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Comment by BenFranklin100 | Hacker News Reader

This is a misguided response. Nuclear power plants have all been essentially custom, one-off projects built by inexperienced crews. It’s little surprise the cost overruns. It’s a very different proposition with identical, smaller modular plants that are being proposed that will be built in the tens to hundreds. Costs will drop dramatically while safety will increase, both by the design of the plants and the economies of scale.

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France, France, France, France, France. I need nuclear proponents to read about France.

A nation made a bet on "let's do all nuclear". It basically worked, but there was no magical cost decrease. They have an immense amount of institutional knowledge, huge educational system, massive amounts of resources. Their nukes are big and expensive and not really on time. There is no magic at the end of the tunnel if Greenpeace disappears.

The world isn't Sim City, power plants need water access and have location concerns, and it's not a question of just dropping a bunch of truck-sized plants across the world and magically solving everything.

Having said that, France is a success story of course. It's cool that it's all set up. But even after building it up, running these plants are expensive, there's often load issues meaning they are not fully utilized... "nuclear is free easy energy" is science fiction. That's fine, though! It's normal that we have to do stuff to power society.

EDIT: to be clear, I'm cool with nuclear, but I am not picky about where my watts come from.

France went "Negative learning by doing" [1] in their initial build out and Flamanville 3 [2] is looking like a complete boondoggle.

[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Pl...

> The French nuclear case illustrates the perils of the assumption of robust learning effects resulting in lowered costs over time in the scale-up of large-scale, complex new energy supply technologies. The uncertainties in anticipated learning effects of new technologies might be much larger that often assumed, including also cases of “negative learning” in which specific costs increase rather than decrease with accumulated experience.

Oof, talk about a nasty abstract. Will need to find a way to look at this paper later.

There is a magical end that we can optimize where it is just about making nuclear fission energy more efficient.

I've heard it said that in France there are 3 types of nuclear reactor and 100 types of cheese. In America it's the other way around.

France also suffered from the same anti-nuclear sentiment as the rest of the world. To the point that they a couple of years ago they were forced to shutdown their plants for maintenance after a decade or more of neglect.

it was in fact the last winter just at the worst moment possible when electricity price was exploding. Half of them were in maintenance for various reasons

https://www.tf1info.fr/economie/crise-de-l-energie-nucleaire...

It is funny what all gets blamed on anti-nuclear sentiment or the anti-nuclear lobby. This is a new one though. The neglect was because of anti-nuclear sentiment? In France? I think France is probably one of the countries with the highest approval for nuclear (well > 50%).

The neglect was because maintenance costs money and as usual people (+governments, corporations ...) want to save money/increase earnings/profit, so upkeep gets neglected.

Of course the issue is more complex than just one cause, but anti-nuclear sentiment plays a huge role:

--- start quote ---

Following the 2011 Fukushima I nuclear accidents, an OpinionWay poll at the end of March found that 57% of the French population were opposed to nuclear energy in France.[119] A TNS-Sofres poll in the days following the accident found 55% in favour of nuclear power.[119] In 2006, BBC/GlobeScan poll found 57% of the French opposed to nuclear energy.[120]

In May 2001, an Ipsos poll found that nearly 70% of the population had a 'good opinion' of nuclear power, however 56% also preferred not to live near a nuclear plant and the same proportion thought that a 'Chernobyl-like accident' could occur in France

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Public...

--- end quote ---

It's also one of the major reasons why no new nuclear reactors appeared in France after 2000, and why the government would neglect the existing reactors.

You are correct - one offs incur huge "unknowns" which bloat budgets.

You are correct that the obvious solution is standard production of modular designs are the solution to that.

This has all be true and obvious for several decades. Yet the realisation of this approach seems to still be far away.

It also doesn't factor in the non-technical hurdles, costs, and delays that are involved here. Environmental impacts, and local-population-resistance are significant, often terminal, factors in plant construction.

Put another way, nobody cares if I have solar panels on my roof. But if I have a tiny modular reactor in the garden the neighbours will (not surprisingly) object.

I say this as a nuclear supporter.

> Put another way, nobody cares if I have solar panels on my roof. But if I have a tiny modular reactor in the garden the neighbours will (not surprisingly) object.

Yes, though your neighbours will probably also object to you putting up one of those big wind turbines in your backyard. Or a coal fired power plant.

Im not sure they'd complain if I put up a small wind turbine. If I was in a more rural area I doubt theyd object to a big wind turbine. (The extent of their worry being noise, and danger if it self destructed in bad weather.)

Clearly a coal-fired plant would be an issue, to the degree to which they pollute the neighbours. There are diesel generators here attached to factories etc, and nobody really cares.

Objection to nuclear though is more visceral. With diesel I can hear the noise and decide if I don't like it. With coal I might notice the smell. But I don't think either would silently kill me. Nuclear leaks are invisible, and accumulative, so it can be (disproportionately) scary. Certainly those who are opposed to it will use fear to rally other people to their side. Fear is a strong motivating emotion that is easily manipulated.

> If I was in a more rural area I doubt theyd object to a big wind turbine

You'd be surprised. There was a protest in my area against putting up five new wind turbines at an industrial site as the existing buildings are take down. People object that it would ruin their view... The current buildings is part of a massive coal fired power plant which is slowly being decommissioned and there are already three existing turbines.

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