So which regulations are superfluous and expensive? There's much talk of overregulation from nuclear proponents, but I've yet to hear of specific examples. Specifically, I want examples of laws that are expensive to comply with but clearly unnecessary.
The thing about nuclear is that regulation is clearly highly necessary in the industry -- there's still plenty existing power plants like Fukushima that are not safe to walk away from, and that can only exist safely when they're competently monitored, and their weaknesses are shored up.
And in fact, accidents result in more, expensive but reasonable regulation. One of the conclusions from Fukushima was that you needed the ability to hook up emergency power and water to a power plant in the event of a disaster, even one that destroys roads. Had people gotten to Fukushima in time with the right tools, it'd have been far less dramatic and less expensive. So that's a quite reasonable thing to want.
However, this means that now there need to be tools and spare parts that can be carried by a helicopter in reasonable time. The existence of those tools, parts and helicopters however all costs money, and so is their continued testing and maintenance.
And yet again nuclear gets more expensive as we patch another hole, while renewables are not affected.
> So which regulations are superfluous and expensive? There's much talk of overregulation from nuclear proponents, but I've yet to hear of specific examples. Specifically, I want examples of laws that are expensive to comply with but clearly unnecessary.
for instance: In CA Diablo Canyon is catching flak over the effect its cooling water has on the local sealife (gmafb) which is at least part of the official reason it is intending to shutdown.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable concern, though.
Now you might argue that power production is going to unavoidably kill something, and we have to make a choice about what's the lesser evil -- do we poison everything with coal, overheat fish with nuclear power plant cooling, smash birds with wind turbines, or set them on fire with a solar heliostat?
We might well decide that it comes out in favor of nuclear there, but if we're minimizing harm then harm has to be measured, accounted for, and limited, and therefore regulating this particular thing makes perfect sense.
>We might well decide that it comes out in favor of nuclear there, but if we're minimizing harm then harm has to be measured, accounted for, and limited, and therefore regulating this particular thing makes perfect sense.
The problem is that this argument holds for every 'this particular thing'. How does it affect the patterns of migratory birds? Cicada cycles? Invasive species? Are historical buildings going to be destroyed? Trees cut down? Was there a native american settlement on the site that we just have to study? That any one of these petty concerns can be brought to litigation by an activist party to stand in the way of 9% of California's total energy demand is absurd and self-defeatist.
People wonder why we can't build anything anymore[0] and then demand we bike-shed every petty item to death in the courts.
[0]At reasonable costs/timelines. I'm still waiting for my high speed rail. Or housing that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
Other problems may be that letting the reactor run during a hot summer may really let water reach temperature very dangerous for most wildlife, and also that during a drought the sheer amount of water not only complicates this but also may forbid to run the reactor at full charge, or maybe even at all (financially hitting the company).
"Since the first ZECs eligibility period began, power markets have deteriorated significantly, thus the financial needs of New Jersey's nuclear plants have continued to grow. Nationwide, nuclear plants continue to struggle economically to survive. Since 2018, three nuclear plants have closed in the eastern U.S., all for economic reasons, and the impact has had a ripple effect."
So, they aren't blaming regulations, they're blaming the fact that the power markets have "deteriorated" ie. there is less money to be made.
Nuclear clearly hasn't become cheaper, and neither have fossil fuels, so what exactly has led to this cheaper electricity if it isn't the plummeting price of renewables?
The industry lobbies heavily (as described in the article and well documented in other sources) for subsidies not reduced regulation. This suggests the nuclear industry's issues are financial not regulatory. This conclusion would also agree with most financial analysis of wholesale electricity markets where nuclear electricity is multiple times the price per MWh compared to not just renewables but also CCGT. Wind, solar and gas turbines are the only competitive generation technologies available currently.
Don't big players in every industry lobby for more regulation? Does this mean that this is what is good for the markets they are dominant in? I fail to see this implication.
The nuclear industry is dying on aggregate globally, as indicated by metrics such as market share, overall capacity or price competitiveness. Nuclear proponents often blame the cost of meeting onerous (and by implication unreasonable) regulations for the fact that it cannot compete on price.
Most of the rest of the electricity energy sector campaign for LESS regulation - the coal power industry is notable example but you see this even in the renewables space where, for example, wind producers would like to have more freedom to site turbines.
The fact that the nuclear industry puts nearly all its lobbying effort into securing financial support instead of attacking regulations, suggests that regulation is not the reason why nuclear is failing to survive but that it's simply because of price/cost.
The other notable example I can think of in the energy sector is with directly growing biofuels. A similarly uneconomic way of providing energy that couldn't exist without massive subsidy.
Not saying the following is the case, but the sample space is broad. For example, overregulation.