<story><title>The US is getting its first new nuclear reactor in 40 years</title><url>https://grist.org/energy/first-us-nuclear-reactor-40-years-online-georgia/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>epistasis</author><text>The delays on this project have nothing at all to do with people opposing nuclear construction.&lt;p&gt;The site welcomed more reactors. The results were approved under a new proces that was explicitly requested by the industry in order to expedite everything.&lt;p&gt;Nuclear is a big construction project, and suffers from the same big construction project cost disease that every other big construction project suffers from in the US. In addition, it suffers from needing absolutely massive amounts of custom, high precision welding, and high precision concrete pours unlike any other construction project. In addition to being some of the most complex projects ever designed, it requires a large amount of highly skilled labor really only gets used for this one purpose in our economy.&lt;p&gt;I wish nuclear proponents would recognize the inherent challenges of the problem, the inherent labor and construction efficiencies that made nuclear a good fit for the mid-20th century, but a less good fit for the 21st century when labor is much more valuable, and perhaps we should put it to more valuable purposes when we have far cheaper alternatives. Building buildings for manufacturing results in much better utilization of labor. A manufacturing facilities that produce 4 GW of solar&amp;#x2F;year is an exponential improvement over a 1GW nuclear reactor.</text></item><item><author>bcatanzaro</author><text>The people who oppose nuclear power always point to the construction cost and long delays.&lt;p&gt;BUT.&lt;p&gt;The reason for the long and expensive construction has a lot to do with the people opposing the construction! We could build these reactors so much more cheaply and quickly (and more safely!) if we decided to!&lt;p&gt;This in an argument from unclean hands. Nuclear skeptics, like the ones given so much airtime in the linked article, have been very successful in driving up costs and adding delay. But these costs and delays are not intrinsic to the technology. It&amp;#x27;s not fair if I delay a thing for me to claim the thing has failed because it was late. No, it failed because I delayed it.&lt;p&gt;I wish the nuclear skeptics would apply their delay tactics to coal power plants, which spew staggering amounts of radionuclides over huge swaths of the world, not to mention their carbon emissions.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>oceanplexian</author><text>&amp;gt; I wish nuclear proponents would recognize the inherent challenges of the problem, the inherent labor and construction efficiencies that made nuclear a good fit for the mid-20th century&lt;p&gt;Yeah, this argument might hold water if there was nothing to compare to, but there is.&lt;p&gt;China stamps these things out of an assembly line. Every year they’re building multiple nuclear reactors, leaving us in the dust. You can’t make the argument that China’s reactors are unsafe, because they’ve had less accidents than us. To me it’s obvious that it’s not an insurmountable engineering problem.</text></comment>
<story><title>The US is getting its first new nuclear reactor in 40 years</title><url>https://grist.org/energy/first-us-nuclear-reactor-40-years-online-georgia/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>epistasis</author><text>The delays on this project have nothing at all to do with people opposing nuclear construction.&lt;p&gt;The site welcomed more reactors. The results were approved under a new proces that was explicitly requested by the industry in order to expedite everything.&lt;p&gt;Nuclear is a big construction project, and suffers from the same big construction project cost disease that every other big construction project suffers from in the US. In addition, it suffers from needing absolutely massive amounts of custom, high precision welding, and high precision concrete pours unlike any other construction project. In addition to being some of the most complex projects ever designed, it requires a large amount of highly skilled labor really only gets used for this one purpose in our economy.&lt;p&gt;I wish nuclear proponents would recognize the inherent challenges of the problem, the inherent labor and construction efficiencies that made nuclear a good fit for the mid-20th century, but a less good fit for the 21st century when labor is much more valuable, and perhaps we should put it to more valuable purposes when we have far cheaper alternatives. Building buildings for manufacturing results in much better utilization of labor. A manufacturing facilities that produce 4 GW of solar&amp;#x2F;year is an exponential improvement over a 1GW nuclear reactor.</text></item><item><author>bcatanzaro</author><text>The people who oppose nuclear power always point to the construction cost and long delays.&lt;p&gt;BUT.&lt;p&gt;The reason for the long and expensive construction has a lot to do with the people opposing the construction! We could build these reactors so much more cheaply and quickly (and more safely!) if we decided to!&lt;p&gt;This in an argument from unclean hands. Nuclear skeptics, like the ones given so much airtime in the linked article, have been very successful in driving up costs and adding delay. But these costs and delays are not intrinsic to the technology. It&amp;#x27;s not fair if I delay a thing for me to claim the thing has failed because it was late. No, it failed because I delayed it.&lt;p&gt;I wish the nuclear skeptics would apply their delay tactics to coal power plants, which spew staggering amounts of radionuclides over huge swaths of the world, not to mention their carbon emissions.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ftth_finland</author><text>More solar is better if it displaces fossil fuels, loads can be moved to coincide with sunshine, output can be cost effectively stored and&amp;#x2F;or the climate is co-operative.&lt;p&gt;Not all of these assumptions hold everywhere or every time.</text></comment>