Is nuclear power really that slow and expensive as they say?

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Great video. I worked in nuclear power for over 40 years. The biggest challenge was educating the public. We failed to address it early on. Catch-up is nearly impossible, especially with population growth, lack of education, and fear of science.

I would prefer to live near a nuclear waste storage site than a coal fired power plant, oil refinery, chemical works, waste to heat plant, etc. They are all likely going to do more harm to my health than a nuclear waste site.

1 thing Sabine failed to mention about the Fukuashima accident is that the backup generators that run the cooling pumps were on the basement floor of the plants. So when the tsunami struck it flooded the basement rendering the generators inoperative. In an area with frequent severe earthquakes you would have thought the designers would have foreseen that.

Great video as usual! I am a retired engineer from a large US utility company. About 20 years ago, I pushed, as best I could, the modular nuclear plant idea. My thought at the time was suggesting using pre-approved (Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)), shop-fabricated and inspected (as physically possible, given size to ship), 200-300 MW (thermal) size nuclear modules. These would be based on, or exactly the same as, the proven (since the 1950s) Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) that the US Navy uses in over 150 nuclear powered vessels. The thought was to reduce siting, permitting, warship reactors are "hardened" for war, and can withstand many G's (earthquakes), and construction times, via maximized shop-fabrication of nuclear and other components. As far as I can tell, from public information, these reactors have a perfect safety and reliability record. For electrical generation, the reactor steam (thermal) output could be headered together to drive a single large turbine generator or several smaller turbine generators. I could go on, but enough said for now. Keep up the great work...!!

My father helped build three nuclear power plants in the 70s. According to him the first one took 7 years to build, the second took 5 years. During the second they started work on the third and it was on schedule for three years mostly as an effect of logistics and lessons learned. He switched jobs after a negative referendum on nuclear power so he never saw the completion of the third reactor and is not sure if they kept the schedule.

More radioactivity is emitted into the environment from burning coal than from nuclear power. The ample waste from the use of coal is also radioactive.

Absolutely the best episode. You nailed so many nuances of the nuclear power topic that so many just don't understand well enough to discuss dispassionately. As one who grew up in the heart of TVA and had the great fortune of knowing so many well informed people in ORNL, TVA, and government, your insights are SO appt on. Regulations became a cash cow for the government for TVA as one example as you so rightly called out. I fully admit that I support nuclear power yet your approach to this topic and the facts that you presented really paint an accurate picture and I'm grateful

I worked on the flood risk assessment for a nuclear power station currently being constructed in the south of England during 2009, during which time I recall seeing design documents predating 2000. The latest estimated completion date I read is 2026! In other words 17 years from the planning stage and arguably more than quarter of a century(!!) from contract commencement. All for <4% of the UK's power requirements. All of the nuclear power plants together in the UK contribute up to <20% of the country's power needs.

If I had the choice between living next to a chemical factory or living next to a nuclear power plant or nuclear waste repository, then I would always choose the nuclear power plant or nuclear waste repository.

In the UK the main problem with any infrastructure development is not regulation, but the fact that anything that takes more than a couple of years falls at victim to winds changing in electoral cycles. So things get sent back to committees, extra studies, etc all of which delay starts or introduce extra hold points and mid project delays. This has happened with projects such as HS2, Hinkley Point, etc.

I’m a mechanical and nuclear engineer with degrees in both. After graduation with an MS in Nuclear Engineering, I worked for 7 years in the Nuclear industry after 1980, when jobs became really hard to find. But I had the good fortune to work with a team of 100 people from 1980-83 to get Diablo Canyon Units 1 and 2 in California to full operational status. I remember the opposition to Nuclear power then. It was so stupid. Idiots agitating to shut us down and screaming at us. Today, those very same plants are essential to keep California up and running. The state cannot function without them.

I was employed in the nuclear power industry from 1974 through 1988, and worked on design for Watts Bar unit 1, Sequoyah unit 1, McGuire Unit 2, and Catawba Unit 2, and lastly was employed for 4 years at Rancho Seco, which was operational by the time I arrived there. These were all pressurized LWR's, but I've come to wonder if the Canadian CANDU is a superior design. It has 1 overwhelming advantage over all of the American reactor designs: it doesn't have to be shut down every couple of years for up to 4 months at a time for refueling. The fuel channels in a CANDU reactor can be accessed with the reactor running at full power. The reactor is built on it's side rather than vertically, and at each end of the reactor, there's a big machine that seals itself to the fuel channels, and a new fuel bundle is pushed in at one end, while a spent fuel bundle, which has spent about 18 months traveling from one end of the reactor to the other, is extracted. CANDU reactors do occasionally have to be shut down for repairs and upgrades, but over many years, average "availability" of the reactor is around 90%, compared to 60% for a PWR. The CANDU has a high initial cost to produce the deuterium oxide (heavy water) needed for the moderator, but another advantage that offsets this cost is that the CANDU's fuel is natural uranium, so the U-235 enrichmnent costs of a typical American LWR are eliminated. The walls of the Calandria of a CANDU reactor don't have to be as thick as those of typical American PWR, so it's less expensive, and easier to transport from the fabrication plant to the reactor site. It may be possible to design the reactor and fuel geometry of a CANDU to burn Thorium-232 (a fertile isotope that can be bred into fissile U-233), or MOX, which is recycled LWR spent fuel that contains some Plutonium-239 in addition to U-235 and U-238. Any power plant is only paying off it's construction and operating costs when it's actually running, and there are very few other reactor designs that can match the availability factor of a CANDU. I wonder, if you did a detailed comparative analysis of all 4th generation reactor designs on the drawing board, if the newest proposals for the Advanced CANDU would come out a clear winner because of that high availability factor?

In France, decommissioning of Brennilis Nuclear Power Plant, a fairly small 70 MW power plant, already cost €480 million (20x the estimate costs) and is still pending after 20 years. Despite the huge investments in securing the dismantlement, radioactive elements such as plutonium, caesium-137 and cobalt-60 leaked out into the surrounding lake.

I was tangentially involved in the construction of Kashiwazaki Kariwa unit 6 in Japan - that was the first ABWR to come online and it took 3 years from site breaking to first criticality. Full grid connection was about a year later. This was in the mid '90s, so even back nearly 30 years ago it was certainly possible to get even a novel plant plant design running fairly quickly.

I found it interesting that during the extremely hot summer recently in Europe the nuclear plants were having problems cooling down the rods due to the water coming into the plant as extremely warm. In addition rivers water levels were dropping to historically low levels. Building nuclear plants means they will need a much larger water supply that is stable, such as is found on the coasts instead of inland. Then we need to take into consideration that the oceans are also warming much faster than thought would happen at this time.

This is great video! Thank you! As a child, I watched a film about Chernobyl. It was the 90s, and I was very afraid of nuclear power. But, as an adult, I understand that this is our future. I hope other people can understand this

it is not a mistake when people confuse "mean and median" People just choose the one that best supports their arguements

It seems to me the biggest issue moving forward on nuclear is that the politicians are afraid of even talking about this because of attacks from special interest groups or the irrational and uninformed segment of the public. In Canada our political system is embroiled in appeasing special interests rather than building a rational energy strategy. I would also like to see the life cycle costs for nuclear which could be relatively low compared to alternatives. I have also heard there are nuclear power plans that can use the existing spent fuel. Thanks for the video.

"Most of the waste is only mildly radioactive". I say the same to my wife after dumping my own waste every morning.