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by boringg 1462 days ago
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.
2 comments
acidburnNSA 1462 days ago
> 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

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boringg 1462 days ago
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.

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acidburnNSA 1462 days ago
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

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boringg 1462 days ago
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.

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ncmncm 1462 days ago
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.

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ncmncm 1462 days ago
Yet, waste disposal is the smallest of problems nukes pose.
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