New nuclear reactor designs promise safe, clean electricity - <AUTHOR> https://www.city-journal.org/next-generation-nuclear-power <comment><USER3> I want to believe that the mainstream could accept nuclear again but I don't have huge hopes. I'm French, we've been getting cheaper and cleaner electricity than our neighbors for a long time. Germany is about to open a coal plant (partially) to take over from one of the nuclear power plants we're shutting down.

And yet, despite all that nuclear power is incredibly unpopular here and the vast majority of ecologists want to reduce our nuclear capacity more and more. I find it depressing personally. We're at 75% now, apparently we're on track to hit 50% by 2035. There's nuclear waste and there's a waste of nuclear.

<comment><USER4> Nuclear will forever be shunned, not because it's inherently unsafe, but rather because WE are unsafe.

Every nuclear disaster so far has exposed incompetence, negligence, corruption, or unsafe practices at some level, and has usually been accompanied by delays, denials, and attempts to bury the evidence. When dealing with potentially "forever" contaminants, this is simply unacceptable.

Ans since human nature and psychology is not going to magically evolve over the next couple of centuries, and since there's no such thing as a foolproof design, reducing nuclear power is a pragmatic approach, even if it causes a temporary increase in dirtier energy production (up to a point, of course).

<comment><USER5> > Every nuclear disaster so far has exposed incompetence, negligence, > corruption, or unsafe practices at some level, and has usually been > accompanied by delays, denials, and attempts to bury the evidence.

Humans are lazy and greedy and stupid. But that applies to everything, and nuclear is responsible for fewer deaths per TWh of power generated than anything you're proposing as a "dirty" alternative.

> When dealing with potentially "forever" contaminants, this is simply > unacceptable.

This is factually not what we are dealing with. The radioactivity of a substance is inversely proportional to its half life. In other words, the more radioactive something is, the faster it disappears.

The most problematic nuclear contaminants are therefore the ones with medium half lives (i.e. decades), because they're radioactive enough to be harmful but long-lived enough to still be there a week later.

This is nasty stuff, but not in any way "forever" and not particularly any nastier than a lot of the chemical substances industries deal with on a large scale all over the place, which are chemically rather than radiologically hazardous and therefore don't even _have_ a half life, i.e. they really are there forever. How is a nuclear reactor worse than a chemical plant?

> Ans since human nature and psychology is not going to magically evolve over > the next couple of centuries, and since there's no such thing as a foolproof > design, reducing nuclear power is a pragmatic approach, even if it causes a > temporary increase in dirtier energy production (up to a point, of course).

Considering that coal is responsible for more radioactive emissions than nuclear per TWh produced _including Chernobyl and Fukushima_ , that is a totally irresponsible and dangerous course of action.

<comment><USER6> > Considering that coal is responsible for more radioactive emissions than > nuclear per TWh produced including Chernobyl and Fukushima, that is a > totally irresponsible and dangerous course of action.

Don't concentration and distribution matter? I mean in Serhii Plokhii's book on Chernobyl he several times repeats the claim that a significant leak into the river/sea would have rendered large parts of Europe uninhabitable. Now either that's a gross lie or your point is ignoring a hugely significant difference between coal production and nuclear. Which is it?

<comment><USER7> Concentration absolutely matters, and based on the figures I've seen coal fly ash - which is what the claims about radiation released from coal power plants are based on - is about as radioactive, kg for kg, as granite is. Which isn't nothing, but it's also not exactly nuclear waste. (Speaking of nuclear waste, the comparisons with coal often also get their numbers by ignoring it and only counting radiation intentionally released to the environment from a properly- working plant. Which is basically just a way of saying that if we could solve the nuclear waste disposal problem and the humans are too incompetent to build and run nuclear power plants problem it'd be a really clean form of power. That's probsbly true, but not realistic. Also, the comparison is generally based on really old and polluting coal power plants that mostly don't exist anymore.)

<comment><USER8> Nuclear waste can basically be safely solved by dumping sealed containers into the sea. We're talking about extremely small amounts of waste. A swimming pool can contain a year's supply of waste, and 20 ft of water is extremely effective radiation shielding. The ocean is so large that this would be totally negligible even if the worst happened.

<comment><USER9> It's been done before.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste)

It wouldn't be negligible. Dumping all our HWL waste (250,000 tons) would increase background radiation of the oceans by 10% if completely mixed, but of course oceans are not. We would simply end up with highly radioactive areas of ocean if and when the containment failed.

<comment><USER10> Just a throwaway idea, but instead of radiating the whole ocean evenly, why not dump it in the already highly radiated nuclear weapon test zone? The US blow around 100 nukes and I wonder if a few thousands of tons would actually do much worse compared to what already down there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The whole article reads like a punchline for a joke involving Admiral Rickover's famous letter. (We just had a thread on it here not two weeks ago!)

"An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose ('omnibus reactor'). (7) Very little development is required. It will use mostly off-the-shelf components. (8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now."

Link to the thread here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715730)

<comment><USER12> I appreciate Rickover's quote more and more every year in I spend in the nuclear industry. My hope for some of these reactors, especially the very small ones, is that they will provide a way for new reactor designers to get some practical experience while risking less than a few billion dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We should have built more nuclear 20 years ago, but it seems it's too late now. The design of reactors that are actually built is extremely conservative, it still takes forever to plan them and get appropriate permissions, and then they take nearly a decade to build. Meanwhile the price of wind+storage is dropping. If you were to start planning a new reactor now, by the time it's operational it might be uneconomical to even turn on. And even if it isn't, it's extremely unlikely that you make your investment back over the lifespan of the plant, especially once you add the decommissioning (which is more expensive than the construction of the plant, because a lot of the structure turns slightly radioactive).

We had our chance, we wasted it by never moving beyond 1970s reactor designs. Now the economics of those designs no longer make sense for new plants, and nobody is going to risk a fortune on building unproven large-scale reactor designs. There's some opportunity with reactors sized like those on ships, but that's it.

<comment><USER14> We were unable to build more nuclear power twenty years ago for the same reason we can't do it now, and it's never too late: it's only against someone's interests

<comment><USER15> And the interests are purely financial, at least in the US. We can achieve carbon free electricity far cheaper by using renewables and storage. Nuclear construction is suuuuuuuper expensive, and perhaps more importantly, incredibly financially risky. The chances of completing a build are very low, and the chance of spending billions of dollars and having nothing to show are unacceptably high.

If nuclear were our only option, we would have to go for it. But we now have better, cheaper, faster, more economically efficient carbon free energy sources.

<comment><USER16> Carbon free renewables will always be a partial solution. People aren't willing to endure rolling brownouts because of low winds or long stretches of overcast weather, and the storage required to solve those issues are never baked into the cost estimates under which these technologies are considered competitive.

<comment><USER15> People have been saying we would have rolling brownouts once we got to 5% renewables. Then when that happened without any ill effects, they said it would happen at 10%. Then 15%. It doesn't matter, because it has always been a false talking point, without any basis in fact. It simply doesn't make sense unless one can only imagine large thermally driven plants and you don't want to have to change grid management from what you were doing in the 1960.

We can do 90% renewable energy, and even 100%, with storage and curtailment. How much we need of each is simply a cost trade off. If we could build nuclear now for less than $100/MWh, it may have a place in this cost optimization problem, but we can't, so it doesn't have a place until nuclear technology catches up to the 21st century.

<comment><USER17> >...People have been saying we would have rolling brownouts once we got to 5% renewables.

Who ever claimed that?

>...We can do 90% renewable energy, and even 100%, with storage and curtailment.

That would not be very difficult with current technology. Trying to rely only on intermittent power sources has huge storage requirements due to weather along with daily/seasonal variation. If grid energy storage was a simple problem it would have been done decades ago.

For example, one estimate is that for Germany to rely on solar and wind would require about 6,000 pumped storage plants which is literally 183 times their current capacity:

>...Based on German hourly feed-in and consumption data for electric power, this paper studies the storage and buffering needs resulting from the volatility of wind and solar energy. It shows that joint buffers for wind and solar energy require less storage capacity than would be necessary to buffer wind or solar energy alone. The storage requirement of over 6,000 pumped storage plants, which is 183 times Germany's current capacity, would nevertheless be huge.

[https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5...](https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5950.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fukushima was a big influence in the most recent hate on nuclear energy. In laymans views, the fact that a (perceived to be) secure, organized country such as Japan had such a terrible nuclear incident, meant that every nuclear plant on the planet was dangerous and we were being lied about.

Politicians simply moved along that line. It doesn't matter that coal is worse for the environment. A nuclear incident can cost your head. Climate change? Clearly nobody cares.

<comment><USER19> This is the saddest misconception that keeps getting trotted out in opposition to nuclear power. People use Fukushima as an example that nuclear power isn't improving in safety, when Fukushima was an old plant around even before Chernobyl. They didn't redesign the plant or substantially alter anything in the wake of Chernobyl. It was built to withstand loss of power, a massive earthquake, and a tsunami all at the same time. The fatal flaw was that when the plant was sited and built, scientific consensus was that a tsunami that large in that area was flat out impossible. As the science improved, no one went back and understood the implications on the design of the seawall that was now known to be inadequate.

Fukushima was a failure, and an expensive one at that, but in terms of the death toll almost all of it is solely from evacuation of the surrounding area and only one case of lung cancer that was likely caused by the accident. There were zero cases of acute radiation poisoning.

<comment><USER20> "...it will run out of space by 2022, and then they will have to dump radioactive water directly into the Pacific Ocean. It is not known yet how much water would need to be put into the ocean."

Yeah, put the dirt under the rug.

<comment><USER21> If all the stored water was dumped in a single year, the population's estimated radiation dose is around 0.02% of yearly background radiation. It's really not a problem.

See [https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissi...](https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/pdf/20191121_current_status.pdf)

<comment><USER22> Meanwhile Scandinavian countries and big chunks of Scotland are already more radioactive than areas close to the closed Fukushima plant...

<comment><USER23> Yes, due to radon gas from the ground which is really a big problem in Scandinavia. Just making sure nobody thinks a big part of the accumulated dose when living here is due to Chernobyl.

<comment><USER22> I lived in Aberdeen, and one of its claims to fame is "Granite City"... which also means the building exhibit more radioactivity than the norm.

<comment><USER23> We've got the same problem over here in Sweden, granite in a lot of places. We also, just for good measure, constructed a lot of buildings in the 50s and 60s from radioactive autoclaved aerated concrete made from alum shale containing high concentrations of uranium. Fun days. Apparently there's still half a million homes here exceeding the radon limit of 200 Bq/m3 indoors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> IQ2 had a debate on nuclear power. One of the arguments against expansion was that nuclear reactor design is basically bespoke for every installation and that the promise of rapid, cheap deployment has not been realized in many years (decades).

Interesting episode, I wish I retained more of it: [https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/02/10/iq2-debate- expand-n...](https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/02/10/iq2-debate-expand- nuclear-power)

<comment><USER25> _> nuclear reactor design is basically bespoke for every installation_

Which is exactly what new modular designs like the one described in this article are trying to change: get away from the custom-built mentality and build nuclear reactors out of standardized, modular components. In other words, the way we already build lots of other things in order to make them cheaper and more reliable (since most of the assembly is done in factories in controlled environments).

<comment><USER26> 20 years ago it was just around the corner. In fact, they said the Russians were about to deploy them: container-sized nuclear power plants that were basically maintenance-free and just ran on their own until they shut themselves down. Made by the hundreds from standard pieces. Safe if messed with. Safe after retirement. There were websites and nice diagrams and mock- ups and everything. Tell me how we're in a different phase now.

<comment><USER22> Without funding it's not going to get moved anywhere. The main design work on them was upscaling them and lowering enrichment + work on reducing any possibility of reusing breed plutonium from them.

If they kept to high enrichment, they could pretty start making and packing container-sized powerplants, but the old designs were designed for 50MW, while the uprated, civilian ones were for min. 100MWe

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> While reading the article, I repeatedly thought "wow this reads like a big ad for nuclear power".

Almost all passages of the very long text pointed out how great it is. It gives only a hand-wavey comment to the problem of what do we do with the waste that will remain toxic for thousands of years to come. Its not a technical but a political problem. Uhm, okay. And the other problem that uranium is much scarcer than previously thought is not even mentioned.

Atomic energy is way cleaner when it comes to immediate CO2 generation - true. But the long term problem of waste is not solved at all.

<comment><USER28> This is a wildly oversimplified and inaccurate picture of nuclear waste, that I've seen all too often.

Nuclear waste is problematic because it emits radiation. It emits radiation because the atoms are unstable, and are decaying into other, more stable atoms. The rate of this decay is normally measured by the half-life - which is the time by which 50% of the element has changed into another, more stable element. The by-product of this decay is that it emits radiation, which is harmful to life. However, it emerges from this that the rate of the decay is directly proportional to the amount of harmful radiation that is emitted. Many things encountered in ordinary life are unstable to some degree or another, but ordinarily either the quantity is so low, or the rate of decay is so slow, that the amount of radiation we recieve under normal conditions isn't particularly harmful.

Now, nuclear waste. This falls into three broad categories. First is those with a half life of less than 50 years, like strontium-90 and cesium-137. These are horribly, horribly dangerous isotopes, and will do horrible things to you if you get near large quantities of them. However the fact that they are so very dangerous means that they are by turn, not going to be a threat for very long. After a short period of time (~30 years for the two I mentioned), they are half decayed already. Devising a storage system to store these sin't very challenging - the quantities are small, and they don't need to be stored for terribly long.

The second category is the one that the anti-nuclear lobby loves to blur with the first. These are isotopes like plutonium-239, with half lives in the tens or hundreds of thousands of years timelines (~24000 years for Pu-239). However what the anti-nuclear lobby fails to mention is that by the very fact that these elements have such a long half life, they are by definition not emitting all that much harmful radiation - many of the waste products in this category similar radiation per kg than coal ash. If we're happy storing coal ash behind nothing more than a chain-link fence, objecting to these waste products is sheer fear mongering, nothing else.

The third category is the problematic one. Here we have things like radium-226, which have half-lives in the thousand-year range (1300 years for ra-226), but are still radioactive enough you want a bit more safety than just piling them up behind a fence. However the good news here is that the quantities of radioactive products in this range are _tiny_. So tiny the entire non-military waste of these isotopes we, as a species, have ever produced would probably fit onto a single train. I think getting rid of one of the most effective ways of power production we've discovered to date for this amount of waste might, just maybe, be described as a colossal overreaction.

Sorry this post got a bit long!

<comment><USER29> Well said. We also need to remember that all of these are 50 to 100 year problems rather than thousand year problems simply because there is no reason to expect that we won't come up with ways to reprocess that fuel within 50 to 100 years. Just consider how our knowledge of these processes has changed over the last 100 years. Do we have so little confidence in our ability to innovate that we really think we will have to deal with this stuff for a few thousand years? So, this is likely a problem of a few decades for the reasons given above and because we will get better at this stuff.

<comment><USER30> This is assuming that our level of technology keeps advancing. Given the level of political instability in our world I would take that far from granted.

<comment><USER31> Then we would have far bigger problems than nuclear waste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am rooting for lots and lots of new nuclear, but this piece is silly. Let's dig in:

"But what if there were sources of zero-carbon electricity that didn't require heavy-handed regulation to make them viable in the marketplace? ..."

Wind and solar are cheaper now than nuclear _advocates_ hope nuclear will be by 2030.

1.[https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....](https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf)

2\. [https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/30/latest-bnef-report- find...](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/30/latest-bnef-report-finds- levelized-cost-of-renewables-continues-to-fall/)

"... What if we could produce more power—and do it affordably, with minimal environmental impact? That's the almost utopian vision that some backers see for the next generation of nuclear power. ..."

Utopian?! We are adding gigawatts of wind and solar this year, and modulo coronavirus we'll add more next year. New geothermal plants are measured in dozens of megawatts:

* [https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-01-22/califor...](https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-01-22/california-needs-clean-energy-after-sundown-geothermal-could-be-the-answer)

"According to Ted Nordhaus, founder of the "eco-modernist" Breakthrough Institute, SMRs could offer a more decentralized, entrepreneurial approach to reducing CO2 emissions without hobbling the economy."

Wind and solar are extremely de-centralized and competitive. The economies that install them at scale—China, California—are doing as well as any.

"Will any of them ultimately be a success in the marketplace? You can't say for sure," he said. "But I think a bunch of them will get licenses to build test plants.""

While we are waiting, offshore wind farms will continue to be installed at hundred-megawatt scale:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms#La...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms#Largest_operational_offshore_wind_farms)

Please continue promoting new nuclear; we could really use it. But please stop with the anti-variable-renewable BS, and FFS stop giving Nordhaus airtime when he insist on talking like this.

<comment><USER33> "The US Energy Information Administration has recommended that levelized costs of non-dispatchable sources such as wind or solar may be better compared to the avoided energy cost rather than to the LCOE of dispatchable sources such as fossil fuels or geothermal. This is because introduction of fluctuating power sources may or may not avoid capital and maintenance costs of backup dispatchable sources. Levelized avoided cost of energy (LACE) is the avoided costs from other sources divided by the annual yearly output of the non- dispatchable source."

See here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source)

So, is LCOE for wind and solar higher than LACE for nuclear power?

<comment><USER32> Great question. Some points:

1\. That source is a mess; three of us spent a couple years trying to update it only to be foiled by classic alpha Wikipedians who are happy to see an article rely on 10 year old price estimates, but not to see standard industry terms used. Note the age of the LACE sources.

2\. The LACE frame is an important complement to LCOE, but also imperfect. Take California's recent decision to require solar PV on new homes. Really high LACE, right?: California is already being forced to pair marginal PV additions with gigawatts of rapid response gas to handle the "neck of the duck curve" when the sun goes down but LA is still using gigawatts of electricity to power AC. Well, the LACE of that low-marginal-value PV is dependent on how many batteries we add, how much offshore wind appears, etc.

3\. The people who promote LACE won't let you include the social cost of carbon as part of the discussion. They'd rather see the page wither.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Advanced nuclear reactor designer here. It is tough times in the industry. The large traditional reactors in the West (US, France, UK) are really struggling. Existing reactors have operations costs that were fine until fracked natural gas pulled the floor out on electricity prices. Now they're struggling. New builds have been boondoggles because contracts went to lowest bidders, who had no idea how to build nuclear plants. The people are focused on intermittent clean sources like wind and solar, with due cause as solar PV prices fell by a factor of 10x since 2009 (as long as the sun is shining).

Meanwhile there has been a bunch of hype about "new" reactors (quoted because they were all initially conceived of and tested in the 1950s). Thorium. Molten Salt. Small Modular. Traveling Wave. Microreactors. These will have less waste and be safer! But will it matter? As I've grown in experience and expertise, I've started looking at the numbers more. Nuclear waste has great solutions in crystalline bedrock (Onkalo), massive salt (WIPP), and deep boreholes (Deep Isolation). If a reactor makes a little bit less, will that move the needle for the public? In terms of safety, current reactors are statistically extraordinarily safe because they don't participate in causing the 4.2 million deaths/year from air pollution (a Chernobyl of death every 2.5 days from the fossil industry). So if a new reactor is slightly safer, will all the anti- nuclear institutions roll over begging for one? I highly doubt it.

Besides, with tech development in nuclear, it's fleet experience that matters. Many MSR designs make vast amounts of tritium and require remote maintenance. Will this be doable? Will releases be acceptable? Only fleet experience can tell. Never believe someone who's never built a nuclear plant on what their design will cost.

These smaller reactors will absolutely struggle economically, especially at first.

More and more I think it's really public communication/PR/education that matters most for nuclear.

Chinese and Russian reactors, on the other hand, are doing better, with Russia seemingly selling VVERs like hotcakes, and moving into markets like Nigeria soon.

I recently wrote up an elaborate page about early reactor development history [1] and about more modern nuclear economics [2] if anyone wants a deep dive. I've been thinking of turning these into a book.

[1] [https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html)

[2] [https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html)

<comment><USER26> Everywhere I've lived in the US that has nuclear power in the mix (Pittsburgh and Georgia) has a surcharge on rates because of the cost of the plant, and we end up paying a higher rate than other areas that don't have nuclear. Are there localities in the US where nuclear has beaten the cost-benefit curve?

<comment><USER12> > Are there localities in the US where nuclear has beaten the cost-benefit > curve?

Technically, pretty much everywhere. The health detriment from fossil air pollution (which is not in the markets at all) and the value of low-carbon energy (also not in the markets) means nuclear plants are providing great benefits pretty much everywhere! :)

But that's not what you're asking. Coal vs. nuclear have traded off through the years. They both got a lot more regulations and more expensive in the 1970s. Komanoff's book really treats this extremely well.

The US plants were not standardized. Places that standardize the plants have a much better time economically. South Korea. France. Russia.

Still, I would argue that while nuclear is indeed more expensive than fossil, the fact that it is nearly carbon free and air-pollution free while being 24/7 make it a good deal. All 100% decarbonized sources have extra fees.

[http://komanoff.net/nuclear_power/](http://komanoff.net/nuclear_power/)

<comment><USER26> That's a good perspective. Unfortunately without being cheaper, the nuclear energy doesn't crowd out fossil fuels without being subsidized.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. Utility execs only care about the bottom line. If we can get markets to value low-carbon or low air pollution nuclear will compete today. Sadly, it doesn't look like this will happen anytime soon. Seems so obvious though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's such a b.s. article and is likely written by the nuclear industry. There are many factual problems but I'll just point out one: the idea that wind and solar will never be enough. Here's a study that includes wind, solar & storage and gets 100% coverage:

[http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2018/ee/c7ee03...](http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2018/ee/c7ee03029k#!divAbstract)

<comment><USER35> This article costs £40.

What's the cost of the 80% and 100% solutions ? What's their lifecycle climate impact (including storage, disposal of course) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> That's NuScale again. They're building a reactor at the Idaho reactor test station, where, if something goes wrong, it's not too bad.

It's not a technical breakthrough. It's an argument that full containment isn't necessary. While the design is supposed to be immune to loss of cooling power, it still has other potential problems. Multiple reactors share the same cooling pool, so if one has a leak, the whole group gets contaminated. If the cooling pool leaks into the ground and you can't refill, as might happen in an earthquake, you could have a meltdown.

It's not really small, either. Each unit is 60 megawatts, and a plant is 12 units, at 0.72GW. Almost 3/4 of an AP 1000.

<comment><USER37> > If the cooling pool leaks into the ground and you can't refill, as might > happen in an earthquake, you could have a meltdown.

The article claims that these reactors don't not have that problem. They didn't describe why or how, but they say the heat would simply dissipate into the atmosphere even if the cooling pool dries out.

<comment><USER36> The article may claim that, but NuScale itself does not.[1] NuScale says they do not need _additional_ water during cool-down. Not that they can shut down dry.

NuScale is interesting, but it's really just a medium-sized (60MW) pressurized-water reactor. Same size as Shippingport (1957), interestingly.

[1] [https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/safety- features](https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/safety-features)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> How many similar headlines have I read since 1980... lol.

I do want it to happen, but my faith is shaken after 35 years of waiting.

<comment><USER39> It probably has happened. I don't think we've had a post-1980s designed nuclear reactor fail miserably yet.

Nuclear remains the safest and cleanest form of power we know about. It was competitive on cheapness last time I checked but the trend favours renewables AFAIK.

<comment><USER12> Today's nuclear is actually already competitive with all clean energy futures. Yes, wind and solar LCOE is dirt cheap today, but only when the wind is blowing or sun is shining. They're riding on the back of the fossil-dominated grid. As we deeploy decarbonize, all studies I've seen show costs rising 30-50 $/MWh to deal with intermittency. At those prices, current nuclear is already in the game.

<comment><USER40> No. With reasonable assumptions for the cost of renewables, nuclear, and storage, the grid optimizes out to 0% nuclear.

<comment><USER12> Yes. Costs of power sources have frequently increased as a function of penetration due to regulations, NIMBY, realities of technology, etc. You're assuming renewables will do the opposite. While popular, this is unconventional. Japan building 22 coal plants right now proves the point.

Serious studies I've seen say 30-50 $/MWh delta is required to deal with reconductoring, storage, recycling, load management, etc.

Nuclear has to standardize and serialize to play. If they don't do that they're out. But if they pull off another France of Korea or Japanese ABWRs its game on. You're also assuming that will not happen.

If you assume nuclear will never improve and other sources will, sure nuclear looks bad.

<comment><USER40> Nuclear power plants have a 60 year history now. We can see they have not come down in cost, and we can see why. They are complex and difficult to build. Mistakes in design or construction can be disastrously expensive. Avoiding those mistakes is also very expensive.

The refrain of "this time it will be different" is looking like just wishful thinking.

<comment><USER12> Now we know how to do it right. See Shika 2 abwr build in 2006. It was amazing. Problem is, we keep choosing to do it wrong. South Texas has a full- on license to build a ABWR there right now. Hitachi could show up and deliver it. But we choose to not allow it due to corporate turf issues with GE.

This is a big management and coordination challenge. But with climate change looming, what better time to choose the path we know works.

VVERs are also fully serialized.

While looking at Vogtle and Hinckley C and Finland, we must not forget VVERs and ABWRs and APR-1400s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The issues is partly political. We could overcome that.

Partly technological: risk of fallout, and more ugly - long term storage.

But really, the issue nobody thinks about is proliferation.

If the West started pumping out 5 cent/mmh electricity and booming, you can be darn sure every tin pot fool everywhere in the world would be as well. After all, why shouldn't they?

But Canada will manage it's boring, hardened facilities extremely well. The entire economy of Canada is not based on anything really intelligent - <USER2> 'boring, consistent responsibility and stability' \- which is exactly what you want for such things.

But how long will stability remain around Nigeria's 20 new reactors? Hey - they convinced us that 'everything was fine' and that it was 'Colonialist and Evil to require external, rigorous inspection'. But now there's a regime change, a civil war breaking out. A rebel group has nabbed a reactor. A second reactor the staff are fleeing because Boko Haram is in the area. The US president wants to send in Marines to lock down the facilities immediately, but wary it will just erupt in more violence immediately.

Obviously that's hugely speculative, but if/when nuclear power breaks up with 100's of reactors popping up everywhere - something like this _will_ happen - somewhere.

I think we can conquor public opinion and figure out 'long term' issues with enough focus and innovation.

But this requires 'highly responsible civilisation' almost universally so that something doesn't blow up somewhere in the long tail.

Since most of the world actually isn't ready for that responsibility, what do we do? Controls? How? Can we tell them 'no'? We could block Somalia from getting nuke power ... but probably not most other places.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm sorry but this article sounds like some pretty egregious reactionary astroturfing. Harping on and on about the cost of the Green New Deal as a given is suspicious in itself. Of course infrastructure investment programs have costs. It just happens that the public would see dividends from it, not just a handful of industrialists.

</comment><comment><USER43> No body seems to have address the cost of Nuclear. There are solar farms in Portugal and Abu Dhabi that cost below $0.02 / kWh non-subsidise. And it seems Sub 1 cents / kWh, what was previously thought to be impossible are now within reach in this decade. How is Nuclear going to compete?

I think right now the race is for utility scale Battery. And this goal seems to be a lot easier to achieve than having a cost competitive Nuclear reactor.

Note: I am not pro Solar or Anti Nuclear, in fact I pretty much want Nuclear to succeed in the long term since I dont like the idea massive land area being used for solar, not every country has the luxury of doing so especially those with limited sunlight hours. But looking at the cost alone it seems solar is hard to compete against.

</comment><comment><USER44> I just watched the Chernobyl HBO series, and I couldn't help but notice the parallels between that disaster and COVID-19, at least in the US.

Those who lead governments are inherently motivated by self-preservation first and foremost, meaning that when something really bad happens, the inclination is to minimize the perception of a problem without considering the cost.

That inclination cost thousands of lives in Ukraine in 1986, and will cost thousands of lives around the world now because leaders didn't listen to the experts early on. Not to mention the constant war on science and intellectualism that has been permeating American politics for years.

This is the price we pay to live in the political environment we have.

<comment><USER45> That statement about thousands of lives is not substantiated.

"The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident caused the deaths, within a few days or weeks, of 30 workers and radiation injuries to hundreds of others. The accident caused the immediate evacuation of about 116 000 people and the permanent relocation of about 220 000 people. The accident caused social and psychological disruption, but apart from the 1800 thyroid cancers that have been reported in inidividuals exposed in childhood, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 14 years after the accident. No increase in overall cancer incidence or mortality has been observed that could be attributed to radiation exposure. The risk of leukaemia does not appear to be raised, even among the hundreds of thousands of recovery workers sent to clean up the environmental contamination. Neither is there any scientific evidence of other non-malignant disorders associated with radiation exposure" from the Lancet [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(05\)73632-1/fulltext#%20)

<comment><USER46> However it did leave a swathe of damaged and uninhabitable land.

<comment><USER47> I read that, because it is uninhabitable to humans, wild life is flourishing in that area! And forests are taking over!

<comment><USER12> Uninhabited by humans, not uninhabitable. Natural radiation in natural hot spots like Ramsar Iran are hotter than most parts of Chernobyl today, and no one there shows any increased cancer. Fear of low-dose radiation is the only reason why Chernobyl is still pretty empty today. The animals are doing just fine. They are no more radiation resistant than you or I.

[http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160421-the-chernobyl- exclus...](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160421-the-chernobyl-exclusion- zone-is-arguably-a-nature-reserve)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> A very interesting concept and I am looking forward to see how it works out. Industrial production of small reactors has the potential to improve the economics a bit and I hope their safety is as good as promised. However the article doesn't talk about a few key points: what are the costs per kWh being produced they are aiming for? The article talks about the reactors being "clean", but doesn't mention what happens with the nuclear waster. What other costs for longterm operations (many decades) have to be calculated? Can the whole reactors be returned to the manufacturer for recycling? The viability of any new concept depends on answering these questions.

Meanwhile, especially these small reactor units are under strong competiton from renewables. Solar plus battery becomes very cost-competitive, especially for small units. If we look towards Africa, solar is ideal there. Not only because the output level is high, but also because the seasonal variation is minimal. Storage mostly would have to last only over night.

And lets not forget about wind energy, which doesn't care about day or night and works very far up north.

</comment><comment><USER49> They always promise it will be safe but it usually isn't. I wish we just were not wasting so much money and effort on this. Solar and wind are already far cheaper, we need to be researching energy storage solutions to make the already cheap solar and wind energy more reliable and not looking for another dangerous boondoggle to make energy for, if we are lucky, ten times the price of solar. Even before the corona-virus hit, this past summer solar cell prices were 15 cents per watt. This is about half of what it was last year. Offshore wind prices are difficult to pin down in a per watt metric, but power companies are saying they are even cheaper than solar and the cheapest option. This is where our efforts should be pointed. We already have the cheap and safe energy we just need to make it more usable and reliable on the grid.

This is all institutional inertia. I know there are a lot of very smart people that studied fission and wanted to dedicate their careers to it and now they are really pissed off that the field is declining rapidly. I know they will all write angry posts in response and down vote me rapidly. I am sorry, I feel bad for you all but I do not wish to risk my life just so you have careers doing something unnecessary and dangerous. You are all very smart I am sure you can re-target your expertise towards power electronics, solid state physics or many of the other fields of physics that are hot right now.

And there is a lot of institutional inertia as well. During the cold war there was an endless stream of tax payer money pointed at anything and everything nuclear and now a lot of the institutions that benefited from it are fighting tooth and nail for relevance. I have the same thing to say to them -- there are other very needed and useful fields where you can direct your efforts.

<comment><USER50> I question whether it is ultimately cheaper, if all subsidies were taken away, the natural resource extraction and transportation costs are considered, the relatively short lifespan, e-waste and intermittent generation all taken into an account. I don't know but I think what we see as "cheap solar/wind" is about as illusory as "cheap gas". I'm not saying nuclear is "cheap" but relative to its reliability, productivity, lifespan balanced against its footprint, waste, etc, I'd believe that it were cheaper and more beneficial for all in the long run that wind/solar/tidal solutions. There's a place for renewables, but replacement of fossil fuels seems like too big of an ask.

<comment><USER22> It's been only in last two years that a wind power plant was built in Poland without direct subsidy, and there's still "green certificate" trading scheme that is an effective subsidy.

Spain switched from direct subsidies to big beefy "guaranteed purchase" 10 year contract... in 2017.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Many of us want to believe this. The problem is the general public doesn't have an appetite for it.

The HBO series Chernobyl is helping/not-helping that cause, but mostly not helping. It is really important not to forget history, not repeat, of course, but the series is bringing nuclear fears to the forefront. For better or worse, we're teaching a whole new generation to interalize those fears about a design that is still very much active [0].

As much as I want to believe the gen 4 reactors are safe and worth attempting, getting this to fly in the public minds is going to take more effort than it's probably worth. For the public, fission power has been poisoned. Single disasters that ruin 20+ years and whole regions of countries are valid/non- ignorable fears.

Large parts of me simply want to dump the money into chasing fusion. Even if it costs 1000x to get there, today money is not the problem - it's sentiment.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK)

<comment><USER52> Corporations and governments use ad campaigns effectively all the time. I'm convinced that if you took a fraction of that fusion money and bombarded people with "nuclear is fine" ads for a year or two, public opinion would change. If a TV show can swing opinion one way, why can't something else swing it back?

<comment><USER53> In addition to "nuclear is fine", I would add that fusion is not as clean as the public imagines. It is being promoted as power generation without nuclear waste, but in reality you are going to get at least mildly radioactive fusion chamber cladding, which will have to be replaced yearly or so. So there will be a huge pile of radioactive waste generated over the lifetime of fusion power plant. This is in addition to a little problem of fusion power being 25 years away for the last 60 years or so.

<comment><USER22> The reason we don't have fusion is that we keep looking for above break-even (and for proper fusion power plant we need ratios way above 10:1, afaik) in _aneutronic_ fusion.

If we accepted neutron radiation in the process, which is what would lead to radioactive fusion chamber cladding you mention, we could have broken even already - the experiment JET reactor had the design capacity to run at above 1:1, but wasn't equipped for the damage from neutron radiation.

<comment><USER40> Breaking even in fusion puts you where fission was in 1942. And that's just a step. The engineering obstacles to practical fusion are enormous, far greater than those facing any advanced fission reactor scheme. I very seriously doubt fusion will ever be practical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> What's strikes me is that the cost of operating a nuclear plant during its lifetime is actually unknown, making it the expensivest energy source. Why it is still in use : obviously because it serves as base technology and knowledge to build weapons.

Some example of hidden costs not included in nuclear kwh price :

\- Cost of managing waste: How can you evaluate cost of managing basically forever (at the human scale) dangerous wastes ?

\- Risk prime to insure huge damage that could arise from accident or future leaks in storage area : Again this amount is so big, that this externality has to be socialized.

\- Cost of dismantling a plant : Beside one or two exceptions, no plant has been successfully dismantled. All the planning and costs for the currently plan in dismantling are exploding and will take years and tons of capital ... leaving more unmanageable wastes and unusable lands.

All those aspects will become increasingly difficult to manage in countries that made the (bad) choice of going full nuclear a few years ago, like France.

<comment><USER55> _> How can you evaluate cost of managing basically forever (at the human scale) dangerous wastes?_

I think we need to be optimists. Not 'glass is half full' optimists, or 'humans are perfect' optimists but 'progress is possible if we keep trying' optimists.

 _If_ we decide to be optimists then our wealth, technological capability and sense of responsibility will all continue to increase. Handling historical waste will become safer and cheaper. An exciting future university project, perhaps, with documentaries, museums and spin-offs abounding.

What it isn't possible to do is to prophesy the precise means by which it will happen.

We _may_ build reactors that produce less and less waste or no waste at all. Nuclear engineers and physicists _may_ figure out how to transmute harmful elements into safe ones. We _may_ end up launching material directly into the Sun. Or we might just dig a better hole. Or something else. Or something else again.

The fact that we don't know in advance is not grounds for pessimism.

 _"Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act." (Howard Zinn)_

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Nukes should be the future but it won't happen.

People are scared of it, and don't understand fission. Popular docudrama shows, like Chernobyl, propagate myths that reactors can explode with "2-4 megaton power".[1]

Politicians won't back it because no one wants it in their back yard. And carbon gives them new revenue they can leverage and borrow against to balance the budget.[2]

I list more reasons at [3], which I link every time this comes up.

[1] - [https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/480113/how- large...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/480113/how-large-would- the-steam-explosion-at-chernobyl-have-been)

[2] - [https://www.eenews.net/stories/1059981189](https://www.eenews.net/stories/1059981189)

[3] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167207)

<comment><USER12> I ROFL'd so hard when the HBO miniseries said 2-4 megatons from a steam explosion. Like, what!? We engineers did a similar bounding calc as the one in your link and got about the same conclusion. So ridiculous.

I do a lot of nuclear outreach in seattle. Audiences are skeptical but open. If we can scale the facts and education, I still think nuclear can and will play a major role in decarbonizing. Especially as intermittent renewable fleets get bigger and the intermittency issue becomes more serious.

<comment><USER57> Do you ROFL at this [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2017.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2017.1384269) also? Especially the conclusion at the end?

<comment><USER12> No. I read this right when it came out with much interest. Why would I ROFL? It's not physically impossible like a 2-4 MT stream explosion postulated to happen days after the nuclear excursion when decay-heat melted fuel was dipped in the suppression pool. The best statement I heard in that regard was: "If that was true, then Hawaii would be wiped off the map multiple times per day as lava falls into the ocean"

Related to this paper, nuclear chain reactor excursions are limited in energy by the vaporization and dispersal of fuel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> What we need it a viable battery to make wind and solar viable for 24 power delivery. How about a rechargeable nuclear battery?

What if during times when there is an excess of power being generated, the excess is used to accelerate protons into a block of some material that (a) captures the protons well and (b) has a half life on the order of 24 hours. Generate the isotopes, when then decay and generate heat over the course of a day or two. Obviously, the isotopes don't wait for night to decay, so it would be generating heat continuously. In effect, it would be a big capacitor.

Just how inefficient would it be?

(Yes, I know very little about nuclear, and I expect it is terribly inefficient, but I'm curious to hear just how bad)

<comment><USER12> Extraordinarily inefficient. The energy in nuclear fission comes not from when a proton is accelerated, but when a neutron splits a large nuclear fuel atom. To store energy in nuclear reactions, you'd have to fuse the fission products back into uranium. This process can only be done at scale in very large supernovas.

But what we can do is store heat. You can have a nuclear plant storing heat in a thermal storage system (e.g. a huge vat of molten salt). As the sun sets, this tank can fill in the extra energy while the (constant power) nuclear reactor keeps the pace. Effectively, the nuclear plant can now ramp rapidly from 50% to 100% full capacity since the salt tank can be sized to double the reactor capacity.

Lots of reactor companies are talking about doing this thermal energy storage thing to best help out in an increasingly intermittent energy world.

You can also steam bypass the nuclear reactor to make hydrogen, desalinated water, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I blame Homer.

The Simpsons painted a horrific picture of nuclear safety - greedy billionaire owner, incompetent safety inspector, three eyed fish, glowing green waste flowing into rivers...

Two decades of TV viewers where indoctrinated with that as a worldview of Nuclear Power.

<comment><USER60> The fun thing about that series is how shifting expectations have impacted our perception of Homer.

Here's a barely-graduated-fron-high schooler, with no special training and skills, yet he enjoys a secure, unionized job, home ownership, and is a single-income earner for a family of five plus supporting a parent in a care home.

In 1988 he was a cautionary tale for our kids. In 2020 he's an unattainable aspiration for our kids' kids.

I wonder if there's room for a "this isn't Homer's time, and it's not Homer's plant" messaging pivot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I feel like I've read this article every three years or so for the past 30 years.

According to my calendar this means we're due for another wave of "the singularity is right around the corner, uh, for reals this time! again!" articles.

</comment><comment><USER62> "Paper Reactors":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715730)

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm concerned about safety not from the engineering side (although not dismissing it), but from the standpoint of an easy access to sufficiently large amount of radioactive material to build a dirty nuke. As the nuclear plants get smaller, the security is going to become a larger percentage of the operating costs and operators will be tempted to skimp in this area.

</comment><comment><USER64> I don't believe in PWR SMR (Pressurized Water Reactor, Small Modular Reactor) will actually solve the problem with nuclear. The only reason to do it, is because the whole regulation is expecting PWRs and to have LITERALLY ANY chance to get a new reactor threw regulation it needs to be a PWR (in the US).

However, while PWR SMR can help you with modular construction and factory mass production, you lose the economics of scale of a larger reactor. I wish NuScale success, but I do not think the technology is very promising to actually reduce cost by the required amount. You need to be competitive with cheap gas prices.

PWR in general are a technological deadend that should never made it past the 70s. Even the inventor of PWR said so in the 60s and that is why he worked on Molten Salt Reactors.

However if you want to know about the future of nuclear, the only place where we see serious development in the Western world, look at Canada. They had a strong program of CANDU reactors and a globally respected regulatory agency. CANDU has now been privatized and the Canadians started to look more into Generation IV reactors (even while I totally dislike this terminology).

This has lead to Canada becoming a hub for nuclear innovation, as the Canadian regulatory system 'only' requires you to prove a safety case that is technology independent. In the US they just say 'show us the secondary pump for the steam', 'my reactor does not have any steam inside of it', 'PLEASE SHOW US THE SECONDARY STEAM PUMP'. _facepalm_

The company that is most advanced in the regulatory process is Terrestrial Energy (www.terrestrialenergy.com) and another one that is a couple years behind is Moltex Enery (www.moltexenergy.com) an originally British company who moved to Canada because the British regulatory agency is possibly even more disfunctional then the US one.

Both of these reactors are based on the Molten Salt reactors and really nice designs. The are both Fast Burners in their first iteration, while Moltex initially focuses more using Canadian CANDU Waste as fuel, Terrestrial Energy has opted to take the most commercially available fuel, 5% enriched Uranium.

However, both hope to eventually develop a Molten Salt Thorium Breeder design, long consider the holy grail among nuclear fans.

Terrestrial Energy is already working on a project to deploy their first US reactor in Idaho. The hope is that the US Regulatory Agency (who have realized how nonsensical their regulation are) are ready with a improved framework and that much of the work done for Canada will be accepted in the US.

The Moltex Ractor is special because it combines Molten Salt with a more traditional fuel assembly design (reusing well tested materials from Sodium Reactors). Listen here if you are interested: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvXcoSdXYlk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvXcoSdXYlk)

Terrestrial Energy is building a more traditional Molten Salt reactor but instead of switching out fuel assemblies, they just replace the whole core. See here for more on their design: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgTgV3Kq49U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgTgV3Kq49U)

For a more economic focus analysis on their design: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsAfUBzRp3M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsAfUBzRp3M)

One thing that is often missed with this discussion is how irrelevant fusion really is in some ways. Fission has an energy density of 10^12 over chemical, Fusion is much better at 10^15, but really if we are not willing to switch to Fission, a technology we already have, why would be do it for Fusion.

<comment><USER65> > but really if we are not willing to switch to Fission, a technology we > already have, why would be do it for Fusion.

I thought the extremely compelling rationale for Fusion was (assuming it can be done) not just orders of magnitude more energy, but also extremely little safety risk and on top of that, your "waste" is pure helium. Am I misinformed? This seems like _of course_ we'd be willing to put the effort into that.

<comment><USER53> > your "waste" is pure helium

No. The cladding of fusion chamber is bombarded with neutrons and has to be replaced frequently, producing radioactive waste. This a drawback of all experimental designs today, AFAIK.

<comment><USER22> The reason we don't have fusion is partially that the focus is on _aneutronic_ fusion that doesn't have that problem.

JET could run above break-even in neutronic fuel cycle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Since everyone is noticing clear skies these days, I hope that motivates people to get rid of dirty power plants.

<comment><USER67> I hope these clear skies make people realize that it's probably from not driving personal cars, and that's what they get rid of.

As far as I understand, there's not been an incredible shift of the type of powerplant that's been running in the last 3 months?

<comment><USER66> Goal and gas powerplants contribute, and this thread is about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Other uses: failsafe generators for critical city infrastructure (communications, fire and police, hospitals). Rural self-sufficient towns far from the grid. City-center car-charging capacity (the grid is most places woefully inadequate to run massive car-charging needs).

</comment><comment><USER69> That is utterly nonsense. There is no safe and clean nuclear reactor, there never will be.

</comment><comment><USER70> I was thinking that if you could shrink them down a bit further it would be a great back up generator for cell sites or hub sites. But then, that would really make the 5G conspiracy theorists heads explode.

</comment><comment><USER71> A technology with a 1% catastrophic failure rate that will devastate whole regions for centuries is a nightmare and should be replaced ASAP.

Keep it in the ground: Oil, coal, gas and uranium! It's over

</comment><comment><USER33> If we ever come up with a cheap and safe energy solution, people will find more creative ways to waste energy, instead of doing more useful things with it. I.e. mining bitcoins.

</comment><comment><USER72> Need to re-brand. Weak-force power stations are the future!

</comment><comment><USER73> could this be the year of "too cheap to meter"?

<comment><USER74> Seems unlikely. Maybe with reduced precision, so they can use lower maintenance meters. They do have to account for crazy usage still surely. But while you get a bill for the connection, they've still got a billing overhead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> NuScale's small modular reactor is proven technology and seems now good enough to be approved, up and running in the US quite soon indeed. It also seems an acceptable answer to many of the current nuclear problems (shameless plug: [https://www.tenproblems.com/2020/04/12/ten-problems-for- nucl...](https://www.tenproblems.com/2020/04/12/ten-problems-for-nuclear-in- the-2020s/)), so good luck!

</comment><comment><USER76> Not great, not terrible.

</comment><comment><USER77> So what did the old reactor designs promise?

</comment><comment><USER78> Why not talk more about spent fuel disposal?

</comment><comment><USER79> Oh yes, yes.

Every 15 years or so we get another piece that goes like "Sure nuclear was bad, but we're going to be reaaaally safe starting... now!"

<comment><USER40> And cheap. Don't forget that "promise" also. Never mind that turbines and generators and cooling towers all have serious cost problems when scaled down, the Hail Mary Reactors will save the day!

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> >New nuclear reactor designs promise safe, clean electricity.

Don't they always?

</comment><comment><USER81> paper-moderated, ink-cooled

<comment><USER12> To be fair, they're mostly digital reactors these days, not paper ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> There are a number of factual errors and misunderstanding in this article.

"New research suggests that wind and solar will never fully replace today's electricity sources. We will always need more reliable sources of energy—ones that don't fluctuate with the weather."

Why no proper reference to this "new research"? Especially since it looks like conventional wisdom which new research has shown is not the case: [https://www.cell.com/one- earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(19)30225-...](https://www.cell.com/one- earth/fulltext/S2590-3322\(19\)30225-8) That paper shows that for continent sized grids (the US is a continent sized country), electrification of heat and transport creates a demand profile that can be matched by a renewable portfolio in every 30 second time period in a year.

Not to mention that the perfect complement to high capex intermittent generation with no marginal production cost is not a steady-producing technology with high capital costs but low to no marginal production cost like nuclear. The perfect complement is low capital cost, high marginal cost gas reciprocal engines. No surprise that this is a fast growing area of generation and that gas turbine manufacturers are hard at work adapting their designs to deal with greater intermittency.

"Joe Biden puts the cost of his plan at $1.7 trillion over ten years. Some analysts estimate the total cost of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal at over $50 trillion."

Conveniently not looking at the cost per year explicitly in the Biden proposal or giving a timescale at all for (one interpretation of) the AOC plan. 1.7 trillion over 10 years is 170bn/yr. That's 8% of US GDP. Quite a lot of money, but it just doesn't seem reasonable to only look at the cost of something which is a set of long life capital investments that way. That's because:

1) The lifetime of renewable generation and transmission infrastructure (and nuclear generation of course) is measured in decades and the operating costs are <<< capital costs.

2) We don't treat capital investments the way we treat recurring expenditures. I "spent" several times my income buying a house. You need to look at the annualised cost over the lifetime of the investment not at the capital cost.

3) Looking at the total upfront cost is only relevant to the degree that in- year budgets or borrowing are constrained. Those constraints are effectively set by the capital markets and by monetary policy for countries borrowing in their own currencies. In government decision making, this distinction is expressed by calculating economic value for money separately from affordability.

4) Only stating the total capital cost doesn't take into account the capital and operating costs in the alternative nor does the author make any attempt to quantify the cost of the nuclear option.

"Moreover, these plans call for unprecedented regulation of the energy sector, something closer to a command economy than a free market."

Dumb as a rock. The energy sector is second only to healthcare in the amount of regulation that applies to it already. The most regulated part of the energy sector is... nuclear.

"But what if there were sources of zero-carbon electricity that didn't require heavy-handed regulation to make them viable in the marketplace?"

I'm glad to hear that nuclear SMR's will be able to buy private insurance rather than relying on the government to backstop them. Again, the size and complexity of the "regulatory surface" is much bigger for nuclear than for renewables.

Not only that, but basically all the expensive basic research and prototyping for GenIV nuclear has been done by governments. That's true for renewable generation as well of course, but it does seem strange to see descriptions of private sector start-ups as being basically scrappy entrepreneurs when in most cases they are attempting to commercialise ideas that were tested at great expensive and sometime substantial scale using government money in the 1980s.

<comment><USER40> $170 billion is less than 1% of US GDP.

<comment><USER82> Sorry, you're right of course. It is actually 0.8% of GDP, not 8%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> This magazine is mostly know for its racist intellectuals so sure let's see what they have to say about energy.</comment>


On Reading Issues of Wired from 1993 to 1995 (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/on-reading-issues-of-wired-from-1993-to-1995 <comment><USER2> Once the author is done digging through her vintage Wired magazines, she should find some copies of Mondo 2000. That was like Wired on LSD. Overtly anarchist, hardcore techno-futurist, deep into art and mind-expanding drugs, it was so much more _aggressive_ than the relatively mainstream views of Wired.

One of my favorite interviews ever was in Mondo 2000. They interviewed the Edge, from U2 - but he was interviewed by the band Negativland (he did not know this in advance). Now, at this time, Negativland was in the process of being sued into oblivion by U2's record label. They were a cut-up band, tearing up bits of popular culture and reassembling it in interesting ways, and they were right at the bleeding edge of the then-nascient sampling debate. Negativland had released an album called _U2_ , with a picture of a U-2 spy plane and the name "U2" printed in huge letters filling the cover, while "Negativland" was rendered in much smaller letters - basically, toying with the U2 trademark for artistic purposes. The record also had some U2 samples, although it was mostly just other samples.

Of course, the label sued. And the Edge had sort of heard about it, but didn't really know anything, even though this was supposedly being done in his name. So the band explains what they do, and he's really intrigued and wants a copy of the album, and they tell him he can't have one.

Holy hell, that was hilarious. But that's what Mondo 2000 was. Wired would never do such a stunt.

<comment><USER3> Loved Mondo 2000 as a teen but some of it has aged terribly... really terribly. To see an example do a search for: mondo 2000 R.U. a Cyberpunk?

Even with that, the art design was absolutely amazing and is still a joy to view. Early issues of Wired had some pretty edgy (and often nearly unreadable) design too. Not Mondo 2000 level but certainly reflective of the tech culture of the time. I suspect that some of the advertisements in early issues of Wired weren't for real companies but were fakes to make the magazine appear more popular with advertisers than it was starting out. Anyone remember ads for a company named Origin (not the makers of Ultima and Wing Commander) that didn't seem to have a product?

IMHO, Wired peaked with the Neal Stephenson Hacker Tourist issue. Perhaps what they've become is simply a reflection of the world now and tech's place in it.

<comment><USER4> Was it Mondo 2000 that had full-on profile stories of people who didn't exist?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a little sad to look back at the early days of Mondo and Wired when the internet was still a wild, weird, individually empowering space instead of a corporate sponsored surveillance dystopia

</comment><comment><USER6> Oh, man. I still cherish my original Wired. I grew up in a small town, and it was a breath of fresh air. Openly discussing the hacking of cell phone signals, cell tower changeovers, BBS reviews, and more. And their advertising was _nuts_ , given they hadn't lined up many advertisers they were running their own hypothetical ads for really strange things.

After that first issue, I kept going back for more. I have the first 20 years collected, but fell by the wayside as my kids grew up and stopped selling magazine subscriptions for school. :)

<comment><USER7> 2600 still fits that weird niche about hacking and advertisements for grey market tech

<comment><USER6> Oh, absolutely! I still remember reading about a fantastical cell-phone-for- every-vehicle concept in 2600. How the engineers had taken the prototype car for a joy ride, and an operator came on to warn them about engine temperatures or some such.

Six months later, On Star was announced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a complete set of the first 5 years in a box in my basement. Sometimes I pull out issues from the pre-WWW days and the ads alone are worth the entertainment value.

If archive.org would scan them whole, I'd donate them all in a minute.

<comment><USER9> I think Jason Scott might be able to help: [https://twitter.com/textfiles](https://twitter.com/textfiles)

<comment><USER8> The early issues used such weird slick waxy paper that I'm afraid they'll slide right off the scanner... =)

Oh, and they're HEAVY.

But you're right, I should drop him a line.

<comment><USER10> Hopefully they'll do a better job scanning them, when they do, than whatever happened with Omni magazine - that scan was completely butchered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >each Day-Glo issue is an offline time capsule from the first dot-com bubble.

My favorite thing about the 90s is how competing products were actually different from one another both in features and in design. These days your choice is between glass slab A and glass slab B. Maybe glass slab B does something really bold and dangerous, like include a headphone jack.

</comment><comment><USER12> Some random scans from 1994 and onwards:

[https://archive.org/details/magazine_rack?and%5B%5D=wired+19...](https://archive.org/details/magazine_rack?and%5B%5D=wired+1994)

<comment><USER13> Just flipping through 1994 issue 11 was pretty amazing: There's a short article about how network interconnect policy changes might affect end users, an blurb on Tektronix getting a patent on rasterizing images, and a large article on Chrysler's "Patriot" hybrid race car, which they were planning on racing at Le Mans (the didn't due to issues with the flywheel energy storage device).

I suppose we've made progress since then...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> First discovered Wired on the shelves of our local college. Immediately fell in love, and begged my parents for a subscription. This was during the golden age the article is talking about. Man, those covers – and that paper – were beautiful.

Their online presence was equally inspiring; those intro gifs, the bold graphics. Web Monkey was a great resource for learning to code.

Hot Wired Style [1], by Jeffery Veen, was hugely influential. To this day, technological improvements aside, it's a great example of principled web design.

1: [https://www.amazon.com/Hotwired-Style-Principles-Building- Sm...](https://www.amazon.com/Hotwired-Style-Principles-Building- Smart/dp/1888869097)

</comment><comment><USER15> The article I remember most from that vintage: Gang War in Cyberspace.

[https://www.wired.com/1994/12/hacker-4/](https://www.wired.com/1994/12/hacker-4/)

<comment><USER16> This is slightly outside of the 1993 to 1995 range—being December 1996—but I think the best story ever in Wired might be "Mother Earth, Mother Board" (by Neal Stephenson, about the laying of the FLAG undersea fiber optic cable).

[https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/](https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/)

Unfortunately, the online copy no longer has the images!

Edit: I just noticed that Stephenson gives GPS fixes to absurd precision (10 microarcminutes, or about 1.6 cm—on the ocean with a civilian GPS receiver in 1996, before GPS Selective Availability was turned off).

<comment><USER17> > Edit: I just noticed that Stephenson gives GPS fixes to absurd precision (10 > microarcminutes, or about 1.6 cm—on the ocean with a civilian GPS receiver > in 1996, before GPS Selective Availability was turned off).

It would seem GPS Selective Availability has been disabled since 2000 [0].

[0]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Globa...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Global_Positioning_System#Selective_availability)</comment></comment></comment>


Making a Deep Learning Server - <AUTHOR> https://waydegg.github.io/making-a-dl-server.html <comment><USER2> Does it really save money? Seems like a bit of an outlay for the rig and GPU's then you got the running costs and maintenance. Atleast you can sell them after you're done I suppose.

What was the total spent and how long until break even?</comment>


How to fake courage - <AUTHOR> http://blog.42floors.com/fake-courage/#.Ujm_RX8EXuA.hackernews <comment><USER2> I'm an extreme introvert by nature, and overcoming this is a constant, daily, exhausting struggle. I love interacting with one or two people who I know very well. But I'm driven to the edge of an irrational panic attack when I meet new people.

In high pressure situations, like sales or fund raising, it can be excruciating. The elevated pulse, the sweat, blurred vision -- it's fight or flight response the entire way.

I was talking with a friend of mine about living in cities, and we both mentioned our distaste for living in an environment where we have to deal with lots of people. But while her response was to try and move out to the country, mine was to try and move to bigger and bigger cities. Turns out I love the anonymity of big crowded cities like New York, but just like my friend, can't stand the kind of semi-dense low-rise urbanity like you find in LA. The density just isn't right.

Many years ago I took a job doing tech support and phone sales. It was probably the worst kind of job for me, but I persevered and found that over time I learned how to deal with people. Every month or two I had a difficult interaction and realized that I dealt with it more successfully than I would have a few months before. I still hated it, that kind of interaction, but it trained me. I was never going to be a natural at that kind of interaction, but I would never naturally get up and run a marathon either. I realized that if I could train myself, I could not only tolerate, but be successful in these kinds of interactions.

I also remember being moved by the Gom Jabbar scene in Dune. The purpose of which was to filter out humans who could discipline their mind against instinct, and animals who were slaves to instinct. I realized reacting to fear is reacting to instinct, like an animal, and if I were a human I could overcome this. This is reenforced by the Litany Against Fear used during that scene.

Now, many years later, before I go into a meeting with strangers, I tell myself this, I've trained myself to overcome my instincts, to be fully human. I tell myself "fear is the mind killer" and I enter the room.

<comment><USER3> > _In high pressure situations, like sales or fund raising, it can be > excruciating. The elevated pulse, the sweat, blurred vision -- it 's fight > or flight response the entire way._

This might blow your mind or it might not, but there's a medicine called Propanolol that can basically eliminate the elevated pulse/shaking/sweats. Performers sometimes use it to combat stage fright. It's nonaddictive and doesn't affect your cognitive skills.

We sometimes get into a feedback loop of: fight-or-flight kicks in, brain freaks out which pushes fight-or-flight further, which freaks out our brain even further, etc. Propanolol short circuits the physiological side, so you're only battling your brain (instead of your brain and your body feeding off each other).

I had a bout of anxiety last year sparked by an unpleasant situation, and therapy helped but the fight-or-flight responses were absolutely crippling. My MD and therapist both suggested the medicine, so I gave it a shot and it's wonderful. I liken it to an armor on my body's responses. My mind may get freaked out but when my body doesn't react in kind, it's easy now with practice to settle down.

Anyway, sounds like you may have figured out your own solution, but I'm leaving this here for you or anyone else who might find it useful. Cheers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depending on the definition this is courage actually. As per The Merriam- Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: "Courage: mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty"

So the author it seems is a courageous person. Not feeling fear/danger/difficulty is not courage. It does not imply the ability to handle these feelings. So if the author is faking anything then that's fearlessness.

Enough nitpicking, great post!

<comment><USER5> Your post brings to mind a fairly well known quote from A Game of Thrones:

"Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?' 'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised by this article since I have not found the "Fake It Until You Make It" strategy to be very effective, especially with regards to faking courage. If it works for the author, great, but I wouldn't recommend this and here's why: False confidence might make you seem brave in the short-term, but long-term it's not going to fool most people and will make you look like even more of a weakling.

"Exaggerating Courage" usually works much better than faking it, at least for me, because it's based on a kernel of truth instead of a lie. For example I've never had a tennis lesson but I used to be good at basketball and other sports. So when I'm on the tennis court, even though my technique is poor, I remind myself that I have good hand-eye coordination and agility. So I focus on the fact that "I'm quick!" instead of "My backhand is lame!"

Focus on your strengths, not your perceived weaknesses. Of course when I'm really "in the zone" I'm in a state of Relaxed Confidence where I'm not talking to myself, either positive or negative, and I'm merely reacting to what's required at the moment. It's the ideal mind-body-state to be in when you're trying to return a serve, sink a free throw, hit a fast ball, or in many other non-sports situations. For more on this, check out...

The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance by Timothy Gallwey. [http://www.amazon.com/The-Inner-Game-Tennis- Performance/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Inner-Game-Tennis- Performance/dp/0679778314)

</comment><comment><USER7> I can't even begin to explain how much this post hits home for me. If not for my 3 years in customer service as an undergrad, I think I'd be much worse off than I am currently. It's still a daily struggle for me to put myself out there, and I have to make a conscious effort to do so. The saving grace for me, as I'm trying to run a small startup, is that I'm incredibly passionate about what I'm working on and I'm confident in my long-term goals for the company. If not for that, I'd probably not have made it this far. It took a while for me to realize that even "successful" people struggle with the same thing. I've found that the best way to get over the fear is to force yourself to do things that make you uncomfortable. While I'm certainly not fearless, I've made huge strides thanks to all my faking. Thanks to Freedman for writing this.

</comment><comment><USER8> The greatest thing about faking is you'll actually end up believing it, even subconsciously, which is great.

A great way to start is just by changing postures. Related: [http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes...](http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html)

I've experienced quite a few of this. When I'm having conversation with colleagues in a closed body posture, boy do I stutter a lot.

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember the 15 Year old me. I was an extremely introvert guy participating in school debate competitions for the first time. While I was speaking in front of the audience, my legs (hidden behind the dais) would be shaking (the first few times). Somehow, I learnt to control my fear of public speaking and manage to put my points across.

Courage (faking courage) is probably the strength to do a thing well without letting the fear of failing paralyzing you.

<comment><USER10> You probably know this already, this comment is just for those who don't.

If you are trembling before public speaking is probably adrenalin. It is hard in the first minutes. But it is good for you, it makes you more alert, smarter and better overall. It is just difficult at the beginning, but once you start talking, it fades away and you will feel better. Keep that in mind.

<comment><USER11> And don't forget to clench your butt.

I'm serious. It gives the energy somewhere to go so you aren't fiddling with your hands or fidgeting around and it's invisible to everyone in the audience.

Also improves your posture. Win-win.

<comment><USER12> Just don't try to walk while you're doing it.

<comment><USER13> And maybe take a potassium supplement or have a banana for breakfast so you don't get a cramp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My default personality is very risk averse. I do lots of things that look crazy to other people. Different knowledge base, different goals, basically.

I agree with the first point of setting a clear goal so you know what you are actually trying to accomplish.

Also, learn about statistics. Most folks make logical errors when they "bet." Flipping a coin, the odds are always about 50/50, no matter what the last flip or last ten flips were. But people tend to think "The last three were heads, so we are overdue for tails." Nope. It is still about 50/50 (with, I think, a slight skew towards heads).

Get the facts or hard data. Be very skeptical about data that comes from iffy sources or processes. Trying to decide on hazy info sucks so bad. Good info leads to better decisions. "Garbage in, garbage out."

Get a sounding board, preferably one who has different strengths and weaknesses from you, not a "yes man" and not someone biased in the same way you are. My oldest son is very opposite me in some important ways. When we both vome yo the,same conclusion from very different directions it tends to be a very sound decision.

Anyway, real work calls or I could possibly drone on.

</comment><comment><USER15> God damn it. I didn't know Disqus picks up your gravatar like that. That was a highly unexpected outcome. Now I need an anonymous email address to use.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was under the impression that "fake courage" was in fact stupidity in disguise.

<comment><USER12> The difference between courage and stupidity is mostly in the outcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I understand the faking all too well.

Awhile back I was this fat, neckbearded kid in my mothers basement coding and gaming. Realized I'm trash at interacting on the most basic levels with people. Lost all the weight, got strong, got decently good looking, but inside I'm always still that shy nerd that doesn't really want to go out _ever_ and keep to himself.

Every outing I need to mentally and physically prepare for, I can't just "go out" and be with people. I have to pay active attention to how my face _feels_ , what position I'm sitting in, how I'm walking, the spacing between my steps, my pacing, every little detail is calculated and it makes going out extremely difficult.

Every single day is a mission to fake it, and though I'm good at it now and it's nearly natural, I still microanalyze every person, gesture, blink, speech, walk, turn, movement of everyone and I incorporate these attributes into my own outward image to project confidence, courage, and ambition.

I never had friends growing up when I was young, not sure what kind of impact that truly had but as an outsider, I've been observing relentlessly, almost obsessively, and taking bits and pieces from others until I formed someone decent (me), how normal people act in normal situations.

I still feel extremely anxious every day to the point of having to pep talk myself before meeting someone, that has never changed for a second, the only thing that has changed is my ability to mask it but I'm as scared as ever.

It makes me wonder if everyone is in the same shoes.

I'm a person that can't do anything unless a process, or number, is attached to it. Essays in highschool? Barely ever passed, I lock down, don't know where to start. Math? Design? Computers? Not the slightest problem, which is why human interaction is so difficult, there is no "set way" to interact.

I don't really know who I truly am because all my mannerisms are borrowed from various people, movies, figures, friends. No movement or expression is my own and it's difficult to cope with.

Through my observation, the only thing that honestly matters, is just being nice and treating others as equals and it all falls into place.

I don't know if it's mental illness or what it is, but I can tell you right now the happiest I'd ever be is 100% alone left to my own mind somewhere deep in nature.

I remember having a heart to heart with roommates I was "close" with. We started talking about all our passive aggressiveness because it was starting to get to all of us and ruin our living situation. It got way to real, and then it got to me. I explained to them how I see the world, how I deal with things, and they honestly looked kinda terrified and thought I was crazy, and it hasn't really been the same since then since they don't really know who I am now, I don't even know who I am.

<comment><USER18> I relate to a lot of this. I used to have similar traits.

Then I bought a bar--a little neighborhood bar, where it's slow--and worked behind the bar for two years.

It fixed me. Now I feel relaxed just to be me.

I don't think everyone can spend two years behind a bar, but maybe there's something similar you can do. For me it was just lots of forced interaction with all levels of acquaintance, for hours per day, until I became good at social interaction and began to relax.

<comment><USER19> Fascinating. Did you work full-time at the bar? Was it enough to make ends meet?

<comment><USER18> I did, yes, and so did my brother who was my partner.

We scraped by. I lived on what would not be enough for most people, mostly tip money.

The bar is still open (we opened March 2010), my brother runs it, and I'm off doing other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I found some great advice on this at the Rejection Therapy site. In particular:

No Confidence? Borrow Some: [http://rejectiontherapy.com/no-confidence-borrow- some/](http://rejectiontherapy.com/no-confidence-borrow-some/)

Fear Hacks of World Class High Divers: [http://rejectiontherapy.com/fear- hacks-of-world-class-high-d...](http://rejectiontherapy.com/fear-hacks-of- world-class-high-divers/)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is honestly a crap article. Absolutely shit.</comment>