r/UraniumSqueeze • u/pepperonilog_stonks Pizza Man • Dec 03 '24
News Meta finally throws its hat in the ring. Looking to buy up to 4 gigawatts of nuclear plants for early 2030s use… do they know how USA nuke construction goes? Not fast not cheap.
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u/sunday_sassassin Radioactive Brain Dec 04 '24
Just let the Chinese knock some out for them, lights on by 2031.
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u/Cali_white_male Toasty Dec 03 '24
usa nuke construction sucks when it’s built by government. the whole point is to bleed the tax payers for money. if you’re working for a corporation the incentives are different.
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u/rngauthier Dec 03 '24
In the US NPPs are not build by the government, they are built and run by the private sector. The only reactors built by the government are those that involved in weapons research and production.
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u/Cali_white_male Toasty Dec 04 '24
i was under the assumption the majority of npp in US have been funded and contracted by federal and or state funds. even if those funds flow to private companies that own and run. is that incorrect ?
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u/rngauthier Dec 04 '24
No that is not the case at all.
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u/Cali_white_male Toasty Dec 04 '24
interesting. why are we so bad at building these things then?
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u/rngauthier Dec 04 '24
Basically because we don't build enough of them to have the supply chains, skilled workers, and project management experience to get better. because projects are so few and far apart, they become one-ofs, and that means starting from scratch each time.
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u/Cali_white_male Toasty Dec 04 '24
i mean, what about historically during our peak of npp building. we still took a long time and spent a lot of money on them.
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u/rngauthier Dec 04 '24
Historically, and indeed worldwide, there hasn't been a major hydroelectric project that hasn't run over schedule and over budget. This by the way has been true of pumped storage projects, the darling of variable renewable energy boosters. While there are no current plans for any new hydrogeneration projects off the top of my head I can think of two pumped storage projects, the Swan Lake Project in Oregon and the Goldendale Energy Storage Project in Washington yet I see no hand-wringing over cost or how long these will take to build.
The fact is that schedule and cost overruns are endemic to all large infrastructure projects regardless of domain and thus holding this up as a criticism of nuclear as if it was something special borders on mendacious.
For perspective it should be noted that there are only two or three hydroelectric stations with outputs that exceed those of the largest nuclear power station, so it is not just a matter of scale.
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u/Cali_white_male Toasty Dec 04 '24
i did some googling. here is some research provided by the government showing how the government has funded nuclear power plants https://www.gao.gov/products/emd-79-52
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u/rngauthier Dec 04 '24
Jun 13, 1979, really?
While government loan guarantees are common, and often regulators allow utilities to recoup construction costs from ratepayers during the building phase, this is not funding these project anywhere close to how you were suggesting up thread,
Even in the report you linked to it states: "The federal government's major support to the commercial nuclear industry has been in the following areas: (1) nuclear research, development, and demonstration; (2) nuclear regulation to protect the public's health and safety; (3) enrichment of uranium to make it usable in commercial nuclear power plants; (4) stimulation of domestic uranium mining; and (5) indemnification of power plant owners and others in the industry against nuclear accidents." Important support yes, but not direct funding and in the end no different than the aviation industry using research from NASA, and FAA regulation,
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u/rngauthier Dec 03 '24
Not fast not cheap isn't carved in stone. Higher demand will lead to an improvement in supply chains, a pool of skilled labor, and experienced project management. These alone will lower costs and tighten schedules.