[epistasis]

There are billions upon billions of dollars spent on nuclear, it just doesn't produce any new capacity.

Look at the failure of VC Summer, and what seems to be the imminent failure of Vogtle.

Since no private company is willing to take on the financial risk of building nuclear power, the federal government provides massive loan guarantees. For the "nuclear renaissance" to take place, state governments passed special laws so that the utility's rate payers took on all the risk of the failed builds. And the failed VC Summer build in South Carolina accounts for double digit percentages of current electricity bills for the utility's customers.

If somebody can figure out how to do project management, engineering, and the logistics of construction, there are lots of communities eager to welcome nuclear. But the industry has failed to deliver capacity even when given every opportunity to build.

[acidburnNSA]

Today's Russia and South Korea, and 1970s France all figured out how to do serial nuclear construction. The key is to standardize the design. Here are some numbers [1].

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...

[epistasis]

The two financial disasters I mentioned were the US's attempt at standardized design, and it failed miserably.

The best bet for nuclear in the US seems to be to have South Korea take over entirely. But they will then have to manage a US construction force, with all those risks. I really don't see how the industry is ever going to build a new big reactor ever again in the US. That's why nuclear fans are looking towards small modular reactors, an idea that in the past was considered less economical than the big ones.

The other risk of putting all your eggs in one basket by large deploys is the same design is what's happening right now in France with the "carbon segregation" problem:

http://www.powermag.com/frances-nuclear-storm-many-power-pla...

20 plants are down, on the suspicion of a potential problem in the future. These types of problems are expected for any technology, but by having a very little variety in generation, any such small problem gets hugely amplified.

In general I have not found anybody who sees a path to building new nuclear in the US that does not simultaneously require a huge advancement in new tech. Solving the construction problem and the bad management problem is something that's swept under the rug and ignored in order to promote a favored tech.