Most often it's ignorance and not stupidity.
> I'd argue the shoe is on the other foot. Nuclear's cost disease renders continued pursuit of the technology very difficult to justify.
Nuclear's "cost disease" is a function of an industry that, for one thing, functions a lot like the dinosaur space launch companies (ULA). Somehow SpaceX came along and completely disrupted things.
The small, agile companies pursuing small modular nuclear reactors are a lot like SpaceX. Probably the most disruptive idea is that of building the reactors at factories, and then transporting and installing them with little additional work. That avoids the entire red tape and risk of one-off construction, and affords economies of scale.
Since there's a very effective and strident anti-nuclear lobby here in the US, these companies will get started elsewhere. Keep an eye on ThorCon, X-Energy, Terrapower, and NuScale.
> According to IAEA, there are 50 designs or concepts in various development or planning stages around the world, with four in advanced construction in Argentina, Russia, and China.
https://www.scottmadden.com/reports/V17_I2/EIU_V17_I2_2017_D...
SpaceX operates by testing a lot and blowing things up. You're not getting that with nuclear. The SMR makers have not delivered much; the closest to delivery, NuScale, is not giving cost improvements that will be sufficient to turn nuclear's ebbing tide.
The levelized cost of solar and wind are well below that of new nuclear. If you did not know this, well, you were ignorant.
> That looks like a pretty big incentive.
Funny you should compare natural gas and nuclear. Exelon, which operates 23 nuclear reactors in the US, did the same thing. The conclusion Exelon came to was that new nuclear construction is hopelessly uncompetitive with natural gas fired combined cycle in the US at current natural gas prices. An effective CO2 tax of $300-400/ton would be needed for new nuclear to compete.
Yes, nuclear saves on fuel costs, but it's a penny wise, pound foolish saving.
> SpaceX has an exemplerary safety record. More misinformation...
SpaceX blows up plenty of stuff IN DEVELOPMENT. They just blew up their manned capsule during ground tests, for example. Applying the same development methodology to nuclear would be a nonstarter. In nuclear you need to avoid accidents everywhere. Paralysis by analysis follows.
> ThorCon is estimating to-the-plug electricty costs of three to five cents per KWH.
Uh huh. That estimate, and $5, will get you a cup of caffeinated brown water at Starbucks.
And what "facts" would those be, exactly...?
Let's start with the incentive to mess with nuclear at all, beginning with the cost of fuel.
>> A modern American light-water reactor has a fuel burnup in the neighborhood of 45 GWd / MTU (45 billion watt-days per metric ton uranium).
So, a metric ton of uranium produces 4.5 billion Watt-days, or 108 GWH.
By contrast, a metric ton of natural gas produces 15.2 million Watt-hours, or 0.0152 GWH.
That means a ton of uranium produces 7,105 times the energy of a ton of natural gas. A ton of uranium costs about $1,400. A ton of natural gas costs about $150. That means the natural gas equivalent of a ton of uranium would cost $150 x 7,105, or about $1,070,000.
That looks like a pretty big incentive. The other is the zero CO2 issue, with nuclear being the only, sole, solitary, single, scalable, existing reliable source of zero CO2 energy. I hope I don't need to explain why that's relevant.
> SpaceX operates by testing a lot and blowing things up.
SpaceX has an exemplerary safety record. More misinformation...
> You're not getting that with nuclear. The SMR makers have not delivered much; the closest to delivery, NuScale, is not giving cost improvements that will be sufficient to turn nuclear's ebbing tide.
ThorCon is estimating to-the-plug electricty costs of three to five cents per KWH. That's vastly cheaper than any "green" electricity source, and better than any alternative in most locations.
Nuclear done sanely is at least competitive with fossil fuels, and is the only scalable, reliable source of zero-CO2 electricity. Having enough grid storage to (usually) make it through low output periods for wind and solar is nothing beyond wildest fantasy at this point.
Nuclear power is a necessity if a very low CO2 trajectory is required.
2) The energy density of uranium is admittedly spectacular. If you compare only uranium prices and fossil fuel prices, uranium wins every time. The problem is that all the equipment and personnel to turn uranium into electricity end up making American uranium-fueled electricity more expensive than gas-fueled electricity. That's why cheap gas has pushed so many operating American nuclear plants into the red, and why those plants need support beyond market prices to keep producing their steady low-emissions electricity. Quoting uranium price alone for nuclear power is like quoting silicon price alone for solar power -- it has very little bearing on the final delivered price of electricity.
3) Practically every power reactor design claims to supply affordable electricity before anyone actually builds one. The EPR did. The AP1000 did. Like pfdietz I'll trust ThorCon's claims after they have operating reactors to prove it, not before. New reactor designs claiming big improvements are no more special than big claims about spectacular new batteries or solar cells. Wait for commercial delivery, then measure. Most of these exciting early claims go nowhere.
So the catch 22 then. Don't build newer reactors until you prove something that requires building them to prove.
> Nuclear's cost disease renders continued pursuit of the technology very difficult to justify.
Why isn't the solution analyzing where the money is going so that the wasteful expenses can be eliminated then?
(Note that one of the major ones is regulatory requirements changing during construction, which is an entirely politically-driven cost.)
> Why isn't the solution analyzing where the money is going so that the wasteful expenses can be eliminated then?
Why do you think that hasn't been tried?
You seem to have the preconception that there must be some way for nuclear to live up to your expectations for it, despite all the evidence that it can't and won't.
There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic that the Earth's natural nuclear fuel resources can find a way to be effectively used by humanity. We've done an OK job at it so far. It's relatively safe. It's very low-carbon, and it has been making ~60% of the USA's carbon free energy for a few decades. Not a bad track record.
But it's a bit too expensive. So we just have to figure out ways to make it cheaper.
This certainly doesn't seem insurmountable. I don't think a "can't and won't" curse is at all warranted.
I think nuclear energy optimism is largely based on wishful thinking.
Meanwhile nuclear plants go on saving millions of lives by displacing air pollution deaths. China is building high-power district heater reactors to reduce coal deaths in Winter [1].
You're absolutely right that rapid improvement requires high volume. That's probably the fundamental challenge of nuclear right now. MIT is working on shipyard constructed nuclear stuff that has these characteristics for this precise reason [2]. UltraSafe nuclear's microreactors are attempting the same dynamic [3].
Human progress depends wholly on people taking bets like this.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-nuclear-heating/chi...
[2] http://news.mit.edu/2015/new-look-floating-nuclear-power-062...
At this point, I will believe a new generation of reactors is cheap and wonderful only after N of them have been built, costs have not exploded, and the maker isn't in bankruptcy.
The implication that stupid people are the ones lobbying against nuclear is deplorable. I'd argue the shoe is on the other foot. Nuclear's cost disease renders continued pursuit of the technology very difficult to justify.