Editorial by me in Colorado Newsline
Nuclear power offers Colorado communities a lifeline
It was done intentionally. Jürgen Trittin, a German green party politician revealed it when he said this.
"It was clear to us that we couldn't just prevent nuclear power by protesting on the street. As a result, we in the governments in Lower Saxony and later in Hesse tried to make nuclear power plants unprofitable by increasing the safety requirements."
And part of it is very reasonable concerns but they are addressed in an incredibly expensive manner. Here’s an example:
How much does it cost to change a lightbulb (read the whole link - it’s fascinating)
Like, before we replaced a single bulb, it took one person a month of time, two reviewers at least a week of their time, and probably over 50,000 dollars. To change freaking light bulbs.
and sometimes it’s stupid management decisions…
The AE firm they chose, Shaw, was the lowest bidder that passed supplier qualification. The problem there is that if you know all the right things to say and put on paper, you can put together a QA program that passes, but is not effective. So they were talking the talk, but not walking the walk.
So everything Shaw produced was at the 80% level of quality that is good enough for every other industry. But everything in nuclear has to be 100%.
Practically everything they delivered needed major changes at site, which is the most expensive way to do it. They were responsible for almost 2/3 of the project scope. That’s the root cause of all the overruns. Most of the vendors and contractors didn’t understand how strict the nuclear industry is. They were operating below 100%. And that’s not good enough in this industry.
Most of the regulations on nuclear make sense. Could they be improved on, sure. But the reason for each tends to be sensible. And for every horror story about over regulating there’s one about how cost cutting led to major problems.
We do need to address both performing the job right and having reasonable regulation. I’ll close with this:
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Break With Reality
The NRC Staff’s new alternative risk evaluation contains mathematically impossible conditions—and is impossible to use.
…
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been writing worst-case scenarios for years, but now the staff has gone to a new extreme. In its framework established to calculate the risk from advanced reactors, it has proposed the impossible. The conditions it postulates are impossible, and the rules are impossible to meet.
The Shaw debacle was caused by nuclear regulation. The paperwork requirements are so onerous that very few vendors are willing to spemd the money and time to get an N-stamp.
The result is no serious competition among vendors and the N-stamp holders can both charge far more than the market and produce lousy product. See
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-n-stamp
The plants that were built in the 1960's for less than $2000/kW overnight before the current regualtory apparat developed operated for 50 years or more while harming zero members of the public from radiation. Nuclear plants can and should be regulated in the same manner we regulate other highly beneficial and potentially hazardous activities. The result would be 24/7, near zero pollution, very low CO2 3 cents/kWh electricity.
NRC regulations and paperwork are more than burdensome, they have economically strangled the industry. They need a new doctrine.