Nuclear Engineer Explains What's Wrong with Nuclear Power in America

🇺🇸 US Nuclear Energy

Chapters
00:00 We Broke It
02:10 How We Got Here
06:20 Cost
08:37 Regulation
16:01 Going International
21:48 Fixing It
28:01 Leaderboard

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[vikramb]

While working at a recent nuclear project mentioned in the video during construction and startup, one thing we notice is that nothing costs what it's projected. The designer projects costs, assuming that every component is mass produced.

They sold us on everything being moduler and that they were going to churn out modules on assembly lines. However, you would need hundreds of projects to achieve that kind of economy of scales.

Usually, many utilities that are interested wait on someone else to build it first. So the first few projects have expensive components on top of discovering all the initial design issues. After the first project goes over budget, all the other utilities back off and look for the next big thing.

All of the advertising around SMRs sounds strangely similar to things being said about the AP1000 10 years ago. Plus their are all kinds of regulatory sunk costs, all plants, regardless of size incur. At the end of the day, making larger plants means that those costs are spread on more MWe of power.

[kayakMike]

"oh great, the bureaucrats are here", said no one ever.

[aasdasdsad]

Nuclear is not expensive nor long to build but USA has made it expensive by ignoring the industry and not innovating. Rosatom is able to build it cheaply and efficiently with vertical integration, preferential funding and poltics favoring it. They're also highly innovative, some reactors are at 107% capacity factor meaning they managed to improve reactor production of electricity by changing some parts and improving it without building a new one. Imagine improving the fuel efficiency of the same car, same model, same make.

Korea and Russia are able to build it in 5-6 years btw. Japanese are recently looking into also, fixing past mistakes and have been able to build a reactor in under 4 years.

[davidjernigan]

How about the NRC drags it's feet on everything it does. There are subsequent license renewal applications that have been in limbo for over two years when the applications were over 75% through the review process.

[petersilva]

@7:45 ... I love that German has a word for when Renewables aren't producing much: Dunkelflaute.

[herbieschwartz]

The problem stems from the fact that many of the bureaucrats running the NRC are just bureaucrats, and most are not educated or experienced in the field of nuclear engineering. The Chairman of the NRC has a masters degree in divinity and forestry. You can't make this stuff up.

[ShaheenGhiassy]

In Mother Russia, you don’t go to the uranium power plant—the uranium comes to you

[ibrahimylmaz]

This is one of the most informative videos someone can find in youtube. Good job ...

[cameron.t]

The Pacific Northwest had a debacle with nuclear energy that still plagues the state today. I forget the details and didn’t live through the creation of it, but what I can recall is that WA state received quite a bit of federal funds to build several nuclear power plants. Enough to make it fully nuclear powered in the 80s (???). There was some kind of mismanagement of funds, so then private and public bonds had to replace the federal funding. The end result is that the people of the state of WA have to pay for these power plants that were never turned on. Whoever I’ve heard talk about this say it’s 5-10% of the energy bill.

Edit: I refer to Satsop. A $20BN failure. Only one of five plants were ever built. I think the original price tag was $15BN for all five or something

[maasl]

The uranium/thorium ore vein is also free. Talking about costs, wind energy and wind turbine companies will crash because of high prices for rare earths which so-called renewables need much more of rare earths per energy unit than a nuclear plant does even without storage and backup plants.

[brianmulholland]

This video was .... AWESOME! Informative and dense. You're literally the first person I've heard give voice to a complaint I've had for a long time: that LCOE systematically (I would argue deliberately) is geared to promote wind/solar by conveniently leaving out many of it's costs like transmission, storage, and such. This is the first AtomicBlender video I've stumbled across, but you've earned a subscribe immediately. But I also learned so much.

I really think that if we're serious about taking on climate change, fission and geothermal are our best bets. Wind and solar can be nice secondary sources, but they're the utility infielders of power supply.

[bobsinhav]

You need to do a response video to Electric Viking who says that nuclear energy is pointless

[projection--emulation]

It gets even worse. US Navy has 112 massive nuclear ships(+subs) with 36 more under construction. civilians try 1 plant, government makes the approval so complex and costly that it never finishes.

[alanhonlunli]

What's wrong with the nuclear industry in USA is the people.

[Pupnsuds]

Such clarity and knowledge in your videos. I learn something new every time!

[chuckschillingvideos]

Creation of the US Dept of Energy is one of the most disastrous things this nation has ever done to itself.

[devilsposterboy]

Could you make a video on what we could do as citizens to try and help this situation?

[stevematthews]

I wonder if Russia or China will ever get paid back for the nuke plants they're building in Egypt and Pakistan. China's B&R investments have not been paying off, Pakistan is on the brink of collapse, and Egypt isn't doing a whole lot better.

[miscbits]

The single biggest problem with existing civil nuclear fuel cycles is that they're dependent on the waste products of the weapons cycle

MSRE was essentially shut down because widespread adoption would have enabled use of thorium and that would have divorced civil nuclear power from its dependence on the military system - essentially making separation facilities a military-only function (therefore subject to limitation treaties) and arguably uranium mining itself a weapons process, as thorium is an unwanted waste product of rare earth mining and doesn't need to be specifically prospected for

[maasl]

I call BS on "levelized costs of electricity" without including the function to keep a stable grid. If you fluctuating, weather, time and season dependent energy sources like wind and solar, you need backup plants like hydrogen-ready gas turbine plants or different kinds of storage like hydro pump stations and battery storage or even everything together, which is expensive and also carbon-intensive destroying industry, economy, society and welfare.