First ACPR-1000 Nuclear Unit Begins Commercial Operation in China

[sfwriter]

4. So this is the convincing part of your arguent...

And this is going to sound a lot more harsh than I intend. My aim is not to belittle. I am interested in the answer.

"Not in China. Not in China. In China, "nuclear takes too long" is a Trumpian scale lie, as it was, by the way, in the period between 1960 and 1980 in the United States. Of course, today, in similar Trumpian scale distortions, people confidently assert that what has already happened is impossible.

We may add to this complaint about "taking too long" the complaint that "nuclear is not competitive" made by the kind of asshole who thinks, say, for instance, that the collapse of a tunnel at the Hanford Nuclear Weapons plant was a world class disaster while climate change, um, isn't. This kind of asshole can't figure out that if it takes two systems to do what one system can do alone, the cost of both needs to be included in the overall cost. This kind of asshole is also the kind of asshole who pays no attention whatsoever to external costs, the costs of the destruction of human flesh, animal flesh, the environment at large, and all future generations of human beings. "

Calling them assholes really wins them over, huh?

Let me be that asshole for a moment. I'm really curious, why do you think Nuclear fails economically in the United States?

It's not the political fear of nuclear played up by by a cold war weapons complex that dictated the framing of the word "nuclear" as remote and dangerous for three generations, resulting in the brainwashed "assholes" as you so eloquently describe them. They are a side effect of a culture that conflated nuclear power and nuclear weapons with the nuclear nightmares for three generations. I'm not surprised that a generation that grew up on radioactive monster movies and duck and cover are leery of nuclear energy. Same goes for the ones that watched Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukishima. All big televised disasters, primetime disasters that walled of entire regions from habitation. You can point out these images aren't fair, the land around Fukishima is habitable. Hell, Hiroshima and Nagasaki thrive. I get you, that fear is unreasonable. But that fear is real, and it is irrelevant. We don't vote nuclear power plants int existence.

Nuclear power is an economic decision. But why is nuclear so expensive, and so uninsurable that the government has to be the underwriter? China is a command economy. China can improve their nuclear industry where ours is bound to the marketplace, except for the risk, that is fully socialized.

I grew up in and around Oak Ridge Tennessee. It took me until college (1990s) to realize that people had a problem with nuclear power. I grew up with no nuclear fears. I knew nuclear scientists as a kid and saw designs for pebble bed and molten salt reactors that promised to be cleaner, safer and less bound to the nuclear weapons industry than what we actually built. They were "cheaper than coal" as one display proclaimed at my beloved childhood haunt, the Museum of Science and Energy proclaimed. Power would be "unmetered." That was written by an engineer, not an economist. If China is getting there, then great, at least someone is doing it. Maybe they will invent cheap, unmetered nuclear and sell those Oak Ridge designs back to us.

But I don't think anti-nuclear activists kill nuclear power, that happens in board rooms and accounting departments. What kills nuclear power? It isn't preference. You said, "people confidently assert that what has already happened is impossible." Fuck those people, do they even matter? Which people specifically? I don't get to vote on building nuclear power plants any more that I get a say over the water system in my town, or what's in my wieners, or whether we get power from coal. That decision is made by experts and technocrats, and I don't think they are swayed by what we both agree are phantom fears.

What causes nuclear power to fail economically? Does that fear translate into regulation? Nuclear power has always been heavily regulated because of the real harm unregulated fissionable material could cause. No way the government steps out of that game. You think those Chinese plants lack regulation? The Chinese perfected bureaucracy when westerners still though Feudalism was an economic breakthrough. Is the cost caused by NIMBYism? Lots of industries face that from refineries to tanneries. We still find room for them somehow. Is it the designs themselves? They are not the most efficient. It can't be the off-book accounting in lives you often cite? Our whole economy is based on not seeing the true cost of anything.

I'm honestly curious, because the screeds you write come across as rabidly anti-renewable when I don't see anyone choosing renewable over nuclear. They choose renewable over coal. Nuclear never even got considered. Why?

I do not know the answer, but without a new solution that comes from understanding that answer, I don't see things changing. I don't see it changing until things get a lot more desperate, resulting in the kind of command efficiency that China enjoys, and I don't see how that happens without bloodshed, because thems that own the property sure the hell aren't giving up their capitalism and economics to save poor kids from asthma, black lung and cancer.

I'm curious, why does Nuclear fail economically? If the answer is because we don't keep all deaths on the same balance sheet, then your fight is with capitalism, not wind and solar.