Wyoming celebrates 'nuclear Renaissance' as feds approve license for a reactor | Hacker News Reader

Wyoming celebrates 'nuclear Renaissance' as feds approve license for a reactor

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33 pointsmooreds5 comments

i am all for nuclear power if it can be made economical. Today it is the most expensive mainstream form of energy when built new, and cannot compete on grids increasingly filled with renewables. Hopefully projects like this can innovate in the cost basis, otherwise it has little future.

Although notably:

> the Biden-administration's Infrastructure Law fronted half of the costs of construction, about two billion dollars.

& the rest bankrolled by bill gates. So, almost entirely subsidized. But nevertheless maybe they'll prove something!

I do think significantly cheaper nuclear power with the best of modern fail safe systems and overall safety are possible from an engineering standpoint, but that we are just really bad at managing the capital requirements/expenditures because it is such an obviously large and expensive and complex project, and it needs to happen multiple times in a row with constant production to bring costs down.

And with all the political, financial, legal, and managerial problems that slow these things down, by time the first plant is finished it is so far behind that the guys that made all the mistakes and redid and learned and improved processes at the start of construction the first time around have been out of that job or work for 10 years and moved on and aren't available for building a second plant. And the guys doing the final construction on the plant and learned and improved processes and fixed mistakes and flaws won't have a second plant to work on until atleast 10 years down the road so they have to move on too. Its not like the guys digging the foundations and pouring concrete are the same guys that in the middle that are laying down electrical equipment or the guys at the end of the project hooking up and testing all the equipment and sensors or planning the management of a radiologically monitored and secured environment.

im sure you're aware, but you're accurately describing Wright's Law and the technology learning curve [1]. Solar and batteries follow Wright's law, and have a learning curve. Nuclear does not follow Wright's law, and has a very shallow learning curve. Fundamentally extremely complicated massive machines like NPPs will _never_ get exponentially cheaper like solar, batteries and wind.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/learning-curve

> i am all for nuclear power if it can be made economical

It can definitely be cost-competitive if you relax the safety standards enough! What could possibly go wrong?

Imagine the equivalent of Pete Hegseth or RFK Jr., but in charge of nuclear safety. The future of humanity is in safe hands.

Rick Perry (and his son) are now deeply involved in (claiming to be) building nuclear power.

The same guy that vowed to defund the Department of Energy, was later put in charge of it and admitted he didn't know what it did when calling to abolish it.

The pro-nuclear nerds on Reddit aren't hapoy:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclear/comments/1sqzmg2/fermi_inc_...

> Fermi Inc: How to Make Your Son a Multi-Billionaire in a Year or Less Through the Guise of Building an AP1000 Nuclear Reactor, A Practical Guide in 3 Easy Steps

Reply on news.ycombinator.com