[thehappypm]

I am not bullish on new nuclear. It takes too long to get a plant up and running, and from a cost perspective renewables are cheaper today and will only continue to get cheaper over time. Plus, no risk of irradiating a city.

That being said, decommissioning existing nuclear plants instead of doing whatever investment needed to keep them running is astonishing.

[hunterb123]

It only takes so long and costs so much because of the over regulation and red tape.

Nuclear is a backup power for when renewables fail. The wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine.

[thehappypm]

"Regulation and red tape" is a very hard problem to solve. I don't see a clear path to low-regulation nuclear power due to its political toxicity and the actual need for safety.

Just look at the Seabrook Station power plant in New Hampshire. "Two reactors were planned at Seabrook but the first unit didn't begin full operation until 1990, a full 14 years after the construction permit was granted, and the second unit was never built due to construction delays caused by protests, cost overruns, and troubles obtaining financing. The difficulties led to the bankruptcy of Seabrook's utility owner, PSNH."

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

[hunterb123]

That's definitely an outlier when it comes to build times, avg. construction time is 7.5 years for the 441 reactors in use today.

http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nucle...

[triceratops]

Please see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28774444

Tl;dr nuclear is safe. But if it goes wrong, the cleanup costs can wipe out decades of profits.

That's why it's so expensive, and why private insurers refuse to touch it. Insuring it is the proverbial picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.

Downvoters: feel free to tell me why I'm wrong. I'd love to learn more. I have no axe to grind against nuclear.

[Jensson]

If you average those clean-up costs for every nuclear plant in the world and how long they have been running then it isn't expensive at all.

[triceratops]

Are you sure? I couldn't find figures on global nuclear industry profits. Best I could do was revenue (about $2tn in 2021)[1].

If we assume nuclear has a gross profit margin of 10% like other utilities[2] then Fukushima's cleanup and compensation costs amounted to 1 year of all nuclear industry gross profits in 2021 (adjusting for the size of the industry in 2011, the various points in time when those costs were incurred, and inflation is too complex to go into here).

That's clearly a fuckton of money. Insuring against it is expensive. Blaming "regulations and tree-hugging environmentalists" for nuclear energy being expensive seems dishonest to me.

1. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210721005453/en/Nuc...

2. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/011915/what-average...

[Jensson]

Yeah, so having such an accident to clean up every 30 years would make nuclear about 1% more expensive than now if you take it into account. So it is hardly a big factor in the cost of nuclear.

[triceratops]

That math works out only if all the nuclear power plants in the world pay into a single risk pool. Which they don't.

Do you know how much companies actually pay for private insurance in the US? I haven't been able to find details. But I did learn that private insurance caps out at $450m and the industry as a whole agrees to cover costs above that (out of their own policies) up to $12b or so. Above that, it's up to Congress to come up with the money.[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...

[chucksta]

It would be interesting to compare the cost of all nuclear cleanup, vs the cleanup costs of all the oil spills

[triceratops]

That's fair. But we're not talking about nuclear vs fossil fuels. Nuclear is obviously better than anything carbon.

The debate is nuclear vs solar, wind, and hydro and how the case for nuclear is framed as "ack-chually, nuclear is better than renewables and would cost less if only those damned tree-hugging libs would get over their irrational fears"

[chucksta]

True. I guess I still see a constant power source as a requirement, so the comparison to green energy doesn't even matter at this point, but it's the goal.

My comment was more curiosity than disagreement

[_-david-_]

Renewables may be cheaper to build, maintain, and decommission but the problem is sometimes the sun doesn't shine and there is no wind. We would have to build storage which is expensive and hope we get enough sun and wind before we run out of what we stored. Why not also use nuclear which doesn't have any of those problems? Sure it maybe more expensive but it is reliable.

[kwere]

the west has lost nay will to do things more than Q calls away. I really hope coruption and maoism will broke china from the inside or we will be fucked

[SilasX]

Yeah, that was my first thought, about the argument against building new nuclear plants.

Opponents: "Yeah, in theory nuclear is better, but it's just too expensive and would take too long to scale up compared to the timetable of global warming, so it's not a viable option."

Also opponents: "Shut down existing plants, where that money/time cost has already been paid."

[himinlomax]

> It takes too long to get a plant up and running

In 2030, people will still be against building new nuclear plants because it takes 10 years to build.

[Melting_Harps]

> I am not bullish on new nuclear. It takes too long to get a plant up and running, and from a cost perspective renewables are cheaper today and will only continue to get cheaper over time. Plus, no risk of irradiating a city.

All valid points, and I'm less anti-nuclear now more than I am anti-20th Century Nuclear these days. Still, I too see the net benefit for renewables to increase it's ~33% Market share over the years in CA. It's incredibly foolish how little CA has spent in water reclamation and aggressively expanding renewable energy given it's ROI to the entire grid.

> That being said, decommissioning existing nuclear plants instead of doing whatever investment needed to keep them running is astonishing.

I's not astonishing, and you should really understand the nature of how corrupt, incompetent, and myopic the NRC are. Look no further than Mitsubishi's and SoCal Edison's handling of San Onofre Nuclear Power plant.

I lived through it and that along with how TEPCO/Nuclear Village/Edo Government poorly handled Fuksuhima in 2011 it became clear that this technology, while holding a great deal of promise is simply not regulated or managed properly and that in it's current state could not continue to be allowed to operate without posing an immense risk given it's location along the San Andrea's fault line. You know, that active seismic area that every Californian has been told will eventually create the next 'big one' that will make Northridge look like a Sunday picnic?

While I do not like the idea of activating more fossil fuel based plants, it's with the understanding that we will never be 100% on renewable as the challenges of storage and 24H capacity will always require to have a source for base load energy during inclement and unfavorable weather.

The goal is to keep the fossil fuel based plant active while renewable continue to grow.

[mbg721]

Do other renewables have the same capacity as new nuclear? I had thought this was a sticking point.

[thehappypm]

Nuclear is not considered a renewable energy source, as FYI. Uranium is mined and is not renewable.

Capacity for renewables is as much as we want. We could cover the whole Southwest in solar panels and generate 10x more power than the world would ever need.