[unchocked]

I will hazard that the problems with nuclear are not technological but political, and the economic problems with nuclear are there because of political reasons.

France gets ~75% of its power from nuclear, safely and economically. France inhabits the same physical world as the rest of us, but is different politically.

If there were a will, there would be a way. If the environmental movement had paid more attention to James Hansen's testimony in 1989 than it did to Chernobyl in 1986 then we would be living in a different world.

There is no amount of damage from nuclear accidents that will be worse than what we are suffering from climate change, with no end in sight. Proliferation is another story, but how's that going anyway...?

[cycomanic]

France is not using their reactors economically. They have been told multiple times by the EU that the reserves that operators have to provide for decommissioning of plants are much too low. So this means that the government/the taxpayers have to foot the bill. And we have not even talk about long term storage cost which are typically never taken into account.

So yes it is a political decision, France is willing to highly subsidise their nuclear industry.

[DoingIsLearning]

> France is willing to highly subsidise their nuclear industry.

And most of the world is willing to subside Oil and Gas to the tune of $5.9 trillion in 2020 or about 6.8 percent of the _world's_ GDP. [0]

Tax payer's money will be sunk anyway, choose your poison.

[0] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Sti...

[fartsucker69]

This is afaik true about nuclear power plants in general. They are one of the least cost-efficient energy generation sources out there because of their insane construction and running costs. In some countries they never make their money back, even if run by private companies, and only exist because of subsidies when they were built.

However, they are by far the most practical and safe way to generate ludicrous amounts of environmentally friendly energy out of all technologies that we have available. Even solar can't match up. If you factor in the really long term cost on every country on this planet due to climate change for example, this footed bill is chump change.

[ncmncm]

Each dollar diverted from renewables to nukes brings climate catastrophe nearer.

Starting a new nuke means burning coal for an extra decade, and at the end of that decade getting much less power per euro, displacing correspondingly less CO2, than if you had built out renewables instead.

There is simply no contest.

Even refurbishing a nuke instead of building out renewables is a losing proposition. Just continuing to operate a nuke instead of building out and then operating renewables is a losing proposition.

The only legitimate use for keeping a nuke running is while you are waiting to bring enough renewables you are building online to wholly displace it, because what you are spending operating it is using up money that could be building more renewables.

This is the magic of exponentially falling costs.

At the point where enough spare renewable generating capacity is available to charge storage, it will be time to start building out increasingly cheap storage.

[kwere]

you dont need 10 years to build a nuclear plant, most of delays are due to " political limitations" and construction/design inexpertise. South Korea build them on 56 months on average. Scale matter

[ncmncm]

In the US and Europe, it takes ten years. Or 20.

[JumpCrisscross]

> have been told multiple times by the EU that the reserves that operators have to provide for decommissioning of plants are much too low

Why is the EU more trustworthy on these estimates than the French?

[scoopertrooper]

Well in fairness, the French government currently in power have an economic incentive to kick the can down the road to subsequent governments. Reduce reserve requirements now, next generation of taxpayers foot the bill later.

Does the EU have an incentive to inflate the reserve requirement?

[syrrim]

The "EU" is just the client countries of the EU. Some countries neighbouring france are strongly against nuclear energy, and thus would have cause to exaggerate the costs.

[Joeri]

You don’t have to hazard. This subject has been studied extensively and there are clear answers.

The high cost of nuclear is due to the inherent complexity of nuclear power plants, and the rise in particular is principally due to a nuclear industry that no longer knows how to construct plants affordably, with increased regulatory compliance a minor contributor.

Source: https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118

The result of that high cost is that nuclear is a lot more expensive to build than renewables for the same amount of energy. This difference is growing and not shrinking, because the solar and wind industries keep getting better at cheaply rolling out capacity.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

Because most of a nuclear project’s cost is upfront, earned back over the lifetime of the plant, a profitable project has to be able to assume it can outcompete renewables + storage over multiple decades. This already is not the case today, and less so in the coming years. No private business can make these numbers work, so no private business is willing to fund a nuclear plant without subsidies. Renewables however can and are being funded privately to a large degree, because they turn a profit more quickly and can be built in smaller increments.

Subsidies come out of taxes, which means the money can’t be spent on something else. Government budgets are already stressed. Between the choice of a largely privately funded solar/wind/hydrogen/storage path and a mostly government-funded nuclear path governments around the world are choosing the cheaper option.

And yes, there is the public perception of nuclear which doesn’t help. But people are also opposed to solar and wind projects. NIMBY is always a thing. Besides, even if you could convince people of the safety of nuclear energy, the numbers still wouldn’t work out.

There are challenges to rolling out solar and wind at scale with grid redesign and hydrogen storage and distribution, but nuclear at scale has similarly sized problems. TANSTAAFL when it comes to energy production.

[adrianN]

France is currently not building enough reactors to replace those that will need to be shut down due to age in the near future. They would need to build a lot more if they wanted to satisfy demand for heating and transportation. I assume they have good reasons not to build more reactors.

[lelag]

That's in large part due to the work of the german-influenced green movement which did manage to get France to stop building reactors for 30 years or so. In the meantime, the french nuclear industry lost the competency to build new one as demonstrated by the struggling EPR project in Normandy. But at least the many older reactors have been producing low-carbon power since then...

Germany's electricity production has emitted about 8 times more CO2 emission than France over the last 30 years: I blame the german political ecologists for being directly responsible for a massive amount of our current ecological woes by demonising the nuclear industry and limiting it's spread across the world for the last 30 years.

It's really a sad story to be so misguided to end up contributing to destroy the one thing you wanted to save...

[logifail]

> In the meantime, the french nuclear industry lost the competency to build new one as demonstrated by the struggling EPR project in Normandy.

If the French (of all people) can no longer get it together to build new reactors even remotely on time and on budget, then maybe we just need to be honest and give up on the "build lots of new nuclear plants, quickly" as a credible medium-term component of a plan to deal with climate change.

"France's Flamanville 3 reactor will cost 300 million euros more than forecast and fuel loading is being pushed back by up to six months, EDF (EDF.PA) said on Wednesday, in the latest setback for a project already running more than a decade late.

EDF now estimates the total cost of the project at 12.7 billion euros ($14.42 billion). Its expected cost has more than quadrupled from the first estimate made in 2004."[0]

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-announces-new-de...

[lelag]

It's very possible that you are right, that it's too late, that we can't redevelop enough nuclear capacity in time, that we are doomed to see the world burn.

That won't prevent me from blaming the anti-nuclear crowd that put us in that situation in the first place.

Yes, nuclear is expensive, yes it can be messy but it was our best shot to produce abundant amount of low carbon power. All this talk about switching to wind and solar power omit the inconfortable fact that the current low prices for those technologies are low because we are using fossil fuel to make them.

When you have to make advanced renewable tech with only renewable energy, you will see that it's no longer possible to make it economically either.

[ncmncm]

We are not doomed to see the world burn. We know what to do: just build renewables. It is dishonest to claim that using carbon to build them is a problem. The more we build, the less carbon is used on them.

When you need falsehoods to make your case, you have no case.

[lelag]

Falsehood ? What do you know about building windmills ?

I admit that I don't myself know much, but I can tell you that you need at least:

- A modern metallurgy industry using coal to make steal

- Possibly a chemical industry to make composite material

- A logistic industry to move components around the world using petrol (all the solar and wind renewable production is based in china)

- Cement to build your fondation (using gas)

Remove all this and try to build it locally and see how much they cost you...

[kwere]

Koreans and Russians (political refugees) have still the skills to build reactors at time and "costs"

[phh]

Even though there are political reasons, the biggest reason is... we had enough reactors for our own usage.

We built them so fast, that even if we had cross-partisan will to keep forever using nuclear, we'd still have 30-40 years of gap without making any new reactor. And after a generation of engineers, we need to make reactors again and we're basically doing it from scratch again.

There are other reasons: people's fear of nuclear became quite real (either because of greenpeace, or local green political parties). There's also a bit of hubris I think, rather than making some "easy" "usual" reactor model, we decided to do our brand new own, which has its own cost: If Flamanville's EPR had succeeded, we would likely have made more reactors and we would already be producing >100% of nuclear power

[adrianN]

Only a third of France's primary power consumption comes from nuclear. That's a long way to go to carbon neutrality.

[trashtester]

In other words, France needs to hurry up and double if not triple their nuclear capacity, so they can switch to electric cars and heating.

Somewhere to the north-east of Strasbourg would be ideal, not only for the abundant water supply, but also because the location is ideal for export to places in Europe that have not invested enough in stable sources of energy, lately. And if France plans to import power when the wind is blowing in those countries, the grid capacity out of that area will be needed anyway.

[ncmncm]

The more nukes they build, the farther behind the rest of the world they will get.

The rest of the world will be building out renewables, and getting much more power for each euro than France will. France will have more expensive power than everyone else in exact proportion to their nuke construction.

Ultimately, the French will buy their power from outside, because the nukes will be unable to deliver at a matching price, and the plants will be mothballed. French taxpayers will be the poorer.

[trashtester]

> Ultimately, the French will buy their power from outside.

My prediction is the opposite, that nuclear will remain cheaper than wind in northern temperate climates for another generation.

I suppose time will tell.

[rswskg]

Not including transport? That's awful.

[phh]

One third is including transport and heating.

[Jorge1o1]

The reasons are political… just like in the United States.

HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress in the perception of nuclear energy.

[jlkuester7]

> HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress

Wait, seriously? That miniseries was not perfect, but I thought it did a pretty good job of pointing out the issues with Chernobyl were largely political and not technical. (Sure the RBMK reactors were flawed, that is a technical issue. But the only reason that escalated into a disaster was due to gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems...)

[rectang]

> gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems...

Gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems are inevitable, inherent features of power utilities. If your technology is disastrous without perfect handling, your technology is disastrous.

[JumpCrisscross]

> your technology is disastrous without perfect handling, your technology is disastrous

Did we watch the same miniseries? Chernobyl went beyond gross negligence. To say nothing of perfection. In the reactor design, in its operation and in post-crisis management.

[ncmncm]

No, it was absolutely typical gross negligence, with unfortunately outsized consequences. Fukushima was exactly equal negligence, with absolutely expected consequences.

[rootusrootus]

They didn't need perfect handling, just halfway competent.

But since the rest of the world doesn't build reactors of that type, and never built any without even a containment building AFAIK, it's not really applicable to modern nuclear power plant designs.

[Manuel_D]

The Chernobyl miniseries greatly distorted the impact of the meltdown. They cited the "bridge of death" where everyone supposedly died. In reality there are zero known deaths among people who watched the meltdown from that overpass, and there's even interviews with people who were there. They cited a death estimate of 60,000 when reputable sources estimate 200-1,700 deaths.

[ncmncm]

False. Cancer rates downwind are sharply elevated.

[Manuel_D]

Credible estimates do include increases in cancer, especially thyroid cancer. That is captured in the estimates of ~1,700. The 60,000 estimates shared by Netflix are not regarded as credible.

[goodpoint]

Nuclear in inherently vulnerable to politics, mismanagement and attempts at cover-up. As it happened in Fukushima as well as Chernobyl.

Because it's centralized, quite isolated from the public eye and with the potential to cause invisible environmental impact.

[heretogetout]

The ascendancy of wind and cheap natural gas probably had a greater effect, considering the miniseries is only a couple years old.

[trashtester]

I suppose now that some of the sources of such gas is being cut, those French nuclear plants will be extremely profitable for a while.

[adrianN]

Or perhaps the reasons are economical. Recently nuclear construction projects became a lot more expensive and took a lot longer than initially planned.

[anonporridge]

Some of those economical problems are burdened on the nuclear industry because of political problems.

For example, because everyone is terrified of nuclear, regulations may require an absurd level of safety expenses that no other energy producer is burdened with. If the political climate lead to burdening fossil fuel burners with costs to reduce their pollution and GHG emissions that directly and indirectly lead to orders of magnitude more deaths than nuclear ever has, then nuclear might actually be price competitive.

As another example, since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the US started in 1975, they have never, not once, approved the construction of a new nuclear site in the US. They've approved expansion of existing sites, but never a new one. In fact, it was a huge deal when the NRC approved the expansion of a site several years ago, for the first time in 30 years, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclear-license/nrc-a...

How much pain and death is the NRC ultimately responsible for for holding nuclear energy to such a high safety standard that it's been literally impossible to build a new site for almost 50 years? Because all that means, is that we've burned drastically more fossil fuel than necessary over the past 50 years.

Shame on the NRC and the US government for using irrational fear to protect the fossil fuel industry at the expense of nuclear energy. And shame on environmentalists for falling for the same trap and failing to think holistically and systemically.

[logifail]

> because everyone is terrified of nuclear, regulations may require an absurd level of safety expenses that no other energy producer is burdened with

"The researchers start out with a historic analysis of plant construction in the US. The basic numbers are grim. The typical plant built after 1970 had a cost overrun of 241 percent—and that's not considering the financing costs of the construction delays [..] while safety regulations added to the costs, they were far from the primary factor [...] In the end, the conclusion is that there are no easy answers to how to make nuclear plant construction more efficient. And, until there are, it will continue to be badly undercut by both renewables and fossil fuel."[0]

[0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plan...

[ncmncm]

The cost overruns are inherent in the process. Actual cost is actual cost.

Really, actual cost is much more than reported cost, because disaster insurance and decommissioning are always omitted from cost accounting.

[kwere]

scale matter expecially with brand new designs and constructions teams/tecnologies

[Retric]

The reasons are economic. France has been heavily subsidizing nuclear for years and can swap to cheaper alternatives for less money.

It’s not that nuclear is any worse, it’s just that the alternatives got better.

[anonporridge]

Wind and solar got better, but it seems fundamentally problematic to me to suggest that those are the alternatives to nuclear. They're not.

Fossil fuel is the alternative to nuclear (and possibly battery supported wind/solar) as the base load. Fossil fuels are fundamentally cheaper because they can more easily avoid paying the cost of their negative externalities than nuclear can. If we could actually internalize the negatives of fossil fuel burning (i.e. by carbon tax) then nuclear might actually be the most economical option for the base load with solar and wind picking up the slack.

[Retric]

Even with that line of thinking, France was well past the point of using Nukes for base load power.

France had nuclear capacity factors around 70% when America and much of the worlds nuclear power plants where closer to 90%. It physically worked, but dramatically increased production cost per KWH.

Assuming they cut back to 30% or even 40% of all electricity being supplied by nuclear that’s still a significantly reduction.

[ncmncm]

Renewables + storage is the alternative to nukes. And, there is simply no contest. Nukes have been left far behind.

[cycomanic]

According to perceptions and advertising about nuclear we should have unlimited power and everything from our cars to our stoves would be running of nuclear. All this should have been possible with just a containers worth of nuclear waste (experts in the 50s,60s seriously said operating a whole country of nuclear would result in maybe a ton of nuclear waste).

Nuclear completely undelivered on this promise. Tschernobyl was just the nail in the coffin.

On top of that has the nuclear industry been one of the strongest lobbying groups against wind and solar, mainly to protect their investments. I would argue on the whole we would have been much further in terms of renewable energy if it wasn't for the nuclear industry.

[pydry]

If something cant operate without lavish subsidies it automatically becomes political.

E.g. Bill Gates' nuclear startup would be dead in the water without its subsidies. That makes it political.

[BenoitP]

6 + an additional 8 are being planned at the moment. It is still dependent on legislative elections (starting this weekend), and on the EU energy taxonomy (currently going final rounds in the EU parliament)

Both should be sort of ok, fingers crossed.

But this is only replacement. If we're serious and want to reduce iron ore with hydrogen for our steel needs, and use the same electrolytic hydrogen for fertilizers, we would need to build about 50 of them.

The technology is there, but yes, it is more of a political issue in France as well.

[adrianN]

France has over fifty nuclear plants, most of them older than 40 years. You probably want to replace most of them in the next twenty years or so. Since building one can easily take a decade or two from planning to power output, you would want to have a couple of dozen in the planning stage right now if you expect to continue producing the same amount of power. Since only about a third of France's primary power consumption is satisfied by nuclear, realistically they'd need to drastically increase the number of reactors in the next decades to reach climate goals.

[legulere]

> the economic problems with nuclear are there because of political reasons. France gets ~75% of its power from nuclear, safely and economically.

EDF, Areva have a long history of bailouts, buyouts and subsidies by the French government. You are right that it's a political decision that France has so much nuclear, but it is not an economical one.

Even though they decided to replace old reactors with new ones, they do not manage to build enough reactors fast enough and especially not economically. Flamanville has a budget overrun of around 500% and time overrun of around 300%.

Nuclear is neither fast nor economical enough to be built. Only building renewables can help push down CO2 emissions fast and cheap enough.

[ncmncm]

The most reliable output of the nuke industry has always been dishonesty and corruption. Power is a distant second.

[boringg]

The problems with Nuclear are simple and straight forward: (1) Economic not viable if you include the total life cycle cost of the system (i.e. nuclear waste storage and dismantling the asset.

Theres a large difference between building new reactors vs running the old ones until the end of life (in terms of economics).

Also the modular reactors that are getting a lot of hype right now also still have a nuclear waste disposal issue.

I would like to see Nuclear thrive but until it gets the cost / waste disposal resolved it's a tough sell.

[acidburnNSA]

> not viable if you include the total life cycle cost of the system (i.e. nuclear waste storage and dismantling the asset.

On the contrary! Nuclear plants pay a fraction of their revenue through their life into special decommissioning funds that have so far been more than enough to perform full greenfield decommissioning.

For waste, there's a separate fund called the Nuclear Waste Fund in the US (and other nuclear-operating countries) that has a current balance around $50B.

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/RL33461.pdf

[boringg]

Sorry should have been more clear. True cost of permanent waste disposal. They cant find anywhere to put it so while 50B sounds nice it doesn't have a home and the lifetime cost of operating a facility is probably significant higher (if they can find one).

Read: problem not resolved.

[acidburnNSA]

It's being done in Finland and Sweden [1] just fine, and for reasonable cost. NIMBY is a big problem but once we figure out how to solve that in the USA like Finland did, then it is basically a solved problem.

[1] https://www.posiva.fi/en/index.html

[boringg]

How much nuclear waste does Sweden and Finland produce? For scale purposes their population isn't larger than the metropolitan area of Los Angeles.

I think the scale of the issue is significantly larger in the US.

Yucca isn't viable politically and there isn't anyone who lives close by.

[ncmncm]

US nukes are, in fact, not paying into any waste fund. Operators are actually being paid out of the previous balance from the previous waste fund.

Legal shenanigans. They got a court decision declaring the waste fund as a lie because there is no viable plan for waste.

[ncmncm]

Yet, waste disposal is the smallest of problems nukes pose.

[dukoid]

If you can't insure something reasonably it's not economical. The risk is just externalized.

[acidburnNSA]

If fossil and biofuel had to insure against air pollution health effects they directly cause (8 million deaths/yr according to WHO), and climate change, then clean/carbon-free nuclear fission would absolutely dominate today.

[ncmncm]

Fossil and bio fuel are not what nukes and nuke construction are competing with, so mentioning them at all is an attempt to distract.

We are not distracted.

[acidburnNSA]

The entire energy project right now is to decarbonize rapidly. The world energy mix is more than 80% fossil and biofuel. Nuclear is competing with fossil and biofuel.

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix

[ncmncm]

No, nuke construction competes with renewables construction, and nuke operation with renewables operation. Nukes are absolutely obliterated on both.

Only political bias allows nukes to continue.

[pydry]

France has nuclear plants because in the 1970s it decided it didnt want to be dependent on middle eastern oil.

It was very very expensive. It was also nothing to do with global warming.

Those plants are fully paid off but nearly all close to death. Replacing them will still be very very expensive. Extending their lives will be dangerous. France isnt quite sure what to do.

If there's unlimited money and patience for years long delays then yes nuclear power is just fine.

If you want it reasonably priced it either wont happen at all or you're risking catastrophe.

[sofixa]

> France isnt quite sure what to do.

Yes it is ( big nuclear buildout to replace most of the current fleet, while also doing lots of renewables and experimenting with small modular reactors):

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220210-announcing-new-r...

[tcfhgj]

So they're reducing nuclear power production in the long term?

[sofixa]

By a small percentage, yes, going down from something like 75% to 55-60% IIRC, with the difference going to renewables.

[ncmncm]

The usual outcome lately is to cancel construction after billions of euros are spent, as it is realized the result will be unable to be competitive.

Occasionally, ratepayers are forced to pay far above market rates in order to keep the plants in operation.

Coercing users does not make nukes look more viable.

[ohgodplsno]

>Those plants are nearly all close to death.

No, these plants are close to the end of their original grant for exploitation. Many of them get renewed for 10, 20 years easily. The US has had plants renewed for 40 years and are still running just fine.

> France isnt quite sure what to do.

We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do. The non-renewal of nuclear plants is purely a political play to gain votes.

Stop spreading your ignorant, fearmongering, unsubstantiated opinions.

[phh]

> We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do.

The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production)

Let's maybe not trust them completely, and have our eggs in other baskets as well.

[ohgodplsno]

No, you don't know what you are talking about. The budget, that's EDF. EDF builds things, the ASN ensures the safety is up to standards. Hell, the ASN _is_ responsible for these costs because they are the ones ensuring everything is up to par. There are many EPRs running, in Finland, in China, but none of these have safety requirements as drastic as the Flamanville EPR.

Additionally, EDF offered multiple estimates at the time of construction, from "everything goes well" to "oh dear god so many delays". Many of these estimates were perfectly in line with the current costs. It is, once again, political decisions that only allocated the minimal budget, while knowing full well that it would go over (but that EDF would take the blame, and not the government).

And once again, this is also a result of letting our nuclear industry decay for 40 years, losing every single person that has the knowledge on how to build nuclear plants either to retirement or other countries.

[ncmncm]

Anything that results in fewer nukes at minimal cost is a net good.

In the US, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission employs 2000 people to reject nuke construction plans. They are cheap at the price.

[sofixa]

> The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production)

It's an entirely new design of a complicated piece of technology, of course it will be over budget and delayed. Grand Paris Express and the Paris Philharmonic were also over budget and delayed, does that invalidate the opinion of all experts involved in both projects?

[ncmncm]

Being over budget and off schedule is most of the purpose. Once a plant is delivered, the gravy train stops. No one actually involved wants that.

The Finns recognized the gravy train would stop soon, anyway, and elected to deliver a (more-or-less) working reactor, after consuming 5B euros beyond the 3B quoted cost, more than a decade late. In the US, corruption is secure enough to go far, far beyond that price, with no demand to deliver.

[moogly]

> does that invalidate the opinion of all experts involved in both projects

demonstrably, yes?

[sofixa]

Because the most important thing about a project as complex as a big acoustic-friendly building or multiple hundreds of kms of automated metros or a nuclear power plant is that the predictions about budget and time are perfect?

I wonder what that means for software developers who notoriously struggle to predict basically the same stuff, only on much less drastic scales (if an engineer underestimates how much time and effort a feature will take, usually people don't die. If a building crumbles or a nuclear power plant has an accident or a train crashes people do die).

[cycomanic]

> >Those plants are nearly all close to death.

> No, these plants are close to the end of their original grant for exploitation. Many of them get renewed for 10, 20 years easily. The US has had plants renewed for 40 years and are still running just fine.

The moving goal post by nuclear proponents never cease to amaze. When we talk about safety the argument is always: "don't look at these old designs, all these modern designs are 100% safe". Then when we talk about cost it is: "don't look at the cost of building new plants, just extend the operation of these 40 year old plants by another 40 years". And the they complain about regulations for nuclear, while at the same time arguing that regulations about decommissioning a plant after its regulated lifetime ran out should not apply to nuclear plants.

Why should the rules about safe operation lifetimes not apply to nuclear plants?

> > France isnt quite sure what to do.

> We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do. The non-renewal of nuclear plants is purely a political play to gain votes.

> Stop spreading your ignorant, fearmongering, unsubstantiated opinions.

They are not fear mongering or unsubstantiated. Plants were build/commissioned with an expected lifetime. There are reasons for this, aging of components and materials especially under exposure to radiation, aging of computer systems...

[sofixa]

> don't look at these old designs, all these modern designs are 100% safe

This is only said as an answer to all the people screaming "but Chernobyl was horrible". Old designs are pretty safe too ( especially when terrible bugs like the one that caused Chernobyl are fixed), precisely because they keep getting updated to newer norms during refreshes and refits. There are nuclear power plants out there that were constructed in the 1950s that still work.

OP's point is that most nuclear power plants can have their life extended, at some cost, which is negligible compared to the cost of a new plant, and there's rarely a case where that doesn't make sense ( usually when for some reason the retrofit to update to new standards is too expensive). Why waste that? Prolong the life of existing plants, and build new ones to expand production and eventually replace the old ones.

[cycomanic]

Yes and the reasons that they don't get extended indefinitely is because it gets increasingly expensive to modernise and follow the new rules. On top of that is that regulators are becoming more reluctant to extend the lifetime, because the unknown factors increase (cue complaints about regulation). The reason they don't get extended that it is not economical compared to using wind/solar instead. Why do you think coal plants don't get operated indefinitely?

[ohgodplsno]

The only way plants are extended is if they meet current nuclear safety rules, not the rules from 40 years ago. Please do literally five minutes of research.