From New Atlas, April 15:
Although nuclear power remains controversial, new reactors are being built in surprising numbers and these will provide the second largest share of the world’s carbon-free energy. It's also an industry undergoing rapid change as new technology comes on line. So, what will nuclear power look like in the decades to come?
On December 2, 1942, underneath the University of Chicago's Stagg Field football stadium, Chicago Pile 1 (CP-1) was activated, becoming the world's first nuclear reactor. Today, 78 years later, 440 reactors generate over 10 percent of the world's electricity, with another 50 now under construction.
Despite this, nuclear energy suffers from a very bad reputation. Like many things in life, this is due to a number of complicated factors. Nuclear energy is still a mysterious thing to many people. It's associated with nuclear weapons, and is still under the burden of decades of Cold War propaganda, as well as three extremely high-profile reactor accidents in the USA, USSR, and Japan.
In the West, reactor construction and development slowed to a crawl in the last decades of the 20th century, but the industry may be on the verge of a renaissance. Despite its reputation, nuclear energy has a number of advantages. It's not only carbon-free, it's emissions free. It produces tremendous amounts of power with a very small area footprint. It can be sited in any region. And, surprisingly, it has the lowest per kilowatt death rate of any energy source.
The cost of nuclear power
However, nuclear energy has one big problem and that's cost. With plants costing up to US$15 billion, constructing a reactor is rarely profitable. Instead, most of the builder's revenue comes from refueling and servicing the reactors.
The main reason for the high cost of building nuclear power plants isn't because they are nuclear, but because they are large, often one-off, civil engineering projects that are few and far between, and can take up to 20 years to bring online. Instead of factory mass production, plants are built in the field. They also require a complicated licensing process, with the plant's design being tested, modified, and retested under a unique set of quality, safety, and security requirements, as well as the operator being required to meet all waste disposal costs....
....MUCH MORE
