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by three14 1067 days ago
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.
2 comments
robertlagrant 1067 days ago
> 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.

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three14 1067 days ago
My argument is that is not the choice we are given. We are given only the choice between too much regulation and too little.
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fsflover 1067 days ago
> 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...

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three14 1067 days ago
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.

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