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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

I'm all for fighting the good fight on this, but I'm also a realist: consumer sentiment isn't going to change much. People on the extremes will still fight to the nails on MSG, Flouride in water, GMO, etc. But the median person doesn't really care where their power comes from when they hit a switch so long as it's cheap.

If we want any serious progress on Nuclear you need regulators with authority to ignore organized civilian protestation. And the only way that happens is when politicians have their backs against the wall when it comes to energy options.

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Virtually no one who is critical of nuclear thinks that "it's scary" is the best, or even a good, reason for not having nuclear. But loads of analysis have been done on the financials of different energy generation methods and shows very clearly that, except for those contracted to build and maintain the thing, no one sees a real benefit. It simply doesn't pan out to plan and build new nuclear reactors today, considering what we could do with that money (solar, wind) over the 10 years it takes from groundbreaking to first day online for nuclear facilities.

The financials don't live in a vacuum though. Nuclear is only so expensive because there is a lack of supply chain on reactors and absurd regulations.

The average nuclear reactor is over 40 years old(!) and well past due for replacement. So the cost is skewed by unrealistic maintenance demand on reactors that are 3 generations old because we can't politically replace them with anything other than a Natural Gas plant.

Meanwhile, renewables enjoy fast-tracking and subsidies. But keep in mind renewables currently only benefit places that are either windy or sunny. There are going to be diminishing returns as they fill up our power diet. We are still going to need power supplies that can keep New York powered in the winter. Or power that can be turned on/off to meet seasonal demand. So unless we want to keep natural gas and coal plants around indefinitely, we are going to need some amount of nuclear power in the mix.

A lot of people say that new reactor designs will be a game changer but I can't help but wonder how much more benefit they'll provide over plain old solar and wind with hydrogen for storage and transport.

After the Ukraine invasion, I think it's also worth considering future political instability in reactor permitting and design. I believe the molten salt reactors negate a lot of the problems we've had to consider with the Zaporozhye nuclear plant being in a war zone, but I'm not sure it comes out to something much better than solar and wind.

The micro reactors sound interesting though.

If anything, the Ukraine invasion changed my opinion the other way. Germany had the largest investment in solar and wind anywhere in the world. But their dirty secret was that they were dependent on malicious petrostates to keep the lights on this whole time.

Meanwhile, the Nordics and France that when all-in on nuclear are enjoying relative energy independence.

So how are those sanctions on rosatom going then? Sooo independent.

So you have a problem with cronyism and corruption, not with solar and wind.

Do you have any good source of reading on this? Most of my layman googling seems to suggest otherwise.

> Virtually no one who is critical of nuclear thinks that "it's scary" is the best, or even a good, reason for not having nuclear.

That's 99.9% of Germany's anti-nuclear movement. The "it's just not economical" is a super recent addition (last 3 years, I'd say) to the public debate, and it feels very much tacked on. If anyone discovered a method to bring down cost, most of those who are against nuclear energy wouldn't change their mind, because that's not an actual concern to them.

To further add to this, most arguments against the economics of nuclear are kind of dumb and circular. "We shouldn't bother making nuclear cheaper, it's too expensive!"

Meanwhile, we are just supposed to take for granted that unforeseen technology will make energy storage and transport cheaper.

Thats because the price is 5x higher (inflation and power output adjusted) than the 70s plants. Due entirely to overregulation.

I don't know if I agree with the "organized civilian protestation" entirely. While NIMBY did play a role historically, this seems out-of-touch when I consider the mothballed & troubled builds which are currently in South Carolina.

I do believe regulators have their foot on the brakes, and there are some really telling stories from people in the actual industry. The level of paperwork and scrutiny are hard to fathom for people in other industries. But right now, in the US, that is more of a Federal political issue. The AP1000 lost crucial time due to added missile shield requirements. That doesn't scream local on-the-ground public resistance. You can pin some of this nearly directly to anti-nuclear views from (let's be honestly) Democratic senators (not from the south). Federal policy both encourages and discourages nuclear, but the domestic industry was too weak, and the regulatory policy took critical hits during a formative time.

I care very deeply about addressing carbon emissions. I want nuclear to work, but that's not an argumentative hill I should die on when solar has seen costs go bananas. Maybe another human generation will change things, but from lived experience, I would bet not.

As an engineer, I admit that either nuclear or solar COULD HAVE become the backbone of our energy system. But time is out for climate action. Solar is modular, proven, and roaring. Further deployment will create a new engineering problem of storage, but we don't have time to turn that into a delay tactic. There will be solutions to energy storage, just as there are solutions to nuclear waste. Neither are cheap, but either are a drop in the bucket compared to the climate damage we face.

Well, I largely think that NIMBY is still at play. If you are a senator you have nothing to gain with a nuclear reactor in your district. Compare this to Japan that doesn't have ridiculously cheap natural gas, and yet is still doubling down on nuclear despite Fukushima and constant protest.

I think renewables are amazing and have a long way still to go, but I look at the current energy mix and it's hard to see a 100% renewables grid in our lifetime with foreseeable technology.

> Well, I largely think that NIMBY is still at play

Citation needed? The argument that "those gosh-darn environmentalists ruined nuclear" have been countered repeatedly by simply focusing on the huge economic headwinds facing any nuclear project, while renewables gallop into an ever-cheaper future.

Even making the claim that environmental activism resulted in overaggressive regulation is hard to back up, since agencies like the NRC and IAEA are made up of mainly nuclear industry figures who are hardly anti-nuke.

If you take the climate science seriously, then you really must accept net-zero by 2050. After that, maybe net-negative.

Assuming you're an educated person, the question we must ask is if natural gas is viable to fill in the gaps from renewables in 2050. Given the net-zero requirement, that means a natural gas plant that puts its CO2 emissions back in the ground. That can make sense with direct carbon-capture and storage, but the problem is high capital costs totally undermine the low capacity factor which is why we use it today.

If we go natural gas CCS vs nuclear in 2050, maybe it's a tossup, but they're BOTH poorly suited for the job, if we're talking about solar at >50%. Daily storage will be solved fairly well by then, and seasonal energy storage will be the challenge. But nuclear is baseload.

There are interesting ideas like running nuclear to heat a vat of salt which is used as a means of energy storage so that it would work in a grid with lots of renewables. But that's peak smoothing over several days. Seasonal thermal storage has been written about but is basically crackpot stuff.

So I've kind of come around to seasonal storage of green hydrogen. The technology is at least focused on the right problem. Duration of storage and energy density arguments favor chemical energy, and low capital costs per nameplate capacity are the primary driver.

Solar electricity is a cheaper and less mining intensive source of heat than nuclear thermal energy.

Burning green hydrogen is also largely not going to be needed outside of emergency conditions. Capturing the many thousands of twh per year of waste stream methane is essential anyway and can easily cover what hydro and a few hours of battery cannot.

> Solar is modular, proven, and roaring.

Nuclear has been proven in France for decades. I've yet to see a medium-sized country with solar as the backbone of electricity production.

In France approximately 2/3 of the final energy consumed (don't get fooled by statistics expressed upon primary energy, they are misleading) is produced by burning fossil fuels.

"In 2008, nuclear power accounted for 16% of final energy consumption in France" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Operat...

> ...consumer sentiment isn't going to change much.

> ...the median person doesn't really care where their power comes from when they hit a switch so long as it's cheap.

> If we want any serious progress on Nuclear you need regulators with authority to ignore organized civilian protestation.

The reason sentiment isn't going to change is because much of the situation is dictated by greed. People want cheap power, the companies want money; both are driving forces compelling them to act not in their best interest but cheaply.

Unless regulators can ignore commercial and private interests a like, then greed will always taint regulation. Which is why sentiment will never change.

There's a complete lack of trust that the industry will do the right thing and sustain it long term because it is under constant pressure to be both profitable and cheap.

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