U.S. Nuclear Comeback Stalls as Two Reactors Are Abandoned

Re:U.S. Nuclear Comeback Stalls as Two Reactors Are Abandoned by maratd on Tuesday August 01, 2017 @10:37AM (#14901048)

> We've tried for 70+ years and have as yet not succeeded to use nuclear as a financially feasible energy source.

Nuclear is used widely. It is definitely a feasible energy source, by definition.

It is becoming financially infeasible because of cheap natural gas. The same is happening to coal.

> Why has a nuclear facility never been able to be fully privately insured without government backing?!

For something to be privately insured, there needs to be a statistically significant data set. We don't have that for nuclear incidents. There just aren't enough of them.

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Re:U.S. Nuclear Comeback Stalls as Two Reactors Are Abandoned by ricw on Tuesday August 01, 2017 @10:47AM (#14901170)

A quick google Search states that there are 449 currently active reactors. Pair that with 50+ years of mass usage, and we have a pretty large data set that should be more than sufficient to calculate the risk.

And as I stated previously: gas and oil are historically not low at all. They are only low compared to 5 years ago.

Nuclear is reallly expensive and risky. That's why it's failing.

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Re:U.S. Nuclear Comeback Stalls as Two Reactors Are Abandoned by iso-8859-1 on Tuesday August 01, 2017 @11:13AM (#14901510)

Failing? In China (2015), nuclear was the fastest-growing electricity source (29% growth).

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Re:U.S. Nuclear Comeback Stalls as Two Reactors Are Abandoned by Beltiras on Tuesday August 01, 2017 @10:47AM (#14901169)

> There just aren't enough of them.

Blissfully. 3-mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima are quite enough thank you very much.

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Re:U.S. Nuclear Comeback Stalls as Two Reactors Are Abandoned by wbl on Tuesday August 01, 2017 @03:16PM (#14904314)

One coal plant will emit more radiation then all of those combined over its lifetime.

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