I think there's a perception problem.
Do people readily go to school to study nuclear engineering?
I don't think it carries a stigma per se, but it would not be that sexy, and it would be harder to get a job and keep it subject to political whim on a 4-year-cycle.
(A more practical/guaranteed job would probably be a petroleum engineer, especially wrt fracking)
Yes, people do study nuclear engineering. I was considering that path myself in university, but ended up going more towards science and doing several years of research in nuclear physics labs instead.
I'm very glad I didn't end up doing nuclear engineering. The nuclear industry stagnated and failed to address cost problems and bad project delivery (cost overruns, delays, etc).
And then between 2010 and 2020 renewable energy scaled up and became incredibly cheap, in fact the cheapest source of energy in most countries: https://about.bnef.com/blog/scale-up-of-solar-and-wind-puts-...
Between 2010 to 2019 wind energy become 70% cheaper and solar became 89% cheaper: https://www.lazard.com/media/451082/lcoe-8.png
Battery costs have dropped 75% over the last 6 years: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-levelize...
> I think there's a perception problem.
Somewhat, but the nuclear industry did a massive PR campaign to address that.
Blaming perception or "green activists" or "fear of scawy radiashun!" is an easy straw-man for them, but the real obstacles are more practical and harder to address: the economics of nuclear are not good. This is compounded by a problematic history of delivery problems.
> Yes, people do study nuclear engineering.
Note I said "readily" not "really". I see you made the calcluation when you made your decision.
It's a shame really because I believe nuclear power has great promise in benefitting society.
Too bad the moonshot level investment in nuclear went towards military ends (france in 80's excepted). And too bad funding is dependent on political whim.
Although solar and wind is working, I worry that might be a "save ourselves rich" strategy.
When you look at this table:
material energy density mj/kg
Uranium 22,394,000,000
Diesel fuel 38.6
Lithium-ion battery 2.63
Loan guarantees are a particularly common example -- for example, last year the US govt provided $3.7 BILLION in loan guarantees for the troubled Vogtle reactor builds in Georgia. The way loan guarantees work is that the government agrees to pay the debt owed if the company goes bankrupt or cannot complete the project; this is surprisingly common actually, since the same project had already driven Westignhouse to file bankruptcy.
Solar and wind aren't likely to make a handful of people extremely rich -- the profit margins on the components are pretty low due to the high degree of competition pushing them down. Building solar and wind farms to sell their power does produce a solid and reliable financial return on investment, but it's still less than 10% (even though the energy return on investment is good).
> When you look at this table [energy density]
For power generation, energy density is largely irrelevant.
Also these energy densities are apples-to-oranges comparisons. You can't burn uranium without a fairly large, heavy reactor. There are no "nuclear cars." Similarly diesel requires an engine although it's smaller. Batteries aren't a power source on their own, they're storage, and you're not "burning" them up.
When it comes to nuclear, that's a problem the world over. Out of practice of designing as well. Look no further than the mess that is the EPR. On its face it seems like a boondoggle, but it makes a lot more sense when you look back at the history of nuclear construction: from 1971 to 1993, France was continuously building plants, first the 34 900MW CP-series (1971 to 1988) then the 20 1300MW P-series (1978 to 1993). The CP-series took 5-6 years to build and the P-series a bit more (6-7). From the mid-70s to the mid 80s, there were a dozen plans being built at any time, and they were being completed.
Then came the N4, that thing had serious teething issues, the first model started construction in 1985 but took 12 years to complete. By the time the 4th was completed, it was down to 7 years. But the 4th was the last N4 to be built. It's unclear to me whether the N4 slowdown was intended all along or whether the teething issues made them take a look at construction and pump the brakes, but in the space of 5 years the country went from building 12 plants at a time to building 5, then 4, then 3, then 2, then 1.
N4 at least overlapped some with the tail end of the CP-series and the middle of the P-series, but the first EPR construction was started in 2007, 5 years after the last N4 (Civaux 2) was completed. I can't even imagine the loss in institutional knowledge over that span.