I'd argue that environmental regulations that impede building modern nuclear power plants to replace coal power plants are net harmful. Nuclear power safety has advanced a lot since Chernobyl.

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breakyerself 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Chernobyl design was never in use in the US, but nuclear went through a long period of near universal public opposition to its expansion because of the high profile disasters that it caused.

Now the cost of solar and storage are dropping at a rate I doubt nuclear is ever going to make a significant comeback. I'm not opposed to it, but I wonder if the economics will ever be favorable even with regulatory reform.

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ch4s3 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Chernobyl design was never in use in the US

Commercially. Several early test reactors were essentially just graphite moderated piles not unlike Chernobyl, but they were abandoned for a reason.

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mikkupikku an hour ago | parent [-]

Graphite moderated reactors are broadly fine, the problem was with some technical specifics of that specific reactor design, and the operational culture that surrounded it. After Chernobyl, those flaws were corrected and operation of other RBMK reactors has continued to this very day, with no repeats.

	▲	ch4s3 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That's good additional clarification, I only meant to point out that graphite moderated, water cooled reactors had existed in the US and UK.

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WorldMaker an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Chernobyl may have done a lot to inflame cultural imagination of what could happen in the worst cases, but the US still had its own high profile disasters like Three Mile Island.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

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mattmaroon 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It would. People are still building some natural gas plants even despite renewables being cheaper and nuclear is far cheaper over its lifecycle than that and, other than regulatory issues, is basically better in every way.

	▲	jerlam an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Nuclear might be better and cheaper over it's entire lifecycle; but given that the starting costs are so high, the time to build is so long, and the US has serious problems with cost overruns in public projects, as well as the fickleness of both government and public opinion, I don't expect another plant to be built.
	▲	prpl 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		There will continue to be new gas plants as long as there are coal plants which will be converted, usually around the time a major overhaul would need to be taken anyway.
	▲	9rx 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> nuclear is far cheaper over its lifecycle than that That is the case for base load generation, where the plant can operate near 100% capacity all the time. But that isn't were gas is usually being deployed; it being used for reserve generation. The economics of nuclear isn't as favourable in that application as it costs more or less the same to run at partial generation, or even no generation, as it does when it is going full blast.

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epistasis an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The closest I've gotten to somebody finding environmental regulations that were driving up the cost of nuclear was with some of the latest stuff with people trying to get rid of the LNT model of how radiation affects people.

Getting rid of LNT would allow higher doses to workers, and the way it makes nuclear cheaper is by having less shielding around the reactor.

But if you look at how recent reactors like the AP1000 failed, it's not so much because of the mere quantity of concrete. In fact, one of the big advantages of the AP1000 is that it used a fraction of the concrete and steel of prior designs. The real problem at Vogtle were construction logistics, matching up design to constructible plans, and doing that all in an efficient manner.

The construction process didn't run over budget and over timeline because of environmental regulations, that happened because we don't know how to build big things anymore, in combination with leadership asking for regulatory favors like starting construction before everything has been fully designed, which gave them more rope to hang themselves with.

I don't know the specifics of why France forgot how to build, at Flamanville and Olkiluoto, but I imagine it's a similar tale as in the US. High labor costs, poor logistics, projects dragged out, and having to pay interest on the loan for years and years extra with every delay.

If there's somebody with more specifics on how unnecessary regulation is killing nuclear, I'd love to see it. But after watching attentively and with great interest since ~2005, I've become so disillusioned with nuclear that I doubt we'll ever see it have success in the West again. Factories and manufacturing have seen productivity go through the roof over the past 50 years, while construction productivity is stagnant. Playing to our strengths, and using our very limited construction capacity on building factories rather than building generators, seems far wiser on the macroeconomic scale.