A lawsuit that you lose is fine, one that is frivolous really isn't, in those cases even the attorneys may get sanctioned (by the judge, or, less commonly, by the bar to the point where if they keep it up they may end up being disbarred).
It will be years before the lawsuit gets to that point, and if you are willing to trade money for a delay, the prospect of having to pay 2x the money for the same delay is hardly a deterrent.
Again: it is your opinion that these are frivolous lawsuits, and that's fine. But there are probably just as many (or more) people that think that they are not.
A frivolous lawsuit is one that does not have merit, has no facts supporting it and usually isn't intended to be won. The lawsuit itself is the goal. These don't qualify as far as I'm concerned. Not even close.
As an example, the nuclear storage facility was delayed, and ultimately cancelled, because the geologic analysis had only established the stability of the ground for the next 800,000 years, and the lawsuit demanded that it be extended to several MILLION years into the future. ...and they WON.
Absolute INSANITY.
What is the problem exactly? Costs are often awarded in many jurisdictions.
Move to Houston next to numerous chemical plants that blow up from time-to-time and let me know how those utopian talking points without regulation works out.
The problem isn't NIMBY's or regulations, it's insurance costs.
Obstructionism is not a problem with nuclear in the US, basic construction competency and diagnostic competency most certainly is though.
For the nuclear energy industry, environmental justice considerations are relevant to every stage of the life cycle of nuclear energy.
https://www.bdlaw.com/publications/nuclear-energy-and-enviro...
That article has nothing at all to do with Vogtle or Summer, has zero concrete claims, and is at most speculation about how things might be different in the future, and how some vague approaches might be used to make sure the nuclear industry fits in to some hypothetical and similarly vague push for vague values.
I find it very odd how nuclear advocates cannot provide evidence for their claims, and often change the point.
Honestly, I find it kind of rude that you claim to be providing one thing but then provide something completely unrelated, and act as if you actually did have evidence for your claims. It's extremely damaging to discussion, why should I trust anything you say from here on out if you are so unreliable? It's a huge problem that I run into with nuclear advocates, creationists, and anti-vaxxers. There's dedication to the causes but no dedication to conversational norms or even the basic standards of honesty.
Some attempts weren't particularly enticing.
The EPR is a Gen3+:
One just started in Finland, and as a project it is a major failure. Nearly 4 times the budget, 12 years late... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Olkiluot...
Two of them run in China, they were five years late and 60% overbudget. One had a problem justifying to stop it for more than one year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Taishan_...
One is a WIP in France. It is massively late and overbudget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanvi...
Two are a WIP in the UK, they already are (surprise!) late and overbudget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Hinkley_...
1) There is no established community / trade to build and maintain nuclear energy on a industrial stage. I live in the neighboring country (Norway), and the nuclear energy community here is pretty much 100% academic. There's are nuclear engineering, tech, etc. programs, so in the start we'd have to import almost all the workers - all while starting our own programs.
2) It's a very long-term commitment, takes what, 10-15 years from shovel in ground to energy production? Compare that to wind energy and similar. The countries that really need energy, are needing it now.
3) Many countries have long-term plans for energy, which were formed decades ago. This is the case of my country - they analyzed nuclear energy back in the 70s, and deemed it not suitable. They are still, almost 5 decades later, parroting the same strategy. "We will focus on renewable hydro, wind, and solar energy, and concentrate funding to those sources"
4) There's a non-trivial amount of political opposition - even though new tech is much, much more safe than the older plants. Nuclear is still big and scary, and some parties will vehemently oppose it - no mater what facts or findings you present to them. And it is very much a NIMBY thing...even those that want it, become a bit hesitant when it comes time to plan for places to put the plants, if it turns out to be too close to home.
[1]: http://solarcellcentral.com/images/avg_cost_of_energy.jpg
* fissile waste that lasts centuries (or more)
* potential for meltdown or other accidental release of radiation
* major military target, a threat not just for loss of generation but
for deliberate release of radiation (by attacker)Better than waste from carbon based power which can't even be contained in the short run.
> potential for meltdown or other accidental release of radiation
Releases less radiation than coal plants
> major military target, a threat not just for loss of generation but for deliberate release of radiation (by attacker)
If an attacker wants to release radiation they can just do it directly wherever they want instead of being limited by where a power plant is.
Besides safety concerns, the biggest impediment to nuclear is simple economics. These are massive, capital intensive projects, with very long timelines. I wish I could dig it up easily but in the nuclear thread the other day an engineer posted an interesting retrospective analysis of what sort of engineering projects were likely to go massively over time and budget. Guess what was at the top of the list.
While nuclear proponents would like to place blame solely on what they consider excessive regulation or by demonizing environmental activists, the reality is that investment dried up for nuclear because the bean counters saw the ROI and timeline was bad compared to alternatives.
When you ask this same faction how to fix that they'll say small modular reactors, etc. That would be great if it existed. It doesn't. People have been trying to make it work for decades, NuScale the latest. I was bullish on NuScale when they started; it really looked like they'd cracked the code. Now they're floundering too.
I would be ecstatic if someone creates these great SMR's that are economic, but I'm not holding my breath.
There's no doubt nuclear needs to be part of the future energy mix, but the idea that all we have to do is get aggressive with nuclear and our problems are solved is navie nonsense imo.
Do they just need a tad more leverage in material terms to ensure future moron governments' feet are held to the fire to the extent they cannot escape rare or what do you think is the ideal enforcement mechanism?
So I guess the dozens of military nuclear submarines and a dozen or so advanced aircraft carriers in the world are powered by unicorns and leprechauns?
I don't know the advanced mechanics of navy reactors, but something that generates 165 megawatts, while fitting inside a 360-foot-long, 35-foot-wide tube and still leaving room to house 130 people comfortably along with all their life support for weeks seems pretty usable as a small reactor. (the A1B reactor on the latest USN carriers takes things up to 700MW of thermal power.)
That's why they're cheap.
Here's a timely podcast on the matter from a very very favorable audience:
http://link.chtbl.com/wGGIOQ5_
For a more realistic view of the problems, I'd recommend this podcast:
https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-209-end-of-the-nu...
Safety, waste, public opposition don't really rate as the reasons that we are not seeing more nuclear. It's just super hard to build and tends to make utilities go bankrupt. So if you're a utility CEO putting in an order for a nuclear reactor is basically suicide.
We need the energy now, though, not in 15+ years. In my country nuclear (which we have none of) is just a dream, but often pushed with those having an agenda against renewables to muddy the discussion.
Calculations I've seen also places the cost of nuclear far above our hydro. As in the price a consumer would have to pay per kWh. Not sure if that even takes into account the massive government subsidies to build it.
Renewables is just a fancy term for "energy whenever the sun shines or the wind blows". This is factually not always the case. We need energy that is available regardless. And that's where fossil fuel and nuclear excels. Fossil fuel's downside that it kills ~3 million people per year. Nuclear's downside that it scares (not kills) ~3 million people per year.
Well we will also need it in 15+ years.
The best time to plant a tree is 15 years ago, and that will still be true in 15 years. The world (hopefully) isn't going to blow up within the next 15 years, so there's no reason we shouldn't consider 15-years investments anymore.
Fossil fuels reserves are going to collapse in the coming decades; even if solar energy prices keep falling, it won't be enough to compensate; any given country has a fixed capacity for hydro power, and it's rather small.
Right now nuclear may not be the cheapest options. But in 15/30 years we're going to desperately wish we'd explored absolutely every realistic option we had.
Carbon capture economically speaking doesn't make anything desirable. We're essentially throwing money at making a problem go away, it's pure spending. So the cheaper, the better, and the sooner the better. Everything else is irrelevant.
So solar and wind are probably are a better bet, and intermittency/storage doesn't really matter.
There are only so many rivers you can dam, so much surface you can put solar panels on without taking away from agriculture, etc.
And a full-renewable approach also has huge risk, it relies on storage technology getting much better in the future, otherwise you need either fossil fuels or nuclear to cover dips. Diversifying probably makes sense.
Source? Quick internet searches seem to say we have more than 50 years left of coal, oil, and natural gas that we know we can extract. And that will expand as we find more and get better at extracting it.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/years-of-fossil-fuel-rese...
https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels
To be clear: we do need to dramatically reduce our fossil fuel usage. Just saying that, so far as I can tell, we're not going to run out of anything in the next 30 years.
What is the lead time in developing new fossil sources?
What is the time to profitability?
How long will there be political will to greenlight new developments?
Depending on those we might run out of the option to increase production of fossil fuels in less time than we have physical reserves for.
It's by far the most expensive power source in common use, and becoming less competitive with other sources every day [1]. This is quite a surprising choice for them to make in 2023.
[1] https://311mieruka.jp/info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/20data...
Hydro: 40 øre/kWh
Windmills on land: 40 øre/kWh
Solar on ground: 63 øre/kWh
Windmills in ocean: 69 øre/kWh
Solar on big roofs: 76 øre/kWh
Nuclear: 78 øre/kWh
Coal: 126 øre/kWh
In 2010, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, opposed nuclear power because it would only come online "in 2021 or 2022".
That would've been great to have last year when gas generation went up an order of magnitude!
It's fast and cheap to deploy zillions of solar panels. It takes a bit longer to truck in the massive components of wind turbines and do a site install. We're already at 30% renewable production of all electricity worldwide. There isn't a compelling rationale for needing nuclear energy, more often it's individuals fixated on it because they want it. Business people or a nonprofit running an energy utility will look at the possibilities and the opportunity costs, and find nuclear isn't a very good fit given the alternatives apart from rare circumstances.