Comment by breakyerself
16 hours ago
Chernobyl design was never in use in the US, but nuclear went through a long period of near universal public opposition to its expansion because of the high profile disasters that it caused.
Now the cost of solar and storage are dropping at a rate I doubt nuclear is ever going to make a significant comeback. I'm not opposed to it, but I wonder if the economics will ever be favorable even with regulatory reform.
> Chernobyl design was never in use in the US
Commercially. Several early test reactors were essentially just graphite moderated piles not unlike Chernobyl, but they were abandoned for a reason.
Graphite moderated reactors are broadly fine, the problem was with some technical specifics of that specific reactor design, and the operational culture that surrounded it. After Chernobyl, those flaws were corrected and operation of other RBMK reactors has continued to this very day, with no repeats.
That's good additional clarification, I only meant to point out that graphite moderated, water cooled reactors had existed in the US and UK.
Chernobyl may have done a lot to inflame cultural imagination of what could happen in the worst cases, but the US still had its own high profile disasters like Three Mile Island.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
I would hesitate to call Three Mile Island a disaster, it was certainly a nuclear accident. A reactor was damaged, but no one was injured and an absolutely miniscule amount of radiation was released. The other units at the plant continued to operate until quite recently (and might actually be starting up again).
It would. People are still building some natural gas plants even despite renewables being cheaper and nuclear is far cheaper over its lifecycle than that and, other than regulatory issues, is basically better in every way.
There will continue to be new gas plants as long as there are coal plants which will be converted, usually around the time a major overhaul would need to be taken anyway.
Nuclear might be better and cheaper over it's entire lifecycle; but given that the starting costs are so high, the time to build is so long, and the US has serious problems with cost overruns in public projects, as well as the fickleness of both government and public opinion, I don't expect another plant to be built.
> nuclear is far cheaper over its lifecycle than that
That is the case for base load generation, where the plant can operate near 100% capacity all the time. But that isn't were gas is usually being deployed; it being used for reserve generation. The economics of nuclear isn't as favourable in that application as it costs more or less the same to run at partial generation, or even no generation, as it does when it is going full blast.