However, after investigating the history more closely, it appears that nuclear construction projects were boondoggles even before Three Mile Island. Economics, not activism, is what killed nuclear in the US.
Nuclear has always been marketed under a lie, that its cheap, and perhaps too cheap to meter. In reality, well engineered projects are insanely complex, requiring huge material and labor costs during construction. And then there's maintenance.
People always talk about regulations driving up costs for nuclear, but they never talk about inappropriate regulations that drive up costs, meaning that the high costs are necessary.
And when you think about the design of the things, there's no reason to think it should be cheap: the nuclear is merely a heat source, which still requires the massive amount of machinery needed for steam turbines. The only part of the thing that's potentially cheaper is fuel, but to handle that fuel you've got to have massively engineering and equipment efforts.
This history of nuclear is always glossed over by its boosters. It's really expensive, and if we didn't have better options now, we should build it anyway. And we should have built a lot during the 80s like France did.
But today, grid storage is far cheaper than nuclear, and it makes no sense at all to ever build a new nuclear plant. Let's keep existing ones running until they're replaced with other carbon free sources, but for new investment, current nuclear tech is dead. New SMR, maybe maybe some day if it's cheap, but we shall see in a few decades, it's not available today like storage, wind, water, and solar are.
My current understanding is that the economics did not work out because: power company borrows x billion in capital to build a nuclear power plant, interest rates in the 80's are in the double digits, activists tie up the startup of the power plant for 5-10 years doubling the cost due to interest, power company finally drops starting the plant altogether and the public eats the loss.
Of course there are all sorts of complications to what really happened, like power consumption rates going up like crazy while AC is adopted and power companies thinking that the trend would continue forever, which didn't happen.
Have something you want to believe and you can find a narrative to fit it. This is a really hard trap to avoid and I'm sure I fall in it often.
While regulation certainly didn't make anything easier, and can probably be blamed for some percentage of the failures, there's a loooot more to the story. As you point out, incorrect demand predictions, and long term planning set during a time of plenty can require cancellations too.
I wish I had a more authoritative book from a disinterested historian, but the best I've found as a summary is the classic 1985 Forbes article[1], which I found through Wikipedia's list [2] of cancelled projects, the list that initially made me think, "huh, TMI can't be blamed for that one, or that one..."
[1] reprint on a blog, with some weird commentary about Gore on top which can be ignored: http://blowhardwindbag.blogspot.com/2011/04/forbes-article-r...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cancelled_nuclear_re...
Love to hear of any sources you might have too!
... and fuel-cycle then decommission -related costs.
About those last ones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17844976
The thing with nuclear power (or solar now) is that just having a viable alternative isn't enough. Because so much of the costs of oil is discovery and infrastructure, its price per barrel can go incredibly low when a competitor arises - much of the oil that's in ground has bought by someone already and they want to sell it for something.
With a situation like this, the only way to stop carbon emissions is regulation. The only way to stop carbon emissions is regulation (in case anyone missed that). Even if nuke were a significant power sources from the 1980s, we would be facing a climate problem if hydrocarbons were not regulated.
Yes, people sometimes had irrational fears. Yes, probabilities are unfortunately difficult to intuitively grasp.
But it's not safety that doomed nuclear power, quite obviously: countries such as Russia and (to a lesser degree) China care little about environmental concerns. Nuclear power is simply too expensive.
It's also surprising that the incredible improvements wind, and especially solar power have seen over the last decade or so are largely not the result of far-sighted technologists, but of the universally-despised political class: subsidising solar power production in Germany, as one example, must be among the most efficient government programs in history.
The near-term interests of those individuals are not aligned with the long-term interests of the rest of humankind.
Showing the connection between global warming and unlimited political donations post-Citizens-United is part of that.
Conspiracy theory.
But if you accept global warming, what other explanation can you present for the continued inaction of our government?
1. Not believe in things they can’t see
2. Especially when it is convenient not to.
The reasoning goes “if global warming were true, we’d have to change a lot of things. I don’t want to change things. It can’t be true”.
There’s also a tendency to believe that slow moving things can’t possibly cause big changes. The reasoning goes: “The earth has always seemed basically similar, so why would it change”
This reasonong doesn’t happen at a conscious level, it’s more of an impulse that guides what beliefs people let in, and don’t. What rationalizations they use, etc.
If it were a conspiracy of elites, you’d see mass support for things like carbon taxes. Instead, they’re unpopular.
Now, you could argue that some rich elites have used propaganda campaigns to convince people global warming is false. I think this is correct, but I also think these propaganda campaigns were aided by what people want to believe.
As for governments: they can’t undertake politically unpopular actions. They’ll get voted out.
1. Global warming is real. (Duh.)
2. Political contributions from the fabulously wealthy are buying government inaction.
Now, it may be that, like many on HN, you value inequality and adamantly support the "free speech" rights of the fabulously wealthy few to dominate the U.S. political system through unlimited political contributions. But global warming becomes harder and harder to deny with each passing year. Maybe it will take the loss of the entire Florida peninsula, but eventually all but the most hardcore will have to face reality.
Even if you're not reachable, eventually enough others will be reachable.
You seem to be viewing this as only propaganda driven.
I don't think you're being disingenuous, but your argument is essentially "concern trolling": you agree with the substance but express concern that others may not. It is folly to be paralyzed in the face of such an argument: that's abandoning a won position to your interlocutor.
I'm saying that even though climate change is disastrous collectively, it's currently generally in an individual's interest to burn carbon. And so a fair chunk of people will have great difficulty even understanding that this burning is terribly bad for the planet and for us collectively.
Even absent propaganda we would have this problem. Now, if society were all united in sending a message I'm sure more people would be in favour of emissions reduction. But you're treating the issue as only caused by propaganda.
Any preventable scenario requires people ignoring it to happen. Which I guess in itself isn't very helpful. It is just that people tend to assume that dysfunction isn't normal when it is usually the opposite. That anything functional often requires long deliberate and concerted efforts. There are for instance still plenty of people dying in traffic.
It's just that we really don't pay attention to the earth not being destroyed by a meteor today.
In most of the rest of the world it might be even worse. Especially if you also consider the size of countries like India and China. Most countries have only had peace for less than a century. New technologies end up abusing, if not killing, hundreds of thousands of people. The global economy seem to experience one large crash every decade. A lot of things are getting better, but I certainly wouldn't say the are getting more functional. I would even say that a lot of development is more unsustainable today than ever.
When a million people don't die in traffic every year I will get more hopeful about humanities ability to handle existential threats. Until then let's hope for a something smaller event first (I don't really know the distribution of something like a meteor).