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Comment by mgfist | Hacker News Reader

> The amount of proposed solar and wind and battery projects in the United States at the end of 2021 was 1000s of time larger than the amount of proposed nuclear power projects

Because the public has been anti nuclear energy for the past 4 decades.

> And one big difference is the renewables are actually built, while the fission projects never make progress.

Nuclear energy regulations are an absolute nightmare and make building anything virtually impossible.

You're not necessarily wrong with your point, but man the world would've been so much cleaner if we didn't abandon nuclear energy 40 years ago. Now that we've lost all expertise and have neglected research, yes it's very hard for nuclear energy to make a huge resurgence.

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Regulations are a nightmare for good reasons. Nuclear power is safe because regulations are a nightmare. Yes, we could build Chernobyl-like power plants with soviet-like regulations, that are cheap. That leads sooner or later to Chernobyl-like accidents.

If nuclear power depends on lowering the safety regulations to be economically viable, it is not economically viable, at least for now.

Take for example the infamous Flamanville third reactor: it could be opened by 2014, but "nightmare" regulations detected flawed components. A year later, regulations detected faults in cooling valves. Three years later, the secondary cooling systen didn't meet regulations. A year later, a failure in steam pipes delayed more the opening, literally more than 100 defective welds. All of the delays combined more than tripled the costs, but to me they sound valid requirements.

You're not necessarily wrong. At the end of the day we lost all nuclear expertise when the public turned against it 40 years ago.

Per kwh fossil fuel disasters have killed more people and have caused more damage to the environment. Compare the public reactions to the Three Mile Island Accident vs the BP oil spill.

40 years ago, yet not soon enough.

Subsidizing solar and wind 40 years ago, in the amount nukes got, would have brought us to the present efflorescence of miraculously cheap renewable energy 30 years ago, and we would not today be facing imminent climate disaster and ocean ecosystem collapse.

The problem isn't the safety regulation, but the opening authorisation regulations. Because we basically forbid the opening of new reactors regardless of their safety we have said to all people with nuclear expertise "Go find another job, you industry is a dead end".

Instead of saying to welders "Learn nuclear grade welding, develop a valued expertise and you are going to have a safe, well paying job for the next 30 years". We told them "this is the last reactor we're gonna do, do the bare minimum and find something else, your job is gone anyway".

Instead of saying to your graduates "Study nuclear and you are going to work in building/managing reactors and provide carbonless energy to your country" we told them "If you study nuclear, all you are going to do is dismantle old reactors we don't want to see anymore".

And surprise: 25 years later we have a very hard time properly building and maintaining reactors. And that is the consequence of the opening authorisation regulations.

I don't know who you are referring with "we forbid". Certainly not we Europe, because there are 3 reactors currently being built, 7 planned and 16 proposed. Again, Flamanville is delayed mainly because of safety issues, and not regardless.

Industries rise and fall. Coal is largely being phased out (in Europe), so coal miners are expected to lose their jobs and certainly their sons are not going to be miners. Of course they sang the same tune "we need guaranteed and well paid jobs for the next 30 years, and then for our youth", but sadly no industry is free from falling.

If nuclear power cannot teach their people to weld properly, they cannot exist. If their plan is to wait for the state to send them fully formed, the plan is flawed. It's like tomorrow Google or Facebook cries because MIT isn't teaching how to harvest data properly.

It was always too expensive. It wasnt hippy peaceniks that killed it. It was money.

The odd catastrophe didnt help though.

Why there is a resurgence of interest now when dirt cheap solar and wind have effectively rendered it a costly relic of the past is somewhat puzzling.

I guess PR campaigns like the OP's link are one reason.

It's expensive when you rely on cheap Russian/ME fossil fuels

> Why there is a resurgence of interest now when dirt cheap solar and wind have effectively rendered it a costly relic of the past is somewhat puzzling.

If cheap solar/wind was enough right now Europe wouldn't be going through an energy crisis.

There isn't enough solar/wind or nuclear to power Europe right now. The question is which power mix will be best in a decade's time.

Solar is cheap since 2012 or so. 10 years is not enough to make a full shift. But we europeans are going there: 15 GW installed in 2019, 20 GW in 2020 and 23 GW in 2021.

> If cheap solar/wind was enough right now Europe wouldn't be going through an energy crisis.

It's an oil/gas crisis, not an electricity crisis - that one went away when the days started getting longer.

Germany had a Solar buildout cap at 50GW because of our coal lobby.

Renewables could be built out much faster with only a little more political will.

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