[Gwypaas]

After 70 years of trying we haven't built an economic traditional nuclear reactor. Even less a breeder.

It is like saying we have infinite fossil fuels because we can use renewables to create it from water and air. The interesting part of the conversation is the efficient allocation of money and people. In that conversation nuclear power never materialized.

[hedora]

The French managed to. I guess they have super-human engineering prowess.

The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design instead of re-inventing the entire thing from scratch for each plant.

Imagine how much more accessible computers would be if you could just copy the operating system from one "printed" circuit board to another, instead of hand-wiring all the transistors, then hand coding process scheduling and I/O.

The French did this totally unprecedented novel thing where they manufacture more than one identical part at a time in a line of assembly stations, and the parts of the plants are interchangeable. I doubt such things transfer to other countries or industries though.

[pyrale]

> The French managed to. I guess they have super-human engineering prowess.

As a french Engineer, I can confirm this. For work inquiries, please reach me at [e-mail]

> The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design

In fact, we don't keep building them. The last N4 reactor was delivered in 2003. Since then, aside from the failed joint-venture with Germany that is the EPR, France essentially delivered nothing. That's not really an engineering issue so much as a political one.

Also France didn't "keep building the same reactor", and didn't build "obsolete" reactors. From the initial reactors (the CP generation) to the N4, the buildings got larger, late reactors produced 60% more energy than the original ones, and significant safety improvements were made. Safety changes were also backported on previous installations. In fact, the major reason why Framatome freed itself from the Westinghouse license is that it provided significant independent contribution to the original design.

[throwaway5959]

Why does it seem we can’t build complicated things like we used to? The same seems to be true here in the US as well.

[pyrale]

The French and the US reasons are, from what I understand, quite different. I don't know the US situation that well.

In France, many factors were involved:

* France over-producing power for decades around y2k, which meant it was hard to commit the country to build more nuclear reactors.

* The EPR being an over-engineered fiasco due to it being designed in a Franco-German partnership which quickly folded, but the design was kept.

* The privatization of the energy sector involved a lot of restructuring for EDF, and the creation of Areva. This had a lot of involvement, but the main one is that the state took a hands-off stance, and EDF and Areva started competing with each other rather than collaborating.

* Areva got mismanaged quite heavily. People like to point out the Olkiluoto fiasco, but what really killed the company was the Uramin scandal.

* Politicians since 2007 started asking hefty dividends from public companies, involving EDF, in order to prop up the government's budget. That created an investment deficit, and significant debt for EDF.

So yeah, lots of things, but the underlying issue seems to be that France used to have a culture of the state coordinating huge projects, which was lost with the new generation of politicians. There seems to be an appetite for new reactors, but the industry is significantly harmed by 20 years of political mixed signals, and whether the current politicians and the industry can deliver remains unclear.

[khuey]

Mostly because we prioritize other things over actually getting stuff built for a reasonable budget.

[threeseed]

You can. It's just not economical and sometimes politically tenable to do so.

[PaulHoule]

Isn't the Hualong One (both of them!) derived from French designs?

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

[pyrale]

Yes, some of the older generations also got exported around. There's one in South Africa too IIRC, based on CP1 reactors.

[Panino]

> The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design

Wikipedia has a list of nuclear reactors in France.

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

According to the list, most power plants came online in the 1980s, so it doesn't sound like they "keep building" more of them. The most recent ones, Civaux and Chooz-B, came online in 2000. Flamanville appears to be incorrectly stated as having came online in 2020. Clicking the link, you see that its 2 reactors came online in 1986 and 1987, and as for the third one -- "as of 2020 the project is more than five times over budget and years behind schedule. Various safety problems have been raised, including weakness in the steel used in the reactor. In July 2019, further delays were announced, pushing back the commercial introduction date to the end of 2022. In January 2022, more delays were announced, with fuel loading continuing until mid-2023, and again in December 2022, delaying fuel loading to early 2024."

All of the nuclear reactors in France were built by previous generations.

As an aside, I'm pro- wind, hydro, geothermal, solar, and nuclear. (I'm also very pro-smart-design which obviates the need for created energy.) However I only really see nuclear proponents (and those of fossil fuels) attacking renewables. And I only really see fossil fuel and nuclear proponents making widespread demonstrably false statements. My rooftop solar is producing a big yearly surplus, supplying my neighbors with energy for their AC etc. I think nuclear proponents who say that nuclear is so cheap and so easy should prove it by building their own nuclear reactors and make tons of money. Go ahead, just do it. Stop talking and do it.

[opo]

>As an aside, I'm pro- wind, hydro, geothermal, solar, and nuclear. (I'm also very pro-smart-design which obviates the need for created energy.)

I think many of the people who aren't anti-nuclear, would agree with all that.

>However I only really see nuclear proponents (and those of fossil fuels) attacking renewables.

I rarely see that here. What I tend to see are people who don't like the idea of nuclear power making misleading or false statements about nuclear power. (Like in the original message of this thread where the claim is made "After 70 years of trying we haven't built an economic traditional nuclear reactor.")

>My rooftop solar is producing a big yearly surplus, supplying my neighbors with energy for their AC etc.

This statement is true in one small sense and misleading in another. You are likely providing excess power during a sunny day in the summer and less power than you are using when it rains and you are providing no power at other times (like at 2:00 AM.). While at the end of the year you might produce more kilowatts than you in total used, that isn't going to help your neighbors when it is raining. The only issue with consumer roof-top solar is that it is the most expensive form of power ever created and consequently has to be heavily subsidized by your neighbors who don't have rooftop solar.

[godelski]

A problem with both nuclear-bros as well as anti-nuclear folks is that they tend to get their information through armchair experts who oversimplify extremely complex topics. Neither group tends to understand the real reasons for costs, the risks and dangers of technologies (including other than nuclear, for proper comparisons), or even the complexities of simply emissions which is far more than electricity and transportation and includes daily and seasonal fluxuations across an extremely non-homogeneous landscape.

FWIW, the IPCC advocates for a diversified portfolio which includes nuclear, and this is the general stance of most climate and energy researchers as the simplified version of reasoning (I know, ironic) is "don't take it off the table." When to use it, how much, and where is more controversial, but this gets extremely complicated quite quickly. It's rather problematic when the people disseminating information (i.e. science communicators; both on youtube as well as news) are not actively aligned with scientific consensus.

[opo]

>FWIW, the IPCC advocates for a diversified portfolio which includes nuclear, and this is the general stance of most climate and energy researchers as the simplified version of reasoning (I know, ironic) is "don't take it off the table." When to use it, how much, and where is more controversial, but this gets extremely complicated quite quickly.

This seems like the most reasonable approach - if someone disagrees with this, it would be interesting to hear their reasoning.

[cauch]

> I rarely see that here. What I tend to see are people who don't like the idea of nuclear power making misleading or false statements about nuclear power. (Like in the original message of this thread where the claim is made "After 70 years of trying we haven't built an economic traditional nuclear reactor.")

I think it's just easier to notice "misleading or false statements" when they contradict what we like to think rather than when they are going in the same direction.

For example, are you 200% sure of your sentence "The only issue with consumer roof-top solar is that it is the most expensive form of power ever created"? Is that true everywhere, all the time? Because if not, how is that not as much as "misleading or false statements" than the original sentence you quote? But of course, this sentence of yours does not strike you as misleading, because you truly believe it's not misleading.

Also, while I don't think the anti-nuclear are less numerous or less idiot, the pro-nuclear usually are also very very prone to think they are smarter when they are not, and start using bullying method to "fight the infidels", which, at least in my circle which are neutral, is really starting to make that side looks bad.

[opo]

>I think it's just easier to notice "misleading or false statements" when they contradict what we like to think rather than when they are going in the same direction.

That is likely true, but what is your point? The statement I said was false and misleading was in the message that started this thread:

>After 70 years of trying we haven't built an economic traditional nuclear reactor.

Are you saying that was a true statement?

>For example, are you 200% sure of your sentence "The only issue with consumer roof-top solar is that it is the most expensive form of power ever created"? Is that true everywhere, all the time? Because if not, how is that not as much as "misleading or false statements" than the original sentence you quote? But of course, this sentence of yours does not strike you as misleading, because you truly believe it's not misleading.

This sort of incessant questioning is a form of sealioning. I guess I could have been more clear I meant that the obvious energy policy issue with consumer rooftop solar is that it is the most expensive form of power thus it has been given huge subsidies. (The money used for such subsidies is not unlimited and this money is fungible - obviously a dollar going to subsidize an extremely expensive rooftop solar installation could have gone much, much farther if it had gone to support a utility grade solar installation.) I think a charitable reading of my sentence would have understood what I meant.

[Gwypaas]

>> After 70 years of trying we haven't built an economic traditional nuclear reactor.

> Are you saying that was a true statement?

As the op, yes. See:

The limited liability vs Fukushima cost of at least $150B.

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

And this review of the economics by DIW berlin.

> According to “numerous scientific studies,” none of the world’s more than 600 nuclear power stations have ever been economically viable, and the plants could only be operated for years due to government subsidies, the institute claims.

https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/-nuclear-has-never-b...

[cauch]

> That is likely true, but what is your point? The statement I said was false and misleading was in the message that started this thread

You realize the part I was quoting started with "I rarely see that here".

Obviously, my sentence was not "the element that you say is incorrect is in fact correct" but rather "that is not a surprise that you notice incorrect element when they are saying something you don't like". This second part recognizes that the element may be incorrect. The point is when you say "I rarely see that here": your impressions have no value, they do not correspond to any reality.

> Are you saying that was a true statement?

I am saying that it is not a worst statement as the one of yours I've quoted. The problem of the statement you quoted is that it is open to interpretation: what is "built", what is "economic", what is "traditional".

Of course, you will pretend it is "false" because you will find one exception, or you will say "it's economic without the artificial extra costs that I have arbitrarily decided are the results of baddies because I don't like them"

I personally think this sentence is bad because it's way too imprecise and generalist. I think only idiots will think it is "false", and only idiots will think it is "true", the reality is that this sentence cannot be called "true" or "false" as it is true to some extend and false to some extend.

> This sort of incessant questioning is a form of sealioning.

Once again you miss the point. I don't care if your statement is true or not, or precise or not. My point is that you are blaming someone for not doing what you don't do yourself.

Your sentence was, according to your own standard (not mine, YOURS), objectively pretty bad (which is not the same as "incorrect"):

1) "the ONLY issue" is obviously highly debatable, as what is an issue for someone may not be an issue for someone else (or be a "small issue"), and it highly depends of the objective and what people care about

2) "the most expensive form of power EVER CREATED". This is technically 100% incorrect: it is totally unreasonable to pretend that modern solar is a more expensive form of power than the form of power used one or two centuries ago. Of course, you can answer "it's obviously not what I mean", but I know that and I don't say you have made a mistake, what I'm saying is that you are the one reacting to such approximations if they are "anti-nuclear".

3) "the MOST EXPENSIVE". Again, while it can be true, it is not at all trivial and even "decidable". In a parallel thread, you admit yourself that you take the "average", which is a very very bad reasoning: if a country decided to build a series of crap nuclear plant with turbines of sub-par efficiency, according to you, it would objectively mean that the nuclear power will intrinsically be worse. A better metric instead of the average would be to take the minimum: it corresponds to the real potential of the technology, probably ignoring old technology (so it is also a good thing to do for nuclear) (sure, there may be circumstantial effect, but at first order, they exist in all the forms, so it's fair. While it is not perfect, it is anyway already way better than taking the average). If we do that, solar power is better than nuclear power. And this is only with the US numbers, but you can easily decompose by state and cherry-pick the ones going in one way or another, or add other countries in the world. It scientifically does not make sense, the numbers that you use cannot answer the question of knowing if the form of power is "more expensive" or not in a debate about future decision, especially when they are all so close.

4) the fact that the sentence is a very naive generalization.

Again, let's be clear: I'm not criticizing you for your statement, or saying your statement is incorrect.

What I'm saying is that someone would have behave exactly like you, would have written exactly the same kind of statement, would have been as clear and precise, but it would have been anti-nuclear and you would have said "yet another example of anti-nuclear being lying or misleading".

> I think a charitable reading of my sentence would have understood what I meant.

This is a good summary: you are asking people to be charitable when reading your sentence and try to understand what you mean by refitting the terms to make sure the sentence is true, but you don't do that to others.

As I've said, the statement that you are saying is a lie is true "in some extend", and, if you really believe in what you've said to me, you should just be charitable and understand what they mean in order to refit the terms so that this sentence is true.

[rewmie]

> (...) consumer roof-top solar is that it is the most expensive form of power ever created (...)

Care to show the basis of your personal assertion? It's an extraordinary and unbelievable claim.

[opo]

This is not my assertion and has been covered in discussions on this web site for a long time.

>Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States. If not for federal and state subsidies, rooftop solar PV would come with a price tag between 147 and 221 U.S. dollars per megawatt hour.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-leveliz...

The latest report from Lazard on LCOE also gives similar numbers:

https://www.lazard.com/media/typdgxmm/lazards-lcoeplus-april...

It would be extraordinary if these one-off rooftop solar photovoltaic installations would be low cost. They are more dangerous to install than ground based solar farms and much more costly - the real question is why are they so heavily subsidized? It really is sort of a reverse Robinhood scenario where less well off consumers subsidize their wealthier neighbors.

[rewmie]

> The latest report from Lazard on LCOE also gives similar numbers:

I'm not convinced you read the doc you cited.

In it, it clearly states that the levelized cost of energy for solar PV rooftop residential ranges from $115/MWH while gas peaking is $114/MWH and nuclear is $141.

Your source also states quite clearly that these costs depend on the circumstances (i.e., each case is a case) and it points to unsubsidized costs.

If I get a quote from a rooftop vendor that sells gold plated PV panels to install in a cave, that does not mean that residential PV panels have an expensive energy cost.

[pyrale]

> However I only really see nuclear proponents (and those of fossil fuels) attacking renewables.

The reverse is pretty much true too. It seems like both renewables and nuclear proponents should be taking turns bashing fossil fuels, but since both see each other as a competitor for "the future of power", that's where the banter goes.

> And I only really see fossil fuel and nuclear proponents making widespread demonstrably false statements.

You don't have to go further than this thread to find false statements about nuclear.

[antonvs]

According to https://www.ad.nl/economie/duur-en-gevaarlijk-elke-kerncentr... (translated with Google):

> "The leading German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin investigated whether new nuclear power plants can indeed contribute to a clean(er) economy. The answer is negative: all 674 nuclear power plants that were built worldwide between 1951 and 2017 were built with substantial government subsidies. Without such support they would never have come about."

[MostlyStable]

Do those cost estimates include the absolutely insane over-engineering for safety that has been forced on the nuclear power industry and _only_ the nuclear power industry? I'd be shocked if a single other power generation method didn't double in price if it was forced to meet the same standards as nuclear. I guarantee you that the coal plants in Germany are killing more people every year than every single one of their Nuclear plants has combined over it's lifetime. And likely more than every single nuclear plant on the planet with the possible exception of Chernobyl

To be clear, I'm not saying there should be no regulations, and that just anyone should be able to build any kind of reactor they want anywhere they want with no concerns for safety etc. But I do _very much think_ that when you are considering a technology that increases safety and also increases cost, you have to consider what the alternatives are. Are _they_ safer than whatever the current thing is? If you force it to be more expensive and more safe, are you going to get less of it and instead get the other, cheaper, more dangerous thing?

That calculation has never been done (in the US at least) and the result is thousands to millions dead over the past 80ish years a result of continuing to burn coal instead of nuclear.

The US nuclear safety regime (which is what makes it so expensive and so impractical) has no concept of tradeoffs. It imagines a hypothetical perfect power generation that never kills anyone to which nuclear should be held. That standard is ridiculous now and was ridiculous 50 years ago when nuclear was _already safer than coal_.

[antonvs]

The comparison being discussed in the article I linked is with clean energy alternatives. In that respect, nuclear does need significantly more safety measures than wind or solar, for example.

The problem with nuclear is that it's much more difficult to regulate effectively than most other industries, because the consequences of mistakes can be so much higher. E.g. Chernobyl contaminated food throughout much of Europe for months. The natural organizational reaction in that situation is to overcompensate.

Nuclear is likely to always be expensive for that reason, because you're never going to get economy of scale as long as companies can't e.g. mass produce nuclear plants and set them up all over the place. I also generally agree with the other reply to your comment by three14.

I consider this to be a pragmatic observation, not a judgment on whether nuclear might make sense in some hypothetical perfectly rational world.

[cycomanic]

The argument that the nuclear power industry suffers from "insane" over-engineering for safety and that this is the reason for the cost is brought up again and again, except there is no real evidence for this.

In fact it's easy to see that a large proportion of a the construction cost is the same as any other (e.g. gas, coal) thermal power plant, because they all need the same steam turbine. Now nuclear power plants have additional costs, also due to safety (and I would argue that we should expect that, a nuclear power plant has more challenges to a coal plant).

Moreover if you look at the cost increases for nuclear power plant projects, they are pretty much inline with the cost increases we have seen for most large infrastructure projects. They all have become significantly more expensive (recently build coal plant also went significantly over budget). Even the world nuclear forum says (https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...): > Nuclear power plant construction is typical of large infrastructure projects around the world, whose costs and delivery challenges tend to be under-estimated.

The reality is that nuclear power is just not cost-competitive (see also this analysis somebody else (in a counter solar argument) posted https://www.lazard.com/media/typdgxmm/lazards-lcoeplus-april...). Especially considering that renewables are on an exponential curve and nuclear is not (and doesn't show any indication of how to get onto one). Because so much of the cost (and energy) is in the construction of a nuclear power plant, it is actually counter-productive to invest into nuclear power plants, because we will increase CO2 compared to an investment into renewables.

[three14]

Not to pick on you, but every time this discussion happens on HN, someone argues that the nuclear power industry is burdened by far more red tape than other industries (probably true) and that if we simply reduce the red tape, we could profitably build new nuclear plants (probably true) and they would still be safe (probably not true). This isn't an engineering problem. This is a social problem. Suppose you offer to let people build with minimal regulation - the most profitable plants are going to be the ones that cut the most corners on safety. The great engineering team that made a safe but slightly more expensive reactor than the minimum allowed by regulation will be out of the market.

And unsafe nuclear is really unsafe in a politically terrible way. You are doomed to either have Chernobyls or a lot of non-optimal regulation, or excellent regulation in the world of spherical cows and frictionless planes.

Perhaps one of the new nuclear startups can find a solution to this, but it'll have to be by finding a way to mass produce nuclear within the existing heavy red tape regime. And in the real world, that's not a bad thing.

[robertlagrant]

> And in the real world, that's not a bad thing

It is a bad thing if the increased cost / pollution kills more people either directly or indirectly.

[three14]

My argument is that is not the choice we are given. We are given only the choice between too much regulation and too little.

[fsflover]

> and they would still be safe (probably not true)

Why do you think it's not true? Just look at the existing statistics that includes old designs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_plant#/media/Fil...

[three14]

I am sure that new designs would be better on paper. I am also sure that a regulatory regime in which nuclear plants are allowed to be exactly as unsafe as fossil fuel power plants would somehow turn out in the real world of money and politics to actually be worse than fossil fuel plants.

I don't think we as humans know how to create a regulatory structure for nuclear that would keep away people who are willing to sacrifice principles for money, and at the same time allows new designs to easily be built.

[thatguy0900]

Of all the things the government can and does subsidize, cheap electricity seems like a pretty good one, especially if it's clean. I suppose that does lead to sillyness like bitcoin farms though.

[antonvs]

It's not an argument against government subsidies, it's just looking at the economic viability of nuclear power relative to other options.

[Keyframe]

Right. Does it account for positive / negative economic impact of (lack of) pollution?

[antonvs]

The goal, alluded to in the quote I provided, is to compare it to cleaner alternatives.

The article I linked ends as follows:

> "For all these reasons, nuclear energy, even though nuclear power is emission-free, is not a relevant solution for profitable, climate-friendly and sustainable energy in the future." According to the researchers, nuclear energy as a solution for climate protection is "an old narrative that is still as inaccurate as in the 1970s."

[fsflover]

> whether new nuclear power plants can indeed contribute to a clean(er) economy

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464

[mattnewton]

I mean, how do you even compare that to the “subsidy” that petroleum gets from western foreign policy?

[Krasnol]

Why would you?

It's not about subsidies for nuclear vs. fossil.

It's about nuclear vs. renewables, and renewables look like a much better investment these days (and years) considering the budget explosions of recent nuclear projects.

[devonkim]

You'd be better using South Korea as an example rather than France these days. To add more context, South Korea is an incredibly, incredibly corrupt country that sends its exiting president to prison to the extent that I joke that we need a special prison just for presidents. Yet there are basically no nuclear accidents at the kind of scale that we saw from Japan. 100% speculating but it's almost as if the nuclear power plants are used as a deterrent and part of the national security apparatus perhaps similar to the logic that Ukraine may have had in the past.

The anti-nuclear crusade in the West is a bit worrisome given that if we had been better at dealing with nuclear as a whole there would be less coal and gas power plants all over the West now. As much as I can sympathize with the concerns about nuclear power related supply chain issues and risks of meltdowns + radiation almost all the problems I've seen in nuclear across countries and cultures don't come down to technical issues as much as structural ones due 90%+ to politics causing massive over-regulation of nuclear to become unviable both financially and politically. This seems silly because I strongly believe such efforts should be directed at the much greater, immediate, far more supportable threat to humanity's IMO of fossil fuels. Of course we kind of depend upon them now but given the problems we had from the 1980s into the 2000s with fossil fuels all the way to now the kind of resources we could have spent on renewables may have had better results simply stepping away from lobbying constantly against nuclear power and letting engineers do their best work in all areas of energy research.

Seriously, almost all the "but nuclear costs too much" arguments are a self-fulfilling prophecy of bad faith where people pile on more and more requirements like it's a really bad DoD project when it's much more complicated honestly. US DoD has operated tons and tons of nuclear reactors, for example, quite successfully with a pretty darn good safety record last I saw despite all sorts of other failures within the US Jobs Program - they're used in submarines!

[adrianN]

It is my understanding that the French massively subsidize nuclear power because they essentially run it as a job program to keep nuclear engineers employed so that they can build nuclear bombs.

[pyrale]

France produced military nuclear fuel in separate facilities, with separate engineers.

Also, France stopped producing military-grade radioactive fuel since 1996, when the Pierrelatte military factory closed [1].

[1], in french: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usine_militaire_de_Pierrelatte

[pfdietz]

The French breeder program was such a "success" that it's been mothballed. They've put the work on a shelf and terminated any follow on reactor.

This tells me the French don't believe nuclear will power the world any time soon. If they believed that, they'd understand breeders would be needed, and would be working on them.

[cycomanic]

Except for the fact that french nuclear power is highly subsidized (partly by military budgets, partly other subsidies, partly by grossly underfunding for storage and decommissioning costs, which they are required to put funds aside for), is breaking at the seams last year for some time >80% of the power generation was down in France due to maintenance (picked up by "intermittent solar and wind").

[pyrale]

> last year for some time >80% of the power generation was down in France due to maintenance

Oh, so low? I heard it was 102%, and we had to activate the hamster wheels in order to make up for the deficit?

Hint: Nuclear isn't even 80% of France's nuclear production when every reactor is up.

[cycomanic]

Yes and for some time 100% of France's nuclear reactors were down, either due to maintenance or heat.

[pyrale]

This simply never happened. It's a matter of public record [1], it shouldn't be hard to check your numbers and see that they're wrong...

[1]: https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight...

[cycomanic]

That link doesn't contradict what I said? I said in summer last year (almost?, at the time I saw 2 different sources, one French said all, one German said almost all) all nuclear power plants were offline. Macron even went on TV arguing that they pulled forward maintenance to "prepare for the winter to support the German's lack of Gas" (seems not to happened according to your link, they were on record low output at the turn of the year).

[Zealotux]

Every time the fact nuclear power is subsidized is being brought up, I can't help but think of how much energy, in general, is highly subsidized, like other fossils and renewables. What makes it special in the case of nuclear?

[pfdietz]

Moving a technology down an experience curve is a positive externality. Technologies with good experience curves (like renewables) justify subsidy because of this. Nuclear, unfortunately, has not shown good experience effects.

[Zigurd]

The French have discovered that they vastly underestimated end-of-life costs. And the power having been sold and used at a price that did not fund those costs, they are well and truly screwed.

[pyrale]

> And the power having been sold and used at a price that did not fund those costs, they are well and truly screwed.

I don't know where you read that, but that's nowhere in actual reasonable sources.

Actual serious sources [1] report funding is being set aside for dismantling, which may be significantly eased by the fact that these reactor are actually going to serve for longer than expected.

[1], in french: https://www.ccomptes.fr/system/files/2020-03/20200304-rappor...

[Zigurd]

https://energypost.eu/how-much-will-it-really-cost-to-decomm...

Whereas Germany has set aside €38 billion to decommission 17 nuclear reactors, and the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority estimates that clean-up of UK’s 17 nuclear sites will cost between €109‒250 billion over the next 120 years, France has set aside only €23 billion to decommissioning its 58 reactors.

That's about 6X less than Germany, per reactor. When is the last time that kind of project came in under budget?

[pyrale]

The article is from 2017, yet reports number from 2013. In 2017, the total provisioning was 28~Bn€. Also French reactor are still working (and producing returns), as opposed to German reactors.

If you focus on dismantling costs, the example of Maine Yankee [1]: is way less dramatic: "In January 2002 Maine Yankee put the total decommissioning cost at $635 million."

The number provided for UK reactors is ludicrous compared to existing dismantling costs, and simply factors in 150 years of dry cask storage, whereas France has a deep storage facility on the way.

Also the author, Paul Dorfman, is an anti-nuclear proponent, it's not surprising to see this kind of numbers from him.

[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dismantling-nucle...

[cycomanic]

> whereas France has a deep storage facility on the way.

That has been "on the way" for how many years exactly? The reality is that after almost > 50 years of nuclear power we have exactly one long-term storage facility world-wide which has been commissioned last year (Finland). And somehow that was hailed as a success.

Also what do you think the storage cost for deep storage facilities are?

[Zigurd]

The numbers are from the respective national nuclear authorities.

Also, as of 2019, the ongoing cost of securing spent fuel at Maine Yankee is about $10M per year. At what point does the spent fuel storage there age out and need replacement?

[Kon5ole]

>>> And the power having been sold and used at a price that did not fund those costs, they are well and truly screwed. >I don't know where you read that, but that's nowhere in actual reasonable sources.

We know for a fact that France nationalized EDF last year and the debt is at currently 65 bn euros and growing. Since the company has been nationalized, the taxpayers are on the hook.

I wouldn't personally go so far as to say they're "screwed" but it's a documented economic fact that nuclear power in France has been sold at a loss, and still is.

Note that this debt is already real, whereas the cost of decommissioning and storing waste for hundreds of years is guesswork no matter which source you use. Operations in France are proven not to cover costs even before we get to that!

[pyrale]

The debt doesn't come from unit costs, EDF has been profitable for decades with the current rates.

[Kon5ole]

65 billions in debt and having to be saved by the state means you are not profitable. It doesn't matter where the costs come from in this case, they are not covered by the money EDF has accumulated from selling power, which was the point.

This debt is already a reality - and growing with interest rates if nothing else - and we haven't even gotten to the many billions more that have to be invested in the beat-up old plants to keep them running.

We also don't know how many billions more that have to be paid to decommission them and for storing the waste. Nobody knows this yet.

Nuclear power has always been a strategic choice, with extensive international treaties and special conditions in place to make it a reality despite it not being financially viable in the traditional sense. The costs have been socialised and pushed to future generations, deliberately.

Now that several decades have passed, we are the generations that have to start paying.

[FredPret]

Even if they did, having sold the power for less than it cost would've stimulated investment in the economy that can pay for that now.

[throwaway1777]

Did you forget about externalities and politics? Because nuclear would be way cheaper with practice building reactors, economies of scale, without billions in red tape, etc. not to mention it’s the best source of base load without creating massive amounts of air pollution or battery waste

[pyrale]

> without billions in red tape

I would prefer to keep the red tape, thank you very much.

Sure, nuclear is an expensive industry, but it's also a very safe industry, and I believe we should keep this part of it.

[fsflover]

The parent didn't say "without reasonable safety measures". See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-risk_bias

and

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36751041

[Joeri]

China and Russia do not build and run nuclear power plants at dramatically lower costs, despite having none of those handicaps.

Edit: Hmm, actually, I find wildly diverging LCOE numbers in different locations online. Some indicate they build at half the cost from France, while others say at a similar cost. So, if anyone knows which LCOE numbers are reliable please indicate.

[chrisco255]

Russia's economy is currently heavily dependent on oil exports, so there may at least be some incentive there to suppress it. China on the other hand, had quadrupled its nuclear power generation in the past 10 years (1).

(1) https://www.forbes.com/sites/thebakersinstitute/2023/05/17/h...

[bell-cot]

> Russia's economy is currently heavily dependent on oil exports...

All the more reason for them to build nuclear plants. Every barrel of oil that their own economy doesn't need (because they have plenty of nuclear plants) is another barrel they can make money exporting. And if or when using oil becomes unfashionable, or their oil reserved start running low...then being recognized experts on how to build & run lots of safe, economical nuclear plants sounds pretty good, eh?

[zdragnar]

Nuclear competes with natural gas and coal, not oil.

Beyond powering the grid, there are myriad uses for oil that nuclear cannot substitute directly for- asphalt, plastic, nylon, even Aspirin (synthesized from benzene).

[chrisco255]

And yet the biggest use of petroleum by far is for transportation. Worldwide demand for petroleum would plunge 90+% if all cars were electric and nuclear was fully deployed.

[pyrale]

From what I understand, Lazard's LCOE, which are quoted everywhere, mainly rely on US numbers. That means they probably are reliable for US situations.

[ben_w]

Sadly we don't get to ignore politics inconveniently making fission more expensive. If you do ignore politics and just look at costs alone, then we can make a global HVDC power grid for less than the cost of the other local upgrades we want regardless within each national power grid.

People demand a safety standard from fission which is expensive, and keep demanding ever more safety from them, and when it can't do that will replace it with fossil fuels even despite nuclear being much much safer than fossil fuels.

[pfdietz]

The reason people demand higher standards is history.

An example: stacks that scrub radioisotopes out of steam from confinement during serious accidents when the steam has to be released to prevent overpressurization of the confinement system. These were added to most European reactors after Chernobyl. The US and Japanese didn't add these, saying the cost wasn't worth it.

Then Fukushima happened. Had the reactors there had these systems, the radioactive release would have been reduced by a factor of 100.

[ben_w]

Given how few people got cancer from Fukushima, this doesn't really help make the fears seem rational.

One death from cancer, 2313 from relocating: https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-cher...

[pfdietz]

One person identified as having gotten cancer from Fukushima. Most of the cancers would be in a larger population and could not be distinguished from the large background of cancers. That doesn't mean they didn't (or won't) happen, or that regulation must assume they didn't/won't happen. Regulation is not like criminal law; radiation is not presumed innocent until proven guilty.

[ben_w]

That's kinda my point — in the court of public opinion, nuclear is unable to win.

This does actually matter despite the deaths from coal etc. being massively higher by the same measures.

[monkaiju]

People also dont like to mention that even the current, far from 'green', extraction is because we currently only mine the easiest to access deposits of uranium. There are not many of these and we would shortly need to start accessing much more challenging (read: dirty) deposits were we to scale nuclear.

Also of the handful of breeder reactors we have (i think the only 2 running are in Russia) they are incredibly far from economical and have a really annoying tendency to catch fire...