<story><title>Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy</title><url>https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power-construction-c3c</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomComb</author><text>Yes, cost is the issue.&lt;p&gt;Everyone assumes that anyone hesitant about Nuclear power is focussed on the environmental or safety concerns, but that is wrong.  The costs (and cost overruns) of the construction and maintenance of Nuclear reactors have been enough reason on their own to be bearish on Nuclear.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m hopeful that new technologies, such as small nuclear reactions that can be built in a factory, will address this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>virissimo</author><text>Our nations were far less wealthy when the existing stock of nuclear power plants were built, the technology available for building them have improved since then, and the raw resources needed as their inputs aren&amp;#x27;t a constraint, so why have costs risen so much relative to what we are willing to spend on it?&lt;p&gt;Environmental and safety regulations are supposed to be explanations for this rise in cost, not rival explanations to &amp;quot;cost is the issue&amp;quot; (since they take that as given).</text></comment>
<story><title>Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy</title><url>https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power-construction-c3c</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomComb</author><text>Yes, cost is the issue.&lt;p&gt;Everyone assumes that anyone hesitant about Nuclear power is focussed on the environmental or safety concerns, but that is wrong.  The costs (and cost overruns) of the construction and maintenance of Nuclear reactors have been enough reason on their own to be bearish on Nuclear.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m hopeful that new technologies, such as small nuclear reactions that can be built in a factory, will address this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jjk166</author><text>Nuclear is not fundamentally expensive[0], and most nuclear power plants currently in operation were cheap when they were built. The high costs of building new powerplants is a result of going decades without building any, leading to a loss of experience. Even still, nuclear remains competitive with other traditional power generation technologies like coal. Only with recent advancements in fracking did natural gas supplant coal as the go to fuel, and Wind and solar have become extremely inexpensive, but only in the past 10 years, in large part due to a concerted effort to scale up those industries. In other parts of the world where nuclear power did not have a decades long hiatus it remains extremely competitive with even these renewables, for example in South Korea where LCOE for nuclear is half that of solar.&lt;p&gt;Of course you may have only became bearish on nuclear when the costs got high, but there are a large number of people who were bearish before then, which is what made costs high.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&amp;#x2F;science&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;pii&amp;#x2F;S0301421516300106&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&amp;#x2F;science&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;pii&amp;#x2F;S030142151...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>