Forgotten History of Small Nuclear Reactors (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Forgotten History of Small Nuclear Reactors (2015)

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49 pointsderriz67 comments

The author of the article "M. V. Ramana" is long-time opponent of nuclear energy , mostly because of nuclear weapon proliferation concerns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._V._Ramana

See for example:

"Bombing Bombay? Effects of Nuclear Weapons and a Case Study of a Hypothetical Explosion", 1999 International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)

https://www.ippnw.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Bombing-Bom...

"Costing plutonium: economics of reprocessing in India", M.V. Ramana, J.Y. Suchitra, 2007

https://www.geocities.ws/m_v_ramana/nucleararticles/IJGEI_Vo...

"India, Pakistan and the Bomb", Scientific American, 2001

https://nci.org/01/12/07-08.pdf

Perhaps he took the Vancouver "nuclear weapons free zone" signs a little too seriously.

https://www.google.com/search?num=10&client=firefox-b-d&hs=d...

Dr M.V. Ramana argued for establishing a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East, even criticizing United States approach towards nuclear armed Israel.

https://www.cndpindia.org/a-nuclear-weapons-free-zone-in-the...

"Dr M.V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs (SPPGA), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, told IPS establishing a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East is not only a major challenge but it is also important.

The challenge is primarily due to Israel’s refusal to not just discuss its decades-old nuclear weapons program but even acknowledge it, while at the same time attacking countries like Iran over even its nuclear energy-related programs, he argued.

Being backed by the United States, which adopts one rule for Israel and another rule for other countries, it is very difficult to involve Israel, said Dr Ramana, who is also Director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Acting Director of the Centre for India and South Asia Research (CISAR) in the Institute of Asian Research."

Not sure this takes away from his arguments? If anything the Wikipedia article sets him up as an expert on the subject?

Yeah, it does. The anti-nuclear crowd has a case of circular reasoning where they put a lot of effort into getting nuclear power crippled by overregulation, then they point to the costs of overregulation as just the inherent nature of nuclear and therefore a reason that it should be abandoned altogether. That changes how an article like this should be read.

And unfortunately the anti-nuclear efforts haven't even managed to stop nuclear proliferation. We seem to have negotiated our way to a world where everyone is going to need to have the weapons but might skip the benefits of nuclear science (though China might make up for the West's failures, hope springs eternal).

"The anti-nuclear crowd" well, that is needlessly inflammatory. Did you ever realize that -- at least a part -- of their arguments might have a stance?

We have tons of political decisions to do in every country where the answer is not totally clear. Often it's a preference. Should we tax the rich? Or take from the middle class? Should Belgium support an army, or creches? Things like that.

IMHO nuclear energy usage is in a similar ball park. It has real risks, and real benefits. And so, if you see one that thinks the risks are more important than the benefits, there is ZERO need to use inflammatory speech.

BTW; I also tend to be an opponent. Many reasons:

- Germany still doesn't have an answer to the permanent storage of the waist

- with existing reactor types the worst imaginable accident is really, really bad. Especially for a densely populated country like mine

- nuclear power is quite expensive. The electric power prices at the customers are only so low because there are open and hidden subsidies in place (e.g. no atomic power plant in Germany has to pay full insurance. Or they don't need to pay for the 20000+ year long storage --- that's all "socialized", e.g. the tax payers pay for it

- nuclear power needs at the end reliably cooling. Look at the rivers --- in Germany we had to stop nuclear power plants, because the summer drough was so intense that not enough cooling water was available. That happened several times in France, too.

- these days, the electric power companies of Germany don't want to build nuclear power plants. In "Manager Magazin" --- not your usual leftist or eco magacine --- they layed out that this is economically infeasible.

- most countries don't have uran mines. My own one used to have, but that is depleted. Interestingly, the russian atom sector owns a lot of the uran infrastructure worldwide, even when abroad (e.g. they own things in Australia or Canada). We just learned the hard way that depending on Russia --- or USA with their toll war --- is an extremely bad idea

I know that for some of these problems there are theoretical answers. E.g. since about 20 years there is the idea to use breeder reactors to convert highly radioactive material with a long half-life into something with a shorter half-life time. But ... they didn't materialize. And Germany's tryout of a breeder was so expensive (both building and operation cost) that the project was terminated.

Personally, I like the idea of renewable energy. We get the energy for free, we don't have to pay Russia (gas, oil, uran). Or the USA (LNG). Or some wahabitic islamistic scheichs (Saudi-Arabia). And if the billions of euro that we invested into nuclear reasearch would go to long-term storage (like iron-oxyde-powder batteries, reflow batteries etc) than we would have something that is cheaper to build, cheaper to operate, has little risk to the neighbourhood AND doesn't funnel money into the hand of reckless power hungry leaders.

So, and now call me "anti-nuclear crowd". Or refute me at an intellectual level, maybe I can learn a thing!

Oh: and if we don't "overregulate" then we have perhaps another Chernobyl. That happened exactly because the regulation AND the execution of the regulation was too lax.

If you think being called anti-nuclear is a shallow dismissal of your views; then I might suggest reading my post on the assumption I'm not talking about you? The anti-nuclear crowd might object to "anti-nuclear" in the sense they'd rather be called "pro-something" like the anti-abortion crowd being pro-choice, but they're hardly going to take "anti-nuclear" as a slur.

Someone who thinks being anti-nuclear is shameful won't choose to be anti-nuclear.

> Or refute me at an intellectual level, maybe I can learn a thing!

I assume you're serious, so by way of unsolicited advice - write shorter posts and lead with the top 1 or two best arguments you think you have. A good refutation is normally longer than the post it replies to, so when you post the kitchen sink you aren't going to get a good refutation.

Although in this case I'd recommend looking up ... pretty much any online argument about nuclear power in the last 30 years. Those all have standard intellectual refutations.

> Oh: and if we don't "overregulate" then we have perhaps another Chernobyl. That happened exactly because the regulation AND the execution of the regulation was too lax.

What we did instead has people sometimes yelling at me that we're going to get millions to billions of people killed, destroy the planet and doom us all to violence and war. I got "burning my future" once which I thought had a ring to it. A Chernobyl every decade or so would be an enormous improvement over what we have actually done.

Anti-abortion people prefer “pro-life”.

But they don't consider the anti-abortion label to be much more than a theoretical problem and bad marketing. They can't reasonably arc up at "anti-abortion". They think the dial should be turned towards the end of the spectrum where there are less abortions.

If the anti-nuclear crowd want a different label they can pick one. Part of the problem they have is I'm sure they'd love to rebrand as pro-safety but they know exactly how the conversation will go if they try that one.

> nuclear power is quite expensive

Could you look out the window in a westerly direction? There’s a country there that is powered 80% by nuclear and it has much cheaper electricity than other Western European countries.

The fact is, only nuclear can provide a clean baseload that runs 24x7. I’m a big fan of wind, batteries and solar, but they can’t handle a reliable base load that always runs.

We have no option but nuclear, meaning we have to solve the problems of waste management, making it cheaper and so on.

And happily, people are tackling this. Britain’s Rolls-Royce is developing a small nuclear reactor that can be manufactured in a factory and assembled on site like an ikea project. There are other companies trying the same. I’d much rather read a 2026 article about trying to solve a problem than a 2015 article saying a problem is unsolvable.

The public is listening to the anti-nuclear experts, like M. V. Ramana. But one has to understand that for M. V. Ramana, no nuclear power plant is safe enough. For him only a world without nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons is safe enough.

"Without nuclear power plants" because any nuclear power plant can be used to breed plutonium which can used to make a nuclear weapon.

The primary risk of nuclear technology for M. V. Ramana is not radiation induced cancers, it's nuclear proliferation. For him nuclear power plants could be safe, only if they could not be used to make plutonium.

> - Germany still doesn't have an answer to the permanent storage of the waist

The best solution for the high level nuclear waste (the nuclear waste most spoken about) would to have a common European permanent storage not a permanent storage in each country, because the amount of high level nuclear waste is very small and probably the most stable geology is old granite bedrock in Sweden and Finland.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Europe_g...

Germany is currently operating the world biggest permanent storage for dangerous waste UTD Herfa-Neurode. Contains at least 690,000 tons of waste containing dioxins and furans, 220,000 tons of waste containing mercury, 127,000 tons of waste containing cyanide, and 83,000 tons of toxic waste containing arsenic. Nuclear waste is currently excluded, but I think it would not make a difference, especially because the after 400 years fission products decay away and only Plutonium and minor actinides stays. Mercury, arsenic, dioxins and furans stay forever.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untertagedeponie_Herfa-Neurode

https://radioactivity.eu.com/articles/radioactive_waste/acti...

> - with existing reactor types the worst imaginable accident is really, really bad. Especially for a densely populated country like mine

All places where large amounts of energy can be released are dangerous. The biggest disaster was not nuclear, but the failure of the 1975 Banqiao Reservoir Dam and other dams in Henan Province, China. The disaster killed an estimated 171,000 people and 11 million people lost their homes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

> - nuclear power is quite expensive. The electric power prices at the customers are only so low because there are open and hidden subsidies in place (e.g. no atomic power plant in Germany has to pay full insurance. Or they don't need to pay for the 20000+ year long storage --- that's all "socialized", e.g. the tax payers pay for it

No hydro power plant pays full insurance, because dam failures are extremely rare and at the same time extremely devastating, the governments bears the costs of the failure, like for many other kinds of civil infrastructure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi_collapse

Germany is already paying permanent storage for chemical waste, UTD Herfa-Neurode.

Subsidies, we could look into EEG-Umlage, Kohlepfennig.

> - nuclear power needs at the end reliably cooling. Look at the rivers --- in Germany we had to stop nuclear power plants, because the summer drough was so intense that not enough cooling water was available. That happened several times in France, too.

We have to adapt our whole infrastructure, see the disruptions in Rhine shipping.

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/rhine-water-hit...

Nuclear power plants can be adapted to work dry environments, for example Palo Verde nuclear power works in a desert. But this adaptations cost money, when most European nuclear power plants were build in 70s,80s, there were not seen as necessary. In Europe, for example Jaslovske Bohunice and Mochovce NPP use evaporative cooling. French NPPs will have to be retrofitted.

https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2015/12/29/palo-verde-nuclear...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S15552...

> - these days, the electric power companies of Germany don't want to build nuclear power plants. In "Manager Magazin" --- not your usual leftist or eco magacine --- they layed out that this is economically infeasible.

Nobody will invest in building nuclear power plants in Germany for decades. The political risk that current government or next current government, or over next government will stop operation of a nuclear power plant, is too large. The electric power companies know this.

> - most countries don't have uran mines. My own one used to have, but that is depleted. Interestingly, the russian atom sector owns a lot of the uran infrastructure worldwide, even when abroad (e.g. they own things in Australia or Canada). We just learned the hard way that depending on Russia --- or USA with their toll war --- is an extremely bad idea

There are many countries with substantial uranium reserves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_r...

Breeder reactors could reuse already mined depleted uranium, they could use much more common thorium, they can run on nuclear waste from older PWR, BWR reactors. Some of breeder reactor concepts have already been tested.

But breeder reactors but they didn't materialize because:

1. Breeder reactors need nuclear reprocessing, this rises risks of nuclear proliferation. (Nuclear reprocessing is also strongly opposed by M. V. Ramana)

2. The building of nuclear power plants stopped in the West. Why invest in new technology if it will not build?

3. Uranium is currently very cheap. Most of the costs in producing fuel for nuclear reactors is not the uranium, but the enrichment of uranium and manufacturing of the fuel rods.

Chernobyl, thing of the past.

Bad design (positive void coefficient, instabilities at low power levels)

Bad manufacturing (no containment, slow control rod movement, manual controlling without computers)

Bad operation (ignoring safety regulations, insufficient training).

We used to drive cars without seat belts.

> nuclear power needs at the end reliably cooling. Look at the rivers --- in Germany we had to stop nuclear power plants, because the summer drough was so intense that not enough cooling water was available. That happened several times in France, too.

I find it darkly humorous that a reason to not use nuclear power is the environmental devastation wrought by decades of not using nuclear power

On the contrary, most of the arguments for increased nuclear safety have actually come from the nuclear industry.

The whole classification of commercial nuclear power plants into multiple generations, for instance, with the big difference between each gen being safety - that came straight from the nuclear industry.

When the nuclear renaissance of the 2000s happened, it was the nuclear industry who chose not to put forward existing battle-tested designs, but instead insisted on the "newer, larger, cheaper (hahaha), safer" GenIII+ (eg. EPR) with all their concomitant delays and cost-overruns.

And now those have proven to be a yet another nuclear boondoggle, we're hearing about SMRs - and, once again, it's the nuclear industry who are talking about increased safety (see the last SMR story that made the HN front page as a prime example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49477559).

The "nuclear isn't economic" folk aren't pushing any of this. They'd be happy enough with something like a Westinghouse SNUPPS or the French P4/N4, lightly modernised with the best of the post-Chernobyl enhancements (see Sizewell B in the UK as a good example) if only the price was right. Those are well-understood, fairly reliable, have no known major safety issues, and are generally good enough. Trouble is that the price isn't right - even those old GenII designs would still cost far too much to build and operate.

And the nuclear industry know this. They have no answer to the "it's too expensive" argument so are advertising increased safety as the only selling point they've got.

What I find interesting is how little the sales pitch seems to have changed. "Yes, smaller reactors lose economies of scale, but we'll make it up through factory production, standardization and repetition" apparently sounded plausible in the 1950s too

> "Yes, smaller reactors lose economies of scale, but we'll make it up through factory production, standardization and repetition"

Why not both? Large Modular Reactors (LMR). You can produce standardized modules in a factory and ship them via barges to their final destination.

See for example: https://whatisnuclear.com/offshore-nuclear-plants.html

Then you have the additional expense of bringing the power ashore, and of building the breakwater. Most coastal sites are environmentally sensitive - think of Trump's hatred for offshore wind turbines, and imagine how people would feel about something so much more massive!

But in a slightly more-plausible vein, Rolls Royce are pushing mid-sized MRs in the 0.5 GW range, with the selling point that they can be built on the location of ex-fossil fuel or 1st gen nuclear power plants.

They're still more expensive per MWh than a modern large nuclear plant, but have the benefit of reusing existing grid connections and other infrastructure. Whether that's actually enough to make them a commercial success is another matter, but there's a chance they could prove a useful stopgap until grid-scale storage costs come down further.

Why not Large Modular reactors? You’ll produce fewer of every component, making it less feasible to set up an assembly line for it. You’ll build everything bespoke, because you’ll only build it a few times.

But assembly as well. People learn by doing. The second reactor will be built quicker than the first and third will be quicker than the second.

And you can see it in the Rolls-Royce order book. 3 separate countries have ordered 3 reactors to start with. An order book of 9 reactors strongly incentivises setting up an assembly line.

> but we'll make it up through factory production, standardization and repetition"

Those are economies of scale, for what it is worth.

Feels like there is a "too small" range where fixed costs make a reactor design uneconomic, and perhaps a "too big" range where they cost so much that they are rare strategic investments without the benefit of a production line.

Is there a happy medium? Some of the modern SMR proposals aren't all that small. There's a 470MW Rolls Royce unit, for example.

The existing "big" nuclear reactors are already more or less in the "happy" range. The problem is irregular building schedule (you can have 10 reactors in works today and 0 for the next 50 years) and extreme regulatory overhead.

Ideally, you need a "pipeline" with one reactor being built every 2-5 years and streamlined regulatory environment where you can use the same project "template" with minimal adjustments. This way building expertise is not lost (i.e. the industry does not need to re-learn everything for every project, which is very costly) and even can be accumulated to reduce costs further. It applies not only to the building part, but also to regulatory bodies.

The problem is that you need to operate ~100 reactors for this, so it can work only for large economies able to provide the "baseline" demand. China and to a lesser extent Russia do this, which does result in significantly lower nuclear plant building costs for them. Europe, SK, and US have dropped the ball hard here.

I think “medium” is a key enabler for being able to sustain a regular schedule of reactor building. It’s way easier to raise $3bn every 3 years than $30bn every 30 years.

Look, I prefer nuclear over fossil fuel every day of the week. It's the great hope of the non-carbon electricity sources.

In practice it is expensive to build, expensive to run, and really expensive to clean up. And that's before we add the risk of meltdowns.

Economically it makes no sense, not at the returns level, not at the timescale level, and certainly not at the political level. (If a US president can shutter an offshore wind farm unilaterally, imagine the risk to a nuclear plant that is 50% complete, and not yet fueled.)

There's a reason they're mostly run by govts. Govts are the only providers who don't have a money motive.

Personally I think research into storage, coupled with "wider" grids geographically, make solar and wind far more financially attractive.

Private capital has no appetite for nuclear, and few govts are left with both financial ability, and political will, for 30 year projects.

And if you think fission is expensive, wait till you find out what fusion-on-earth costs...

Nuke fanboys hate this one weird trick (economics)

“Nuclear is too expensive.”

Enter pumped hydro:

The $12 billion Snowy 2.0 scheme will cop further cost and timeline blowouts, auditors say, but the project has been beset with management failures and the government-owned corporation delivering the project cannot yet say how much more it will cost and how much longer it will take.[1]

My proposed solution: invite any of the 31 nuclear power reactor operating countries over to Australia to build them for us, and teach us how to do it.

1. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/extreme-risk-of-yet-...

"A 2009 poll conducted by the Uranium Information Centre found that Australians in the 40 to 55 years age group are the "most trenchantly opposed to nuclear power". This generation was raised during the Cold War, experienced the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s, witnessed the 1979 partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in the US, and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It was the generation which was also subject to cultural influences including feature films such as the "nuclear industry conspiracies" The China Syndrome and Silkwood and the apocalyptic Dr Strangelove. Younger people are "less resistant" to the idea of nuclear power in Australia. Analysis of opinion polls from 2012 shows a "significant decrease in favourable views of nuclear power" following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Austr...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Australia

Decarbonisation is very much discussed in Australia, but not much progress has been done, because coal and natural gas is cheap in Australia. Australia also one of the largest coal exporters in the world.

https://www.csiro.au/en/research/environmental-impacts/decar...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g...

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/coal-expo...

Australian electricity in 2026 is about 45% renewable. And rising fast. 40% of Australian homes have rooftop solar. How is this “not much progress”? Yes more could be done but that is massive progress

Also, I’m not sure what point you’re making about public opinions. They’ve soured because it’s an economicly uncompetitive option, plus some safety fears. Seems rational to me.

CSIRO releases final 2024-25 GenCost report following consultation

  * The report found renewables remain the lowest-cost new-build electricity generation technology, while nuclear small modular reactors (SMRs) are the most costly.

  * Electricity systems rely on a mix of technologies, because no single option can deliver all the capabilities required for a reliable, secure and flexible supply.

~ https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/news/2025/july/2024-25-genc...

Nuclear power, in Australia, relies upon high upfront costs with an uncertain delivery timeline; there are no sizeable existing nuclear power skillsets in the country, no living experience of construction, and a history of global clusterfucks when it comes to third party power station construction / delivery.

For the same money that maybe gets Australia some turnkey nuclear power by 2040 (ish) there can be nearly immediate delivery of solar power, battery farms, geological hydrogen storage, mini hydro, etc.

Right now, in Australia, nuclear isn't a pragmatic economically feasible choice.

Uranium based nuclear is ... a headache to say the very least, if not for the realisation that any waste sites will require much more security than they do presently, not ideal for the issue of decommissioning large uranium nuclear plants when they reach end of life. [1] [2] Perhaps the smaller reactor plants might not quite the same level of trouble decommissioning them.

Almost always what echoes in the quiet gap between the reality there is if not multiple billions of dollars of expenditure to implement going nuclear with Uranium, is the repetitive assertion just having all that Uranium is why we should go ahead with it. Well actually we have plenty of Thorium too, and the by product waste is not as great an issue.

[1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Cs8I-6PkQ [video 27 mins] How a Nuclear Power Plant Is Actually Decommissioned — The Full $20B Process

- can take 30 to 60 years - average US nuclear plant decommission cost sits around 10 billion dollars.

I think the political-risk point is underrated. Even if you somehow get the engineering and construction costs under control, you're still asking investors to commit capital for decades while permitting rules, subsidies, electricity markets, and governments can all change underneath them

Nationalize all power utilities and use their capital to build new plants. That costs the government nothing, and power will get cheaper even if the nuclear plans fail because their profit margins would be limited by law. It's also the best way to enforce a transition away from fossil fuels.

>> That costs the government nothing

The costs are actually substantial, but measured in things other than money. Countries have nationalised things in the past, including energy, (think Cuba, Venezuela, Iran etc). The real cost tends to be in lost investor confidence at the bottom end, up to massive sanctions at the top end.

>> because their profit margins would be limited by law

yes, and no. I've lived in a place where selling price was below cost price for electrcity (with a Govt run electricity production.) Ultimately the price is paid out of the budget, which in turn is not infinite. Pressure on the budget in turn leads to redicing costs - like proper maintainence. There's some serious long term pain that is at the end of this path.

Cuba, Venezuela, Iran have many problems, nationalizing energy production is only one of them, mostly it is the corrupt government.

On the other hand France fully nationalized EDF and results are good.

https://www.edf.fr/en/2025-annual-results

https://datacentremagazine.com/news/how-france-is-set-to-bec...

In most Western countries, you cannot just confiscate someone else's property without adequate compensation.

"That costs the government nothing"

It does - it costs you your international reputation, willingness of other countries to trade with you and invest in your economy, lost arbitrations in courts. Once you mount this particular tiger of just taking things you want by force, you are riding it all the way towards the "let us build glorious autarky!" club, whose members are famous for their blackouts.

Once upon a time, if you started nationalizing industries, you could at least rely on the Soviet Bloc to support you. That was their ideology, after all. Now the Soviet Bloc is gone, Russia is an economic dwarf and China is not interested in supporting precedents like that - they have too many investments abroad to encourage others to fleece foreigners.

If we all agree that we prefer nuclear over fossil fuel, then the solutions is extremely simple. Ban construction of new combustion based energy production in the national grid. Let the economy and market forces compete to find the cheapest alternative when there is no fallback to burning fuels for electricity.

Take Sweden, since that is the country where I live in and which has an ongoing election right now. We are not building any new nuclear. We are building a bit more wind and solar, but both is close to 100% capacity and interest for overcapacity is low. New production is located in areas which has yet to reach 100% capacity. Hydro capacity is already at maximum capacity and need to be decrease in order to follow environmental rulings from EU and prevent extinctions of multiple species.

Thermal power plants however is seeing an increase with new plants being planned to burn fuel for electricity and heat. Private capital has great appetite for thermal power plants since those has great financial ability to extract rent from the government as part of the reserve grid and providing readiness to stabilizing the gird, and when they produce energy they can extract the highest price since periods of low wind and low solar create the absolute highest market price. The energy crisis a few years ago demonstrated that a single month can create market prices that exceed that of a whole year if the weather produce non-optimal conditions during the winter.

So the solution is really that simple. Do not build power plants that burn fuels. The economics will push the next cheapest solution to the top.

>> So the solution is really that simple. Do not build power plants that burn fuels. The economics will push the next cheapest solution to the top.

That's not strictly accurate. It'll push the next most profitable solution to the top. If there's no solution that offers the desired rate of return, at acceptable risk levels, then private capital simple doesn't bother to arrive at all.

Govts don't need a reasonable rate of return, so they can fill that gap, assuming that it doesn't cost too much political capital. Yes we need base load, but that message gets lost when the opposition are complaining about high govt spending etc.

Storage is the holy grail here. That allows for more provision of wind and solar.

Governments have always intervened into energy markets to implement policy goals.

German Coal penny

The coal levy was a surcharge on electricity prices levied by energy suppliers in the Federal Republic of Germany to finance hard coal mining . Consumers in the former West Germany paid the coal levy from 1974 to 1995, and it was abolished after the Federal Constitutional Court ruled it an unconstitutional special levy (electricity generation levy).

The Federal Constitutional Court argued that the coal levy was unjustifiable because it burdened the general public of electricity customers who had no particular financial responsibility for hard coal from Germany. The coal levy was therefore abolished at the end of 1995. Since then, hard coal mining has been subsidized from the state budget. Between 1975 and 2002, the total amount of subsidies was approximately 80 to 100 billion euros (in 2003 prices).

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlepfennig

German Renewable Energy Sources Act

"The Renewable Energy Sources Act or EEG (German: Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz) is a series of German laws that originally provided a feed-in tariff (FIT) scheme to encourage the generation of renewable electricity."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source...

German coalition agrees to subsidised power price for industry

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-coalition-agr...

Storage could be a solution, but it is not what politicians are right now putting their weight behind (remember, election here is ongoing and will finish in a few weeks. They are very open about their politics). For example, the platform of the green party writes that thermal power plants are a critical part of the Swedish energy grid in order to enable wind and solar. In debates they said that the oil power plant is a natural part of the energy grid and essential for keeping prices low and the grid stable.

That is the left side of the debate. The other side pushes for nuclear, but there is no actually ongoing construction for that. What is actually being constructed and supported by both side is more thermal power plants.

When you need multiple months worth of capacity to cover the winter, rather than hours to cover a day-night cycle, storage is a very expensive strategy. There are experimental tests, like the one in Finland that will heat a small number of buildings in a small town, but there is no political party that is going to the election on a platform with storage as the solution. The closest you will get is the far future plans in the green party platform that current oil and other plants could (in theory) be switched to burning green hydrogen, but the political capital in that area has been significant decreased in the last decade when cost of infrastructure and production has shown to be prohibitively expensive. The biggest project, intended to produce green steel, has been significantly delayed and costs increased, and is continuously demanding more and more subsidizes. To burn green hydrogen for electricity is about as close to becoming economical as fusion is.

You are indeed right that if we were to ban the construction of new thermal power plants, the result will likely be that private capital will simple not bother to do anything unless significant government capital is put on the table. Everything is simply too expensive and if you allow the market price to spike without limit, citizens will go and vote for government to step in. When electricity market spikes by 100x for a single month, the outcome is not that the market steps in and invest in more expensive power plants. Citizen instead goes to the government and elect one that will provide a stable energy market. That was the outcome of the 2020 energy crisis. That is how the economics of nuclear could become viable, or storage, but it is also why thermal power plants is the thing being built right now.

> Storage is the holy grail here. That allows for more provision of wind and solar.

Storage makes the already expensive intermittent renewables even more expensive.

Germany has the highest electricity costs among the G20.

https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2026-08/strompreise-g20-deuts...

And that's with still quite a lot of coal and ever more gas in the grid, both for the plenty of times the intermittent don't deliver and for grid stability (see also: Spainout), which means we have the 3rd worst specific emissions in the EU (down from 4th worst last year), and the highest total CO₂ emissions in the EU.

After about €1 trillion spent on our "Energiewende", our "green" energy transition.

> We are not building any new nuclear.

I mean, not building yet, but a lot of new nuclear is in the pipeline.

"The Swedish government has presented a roadmap for new nuclear, stipulating that, by 2035, nuclear reactors with the capacity to produce 2500 MW should have been built, with further increases to 10 000 MW by the year 2045."

https://www.innovationnewsnetwork.com/the-case-for-new-nucle...

"A flurry of nuclear developments in Sweden—state aid, SMR selections, legislation"

https://www.ans.org/news/2026-06-18/article-8133/new-sweden-...

There appear to be new developments almost every other week.

Legislation, permits and offers of loans/state aid can result in new plants if the private actors starts to invest, but there is a large difference between that and actually building new plants. With the election going on, it is also very questionable if anything will happen if the flips from right to left, as the new government can easily just withdraw those offers of state aid and change the legislation to make it unprofitable to invest into new nuclear power plants.

The proof is as always in what get actually get constructed, and right now what we do know is that new thermal power plants is currently being constructed in the south that is expected to finish and starting to burn fuel in 2028.

> can result in new plants if the private actors starts to invest

It is the private investors seeking approvals. Why would they do this if they didn't want to build? After all, these types of approvals and application processes also cost money. Are they doing this just for fun?

> but there is a large difference between that and actually building new plants.

Well yes: what is happening now are the required prerequisites to actually building. Can't really start building without having done these things first.

Not sure what you're trying to say here? They can only be taken seriously if they skip the necessary first steps?

> the new government can easily just withdraw those offers of state aid and change the legislation to make it unprofitable to invest into new nuclear power plants.

That was one of the changes: there is now an insurance mechanism that compensates investors if the state pulls the plug on them.

Which goes back to the point of the state being the biggest risk factor for nuclear projects.

> The proof is as always in what get actually get constructed

The proof for construction. The proof for intent and investor interests is now.

Next step happened just today:

Studsvik, GE Vernova Hitachi and Samsung C&T commit to advancing 1.2 GW nuclear power project in Sweden

https://news.cision.com/studsvik-ab/r/studsvik--ge-vernova-h...

Again, these news are coming out almost on a weekly basis. Yes, not a finished power plant, yet, but also very very far from nothing.

> Ban construction (...) and let the economy and market forces compete to find the cheapest alternative

This sounds nice and unbiased on paper, but often this means that rather than expanding alternatives, the poor are simply made to go without and then they will scream at politicians for relief until they get it and you are right back at square one.

As a fellow Swede you will know how the price of gasoline has become a hot topic and how politicians campaigned on bringing the price down again by reversing climate policies.

Personally I think the solution is to make a commie-style 5 year plan and then work backwards to what kind of incentives would be needed for that plan, probably involving industry leaders in that discussion. Then you can make sure that the incentives are technology neutral. This ensures that if nothing better comes along the "free" market will execute 5 year plan but they do have the option of gambling on alternatives if they so choose or if some wonder technology emerges out of a secret lab.

A commie-style 5 year plan or even 10 year plan would be kind of great. Electricity is one of those products that we know what we want long term and should be willing to budget for it in a reasonable way. We need to double the production while eliminating emissions, while at the same time restore rivers and prepare for more extreme weather. We also need a stable energy market without shortages, as week/month long shortages makes citizens and businesses go to the government for solutions. As the last energy crisis illustrated, people can't just stop going to work because the market price for electricity is too high. People need to eat and pay rent, and those needs is why they go and scream at politicians to fix it.

The price of gasoline is a actually a good example of an fairly open debate over what the costs should be on a national level for a global product. We are currently paying one of the highest electricity prices in EU, not because the energy is expensive to produce at the wind farms, but because construction of new transmission from the place of production to the place of consumption is carried by the consumer. There is very little political discussion on what a fair price is for electricity, and how the cost of the grid should be fairly paid.

> In practice it is expensive to build, expensive to run, and really expensive to clean up.

That turns out not to be the case.

Nuclear power plants are expensive, but that's because they are big. For the amount of electricity they generate, they are cheap.

They are also quite cheap to run. As far as I know, there is no cheaper source of electricity than a nuclear power plant that has paid off its construction costs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY

And they run for a long time, if you don't do stupid shit like ban nuclear power. The US has so far extended the operating license of every nuclear plant that has applied to 80 years, and they now thin 100 years is a realistic option.

> There's a reason they're mostly run by govts.

Most nuclear power plants in the US are privately run, last I checked. So were the nuclear power plants in Germany. In Germany, the Greens tried to force nuclear power to become uneconomical by ever stricter regulations. They failed. Nuclear power had to be outlawed.

> Private capital has no appetite for nuclear

This turns out not to be the case.

https://world-nuclear.org/net-zero-nuclear/news/internationa...

https://www.nucnet.org/news/polish-billionaire-to-invest-gbp...

Also, the hyperscalars, for example, have all invested in nuclear. The biggest risk to nuclear is governments, which is why private investors want assurances or the government on board.

> wait till you find out what fusion-on-earth costs...

What does it cost?

Nuclear power plants are expensive because 95% of the cost of the produced MWH is in building the plant.

If you avoid irrelevant comparisons of costs (e.g. vs intermittent sources), nuclear is actually attractively priced.

> Nuclear power plants are expensive, but that's because they are big. For the amount of electricity they generate, they are cheap.

Not according to the standard statistic for electricity generation cost - LCOE which amortizes capital costs.

> They are also quite cheap to run. As far as I know, there is no cheaper source of electricity than a nuclear power plant that has paid off its construction costs.

The are not cheap to run. Indian Point closed ahead of end-of-life because it couldn't support its operational costs - about $31 per MWh - about $500m per annum. Average wholesale prices at the time were around $28/MWh.

> Not according to the standard statistic for electricity generation cost - LCOE

According to the IEA it is. If you think nuclear LCOE is high, then you probably looked at the Lazard data. But Lazard themselves say that their figures for nuclear are not representative and that they did not try to make them representative.

Here is the Vice Chairman for Energy at Lazard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16HVh_Fx6LQ

“We do not, in this study, try to cost out new nuclear” (2:35)

“We think nuclear will be a big part of the future” (2:47)

“the costs of nuclear should go down “ (12:54)

“next five to 10 years the nuclear bar the one that's most likely to change the most in in terms of cost reduction” (14:06)

If you look at other sources than Lazard, for example the IEA, you will find that even nuclear LCOE is low.

However, LCOE is actually not the correct metric, as it only covers the cost of producing electricity from that source. It doesn't capture the cost of intermittent sources, which have very high system costs due to their intermittency.

Levelized Full System of Electricity (LFSCOE) is what you need to look at that, and there nuclear does well and intermittent are generally horrible, and they get worse the more of them you have. So you need to balance intermittent with stable providers like nuclear. And no, batteries are not sufficient, except maybe in the Sahara.

Here is the Finnish environment minister:

""If we consider the [consumption] growth figures, the question isn't whether it's wind or nuclear power. We need both," Mykkänen said at a press conference on Tuesday morning.

He added that Finland's newest nuclear reactor, Olkiluoto 3, enabled the expansion of the country's wind power infrastructure. Nuclear power, he said, is needed to counterbalance output fluctuations of wind turbines."

https://yle.fi/a/74-20136905

> [Nuclear power plants] are not cheap to run.

Yes they are. One counterexample does not disprove this, even if it were a valid counterexample, which it is not.

Wholesale prices that don't include various externalities are not a valid counterexample.

Seems there's no mention of Russia in the article, but they seem to have a rich tradition of small reactors[0].

My understanding is there's still ongoing research/commercialization work but the fabled "many and cheap" production state hasn't been reached there either

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_small_nuclear_...

The list of installed VVER-440 reactors (slightly larger then the official definition of SMR - rated electrical power of less than 300 megawatts (MWe)) is long:

WWER-440 V-230 reactor

    B179 - Units 3 and 4 of the Novovoronezh NPP (Russia)

    B230 - 1, 2 units of the Kola NPP (Russia)

    1, 2, 3, 4 units of the Kozloduy NPP (Bulgaria)

    Units 1, 2, 3, 4 of the Greifswald NPP (Germany)

    1, 2 units of Bohunice NPP (Slovakia)

WWER-440 V-213 reactor plant

    3, 4 blocks of the Kola NPP (Russia)

    Units 1, 2, 3, 4 of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant (Hungary)

    Units 1, 2, 3, 4 of the Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant (Czech Republic)

    Units 1 and 2 of the Loviisa NPP (Finland);

    3, 4 units of the Bohunice NPP (Slovakia)

    1, 2 units of Rivne NPP (Ukraine)

    Units 5, 6, 7, 8 of the Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant (Germany)

WWER-440 V-270 reactor plant

    B-270 — 1, 2 blocks of the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant ( Armenia )

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%92%D0%AD%D0%A0-440

> Units 3 and 4 of the Novovoronezh NPP

So "small" here means a 150 meter long building.

SMR - rated electrical power of less than 300 megawatts (MWe), says nothing about physical dimensions of the plant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor

There were even discussion about modifications of AP-600 reactor to 300 MWe, so it could be offered in SMR projects. There are customer who want only SMR or only allow SMR to be build.

For example, Illinois had 36-year-old moratorium on nuclear construction. In 2023 lawmakers approved the House Bill 2473, this lifted the moratorium on nuclear construction, but only for SMR, not for larger reactors.

https://will.illinois.edu/studentnewsroom/story/lifted-morat...

I think that the definition of SMR is incorrect. One should not limit electric output, the important metric is total cost of the project.

... cracks .... cracking ... cracked .. cracks..

there's a remarkable similarity to the life of these units.

They worked, until they didn't.

"ah, but we're much wiser now" is of course in this too.

We are much wiser now, because the nuclear industry learns and improves. Similar evolution can be seen for example in aircraft industry, flying in 1970s was much more dangerous with many more incidents then flying now.

https://www.voronoiapp.com/travel/Airplane-Safety-Timeline-1...

https://accidentstats.airbus.com/fatal-accidents/

And yet there are still occasional accidents. 51 in 2025. Which end tragic in aviation but are so much more severe for nuclear power plants.

The severity of nuclear power plant failures is also decreasing.

"Radiation effects from the Fukushima nuclear accident"

"A June 2012 Stanford University study estimated, using a linear no-threshold model, that the radioactivity release from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could cause 130 deaths from cancer globally (the lower bound for the estimate being 15 and the upper bound 1100) and 199 cancer cases in total (the lower bound being 24 and the upper bound 1800), most of which are estimated to occur in Japan. Radiation exposure to workers at the plant was projected to result in 2 to 12 deaths. However, a December 2012 UNSCEAR statement to the Fukushima Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety advised that "because of the great uncertainties in risk estimates at very low doses, UNSCEAR does not recommend multiplying very low doses by large numbers of individuals to estimate numbers of radiation-induced health effects within a population exposed to incremental doses at levels equivalent to or lower than natural background levels.""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fuk...

The power plant is in a very rural area with estimations of 100 people per square kilometer. Tokai Daini is in an area with approx 10 times the people compared to Fukushima. It’s only 8 meters above sea level and it’s also in risk of a tsunami in general. From my point of view that’s not an argument for the safety of nuclear power but more a “it didn’t happen this time”

It's argument for the safety of nuclear power, because 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami (Earthquake was the most powerful ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth most powerful recorded in the world since modern seismography began in 1900) caused over 15,000 deaths. In contrast the meltdown of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant started by the tsunami caused much less deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...

Would a similar earthquake and tsunami cause 150 000 deaths, if it happen near Tōkai?

Nuclear operators studied the reasons for meltdown of Fukushima Daiichi NPP (failure to restore cooling after wide spread destruction of infrastructure around nuclear power plant and flooding of backup diesel generators underground) and have prepared steps to prevent it in other power plants (aditional backup diesel generators mounted in higher places, helicopter transport of spare cooling equipment when roads are destroyed).

"As an example, the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) initiated an assessment of the country’s 56 nuclear power reactors as well as the 2 EPR reactors under construction. The ASN then prescribed the implementation of both fixed and mobile equipment that could potentially prevent a large release, including high-resistance diesel generators and pumps able to function in extreme scenarios such as major earthquakes or flooding. The availability of alternative sources of water for cooling was also prescribed under the same conditions. In addition, the ASN required a back-up plan including rapid action force groups that can be on site within 24 hours with light equipment and within three days with heavy equipment, using transportation means such as helicopters, and that can operate in a severely disrupted environment."

https://www.iaea.org/bulletin/ensuring-the-safety-of-nuclear...

How much wiser do we need to be to build a large number of nuclear reactors? How much safer is each one compared to a larger one to justify the risk of building more items that can end in a disaster? And aren’t large reactors quite uneconomical already? How much worse do small ones operate, given the economy of scale. Nuclear power just didn’t deliver what it promised.

The uranium mines of the GDR resulted in 311 million cubic meters of mine waste. In 2005 for the the remediation 13.75 million liters of Diesel fuel were used. The costs so far have been 7.4 billion €. About 20 Billion € were invested in nuclear plants that never produced any power (or in one case was shut down after 100 days) in Germany. Add the costs of deconstruction of the existing plants. The whole narrative of cheap power is nothing but a house of cards.

Nuclear's great until you have a natural disaster or war. Then every single reactor is a potential Chernobyl. The less of those around, the better.

And the waste, and the environmental impact on fuel mining, and the deconstruction, and the inherent risks, but otherwise yes, it’s great!

This is absolutely not true.

Actually, nuclear is safer than, say, hydraulic power.

With that said, it requires a country with good governance and an independent safety regulator (like in France).

Nuclear power, as actually implemented in most human societies, is obviously not so great. If it was, we'd have far more of it.

And while the combination of natural disasters & war with nuclear power is great for pushing people's emotional buttons, the reality isn't particularly bad. What % of the casualties from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami were related to the Fukushima plant? What % of the casualties in the Ukraine war have been related to the nuclear plants there? Yes, Putin can talk big about doing all sorts of creepy-scary things related to those nuclear plants. Especially if his doing so gets the sorts of reactions that he wants. But Putin can also talk big about using nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in Ukraine. Or just order the destruction of a hydroelectric dam - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakhovka_Dam - which caused plenty of death and destruction.

Current operating reactors don't have the design, constructions and operational flaws of Chernobyl. Current reactors don't have large positive void coefficient, instabilities at low power levels, manual controlling, slow control rods movements, computers from the 1960s.

Your mobile phone can do more computation in a milisecond that Chernobyl could do in minutes.

" SKALA (Russian: СКАЛА, система контроля аппарата Ленинградской Атомной; sistema kontrolya apparata Leningradskoj Atomnoj, "Control system of the device of the Leningrad Nuclear [Power Plant]", lit. "rock") was the process computer for the RBMK nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant prior to October 1995. Dating to the 1960s, it used magnetic-core memory, magnetic tape data storage, and punched tape for loading software.

SKALA monitored and recorded reactor conditions and control board inputs. It was wired to accept 7200 analog signals and 6500 digital signals. The system continuously monitored the plant and displayed this information to operators. Additionally, a program called PRIZMA (Russian: ПРИЗМА, программа измерения мощности аппарата; programma izmereniya moshchnosti apparata, "Device power measurement program", lit. "prism") processed plant conditions and made recommendations to guide plant operators. This program took 5 to 10 minutes to run, and could not directly control the reactor" "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant

As a side note, there are currently still 7 RBMK reactors in operation, in Russia. But they use modern computers, modern instrumentation and control, different composition of nuclear fuel.

I always get touchy when someone compares the cost of nuclear MWh to the ones of solar and wind turbines, because they are essentially NOT the same MWh.

Nuclear works 24x7 on its own. Intermittent energies don't.

Intermittent energies need a whole infrastructure on their side (usually gas / coal power plants) to guarantee 24x7 electricity. This cost should be factored in.

If you are not convinced, think about your cell phone service: would you pay the same for a network that works only when it is sunny ? No. Not the same.

NB: don't even mention batteries, when the largest scale projects, very expensive, can only supply power for a few minutes at grid scale.

Nuclear is also intermittent - ask Europeans.

During January this year, nuclear contributed about 62TWh of the electricity generated in the EU while in June this had fallen to 43.7TWh - about a 30% decrease. The deficit was largely filled by a surge of solar generation as well as burning more gas.

The drop was due to both scheduled and unscheduled downtime. There is no such thing as a non-intermittent source - even without unscheduled outages, a typical nuclear plant spends over 4 weeks offline a year. You need to be able to handle that also - i.e. with redundancy and backup.

Also because nuclear (like coal - the other thermal steam generation tech) requires huge scale to be profitable, it requires huge transmission investment. Contrast this with solar, for example, which is economic to scale down and can deployed in a more distributed pattern.

First, overall consumption is smaller in June than in January, when days are shorter and heating is on. So I don't see how comparing these 2 numbers makes a relevant argument.

Second, you can't compare technical (planned) maintenance with the uncontrolled intermittence of wind or solar. Not having sun or wind during peak demand is the actual problem. In Europe, peak demand is 6-8pm in winter: no sun, no wind.

The last problematic preventive maintenance, mandated by the supervising agency, which forced France to import MWh for a few months was in 2022. Anything human-made can have a downtime. It was actually a voluntary (although mandated) downtime in this case.

Moreover, you may not know that nuclear is forced to reduce output when intermittent energies increase their output. There is no good technical reason for this, it is just how the regulation has been made (you can imagine lobbying entities asking for it). You may have noticed more sun in June than in January, so yes nuclear may have had to reduce output. Not due to the technology.

Yes consumption varies by month but that's not why nuclear output fell by 30%.

There was wide scale unscheduled reduction in nuclear generation this Summer: in Hungary (Paks - reduced to 10% output), Romania (full shutdown of Cernavodă), France (5 plants fully shutdown, 2 curtailed) and Switzerland (Beznau operating at 50% then shutdown). All due to weather (lack of water for cooling).

I clearly distinguished scheduled from unscheduled downtime and am talking purely about nuclear intermittency caused by unscheduled downtime. And even if I didn't/wasn't, your original claim:

> Nuclear works 24x7 on its own.

simply does not stand up to any scrutiny.

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