It's almost criminal how every time someone refers to the Fukushima disaster, media portrays images of the destruction brought upon by both the earthquake and tsunami, apparently implying (at least to people not familiar with the matter) that all that devastation was done by the nuclear accident.
And the media never talks about how the operators and managers of the Fukushima power plant knew for years of the risks of a major tsunami, they knew that the backup generators for the coolant pumps would not be high enough to prevent them being flooded yet they did nothing to adequately prepare for a disaster. Fukushima’s biggest disaster was it’s incompetent failure of management for a completely avoidable catastrophe, which directly lead to the company that owned the power plant being taken over by the Japanese government
Their reactors only had a problem because the diesel pumps were damaged. Not a problem anymore with their adjustments and would never be in a normal site for a reactor.
Exactly. They can’t build anything cheaply. Fabs, subways, trains. UK can’t build new trains either. Constantly starting and stopping projects lead to loss of knowledge and inability to remove all the barriers to learn to get better.
Fear has dominated our thoughts about nuclear power for far too long. It's our only path to safe, clean, abundant, on demand power. I grew up next to a Nuclear power station, my family and friends all have worked there and all of them are still alive today. My father is 87, retired from being an engineer at the plant. We need to let our unreasonable fears go and embrace the future.
Nonsense! The cost per kWh produced is why why higher than that of solar/wind with battery power plant together. It is economical suicide. Only crazy people believing in the energy fairy pushing this tech...
Fission byproducts remain dangerous for like 10000 years. That's a long time for someone to eventually discover and accidentally (or worse intentionally) spill the contents of those casks.
@@eggnogaddict6287what’s there to look at? The fact there’s not a single death due to radiation? The fact that cities like Rome are more radiant than it was the day after the accident?
I think the US is really shy about big infrastructure spending. Too much focus on instantaneous profitability. It's all about the share price and how corporations can fund ceo salaries.
Well that and the past 50 years give or take certain media (D) has made sure to keep the public scared of nuclear energy to line their pockets so they can push all their "green" energy which all the poloticians have their fingers in either as CEOs or shareholders.
From Australia, I say that this is all the fault of western governments lowering taxes to get elected. We all had shiploads of money until Reagan and Thatcher started demonising taxation - making governments run on a shoestring is NOT they way to pursue worthy goals. You guys didn't do all the amazing things you've done by having a penniless government.
@@mahamedbarry3671 very true. There used to be a time when we, the USA were willing to do those big infrastructure projects. But that was a time when you could work a straight 40hr week w/ a HS diploma and be able to support a family on just one income. My dad did that. He was a blue collar guy, didn't have a college degree and made good money. You can't do that today. That America, sadly, does not exist anymore.
5:35 Southern Environmental Law Center: *does everything it can't to stop nuclear construction, and sues nuclear at ever step* Also Southern Environmental Law Center: "Why is nuclear energy so expensive to build?"
@@SCComega tbh I was Union Boilermaker for a while and the waste alone is soooo scary man. They're guessing with literally all of it and hoping for the best. It just worries me for the future of the planet I plan on having kids bro
@@Spetsnaz--21 Availability: Nuclear is inherently limited to where and who can deploy it. Nations lacking stable, strong, peace-focused governments and institutions are rightfully a security concern to the rest of the world when it comes to deploying nuclear technology of almost any form. This factor alone knocks nuclear out of the running for most of the planet. Scale: Nuclear doesn't scale down well. Much of the world simply doesn't need concentrated 1GW power generation, at least not at their current stages of industrialization. Solar trivially scales down to microwatts (μW) and of course all the way up through gigawatts to directly complete with nuclear capacity. There are lots of "micro reactor" designs in the works, but "micro" here is relative as they're only micro in relation to convention reactors. Micro nuclear reactors are still in the tens or hundreds of megawatts. The smallest micro reactor designs are still generating 2,000 times the power of a typical rooftop solar installation and most are generating more than 20,000x. Nuclear doesn't know what small is. External Infrastructure: Because it can't scale down nuclear power is inherently dependant on centralized power grid infrastructure to distribute it. That grid may not exist at all, it may be 100 years old and need of complete replacement, it may not be stable or secure due to economic or political weaknesses, and of course such grids are highly susceptible to climate change effects (fires, storms, etc). Industrial scale solar can certainly leverage a traditional centralized power grid if it exists, but solar doesn't require any grid whatsoever. Solar's ability to scale down and availability also make it a prime candidate for next generation mesh grid designs. Such mesh grid designs have huge advantage over traditional grid designs (security, availability, agility, installation costs, fire/storm resistant, etc) while retaining the best benefits of traditional grids. Nuclear's inability to scale down makes it a very awkward resource for mesh grid technologies and negates many of the benefits of such grids. Deployment Speed: Solar can be deployed in minutes. That's slightly hyperbolic, but the fact is solar deployment timelines mostly scale proportionally to the deployment's capacity. And since solar scales down so well, it's trivial to perform many small deployments in parallel. It's that parallel deployment capability that has enabled so much new solar power to come online in the aggregate in such a small amount of time. Nuclear projects at best take years and are much, much more difficult to do in parallel as the technologies and expertise needed simply don't reproduce anywhere near as quickly or as cheaply as solar installation does. Agility: Because of all the factors described above it is very difficult to be agile with nuclear power. You can't bring it online as needed...you instead need to predict years in advance what your power requirements will be in a given location. And once deployed you can't move it: You've got to predict the power needs of a given location for practically the next century. Solar in sharp contrast, can be deployed when it's needed, in the amounts that are needed, expanded quickly when needed, and moved quickly when needs change. This kind of agility is going to be absolutely essential over the next decades as climate change quickly, dramatically, and unpredictably changes where and how we need power. Geographical: Solar certainly has some geographic limitations, after all it likes sunshine and lots of it. But most nuclear designs are much, much pickier. Along with all the other limitations described above, most all nuclear reactor designs are still really just boilers for steam turbines. Because of that fact and their large size they typically need a lot of water as they're not closed loop systems. A considerable amount of the world's power needs are not near suitable water sources for a nuclear plant...and many that are have serious safety concerns of tsunami risk and of course greatly increased storm risk due to climate change. Risk: All of these factors amplify each other creating massive risk for any nuclear project. This in turn makes for extremely expensive underwriting. The scale, the uncertainties, the inflexibilities, the externalizations, neverly everything stacks up high on the side of risk with very little on the side of potential reward. Cost: The costs for nuclear are massive for all the above factors and more. And those costs are only going up as the world becomes more dangerous and macro uncertainties such as changing needs due to climate change become more common and more impactful. Conclusion: Fission generation is a dead end. The only real possible future for nuclear generation is fusion because it's the only fundamental nuclear technology that has the potential to mitigate many of fission's most serious issues (security, scale, agility, cost, speed). But of course aside from Sol, practical fusion power generation is just science fiction at this point in time. It may take decades to exist...it may never exist at all...and we need deployable solutions yesterday and everywhere, not years or decades from now and only in a few privileged nations. HT Zenin
There is no such thing as recycling nuclear fuel rods. This wording was pushed by the nuclear lobby. In reality, it just means to extract Plutonium, to manufacture Plutonium based fuel rods. The overall amount of waste doesn't go down. And it is a dead-end, since the highly problematic waste is stored in glass plates. Even if there would a technology in the future, to reduce this waste or to use it as a fuel, it will be stuck in glass.
Deflect, nice. It is stupid politicians pandering to the environmental cult who want us to live in the 1700s. As they type on their plastic computers and use their cell phones. 🤡
@@JDMSwervo2001oil makes up like 0.3% of electricity generation, and that's almost exclusively through emergency diesel. As for coal, it doesn't even make up as high of a percentage (16.8%) of our national mix as nuclear (18.6%). Seriously, the EIA keeps really good track of these things, so you don't have to look like an idiot.
Environmental Lawyer talking about unexpected costs not taking into account they are the reason for the unexpected costs. I didn't know the US was the #1 producer of Nuclear Energy. I just assumed it was France or Russia.
Absolutely, the same here in europe where the extensive bureaucracy triple prices for everything since making stuff take longer but companies still have to pay their empoyees while they have nothing to do, they are at the construction site waiting for bureaucrats letting them to work. Imagine how much more we can do from the same amount of money without those neo marxists...
This video did not adequately explain why it has become difficult to build Nuclear Reactors in the USA. These factors are not all technical, safety, waste disposal related, or economic, but are regulatory and political. We need a more in-depth multi-part analysis and expose' of the issues underlying these difficulties.
Nonsense! The cost per kWh produced is why why higher than that of solar/wind with battery power plant together. It is economical suicide. Only crazy people believing in the energy fairy pushing this tech...
They only want thair narrative to be expressed good thing people like you gives us hope in a hunger for the complete story and spurs research on a personal level
I worked as an electrician building unit 4, and from my personal observation, the biggest hangup on the project was the contractor (Bechtel). They controlled the workflow and we had to work off of "work packages", if you were working in an area and did not have a work package, you would be fired. There were many times when crews would finish their work in an area and would have to wait months to get their next work package for another area. They also did not hire enough field engineers, we needed to have all of our work inspected by engineers and southern company quality control, we would be always waiting on the engineers to show up just to drill holes, mount supports, or finish out a package. The problem is our power grid being owned by private corporations that only care about profit, if we cut out the contractor middle man and the nukes were just state owned enterprises, we could build them much faster and much much cheaper.
This should actually speed up the rate at which they can deploy nuclear reactors because you now have a construction contractor that has experience doing it if anything this should be a reason to go full speed ahead on nuclear
The original contractor who'd been operating since the 60s went bankrupt while working on this project so at best we probably didn't even break even in terms of institutional knowledge. Odds are that the firm would have gone bankrupt anyway, so it's not a net loss, but as far as progress goes we still need a top-down shift before real change can happen. My hope is that recent developments in the Thorium reactor space can kick-start new public sector interest in the technology.
In a broad sense, you are 100% correct. The US hadn't built a nuclear plant in so long, many of the original engineers and designers from 40 years ago were retired, or dead. Growing pains.
I really wish nuclear power was used more than it currently is. It’s the safest, most reliable and efficient way of generating low carbon electricity. It’s expensive to build initially but the lifetime costs are low and can produce electricity 24/7 rather than intermittent sources like wind and solar. At one point in the 60s, there were projected to be over 1000 plants in the US but most were canceled due to public backlash and financial difficulties. If there was more support from the public and the government then I believe there could be a comeback for nuclear power in the future
It is not feasible to have 100% energy from nuclear. It produces power whether it is needed or not. It needs to be supplemented with energy that is on demand or does not work outside peak hours. Otherwise, the electric company will need to deal with too much energy during off-peak hours. Many countries accomplish this with Natural Gas.
@@KevinSmith-qi5yn I agree that it's not feasible to have it be 100%, but that was never even proposed. More that our energy needs be based in diversification with nuclear as one of the core suppliers. Yes, we should have solar fields and panel subsidies for homes, wind energy, geothermal and so on. But they unlike nuclear they're regional, inconsistent, and space demanding. Nuclear fills in that void that we're currently using with fossil fuels. Until we can, if ever, crack the problem of fusion, nuclear reactors are going to need to be the heart of our energy needs. But there's a lot of 20th century fear mongering over it and outdated practices and red tape that we need to make progress on for it to be feasible.
Not as quickly as gas, hydro, or battery storage. Electricity production has to very closely align with demand because the grid itself has almost no capacity to buffer any excess power.
@@ОгурецМолоко There are already new methods being deployed like 'Direct lithium extraction' which are much less harmful to environment. Also we have sodium ion batteries which are much more suitable for grid storage. Have much less impact on environment.
Energy needs will only continue to rise over time. Renewables are pulling some weight, but if we want to meet these needs while rotating out of fossil fuels - the only answer is Nuclear.
I am glad to see this getting more attention, I am all for solar, wind, and other renewable power sources, but with our current technology, if we want to go full carbon neutral, we need to build more NPPs.
Nonsense! Nonsense! The cost per kWh produced is why why higher than that of solar/wind with battery power plant together. It is economical suicide. Only crazy people believing in the energy fairy pushing this tech...
I'd rather we purse the nuclear under our feet, as geothermal heat is itself a nuclear process and extreme deep drilling is something we've already begun exploring ♨ Unlike above-ground nuclear though, any incidents that happen won't be more exotic and durable than anything life on Earth hasn't already experienced 🌋
@@johnsbirthdayinapril4197 True, but there are places in the world that can accomplish a fully renewable, carbon neutral electrical grid without nuclear power.
@@SmilingNinja While it's great to know that those places are able to do that, I just have to ask 1. What's the population, and what's their electricity consumption? and 2. Are they importing any electricity from neighboring countries?
@@hobbes5043 Yeah people not being educated and just listening to whatever a politician tells them. People that fight the board of education over banning books, wanting fake man made religions in schools which were never a thing, and wanting American exceptionalism in history instead of teaching real history in all of its horror so it teaches the next generation what to do and what not to do. Nuclear energy is not evil. Burning coal and wood is unsafe and inefficient, and old. Drilling into the planet for oil and natural gas is old as well. Nuclear and Solar Energy are the future
Aside from the fact that storing so much radioactive waste may lead to issues no matter how many safety protocols are in place, there's the obvious issue of needing industrial amounts of water in areas struggling with drought like Arizona and California
@@thunderb00m NIMBYs exist here in Australia, where they are fighting FOR nuclear and AGAINST renewables! As a result, we are seeing windfarms rejected for the most bizarre reasons. It's so bizarre - they reject the idea of a local windfarm, and support a nuclear power plant in someone else's backyard.
@@footbru i don't think its bizzare. Its is in line with nimby philosophy. They agree that cleaner sources of energy are needed but just not near them of course. Just move it out of sight and don't destroy the prescious property values. Make it the burden of less fortune people who can't lobby politicians. Its the selfish "other people have might lose their (whatever) and thats a sacrifice i am willing to make" kinda vibe that unites nimbys.
The time to build and cost are not a problem of nuclear. It's an American problem caused by bad regulations and designs not being stardardized. Every nuclear power plant in the US has essentially been a science project, different each time increasing cost and complexity and time to build. Japan, South Korea, Russia, China and France did not have these these levels of cost overruns and delays.
The AP 1000 is supposed to be a standardized, simplified design. Far superior than the EPR with so much government mandated redundancy and way more concrete and steel compared to simplicity and inherent safety.
Every major project in the US after the Interstate buildout has been a one-off design. We keep trying to innovate where innovation isn't fundamentally necessary.
This is just misleading and simplistic. I dont know about pther countries but France's new nuclear sites are definitely delayed and costly. Without crazy subsidies and intervention France's nuclear industry would falter.
HAHAHAHAHAHA ! You fool, they actually have these delays and costs, even worse more than often. Just as some exemples among others around the world, search "Flamanville", "Hinkley Point", and "Olkiluoto".
I talked to a guy who worked in power plants all his life, and he said the amount of safety and precautions with nuclear plants is extremely high. Everything is accounted for, the the tiniest screw. Bagged, tagged, and placed in database.
If regulations change while building, there is no way to make progress. There has to be a fixed design and execution to the plan without interruptions with changes in the plan.
Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, left the organization when he said that it had become politicized. He’s for nuclear power. We have over regulated the construction of nuclear power plants, which has unnecessarily driven up the costs. Europe builds nuclear power plant that are highly reliable for a lower cost.
Europe superior in every way just look at their population of USA. Whites are minority while Europe is only white except France,UK and lgbtq Netherlands
DUDE YOU REALISE SOLARS 5-8X CHEAPER IN 2024 .... PROVE ME WRONG ILL GIVE YOU 5000 CASH-- MEXICO BUILT ONE 2 CENTS KWH -- NEW NUCLEAR IS LIKE 10 CENTS PLUS 5 CENTS STORAGE COSTS = 15 CENTS
Good on Georgia for developing a new nuclear plant. There are only 54 nuclear powerplants in the U.S., yet it produces almost 20% of our total electricity. That's impressive.
Right. 40 more would put us at almost 50%. At $24 billion a piece that would be $1 trillion. That's how much the Iraq war cost us. Renewables on top of that and upgrading our electric grid that would damn near put us at NetZero.
@@aleonyohan6745 I would very much assume the cost of a nuclear powerplant would also go down as we build more. I think the high price is likely a multitude of things, but partially because we build one every several decades. Similar to renewables, the more we build, the cost generally drops because we become more familiar and the supply chain becomes more fluid. Using France for example, a country that uses a lot of nuclear (something like 70% of their energy), the avg powerplant there is about $10b.
I am glad they mention that after they prods 4th unit… they passed Palo Verde. We do talk enough about how huge those units are and why we don’t build new units that big anymore
The US spends $800 billion a year on its military. What do we gain from that? If we cut $100 billion a year from defense and spent it on nuclear, we could build 40 of these large nuclear facilities in 10 years.
FUN FACT NEW NUCLEAR COST 10+ CENTS KWH AND 5 CENTS KWH LIFELONG STORAGE COSTS SO 15 CENTS FUN FACT NEW SOLAR GRID LEVEL COST 2-3 CENTS KWH --- MEXICO DID PLANT 2CENTKWH 2 YEAR AGO AND NOW SOLAR PANEL EVEN CHEAPER 50% PROVE ME WRONG FOR 500 DOLLAR FREE --- STOP SHILLING NUCCCLEAR YOUR MEDIA BRAINWASHED BY NUCCLEAR INDUSTRY ITS ALSO SKETCHY.
We should be building liquid fluoride thorium reactors, which are 100 percent safer than conventional nuclear power plants and produce much less radioactive waste that can be recycled.
It’s very impressive to see that power plant built and operating. But the price went up by over more than double. 14 billion + 17 billion = 31 billion.
FUN FACT NEW NUCLEAR COST 10+ CENTS KWH AND 5 CENTS KWH LIFELONG STORAGE COSTS SO 15 CENTS FUN FACT NEW SOLAR GRID LEVEL COST 2-3 CENTS KWH --- MEXICO DID PLANT 2CENTKWH 2 YEAR AGO AND NOW SOLAR PANEL EVEN CHEAPER 50% PROVE ME WRONG FOR 500 DOLLAR FREE --- STOP SHILLING NUCCCLEAR YOUR MEDIA BRAINWASHED BY NUCCLEAR INDUSTRY ITS ALSO SKETCHY... LOL
It's not about why not, but more toward the issue with the nuclear plant having a meltdown like during the Three Mile Island accident. That accident changed the mindset of nuclear plants in the US.
@@doujinflip These events are incredibly rare and will only get rarer as newer reactors are developed. In the end, nuclear would save many lives from fossil fuels
Newer reactors are still research projects. Either they're not economical to operate, or the byproducts are too easily weaponized (including being concentrated enough for a devastating dirty bomb) over the often centuries-long course of their half-lives. This is why developed countries hesitate to add deployments at this time.
Planes that everyone uses are also highly regulated and tightly controlled from production to operation to disposal by parting out -- it's prohibitively expensive to enter the core fields and very very few people are certified to ultimately participate. Difference with aviation is that this extreme level of control needs to be kept up over the next 10000 years because there's no simple scrapping at the end. What nuclear advocates ask for is like flying revenue service jumbo jets but with the equivalent of WW1 level aerial technology. There's way more to understand and develop before expanding public access.
The big problem: each nuclear power plant is a very expensive, custom-built installation. That's why in France, they essentially duplicated one reactor installation type all over the country to keep construction costs down. Besides, the future is small modular reactors of around 100 to 250 MW output per reactor, where each reactor's parts can be pre-assembled in a factory and then the reactor is final-assembled at the power plant site. And the new reactors will use Generation IV reactors that are essentially meltdown proof and use way cheaper thorium-232 as the nuclear fissile fuel.
SOLARS 5X CHEAPER... ANYONE TALKING NUCCCLEAR IS JUST SHILLL OR PARRROTTING SHILLLS INFO FACTOR IN 100 PLUS YEAR STORAGE OF WASTE AND ITS 8X THE PRICE PROBABLY --- HENSE MEXICO NEW PLANT 2 YEAR AGO 2 CENTS KWH SOLAR....... LOL AND PANELS 500W NOW 50 BUCKS 30 YEARS LAST LIKE 80 PERCENT LESS THEN JUST SEVERAL YEAR AGO
Fun Fact: 1gram of nuclear fuel is equal to that of 1 million kg of coal and all of the nuclear waste ever produce can be stored in a football field 15 feet high.
FUN FACT NEW NUCLEAR COST 10 CENTS KWH AND 5 CENTS KWH LIFELONG STORAGE COSTS SO 15 CENTS FUN FACT NEW SOLAR GRID LEVEL COST 2-3 CENTS KWH --- PROVE ME WRONG FOR 500 DOLLAR FREE
Nuclear energy production gaining popularity as investment, government incentives making such power generating stations even greater financial attraction. The government regulatory scheme as in place today places very little emphasis/incentive on nuclear waste disposal. State of the art is nuclear waste "storage", absolutely not the same as "disposal"...yet, there remains very little incentive for profit sector nuclear plants to engage R&D for nuclear waste disposal.
Building a Nuclear plant invokes a huge financial risks as renewable prices drop like gravity and nuclear is already more expensive then renewables today. Even in France, Bloomberg reported that they were shutting down 3 reactors, possibly 3 more to come and stopped plans for building a new plant. Nuclear can simply not compete with renewables.
What she did not mention is Georgia plants went $17 billion over budget, and customer rates have increased by at least 50%. Those dollar amounts mentioned were for just one year. They have been increasing rates every year to pay for this since construction began.
Well the FED had to hike rates to fight inflation but if they have good accounting I assume they may be able to adjust their cost over time and perhaps bring down cost, we shall see in the coming years
I have said it before and I'll say it now: a lot of people are riding the EV is cheap to operate wave, but it will reach a point when electricity prices will rise to counter and surpass that. They have been waiting for enough people to buy in and commit themselves and a convenient excuse. Enter this.
@@kenmore01 That's absurd. Providing energy at rate is orders of magnitude more efficient than generating at the point of use if you translate energy types. In other words a nuclear plant that generates energy is ALWAYS better than burning gas to make heat to fire a piston. The efficiency of gas powered cars is abysmal. You are also ignoring the externalities. Gas powered cars cause air pollution that cause death and poor health. That's a public health cost that's absolutely enormous and you simply don't have it with electric cars. If you want to know more about this subject read "Clearing the Air" which I consider to be the definitive book on the subject.
A Dec. 2023 evaluation found that the cost per kilowatt for utility-scale solar energy is less than $1,000, while the comparable cost for nuclear power is between $6,500 and $12,250 per kilowatt. I'm not sure why anyone would prefer nuclear power given these kinds of numbers. Meanwhile, on p. 465 of “Nuclear Choices for the Twenty-First Century: A Citizen’s Guide” by Richard Wolfson and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, the authors state that a direct strike on a functioning nuclear power plant, using only conventional weapons, could have the capacity to release 30x the radioactivity of the Chernobyl incident. A 2016 estimate put the total cost of the Chernobyl disaster at around $700 billion (USD), yet developers somehow want to portray this technology as "safe." Anyone who thinks nuclear power plants can't be targeted in war should look at the situation in Zaporizhzhia for the past two years. Nuclear power is not worth the risk, especially when there are better and cheaper technologies available.
It’s not the technology it’s the lengths they went to coverup an issue with that meltdown. A lot of why it wasn’t worse was dumb luck. They even tried to silence a whistleblower which initiated an FBI inquiry.
Still needs more research too to become both economical to operate while not a weaponization risk. Until that's sorted out it's safer to minimize new deployment of our existing designs.
There was the same problem in France, which has the highest number of reactors per capita. They were all built decades ago, and the new types being built are slipping in budget and delays due to the disappearances of knowledge and experience after so many years without building new ones. Plus, the new French model was extremely compliant, so much that after the completion of the first one (which is done), they'll go directly with a simplified 2nd version for the next ones.
The issue with Nuclear construction, and why it’s costing so much, is that the workforce that built all the reactor plants in the 70’s and 80’s are all retired and out of the workforce. Therefore, we had to train new people which costs time and money. If we can renew that workforce with well trained and experienced people, deadlines won’t be grossly missed which will also drive down total costs.
At this point any infrastructure projects in USA/Canada seem to a) end up over running the budge massively b)lag behind the schedule massively. Just look at the high speed rail project in California. Living in Canada the exact same thing happens, here in Calgary we were to be a new LRT line. Originally slated for $2.6 Billion, now $1.2 Billion into planning haven't even broke ground the provincal gov't pulled their funding due the gong show, cost to build the line is now expected be over $6 billion and 5 years late if it ever gets started again.
I am usually not a fan of government control, but the US government should build these plants with bids from energy companies to lease, manage and run with a large percentage going back to US government Dept of Energy specifically to fund future research and building other nuclear plants. This way the a company can have a money maker without putting out a large initial funds. A government can put out the initial funds and wait for an extended time for repayment with interest on top. As the owner, they can do site inspections at will. They can pull back from companies that are not properly managed and lease it to another company to manage.
The government does not know how to manage funds well. We have so many people that could be working for these but we rather just give welfare without asking anything.
Gotta love how the problem is all over the place, when its common for private energy plant to overbudget and late to absorb more funding and justify higher billing
Dear CNBC, While the NPI points fingers at the public's "baseless fears, and backwards" attitude towards Nuclear Power ( current and new technologies ) the real reason that Nuclear Power is not gaining ground in the US is simple Dollars and Cents. China, Russia, France and India are building units with substantial government subsidies, this is not the case in the US. Secondly no one, "no one" knows exactly what the cost will be for a complete decommissioning of a 40, 60 and 80 year old nuclear power plant. Some preliminary estimates ( factoring for inflation ) imply that it will be almost as expensive as it was to build, and this cost will be passed down to the consumer. Lastly there remains the problems of long term radiation storage, which the few countries have actually solved, and which the US is still attempting to develop. Nuclear Power serves an important function in the energy stream of the US and in Carbon Free energy production, but the dollar per kilowatt is cheaper to use Solar and Wind with even very expensive batter storage.
For the record, nuclear is smokestack-free, NOT emissions-free. No form of energy generation is once you pull the threads on materials and supply chains. But nuclear is in a class of its own. It’s a challenge to mine, leaving tailings that are radioactive. The refining process, which often begins in the mine, involves leaching that can pose a threat to groundwater. Every step of the way, a radioactive substance has to be contained, generally with lots of steel-reinforced concrete. Both steel and concrete have signifiant carbon footprints in their production. Nuclear waste is tricky. Currently, 90 thousand tonnes are in “temporary storage” at reactors because there is no place to send it. If/when there is, the radioactive material will have to travel by truck on public highways, or by train, which can present a security challenge. Or, at a time of accelerating climate change, simply a challenge. Rail track expands in heat so hotter temperatures are already presenting a new wrinkle for that mode of travel. While US mines are starting to reopen, currently about half the world’s enriched uranium comes from Russia, so there are also geopolitical concerns. Water for cooling is another issue. While some newer SMR designs are much better on this score, the amount of water needed at a conventional plant is substantial. And when that water is warmed, it degrades it for other uses. Nuclear may be an essential part of our energy future given soaring electricity demand from AI, but the narrow focus on smokestack emissions has obscured the issues of what we’re dealing with. The video is good reporting as far as it goes. It could go further.
Not mentioned here: Vogtle was the first nuclear plant built in the US in so long, many of the engineers and builders from the 80's were retired, or dead, so there were a hell of a lot of growing pains to learn from in order to build such a massive, elaborate facility . If we can keep building these, the costs and time to build will drop considerably. With projected energy demands far exceeding what other practical energy can provide, the US could easily build 50 new plants, if not all of this size, and use every watt of energy in the years to come.
Need to keep pointimg out that others are suceeding at it hence US has found the way to be the problem. Need to point out how some of the so called criticism is sheer manure. Also need to confront the bureacracy, it is a necessary evil but don't let its every whim dominate the plot.
@@beback_ airport development projects are public private partnerships with governments owning the land and the airlines or sponsors developing the terminals on top.
I find it funny they needed redesign and fixes. Sounds like it needed even more up front planning. As to costs. It’s getting silly enough that you can only expect the government to pay for it all. It’s funny as hell the US navy doesn’t seem to have issues building and operating nuclear power plants… should just have all future plants be operated by the navy.
Im what you call a grid engineer we design plans and more plans and someone more plans, nuclear is just nice because it’s a really good baseline product, baseline is the amount of power supplied for all times outside of peak times and it’s really cheap with no fuel cost
I suspect there is very little, if any, environmental or civil lawsuits brought against the Chinese gov't while building reactors, high speed rails lines or damns. You should research the number of people displaced when the Three Gorges Dam was built. Or the number of historical sites that were flooded when it was filled. If the Chinese gov't wants it built, they just build it, and damn all the consequences it may produce.
I think I rather trust an old soviet era reactor over a "modern" Chinese reator... Have you seen how much of their constructions falls apart within 5 years of being built?
A problem I see here is that people want to know exactly how much and how long a new reactor will take to build, then get upset when those targets are missed. They want a Predictive WaterFall-type project where EVERYTHING is planned upfront. These projects would work better in an Adaptive Agile project methodology, similar to how software is written these days, where you agree on the outcome but can't exactly lock down on time or costs. Instead of trying to lock down a single cost for the whole project, which takes years to complete, you agree on how much you are willing to spend every year and let the project run for how long it needs to run. With oversight and governance, this is how software projects get finished.
Woah for real? I'm so excited Francisco alvero strategy has normalised winning trades for me also. and it's a huge milestone for me looking back to how it all started
This is so great. Nuclear power replacing oil and coal, until we can improve energy acquisition from renewable, like solar and wind, makes combatting global warming so much easier, and creates a very clean ecology. I am glad that they are built
Finally a post that someone mentions the elephant in the room. Where to put the waste that no one wants. Mich is now taking in waste from NY and everyone is screaming about it. Canada wants to bury it next to the lake, which sounds like such a great idea. Nevada will not open up a multi billion dollar hole in the ground, so where? Blast it off to the Moon? Look at Maxey Flats in KY where the ground water is contaminated or anywhere the fuel was produced, KY or WA state? Deal with the waste first then we can talk.
Director Brett Rampal mentions the complexity of completing the design of the plant during its construction. This practice (called something like expedited design) was cited as one cause of the cost overruns at the Shoreham Nuclear Plant on L.I., N.Y. ('70s/'80s).
I'm glad they are at least using mechanical/gravity cooling in the new designs. Personally I would never want to build that sucker without a PERPETUAL gravity-assisted mechanical cooling. Next to a river that can just passively cool it forever, etc.
Pose this challenge to Elon Musk's crew, his engineers would surely find a more innovative solution to reduce most of the negative impacts associated with fast breeding reactors
Why is that? I didn’t realize musk hired a bunch of nuclear engineers and chemists. He himself isn’t even a fan of nuclear and pushes solar and batteries as energy sources any chance he gets.
$9 is understandable. In Connecticut we're being charged over $200 a month for nuclear power. Absolutely criminal. And next month they're adding ev charge
3:48 The Westinghouse AP1000 was designed in the 1990s. A "current" design, not a "new" design. We need more of these Gen3 AP1000's in order to produce Gen4 reactors. Generation IV reactors are going in the design direction to recycle spent nuclear fuel from Gen III. Make them, we're 50 years behind where we should be.
We should have followed France's lead and adopted a standardized nuclear power plant design with only two or three sizes of the standard design. Instead, we reinvented the wheel with every new reactor which required a lengthy and costly approval process for every plant built. Very, very inefficient and now nuclear can't compete on cost with green energy sources with energy storage. We shouldn't be building ANY new nuclear of any design. IMO
The thing is now that a new plant has been built you need to double down and build more. Using the same construction techniques and company as the 1st. That way the lessons learned from building the first can be applied to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc..... till building them becomes second nature.
Imagine how much Solar you could install for the 14+17 Billion dollars this cost... For Comparison: According to MarketWatch an industrial Solarpark costs 1.06$ per Watt, Meaning this for 31 Billion$ you could install roughly 29 GigaWatt of peak Capacity SolarPower. At that doesn't even account for the operational costs. Absolutely insane.
Solar energy is intermittent i.e. it requires storage facility because we produce solar on daylight and use it on night but with nuclear that is not even a problem. Solar energy transmission requires a major upgradation of grid , but with nuclear we doesn't need to replace or upgrade our grid . Nuclear is best possible source of energy.
@@konigstiger3252 Battery prices are in a free fall. A kwh of battery today costs only 50% what is used to cost in 2021. And in 2021 the prices were already down 70% from 2010.
Building reactors and using spent nuclear fuel, yes theres a way to use spent nuclear fuel as fuel exists, is easy. The hard part is the bureaucratic process. Tons of paperwork, tons of regulations, delay after delay after every delay, year after year, and lawyer fees. Thats the issue
SOLARS 5X CHEAPER ONLY SHILLLS TALK ABOUT NUCCCEAR... 100 YEAR STORAGE COSTS THEN 8X CHEAPER IN REALITY-- MEXICO DID 2 CENT KWH SOLAR FARM... AND NOW SOLARS DROPPED EVEN MORE A LOT
I live in GA, I have never gotten an electric bill over $200 in the summer. The lady saying ppl get bills up to $600? What a lie. My friend in CA does not even get $600 bills. Straight BS.
This is a huge part of it. Too many firms trying to push their own designs resulting in zero mass-producibility. The federal government needs to hold an open competition and select the best design, like they do with military equipment.
@@alexanderfreeman3406 I don't know if military equipment is a good example of efficient and cost-effective manufacturing. The prices there are crazy. Over $170.000 just for a Javelin rocket launcher.
A few points about the leadership of the United States in the production of nuclear energy for electric generation. The first reactor that produced energy was in the USA. They connected several light bulbs at the factory itself. The first reactor that actually supplied energy to the grid was in the USSR. Obninsk nuclear power plant. The first commercial reactor is the United Kingdom. Of course, there is a question of what is commercial when comparing socialism and capitalism, but nevertheless. The United States, with all due respect to its achievements, has not been the only leader in developing a peaceful nuclear program most of the time.
the big problem with nucs. is it a big eclectic bill forever. if your a home owner , you almost have to get solar panels to keep electric bills down. for 7 billion dollars, can you even imagine how much solar you can set up with batteries. to back them. if they had lined the highways in that state, with solar panels ,would have gotten near to same power output, I admit 4 gig in batteries would have been tough
Solar and wind power are great, but they are not suitable to be the backbone of a power grid. They’re too fickle and unpredictable. Not to mention solar would need massive battery storage facilities to supple power at night or when it’s cloudy.
If you’re a home owner, that’s the point, try to power industry with solar panels. Nuclear is baseload, the “powers N homes” is a misleading phrase, no nuclear plant will only power homes
There are definitely good things about capitalism but where we kind of get lost is the fact that some things need to be free and not controlled and some things need some regulation and some subsidies and that's where it all gets broken down. Nobody wants to manage that. Energy is certainly one of those things that needs to get subsidized and basically sort of governed in a way. It cannot absolutely be free. Same thing can be said about commercial aircrafts for example like Boeing. Let's not confuse capitalism with the ultimate levels of human greed that basically disrupt the way how it's intended to work
People often associate nuclear power plants as non-renewable. Which is true but its also a good source of clean energy. It also generates a sht ton of power.
It's almost criminal how every time someone refers to the Fukushima disaster, media portrays images of the destruction brought upon by both the earthquake and tsunami, apparently implying (at least to people not familiar with the matter) that all that devastation was done by the nuclear accident.
And the media never talks about how the operators and managers of the Fukushima power plant knew for years of the risks of a major tsunami, they knew that the backup generators for the coolant pumps would not be high enough to prevent them being flooded yet they did nothing to adequately prepare for a disaster. Fukushima’s biggest disaster was it’s incompetent failure of management for a completely avoidable catastrophe, which directly lead to the company that owned the power plant being taken over by the Japanese government
Their reactors only had a problem because the diesel pumps were damaged. Not a problem anymore with their adjustments and would never be in a normal site for a reactor.
What more do you expect from the media?
Because the diesel pumps weren’t place underground.
SOLAR 2-3 CENTS KWH
NEW NUCLEAR 10 CENTS PLUS 5 CENTS STORAGE = 15 CENTS KWH..
PROVE ME WRONG 5000 CASH
That anti-nuclear lawyer pretending to care about people's pockets was pretty amusing.
small correction fossil fuel lawyer they hate when they loose billions like that
@@nodehead9475it’s spelled lose
I love the "hottest summers in a while" line too. If you want to be taken seriously by adults then don't pretend cool summers are on their way.
@@benchoflemons398 cringe
@@benchoflemons398it’s loose.
Its not building nuclear power plants thats the difficulty, its building large infrastructure and construction projects in general.
Exactly. They can’t build anything cheaply. Fabs, subways, trains. UK can’t build new trains either. Constantly starting and stopping projects lead to loss of knowledge and inability to remove all the barriers to learn to get better.
Everything is much harder than it used to be. It's overregulation.
building data collection centers.
That’s what happens when so many education institutions pump out bs degrees. Not enough skilled labour to keep up with demand.
Exactly, we can't even build something as trivial as a bike lane.
Fear has dominated our thoughts about nuclear power for far too long. It's our only path to safe, clean, abundant, on demand power. I grew up next to a Nuclear power station, my family and friends all have worked there and all of them are still alive today. My father is 87, retired from being an engineer at the plant. We need to let our unreasonable fears go and embrace the future.
Yeah, what’s there to be concerned about? Look at Fukushima.
Nonsense! The cost per kWh produced is why why higher than that of solar/wind with battery power plant together. It is economical suicide. Only crazy people believing in the energy fairy pushing this tech...
It only takes one nuclear disaster. And when theres a possibility, the laws of the universe say it will surely happen.
Fission byproducts remain dangerous for like 10000 years. That's a long time for someone to eventually discover and accidentally (or worse intentionally) spill the contents of those casks.
@@eggnogaddict6287what’s there to look at? The fact there’s not a single death due to radiation? The fact that cities like Rome are more radiant than it was the day after the accident?
I think the US is really shy about big infrastructure spending. Too much focus on instantaneous profitability. It's all about the share price and how corporations can fund ceo salaries.
Counterpoint- interstate highway, transcontinental railroad and the Hoover dam.
Granted this all took place in the 19th and 20th century
Well that and the past 50 years give or take certain media (D) has made sure to keep the public scared of nuclear energy to line their pockets so they can push all their "green" energy which all the poloticians have their fingers in either as CEOs or shareholders.
From Australia, I say that this is all the fault of western governments lowering taxes to get elected. We all had shiploads of money until Reagan and Thatcher started demonising taxation - making governments run on a shoestring is NOT they way to pursue worthy goals.
You guys didn't do all the amazing things you've done by having a penniless government.
@@mahamedbarry3671 That was at the beginning of the 20th century, now there have been no works of that caliber that go at acceptable speeds
@@mahamedbarry3671 very true.
There used to be a time when we, the USA were willing to do those big infrastructure projects. But that was a time when you could work a straight 40hr week w/ a HS diploma and be able to support a family on just one income. My dad did that. He was a blue collar guy, didn't have a college degree and made good money. You can't do that today. That America, sadly, does not exist anymore.
5:35
Southern Environmental Law Center: *does everything it can't to stop nuclear construction, and sues nuclear at ever step*
Also Southern Environmental Law Center: "Why is nuclear energy so expensive to build?"
I pray they stop all of them
@@strike-too-420why?
@@SCComega tbh I was Union Boilermaker for a while and the waste alone is soooo scary man. They're guessing with literally all of it and hoping for the best. It just worries me for the future of the planet I plan on having kids bro
@robmanueb. That's not the point, it's frivolous suing and lawsuits that are the issue.
@@Spetsnaz--21
Availability: Nuclear is inherently limited to where and who can deploy it. Nations lacking stable, strong, peace-focused governments and institutions are rightfully a security concern to the rest of the world when it comes to deploying nuclear technology of almost any form. This factor alone knocks nuclear out of the running for most of the planet.
Scale: Nuclear doesn't scale down well. Much of the world simply doesn't need concentrated 1GW power generation, at least not at their current stages of industrialization. Solar trivially scales down to microwatts (μW) and of course all the way up through gigawatts to directly complete with nuclear capacity. There are lots of "micro reactor" designs in the works, but "micro" here is relative as they're only micro in relation to convention reactors. Micro nuclear reactors are still in the tens or hundreds of megawatts. The smallest micro reactor designs are still generating 2,000 times the power of a typical rooftop solar installation and most are generating more than 20,000x. Nuclear doesn't know what small is.
External Infrastructure: Because it can't scale down nuclear power is inherently dependant on centralized power grid infrastructure to distribute it. That grid may not exist at all, it may be 100 years old and need of complete replacement, it may not be stable or secure due to economic or political weaknesses, and of course such grids are highly susceptible to climate change effects (fires, storms, etc). Industrial scale solar can certainly leverage a traditional centralized power grid if it exists, but solar doesn't require any grid whatsoever. Solar's ability to scale down and availability also make it a prime candidate for next generation mesh grid designs. Such mesh grid designs have huge advantage over traditional grid designs (security, availability, agility, installation costs, fire/storm resistant, etc) while retaining the best benefits of traditional grids. Nuclear's inability to scale down makes it a very awkward resource for mesh grid technologies and negates many of the benefits of such grids.
Deployment Speed: Solar can be deployed in minutes. That's slightly hyperbolic, but the fact is solar deployment timelines mostly scale proportionally to the deployment's capacity. And since solar scales down so well, it's trivial to perform many small deployments in parallel. It's that parallel deployment capability that has enabled so much new solar power to come online in the aggregate in such a small amount of time. Nuclear projects at best take years and are much, much more difficult to do in parallel as the technologies and expertise needed simply don't reproduce anywhere near as quickly or as cheaply as solar installation does.
Agility: Because of all the factors described above it is very difficult to be agile with nuclear power. You can't bring it online as needed...you instead need to predict years in advance what your power requirements will be in a given location. And once deployed you can't move it: You've got to predict the power needs of a given location for practically the next century. Solar in sharp contrast, can be deployed when it's needed, in the amounts that are needed, expanded quickly when needed, and moved quickly when needs change. This kind of agility is going to be absolutely essential over the next decades as climate change quickly, dramatically, and unpredictably changes where and how we need power.
Geographical: Solar certainly has some geographic limitations, after all it likes sunshine and lots of it. But most nuclear designs are much, much pickier. Along with all the other limitations described above, most all nuclear reactor designs are still really just boilers for steam turbines. Because of that fact and their large size they typically need a lot of water as they're not closed loop systems. A considerable amount of the world's power needs are not near suitable water sources for a nuclear plant...and many that are have serious safety concerns of tsunami risk and of course greatly increased storm risk due to climate change.
Risk: All of these factors amplify each other creating massive risk for any nuclear project. This in turn makes for extremely expensive underwriting. The scale, the uncertainties, the inflexibilities, the externalizations, neverly everything stacks up high on the side of risk with very little on the side of potential reward.
Cost: The costs for nuclear are massive for all the above factors and more. And those costs are only going up as the world becomes more dangerous and macro uncertainties such as changing needs due to climate change become more common and more impactful.
Conclusion: Fission generation is a dead end. The only real possible future for nuclear generation is fusion because it's the only fundamental nuclear technology that has the potential to mitigate many of fission's most serious issues (security, scale, agility, cost, speed). But of course aside from Sol, practical fusion power generation is just science fiction at this point in time. It may take decades to exist...it may never exist at all...and we need deployable solutions yesterday and everywhere, not years or decades from now and only in a few privileged nations.
HT Zenin
We also need to include fuel-rod recycling like France. To reduce nuclear waste.
Or build molten salt reactors, which can use those as fuel.
Only if it makes $&$
@@peersupportcounselor1904 that a joke? Nuclear has never been profitable without enormous government subsidy.
Let Elon shoot that stuff into deep space.
There is no such thing as recycling nuclear fuel rods. This wording was pushed by the nuclear lobby.
In reality, it just means to extract Plutonium, to manufacture Plutonium based fuel rods.
The overall amount of waste doesn't go down. And it is a dead-end, since the highly problematic waste is stored in glass plates.
Even if there would a technology in the future, to reduce this waste or to use it as a fuel, it will be stuck in glass.
that attorney lady sucks. shes literally on camera because shes suing the power plant. Shes is the problem.
she sucks because she actually has any education unlike you?
SOLARS 5X CHEAPER THIS IS VIDEO ABOUT NUCLEARR IS JUST PROPAGANDA PROVE ME WRONG GIVE U 5000 CASH
@@travis938lol where’s power coming from when it’s nighttime? Now give me my $5000
Nuclear is the future, a all time high energy yield that emits no emissions is amazing, costs will decrease as technology gets better.
nuclear is like aviation it's scary but the most safe actually
Because of heavy regulation and tightly controlled deployment, just like aviation.
great analogy
NUCLEAR 4X THE PRICE OF SOLAR YOU HAVE TO BE DUMB OR A SHILL TO WANT NUCLEAR......
Yeah but when you park a plane it doesn't have a half life of 10,000 years..........
@@realtundratrashbraindead analogy.
I'm sure big oil doesn't have anything to do with the challenges
And the coal industry
Big oil and coal is the reason you’re able to charge your electric cars
Deflect, nice. It is stupid politicians pandering to the environmental cult who want us to live in the 1700s. As they type on their plastic computers and use their cell phones. 🤡
@@JDMSwervo2001 That depends entirely on where you live.
@@JDMSwervo2001oil makes up like 0.3% of electricity generation, and that's almost exclusively through emergency diesel. As for coal, it doesn't even make up as high of a percentage (16.8%) of our national mix as nuclear (18.6%). Seriously, the EIA keeps really good track of these things, so you don't have to look like an idiot.
Environmental Lawyer talking about unexpected costs not taking into account they are the reason for the unexpected costs.
I didn't know the US was the #1 producer of Nuclear Energy. I just assumed it was France or Russia.
Absolutely, the same here in europe where the extensive bureaucracy triple prices for everything since making stuff take longer but companies still have to pay their empoyees while they have nothing to do, they are at the construction site waiting for bureaucrats letting them to work. Imagine how much more we can do from the same amount of money without those neo marxists...
France has the largest share of nuclear power but they just require much less energy than we do in the US
SOLARS 5X CHEAPER ANY TALK NUCCLEAR IS JUST IDI0TIC SHILLL PARRROTING
This video did not adequately explain why it has become difficult to build Nuclear Reactors in the USA. These factors are not all technical, safety, waste disposal related, or economic, but are regulatory and political. We need a more in-depth multi-part analysis and expose' of the issues underlying these difficulties.
Nonsense! The cost per kWh produced is why why higher than that of solar/wind with battery power plant together. It is economical suicide. Only crazy people believing in the energy fairy pushing this tech...
They only want thair narrative to be expressed good thing people like you gives us hope in a hunger for the complete story and spurs research on a personal level
Sounds like a fossil fuel bot
It's NBC. Imagine expecting to get an answer, lol.
They’re expensive AF to build. They don’t make economic sense when renewables are now less expensive
I worked as an electrician building unit 4, and from my personal observation, the biggest hangup on the project was the contractor (Bechtel). They controlled the workflow and we had to work off of "work packages", if you were working in an area and did not have a work package, you would be fired. There were many times when crews would finish their work in an area and would have to wait months to get their next work package for another area. They also did not hire enough field engineers, we needed to have all of our work inspected by engineers and southern company quality control, we would be always waiting on the engineers to show up just to drill holes, mount supports, or finish out a package. The problem is our power grid being owned by private corporations that only care about profit, if we cut out the contractor middle man and the nukes were just state owned enterprises, we could build them much faster and much much cheaper.
This should actually speed up the rate at which they can deploy nuclear reactors because you now have a construction contractor that has experience doing it if anything this should be a reason to go full speed ahead on nuclear
Would hold off until a Lessons Learned Report is produced. If the project took more than 20 years, this autopsy might be very difficult.
The original contractor who'd been operating since the 60s went bankrupt while working on this project so at best we probably didn't even break even in terms of institutional knowledge.
Odds are that the firm would have gone bankrupt anyway, so it's not a net loss, but as far as progress goes we still need a top-down shift before real change can happen. My hope is that recent developments in the Thorium reactor space can kick-start new public sector interest in the technology.
In a broad sense, you are 100% correct. The US hadn't built a nuclear plant in so long, many of the original engineers and designers from 40 years ago were retired, or dead. Growing pains.
$400 power bills are still crazy cheap, most people in my town in Mass are now paying $800-1000 every month for a 2000 sq ft house
SOLARS 2 CENTS KWH NUCLEARS 15 CENTS KWH WITH LONGTERM STORAGE AND 10 CENTS WITHOUT...
@@travis938 Solar is not a reliable source of energy for a lot of world, including a lot of the U.S, Nuclear is.
$700 here in CA...
I really wish nuclear power was used more than it currently is. It’s the safest, most reliable and efficient way of generating low carbon electricity. It’s expensive to build initially but the lifetime costs are low and can produce electricity 24/7 rather than intermittent sources like wind and solar. At one point in the 60s, there were projected to be over 1000 plants in the US but most were canceled due to public backlash and financial difficulties. If there was more support from the public and the government then I believe there could be a comeback for nuclear power in the future
Nuclear isn’t safe. Look at Fukushima. What coal or natural gas fleet has come anywhere close to that catastrophe???
It is not feasible to have 100% energy from nuclear. It produces power whether it is needed or not. It needs to be supplemented with energy that is on demand or does not work outside peak hours. Otherwise, the electric company will need to deal with too much energy during off-peak hours. Many countries accomplish this with Natural Gas.
@@KevinSmith-qi5yn I agree that it's not feasible to have it be 100%, but that was never even proposed. More that our energy needs be based in diversification with nuclear as one of the core suppliers. Yes, we should have solar fields and panel subsidies for homes, wind energy, geothermal and so on. But they unlike nuclear they're regional, inconsistent, and space demanding. Nuclear fills in that void that we're currently using with fossil fuels. Until we can, if ever, crack the problem of fusion, nuclear reactors are going to need to be the heart of our energy needs. But there's a lot of 20th century fear mongering over it and outdated practices and red tape that we need to make progress on for it to be feasible.
@@KevinSmith-qi5ynThat's not true. Nuclear energy can throttle output no problem.
Not as quickly as gas, hydro, or battery storage. Electricity production has to very closely align with demand because the grid itself has almost no capacity to buffer any excess power.
Finally… about time!!! Nuclear is the only way to go for efficiency.
I enjoy that the waste can be weaponized - no one should mess with us.😊
It's one of the ways.
We need more nuclear solar wind and batteries.
@@sbk2207Batteries? Have you seen how damaging it is for environment to make lithium for batteries?
@@ОгурецМолоко There are already new methods being deployed like 'Direct lithium extraction' which are much less harmful to environment.
Also we have sodium ion batteries which are much more suitable for grid storage. Have much less impact on environment.
Even if we go all on nuclear we still need lithium ion batteries for Electric vehicle. (Buses bikes and cars)
Energy needs will only continue to rise over time. Renewables are pulling some weight, but if we want to meet these needs while rotating out of fossil fuels - the only answer is Nuclear.
I am glad to see this getting more attention, I am all for solar, wind, and other renewable power sources, but with our current technology, if we want to go full carbon neutral, we need to build more NPPs.
Nonsense! Nonsense! The cost per kWh produced is why why higher than that of solar/wind with battery power plant together. It is economical suicide. Only crazy people believing in the energy fairy pushing this tech...
I'd rather we purse the nuclear under our feet, as geothermal heat is itself a nuclear process and extreme deep drilling is something we've already begun exploring ♨ Unlike above-ground nuclear though, any incidents that happen won't be more exotic and durable than anything life on Earth hasn't already experienced 🌋
@@johnsbirthdayinapril4197 True, but there are places in the world that can accomplish a fully renewable, carbon neutral electrical grid without nuclear power.
@@SmilingNinja While it's great to know that those places are able to do that, I just have to ask 1. What's the population, and what's their electricity consumption? and 2. Are they importing any electricity from neighboring countries?
I think peoples fear, uneducation, backwards thinking, and politics will never let nuclear power plants to come back
uneducation?
People's fear, uneducation, backwards thinking, and politics are preventing WAY more than just more nuclear power.
@@hobbes5043 Yeah people not being educated and just listening to whatever a politician tells them. People that fight the board of education over banning books, wanting fake man made religions in schools which were never a thing, and wanting American exceptionalism in history instead of teaching real history in all of its horror so it teaches the next generation what to do and what not to do. Nuclear energy is not evil. Burning coal and wood is unsafe and inefficient, and old. Drilling into the planet for oil and natural gas is old as well. Nuclear and Solar Energy are the future
Aside from the fact that storing so much radioactive waste may lead to issues no matter how many safety protocols are in place, there's the obvious issue of needing industrial amounts of water in areas struggling with drought like Arizona and California
@@hobbes5043 He bee real smart
NIMBY doesn't exist in China or Russia. It is no different for high speed rail projects or nuclear power plants.
Nimbys do exist but they are shunned and moved aside instead of being pandered to.
I guess that's true when you aren't allowed to
They exist in those countries; It will be built anyway. The people can't defy the government.
@@thunderb00m NIMBYs exist here in Australia, where they are fighting FOR nuclear and AGAINST renewables! As a result, we are seeing windfarms rejected for the most bizarre reasons.
It's so bizarre - they reject the idea of a local windfarm, and support a nuclear power plant in someone else's backyard.
@@footbru i don't think its bizzare. Its is in line with nimby philosophy. They agree that cleaner sources of energy are needed but just not near them of course. Just move it out of sight and don't destroy the prescious property values. Make it the burden of less fortune people who can't lobby politicians.
Its the selfish "other people have might lose their (whatever) and thats a sacrifice i am willing to make" kinda vibe that unites nimbys.
The time to build and cost are not a problem of nuclear. It's an American problem caused by bad regulations and designs not being stardardized. Every nuclear power plant in the US has essentially been a science project, different each time increasing cost and complexity and time to build. Japan, South Korea, Russia, China and France did not have these these levels of cost overruns and delays.
The AP 1000 is supposed to be a standardized, simplified design. Far superior than the EPR with so much government mandated redundancy and way more concrete and steel compared to simplicity and inherent safety.
Every major project in the US after the Interstate buildout has been a one-off design. We keep trying to innovate where innovation isn't fundamentally necessary.
Me when I spread misinformation over the internet 🤭
This is just misleading and simplistic. I dont know about pther countries but France's new nuclear sites are definitely delayed and costly. Without crazy subsidies and intervention France's nuclear industry would falter.
HAHAHAHAHAHA ! You fool, they actually have these delays and costs, even worse more than often. Just as some exemples among others around the world, search "Flamanville", "Hinkley Point", and "Olkiluoto".
I talked to a guy who worked in power plants all his life, and he said the amount of safety and precautions with nuclear plants is extremely high. Everything is accounted for, the the tiniest screw. Bagged, tagged, and placed in database.
The "green energy " movement fights it harder than coal or oil .
It is hard everywhere: the buildings are expensive, and the raw materials for the fuel rods get more and more expensive.
Vogel plants should be a blueprint with lessons learned but I’m sure lawyers and politicians will be happy to slow or shut things down .
If regulations change while building, there is no way to make progress. There has to be a fixed design and execution to the plan without interruptions with changes in the plan.
Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, left the organization when he said that it had become politicized. He’s for nuclear power. We have over regulated the construction of nuclear power plants, which has unnecessarily driven up the costs. Europe builds nuclear power plant that are highly reliable for a lower cost.
Europe superior in every way just look at their population of USA. Whites are minority while Europe is only white except France,UK and lgbtq Netherlands
DUDE YOU REALISE SOLARS 5-8X CHEAPER IN 2024 .... PROVE ME WRONG ILL GIVE YOU 5000 CASH-- MEXICO BUILT ONE 2 CENTS KWH -- NEW NUCLEAR IS LIKE 10 CENTS PLUS 5 CENTS STORAGE COSTS = 15 CENTS
Its hardbto get anything done in the US
Good on Georgia for developing a new nuclear plant. There are only 54 nuclear powerplants in the U.S., yet it produces almost 20% of our total electricity. That's impressive.
Right. 40 more would put us at almost 50%. At $24 billion a piece that would be $1 trillion. That's how much the Iraq war cost us. Renewables on top of that and upgrading our electric grid that would damn near put us at NetZero.
@@aleonyohan6745 I would very much assume the cost of a nuclear powerplant would also go down as we build more. I think the high price is likely a multitude of things, but partially because we build one every several decades. Similar to renewables, the more we build, the cost generally drops because we become more familiar and the supply chain becomes more fluid.
Using France for example, a country that uses a lot of nuclear (something like 70% of their energy), the avg powerplant there is about $10b.
I am glad they mention that after they prods 4th unit… they passed Palo Verde. We do talk enough about how huge those units are and why we don’t build new units that big anymore
The US spends $800 billion a year on its military. What do we gain from that? If we cut $100 billion a year from defense and spent it on nuclear, we could build 40 of these large nuclear facilities in 10 years.
FUN FACT NEW NUCLEAR COST 10+ CENTS KWH AND 5 CENTS KWH LIFELONG STORAGE COSTS SO 15 CENTS
FUN FACT NEW SOLAR GRID LEVEL COST 2-3 CENTS KWH --- MEXICO DID PLANT 2CENTKWH 2 YEAR AGO AND NOW SOLAR PANEL EVEN CHEAPER 50%
PROVE ME WRONG FOR 500 DOLLAR FREE --- STOP SHILLING NUCCCLEAR YOUR MEDIA BRAINWASHED BY NUCCLEAR INDUSTRY ITS ALSO SKETCHY.
I can’t believe how much you’ve achieved! You’re a true inspiration
We should be building liquid fluoride thorium reactors, which are 100 percent safer than conventional nuclear power plants and produce much less radioactive waste that can be recycled.
YOU DONT KNOW THE COST PER KWH THEN YOUR TALKING OUT YOUR BUTTTTTT SOLARS 5X CHEAPER
It’s very impressive to see that power plant built and operating. But the price went up by over more than double. 14 billion + 17 billion = 31 billion.
Considering covid would have delayed so much, plus inflation of at least 30 - 50%, that number isn't the massive overrun they suggest.
FUN FACT NEW NUCLEAR COST 10+ CENTS KWH AND 5 CENTS KWH LIFELONG STORAGE COSTS SO 15 CENTS
FUN FACT NEW SOLAR GRID LEVEL COST 2-3 CENTS KWH --- MEXICO DID PLANT 2CENTKWH 2 YEAR AGO AND NOW SOLAR PANEL EVEN CHEAPER 50%
PROVE ME WRONG FOR 500 DOLLAR FREE --- STOP SHILLING NUCCCLEAR YOUR MEDIA BRAINWASHED BY NUCCLEAR INDUSTRY ITS ALSO SKETCHY... LOL
It's crazy how no body is putting money into nuclear energy. It's literally the solution
Whats so terrible is that it is the perfect solution to our energy problem.
It's not about why not, but more toward the issue with the nuclear plant having a meltdown like during the Three Mile Island accident. That accident changed the mindset of nuclear plants in the US.
Pretty misleading to show unrelated tsunami damages when talking about Fukushima nuclear power plant
Still illustrates mass disasters in general, which will inevitably occur at a nuclear plant somewhere especially if there's more sites built.
@@doujinflip These events are incredibly rare and will only get rarer as newer reactors are developed. In the end, nuclear would save many lives from fossil fuels
Newer reactors are still research projects. Either they're not economical to operate, or the byproducts are too easily weaponized (including being concentrated enough for a devastating dirty bomb) over the often centuries-long course of their half-lives. This is why developed countries hesitate to add deployments at this time.
@@doujinflip Planes inevitably fall but we still use them.
Planes that everyone uses are also highly regulated and tightly controlled from production to operation to disposal by parting out -- it's prohibitively expensive to enter the core fields and very very few people are certified to ultimately participate. Difference with aviation is that this extreme level of control needs to be kept up over the next 10000 years because there's no simple scrapping at the end.
What nuclear advocates ask for is like flying revenue service jumbo jets but with the equivalent of WW1 level aerial technology. There's way more to understand and develop before expanding public access.
The big problem: each nuclear power plant is a very expensive, custom-built installation. That's why in France, they essentially duplicated one reactor installation type all over the country to keep construction costs down.
Besides, the future is small modular reactors of around 100 to 250 MW output per reactor, where each reactor's parts can be pre-assembled in a factory and then the reactor is final-assembled at the power plant site. And the new reactors will use Generation IV reactors that are essentially meltdown proof and use way cheaper thorium-232 as the nuclear fissile fuel.
SOLARS 5X CHEAPER... ANYONE TALKING NUCCCLEAR IS JUST SHILLL OR PARRROTTING SHILLLS INFO FACTOR IN 100 PLUS YEAR STORAGE OF WASTE AND ITS 8X THE PRICE PROBABLY --- HENSE MEXICO NEW PLANT 2 YEAR AGO 2 CENTS KWH SOLAR....... LOL AND PANELS 500W NOW 50 BUCKS 30 YEARS LAST LIKE 80 PERCENT LESS THEN JUST SEVERAL YEAR AGO
Fun Fact: 1gram of nuclear fuel is equal to that of 1 million kg of coal and all of the nuclear waste ever produce can be stored in a football field 15 feet high.
FUN FACT NEW NUCLEAR COST 10 CENTS KWH AND 5 CENTS KWH LIFELONG STORAGE COSTS SO 15 CENTS
FUN FACT NEW SOLAR GRID LEVEL COST 2-3 CENTS KWH --- PROVE ME WRONG FOR 500 DOLLAR FREE
@@travis938because of government funding
Nuclear energy production gaining popularity as investment, government incentives making such power generating stations even greater financial attraction.
The government regulatory scheme as in place today places very little emphasis/incentive on nuclear waste disposal. State of the art is nuclear waste "storage", absolutely not the same as "disposal"...yet, there remains very little incentive for profit sector nuclear plants to engage R&D for nuclear waste disposal.
Building a Nuclear plant invokes a huge financial risks as renewable prices drop like gravity and nuclear is already more expensive then renewables today.
Even in France, Bloomberg reported that they were shutting down 3 reactors, possibly 3 more to come and stopped plans for building a new plant. Nuclear can simply not compete with renewables.
But are renewables as scalable as Nuclear?
What she did not mention is Georgia plants went $17 billion over budget, and customer rates have increased by at least 50%. Those dollar amounts mentioned were for just one year. They have been increasing rates every year to pay for this since construction began.
You did not finish the video. The project going over budget was mentioned as well as the concern of increased bills.
Well the FED had to hike rates to fight inflation but if they have good accounting I assume they may be able to adjust their cost over time and perhaps bring down cost, we shall see in the coming years
I have said it before and I'll say it now: a lot of people are riding the EV is cheap to operate wave, but it will reach a point when electricity prices will rise to counter and surpass that. They have been waiting for enough people to buy in and commit themselves and a convenient excuse. Enter this.
@@kenmore01 That's absurd. Providing energy at rate is orders of magnitude more efficient than generating at the point of use if you translate energy types. In other words a nuclear plant that generates energy is ALWAYS better than burning gas to make heat to fire a piston. The efficiency of gas powered cars is abysmal.
You are also ignoring the externalities. Gas powered cars cause air pollution that cause death and poor health. That's a public health cost that's absolutely enormous and you simply don't have it with electric cars. If you want to know more about this subject read "Clearing the Air" which I consider to be the definitive book on the subject.
A good chunk of that cost is directly related to overregulation. A lot of that money could be spent on more research to improve safety and efficiency.
How many does the navy operate?
A Dec. 2023 evaluation found that the cost per kilowatt for utility-scale solar energy is less than $1,000, while the comparable cost for nuclear power is between $6,500 and $12,250 per kilowatt. I'm not sure why anyone would prefer nuclear power given these kinds of numbers. Meanwhile, on p. 465 of “Nuclear Choices for the Twenty-First Century: A Citizen’s Guide” by Richard Wolfson and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, the authors state that a direct strike on a functioning nuclear power plant, using only conventional weapons, could have the capacity to release 30x the radioactivity of the Chernobyl incident. A 2016 estimate put the total cost of the Chernobyl disaster at around $700 billion (USD), yet developers somehow want to portray this technology as "safe." Anyone who thinks nuclear power plants can't be targeted in war should look at the situation in Zaporizhzhia for the past two years. Nuclear power is not worth the risk, especially when there are better and cheaper technologies available.
YES 1 SMART PERSON REST BOTS OR SHILLLS SOLARS 5X CHEAPER THEN U FACTOR 100 YEARS STORAGE ITS 8X CHEAPER
The US is still scarred by the Three Mile Island. New technology (modular reactors) needs new thinking
It’s not the technology it’s the lengths they went to coverup an issue with that meltdown. A lot of why it wasn’t worse was dumb luck. They even tried to silence a whistleblower which initiated an FBI inquiry.
Still needs more research too to become both economical to operate while not a weaponization risk. Until that's sorted out it's safer to minimize new deployment of our existing designs.
There was the same problem in France, which has the highest number of reactors per capita.
They were all built decades ago, and the new types being built are slipping in budget and delays due to the disappearances of knowledge and experience after so many years without building new ones.
Plus, the new French model was extremely compliant, so much that after the completion of the first one (which is done), they'll go directly with a simplified 2nd version for the next ones.
Why ? Two words. "BIG OIL".
Imagine what we could have accomplished without the corruption and influence of Big oil. We would already be NetZero.
Small hats
The issue with Nuclear construction, and why it’s costing so much, is that the workforce that built all the reactor plants in the 70’s and 80’s are all retired and out of the workforce. Therefore, we had to train new people which costs time and money.
If we can renew that workforce with well trained and experienced people, deadlines won’t be grossly missed which will also drive down total costs.
Electrizity
Damn you
you beat me to it.
At this point any infrastructure projects in USA/Canada seem to a) end up over running the budge massively b)lag behind the schedule massively. Just look at the high speed rail project in California. Living in Canada the exact same thing happens, here in Calgary we were to be a new LRT line. Originally slated for $2.6 Billion, now $1.2 Billion into planning haven't even broke ground the provincal gov't pulled their funding due the gong show, cost to build the line is now expected be over $6 billion and 5 years late if it ever gets started again.
I am usually not a fan of government control, but the US government should build these plants with bids from energy companies to lease, manage and run with a large percentage going back to US government Dept of Energy specifically to fund future research and building other nuclear plants. This way the a company can have a money maker without putting out a large initial funds. A government can put out the initial funds and wait for an extended time for repayment with interest on top. As the owner, they can do site inspections at will. They can pull back from companies that are not properly managed and lease it to another company to manage.
The government does not know how to manage funds well. We have so many people that could be working for these but we rather just give welfare without asking anything.
Gotta love how the problem is all over the place, when its common for private energy plant to overbudget and late to absorb more funding and justify higher billing
Dear CNBC, While the NPI points fingers at the public's "baseless fears, and backwards" attitude towards Nuclear Power ( current and new technologies ) the real reason that Nuclear Power is not gaining ground in the US is simple Dollars and Cents. China, Russia, France and India are building units with substantial government subsidies, this is not the case in the US. Secondly no one, "no one" knows exactly what the cost will be for a complete decommissioning of a 40, 60 and 80 year old nuclear power plant. Some preliminary estimates ( factoring for inflation ) imply that it will be almost as expensive as it was to build, and this cost will be passed down to the consumer. Lastly there remains the problems of long term radiation storage, which the few countries have actually solved, and which the US is still attempting to develop. Nuclear Power serves an important function in the energy stream of the US and in Carbon Free energy production, but the dollar per kilowatt is cheaper to use Solar and Wind with even very expensive batter storage.
For the record, nuclear is smokestack-free, NOT emissions-free. No form of energy generation is once you pull the threads on materials and supply chains. But nuclear is in a class of its own. It’s a challenge to mine, leaving tailings that are radioactive. The refining process, which often begins in the mine, involves leaching that can pose a threat to groundwater. Every step of the way, a radioactive substance has to be contained, generally with lots of steel-reinforced concrete. Both steel and concrete have signifiant carbon footprints in their production. Nuclear waste is tricky. Currently, 90 thousand tonnes are in “temporary storage” at reactors because there is no place to send it. If/when there is, the radioactive material will have to travel by truck on public highways, or by train, which can present a security challenge. Or, at a time of accelerating climate change, simply a challenge. Rail track expands in heat so hotter temperatures are already presenting a new wrinkle for that mode of travel. While US mines are starting to reopen, currently about half the world’s enriched uranium comes from Russia, so there are also geopolitical concerns. Water for cooling is another issue. While some newer SMR designs are much better on this score, the amount of water needed at a conventional plant is substantial. And when that water is warmed, it degrades it for other uses. Nuclear may be an essential part of our energy future given soaring electricity demand from AI, but the narrow focus on smokestack emissions has obscured the issues of what we’re dealing with. The video is good reporting as far as it goes. It could go further.
Missed the mark on not referencing the costly regulatory web that adds years to construction timelines.
Not mentioned here: Vogtle was the first nuclear plant built in the US in so long, many of the engineers and builders from the 80's were retired, or dead, so there were a hell of a lot of growing pains to learn from in order to build such a massive, elaborate facility . If we can keep building these, the costs and time to build will drop considerably. With projected energy demands far exceeding what other practical energy can provide, the US could easily build 50 new plants, if not all of this size, and use every watt of energy in the years to come.
Going forward molten salt cooling should be the standard.
Need to keep pointimg out that others are suceeding at it hence US has found the way to be the problem. Need to point out how some of the so called criticism is sheer manure. Also need to confront the bureacracy, it is a necessary evil but don't let its every whim dominate the plot.
MSR have a long way to go before that happdns, like proving one to be an economically (good one not bad) operational unit.
No it shouldn't. We have tried and true designs that can be deployed now. District heating and cooling with exhaust steam should be the standard.
Problem is maitanance of these reactors is dangerous it must be maintained in running reactor it canot be shot down
thank you for giving us another Banger!!! This is an Awesome strategy during rich market conditions, I love It!!!!!!
I love the idea of nuclear but the cost of electricity in Georgia has gone up by 22 % compared to last for about the same electric usage
Which isn't good, as the cheaper the energy sources the more positive economic activity productivity happens.
How have the prices gone up in other nearby states though? Energy in general has gone up significantly.
2020s needs to be a generational moment to dramatically expand nuclear power. There’s no other realistic path.
The US can't construct large infrastructure projects efficiently and within budget period....
Not when it comes to stadiums and large private projects like airports apparently as those always come on time. I wonder why 😂
@@portcybertryx222 airports are not private
@@beback_ airport development projects are public private partnerships with governments owning the land and the airlines or sponsors developing the terminals on top.
I find it funny they needed redesign and fixes. Sounds like it needed even more up front planning.
As to costs. It’s getting silly enough that you can only expect the government to pay for it all.
It’s funny as hell the US navy doesn’t seem to have issues building and operating nuclear power plants… should just have all future plants be operated by the navy.
Nuclear is the future
Solar will be the dominate form of power this century.
@@marsspacex6065 We would still need a reliable and always available power source, solar can’t fulfill that
Solarpanels are the FUTURE
@@mikafiltenborg7572 lol no
@@marsspacex6065 Energy poverty will dominate, you mean.
Love the energy sector coverage by Pippa 👍🏼
Because it is expensive. Even in pro-nuclear countries like France and UK, they've been hit by massive delays and increase in cost.
Isn’t the UK blowing up Nuclear plants?
Nice work RJ!
Most people like it…. Most people don’t want it in their back yard lol
well that makes plenty of sense. I also want nuclear power, and I also don't want any plants near any stretch of population.
CNBC, I really enjoyed this video, so I hit the like button!
one word: Corruption
Sure, you can throw random words if you like
Im what you call a grid engineer we design plans and more plans and someone more plans, nuclear is just nice because it’s a really good baseline product, baseline is the amount of power supplied for all times outside of peak times and it’s really cheap with no fuel cost
China could build one for 12 billion but due to corruption in america a 100 km rail line cost 6 billion imagine that bullcrap😂😂😂😂
I suspect there is very little, if any, environmental or civil lawsuits brought against the Chinese gov't while building reactors, high speed rails lines or damns. You should research the number of people displaced when the Three Gorges Dam was built. Or the number of historical sites that were flooded when it was filled. If the Chinese gov't wants it built, they just build it, and damn all the consequences it may produce.
I think I rather trust an old soviet era reactor over a "modern" Chinese reator... Have you seen how much of their constructions falls apart within 5 years of being built?
SOLARS 5X CHEAPER WHY TALK NUCLEAR ARE YOU SHILLLL OR STUUPID MEDIA BRAINWASHED
A problem I see here is that people want to know exactly how much and how long a new reactor will take to build, then get upset when those targets are missed. They want a Predictive WaterFall-type project where EVERYTHING is planned upfront. These projects would work better in an Adaptive Agile project methodology, similar to how software is written these days, where you agree on the outcome but can't exactly lock down on time or costs. Instead of trying to lock down a single cost for the whole project, which takes years to complete, you agree on how much you are willing to spend every year and let the project run for how long it needs to run. With oversight and governance, this is how software projects get finished.
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I'm 51 and have been looking for ways to be successful, please how??
Francisco alvero expertise is truly commendable.
She has this skill of making complex crypto concepts easy to understand.
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He often interacts on Telegrams chat.
Using the user below
This is so great. Nuclear power replacing oil and coal, until we can improve energy acquisition from renewable, like solar and wind, makes combatting global warming so much easier, and creates a very clean ecology. I am glad that they are built
The video didn't touch on the most important topic of Nuclear waste management.🤔
Finally a post that someone mentions the elephant in the room. Where to put the waste that no one wants. Mich is now taking in waste from NY and everyone is screaming about it. Canada wants to bury it next to the lake, which sounds like such a great idea. Nevada will not open up a multi billion dollar hole in the ground, so where? Blast it off to the Moon? Look at Maxey Flats in KY where the ground water is contaminated or anywhere the fuel was produced, KY or WA state? Deal with the waste first then we can talk.
What's the problem with nuclear waste?
Director Brett Rampal mentions the complexity of completing the design of the plant during its construction. This practice (called something like expedited design) was cited as one cause
of the cost overruns at the Shoreham Nuclear Plant on L.I., N.Y. ('70s/'80s).
who made that chart on power, that's just dumb and misleading.
nice, i built these in Sim City 3000. helped me reduce pollution and sell power
Sixty years too late.
I'm glad they are at least using mechanical/gravity cooling in the new designs. Personally I would never want to build that sucker without a PERPETUAL gravity-assisted mechanical cooling. Next to a river that can just passively cool it forever, etc.
Pose this challenge to Elon Musk's crew, his engineers would surely find a more innovative solution to reduce most of the negative impacts associated with fast breeding reactors
I don't want panel gaps on my neighborhood's nuclear reactor
A nuclear power plant on the same genius level as this Las Vegas Loop thing?
Why is that? I didn’t realize musk hired a bunch of nuclear engineers and chemists. He himself isn’t even a fan of nuclear and pushes solar and batteries as energy sources any chance he gets.
$9 is understandable. In Connecticut we're being charged over $200 a month for nuclear power. Absolutely criminal. And next month they're adding ev charge
For starters it's not cheap and they still haven't decommissioned a single nuclear reactor in this country because of how expensive it is.
Meanwhile send tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine and 🇮🇱.
@@PatrickRockwell24 You spend almost a trillion for defense each year. Ukraine and Israel are peanuts in comparison.
@@PatrickRockwell24and?
@@huckleberryfinn6578 ugh......so that should mean a nuclear reactor should also be peanuts in comparison, right???
@@paralleluniverse99 Don't worry about it Bubba, it went over your head.
The biggest reason that it cost so much in the US is we have really strict environmental laws. They seemed to leave that part out.
Pippa Stevens is awesome!
3:48 The Westinghouse AP1000 was designed in the 1990s. A "current" design, not a "new" design. We need more of these Gen3 AP1000's in order to produce Gen4 reactors. Generation IV reactors are going in the design direction to recycle spent nuclear fuel from Gen III. Make them, we're 50 years behind where we should be.
We should have followed France's lead and adopted a standardized nuclear power plant design with only two or three sizes of the standard design. Instead, we reinvented the wheel with every new reactor which required a lengthy and costly approval process for every plant built. Very, very inefficient and now nuclear can't compete on cost with green energy sources with energy storage. We shouldn't be building ANY new nuclear of any design. IMO
France is the worst example when it comes to new build reactors...
The thing is now that a new plant has been built you need to double down and build more. Using the same construction techniques and company as the 1st. That way the lessons learned from building the first can be applied to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc..... till building them becomes second nature.
Imagine how much Solar you could install for the 14+17 Billion dollars this cost...
For Comparison: According to MarketWatch an industrial Solarpark costs 1.06$ per Watt, Meaning this for 31 Billion$ you could install roughly 29 GigaWatt of peak Capacity SolarPower. At that doesn't even account for the operational costs. Absolutely insane.
Solar need massive battery to work. Electric demand is high at night when solar generates 0 power
Solar energy is intermittent i.e. it requires storage facility because we produce solar on daylight and use it on night but with nuclear that is not even a problem. Solar energy transmission requires a major upgradation of grid , but with nuclear we doesn't need to replace or upgrade our grid . Nuclear is best possible source of energy.
@@konigstiger3252 where did you get your engineering degree?
electric consumption at 9pm is half of 9am
@@DSAK55 source?
If you check eia.gov you will find peak demand is around 5-6pm while demand of 9am is about the same as 9pm.
@@konigstiger3252 Battery prices are in a free fall. A kwh of battery today costs only 50% what is used to cost in 2021. And in 2021 the prices were already down 70% from 2010.
Building reactors and using spent nuclear fuel, yes theres a way to use spent nuclear fuel as fuel exists, is easy. The hard part is the bureaucratic process. Tons of paperwork, tons of regulations, delay after delay after every delay, year after year, and lawyer fees. Thats the issue
SOLARS 5X CHEAPER ONLY SHILLLS TALK ABOUT NUCCCEAR... 100 YEAR STORAGE COSTS THEN 8X CHEAPER IN REALITY-- MEXICO DID 2 CENT KWH SOLAR FARM... AND NOW SOLARS DROPPED EVEN MORE A LOT
Here come the keyboard experts....
Clank clank clank clank clankkkk
Most of whom are pro-nuclear, not having considered the risks over its full lifecycle.
I live in GA, I have never gotten an electric bill over $200 in the summer. The lady saying ppl get bills up to $600? What a lie. My friend in CA does not even get $600 bills. Straight BS.
The problem is you have to pick a good plant prototype and copy it vs. a new model every plant
This is a huge part of it. Too many firms trying to push their own designs resulting in zero mass-producibility.
The federal government needs to hold an open competition and select the best design, like they do with military equipment.
@@alexanderfreeman3406 I don't know if military equipment is a good example of efficient and cost-effective manufacturing. The prices there are crazy. Over $170.000 just for a Javelin rocket launcher.
A few points about the leadership of the United States in the production of nuclear energy for electric generation. The first reactor that produced energy was in the USA. They connected several light bulbs at the factory itself. The first reactor that actually supplied energy to the grid was in the USSR. Obninsk nuclear power plant. The first commercial reactor is the United Kingdom. Of course, there is a question of what is commercial when comparing socialism and capitalism, but nevertheless. The United States, with all due respect to its achievements, has not been the only leader in developing a peaceful nuclear program most of the time.
the big problem with nucs. is it a big eclectic bill forever. if your a home owner , you almost have to get solar panels to keep electric bills down. for 7 billion dollars, can you even imagine how much solar you can set up with batteries. to back them. if they had lined the highways in that state, with solar panels ,would have gotten near to same power output, I admit 4 gig in batteries would have been tough
Solar and wind and batteries would be much better even if i LOVE NUCLEAR
Solar and wind power are great, but they are not suitable to be the backbone of a power grid. They’re too fickle and unpredictable. Not to mention solar would need massive battery storage facilities to supple power at night or when it’s cloudy.
*if you're a homeowner ❤
If you’re a home owner, that’s the point, try to power industry with solar panels. Nuclear is baseload, the “powers N homes” is a misleading phrase, no nuclear plant will only power homes
Thanks for sharing
Why everything is hard in the US: Capitalism
religious conservatism*
which is UnConstitutional.
There are definitely good things about capitalism but where we kind of get lost is the fact that some things need to be free and not controlled and some things need some regulation and some subsidies and that's where it all gets broken down. Nobody wants to manage that.
Energy is certainly one of those things that needs to get subsidized and basically sort of governed in a way. It cannot absolutely be free. Same thing can be said about commercial aircrafts for example like Boeing.
Let's not confuse capitalism with the ultimate levels of human greed that basically disrupt the way how it's intended to work
Also why we are so rich and have so much: Capitalism
Capitalism is why your on the phone you’re using right now and have the ability to use the internet to send the comment.
@@Dumbledore6969x also why u have so many homeless and poor people: capitalism
“The argument against nuclear is an emotional one. Decisions based on emotions are not decisions. They are instincts.”-Raymond Tusk
People often associate nuclear power plants as non-renewable. Which is true but its also a good source of clean energy. It also generates a sht ton of power.