Westinghouse to be sold for $7.9B in sign of nuclear power revival
ft.com
ft.com
As a guy who is instinctively against conspiracy theories, allow me to bring arguments against this one.
First, we live in a country of laws. NRC follows the laws, not because it has noble intentions, but because it is not an actual organism, but a collection of people, and individually people don't like to break the law. People will just try to do their job, and if they don't see an explicit (i.e. written) mandate somewhere that they need to prevent nuclear power plants from being built, then they won't do it.
Second, if they really wanted to do that, they would have kept the way they were doing business in the 70s. But they worked hard to come up with an approval process based on probabilistic risk assessment [1]. It took them 13 years to build this framework (between 1994 and 2007). In the old framework, if some undesirable event was possible, then the approval would not come, even if the probability of that event was one in one quadrillion. That was the absolutely perfect framework to shut down an industry. Why did they move away from it?
Third, they just gave NuScale an approval for their small modular reactor design. You can find all the papers related to the approval here [2]. NuScale provided 12000 pages of documents as part of their application, plus 2 million more pages as supporting evidence for the NRC audits. It took them 2 million man-hours of effort over about 7 years to get this approval.
Now, take a look at communication between NRC and NuScale during the approval process [3]:
For Chapter 15, there are numerous unresolved issues without a mutually understood and clearly defined path toward resolution at this time. These issues are related to the underlying methodologies used in the NuScale design basis accident analyses, the thermal-hydraulic and neutronic phenomena modeled in the analyses for long-term cooling and post-shutdown return to power, and recent changes to the NRELAP5 design basis accident analysis tool and supporting input models. Related to Chapters 3 and 15, NuScale submitted a letter dated December 14, 2018 (ADAMS Accession No. ML18351A145), discussing the application of the single failure criterion to the inadvertent actuation block valve. On April 11, 2019, the NRC staff issued SECY-19-0036, “Application of the Single Failure Criterion to NuScale Power, LLC's Inadvertent Actuation Block Valves” (ADAMS Accession No. ML19060A162), requesting Commission direction. Once the Commission provides direction on this policy matter, or sooner, NuScale and the staff will need to act promptly to bring the issue to closure. For each of these issues, the NRC staff and NuScale continue to engage to reach alignment on a clear path toward resolution. The NRC staff expects NuScale to submit its responses by mid-June to support resolution of the Chapter 15 issues.
So, no, sorry, I don't buy your conspiracy theory.
[1] https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/risk-informed/histo...
[2] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/licensing-acti...
[3] https://www.nuscalepower.com/newsletter/nucleus-fall-2020/pr...
NRC was the outcome of 70's environmental movement that has strangled energy policies and essentially made sure no new nuclear power plant designs get built. It was established right after EPA and has grown exponentially to completely destroy nuclear energy industry. I have watched hundreds of hours of interviews with nuclear experts, this is essentially not a conspiracy, just facts. NRC hasn't allowed a single new nuclear power plant design for over 40 years. A complete chokehold on the industry that was already facing issues as explained in this presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb7tAwNIvUs
> The NRC (from 1974-2022) has certified six other designs: the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor, System 80+, AP600, AP1000, the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor and the APR1400. Designs for original pressure water reactors and the boiler water reactors were all approved under the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) which ran from 1946 to 1974. After the AEC was replaced by the NRC, the approval of new nuclear reactor designs ground to a near halt.
Basically, NRC hasn't certified any new designs since AEC.
Tell me how is this a conspiracy theory!? NRC's role, just from empirical examinination appears to be a roadblock, not a regulatory agency for the good and the service of the people.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/08/nuclear-regulatory-com...
The entire industry is fucked and the only the way to move forward to abolish NRC, start a new agency that resembles AEC from 1940-1970. Perhaps the next president will.
First of all, here's my source for the 12k number [1]:
NuScale spent over $500 million, with the backing of Fluor, and over 2 million labor hours to develop the information needed to prepare its DCA application. The company also submitted 14 separate Topical Reports in addition to the over 12,000 pages for its DCA application and provided more than 2 million pages of supporting information for NRC audits.
I personally perused some of those documents, and I didn't get the impression that they show just busywork. They seem to be (in my non-expert opinion) quite commensurate with the complexity of the project.
I for one am happy that the NRC is showing a lot of diligence when working on approving a new nuclear reactor.
And by the way, I used to be in the same camp: nuclear plants are very expensive because the NRC makes it so. But going through the rabbit hole of the NRC approval documents showed me that's not the case.
Here's an anecdote. I can't find a link now, but I'm sure with a bit of effort we could find it.
At some point during the NuScale process, one of the reviewers raised his concerns about some phenomenon around how Boron mixes with water in some edge case. Eventually the issue got resolved, apparently, since the design was approved. But the concern was highly technical, and I can only imagine NuScale spent a lot of time trying to address it. I'm sure there were thousands of cases like that. Is it possible that the NRC is overly cautious? Maybe, but I didn't get a sense they are gratuitously cautious. I just got the sense they are just doing their job, and they are thorough about it. And I like that.
[1] https://www.nuscalepower.com/newsletter/nucleus-fall-2020/pr...
[2] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2019/ML20197A370.html
[3] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/licensing-acti...
https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-reactor-demonstration-pro...
I don't think most of the people in power in an organization having a particular agenda or set of beliefs is "a conspiracy". It happens all the time. (Actual 'conspiracies' happen all the time too. People conspire - hence the existence of the word.)
(I don't have a dog in this fight about the NRC.)
That wasn't ad hominem. It characterized the argument, not the person.
> makes you
This is ad hominem. You've ignored the arguments and characterized the person.
> most of the people in power in an organization having a particular agenda or set of beliefs
This is hasty generalization.
--------
Defeat the paywall[0]
That are broken all the time. This means nothing. It's a cost of doing business to many corporations and organizations and the corporate veil and some fines usually absolves everyone.
> People will just try to do their job, and if they don't see an explicit (i.e. written) mandate somewhere that they need to prevent nuclear power plants from being built, then they won't do it.
This isn't the case in discussing anything of significance.
A few examples: the 2008 crisis, automakers and emissions, Wells Fargo fake account scandal, DuPont toxic chemical leak and cover up, Monsanto dumping into the ocean.
People are easily manipulated and most of the time they know what they are doing is wrong. The more people that are involved or the more their superiors are enabling it, the easier it is for them to do it.
I'm not informed enough on the topic at hand, but your opening argument is baseless.
This argument is naive to how organizations work. There are a million ways to loudly communicate policies around an organization that leads to the alignment of behavior to that policy without ever explicitly stating it. Hiring or promoting mainly anti-development regulators, assigning the loudest pro-development regulators to frustrating busy work with no prospects, raises, “reading between the lines” internal communication and so on. The result is a policy which most align with or leave, that everyone understands, but which can’t be proven in front of a congressional committee.