[pasabagi]

> another dangerous nuclear thing

I think this really understates the case against nuclear power. The problem with nuclear power stations is they are prone to the same kind of industrial accidents all large plants are prone to, and they are on the more dangerous end of the scale when it comes to what can happen if there is an industrial accident. You can say that people aren't accurately weighing the risks, but you can't say it's irrational for people in, say, Japan, to be very skeptical of their government's capacity to either regulate industry or respond to industrial accidents and spills in a way that protects public health.

Fusion power, as far as I can see, is not on the more dangerous end of the scale, so would probably pass all of the mainstream, basically reasonable objections to new nuclear plants.

(For the record, I'm not anti-nuclear.)

[pfdietz]

No, the problem with nuclear power stations is they are way too expensive.

Fusion promises to make this main problem worse, not better.

Fusion is a great example of solving the wrong problem.

[danpalmer]

This is a really good point, and could well be true, although I think it's a bit more complicated.

Fission has two problems: the emotional one – weapons/danger, and the practical one – cost. Yes weapons could be a practical issue, but I think it's more an "emotional" issue.

The question is, is it only the practical reason that is preventing widespread adoption of fission power? On the surface, maybe! Unpacking it a bit, I'm not sure. Anti-nuclear sentiment has caused government policy changes, not the cost issue. Similarly, restricting nuclear power technology to only certain countries is a political issue, not a cost issue, and more closely aligned with the former.

Cost is a big issue, but I do wonder if we'd get over it if the danger aspect disappeared. The long term economics of nuclear power are actually really good, it's just that it takes ~10 years to realise those economics compared to (e.g.) ~3 for natural gas.

[pfdietz]

Cost has been the problem with fission. The first nuclear buildout in the US ended because of market forces, not because of TMI. Costs were higher than promised, a constant problem then and now. Electricity demand growth slowed, and with the passage of PURPA in 1978 non-utility sources started to be added to the grid. Nuclear could not compete with them even then.

Nuclear's long term prospects are poor, for one big reason: it has never shown good experience effects. This means its cost has not come down with time. Any technology like that is doomed, if it has competitors that are improving. PV started off orders of magnitude more expensive than nuclear (levelized cost of energy) but now is much cheaper, because PV improved 20% for each doubling of cumulative production and nuclear didn't.

[danpalmer]

> Nuclear's long term prospects are poor, for one big reason: it has never shown good experience effects.

Good point, I hadn't considered this. I would suggest that a possible cause for this is lack of investment though. We had the 1st generation. Most current reactors are gen-2 or gen-3. Gen 4 hasn't really started use, still in R&D I think. There are ideas for Gen 5 but no progress. Each generation seems to bring moderate energy improvements, and significant cost, safety, and waste management improvements, but the interest just isn't there.

[pfdietz]

I think the problem is not lack of investment, but how nuclear power plants are built. Experience effects come from people doing a task over and over, learning to do it faster and modifying it so it can be done faster and better. But there's little opportunity for that in nuclear construction. Most workers will not work on many NPPs, and the designs are not easily changed.

It might be better if a string of smaller but identical NPPs were built with overlapping construction timelines, so groups of workers could specialize on one part of the construction of each and switch to the next in line to repeat the process. This would be a kind of assembly line without a factory. But this would require construction of many reactors, which means they'd have to be small. Renewables benefit from having huge opportunity for this kind of pipelining, because individual units are so small.