Everybody cheering on nuclear seems to forget one big problem associated with it … nuclear waste. It’s just assumed that people living in remote regions will be fine and dandy having nuclear waste buried in their backyards, possibly poisoning their groundwater. Nevermind the transportation of said waste through more heavily populated areas which would lead to at least one catastrophic accident.
Imo the cost of that is far more important than what it costs to build in the first place.
Yes, nuclear waste is a problem. One we’ll need to solve in the next few decades. Those few decades will buy us time to get off of fossil fuels and onto more permanent renewable solutions though.
In* the short term, I’d much rather see more nuclear plants opening up, even with the long term drawbacks around waste storage, rather than more gas or coal plants. It’s the lesser of the two evils by a long shot.
Beyond replacing fossil fuels plants, nuclear plants can also help power atmospheric decarbonization (with their excess baseband power) as well as desalination plants if close enough to a coast.
There’s a lot of projects that depend on cheap and abundant energy that can further help undo some of the damage from a century of fossil fuels usage.
While the design lifespan of nuclear plants might be 30-40 years, newer ones are designed for 40-60 years of operation right off the bat.
So it’s a bit of a sticker shock at first but even getting just 40 years of benefits from each plant is huge.
A big part of the problem is we don’t look at these longtime operation periods and we externalize (or just ignore) the CO2 emissions as costs of running cheaper gas and coal power plants.
The main problem is that all this theory doesn’t track with reality.
The mean construction time for nuclear reactors worldwide is 9.4 years and the US seemingly only finished one reactor (Watts Bar 2) in the last ten years which took 42.8 years to complete and ended up costing more than 12 billion.
Watts Bar 1 was finished after 23 years and two others were abandoned, one by TVA after 47 years.
Correction: Unit 3 of the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor (Vogtle) was finished in 2023 in only 14 years costing 34 billion, while Unit 4 is still in construction.
The reason why China was able to build 39 reactors in a short amount of time is because they are using them to increase their nuclear arsenal. Projects like this tend to go faster if a dictatorship wants it to be done no matter the cost, public opinion and safety concerns.
It sounds like you’re suggesting that the reason the US takes longer to build nuclear plants is because of more rigorous safety requirements or something. I’m not convinced though, considering the US’s track record on the rest of its power infrastructure.
I think there are a ton of reasons why the US is so slow to build nuclear reactors, most of which have nothing to do with the technology itself.
Obviously the problem needs addressed though, and we know it’s a solvable problem - the chart you posted says as much.
Everybody cheering on nuclear seems to forget one big problem associated with it … nuclear waste. It’s just assumed that people living in remote regions will be fine and dandy having nuclear waste buried in their backyards, possibly poisoning their groundwater. Nevermind the transportation of said waste through more heavily populated areas which would lead to at least one catastrophic accident.
Imo the cost of that is far more important than what it costs to build in the first place.
Yes, nuclear waste is a problem. One we’ll need to solve in the next few decades. Those few decades will buy us time to get off of fossil fuels and onto more permanent renewable solutions though.
In* the short term, I’d much rather see more nuclear plants opening up, even with the long term drawbacks around waste storage, rather than more gas or coal plants. It’s the lesser of the two evils by a long shot.
That’s what they said in the 1970s. We still haven’t solved the problem fifty years later.
Sure, but I think there’s a ton of reasons for that, and most are not the fault of nuclear power itself.
Beyond replacing fossil fuels plants, nuclear plants can also help power atmospheric decarbonization (with their excess baseband power) as well as desalination plants if close enough to a coast.
There’s a lot of projects that depend on cheap and abundant energy that can further help undo some of the damage from a century of fossil fuels usage.
While the design lifespan of nuclear plants might be 30-40 years, newer ones are designed for 40-60 years of operation right off the bat.
So it’s a bit of a sticker shock at first but even getting just 40 years of benefits from each plant is huge.
A big part of the problem is we don’t look at these longtime operation periods and we externalize (or just ignore) the CO2 emissions as costs of running cheaper gas and coal power plants.
“In the short term”
The main problem is that all this theory doesn’t track with reality.
The mean construction time for nuclear reactors worldwide is 9.4 years and the US seemingly only finished one reactor (Watts Bar 2) in the last ten years which took 42.8 years to complete and ended up costing more than 12 billion. Watts Bar 1 was finished after 23 years and two others were abandoned, one by TVA after 47 years.
Correction: Unit 3 of the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor (Vogtle) was finished in 2023 in only 14 years costing 34 billion, while Unit 4 is still in construction.
The reason why China was able to build 39 reactors in a short amount of time is because they are using them to increase their nuclear arsenal. Projects like this tend to go faster if a dictatorship wants it to be done no matter the cost, public opinion and safety concerns.
It sounds like you’re suggesting that the reason the US takes longer to build nuclear plants is because of more rigorous safety requirements or something. I’m not convinced though, considering the US’s track record on the rest of its power infrastructure.
I think there are a ton of reasons why the US is so slow to build nuclear reactors, most of which have nothing to do with the technology itself.
Obviously the problem needs addressed though, and we know it’s a solvable problem - the chart you posted says as much.