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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24615 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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The problem is that we can not build them in the USA. Out of the last 4 units we tried, two of them ran up construction costs approaching $30 billion before they threw in the towel and got canceled. The other two at least got built, but again, with a cost of some $30 billion. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-5x as expensive as wind or solar.

We can’t talk about nuclear without acknowledging that the USA, as a country, can’t build nuclear anymore. Anyone who who even tries goes bankrupt. I don’t mean there is a lack of political will, though there is that. I mean we don’t have the manufacturers, contractors, designers, or financial sponsors that know how to do it. It’s really sad.

If I recall, the MIT study on the matter even straight up said that it's not the cost of the nuclear portion that drives up the price, it's the general construction and horrible project management of the rest of the site.

Sure, but that’s kind of my point. Building solar panels and wind turbines is simple. Building nukes in hard. Part of this is the supply chain. There’s a well established wind and solar supply chain which keeps costs down.

Our nuclear contractors are horrible, they don’t have the experience or the volume to learn. And the manufacturing is nothing to sneeze at either. There are only so many companies in the world that can build vessels large enough for nuclear.

The contractor and site management costs are certainly relevant when deciding if a technology is viable. And I don’t see any near term or medium term way to fix this.

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