
New nuclear reactor designs promise safe, clean electricity - jseliger
https://www.city-journal.org/next-generation-nuclear-power
======
simias
I want to believe that the mainstream could accept nuclear again but I don't
have huge hopes. I'm French, we've been getting cheaper and cleaner
electricity than our neighbors for a long time. Germany is about to open a
coal plant (partially) to take over from one of the nuclear power plants we're
shutting down.

And yet, despite all that nuclear power is incredibly unpopular here and the
vast majority of ecologists want to reduce our nuclear capacity more and more.
I find it depressing personally. We're at 75% now, apparently we're on track
to hit 50% by 2035. There's nuclear waste and there's a waste of nuclear.

~~~
kstenerud
Nuclear will forever be shunned, not because it's inherently unsafe, but
rather because WE are unsafe.

Every nuclear disaster so far has exposed incompetence, negligence,
corruption, or unsafe practices at some level, and has usually been
accompanied by delays, denials, and attempts to bury the evidence. When
dealing with potentially "forever" contaminants, this is simply unacceptable.

Ans since human nature and psychology is not going to magically evolve over
the next couple of centuries, and since there's no such thing as a foolproof
design, reducing nuclear power is a pragmatic approach, even if it causes a
temporary increase in dirtier energy production (up to a point, of course).

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Every nuclear disaster so far has exposed incompetence, negligence,
> corruption, or unsafe practices at some level, and has usually been
> accompanied by delays, denials, and attempts to bury the evidence.

Humans are lazy and greedy and stupid. But that applies to everything, and
nuclear is responsible for fewer deaths per TWh of power generated than
anything you're proposing as a "dirty" alternative.

> When dealing with potentially "forever" contaminants, this is simply
> unacceptable.

This is factually not what we are dealing with. The radioactivity of a
substance is inversely proportional to its half life. In other words, the more
radioactive something is, the faster it disappears.

The most problematic nuclear contaminants are therefore the ones with medium
half lives (i.e. decades), because they're radioactive enough to be harmful
but long-lived enough to still be there a week later.

This is nasty stuff, but not in any way "forever" and not particularly any
nastier than a lot of the chemical substances industries deal with on a large
scale all over the place, which are chemically rather than radiologically
hazardous and therefore don't even _have_ a half life, i.e. they really are
there forever. How is a nuclear reactor worse than a chemical plant?

> Ans since human nature and psychology is not going to magically evolve over
> the next couple of centuries, and since there's no such thing as a foolproof
> design, reducing nuclear power is a pragmatic approach, even if it causes a
> temporary increase in dirtier energy production (up to a point, of course).

Considering that coal is responsible for more radioactive emissions than
nuclear per TWh produced _including Chernobyl and Fukushima_ , that is a
totally irresponsible and dangerous course of action.

~~~
scandox
> Considering that coal is responsible for more radioactive emissions than
> nuclear per TWh produced including Chernobyl and Fukushima, that is a
> totally irresponsible and dangerous course of action.

Don't concentration and distribution matter? I mean in Serhii Plokhii's book
on Chernobyl he several times repeats the claim that a significant leak into
the river/sea would have rendered large parts of Europe uninhabitable. Now
either that's a gross lie or your point is ignoring a hugely significant
difference between coal production and nuclear. Which is it?

~~~
makomk
Concentration absolutely matters, and based on the figures I've seen coal fly
ash - which is what the claims about radiation released from coal power plants
are based on - is about as radioactive, kg for kg, as granite is. Which isn't
nothing, but it's also not exactly nuclear waste. (Speaking of nuclear waste,
the comparisons with coal often also get their numbers by ignoring it and only
counting radiation intentionally released to the environment from a properly-
working plant. Which is basically just a way of saying that if we could solve
the nuclear waste disposal problem and the humans are too incompetent to build
and run nuclear power plants problem it'd be a really clean form of power.
That's probsbly true, but not realistic. Also, the comparison is generally
based on really old and polluting coal power plants that mostly don't exist
anymore.)

~~~
sarbaz
Nuclear waste can basically be safely solved by dumping sealed containers into
the sea. We're talking about extremely small amounts of waste. A swimming pool
can contain a year's supply of waste, and 20 ft of water is extremely
effective radiation shielding. The ocean is so large that this would be
totally negligible even if the worst happened.

~~~
Jabbles
It's been done before.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste)

It wouldn't be negligible. Dumping all our HWL waste (250,000 tons) would
increase background radiation of the oceans by 10% if completely mixed, but of
course oceans are not. We would simply end up with highly radioactive areas of
ocean if and when the containment failed.

~~~
belorn
Just a throwaway idea, but instead of radiating the whole ocean evenly, why
not dump it in the already highly radiated nuclear weapon test zone? The US
blow around 100 nukes and I wonder if a few thousands of tons would actually
do much worse compared to what already down there.

------
zipwitch
The whole article reads like a punchline for a joke involving Admiral
Rickover's famous letter. (We just had a thread on it here not two weeks ago!)

"An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic
characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap (4) It is
light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose
(’omnibus reactor’). (7) Very little development is required. It will use
mostly off-the-shelf components. (8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is
not being built now."

Link to the thread here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715730)

~~~
acidburnNSA
I appreciate Rickover's quote more and more every year in I spend in the
nuclear industry. My hope for some of these reactors, especially the very
small ones, is that they will provide a way for new reactor designers to get
some practical experience while risking less than a few billion dollars.

------
wongarsu
We should have built more nuclear 20 years ago, but it seems it's too late
now. The design of reactors that are actually built is extremely conservative,
it still takes forever to plan them and get appropriate permissions, and then
they take nearly a decade to build. Meanwhile the price of wind+storage is
dropping. If you were to start planning a new reactor now, by the time it's
operational it might be uneconomical to even turn on. And even if it isn't,
it's extremely unlikely that you make your investment back over the lifespan
of the plant, especially once you add the decommissioning (which is more
expensive than the construction of the plant, because a lot of the structure
turns slightly radioactive).

We had our chance, we wasted it by never moving beyond 1970s reactor designs.
Now the economics of those designs no longer make sense for new plants, and
nobody is going to risk a fortune on building unproven large-scale reactor
designs. There's some opportunity with reactors sized like those on ships, but
that's it.

~~~
ggm
We were unable to build more nuclear power twenty years ago for the same
reason we can't do it now, and it's never too late: it's only against
someone's interests

~~~
epistasis
And the interests are purely financial, at least in the US. We can achieve
carbon free electricity far cheaper by using renewables and storage. Nuclear
construction is suuuuuuuper expensive, and perhaps more importantly,
incredibly financially risky. The chances of completing a build are very low,
and the chance of spending billions of dollars and having nothing to show are
unacceptably high.

If nuclear were our only option, we would have to go for it. But we now have
better, cheaper, faster, more economically efficient carbon free energy
sources.

~~~
marcusverus
Carbon free renewables will always be a partial solution. People aren't
willing to endure rolling brownouts because of low winds or long stretches of
overcast weather, and the storage required to solve those issues are never
baked into the cost estimates under which these technologies are considered
competitive.

~~~
epistasis
People have been saying we would have rolling brownouts once we got to 5%
renewables. Then when that happened without any ill effects, they said it
would happen at 10%. Then 15%. It doesn't matter, because it has always been a
false talking point, without any basis in fact. It simply doesn't make sense
unless one can only imagine large thermally driven plants and you don't want
to have to change grid management from what you were doing in the 1960.

We can do 90% renewable energy, and even 100%, with storage and curtailment.
How much we need of each is simply a cost trade off. If we could build nuclear
now for less than $100/MWh, it may have a place in this cost optimization
problem, but we can't, so it doesn't have a place until nuclear technology
catches up to the 21st century.

~~~
opo
>...People have been saying we would have rolling brownouts once we got to 5%
renewables.

Who ever claimed that?

>...We can do 90% renewable energy, and even 100%, with storage and
curtailment.

That would not be very difficult with current technology. Trying to rely only
on intermittent power sources has huge storage requirements due to weather
along with daily/seasonal variation. If grid energy storage was a simple
problem it would have been done decades ago.

For example, one estimate is that for Germany to rely on solar and wind would
require about 6,000 pumped storage plants which is literally 183 times their
current capacity:

>...Based on German hourly feed-in and consumption data for electric power,
this paper studies the storage and buffering needs resulting from the
volatility of wind and solar energy. It shows that joint buffers for wind and
solar energy require less storage capacity than would be necessary to buffer
wind or solar energy alone. The storage requirement of over 6,000 pumped
storage plants, which is 183 times Germany’s current capacity, would
nevertheless be huge.

[https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5...](https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5950.pdf)

------
dr_zoidberg
Fukushima was a big influence in the most recent hate on nuclear energy. In
laymans views, the fact that a (perceived to be) secure, organized country
such as Japan had such a terrible nuclear incident, meant that every nuclear
plant on the planet was dangerous and we were being lied about.

Politicians simply moved along that line. It doesn't matter that coal is worse
for the environment. A nuclear incident can cost your head. Climate change?
Clearly nobody cares.

~~~
MertsA
This is the saddest misconception that keeps getting trotted out in opposition
to nuclear power. People use Fukushima as an example that nuclear power isn't
improving in safety, when Fukushima was an old plant around even before
Chernobyl. They didn't redesign the plant or substantially alter anything in
the wake of Chernobyl. It was built to withstand loss of power, a massive
earthquake, and a tsunami all at the same time. The fatal flaw was that when
the plant was sited and built, scientific consensus was that a tsunami that
large in that area was flat out impossible. As the science improved, no one
went back and understood the implications on the design of the seawall that
was now known to be inadequate.

Fukushima was a failure, and an expensive one at that, but in terms of the
death toll almost all of it is solely from evacuation of the surrounding area
and only one case of lung cancer that was likely caused by the accident. There
were zero cases of acute radiation poisoning.

~~~
ffhhj
"...it will run out of space by 2022, and then they will have to dump
radioactive water directly into the Pacific Ocean. It is not known yet how
much water would need to be put into the ocean."

Yeah, put the dirt under the rug.

~~~
jml7c5
If all the stored water was dumped in a single year, the population's
estimated radiation dose is around 0.02% of yearly background radiation. It's
really not a problem.

See
[https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi...](https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/pdf/20191121_current_status.pdf)

~~~
p_l
Meanwhile Scandinavian countries and big chunks of Scotland are already more
radioactive than areas close to the closed Fukushima plant...

~~~
simloo
Yes, due to radon gas from the ground which is really a big problem in
Scandinavia. Just making sure nobody thinks a big part of the accumulated dose
when living here is due to Chernobyl.

~~~
p_l
I lived in Aberdeen, and one of its claims to fame is "Granite City"... which
also means the building exhibit more radioactivity than the norm.

~~~
simloo
We've got the same problem over here in Sweden, granite in a lot of places. We
also, just for good measure, constructed a lot of buildings in the 50s and 60s
from radioactive autoclaved aerated concrete made from alum shale containing
high concentrations of uranium. Fun days. Apparently there's still half a
million homes here exceeding the radon limit of 200 Bq/m3 indoors.

------
tra3
IQ2 had a debate on nuclear power. One of the arguments against expansion was
that nuclear reactor design is basically bespoke for every installation and
that the promise of rapid, cheap deployment has not been realized in many
years (decades).

Interesting episode, I wish I retained more of it:
[https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/02/10/iq2-debate-
expand-n...](https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/02/10/iq2-debate-expand-
nuclear-power)

~~~
pdonis
_> nuclear reactor design is basically bespoke for every installation_

Which is exactly what new modular designs like the one described in this
article are trying to change: get away from the custom-built mentality and
build nuclear reactors out of standardized, modular components. In other
words, the way we already build lots of other things in order to make them
cheaper and more reliable (since most of the assembly is done in factories in
controlled environments).

~~~
projektfu
20 years ago it was just around the corner. In fact, they said the Russians
were about to deploy them: container-sized nuclear power plants that were
basically maintenance-free and just ran on their own until they shut
themselves down. Made by the hundreds from standard pieces. Safe if messed
with. Safe after retirement. There were websites and nice diagrams and mock-
ups and everything. Tell me how we're in a different phase now.

~~~
p_l
Without funding it's not going to get moved anywhere. The main design work on
them was upscaling them and lowering enrichment + work on reducing any
possibility of reusing breed plutonium from them.

If they kept to high enrichment, they could pretty start making and packing
container-sized powerplants, but the old designs were designed for 50MW, while
the uprated, civilian ones were for min. 100MWe

------
chris_engel
While reading the article, I repeatedly thought "wow this reads like a big ad
for nuclear power".

Almost all passages of the very long text pointed out how great it is. It
gives only a hand-wavey comment to the problem of what do we do with the waste
that will remain toxic for thousands of years to come. Its not a technical but
a political problem. Uhm, okay. And the other problem that uranium is much
scarcer than previously thought is not even mentioned.

Atomic energy is way cleaner when it comes to immediate CO2 generation - true.
But the long term problem of waste is not solved at all.

~~~
jfindley
This is a wildly oversimplified and inaccurate picture of nuclear waste, that
I've seen all too often.

Nuclear waste is problematic because it emits radiation. It emits radiation
because the atoms are unstable, and are decaying into other, more stable
atoms. The rate of this decay is normally measured by the half-life - which is
the time by which 50% of the element has changed into another, more stable
element. The by-product of this decay is that it emits radiation, which is
harmful to life. However, it emerges from this that the rate of the decay is
directly proportional to the amount of harmful radiation that is emitted. Many
things encountered in ordinary life are unstable to some degree or another,
but ordinarily either the quantity is so low, or the rate of decay is so slow,
that the amount of radiation we recieve under normal conditions isn't
particularly harmful.

Now, nuclear waste. This falls into three broad categories. First is those
with a half life of less than 50 years, like strontium-90 and cesium-137.
These are horribly, horribly dangerous isotopes, and will do horrible things
to you if you get near large quantities of them. However the fact that they
are so very dangerous means that they are by turn, not going to be a threat
for very long. After a short period of time (~30 years for the two I
mentioned), they are half decayed already. Devising a storage system to store
these sin't very challenging - the quantities are small, and they don't need
to be stored for terribly long.

The second category is the one that the anti-nuclear lobby loves to blur with
the first. These are isotopes like plutonium-239, with half lives in the tens
or hundreds of thousands of years timelines (~24000 years for Pu-239). However
what the anti-nuclear lobby fails to mention is that by the very fact that
these elements have such a long half life, they are by definition not emitting
all that much harmful radiation - many of the waste products in this category
similar radiation per kg than coal ash. If we're happy storing coal ash behind
nothing more than a chain-link fence, objecting to these waste products is
sheer fear mongering, nothing else.

The third category is the problematic one. Here we have things like
radium-226, which have half-lives in the thousand-year range (1300 years for
ra-226), but are still radioactive enough you want a bit more safety than just
piling them up behind a fence. However the good news here is that the
quantities of radioactive products in this range are _tiny_. So tiny the
entire non-military waste of these isotopes we, as a species, have ever
produced would probably fit onto a single train. I think getting rid of one of
the most effective ways of power production we've discovered to date for this
amount of waste might, just maybe, be described as a colossal overreaction.

Sorry this post got a bit long!

~~~
dev_tty01
Well said. We also need to remember that all of these are 50 to 100 year
problems rather than thousand year problems simply because there is no reason
to expect that we won't come up with ways to reprocess that fuel within 50 to
100 years. Just consider how our knowledge of these processes has changed over
the last 100 years. Do we have so little confidence in our ability to innovate
that we really think we will have to deal with this stuff for a few thousand
years? So, this is likely a problem of a few decades for the reasons given
above and because we will get better at this stuff.

~~~
GekkePrutser
This is assuming that our level of technology keeps advancing. Given the level
of political instability in our world I would take that far from granted.

~~~
Paradigma11
Then we would have far bigger problems than nuclear waste.

------
spenrose
I am rooting for lots and lots of new nuclear, but this piece is silly. Let's
dig in:

"But what if there were sources of zero-carbon electricity that didn’t require
heavy-handed regulation to make them viable in the marketplace? ..."

Wind and solar are cheaper now than nuclear _advocates_ hope nuclear will be
by 2030.

1.[https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....](https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf)

2\. [https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/30/latest-bnef-report-
find...](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/30/latest-bnef-report-finds-
levelized-cost-of-renewables-continues-to-fall/)

"... What if we could produce more power—and do it affordably, with minimal
environmental impact? That’s the almost utopian vision that some backers see
for the next generation of nuclear power. ..."

Utopian?! We are adding gigawatts of wind and solar this year, and modulo
coronavirus we'll add more next year. New geothermal plants are measured in
dozens of megawatts:

* [https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-01-22/califor...](https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-01-22/california-needs-clean-energy-after-sundown-geothermal-could-be-the-answer)

"According to Ted Nordhaus, founder of the “eco-modernist” Breakthrough
Institute, SMRs could offer a more decentralized, entrepreneurial approach to
reducing CO2 emissions without hobbling the economy."

Wind and solar are extremely de-centralized and competitive. The economies
that install them at scale—China, California—are doing as well as any.

“Will any of them ultimately be a success in the marketplace? You can’t say
for sure,” he said. “But I think a bunch of them will get licenses to build
test plants.”"

While we are waiting, offshore wind farms will continue to be installed at
hundred-megawatt scale:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms#La...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms#Largest_operational_offshore_wind_farms)

Please continue promoting new nuclear; we could really use it. But please stop
with the anti-variable-renewable BS, and FFS stop giving Nordhaus airtime when
he insist on talking like this.

~~~
DeathArrow
"The US Energy Information Administration has recommended that levelized costs
of non-dispatchable sources such as wind or solar may be better compared to
the avoided energy cost rather than to the LCOE of dispatchable sources such
as fossil fuels or geothermal. This is because introduction of fluctuating
power sources may or may not avoid capital and maintenance costs of backup
dispatchable sources. Levelized avoided cost of energy (LACE) is the avoided
costs from other sources divided by the annual yearly output of the non-
dispatchable source."

See here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source)

So, is LCOE for wind and solar higher than LACE for nuclear power?

~~~
spenrose
Great question. Some points:

1\. That source is a mess; three of us spent a couple years trying to update
it only to be foiled by classic alpha Wikipedians who are happy to see an
article rely on 10 year old price estimates, but not to see standard industry
terms used. Note the age of the LACE sources.

2\. The LACE frame is an important complement to LCOE, but also imperfect.
Take California's recent decision to require solar PV on new homes. Really
high LACE, right?: California is already being forced to pair marginal PV
additions with gigawatts of rapid response gas to handle the "neck of the duck
curve" when the sun goes down but LA is still using gigawatts of electricity
to power AC. Well, the LACE of that low-marginal-value PV is dependent on how
many batteries we add, how much offshore wind appears, etc.

3\. The people who promote LACE won't let you include the social cost of
carbon as part of the discussion. They'd rather see the page wither.

------
acidburnNSA
Advanced nuclear reactor designer here. It is tough times in the industry. The
large traditional reactors in the West (US, France, UK) are really struggling.
Existing reactors have operations costs that were fine until fracked natural
gas pulled the floor out on electricity prices. Now they're struggling. New
builds have been boondoggles because contracts went to lowest bidders, who had
no idea how to build nuclear plants. The people are focused on intermittent
clean sources like wind and solar, with due cause as solar PV prices fell by a
factor of 10x since 2009 (as long as the sun is shining).

Meanwhile there has been a bunch of hype about "new" reactors (quoted because
they were all initially conceived of and tested in the 1950s). Thorium. Molten
Salt. Small Modular. Traveling Wave. Microreactors. These will have less waste
and be safer! But will it matter? As I've grown in experience and expertise,
I've started looking at the numbers more. Nuclear waste has great solutions in
crystalline bedrock (Onkalo), massive salt (WIPP), and deep boreholes (Deep
Isolation). If a reactor makes a little bit less, will that move the needle
for the public? In terms of safety, current reactors are statistically
extraordinarily safe because they don't participate in causing the 4.2 million
deaths/year from air pollution (a Chernobyl of death every 2.5 days from the
fossil industry). So if a new reactor is slightly safer, will all the anti-
nuclear institutions roll over begging for one? I highly doubt it.

Besides, with tech development in nuclear, it's fleet experience that matters.
Many MSR designs make vast amounts of tritium and require remote maintenance.
Will this be doable? Will releases be acceptable? Only fleet experience can
tell. Never believe someone who's never built a nuclear plant on what their
design will cost.

These smaller reactors will absolutely struggle economically, especially at
first.

More and more I think it's really public communication/PR/education that
matters most for nuclear.

Chinese and Russian reactors, on the other hand, are doing better, with Russia
seemingly selling VVERs like hotcakes, and moving into markets like Nigeria
soon.

I recently wrote up an elaborate page about early reactor development history
[1] and about more modern nuclear economics [2] if anyone wants a deep dive.
I've been thinking of turning these into a book.

[1]
[https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html)

[2]
[https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html)

~~~
projektfu
Everywhere I've lived in the US that has nuclear power in the mix (Pittsburgh
and Georgia) has a surcharge on rates because of the cost of the plant, and we
end up paying a higher rate than other areas that don't have nuclear. Are
there localities in the US where nuclear has beaten the cost-benefit curve?

~~~
acidburnNSA
> Are there localities in the US where nuclear has beaten the cost-benefit
> curve?

Technically, pretty much everywhere. The health detriment from fossil air
pollution (which is not in the markets at all) and the value of low-carbon
energy (also not in the markets) means nuclear plants are providing great
benefits pretty much everywhere! :)

But that's not what you're asking. Coal vs. nuclear have traded off through
the years. They both got a lot more regulations and more expensive in the
1970s. Komanoff's book really treats this extremely well.

The US plants were not standardized. Places that standardize the plants have a
much better time economically. South Korea. France. Russia.

Still, I would argue that while nuclear is indeed more expensive than fossil,
the fact that it is nearly carbon free and air-pollution free while being 24/7
make it a good deal. All 100% decarbonized sources have extra fees.

[http://komanoff.net/nuclear_power/](http://komanoff.net/nuclear_power/)

~~~
projektfu
That’s a good perspective. Unfortunately without being cheaper, the nuclear
energy doesn’t crowd out fossil fuels without being subsidized.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Agreed. Utility execs only care about the bottom line. If we can get markets
to value low-carbon or low air pollution nuclear will compete today. Sadly, it
doesn't look like this will happen anytime soon. Seems so obvious though.

------
melbourne_mat
It's such a b.s. article and is likely written by the nuclear industry. There
are many factual problems but I'll just point out one: the idea that wind and
solar will never be enough. Here's a study that includes wind, solar & storage
and gets 100% coverage:

[http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2018/ee/c7ee03...](http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2018/ee/c7ee03029k#!divAbstract)

~~~
maelito
This article costs £40.

What's the cost of the 80% and 100% solutions ? What's their lifecycle climate
impact (including storage, disposal of course) ?

------
Animats
That's NuScale again. They're building a reactor at the Idaho reactor test
station, where, if something goes wrong, it's not too bad.

It's not a technical breakthrough. It's an argument that full containment
isn't necessary. While the design is supposed to be immune to loss of cooling
power, it still has other potential problems. Multiple reactors share the same
cooling pool, so if one has a leak, the whole group gets contaminated. If the
cooling pool leaks into the ground and you can't refill, as might happen in an
earthquake, you could have a meltdown.

It's not really small, either. Each unit is 60 megawatts, and a plant is 12
units, at 0.72GW. Almost 3/4 of an AP 1000.

~~~
noahtallen
> If the cooling pool leaks into the ground and you can't refill, as might
> happen in an earthquake, you could have a meltdown.

The article claims that these reactors don’t not have that problem. They
didn’t describe why or how, but they say the heat would simply dissipate into
the atmosphere even if the cooling pool dries out.

~~~
Animats
The article may claim that, but NuScale itself does not.[1] NuScale says they
do not need _additional_ water during cool-down. Not that they can shut down
dry.

NuScale is interesting, but it's really just a medium-sized (60MW)
pressurized-water reactor. Same size as Shippingport (1957), interestingly.

[1] [https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/safety-
features](https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/safety-features)

------
rpiguy
How many similar headlines have I read since 1980... lol.

I do want it to happen, but my faith is shaken after 35 years of waiting.

~~~
roenxi
It probably has happened. I don't think we've had a post-1980s designed
nuclear reactor fail miserably yet.

Nuclear remains the safest and cleanest form of power we know about. It was
competitive on cheapness last time I checked but the trend favours renewables
AFAIK.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Today's nuclear is actually already competitive with all clean energy futures.
Yes, wind and solar LCOE is dirt cheap today, but only when the wind is
blowing or sun is shining. They're riding on the back of the fossil-dominated
grid. As we deeploy decarbonize, all studies I've seen show costs rising 30-50
$/MWh to deal with intermittency. At those prices, current nuclear is already
in the game.

~~~
pfdietz
No. With reasonable assumptions for the cost of renewables, nuclear, and
storage, the grid optimizes out to 0% nuclear.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Yes. Costs of power sources have frequently increased as a function of
penetration due to regulations, NIMBY, realities of technology, etc. You're
assuming renewables will do the opposite. While popular, this is
unconventional. Japan building 22 coal plants right now proves the point.

Serious studies I've seen say 30-50 $/MWh delta is required to deal with
reconductoring, storage, recycling, load management, etc.

Nuclear has to standardize and serialize to play. If they don't do that
they're out. But if they pull off another France of Korea or Japanese ABWRs
its game on. You're also assuming that will not happen.

If you assume nuclear will never improve and other sources will, sure nuclear
looks bad.

~~~
pfdietz
Nuclear power plants have a 60 year history now. We can see they have not come
down in cost, and we can see why. They are complex and difficult to build.
Mistakes in design or construction can be disastrously expensive. Avoiding
those mistakes is also very expensive.

The refrain of "this time it will be different" is looking like just wishful
thinking.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Now we know how to do it right. See Shika 2 abwr build in 2006. It was
amazing. Problem is, we keep choosing to do it wrong. South Texas has a full-
on license to build a ABWR there right now. Hitachi could show up and deliver
it. But we choose to not allow it due to corporate turf issues with GE.

This is a big management and coordination challenge. But with climate change
looming, what better time to choose the path we know works.

VVERs are also fully serialized.

While looking at Vogtle and Hinckley C and Finland, we must not forget VVERs
and ABWRs and APR-1400s.

------
jariel
The issues is partly political. We could overcome that.

Partly technological: risk of fallout, and more ugly - long term storage.

But really, the issue nobody thinks about is proliferation.

If the West started pumping out 5 cent/mmh electricity and booming, you can be
darn sure every tin pot fool everywhere in the world would be as well. After
all, why shouldn't they?

But Canada will manage it's boring, hardened facilities extremely well. The
entire economy of Canada is not based on anything really intelligent - just
'boring, consistent responsibility and stability' \- which is exactly what you
want for such things.

But how long will stability remain around Nigeria's 20 new reactors? Hey -
they convinced us that 'everything was fine' and that it was 'Colonialist and
Evil to require external, rigorous inspection'. But now there's a regime
change, a civil war breaking out. A rebel group has nabbed a reactor. A second
reactor the staff are fleeing because Boko Haram is in the area. The US
president wants to send in Marines to lock down the facilities immediately,
but wary it will just erupt in more violence immediately.

Obviously that's hugely speculative, but if/when nuclear power breaks up with
100's of reactors popping up everywhere - something like this _will_ happen -
somewhere.

I think we can conquor public opinion and figure out 'long term' issues with
enough focus and innovation.

But this requires 'highly responsible civilisation' almost universally so that
something doesn't blow up somewhere in the long tail.

Since most of the world actually isn't ready for that responsibility, what do
we do? Controls? How? Can we tell them 'no'? We could block Somalia from
getting nuke power ... but probably not most other places.

------
ngcazz
I’m sorry but this article sounds like some pretty egregious reactionary
astroturfing. Harping on and on about the cost of the Green New Deal as a
given is suspicious in itself. Of course infrastructure investment programs
have costs. It just happens that the public would see dividends from it, not
just a handful of industrialists.

------
ksec
No body seems to have address the cost of Nuclear. There are solar farms in
Portugal and Abu Dhabi that cost below $0.02 / kWh non-subsidise. And it seems
Sub 1 cents / kWh, what was previously thought to be impossible are now within
reach in this decade. How is Nuclear going to compete?

I think right now the race is for utility scale Battery. And this goal seems
to be a lot easier to achieve than having a cost competitive Nuclear reactor.

Note: I am not pro Solar or Anti Nuclear, in fact I pretty much want Nuclear
to succeed in the long term since I dont like the idea massive land area being
used for solar, not every country has the luxury of doing so especially those
with limited sunlight hours. But looking at the cost alone it seems solar is
hard to compete against.

------
save_ferris
I just watched the Chernobyl HBO series, and I couldn’t help but notice the
parallels between that disaster and COVID-19, at least in the US.

Those who lead governments are inherently motivated by self-preservation first
and foremost, meaning that when something really bad happens, the inclination
is to minimize the perception of a problem without considering the cost.

That inclination cost thousands of lives in Ukraine in 1986, and will cost
thousands of lives around the world now because leaders didn’t listen to the
experts early on. Not to mention the constant war on science and
intellectualism that has been permeating American politics for years.

This is the price we pay to live in the political environment we have.

~~~
flatfilefan
That statement about thousands of lives is not substantiated.

“The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident caused the deaths, within a few days or
weeks, of 30 workers and radiation injuries to hundreds of others. The
accident caused the immediate evacuation of about 116 000 people and the
permanent relocation of about 220 000 people. The accident caused social and
psychological disruption, but apart from the 1800 thyroid cancers that have
been reported in inidividuals exposed in childhood, there is no evidence of a
major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 14 years after
the accident. No increase in overall cancer incidence or mortality has been
observed that could be attributed to radiation exposure. The risk of leukaemia
does not appear to be raised, even among the hundreds of thousands of recovery
workers sent to clean up the environmental contamination. Neither is there any
scientific evidence of other non-malignant disorders associated with radiation
exposure“ from the Lancet
[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(05\)73632-1/fulltext#%20)

~~~
celticninja
However it did leave a swathe of damaged and uninhabitable land.

~~~
cellular
I read that, because it is uninhabitable to humans, wild life is flourishing
in that area! And forests are taking over!

~~~
acidburnNSA
Uninhabited by humans, not uninhabitable. Natural radiation in natural hot
spots like Ramsar Iran are hotter than most parts of Chernobyl today, and no
one there shows any increased cancer. Fear of low-dose radiation is the only
reason why Chernobyl is still pretty empty today. The animals are doing just
fine. They are no more radiation resistant than you or I.

[http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160421-the-chernobyl-
exclus...](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160421-the-chernobyl-exclusion-
zone-is-arguably-a-nature-reserve)

------
_ph_
A very interesting concept and I am looking forward to see how it works out.
Industrial production of small reactors has the potential to improve the
economics a bit and I hope their safety is as good as promised. However the
article doesn't talk about a few key points: what are the costs per kWh being
produced they are aiming for? The article talks about the reactors being
"clean", but doesn't mention what happens with the nuclear waster. What other
costs for longterm operations (many decades) have to be calculated? Can the
whole reactors be returned to the manufacturer for recycling? The viability of
any new concept depends on answering these questions.

Meanwhile, especially these small reactor units are under strong competiton
from renewables. Solar plus battery becomes very cost-competitive, especially
for small units. If we look towards Africa, solar is ideal there. Not only
because the output level is high, but also because the seasonal variation is
minimal. Storage mostly would have to last only over night.

And lets not forget about wind energy, which doesn't care about day or night
and works very far up north.

------
hristov
They always promise it will be safe but it usually isn't. I wish we just were
not wasting so much money and effort on this. Solar and wind are already far
cheaper, we need to be researching energy storage solutions to make the
already cheap solar and wind energy more reliable and not looking for another
dangerous boondoggle to make energy for, if we are lucky, ten times the price
of solar. Even before the corona-virus hit, this past summer solar cell prices
were 15 cents per watt. This is about half of what it was last year. Offshore
wind prices are difficult to pin down in a per watt metric, but power
companies are saying they are even cheaper than solar and the cheapest option.
This is where our efforts should be pointed. We already have the cheap and
safe energy we just need to make it more usable and reliable on the grid.

This is all institutional inertia. I know there are a lot of very smart people
that studied fission and wanted to dedicate their careers to it and now they
are really pissed off that the field is declining rapidly. I know they will
all write angry posts in response and down vote me rapidly. I am sorry, I feel
bad for you all but I do not wish to risk my life just so you have careers
doing something unnecessary and dangerous. You are all very smart I am sure
you can re-target your expertise towards power electronics, solid state
physics or many of the other fields of physics that are hot right now.

And there is a lot of institutional inertia as well. During the cold war there
was an endless stream of tax payer money pointed at anything and everything
nuclear and now a lot of the institutions that benefited from it are fighting
tooth and nail for relevance. I have the same thing to say to them -- there
are other very needed and useful fields where you can direct your efforts.

~~~
aksss
I question whether it is ultimately cheaper, if all subsidies were taken away,
the natural resource extraction and transportation costs are considered, the
relatively short lifespan, e-waste and intermittent generation all taken into
an account. I don’t know but I think what we see as “cheap solar/wind” is
about as illusory as “cheap gas”. I’m not saying nuclear is “cheap” but
relative to its reliability, productivity, lifespan balanced against its
footprint, waste, etc, I’d believe that it were cheaper and more beneficial
for all in the long run that wind/solar/tidal solutions. There’s a place for
renewables, but replacement of fossil fuels seems like too big of an ask.

~~~
p_l
It's been only in last two years that a wind power plant was built in Poland
without direct subsidy, and there's still "green certificate" trading scheme
that is an effective subsidy.

Spain switched from direct subsidies to big beefy "guaranteed purchase" 10
year contract... in 2017.

------
irjustin
Many of us want to believe this. The problem is the general public doesn't
have an appetite for it.

The HBO series Chernobyl is helping/not-helping that cause, but mostly not
helping. It is really important not to forget history, not repeat, of course,
but the series is bringing nuclear fears to the forefront. For better or
worse, we're teaching a whole new generation to interalize those fears about a
design that is still very much active [0].

As much as I want to believe the gen 4 reactors are safe and worth attempting,
getting this to fly in the public minds is going to take more effort than it's
probably worth. For the public, fission power has been poisoned. Single
disasters that ruin 20+ years and whole regions of countries are valid/non-
ignorable fears.

Large parts of me simply want to dump the money into chasing fusion. Even if
it costs 1000x to get there, today money is not the problem - it's sentiment.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK)

~~~
sv9
Corporations and governments use ad campaigns effectively all the time. I'm
convinced that if you took a fraction of that fusion money and bombarded
people with "nuclear is fine" ads for a year or two, public opinion would
change. If a TV show can swing opinion one way, why can't something else swing
it back?

~~~
pauljurczak
In addition to "nuclear is fine", I would add that fusion is not as clean as
the public imagines. It is being promoted as power generation without nuclear
waste, but in reality you are going to get at least mildly radioactive fusion
chamber cladding, which will have to be replaced yearly or so. So there will
be a huge pile of radioactive waste generated over the lifetime of fusion
power plant. This is in addition to a little problem of fusion power being 25
years away for the last 60 years or so.

~~~
p_l
The reason we don't have fusion is that we keep looking for above break-even
(and for proper fusion power plant we need ratios way above 10:1, afaik) in
_aneutronic_ fusion.

If we accepted neutron radiation in the process, which is what would lead to
radioactive fusion chamber cladding you mention, we could have broken even
already - the experiment JET reactor had the design capacity to run at above
1:1, but wasn't equipped for the damage from neutron radiation.

~~~
pfdietz
Breaking even in fusion puts you where fission was in 1942. And that's just a
step. The engineering obstacles to practical fusion are enormous, far greater
than those facing any advanced fission reactor scheme. I very seriously doubt
fusion will ever be practical.

------
ElDji
What's strikes me is that the cost of operating a nuclear plant during its
lifetime is actually unknown, making it the expensivest energy source. Why it
is still in use : obviously because it serves as base technology and knowledge
to build weapons.

Some example of hidden costs not included in nuclear kwh price :

\- Cost of managing waste: How can you evaluate cost of managing basically
forever (at the human scale) dangerous wastes ?

\- Risk prime to insure huge damage that could arise from accident or future
leaks in storage area : Again this amount is so big, that this externality has
to be socialized.

\- Cost of dismantling a plant : Beside one or two exceptions, no plant has
been successfully dismantled. All the planning and costs for the currently
plan in dismantling are exploding and will take years and tons of capital ...
leaving more unmanageable wastes and unusable lands.

All those aspects will become increasingly difficult to manage in countries
that made the (bad) choice of going full nuclear a few years ago, like France.

~~~
contrapunter
_> How can you evaluate cost of managing basically forever (at the human
scale) dangerous wastes?_

I think we need to be optimists. Not 'glass is half full' optimists, or
'humans are perfect' optimists but 'progress is possible if we keep trying'
optimists.

 _If_ we decide to be optimists then our wealth, technological capability and
sense of responsibility will all continue to increase. Handling historical
waste will become safer and cheaper. An exciting future university project,
perhaps, with documentaries, museums and spin-offs abounding.

What it isn't possible to do is to prophesy the precise means by which it will
happen.

We _may_ build reactors that produce less and less waste or no waste at all.
Nuclear engineers and physicists _may_ figure out how to transmute harmful
elements into safe ones. We _may_ end up launching material directly into the
Sun. Or we might just dig a better hole. Or something else. Or something else
again.

The fact that we don't know in advance is not grounds for pessimism.

 _“Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by
crippling our willingness to act.” (Howard Zinn)_

------
trimbo
Nukes should be the future but it won't happen.

People are scared of it, and don't understand fission. Popular docudrama
shows, like Chernobyl, propagate myths that reactors can explode with "2-4
megaton power".[1]

Politicians won't back it because no one wants it in their back yard. And
carbon gives them new revenue they can leverage and borrow against to balance
the budget.[2]

I list more reasons at [3], which I link every time this comes up.

[1] - [https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/480113/how-
large...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/480113/how-large-would-
the-steam-explosion-at-chernobyl-have-been)

[2] -
[https://www.eenews.net/stories/1059981189](https://www.eenews.net/stories/1059981189)

[3] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167207)

~~~
acidburnNSA
I ROFL'd so hard when the HBO miniseries said 2-4 megatons from a steam
explosion. Like, what!? We engineers did a similar bounding calc as the one in
your link and got about the same conclusion. So ridiculous.

I do a lot of nuclear outreach in seattle. Audiences are skeptical but open.
If we can scale the facts and education, I still think nuclear can and will
play a major role in decarbonizing. Especially as intermittent renewable
fleets get bigger and the intermittency issue becomes more serious.

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
Do you ROFL at this
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2017.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2017.1384269)
also? Especially the conclusion at the end?

~~~
acidburnNSA
No. I read this right when it came out with much interest. Why would I ROFL?
It's not physically impossible like a 2-4 MT stream explosion postulated to
happen days after the nuclear excursion when decay-heat melted fuel was dipped
in the suppression pool. The best statement I heard in that regard was: "If
that was true, then Hawaii would be wiped off the map multiple times per day
as lava falls into the ocean"

Related to this paper, nuclear chain reactor excursions are limited in energy
by the vaporization and dispersal of fuel.

------
tasty_freeze
What we need it a viable battery to make wind and solar viable for 24 power
delivery. How about a rechargeable nuclear battery?

What if during times when there is an excess of power being generated, the
excess is used to accelerate protons into a block of some material that (a)
captures the protons well and (b) has a half life on the order of 24 hours.
Generate the isotopes, when then decay and generate heat over the course of a
day or two. Obviously, the isotopes don't wait for night to decay, so it would
be generating heat continuously. In effect, it would be a big capacitor.

Just how inefficient would it be?

(Yes, I know very little about nuclear, and I expect it is terribly
inefficient, but I'm curious to hear just how bad)

~~~
acidburnNSA
Extraordinarily inefficient. The energy in nuclear fission comes not from when
a proton is accelerated, but when a neutron splits a large nuclear fuel atom.
To store energy in nuclear reactions, you'd have to fuse the fission products
back into uranium. This process can only be done at scale in very large
supernovas.

But what we can do is store heat. You can have a nuclear plant storing heat in
a thermal storage system (e.g. a huge vat of molten salt). As the sun sets,
this tank can fill in the extra energy while the (constant power) nuclear
reactor keeps the pace. Effectively, the nuclear plant can now ramp rapidly
from 50% to 100% full capacity since the salt tank can be sized to double the
reactor capacity.

Lots of reactor companies are talking about doing this thermal energy storage
thing to best help out in an increasingly intermittent energy world.

You can also steam bypass the nuclear reactor to make hydrogen, desalinated
water, etc.

------
mrnobody_67
I blame Homer.

The Simpsons painted a horrific picture of nuclear safety - greedy billionaire
owner, incompetent safety inspector, three eyed fish, glowing green waste
flowing into rivers...

Two decades of TV viewers where indoctrinated with that as a worldview of
Nuclear Power.

~~~
hakfoo
The fun thing about that series is how shifting expectations have impacted our
perception of Homer.

Here's a barely-graduated-fron-high schooler, with no special training and
skills, yet he enjoys a secure, unionized job, home ownership, and is a
single-income earner for a family of five plus supporting a parent in a care
home.

In 1988 he was a cautionary tale for our kids. In 2020 he's an unattainable
aspiration for our kids' kids.

I wonder if there's room for a "this isn't Homer's time, and it's not Homer's
plant" messaging pivot.

------
noad
I feel like I've read this article every three years or so for the past 30
years.

According to my calendar this means we're due for another wave of "the
singularity is right around the corner, uh, for reals this time! again!"
articles.

------
dredmorbius
"Paper Reactors":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715730)

------
jerzyt
I'm concerned about safety not from the engineering side (although not
dismissing it), but from the standpoint of an easy access to sufficiently
large amount of radioactive material to build a dirty nuke. As the nuclear
plants get smaller, the security is going to become a larger percentage of the
operating costs and operators will be tempted to skimp in this area.

------
nickik
I don't believe in PWR SMR (Pressurized Water Reactor, Small Modular Reactor)
will actually solve the problem with nuclear. The only reason to do it, is
because the whole regulation is expecting PWRs and to have LITERALLY ANY
chance to get a new reactor threw regulation it needs to be a PWR (in the US).

However, while PWR SMR can help you with modular construction and factory mass
production, you lose the economics of scale of a larger reactor. I wish
NuScale success, but I do not think the technology is very promising to
actually reduce cost by the required amount. You need to be competitive with
cheap gas prices.

PWR in general are a technological deadend that should never made it past the
70s. Even the inventor of PWR said so in the 60s and that is why he worked on
Molten Salt Reactors.

However if you want to know about the future of nuclear, the only place where
we see serious development in the Western world, look at Canada. They had a
strong program of CANDU reactors and a globally respected regulatory agency.
CANDU has now been privatized and the Canadians started to look more into
Generation IV reactors (even while I totally dislike this terminology).

This has lead to Canada becoming a hub for nuclear innovation, as the Canadian
regulatory system 'only' requires you to prove a safety case that is
technology independent. In the US they just say 'show us the secondary pump
for the steam', 'my reactor does not have any steam inside of it', 'PLEASE
SHOW US THE SECONDARY STEAM PUMP'. _facepalm_

The company that is most advanced in the regulatory process is Terrestrial
Energy (www.terrestrialenergy.com) and another one that is a couple years
behind is Moltex Enery (www.moltexenergy.com) an originally British company
who moved to Canada because the British regulatory agency is possibly even
more disfunctional then the US one.

Both of these reactors are based on the Molten Salt reactors and really nice
designs. The are both Fast Burners in their first iteration, while Moltex
initially focuses more using Canadian CANDU Waste as fuel, Terrestrial Energy
has opted to take the most commercially available fuel, 5% enriched Uranium.

However, both hope to eventually develop a Molten Salt Thorium Breeder design,
long consider the holy grail among nuclear fans.

Terrestrial Energy is already working on a project to deploy their first US
reactor in Idaho. The hope is that the US Regulatory Agency (who have realized
how nonsensical their regulation are) are ready with a improved framework and
that much of the work done for Canada will be accepted in the US.

The Moltex Ractor is special because it combines Molten Salt with a more
traditional fuel assembly design (reusing well tested materials from Sodium
Reactors). Listen here if you are interested:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvXcoSdXYlk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvXcoSdXYlk)

Terrestrial Energy is building a more traditional Molten Salt reactor but
instead of switching out fuel assemblies, they just replace the whole core.
See here for more on their design:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgTgV3Kq49U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgTgV3Kq49U)

For a more economic focus analysis on their design:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsAfUBzRp3M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsAfUBzRp3M)

One thing that is often missed with this discussion is how irrelevant fusion
really is in some ways. Fission has an energy density of 10^12 over chemical,
Fusion is much better at 10^15, but really if we are not willing to switch to
Fission, a technology we already have, why would be do it for Fusion.

~~~
hamburglar
> but really if we are not willing to switch to Fission, a technology we
> already have, why would be do it for Fusion.

I thought the extremely compelling rationale for Fusion was (assuming it can
be done) not just orders of magnitude more energy, but also extremely little
safety risk and on top of that, your "waste" is pure helium. Am I misinformed?
This seems like _of course_ we'd be willing to put the effort into that.

~~~
pauljurczak
> your "waste" is pure helium

No. The cladding of fusion chamber is bombarded with neutrons and has to be
replaced frequently, producing radioactive waste. This a drawback of all
experimental designs today, AFAIK.

~~~
p_l
The reason we don't have fusion is partially that the focus is on _aneutronic_
fusion that doesn't have that problem.

JET could run above break-even in neutronic fuel cycle.

------
WalterBright
Since everyone is noticing clear skies these days, I hope that motivates
people to get rid of dirty power plants.

~~~
justinator
I hope these clear skies make people realize that it's probably from not
driving personal cars, and that's what they get rid of.

As far as I understand, there's not been an incredible shift of the type of
powerplant that's been running in the last 3 months?

~~~
WalterBright
Goal and gas powerplants contribute, and this thread is about that.

------
JoeAltmaier
Other uses: failsafe generators for critical city infrastructure
(communications, fire and police, hospitals). Rural self-sufficient towns far
from the grid. City-center car-charging capacity (the grid is most places
woefully inadequate to run massive car-charging needs).

------
simonCGN
That is utterly nonsense. There is no safe and clean nuclear reactor, there
never will be.

------
zw123456
I was thinking that if you could shrink them down a bit further it would be a
great back up generator for cell sites or hub sites. But then, that would
really make the 5G conspiracy theorists heads explode.

------
beders
A technology with a 1% catastrophic failure rate that will devastate whole
regions for centuries is a nightmare and should be replaced ASAP.

Keep it in the ground: Oil, coal, gas and uranium! It's over

------
DeathArrow
If we ever come up with a cheap and safe energy solution, people will find
more creative ways to waste energy, instead of doing more useful things with
it. I.e. mining bitcoins.

------
cwillu
Need to re-brand. Weak-force power stations are the future!

------
jhpriestley
could this be the year of "too cheap to meter"?

~~~
Arbalest
Seems unlikely. Maybe with reduced precision, so they can use lower
maintenance meters. They do have to account for crazy usage still surely. But
while you get a bill for the connection, they've still got a billing overhead.

------
DrNuke
NuScale’s small modular reactor is proven technology and seems now good enough
to be approved, up and running in the US quite soon indeed. It also seems an
acceptable answer to many of the current nuclear problems (shameless plug:
[https://www.tenproblems.com/2020/04/12/ten-problems-for-
nucl...](https://www.tenproblems.com/2020/04/12/ten-problems-for-nuclear-in-
the-2020s/)), so good luck!

------
jfranche
Not great, not terrible.

------
gandalfian
So what did the old reactor designs promise?

------
lazylizard
Why not talk more about spent fuel disposal?

------
songshuu
Oh yes, yes.

Every 15 years or so we get another piece that goes like "Sure nuclear was
bad, but we're going to be reaaaally safe starting... now!"

~~~
pfdietz
And cheap. Don't forget that "promise" also. Never mind that turbines and
generators and cooling towers all have serious cost problems when scaled down,
the Hail Mary Reactors will save the day!

------
every
>New nuclear reactor designs promise safe, clean electricity.

Don't they always?

------
justatdotin
paper-moderated, ink-cooled

~~~
acidburnNSA
To be fair, they're mostly digital reactors these days, not paper ones.

------
Mvandenbergh
There are a number of factual errors and misunderstanding in this article.

"New research suggests that wind and solar will never fully replace today’s
electricity sources. We will always need more reliable sources of energy—ones
that don’t fluctuate with the weather."

Why no proper reference to this "new research"? Especially since it looks like
conventional wisdom which new research has shown is not the case:
[https://www.cell.com/one-
earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(19)30225-...](https://www.cell.com/one-
earth/fulltext/S2590-3322\(19\)30225-8) That paper shows that for continent
sized grids (the US is a continent sized country), electrification of heat and
transport creates a demand profile that can be matched by a renewable
portfolio in every 30 second time period in a year.

Not to mention that the perfect complement to high capex intermittent
generation with no marginal production cost is not a steady-producing
technology with high capital costs but low to no marginal production cost like
nuclear. The perfect complement is low capital cost, high marginal cost gas
reciprocal engines. No surprise that this is a fast growing area of generation
and that gas turbine manufacturers are hard at work adapting their designs to
deal with greater intermittency.

"Joe Biden puts the cost of his plan at $1.7 trillion over ten years. Some
analysts estimate the total cost of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal
at over $50 trillion."

Conveniently not looking at the cost per year explicitly in the Biden proposal
or giving a timescale at all for (one interpretation of) the AOC plan. 1.7
trillion over 10 years is 170bn/yr. That's 8% of US GDP. Quite a lot of money,
but it just doesn't seem reasonable to only look at the cost of something
which is a set of long life capital investments that way. That's because:

1) The lifetime of renewable generation and transmission infrastructure (and
nuclear generation of course) is measured in decades and the operating costs
are <<< capital costs.

2) We don't treat capital investments the way we treat recurring expenditures.
I "spent" several times my income buying a house. You need to look at the
annualised cost over the lifetime of the investment not at the capital cost.

3) Looking at the total upfront cost is only relevant to the degree that in-
year budgets or borrowing are constrained. Those constraints are effectively
set by the capital markets and by monetary policy for countries borrowing in
their own currencies. In government decision making, this distinction is
expressed by calculating economic value for money separately from
affordability.

4) Only stating the total capital cost doesn't take into account the capital
and operating costs in the alternative nor does the author make any attempt to
quantify the cost of the nuclear option.

"Moreover, these plans call for unprecedented regulation of the energy sector,
something closer to a command economy than a free market."

Dumb as a rock. The energy sector is second only to healthcare in the amount
of regulation that applies to it already. The most regulated part of the
energy sector is... nuclear.

"But what if there were sources of zero-carbon electricity that didn’t require
heavy-handed regulation to make them viable in the marketplace?"

I'm glad to hear that nuclear SMR's will be able to buy private insurance
rather than relying on the government to backstop them. Again, the size and
complexity of the "regulatory surface" is much bigger for nuclear than for
renewables.

Not only that, but basically all the expensive basic research and prototyping
for GenIV nuclear has been done by governments. That's true for renewable
generation as well of course, but it does seem strange to see descriptions of
private sector start-ups as being basically scrappy entrepreneurs when in most
cases they are attempting to commercialise ideas that were tested at great
expensive and sometime substantial scale using government money in the 1980s.

~~~
pfdietz
$170 billion is less than 1% of US GDP.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
Sorry, you're right of course. It is actually 0.8% of GDP, not 8%.

------
viburnum
This magazine is mostly know for its racist intellectuals so sure let’s see
what they have to say about energy.

