186
Sweden adopts new fossil-free target, making way for nuclear
(www.power-technology.com)
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
This talks about those ballooning costs.
https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop
Spoiler, most of it has been inflicted by regulatory sabotage.
Here are some deep dives by a guy who's been researching this shit for years. There are dozens of articles about how fossil fuel lobbyists have constantly attacked nuclear power.
https://atomicinsights.com/how-did-leaders-of-the-hydrocarbon-establishment-build-the-foundation-for-radiation-fears/
https://atomicinsights.com/how-did-an-oil-shale-investor-hamstring-his-atomic-energy-competition-ancient-but-impactful-smoking-gun/
A great write-up about the oil industry funding the anti-nuclear environmental movement
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-fossil-fuel-interests-bankrolling-the-anti-nuclear-energy-movement/
"Regulatory sabotage" is the latest talking point put out by the nuclear lobby. It's a fabrication. Regulations were built based on incidents and accidents in the past. Building nukes on the cheap would be like building deep-sea submersibles without certifications. It'll work fine, until it doesn't.
Certification and licensing only make-up a tiny percentage of a plant's upfront costs. Typically it'll be dumped in with engineering/design costs and those would be down around 15% of capital costs, depending a lot on the project.
The French government has traditionally been very pro-nuclear, and the industry has broad support from the population aside from the Green movement. They have had extensive incentive programs for the industry, both domestic and for export. And yet, they have had no better luck in building plants on time and budgets. Flamanville-3 is the poster child for overbudget nuclear projects. Construction started in 2007, was supposed to be on-line in 2012, but is currently projected to be completed in 2024. The budget went from €3.3B to an estimated €20B as of a 2019 French court audit.
The "oil industry" doesn't care about nuclear at all. Oil fired generators haven't been a thing since the oil shocks of the 1970s. The few that are still around are typically used as backup or peakers, as they're ridiculously expensive to run.
The coal industry would be so inclined, but in the US, coal plants have dropped from ~65% of generation to less than 20% of generation over the last 30 years. New plants are almost as expensive to build as nuclear, and as the plants get to end of life, they're being decommissioned rather than refurbished. The writing is on the wall.
Of the fossil fuel industries, only natural gas is competitive, and the plants are far, far cheaper to build than about anything else. They are the preferred type of new generation for utilities that have access to gas. Only regulation or government mandates really slow down new gas plants.
If regulatory sabotage isn't real, what do you call the prohibition against multiplexing? Or the requirement for a contingency plan for a Double-Ended-Guillotine-Break of the primary loop piping? That second one cannot actually be simulated in reality because steel doesn't break like that. And yet, it's one of the most expensive design requirements that nuclear power plants must comply with. It also comes at the expense of safety standards that would actually work, because you cannot design for reality and this fiction on the same page.
Then there are stories like this one
Another type of sabotage is called “backfitting”;
And one final bit of regulatory sabotage, but one that I think was accidental, every nuclear plant has the exact same annual licensing fees regardless of power capacity. This means that there's an incentive to build the largest, most complex plant possible, because you can put out more power for the same regulatory fee. The problem lies in the trap of thinking bigger and bigger, you suddenly have a reactor with parts that need special infrastructure to produce those parts, which is expensive, then you need special equipment to transport them, which is expensive, and special equipment to install them, which is expensive. And then, when the plant is built, it has way more capacity than is actually needed by the surrounding communities.