Good News & Bad News, page-40664

Fair enough, but for context, have a look at the article I was commenting on, about the countries where nuclear has worked for many years, and how it was established at scale with backing from governments, the military, and alongside the nuclear weapons segment, under conditions which no longer exist. Even China is struggling with its nuclear energy program, the author argues. It is a very meaty bit of analysis, really worth a look IMO. Hat tip, it was shared by @Nefico

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/30/what-drives-this-madness-on-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/

Here's a chunky quote:

There have been successful nuclear generation deployment programs in the world. The USA, France, Canada and South Korea managed it, more or less. Given the embarrassing track record of massive cost and schedule overruns that have led to nuclear generation deployments being 23rd of 25 categories in megaproject expert Bent Flyvbjerg’s 16,000+ dataset of programs sorted by likelihood to succeed, what worked in the past?

They were national strategic programs. The strategic programs were aligned with nuclear weapons programs. The government picked and enforced a single design for all of the reactors. The reactors were GW-scale due to thermal efficiencies required for cost effectiveness. The government ran human resourcing. The programs ran for 20 or 30 years. They built dozens of nuclear reactors to maintain the teams and momentum and to share lessons learned.

This is obvious stuff looking backward from 2023. As I noted recently, nuclear energy and free markets aren’t compatible. Nuclear programs are state programs with subordinate corporate partnerships.

As a note, China couldn’t recreate the conditions for success despite having every ability to so. Their nuclear program peaked in 2018 with seven reactors achieving commercial operation but has been averaging three reactors a year since. This year the single reactor that’s been connected to the grid may not achieve commercial operation. In my assessment, their industrial export strategy led them to build too many technologies and designs of reactors instead of rigorously enforcing a single design, hamstringing the deployment and scaling effort.

No country globally has the conditions for success for nuclear generation in the 21st Century. That was a Cold War era success story based on a hyperawareness of the threat of nuclear war which is vastly diminished in the age of trade.