Google commits to buying power generated by nuclear-energy startup Kairos Power

The typical reaction is I think supported by an efficient markets pov - in other words this is dumb, we know it’s dumb, but market failures make it look to the owners of capital that it’s a good investment

1. There is too much money in the world for the investments (Massive QE post 2008 and post covid). Hence people with money want returns on tokens that say 10 dollars in the front instead of say 5 dollars

2. The externalities of nuclear power are not properly priced in (see Chernobyl)

3. The price of tax compared to services received for wealthy is again out of whack and so any investment looks good because the whole chain is not paying enough tax

All in all, I believe in efficient markets and price mechanisms - I just also believe people with power and influence bend the markets to their own needs and guess what they stop being efficient - hence the need for strong governments (not strongman governments)

Based on other threads here, it doesn't seem like there is universal consensus that this is dumb.

What about the positive externalities of nuclear power? It’s unfair to only complain about negative externalities - any action whatsoever always has a negative side-effect which can be used as a cynical excuse to block it.

That’s ok. They can be wrong :-)

Nuclear power has almost unlimited downsides and fairly limited upsides.

It’s at least as expensive (and mostly more) to maintain a nuclear power station As any other form of (non-carbon) power generation - and the costs of catastrophic failure and orders of magnitude higher.

This is just back of the envelope maths. Cost to maintain a power station of X GW for 100 years is X, cost to maintain solar panels of X GW for 100 years is Y. Cost of total catastrophic failure in fifty years of solar panels because the country fell apart is small y. Cost of total catastrophic failure of fission reactor is huge great X.

The simplest analysis just comes up with huge downsides.

Look I take the train past Battersea powerstation most days. It was built 100 years ago at the height (?) of the British Empire. It became disused as Britain fell into bankruptcy in the 70s and was left to fester for decades before people realised a vast shopping centre in the middle of London was quite nice.

If it was nuclear it would still be sealed off, any slacking of maintenance, any cost saving too far, would fuck up the world’s greatest city .

And if you think the worlds most powerful and richest country could always afford the very best maintenance - let me introduce you to political decision making in the 1960s, industrial policy in the 1970s and human beings who tend to hope as a strategy.

It’s not hard to pretend the obvious won’t happen, and if you take the risk sometimes you will be right. And the cautious man will look silly.

But in the end Warren Buffet looks more sensible than Dick Fuld.

And even Warren is aware he pays far less tax relative to his maid. But it’s upto us to fix that just as it’s upto us to not make bad investment choices as a society that we will pay costly annual fees for centuries to come.

Downthread I go on (much) longer, but honestly I see the maths as simple

1. We want to generate electricity with minimal carbon output. 2. Nuclear is part of this equation (along with solar, wind and tidal. Maybe one day fusion) 3. Nuclear has large capital upfront, a maintenance cost that requires us to always be on the A game, and the cost of catastrophic failure is fucking huge. 4. The other options have downsides of course, but their ongoing maintenance is basically lower because the catastrophe cost is much much much lower. 5. It’s really hard to quantify things like “major urban area made uninhabitable”, because it has almost never happened. But it can and it will if we keep chucking risk around like this.

6. The way to stop this, no the way to align investment, is to correct price externalities - positive and negative.

If we want to re- start places like Indian Point (a relative well Managed successful nuclear plant whose history reads like a series of disasters) then we ask what if Indian point failed like Fukushima.

That’s Westchester, and most of Manhattan that suddenly looks like a disaster movie. No Fukushima was not actually as deadly as feared (1 person kinda), but the evacuation and knock on effects. Try that on the Hudson and see what the cost of evacuating New York is - I mean, shipping, finance everything.

Honestly I struggle to see what’s crazy anymore.

How about every bond raised to fund a nuclear plant has a 100 year lien attached that no payments can be made till a century of safe operation and closure has occurred.

If the financials make sense after that I will take another look.

The designers of new reactors (the one in this article specifically, and others too) claim that the design is inherently safe and has no possibility of catastrophic meltdown.

If this is true, then you are greatly overestimating the downside costs.

The result of a failed system won't be as inert and benign as a failed solar panel, but it is also unlikely to be "fuck up the entire city", especially when considering the smaller modular deployment.

>>> If this is true,

The cheque is in the post, I will still respect you in the morning,

Come on. I’m not saying new designs are Rube Goldberg machines flinging radioactive waste around, but “perfectly safe for the next hundred or five hundred years” is complete rubbish. There is no such thing.

This is not about engineering - this is about humans, how humans react in the face of profitable deals, and the history of engineering safe systems (one death or catastrophe at a time)