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EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

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1041 points mpweiher | 4 comments | 12 Sep 25 18:18 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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reenorap ◴[12 Sep 25 18:54 UTC] No.45225348[source]▶
We need to drive down the costs of implementing nuclear energy. Most of it are fake costs due to regulation. I understand that regulation is needed but we also need nuclear energy, we have to find a streamlined way to get more plants up and running as soon as possible. I think they should all be government projects so that private companies can't complain that they're losing money and keep have to ratchet up the prices, like PG&E in California. My rates have doubled in a few years to over $0.40/kWh and up over $0.50/kWh after I go up a tier depending on usage.
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epistasis ◴[12 Sep 25 19:01 UTC] No.45225431[source]▶
Which are the fake costs from regulation?

We have new builds in Europe of the EPR, in France and Finland, and it has had disastrous costs. China has built some too, presumably cheaper, since they keep on building more. What is the regulatory difference there?

I have yet to find any concrete defense of the idea that costs are coming from regulation, rather than the costs of construction in advanced economies.

If regulations are the cost, name them and a solution. Otherwise it seems like we are wasting efforts in optimizing the wrong thing for nuclear.

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1. krisoft ◴[12 Sep 25 19:42 UTC] No.45225895[source]▶
> If regulations are the cost, name them and a solution.

That is a funny ask. Regulation doesnt have to be a single thing. It can very well be cost-overrun by a thousand paper cut. You can drown any project in endless paperwork, environmental and national security reviews. In fact unclear and contradictory requirements are much more conductive to drive costs up than a single Lets-make-nuclear-expensive-Act.

That being said if you need to pick a single thing (which is silly) then the “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” principle of radiation protection is a prime candidate. When you have a safety limit you can design a system to remain under it. When you are designing a sytem for the ALARA principle that in itself will blow your costs up.

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2. Matticus_Rex ◴[12 Sep 25 20:28 UTC] No.45226380[source]▶
You're getting downvoted, but you're correct. It's death by a thousand cuts, because ALARA forces radiation exposure-reduction expenditures to scale upward forever, despite the fact that radiation exposure from plants long ago reached levels far below those that result in any risk. There is no lower bound, so the regulators never stop reducing exposure further, raising costs further and further over time.

Under ALARA, nuclear literally isn't allowed to reduce market electric costs, because the requirements for reducing exposure scale to what keeps it competitive with other forms of production! If all other electric costs doubled tomorrow, the NRC would respond by raising the requirements for plants to reduce radiation exposure.

If that sounds insane, it's because it's insane. Our nuclear regulations are insane.

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3. epistasis ◴[12 Sep 25 21:03 UTC] No.45226738[source]▶
ALARA would indicate that the increased costs from regulation are due to the design of the reactor.

However, my example is of reactors that China can build cost effectively, but which Europe can not. (And the AP1000 is an example where China can build the design cost effectively, but the US can not.)

That would indicate that nuclear reactors could be built cost effectively, with the same design, and without changing ALARA.

Removing ALARA may provide some sort of cost savings, but without some concrete and specific indication of how that would change the design, and to what savings during construction, it's hard to agree that ALARA is at fault.

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4. krisoft ◴[13 Sep 25 10:19 UTC] No.45230877{3}[source]▶
> ALARA would indicate that the increased costs from regulation are due to the design of the reactor.

Yeah. Due to armies of highly paid experts spending almost a decade of their life arguing if the design is up to the regulations. And also when because of these uncertainties you start building before full approval and then requirements change.