In the US, nuclear power plant projects live or die based on i) regulatory approval (social and technical approval) and ii) insurance. Insurance makes or breaks the project, and currently, there is essentially no way to move forward but in a limited number of circumstances.
"The official model guiding US government policy, both at the EPA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), is the Linear No Threshold model (LNT). LNT says that cancer risk is directly proportional to dose, that doses are cumulative over time (rate doesn‘t matter), and that there is no threshold or safe dose.?
The author points out that the danger of long term low level radiation is much smaller than what is commonly believed, which means that cleanup does not need to be as thorough and expensive.
Cleanup may not need to be as expensive as we thought, but isn't the only way to tell for sure.. loss of human life / cancer?
Coincidentally, my brother was a PhD in Zoology and his doctorate thesis back in the 1960s was whether or not there is a threshold for radiation damage on fruit-flies. His results indicated that there was no threshold. Radiation damage is proportional to the dosage.
Nature, 1961 "Radiosensitive Stages in the Spermatogenesis of Drosophila melanogaster" - Strangio, V. A.
The actual thesis is a bit too technical for my complete understanding.
People do dumb things when they read stuff like this.
These construction costs alone could be what finally kills nuclear power in the West.
No, not the cost of construction, though that's fairly pricey.
No, not the cost of production. That's actually the best part about nuclear energy. It's remarkably cheap and safe for energy production.
The biggest, costliest and most horrific thing about nuclear energy is what you do after you have finished using that nuclear power station.
You have, quite often, thousands or even millions of tons of radioactive waste to dispose of. Where do you put that? How do you dismantle the construction without causing contamination of the site and the surroundings for miles around? What about the medical costs of looking after the demolition workers as they develop cancers later in life?
But don't take my word for it. Look at Chernobyl and Fukushima. If the task wasn't so difficult, why are those disaster areas still existing? Chernobyl was nearly forty years ago. Fukushima was ten years ago. Still causing problems.