14 thoughts on “Nuclear Power’s Future”

  1. I agree the smaller power plant build in a factory and shipped to a site would be more economical than asking an army of union laborers to build a mega power plant. The real problem will be our old problem. The protests and endless litigation from the nimbi’s, and the usual environmental groups will slow the production to a trickle. This will ultimately impact the costs. Maybe they can have the Park Police perform a preemptive strike.

    1. The issue isn’t protests and litigation directly. Nuclear’s main problem is high cost due to excessive regulation. The regulations are excessive due to *fear* of protests and litigation, as well as a large amount of political pressure in general, from influential groups hostile to nuclear (i.e., the fossil industry and “environmentalists”).

      In the Southeast, where almost all proposed new reactors would be, nuclear enjoys a high degree of political/popular support. The support level is even higher in the local communities where the plants are to be built (due to jobs and tax base). Many such communities have actively competed for the privelege of having a reactor built there. So, NIMBY (lack of local support) is not the problem. High costs and project construction risks from onerous regulation is the problem.

    1. It’s doing well in Asia, mainly China and India. There are actually over 100 plants under construction or planned. Nuclear is actually projected to be one of the fastest growing sources between now and 2040.

      1. China and India are also building coal plants; they seem to be building everything. Is there any reason to believe that, absence regulatory burdens, nuclear can compete financially with coal or natural gas?

    2. “Is nuclear power doing very well anywhere? It seems to be a broader problem than just U.S. regulations.”

      Nuclear power was doing just fine in France and Germany until they (mostly Germany) got bitten by the Green Bug and became delusional about solar and wind. Though I think France was somewhat less delusional than Germany.

      They are now paying the price for their delusions: in Germany the price of a kilowatt hour has skyrocketed due to tithing at the altar of Green Imbecility.

      Israel doesn’t seem to have a problem with Nuke power and they get a lot more sunshine than Germany. Whoever pushed solar in Germany must have been on crack. Never mind the guaranteed failure on subsidizing a technology not ready for the market…….. lotta cloud cover there.

  3. “The industry is a mess because the government has been inhibiting innovation in it for decades, since the beginning”

    Why, yes, the French, British, German, Italian, Turkish, Israeli, Iranian, Indian, Chinese, Russian,
    Japanese, brazilian, Malaysian, Indonesian, Thai governments have been inhibiting innovation.

    I seem to recall nuclear power plant construction came to a halt during the Reagan Administration.

    Hong Kong missed out on nuclear power and you can do anything in hong kong.

    1. A lot of those countries in your list – by their very governmental nature and society – are not innovative. Not impossible, but you don’t get many innovations out of a lot of them. For one thing they don’t have the scientific and engineering cadres you need for that. For places like France and Germany, they went full bore on nuke plants decades ago and they were operating just fine until they were shut down for no good reason. With all that infrastructure investment, it’s hard to replace working, profit making plants with newer ones when you don’t have to or when the profit margin for doing so doesn’t justify it (see: Cash for clunkers). It’s bad economics. In time there would have been economically positive replacement. But their governments choked that off.

      Because now, of course, it’s silly to expect nuke plant innovation from Germany since they decided to shut the nukes down. So that’s a direct case of the government shutting down innovation in a country perfectly capable of innovating.

      For innovation you need a population where innovation is cultural; you need a government which will get out of the way; you need the trained cadre of scientists, engineers and tinkerers. I don’t see those sorts of pre-requisites in Malaysia, for example. Not that it can’t happen there….just that the odds are low.

      1. Then one question is why innovative US/French/Japanese/etc. companies aren’t building plants in countries like Turkey, Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand, etc. — countries with very different regulatory regimes than those here or in Europe. Innovation doesn’t have to be homegrown, it can be imported if the economics make sense.

        1. “Then one question is why innovative US/French/Japanese/etc. companies aren’t building plants in countries like Turkey, Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand, etc”

          Well firstly you’d have to find out whether or not they tried. If so, were they rebuffed by those governments? Then you’d have to ask if inability to build there was from a purely economic analysis (i.e. they were outbid), or political (we want only Russkie Reaktors), or a combination of both. Thirdly, you’d have to find out if the business plan resulting from an analysis of building in, say, Malaysia was worth the investment to the company – maybe they didn’t pay enough. Fourthly, you’d have to find out if Reactor technology is something the US Government allows to be exported. Fifthly you’d have to decide, as the Nuke builder, if putting your best secrets in a foreign country is to your advantage since they may or may not honor any patents you might have. In short to answer that question you’d have to know a lot about the situation.

          Unlike Statist Thugocracies, businesses can’t just decide to build a reactor anywhere they want.

          “Innovation doesn’t have to be homegrown, it can be imported if the economics make sense.”

          Well of course the buyer would love to buy innovation. That’s blitheringly obvious.

          But maybe the innovator isn’t interested in giving the innovation away to a government which might not honor the ownership of said intellectual property.

        2. “Then one question is why innovative US/French/Japanese/etc. companies aren’t building plants in countries like Turkey, Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand, etc. — countries with very different regulatory regimes than those here or in Europe.”

          Well to answer that question you’d have to know some facts.

          Firstly, did the companies even try to build in those countries? If they did try, why did the deal not go through? Was it because they were outbid? Were there political considerations in the host country that prevented selection of US companies (e.g. paid off by the Russkies to love only Russkie Reaktors). Were the politicians bribed to select the “right” one?

          If they didn’t try, was it because the business model didn’t support it? Or does the US government prevent nuke technology from being exported to some/all of those places? If you are Germany and drinking deeply of the Green Kool-Aid do you even try to export the best reactor tech? Do the companies in question trust that their rights to intellectual property will be honored? After Fukushima, do you want to be on the hook for international lawsuits if a World Class tsunami and earthquake cracks your reactor?

          “Innovation doesn’t have to be homegrown, it can be imported if the economics make sense.”

          Well obviously importing innovation is great if you can’t generate it – blindingly obvious. But is it good for the companies who innovated to export that innovation?

  4. Hong Kong missed out on nuclear power and you can do anything in hong kong.

    Have you seen a map of Hong Kong? They had to build an island, a pretty good distance away, to build an airport. Ignoring that Hong Kong is now run by China, and allowing that it was once run by the British; you still cannot just do anything in Hong Kong because of the politics and less regulation. There is this thing called geography. Is your argument that Hong Kong has the same geography as the United States yet they opted not to go with nuclear power?

    I seem to recall nuclear power plant construction came to a halt during the Reagan Administration.

    Yes, the Democrat run House of Representatives, lead by Tip O’Neill who shutdown the US government 12 times (7 times under Reagan), pushed through various regulations against the Reagan’s Administrations attempt to deregulate nuclear energy. The new regulation didn’t have to do with the shutdowns, but back then, the Democrats were not opposed to Congress using the power of the purse to force a President to negotiate.

    1. Hong Kong was 426 square miles in area. They also had the land area for
      Coal and Oil plants, and a nuclear plant is much smaller.

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