| Regulatory costs and waste disposal are not significance cost centers for nuclear, at least as far as I can tell from any cost breakdowns. One doesn't need super high quality welding and concrete pours becuase of regulations as much as the basic desire to have a properly engineered solution that lasts long enough to avoid costly repairs. Take for example this recent analysis on how to make the AP1000 competitive: https://gain.inl.gov/content/uploads/4/2024/11/DOE-Advanced-... There are no regulatory changes proposed because nobody has thought of a way that regulations are the cost drivers. Yet there's still a path to competitive energy costs by focusing hard on construction costs. Similarly, reactors under completely different regimes such as the EPR are still facing exactly the same construction cost overruns as in the rest of the developed world. If regulations are a cost driver, let's hear how to change them in a way that drives down build cost, and by how much. Let's say we get rid of ALARA and jack up acceptable radiation levels to the earliest ones established. What would that do the cost? I have a feeling not much at all, but would like to see a serious proposal. |
One approach would be to reduce the size of the containment building by greatly reducing the volume of steam it must hold. This would be done by attaching Filtered Containment Venting Systems (FCVS) that strip most of the radioactive elements from the vented steam in case of a large accident.
The containment building is a significant cost driver, costing about as much as the nuclear island inside of it.
If such a system had been attached to the reactors that melted down at Fukushima exposure could have been reduced by maybe two orders of magnitude. And if the worst case exposure is that low, perhaps much more frequent meltdowns could be tolerated, allowing relaxation of paperwork requirements elsewhere.