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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> Is that majority of that cost dealing with regulatory and legal nonsense that stems from the anti-nuclear hippy groups and laws they got passed in the 60s and 70s?

One part this, two parts the economics of a novel technology platform being deployed in a large size, three parts American labor costs and inexperience with megaprojects.

Similar to why we can't build ships [1]: high input costs, notably materials and labour, and a coddled industry that is internationally uncompetitive. With ships, it's the Jones Act and shipyard protectionism; with civilian nukes, it's misguided greenies. (Would note that we're perfectly capable of nuclear production if it happens under the military.)

[1] https://open.substack.com/pub/constructionphysics/p/why-cant...

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Nuclear is still much more expensive than renewables in China, where there aren't too many "misguided greenies" setting policy. Environmentalists were successful in opposing nuclear construction because it was expensive and unprofitable, not the other way around.

The faster people can internalize this lesson, the sooner we'll get to economically-viable nuclear power.

> Environmentalists were successful in opposing nuclear construction because it was expensive and unprofitable

As far as Europe is concerned, there seems to have been various political move and lobbying to affect energy independence (e.g. France): economy is transformed energy, so by nuking (…) energy independence, you're suffocating countries. The military role of nuclear is furthermore crucial; civil & nuclear must be correlated.

That's to say, giving up nuclear is not something a sane, well-driven country should do lightly, regardless of ideologies.

It's a tricky topic; what I regularly hear from economists is that wind & solar are still far from being able to compete with nuclear. And because of the previous two points, people can't but frown upon "green" arguments, even if the underlying intentions are honest and well-intended.

(China may not have misguided greenies, but it has a strong incentive to sell whatever it's offering).

If China had a super cheap nuclear design they would be very happy to export that the same way they export their other technologies like EVs, high speed trains, solar panels, batteries, etc. But it simply does not exist.

> If China had a super cheap nuclear design they would be very happy to export that

China "plans to export nuclear power reactors in the future" [1]. It's early stages, but being done through Belt & Road [2].

[1] https://www.iaea.org/bulletin/how-china-has-become-the-world...

[2] https://www.cipe.org/resources/chinas-nuclear-dragon-goes-ab...

The first article refers to 2018 in the future tense, and the second article is three years old without a single announcement of a Belt and Road nuclear plant since then.

china has a super cheap design called hualong and they plan to export it the way russia is exporting their designs. Another plan is finishing local adaptations of ap1000 that can be reselled without licensing problems

This is why China installed 217 GW of solar last year, but only 1.2 GW of nuclear.

> why China installed 217 GW of solar last year, but only 1.2 GW of nuclear

And 114 GW of coal [1]. Don't do nuclear, and that becomes 115 GW of coal. Nuclear and renewables aren't competing for market share.

Everyone is putting down renewables as quickly as possible. But we need more power, so we fill the gap with one of gas, nuclear or coal.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-...

> > why China installed 217 GW of solar last year, but only 1.2 GW of nuclear > > And 114 GW of coal [1]. Don't do nuclear, and that becomes 115 GW of coal. Nuclear and renewables aren't competing for market share.

That is true for China, since their overall energy demand is growing massively. But is that also true for other parts of the world like the US or EU? Because looking at the electricity production [1] this doesn't seem to be the case. So in those markets they would compete for replacing existing fossil power plants. I think we can expect some growth, but not on a level even close to China.

[1] https://yearbook.enerdata.net/electricity/world-electricity-...

We should see some increase in electricity consumption due to displacement of direct uses of fossil fuels. For example, use of heat pumps in place of natural gas furnaces, electric cars in place of IC engine vehicles. Add to that the ever popular AI and general data center consumption motivating this announcement (but I wonder how much of that is going to move to places with cheaper electricity.)

Yes, these and other innovations will defivinitely increase our overall electricity consumption, but i imagine that it will be a gradual shift as it is aleady happening, since vehicles and heating has long life cycles. It also helps that energy wise these technologies are more efficient, so that offsets some of the increase.

Probably hard to judge right now where AI is heading and if the pace of increased energy consumption remains this high. But i agree that they'll probably end up moving closer to sources of cheap electricity.

The efficiency would decrease primary energy use, if the electricity were being produced from thermal sources, but the amount of electrical energy used would increase.

I'm only slightly exaggerating when I say that the rest of the world is a footnote to China's emissions. Europe's emissions are already dropping fast, though. Presumably if China can decarbonize its economy at the rate it's going, then we presumably the rest of the world (even poorer nations) will be able to fast-follow them due to the learning curve (or else just because China will have so much excess manufacturing capacity that they'll flood the world with cheap renewables.)

The current analysis is that China's emissions peak this year [1,2] and will enter a structural decline. This is because new renewables are being deployed faster than growth in energy demand. The new coal construction is mostly "dispatchable" production that will be used to backstop the fast-growing renewable grid, with payments going to coal plants in exchange for not generating (and built-in expectations that these payments will rise over the next few years as renewables and storage serve more of the demand.)

[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-emissions-set-to... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02877-6

Also because of widespread adoption of battery electric vehicles.

is it? New plants cost 3-3.5bn for a stable 1gw output. For renewables - much more needs to be built to provide same reliability or compensate with fossils

IMO they only continue to exist because of the Jones Act not the way I think you're implying where Jones Act protectionism prevents them from flourishing. High material and labor alone are enough to explain why people wouldn't build ships in the US. What special capabilities could Us shipbuilders bring that would make the cost of labor here competitive with China or South Korea? Gone are the days when the US dominates on skill or capacity, and that's not because the US has lost something the rest of the world just caught up with us.

Whenever we're looking at the 1900s and wondering why the US used to be so dominant as an industrial power I think it's incredibly important to remember our industry got all the upside (an absolute torrent of money and demand) and none of the downside (bombing) of two world wars. IMO the US industrial base was riding high on that easily into the 80s and people mistake that dominance for skill and prowess rather than the waning boon of WW2's mobilization and destruction of every other extant industrial power.

The rise of the US as an industrial power started in 1800. The US was already dominant before WW1.

There is a huge difference between the US accounting for 20% of Global GDP and merely being "in first place" at the end of WWI and the USA having half of global GDP (and 80% of the world's hard currency reserves) at the end of WW2. While also say, having a Navy easily more powerful than the rest of the world combined, and being able to to focus on an upcoming surge in consumer consumption as opposed to desperately struggling to stabilize food production and rebuild cities and industries that had been ravaged by war.

Britain, a victor that had never been occupied, wasn't able to lift many significant food rationing schemes until the 1950s. Bread, which wasn't rationed during the war, had to be rationed from '46 to '48.

There is a meaningful distinction between being the leading industrial power and being the overwhelmingly dominant economic power.

When the German soldiers first encountered the US doughboys, they were struck by their height, their excellent food, and their supplies. That was when Germany knew they had lost WW1.

And this was despite having to ship all that stuff across an ocean.

The US was an industrial powerhouse then.

The point is there are downstream costs to our moribund shipping industry. We have a internally-navigable waterways we barely use, offshore wind power gets stalled due to lack of ships, et cetera.

Post-WWII effects are one component. But another is that we want a protected shipbuilding industry for its own purposes, which is fine, but that curtails a lot of other production.

> What special capabilities could Us shipbuilders bring that would make the cost of labor here competitive with China or South Korea?

Energy. Our energy costs are much lower than theirs.

China's average energy cost for businesses is 10c and the US is 13c according to a quick search I did so I'm still not following.

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