I worry instead that the lesson taken from this will be "nuclear is too expensive and ineffective".
Taking your point more charitably, it is indeed the lack of a sustainable nuclear energy industry that routinely builds plants that causes costs to skyrocket. There is a chicken and egg situation: nuclear projects don’t get funded because they’re too expensive, so there is no chance to develop expertise in how to build them cheaply, which causes the few that get greenlit to be built by rookie teams that make rookie mistakes that cause costs to skyrocket.
The MIT study into the causes of cost overruns: https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118
I clicked through to the actual study ( https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X?_r... ) and I couldn't find a single sentence mentioning on-site last-minute design changes. I searched for "change" and tabbed through all of the results. The closest thing was mention of Westinghouse changing construction standards halfway through an ongoing project, which required many changes to the project design. But, that's one project.
So my question is: Is it possible that the MIT News Office can't understand MIT journal articles?
Couldn't that be paraphrased to "last minute changes"?
Guess that's where they took it from.
Skimming the paper it seems a large part of the issue is that it's difficult to mass produce something which needs to be integrated into a variable environment, and attempting to do so is detrimental compared to custom solutions.
This seems to mirror what I've found in the software world, where a custom integration is often much cheaper and easier to maintain than trying to manhandle some generic library/software to do what's needed.
IIRC one of the big differences/problems is that every one of them have completely different control rooms and control systems. To the point that you cannot train on one reactor and walk into another and operate it. If we at least standardized that side of things, the cost of operations would surely come down
I also question (and happy to be enlightened about) how much the local project needs some massive change. That a pipe might need to be a few hundred yards longer to reach the river surely isn't so consequential that you can't reuse designs
These things are built on huge sites that could be completely leveled and turned into identical square clean pieces of dirt with massive empty land around them How much variation can there possibly be that can't be handled outside of the critical reactor design area
Then again, perhaps it is one of those things where you actually need to make a few of 'em to gain experience.
Today renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels which in turn are cheaper than than nuclear. Through pure economic terms the world is steaming towards a new cheaper energy equilibrium based on renewable energy.
We are currently in the chaotic transitioning phase but that will of course shake out. Sprinkling some luxury nuclear in top will have miniscule effect.
Rince repeat.
Norway also does great with its nationalized O&G
Nationalize industries can be fantastic with the public benefiting directly rather then a few select individuals.
Fix your public institutions instead of privatization
> a previous conservative Goverment saddling it with 16 billion of extra costs due to grift
Oh really? A government run monopoly being involved in grift? How surprising. Guess what? That's what happens with government run companies. You can't simply wish away the opposing party. And I bet the party you like best also does awful crap you conveniently ignore.
For every great nationalized business you can point out, I could point out 100 that are awful wastes of money.
in canada every province with private electricity company is being reamed with high energy prices. every province with a government run power company is not. the same seems to apply in the EU/UK.
nationalized companies run from amazing too crap but every time infrastructure or natural monopolies is privatized the consumer/citizen looses out. EVERY TIME. from parking in Chicago to PG&E in cali to the 409 in ontario - privatization never works out and to prevent abuse regulation is always imposed.
turns out when you grant a for profit company a monoply they take advantage. every time without fail.
so we have on one hand nationalized companies ranging from bad to great for society to private companies always being bad doing everything possible to extract money.
Yes. Granting anyone a monopoly (a corporation or a government) is always a terrible idea. Let's stop doing that.
Also turns out that competition doesn’t always lead to the best outcomes for a society see healthcare in America vs the rest of the world or that we are speed running the world into a climate disaster
> you eont get to have multiple roads or power lines to your home
Why the fuck not? You are asserting things that you clearly haven't thought much about. But I don't have time to try and change your mind. Your biases are clearly too ingrained.
We seem to get by fairly well without those in most places. There are various solutions.
I think it's more likely the current exponential improvements in renewables increase such that we have to come up with new uses for the excess power.
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088
“The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.
The idea that existing nuclear power plants are losing money because they aren't operationally competitive with oil and gas does not square with the facts. The total cost of running a nuclear plant is 30% less than oil and gas per kilowatt-hour. And if all our nuclear plants weren't 50 years old and saddled with massive overregulation, the operation and maintenance of a nuclear plant would probably be equivalent to running a fossil fueled power plant, which would cut ANOTHER 30% off the cost of nuclear because fuel costs of fossil fueled power plants are 4 times the cost of nuclear fuel per kwh.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html
And as for construction costs, you can see that the massive increase in construction costs in the early 60s and 70s was because regulation required enormous increases in staffing, which ballooned labor costs.
https://ifp.org/nuclear-power-plant-construction-costs/
And even so a nuclear plant should be expected to be profitable as long as you can manage to operate it for long enough without the government shutting you down (one of the major regulatory risks I mentioned).
Nuclear power plants in the past generally took 7 years to build and pay off in 16-24 years. While a natural gas plant can be built in 2 years and pay off in 8 years. Nuclear power plants are so cost effective tho, that if you can manage to run it for 17 years, you'll make more money than running a natural gas plant.
Who cares? That putative issue would be beating a dead horse. If it didn't make sense economically anyway, why worry about that?
> The idea that existing nuclear power plants are losing money because they aren't operationally competitive with oil and gas does not square with the facts.
Oil isn't in the picture (it's not used for any baseload power generation in the US, and precious little peaking). But gas is certainly an issue. There have been existing plants (not all of them, of course) that shut down because they could not make even an operating profit. TMI's other reactor was cash flow negative for six years before it was shut down, for example.
In any environment where existing plants are troubled, building new NPPs is obviously completely off the table economically. V. C. Summer was so out of the running it was better to write off the $9B spent so far on it than to complete it.
When we built them more often, weren't they bespoke and expensive?
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Overnight-Construction-C...
Solar and wind costs have only ever decreased. For reasons.
China has constructed more solar and wind generating capacity in the past year than its entire fleet of nukes will produce after they have finished building them. China is less interested in power production from their nukes than strategic isotopes.
The only reason massive subsidies for renewables continue is to accelerate build-out to address the looming climate catastrophe. We need to ramp up to building out a TW of new renewable capacity every year.
They are a supplement to, not a straight replacement for, nuclear or gas or anything else.
Factor in the cost of filling in the gaps, and solar and wind don't come out ahead.
Financial effect of renewables in Europe: https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-energy-market-update-j...
The civilian nuclear industry stemmed from massive military investments, which were a way to subsidize it. "In the United States, the federal government has paid US$145 billion for energy subsidies to support R&D for nuclear power ($85 billion) and fossil fuels ($60 billion) from 1950 to 2016" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies_in_the_United...)
The very PWR reactor exists thanks to the US Army desire of nuclear subs, which paid all associated R&D (Westinghouse then adapted it to the civilian on-shore market). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor#Hist...
Nowadays the sole direct federal energy support "peaked in FY 2021 at over $500 million" ( https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pd... )
There is no secret here: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-via... https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/nuclear_s... Nuclear enjoys massive tax reduction
Cost effectiveness will be established after the last hot waste of the last decommissioned plant will be cold. In the meantime any serious accident or waste particle wandering around may induce costs.
As already answered: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-via...
I don't think we should be subsidizing power (or most things) but it seems disingenuous for an article to claim that nuclear power isn't viable because it gets subsidies, even tho fossil fuel gets at least as much subsidies per mwh as nuclear.
Coal and oil still get huge subsidies, yet even with are not viable against solar and wind without.
Wait, what? Other than solar (for obvious reasons), renewables can run 24/7/365, and that's extremely common; as an example, the Itaipu power plant has run continuously since 1984, and it only powered down once in 2009, when several of the transmission lines taking power from it failed at nearly the same time due to lightning.
This nuclear plant cost ~$34 billion USD. What if Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and a few others just got together and built 10 or so nuclear power plants? I wonder if that could actually bring down the price to build them.
Nuclear plants have only ever been built where the customers can be forced to buy the power. No merchant nuclear plant, selling into a competitive market, has ever been built anywhere.
Except for airplanes that's one of the few things we still do better.
My overall point is I highly doubt nuclear powerplants will be built here in any major way. Will it happen in Asia? Far more likely.
I believe engines are from Rolls Royce which is European.
Mineral fuels including oil: US$378.6 billion
Machinery including computers: $229.6 billion
Electrical machinery, equipment: $197.7 billion
Vehicles: $134.9 billion
Aircraft, spacecraft: $102.8 billion
Optical, technical, medical apparatus: $99.1 billion
Gems, precious metals: $92.5 billion
Pharmaceuticals: $83.5 billion
So the top 3 "non-aircraft" machinery categories are still exported at 5x the amount of aerospace. It seems like people [2] are still interested in the stuff the US manufactures.
[1] https://www.worldstopexports.com/united-states-top-10-export...
[2] https://www.usitc.gov/research_and_analysis/tradeshifts/2020...
It's just true.
Pharmaceuticals, medical and gems are off topic.
I'm sure there's other small niches the US dominates in. But overall what I said is the objective truth no matter how much you desire it to be not true.
If Asia doesn't dominate a niche yet they are aggressively on track to dominate in the near future.
Throwing out gems (because that probably isn't a good case, like you said), it still amounts to over $1.2 trillion in exports. I'm sure other countries would love that kind of "niche" business.
Gemstones therefore are more of a reflection of countries with the ability to purchase the gemstones as an import and less of a reflection of the country actually exporting the gemstones. Right? If a country exports a huge amount of gemstones it means a lot of external countries have an abundance of economic output such that they can purchase frivolous goods that ultimately don't contribute much to the economy. North Korea doesn't purchase gemstones but maybe a rich country would. And the place where diamonds are mined are mostly from some poor countries in Africa.
>Can you elaborate on what you mean by "building"? It's a nebulous term.
Manufacturing and infrastructure I believe are the two words that cover it best off the top of my head but it's unnecessary to specify this to the level of pedantic detail you're going for here. I think those two terms are clear enough.
I think we both know, in general the direction China/Asia is going and where they're completely dominating the US. It's at a general tipping point now. Where one can say they're better than the US overall in the general area of infrastructure/manufacturing. Manufacturing is pretty broad and general and that's the right word to use because broadly and generally Asia is just ahead of the US in this matter.
The problem with these things is that even though it's obvious people still like to debate pedantic details in some vain attempt to use the pedantic details to obscure the obvious truth or even shift the advantage in the favor of the US. Why else would you bring up gemstones and pharmaceuticals?
I don't think I need to elaborate as you requested. You know what I'm talking about and deep down you most likely agree. The trouble here is less about getting at the most accurate truth and more about the inability to accept the truth.
Additionally byd will be surpassing Tesla soon. It's projected to in less than a year.
As for phones, the entire stack is owned by Asia. Software is the only thing we have left and most of it is open source.
Pretty clear cut from your examples. But also clear cut from common sense.
I suggest you find other examples to help detract from the obvious generality. Look into Tiny niches like precision and highly advanced bespoke manufacturing where the US still holds a shakey lead. These areas may help you construct an argument that looks effective but obviously isn't.
The rest of your post seems like a deflection because you can't seem to adequately illuminate your point. Asking for clarification is not being pedantic any more than hiding behind ambiguous terms makes for a convincing argument. I'm not, for one, saying the US manufactures more than Asia. But I'm also not in agreement that it's languishing, save for a single industry like aerospace. If you look at the actual data, there is still a fairly robust manufacturing base in America, especially for a service-oriented economy. You wrote a lot of words but didn't contribute much to the argument other than another vague diatribe when asked for a finer point, and that's often indicative of not having a thorough understanding.
It's False gracious-ism lol. You obviously believe you can win the argument without that so you gave it up. It was a deceptive gesture. Anyway. I'm not in this to win. I'm in it because I, in totality believe I'm right. So what does it matter if I use gemstones given that you already conceded that point? And like I said it was a false concession. You pretended to concede that point and I correctly responded as if you didn't concede.
>The rest of your post seems like a deflection because you can't seem to adequately illuminate your point.
I can't adequately illuminate my point. I concede to that. The statement "Asia is superior to the US in manufacturing and infrastructure" is a statement with so many fuzzy words I can't satisfy your pedantry. What is "manufacturing"? What is "superiority"? What is "Asia"? Am I referring to North Korea?
There is no study, no science on the face of this earth that can prove either side of this debate correct.
The most we can do is throw a bunch of random facts and tidbits at each other and never ultimately agree. Take your side foray into gemstones... Does diamonds represent all of gemstones? Also what about the proportional value of artificial diamonds vs. Mined diamonds? What about the amount of value involved in beauty vs. Manufacturing? You failed to acknowledge here that diamonds used in manufacturing are mostly manufactured themselves. How much of manufacturing does gemstones represent? We could dive deep into this useless pedantic branch of the debate and ultimately go nowhere.
But despite all of this, we both know what gemstones usually refers to a mined rock for beauty purposes. That was the industry referred to through the colloquial usage of the term gemstones. But there's an underlying strategy here where you can subtly switch definitions and use the pedantic definition without the other party realizing it. Anyway let's move off of gemstones like you originally conceded.
I value the human ability to know things and communicate vague and general concepts and things without fuzzy boundaries without the need to reference data or research. If you don't have the intellectual ability to do this then the only logical conclusion for you is to not even engage in this debate or any debate for that matter because no definitive conclusion is possible for most things of this nature.
I also concede that despite all of this fuzziness you are smart enough to know what I'm talking about and deep down you know I'm right.
Call it diatribe or whatever you want. The outcome of this conversation had a predictable end of going to a pedantic nowhere. I just took it to a different end here.
>If you look at the actual data, there is still a fairly robust manufacturing base in America, especially for a service-oriented economy.
So? You can make this statement and the following can still be true: Asia is far superior to the US when it comes to manufacturing and infrastructure.
Additionally the following statement can still be true: the past several decades American manufacturing and infrastructure has been in decline.
And this as well: America does not have the will or the manufacturing capability to replace it's energy infrastructure with nuclear.
Do we need to get into a overly detailed debate about this or is it just self evident that these statements are true? I think it's self evident. Again it's not really matter of truth, but more about accepting the truth.
Additionally the rivalry between the US and China is off topic I'm not talking about that.
My statement is, Asia is superior to the US in terms of Manufacturing/infrastructure. I can add more to that as well. In terms of ICs, Asia also dominates. The US is behind Asia on all three of these fronts. As a general statement this is still true. You didn't invalidate anything with your off topic comment here.
That being said, the united states is the dominant spender in terms of defense. They are number one on this front and in terms of technology. I don't think the world has ever seen a military industrial complex as massive and as advanced as the one the US has built. What you say here is true and it's major. It's not included in "manufacturing" but it's intimately connected and thus worth mentioning.
So in essence if there is a place that will convert to majority nuclear power it's most likely going to be Asia that still has the capability to do this. I don't think it's likely for the US.