>>16827017The ALARA/LNT regulatory regime
>>16827017to prevent meltdowns. china will have a meltdown due to cutting costs.
>>16827017A worker at the Michigan Palisades Nuclear Plant that's in the process of being restarted fell into the containment pool. It was hoped that the plant would be able to restart this year but it's likely the investigation into this incident will delay that into next year, barring any other incidents.>The worker swallowed some of the water before being rescued from the pool. The individual was decontaminated by radiation protection personnel but had 300 counts per minute detected in their hair.https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2025/20251022enEvent Number: 57996
>>16827017Boiling water is hard, okay?
Initially it was retarded politics, then there just wasn't an incentive to revive the industry since fossil fuels worked fine. Now, assuming that low carbon energy is incentivised and no one decides to murder the industry again, the cost could come down.Stringent safety measures do increase it, but the real problem is that for a long time the NRC was literally incompetent/malicious and the benefits of nuclear were small enough that business never felt like challenging it.
>>16827017>Why is Nuclear Energy So Expensive?Regulations & safety redundancies, unstandardized parts & pieces, cost and scarcity of training/education. You could reduce price significantly, while still maintaining safety standards, by simply producing standardized materials, novel facility designs, and lowering the costs associated with training the people who work at these facilities.
>>16827017Is this adjusted for PPP?
>>16827356No, but it is adjusted for inflation
>>16827269DOH!
>>16827017>why are slave labor and low safety regulations cheaper?
>>16827303> that business never felt like challenging it.How do you challenge a regulator that has monopolistic power over you and cares absolutely nothing about your need to profit?
>>16827356That probably dont matter much at this high end of the technological tail. The cost of hiring nuclear engineers are just as expensive as they are in the US. The cost of living for engineers living in Chinese richest coastal regions rival that of San Francisco/NYC.
>>16827503All other industries seem to manage.
>>16827514ever wonder why so much industry moved to china etc? its all crazy expensive here compared to there.
>>16827017China numba one in nuclear disaster, white pigdog chernobyl small, china make bigbig
Highly specialized components that need to be made with high-quality materials. Reactor pressure vessels need to be made out of specific reactor-grade steel; anything else will interfere with reactivity. Most foundries aren't equipped to take orders for nuclear plants; they also need special molds and equipment to handle those clients. Hundreds of miles of piping and pumps to handle the millions of gallons of water being pumped through the system every single day. Piping that's used in the reactor has to handle the high pressure/temperatures with minimal heat loss. Tens of thousands of tons of concrete to build the containment unit, the turbine hall, and the cooling towers. If a single bit of concrete fails QC and crumbles under pressure, you have to tear down the whole thing.China always cooks the books when it comes to finances. You have a state-owned power company, that contracts with a state-owned construction company, that buys all of its materials from state-owned factories, which are supplied by state-owned mines that use cheap rural migrants and Uyghur slave labor. They obfuscate the true cost as a marketing technique so that they can sell their designs and services to overseas clients.
>>16827758this. EVERYTHING is 'face' for those people.
>>16827017The government
Nuclear plants have a high initial construction cost, a period of operation where they're able to recoup the cost of construction, and then a long decommissioning phase. In the US plants are required to factor in the cost of the decommissioning phase, but maybe they're just not planning for that in China?? In a few decades they're gunna have a big old mess to clean up and it'll cost them more in the long run. Still cheap energy now if that's all you care about. China usually makes 100 year plans so it's hard to believe they'd be so short sighted on this topic.
>>16827017>Why is Nuclear Energy So Expensive?1. Expensive fuel and very limited in supply.2. Low steam temperature resulting in low energy conversion efficiency.3. High building costs.4. High maintenance costs due to high salaries. 5. High insurance costs.6. High products treatment costs.Comparing to China may be meaningless since they don't have market.
>>16827017Line doesn't go up fast enough for nuclear. People and markets are too shortsighted
>>16827859>Comparing to China may be meaningless since they don't have market.yes they doIt's exactly the same as here or anywhere else...Nuclear is pretty much the simplest form of "power" possible, a lump of spicy metal constantly boiling water
>>16827758>>16827760Why is South Korea's >>16827321 nuclear power plants the cheapest on the planet? Are they cooking the books as well?
>>16827321>unstandardized parts & piecesThis is the single biggest problem, and the one people overlook the most. Because the nuclear energy sector has been kept as small as it has over the last 50 years, there's been almost no impetus to standardize the bulk of components and systems at plants. The bulk of equipment and materials at large plants is entirely custom, and that makes it very expensive and time consuming to build plants, even when the regulation and approval goes through without a hitch.
>>16828228is that a rhetorical question?
>>16827017Unironically it's just red tape. If you actually knew the full extent of the regulatory nightmare that is building a nuclear power plant you'd find it absolutely bizarre. It's legitimately just over-regulation lobbied by the coal and gas companies.
>>16828467t. thinks Richard Jewel planted that bomb
>>16827798Decommissioning costs are small,the main cost is construction and everything else I have heard has been bullshit. Most of the decommissioning period no work is actually being done, they are just waiting for the plant to "cool off" so its easier to take apart without sterilizing the workers.
>>16828284It would be great if they'd come up with a standard plant design (not just the reactor), crank out all the materials need for fifty plants, and then select sites that could be built up to the standardized platform required for the standardized plant. In places where the local conditions would require changes to the plant standard, that place simply would not be eligible for a nuclear plant, at least of the standardized plant design in this phase.Once they're in operation, start on the Mark II design, which would incorporate lessons learned from the first design, and maybe have some different standards so a different set of fifty or so sites could be selected for this Mark II standardized plant design. Make it a rolling system where each decade introduces a new standardized platform for widespread construction. When a generation becomes obsolete, the decommissioning process should be mostly standardized for that particular generation. Don't try to force everything to be 100% nuclear. Crank out tons of plants where the local conditions allow for hosting the standard design of the current generation. Even if that could get the country to 50% nuclear, it would be a huge improvement, and with standardized generation designs, keeping them maintained would be far easier than the current system of basically handcrafting each plant.
>>16827017Greenpeace shows up to protest.Construction is delayed several years.Interest expenses rack up.Most of the cost is INTEREST. Let that sink in.
>>16827758As others pointed out, SK, Russia, Egypt, and a plethora of shitholes like fucking Turkey or Belarus manage to get nuclear power and the fraction of the US costs. "China cooks the books, we show the true costs" is believable. "The entire world is in a global conspiracy to pretend nuclear is cheaper" is schizo.
>>16828196>yes they do>It's exactly the same as here or anywhere else...In order to make the statement that China has a nuclear power plant market, those conditions should be met:1. There should be several companies, at least 2 who build power plants.2. They compete in tenders.3. Those tenders are transparent and everyone knows how much money was allocated and where did those money finally go.4. Those companies should be independent from the government.I guess China has nothing of that.>Nuclear is a lump of spicy metal constantly boiling water- Rocket is a big fire torch.- Computer is just a set of switches.
>>16828489>Most of the decommissioning period no work is actually being done, they are just waiting for the plant to "cool off" so its easier to take apart without sterilizing the workers.An economist would say that real estate just sitting there and not being used is actually an enormous cost. He could've sold the land to build malls and entire suburbs of overpriced rent housing to make hundreds of millions, but there's still a power plant in the way and he can't, which adds those hypothetical hundreds of millions to the decommissioning costs (this is what economists actually believe).
>>16828597>1. There should be several companies, at least 2 who build power plants.>2. They compete in tenders.>3. Those tenders are transparent and everyone knows how much money was allocated and where did those money finally go.Those conditions are satisfied, as China has multiple companies building reactors, and they additionally compete with Rosatom and Framatome both in China and in international tenders.>4. Those companies should be independent from the government.This does not exist on the global energy market, or really on any market. Bechtel and Westinghouse are not independent from the US government. Similarly, Chevron, BP and NextEra Energy are not independent from the government (to say nothing of the likes of Saudi Aramco or Rosneft), so I guess there is no such thing as an energy market period. Space X, Boeing, Airbus, TSMC and Intel are not independent from the government, so aerospace and microelectronic markets don't exist either. I don't think I even need to specify anything regarding agriculture or the military industrial complex. Every single aspect of global economy worldwide is dominated by the unholy fusions of state and corporate capital - a company cannot grow globally relevant without seeping into the ministries and government entities getting embedded into the company. So that's a meaningless criterion currently.
>>16828599Economists also understand the importance of location on the value of land.
>>16828616Land with no power grid and voltage on the outlets costs absolutely fucking nothing.
>>16827508>The cost of living for engineers living in Chinese richest coastal regions rival that of San Francisco/NYC.kek not even close. You can get amazing appartments in Shangai or Shenzen below 800 USD
>>16828619Yes, which is why the claim it has an enormous opportunity cost is a ridiculous claim.
>>16828750Chinese engineers aren't paid in USD, they are paid in YUAN. You're confusing the monetary value by comparing American inflation rate to that of China. Hell, $800 can rent or even buy you a house in Detroit or some shithole places in America.
>>16828757>Why is this cheaper in ChinaWages and costs are lower>But wages aren't lower and costs are the same in Chinese big citiesThey are not>BUT THEY ARE PAID IN YUANAnon wtf are you trying to do here? Obviously the cost of everything is cheaper in China including labor. Purchasing power of wagies is fucking irrelevant to this discussion
So, the answers fall into 2 categories:1. The glorious U.S. safety demands the reactor made of purest diamond and the parking lot to be paved with gold bars, while pathetic Chinese peasants build their unsafe plants in a discarded barn out of plywood. Yet the U.S. couldn't be arsed to put a fence around the pool and a dude fell into it.2. Akchually the plants are more expensive, just for some reason they want to pretend that they are cheap. "They" being: South Korea, India, China, Japan, Brazil, Turkey, Pakistan, UAE, France, Argentina, Bangladesh, Finland, Slovakia, Egypt. They all hide the true costs of their plants. Because they are clearly in league, this is a global conspiracy to make the U.S. nuclear plant industry look bad. They will stop at nothing. The list of countries showing the correct cost of the nuclear plants: UK, USA.
>>16828465>no answerOh, okay.>>16828593Well, nuclear power plants are extremely cheap in South Korea, India, Japan, Brazil, Turkey, Pakistan, UAE, France, etc, but NOT in China because they're lying about their costs, and they're as expensive, if not more expensive than the UK or the US. For some reason.
>>16828800Also, price of electricity has gone up substantially, since energy generation has stagnated while AI data centers have been consuming all available energy.
>>16828608>international tenders.Any Chinese reactors abroad? Not build by Chinese credit of course, the country should pay for them itself.Any tenders that were held in China?>Chevron, BP and NextEra Energy are not independent from the government >BlablablaDo not compare White People's companies to Rosneft. There's a big difference in being regulated by a government and having government procurement, like those companies in the West. And being owned by a government, when they can change your entire management, like those of the East.> .. a company cannot grow globally relevant ...But inside of a state you can have productive competition. Like it happens on market economies mentioned above. Have you noticed that in your list western countries may have 2 or more companies, while dictatorships always have one per country, like mentioned Rosneft and Armaco. Also, you mentioned that China has multiple reactor builders. Now you obliged to list at least 2.
>>16828863>Any Chinese reactors abroad? Like, thirt~>Not build by Chinese credit of courseIf we don't count government-mediated loan-based financing, government subsidies or direct government funding, then US-base companies have built 0 (zero) reactors ever, none of them count.>Any tenders that were held in China?globaltenders dot com "China" "Nuclear Energy", knock yourself out.>Do not compare White PeopleSemitic people are not white, everyone knows that.>There's a big difference in being regulated by a government and having government procurement, like those companies in the West. And being owned by a government, when they can change your entire management, like those of the East.Anon, "Bechtel" has been the most common last name in the DoE since the day DoE was created. Chevron is a Berkshire Hathaway asset, Berkshire Hathaway is a Warren Buffett asset, and Warren Buffett literally is the DNC budget. That's like two immediate examples. The latter of which certainly has nothing to do whatsoever with the nuclear costs situation in the US. And that's before we get to Intel, US Steel, GM, TI...>But inside of a stateEnergy (and basically everything else) is a global market, has been for over a century. There are no and cannot be any markets enjoying "perfect competition" within a solipsistic cocoon of one state. And even if it was possible, US energy market would not be such an example.> while dictatorships always have one per country, like mentioned Rosneft Lukoil? Gazprom? Tatneft? Surgutneftegas?Those are like, only the onles with 50000+ employees and revenues in tens of billions>and Armaco. Sabic? SIBCHEM? Etc?This is the point where you say that's irrelevant.>Also, you mentioned that China has multiple reactor builders. Now you obliged to list at least 2.CNNC, CGN, SPIC.Now you'll say that's also akshually irrelevant and you made a point of claiming that foreign energy markets are monopolized for no reason whatsoever.
>>16828863>a big difference in being regulated by a government and having government procurement, like those companies in the West. And being owned by a government, when they can change your entire management, like those of the East.>what is GBN
>>16827017Politic and banking It usually takes 15 years from proposal to finish and production starts for a nuke plant then another 15-20 to start making money meaning whoever is paying for them needs to be able to wait 40 years to start making an actual profit. You have to pay off loans. Get rid of politics and banking you make a nuclear reactor to power a small city in 6 to 9 months. The navy goes faster at times
If anyone is telling you it takes years to build nuclear plants they are lying. The US navy kicks 4-6 reactors a year. For civilians banking and politics. It's pretty much the perfect energy source look up how much waste has been produced total. Born rich want their cut and control and no one with ambition wants to do that so if never happens unless it's a bloated corporation
>>16829010>>16828999Nuclear reactors for submarines and aircraft carriers like S9G and A1B an order of magnitude below your common BWRs. Most of the ones USN orders are itty-bitty S9Gs for Virginia subs. So not a great comparison. In any case, nobody has ever completed a construction project for a 1000MW+ NPP in under 4 years. Manufacture of reactor itself is far from the biggest hurdles there.
>>16828774>2. Akchually the plants are more expensive, just for some reason they want to pretend that they are cheap.No, you didn't get it. US NPPs probably would cost like those of Japan or France, if they were built in that countries. Regulations, tons of papers, insurance, endless consultations make them expensive. I remember once Musk said he had to sign 25 papers for Tesla car or something.
>>16828898>globaltenders dot com "China" "Nuclear Energy"Literally found 1 trend "Fire Water Pump and Voltage Stabilizer". Wow!
>>16828898>Now you'll say that's also akshually irrelevant and you made a point of claiming that foreign energy markets are monopolized for no reason whatsoever.I can agree with the inner competition, but markets are still closed from outside.Can argue that those markets somehow redistribute money so the power plants look cheaper but actual cost is subsidized. Let's say a US company will never win a tender against China, because China will subsidize their companies so they could actually win that tender.
Because, while on a longterm scale nuclear is completely outperforms everything else currently available, it is inevitable (despite whatever the small hired army of pedestrian chaos agent naysayers preach) great minds will eventually crack the fusion shell, and then all the resources spent on nuclear will have been somewhat wasted. There was a frame of time these past few decades in which nuclear could have invested in far more ambitiously, but rich counterpowers interfered, and now that optimal window of opportunity is quickly fading as the realization of fusion approaches seriousness.The same anti nuke crowd will also remain anti fusion. They're mostly just nepo retards with inherited investments from their boomer oil ancestry. Just gotta clean them all out and we'll pretty much be smooth sailing good to go for the space age utopia of earth.
>>16829052At first I was like>But inside of a state you can have productive competition. but then I>I can agree with the inner competition, but markets are still closed from outside.Anyhow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan_Nuclear_Power_Plant>China will subsidize their companies so they could actually win that tenderMeanwhile you know what country has 0 foreign-built NPPs? https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/power/focd>No license may be issued to an alien or any corporation or other entity if the Commission knows or has reason to believe it is owned, controlled, or dominated by an alien, a foreign corporation, or a foreign government.
>>16829061>optimal window of opportunityFusion when?
>>16827017Entirely regulations, as everything else falls downstream of that.As for the reason for the existence of regulations; initially inherited from military security of the bomb, then standard bureaucratic bloat, finally evolved into leftist economic terrorism against western industry by targeting cheap energy via environmentalism. Also mix in public association of the word “nuclear” with “bomb”.
>>16829061>great minds>>16829130Net energy positive fusion is possible with todays technology. Simply scale up the reactor design. Larger core sizes increases triple product. Scale up the core to a few hundred feet.What limits this is economics. Such an investment would require the planets superconductor production supply for decades, among other extreme inputs.The reactor would only produce few GW while costing trillions to construct.Fusion has always been an economical question, unlike fission.
>>16829149>leftist economic terrorismLeftism has nothing to do with it. The oil companies don't want competition. They pay the government to keep nuclear high cost in order to keep it from threatening oil profits. This is yet another example of how late stage capitalism is destroying everything.
>>16829155>Fusion has always been an economical questionCite your existing energy position fusion plantsI could build an energy positive fission reactor in my backyard out of uranium ore
>>16829155You were asked when. You are not saying when.
>>16828599yeah the fact that it eats up land is a minor cost but land costs are pretty irrelevant compared to what goes on top of them, its not like big power plants usually go in prime real estate anyways lol
>>16829412And yes, it costs a few hundred million to decommission a reactor unit, but this is minor compared to its maintenance/fuel/construction costs from when it actually was a useful asset.As usual, the decommissioning argument is a waste of time.
The real awnser is that it used to be politically expedient to let the industry die, and it was ever so slightly more expensive than coal (and eventually fracked gas) so no one felt the need to do anything different.Now it turns out CO2 is actually bad and wind and solar aren't a replacement for thermal generation and they had just got done murdering the construction industry, oops!
>>16829416Even in the 70's and 60's nuclear needed government support, free markets were still on coal for the most part at that time. Nuclear does fine if you need a way to cut down on air pollutants, but somehow the greens of the world got it in their heads that nuclear wasn't specifically developed to make their agenda happen, so that didn't happen.
>>16829421My conspiracy theory is that it's mostly a hangover from the Cold War. The Soviets funded anti-nuclear groups, especially Greens, in the west during the Cold War. They knew nuclear research was dual purpose so having useful idiots in the west oppose civilian nuclear power had the benefit of slowing down military advancements in nuclear weaponry. Plus having the west in a perpetual energy crisis helped the Soviets too. When the Iron Curtain fell, those useful idiots weren't deprogrammed. They continue to roam around opposing anything nuclear by reflex. It's part of their core programming.
>>16829127Well, thanks for the ejucation and doing all the research. Did you just, sorry my language, PINPOINTED the answer for the tread's question? And what would be your proposed solution to the expensive US energy?Clearly, if US don't want alien nukeplants inside, it's due to security reasons. So my solution would be either ease the security by letting selected countries, like South Korea in. Or increasing inner competition somehow. May be allow states to regulate their nuclear shit? So some states (desert ones) would produce energy on such cheap level, so even being transported far away that energy would still be competitive. This will create per-state diversity and make the industry more competitive.
>>16829439Deboonked. Post-Soviet societies have their own anti-nuclear activists.
>>16829546Are you under the impression that when the Cold War ended, all humans were killed and a fresh batch with no connections to those killed replaced them?
Anglos are just shit at infrastructure in general. You can compare what the Spanish or Italian goverment do with their tony infrastructure budget and compare what the UK does with its bloated one and it is baffling how shit anglos are at managing public budgets and public spending and how much bloat they have with consultants+lawyers to do the most basic shit
>>16829597The point is, if anti-nuclear activism was a product of foreign communist psyops then territories formerly controlled by foreign communists would not be characterized by roughly equal representation of anti-nuclear activists per capita. They would not be psyopping their own population against their own (massive) nuclear power initiative. So that hypothesis is shit.
>>16829529>Clearly, if US don't want alien nukeplants inside, it's due to security reasonsSecurity reasons are a blatant gay-ass excuse. Nobody has ever had a foreign company come, build an NPP, own it and staff it with it's own people. This works through the national and foreign nuclear companies creating a joint venture, which receives government funding, pulls the foreign project through government approval, builds it using mostly local workforce and materials with imported key elements (like reactors themselves) and specialists. And then the plant is operated by a different joint venture, partially owned by foreign and foreign nuclear companies, with draconian government oversight. The fact that a fuckton of US NPPs were literally operating on straight up Russian nuclear fuel was much greater "security risk" than an NPP built by some hypothetical "RBH LLC" (owned by Rosatom, Bechtel and Hitachi) using a Russian WWER-1200 and operated by like "North American Energy Inc" (owned by Vanguard, GE and Rosatom).The whole point of this regulation is preventing competition. The entire national market goes to American companies, who in turn support the lawmakers and functionaries both in office (by financing their campaigns and political party) and out of office (by securing them highly lucrative positions in the company). And the more money companies ask for to build a power plant, the more of it comes back to the corrupt politicians. So there is no reason for the companies to not ask the highest cost they have the financial capacity to absorb, and there is simultaneously no reason for the government functionaries to ever say "no" to these exuberant costs, because they are not losing money by paying more - the government does, but they end up getting more the more they secure for the companies. Even internal competition is a bust, since it's a motherfucking cartel which just neatly divvied up the market between themselves by function.
>>16829291>I could build an energy positive fission reactor in my backyard out of uranium oreYes, what point are you making?>Cite your existing energy position fusion plantsThey don’t exist because it’s a question of economics. I can’t cite the existence of five mile high pyramids constructed with Egyptian limestone either as they too are uneconomical.>>16829409Yesterday. The technology is always available. We’re nor waiting on the technology; it’s economics.
>>16829782>Yesterday.Where?>They don’t exist Ooooh~
