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0 pointsRetric3y ago0 comments

Fuel is hardly the only advantage, the major issue with fission is the enormous costs of trying to avoid problems or cleanup after them. Thus 24/7 security, redundancy on top of redundancy, walls thick enough to stop aircraft etc. Fission is still by far the most expensive power source even with massive subsides and is only even close to economically viable as base load power backed up with peaking power plants.

In theory much of that is excessive but there is a long history of very expensive mistakes with massive cleanup efforts. The US talks about three mile island as the largest nuclear accident ignoring the Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One that killed 3 people. All that complexity and expense comes from trying to avoid real mistakes that actually happened.

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5 comments · 5 top-level

Galaxeblaffer3y ago

this is simply not true. according to IEA

https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...

LCOE of nuclear is cheaper than almost all other possibilities we have. sure nuclear is very expensive up front, but a nuclear powerplant can run for 100 years while wind and solar had to be completely replaced every 25 years.

your correct that nuclear has had some very expensive accidents, but the chance of a modern gen3+ plant that we'd build today causing any accidents like that in a western country is so very close to 0 that it's not even worth discussing.

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pfdietz3y ago

Fusion will also have to go to enormous efforts to avoid problems -- not because of public safety, but because it's very difficult to repair anything in the reactor if it breaks. This was a lesson of Three Mile Island: a nuclear accident that doesn't kill anyone is still ruinous for a utility, since their large investment is destroyed.

kennend33y ago

Came here for the F.U.D and you did not disappoint.

>. Fission is still by far the most expensive power source even with massive subsides and is only even close to economically viable as base load power backed up with peaking power plants.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/748580/electricity-cost-...

Seems Solar is the most expensive, and by a large margin?

It looks like nuclear is cheaper vs almost all "renewables"?

There is a nuclear power plant ~10KM from me that set world records:

- On October 7, 1994, Pickering Unit 7 set the world record for continuous runtime at 894 days, a record that stood for 22 years.

Can you provide the number of days that "WIND" or "Solar" have provided continuous power for?

That complexity and expense is because you are building machines which can run for 894 days NON-STOP. (CANDU plants can be refuelled while operating)

Diesel locomotives are expensive, a lot of this is attributed to the engine designed to run at high-output for an extended amount of time.

panick21_3y ago

> the major issue with fission is the enormous costs of trying to avoid problems or cleanup after them. Thus 24/7 security, redundancy on top of redundancy, walls thick enough to stop aircraft etc.

A fusion reactor will also require wall thick enough to stop aircraft. Security will likey be the same to. And there is no fundamental reason why fusion should require any less for any of these.

In fact the actual cost of nuclear is CAPX and comes from the large civil engineering project with high specification, the steam turbine and water towers.

There are lots of fission based reactor designs that have non of these things. So nothing you describe has really much to do with 'fission' itself. Fission plants can also be made so that airborn radiation is practically impossible.

We simply stopped fundamentally advancing fission reactors in the early 70s and instead of solving problems fundamentally, we added lots of regulation.

batrastard3y ago

The most expensive before or after taking greenhouse emissions into effect?

Seems like power generation still counts on externalities being external.

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