I think it's more that nuclear plants are exceptionally large and complex and that makes it difficult to access economies of scale, and each new safety measure introduced after an accident involves additional complexity layered on top, which worsens the problem. There are so many countries with so many different cultures of regulation which have had difficulties with nuclear recently, in particular with the latest generation designs.
I think you could make the situation better by having a dramatic programme to scale up nuclear, because then you can get economies of scale. That worked quite well for the French, but it means a large upfront investment, essentially paying for 50 years of energy in advance, with significant risk of cost over-runs.
That requirement for front-loaded investment means the cost depends very strongly on the interest rate of money borrowed, and a low interest rate on a large, complex project requires government backing. So the fundamental reason is that governments do not have the appetite for that sort of intervention or that level of risk, like they did during the 60's-70's.
China followed the big spin up plan, aren't in any sort of over regulation problem, and could roll over any anti-nuclear protest, and yet found schedule and cost overruns still occured.
> The country has the capacity to build 10 to 12 nuclear reactors a year. But though reactors begun several years ago are still coming online, the industry has not broken ground on a new plant in China since late 2016, according to a recent World Nuclear Industry Status Report.
> Officially China still sees nuclear power as a must-have. But unofficially, the technology is on a death watch. Experts, including some with links to the government, see China’s nuclear sector succumbing to the same problems affecting the West: the technology is too expensive, and the public doesn’t want it.
Sadly 3MI and Chernobyl turned environmentalists against it. In fairness, one can’t blame them, but as a technology matured and is better understood and built, they should actively support something they previously were against arguably for valid safety concerns.
Fukushima was the nail in the coffin. A lot of people don't remember Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl had been spun (not unreasonably) as Soviet incompetence. People in general were cautiously tolerant of nuclear until Fukushima. It's a damn shame.
Yes but the tech was dead before Fukushima the first. Da ichi was a 40-50 year old tech, and for the tech it did okay given the circumstances.
So even before Fukushima, there’d be delay after delay for more studies and impact and safety concerns for new projects and old ones getting shut down mostly due to thd ghosts of 3MI and Chernobyl.
Of course it doesn’t help to engender confidence in the tech as this legacy is the baggage any new tech faces in any consideration.
Before fukushima, I estimated any natural disaster big enough to destroy a nuclear plant would kill so many people itself, that the nuclear accident would be a mere side note.
Well Tōhoku tsunami and earthquake killed 15,000+ people and yet everyone only talks about the nuclear plant that was hit with it.
At some point you just have to accept that human mind has an irrational fear on rare but dramatic events
Fukushima Daiichi..which killed zero people from radiation. I think we have to reflect on whether or not we overreacted from that accident. In a sense it shows that even in crazy conditions, most of the core remains in the plant, and the radiation released isn't much of a health threat. Meanwhile coal kills a 200,000 per year while operating normally! The difference is astounding, yet nuclear is the most regulated industry on earth.
Fukushima did massive contamination of inhabitable land, which is in short supply in Japan already. But the only reason it wasn't much worse is the wind pattern blowing towards the sea.
> Meanwhile coal kills a 200,000 per year while operating normally!
Coal is definitely the worst conventional energy generation tech. No wonder nuclear advocates love to focus on it as if it's the only alternative. That said, do you know anyone who died from coal?
>That said, do you know anyone who died from coal?
Personally no. But in production of coal you have many miners’ lives cut short as a direct consequence of mining activities. Now, that’s short of the annual number listed there but this is a known direct consequence.
Respiratory disease kills everyday people from coal emissions left and right by similar mechanisms to smoking. The numbers are huge for asthma and COPD, and large fractions of those are attributed to fossil fuel air pollution. In less developed energy markets, indoor cooking is as bad or worse. In the USA, the Clean Air Act saves lives like crazy but we still are killed by fossil emissions.
> Fukushima did massive contamination of inhabitable land
Have you seen the dose rates in the area recently and compared them to the higher end of natural background in inhabited areas on Earth? If not I recommend you do. It's very reasonable to evacuate an area during a massive nuclear accident. When the dose rate goes down, it's very reasonable to go back. Here's a handy reference: [1]. The main point is that global warming gets rid of even more inhabitable land by pushing people out of cities en masse.
> No wonder nuclear advocates love to focus on it as if it's the only alternative.
Nuclear is safer than almost every other energy source. More people fall of their roofs installing solar panels per TWh than people die from nuclear accidents. Hydro has killed people by the 100,000 as well. Shoot, even wind kills people with ice-throw [2].
> That said, do you know anyone who died from coal?
A few hundred thousand per year, but no I don't actually know any of those people. Do you know anyone who has died from nuclear power, which kills 6 orders of magnitude fewer people?
The main point is that global warming is the serious threat and we should throw all serious low-carbon energy sources at it. Nuclear is the only large-scale operational low-carbon source that can run through daily and seasonal weather shifts, so it should play a large role. Wind and solar are needed as well, at about 20x their current deployment.
> More people fall of their roofs installing solar panels per TWh than people die from nuclear accidents.
Belarus has not commissioned its first nuclear plant yet, but already two construction workers died on its construction. That's already +INF amount of deaths per TW generated nationally.
> Do you know anyone who has died from nuclear power, which kills 6 orders of magnitude fewer people?
I actually do, met a dying Chernobyl liquidator in early 1990s.
I wonder how the economcics between nuclear, natural gas, and coal would pan out if the negative externalities (including both emmisions during consumption of the fuel and those created during mining/capturing of the fuel) were accounted for into the cost of the produced electricity.
The president of Exelon has said new nuclear in the US would require a CO2 tax of $300-400/tonne in order to compete with natural gas. At that tax rate, it would be cheaper to completely sequester the CO2 from a NG plant.
So, no, the externalities cannot save nuclear in the US.
