this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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I hear this a lot. Can you give an example of a regulation that could safely be removed that would lead to a significant reduction on the cost of new nuclear?
Well one easy one, in my country it is that nuclear plants need to emit zero radiation from their core, like nothing. This is incredibly expensive to achieve, a more sensible value would have been similar or less than normal background radiation.
Nuclear has a lot of advantages that are really low hanging fruit of producing safe clean energy that is perfect for a grids baseload.
Interesting, can you provide more info? Which country? Link?
Wouldn't emitting radiation, even at background levels, lead to an increase in radiation as it's in addition to background stuff?
Also, there are strong arguments that we no longer need baseload generation and in fact it's detrimental:
"No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States….
Wellinghoff said renewables like wind, solar and biomass will provide enough energy to meet baseload capacity and future energy demands. Nuclear and coal plants are too expensive, he added.
“I think baseload capacity is going to become an anachronism,” he said. “Baseload capacity really used to only mean in an economic dispatch, which you dispatch first, what would be the cheapest thing to do. Well, ultimately wind’s going to be the cheapest thing to do, so you’ll dispatch that first.”…
“What you have to do, is you have to be able to shape it,” he added. “And if you can shape wind and you can effectively get capacity available for you for all your loads.
“So if you can shape your renewables, you don’t need fossil fuel or nuclear plants to run all the time. And, in fact, most plants running all the time in your system are an impediment because they’re very inflexible. You can’t ramp up and ramp down a nuclear plant. And if you have instead the ability to ramp up and ramp down loads in ways that can shape the entire system, then the old concept of baseload becomes an anachronism.”"
https://energycentral.com/c/ec/there-really-any-need-baseload-power
Yes. But a single flight across the US exposes people around 4 times ground level background radiation.
Sure, it's a negligible amount but OP was saying that nuclear would be competitive on cost if only red tape wouldn't keep pushing the price up. Their contention was that less shielding would substantially lower the price of new nuclear but so far I've not seen anything to support this argument.