Comment by ViewTrick1002 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ViewTrick1002 | Hacker News Reader

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Nuclear power has famously had negative learning by doing throughout its entire life.

There was a first large scale attempt at scaling nuclear power culminating 40 years ago. Nuclear power peaked at ~20% of the global electricity mix in the 1990s. It was all negative learning by doing.

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

Then we tried again 20 years ago. There was a massive subsidy push. The end result was Virgil C. Summer, Vogtle, Olkiluoto and Flamanville. We needed the known quantity of nuclear power since no one believed renewables would cut it.

How many trillions in subsidies should we spend to try one more time? All the while the competition in renewables are already delivering beyond our wildest imaginations.

China is barely investing in nuclear power. At their current buildout which have been averaging 5 construction starts per year since 2020 they will at saturation reach 2-3% total nuclear power in their electricity mix.

China is all in on renewables [1]() and [2] storage.

Then rounding of with some typical ”SMRs” nonsense!!!

SMRs have been complete vaporware for the past 70 years.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuc...

Or just this recent summary on how all modern SMRs tend to show promising PowerPoints and then cancel when reality hits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XECq9uFsy6o

Simply look to:

- mPower: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%26W_mPower

- NuScale: https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2024/10/29/the-rise-and-f...

And the rest of the bunch adding costs for every passing year and then disappearing when the subsidies run out.

[1]: https://reneweconomy.com.au/chinas-quiet-energy-revolution-t...

[2]: https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/23/chinas-new-energy-storag...

It's too costly to build high speed rail in many parts of the world (California for instance). It's not because high speed rail isn't a viable solution, it's regulation.

The article you posted from sciencedirect supports this. The study points primarily to a changing complex regulation landscape as a primary driver of costs. Meanwhile, France is in an excellent position in the EU in terms of energy in large part because it stuck with nuclear instead of attempting unsuccessfully to transfer to wind and solar like some of it's neighbors (who now burn lignite to meet energy demands).

Solar panels, for instance, are mostly made in places where actual costs of construction are externalized to the environment and workers with depressed wages. Nuclear plants need to be built and decommissioned in the same place - places that are often actively hostile with complex regulation meant to curtail nuclear specifically for the sake of non-proliferation. SMRs help sidestep a portion of this hostile regulation but there are countless reactor designs that are possible that we can't even begin to explore until regulation is made reasonable.

Given that Flamanville 3 being 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule even the French are wholly unable to build new nuclear power.

We should of course keep our existing fleet around as long as it is safe, needed and economical.

Then you round of with an endless stream of excuses as to why nuclear power does not deliver.

The only thing hindering nuclear power is its economics. Otherwise less regulated countries would pounce on the opportunity to have cheaper energy. That hasn’t happened.

Where nuclear power has a good niche it gets utilized, and no amount of campaigning limits it. One such example are submarines.

So stop attempting to shift the blame and go invest your own money in advancing nuclear power rather than crying for another absolutely enormous government handout when the competition in renewables already deliver on that said promise: extremely cheap green scalable energy.

Unsubsidized renewables are today cheaper than fossil fuels. Lets embrace that rather than wasting another trillion dollars on nuclear subsidies.

Your figures for China's mix are meaningless because you don't bother to mention when you think "saturation" occurs. They are on track to build far more Nuclear than 2-3% of their current mix in the next 20 years - and this is as the world's top manufacturer of solar and wind products.

Love the excuses when apparently China was not building as much nuclear power as your fantasy land imagined.

You do know that nuclear power as a share of the Chinese electricity mix is dropping?

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