The First Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Was Just Approved by US Regulators
I highly encourage you to look at this factsheet I only just found today [1]. Some highlights:<p>&gt; - Levelized cost of energy (LCOE) includes the lifetime costs of building, operating, maintaining, and fueling a power plant. Estimated LCOE for plants built in the near future are: combined cycle natural gas: 3.71 ¢&#x2F;kWh; advanced nuclear: 6.31 ¢&#x2F;kWh; and biomass: 8.92 ¢&#x2F;kWh<p>and<p>&gt; - Spent fuel is placed in a storage pool of circulating cooled water to absorb heat and block the high radioactivity of fission products<p>&gt; - Many U.S. spent fuel pools are reaching capacity, necessitating the use of dry cask storage.<p>This point is often overlooked. Nuclear waste generates heat. It needs to be actively cooled, possibly for a decade or longer, until it can be stored in dry storage. There&#x27;s transportation risk there (for tens of thousands of tons per year at current rates) and facilities that need to be maintained to do that. Plus adding water increases the risk of site contamination.<p>Also consider:<p>&gt; - ... Managing nuclear waste requires very long-term planning. U.S. EPA was required to set radiation exposure limits in permanent waste storage facilities over an unprecedented timeframe—one million years<p>&gt; - The U.S. has no permanent storage site.<p>TIL:<p>&gt; - The U.S. Price-Anderson Act limits the liability of nuclear plant owners if a radioactive release occurs to $450 million for individual plants and $13.5 billion across all plants.<p>WHY?<p>This is the big problem with nuclear: failure modes have incredibly high cost but relatively low likelihood. Companies have limited liability so they get to pocket the profits for under-maintaining plants and move the costs to the government.<p>In addition to being a bad idea this presents a falsely cheap picture of the true costs of nuclear power.<p>In this same vein:<p>&gt; - The Nuclear Waste Policy Act required the U.S. federal government to begin taking control of spent nuclear fuel in 1998.<p>Another cost shifted to the government.<p>EDIT: over the years I&#x27;ve learned that the more rabid one side of an argument is, the more likely they are to simply downvote anything they disagree with, regardless of the merit. This, sadly, is my experience with nuclear on HN (which isn&#x27;t plagued with downvote-as-disagreement like, say, Reddit is). It&#x27;s not a reason to be anti-nuclear but it sure makes it hard to be swayed by pro-nuclear arguments.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;css.umich.edu&#x2F;publications&#x2F;factsheets&#x2F;energy&#x2F;nuclear-energy-factsheet" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;css.umich.edu&#x2F;publications&#x2F;factsheets&#x2F;energy&#x2F;nuclear...</a>