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A comment on US nuclear regulator: 2,868 employees; 47 yrs in operation; 0 license approvals. Parent comment

Re:US nuclear regulator: 2,868 employees; 47 yrs in operatio... by MisterMower on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @11:49PM (#30081861)
The same outcome would befall wind and solar energy if you applied the same regulatory structure and burden to them. Cost would balloon and innovation would stop.

Try making wind farms abide the same siesmic requirements and end of life plans that we hold nuclear to. They would become wildly expensive and uneconomical.

Swap regulatory structures between wind and nuclear, wait two decades and you’ll see a bunch of NYT articles talking about how toxic it is for workers and the environment to be sawing fiberglass wind turbine blades into pieces to dump in a landfill when they are no longer economically viable due to asinine regulations.

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Re:US nuclear regulator: 2,868 employees; 47 yrs in operatio... by cycomanic on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @12:46AM (#30082225)
But that is the case already, solar/ wind farms have to have decommission plans, environmental impact plans etc. In fact building a wind farm faces large amount of regulations. I'd argue considering the difference in consequences of failure it's the amount of regulations faced by wind and solar compared to solar is quite unfair.

I also find the arguement that we should put the same regulations on solar wind as on nuclear weird. The consequences of a failure is many orders of magnitude different, the considerations when decommissioning are vastly different etc..

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Re:US nuclear regulator: 2,868 employees; 47 yrs in operatio... by CryptoPunk on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @02:16AM (#30082720)
Solar/wind don't have to abide by anywhere near the same amount of regulations as nuclear, your second point notwithstanding.
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Re:US nuclear regulator: 2,868 employees; 47 yrs in operatio... by BMc2020 on Thursday January 27, 2022 @08:01PM (#30109425)
The same outcome would befall wind and solar energy if you applied the same regulatory structure and burden to them..

Incorrect. The Russians, Chinese, French, Koreans et. al. have wildly different regulatory burdens and they can't do it either. The PRC bought some Westinghouse AP1000s, stole the design, tried to copy, ended up way late and way over budget.

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