Обсуждение

You’re absolutely right and why the government is hellbent on throwing subsidies on retrofitting old plants is beyond me unless they just don’t want them designated as Super Fund sites.

There are subsidized loans, but AFAIK that's it.

There are, but afaik, NRC permitting hasn’t caught up. Until the first one is approved, and reusable permits are enshrined (“oh, if this is identical to an existing reactor then, sure, approved”), they’re not any faster or cheaper.

Someday pretty soon we'll start hearing about cities, regions, nations going weeks/months/years on 100% solar/wind and storage backups. I guarantee we'll be told very seriously that in China the wind blows harder and the sun shines stronger, and of course none of this can be done in the US.

A specific aspect of that that I didn't see in the article is that nuclear power faces similar certification lock-in issues as airframes. E.g., if the control room was originally specced and certified using vacuum tubes, they can't replace those with ICs without re-certifying the whole setup.

Bent Flyvbjerg's "How Big Things Get Done" uses power generation as an example of the value of working iteratively. A nuclear plant, you build once, and it's only usable when done. Utility-scale solar, you build a rack & install panels. Then you just keep repeating that, making power all the while.

I can't imagine we'll be down to zero fossil fuels maybe ever. So if we needed some natural gas generation for dark/calm, would that be awful? I admit to being of the generation that's scared of nuclear. I was pregnant when 3 Mile Island happened and seriously considered where should I go.