> They're fixations on the wrong question. The dominant issue is delivering competitive unit economics.

The problem is. The regulation around safety, waste and land-use is what make the economics the problem.

But you are right, it is difficult, or just straight up impossible with the current state or regulation and policy.

Just for reference, since NRC was establish, basically new nuclear has been approved. During the AEC, innovation was rapid. Basically, no longer a balance between concerns, but simply all out focus on safety for a specific set of reactors. That's not the only factor, but its a big one.

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ProjectArcturis 3 days ago | parent [-]

It's pretty clear that for-profit entities will optimize to maximize profit at the expense of all other variables, including safety and the environment. We certainly can't trust the CEO class to properly prioritize safety concerns. So we will always need government regulations to keep these tradeoffs balanced.

You seem to be calling for a magical new set of regulations that are just as effective but don't cost as much. That's not going to happen.

	▲	panick21_ 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Nuclear plants were already operated pretty safely and the saty was constantly improving as people were learning more and research was progressive. You do not achieve safety by hard-coding all regulation to a specific technology and make everything else practically impossible. It works like this: "Your computer needs a C compiler with good error messages otherwise you can't build this", "Ok but we are building a LISP machine, there literally is no C". "We hear you but your C compiler needs good error messages". "Ok, could you maybe tell us who you would accept from, we can show you our LISP compiler will have amazing error messages" "MMhh sure we can do that, give us a full specification, and then we get back to you, but its going to cost you for every 1h we invest in that. And at the end, will tell you what we will accept as an application" "Ok, how long will that take and how much will it cost" "We can not give you a time or a cost, you will just have to wait (implied it will take at least many years and at least 100s of millions of $ with no outcome certainty what so ever)" That's just the tip of the iceberg. And then each individual country has their own version of something like this. So we have a market that is ultra heavy capital that needs scale. But scale is basically impossible to achieve. Thankfully the US government has finally made some steps into relaxing some of these and adopting a smarter approach, but its like turning the titanic, see GAIN for example. I am not suggesting we hand out plutonium the everybody who asks for it. In fact what I dislike, is that anybody who even suggest that regulatory form is part of the solution people instantly bring out 'we need some regulation' or 'new regulation wont be magic'. Both are true, and both are irrelevant. The de/re-regulation of many other industries has had dramatic effects, think of airlines, trucking, software, the Bell System and so on and so on. The current regulatory regime was created at a high point in panic and anti-nuclear sentiment. What I would like to see is something like what NASA did, for commercial cargo and commercial crew. You start with something achievable (commercial cargo). Create programs where the government want's to achieve something, and has multiple companies bid in a technology independent way. Start with some smaller things, nuclear reactor for space, medical isotope reactors, off-grid nuclear and then do SMR.