News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on China to supercharge uranium race with 150 new nuclear reactors. Parent comment

Re:China to supercharge uranium race with 150 new nuclear re... by jjoonathan on Monday November 08, 2021 @03:22PM (#29153760)
Nuclear follows a learning curve too.

The reason why it got so expensive is because we fell down the curve. Intentionally. So that we could fill our atmosphere with CO2 while we waited 40 years for wind and solar to become viable. The mind boggles.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:China to supercharge uranium race with 150 new nuclear re... by Gwypaas on Tuesday November 09, 2021 @05:29AM (#29159857)
Not really, nuclear power is one of those things which has had a negative learning curve.

The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:China to supercharge uranium race with 150 new nuclear re... by rmbyrro on Monday November 08, 2021 @05:55PM (#29155400)
Do you mean we lowered the scale of nuclear after accidents, thus increased cost/Kw generated?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:China to supercharge uranium race with 150 new nuclear re... by tw04 on Monday November 08, 2021 @06:41PM (#29155815)
He means when you stop building reactors, you lose the tribal knowledge to build reactors. No different than when folks try to reproduce WWII vehicles and discover the plans don’t actually reflect the real build process because things were adapted on the fly and never written down because everyone “just knew”. Oh that weld? We actually need plates and bolts to reinforce it due to stress cracks in the field.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:China to supercharge uranium race with 150 new nuclear re... by Ekaros on Tuesday November 09, 2021 @04:17AM (#29159388)
Exactly.

When you are building one offs, and something goes wrong and you redo it, you don't gain benefit from knowledge of not making same mistake again. As there isn't next time. Now when you have done same mistake before you won't repeat it. And these mistakes are the reason behind delays and part of cost over runs.

[ Parent | on HN ]