Economics of Nuclear Reactor 

A successful politician (in a democracy / democratic republic) does what will get them elected and keep them in power. They can't do otherwise and be successful.

@@travcollier that usually involves short term things that make people happy now

And thats why China is going nuclear, as they have a dictaitor

@Michael Kahr True, they don't learn. Republicans decry all regulation, right up until lack of regulation harms them personally, but then it's too late. Theirs is an "I got mine, screw everyone else" mentality. It's why you see them rail against Obamacare until they get sick, at which point they expect the government to step in and save them!

@Michael Kahr Democrats and Republicans representing various electorates is not a problem. The problem is that the extreme right wing is funded by corporations looking for more corporate welfare (so yes, anti-free market), and they convince working poor that they should vote against their own best interests. I've actually had working poor (minimum wage) people tell me that they don't want their taxes going to somebody else's health care. Informing them that they don't pay taxes doesn't go well, because they're in complete denial, having only watched Fox "News" for years.

MadAtreides1 Yes, plant a tree that explodes and burns releasing 1300 nuclear isotopes into the air and water, threatening a global extinction level event. Doesn't the fruit of the poison tree taste good?

@@badpizzadays nuclear power plants are very safe nowadays. This isnt 50 years ago.

T C thank you for your thoughtful reply. I agree that advancement in technology and plant design has and will greatly improve the safety of nuclear power plants. Here are my concerns with the process of boiling water with Uranium and Plutonium (MOX) fuels. First, the mining process for Uranium 238 is very toxic, simply look up what was left behind on Navajo lands, large waste pits of highly radioactive waste. Secondly, processing U238 into U235 can be dangerous and toxic, look up gas diffusion leaks in Metropolis Illinois at the Honeywell gaseous diffusion plant. Thirdly, after processing the fuel used to generate power creates tritium that is legally discharged into the environment because it's impossible to remove after the reaction, several municipal source waters in Illinois have been contaminated with tritium that was deep well injected into the earth by local power plants. Fourth, after the fuel is utilized it is more radioactive than before the reaction, yet it is stored in open-air spent fuel pools. If for any reason the pumps that keep the storage pools cool fail, the fuel will evaporate the water and can burn, which releases nuclear contamination into the environment. These are four reasons that nuclear power is too dangerous for power generation purposes. Kindest regards,

@@badpizzadays This is all irrelevant to liquid thorium reactors, which can actually also use the waste of older generation reactors as fuel. They don't explode, they don't go into meltdown; it's literally impossible because the process is entirely different. Further, solar and wind also produce radioactive waste, and it's completely overlooked and just dumped into lakes. Anything that uses rare earth metals, like solar and wind, inherently create a radioactive byproduct. I'd rather take the option that produce _less_ waste while producing more energy: nuclear.

@@badpizzadays holy sh!t, that is quite the reply. I have no idea how to respond, I'm not a nuclear engineer, lol. Perhaps zedeks reply is good enough.

No nuclear plants have made a profit yet

Ethan McCormick lol and what makes you think that?

@@kevcom000 the only ones that have were sold by a government for below the cost to build to a private company who made a profit on that, but none have completely covered costs from selling electricity. Not yet anyway

Ethan McCormick I don’t know where you got this information from but you have been sorely mislead as 30 mins on google and a calculator can easily prove. Detroit Edison (DTE) built and operated fermi 1 which became active in 1963 and as per Stanford University was built by DTE large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/fleming1/ Unfortunately as it was an experimental breeder reactor, and we where still pretty new at building breeder reactors at the time, it suffered a partial meltdown in 1966 making it inactive until after repairs they shut it down in 1972. Fermi 2, the current reactor, fully came online in 1988 with a production output of 1,202MWe which was built and currently owned by DTE. Now to find how much money it has made since it began operations in 1988 you only need to know 3 things: cost of electricity in 1988, cost of electricity today and how much energy it has output since it began operation and luckily it was a pretty easy search. So first for the total energy produced DTE, in the history section, states that Fermi 2 has produced more than 200 billion KWh of electricity since it came online newlook.dteenergy.com/wps/wcm/connect/dte-web/home/about-dte/common/fermi2/fermi2-power-plant Or if you don’t trust them I can also use a time calculator and it has been 280272 hours between January 23 1988 and today then by multiplying the power output of 1,202MWh by the total hours you get 336,886,944MWh of electricity assuming it has been running at 100% nonstop. Now we have to convert that to KWh as that is the rate electricity is charged at and since 1MW is a thousand KW you just multiply the number by 1,000 making it 336,886,944,000 KWh so I think we can trust their figure. Now we need to know the cost of electricity in 1988 vs the current cost today and at 9.47 cents in 1988 (adjusted for inflation) and 14.13 cents today all we have to do is round the numbers to .09 and .14 then average them out which comes to an average of 11.5 cents per KWh between now and 1988 .12 after rounding. Cost in 1988 real number is adjusted for inflation www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/showtext.php?t=ptb0810 Cost today www.electricitylocal.com/states/michigan/ All that’s left now is to multiply the average cost of electricity by the amount of power used which using their number of 200 billion comes to $24 billion or using my number of 100% output 100% of the time you get $40 billion and since the plant cost $6 billion I’m going to have to say that after DTE paid for and built the plant it has most definitely say that it has been profitable. Here’s the cost btw en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi_Nuclear_Generating_Station#Fermi_3

Oh and as for how long till it was paid off based on the $24 billion number they would make $750 million a year comes to 8 years and assuming that $40 billion number you get $1250 million a year so 4.8 years till it’s paid off

Good luck, Bangladesh deserves more nuclear power because i hear you're reliant on natural gas power which is super expensive. Greetings from India :)

Never trust the opposition

Tell us what is so “good” about it? I’ll wait.

This guy grossly underestimates the capital cost of a nuclear unit and overestimates capital cost of natural gas CC units. Problem 1. The numbers are more like 15 Billion per nuclear unit with 1200 mw output and half a billion for a CC that would output that much power.

@@BrianLTanner China and Russia are doing nuclear at 1.6-2.6B$/1000MW. South Korea managed 4.5B/1000MW in Barakah, an essentially FOAK project(all 4 units already completed, 3 operating, one in commissioning). And are now doing offers for 2.6B/1000MW. Gas isn't paying for any externalities either. With increased air quality and carbon tax requirements, gas won't look so good. And Unreliables aren't even worth mentioning.

I know what you mean. It's one thing not to put a new (mostly completed) reactor into operation, due to committing to its decommissioning costs; it's quite another to shutdown perfectly good reactors a decade early. While Germany did well with implementing renewable energy since then, they'd have been far better off replacing their coal plants first. Now they're just on par with where they were a decade ago.

My feeling exactly, they should shut down the coal plants first. Maybe I'm not completely up to date but I think they have around 50% coal in their electricity mix (and of course some of that other fossil fuel, natural gas from Putin), when they have stopped using that then they can start considering shutting down the nuclear plants.

@@BattleshipAgincourt Nah, Germany is worse off now that they've mindlessly pushed for unreliable renewables. Their CO2 emissions have gone up considerably because they had to build coal to provide baseline power, their energy prices have gone up considerably, and blackouts are now commonplace.

@@Willaev "blackouts are now commonplace" That's completely false.

@@Willaev blackouts are not a commonplace in germany. germany has a lot less blackouts than california. we just destroy our countryside for cheap power. coal power is even cheaper than nuclear power in the long run. the infrastructure is already in place.germans are just to afraid of nuclear power, since if somethink goes wrong is catastrophic and society is afraid of nuclear power. it is quite funny, since germany has everythink for it. the safest reactores, local mines with lots of uranium and the know how. but we choice to not use it, since society is scared of nuclear power. p.s. germany even had a thorium reactor ...

Lmao

that's nothing compared to what 'Agile project management and Kanban' world has done to make the sticky note people rich

Actually 3M doesn't make much money on sticky notes. The main reason you can still buy them is because they're good for PR & company exposure.

3M sends him a Christmas card every year

Yeah a 3M employee invented them within the company im pretty sure

Goddamn, I thought he was a genius at writing mirror 😂

Butt wondering about it in 10, so..

vertically

How long until you realized this is just a video of the mirror this guy is standing in front of

That minute must have been wild

Dream big, dude.

With motivation like that, you can do a lot of things that everyone says is "impossible". Dream big!

That's awesome!

Welcome to the accumulation of all human knowledge! Don't mind the trolls, they are just here to remind you to go outside on occasion.

@@icthuluQuite often, physical activity, like just walking 15min, will increase BDNF (brain fertilizer) and blood flow to the brain. Setting you up for brain growth, instead of brain shrinkage that is most common.

Or build thorium MRS...and become the god!

I’m 27, I’m fucked...

Serra Kagin in more ways than you know

The best time to build a nuclear reactor is 17 years ago. The second best time to build a nuclear reactor is today.

Responsible would be to dig a certified hole and deposit the stuff down there, and not to park it in clear sky in a conrete container. Why is the WIPP not recertified also for non-military waste?

Definitely killed a crap less men than coal...

The waste will be reused as fuel in new Gen 4 reactors.

@@harambae117 Sure, but I don't want to live next to a pile of dry cask containers which slowly rot in sun and rain. Nuclear therapy is very beneficial to many cancer patients, but you have to be responsible with the waste from these therapeutic installations, else you kill people. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident

@@nick21614 What do you mean by waste? If you have 5% enrichment and burn 4%, then 100 tons of spent fuel elements mean you have 4 tons of waste, 1 ton of unburnt U-235 and 95 tons of U-238 ballast. How do you want to reuse the already split atoms? These highly radioactive isotopes will not go away, on the contrary if you burn the 95 tons of U-238 in a breeder reactor, you will add 95 tons of nuclear waste in the equation. A Gen-IV-reactor will not solve the wast problem, I may only help to solve the fuel supply by different fuels except U-235. But as operating costs including fuel costs are not an issue, why should anybody in the conservative energy industry invest in a new technology?

People hate nuclear so much that they will do anything to hamper and destabilise it. Methinks there are far too many votes and special interests to keep the primacy of coal and oil continuing. It's really disgusting, and I hope we see a point in history where this blatant disregard for a safe, and very cheap energy source was spat on for purely ignorant and selfish reasons.

@@Novarcharesk I guess you missed all the hoopla over the Biden Administration’s anti-carbon Executive Orders? While there isn’t a specific ban or adverse action against coal YET, it’s only a matter of time. His stated goal of a carbon-free electrical grid by 2035 (14 years from now) cannot happen if coal is still mined and burned for power. He’ll, with current attitudes and regulations on the books, it’s nearly impossible to build power plants (or, dare I say it, gasoline refineries)! It’s also worth pointing out that the same enviro-crazies who are so against coal power plants are almost unanimous in their equal hatred of nuclear plants...AND...the same kinds of people (at least in California) won’t approve dams that could be hydroelectric generators.That leaves solar + wind + hydrothermal, but combined, those can’t meet our energy needs. Your skepticism about votes and companies trying to buy their security are understandable, but this Administration isn’t playing that game. And the so-called ‘green energy’ companies that *did* successfully lobby the previous Democrat in the White House (President Obama) were universally failures (Solyndra and dozens of others)... No energy company is innocent of trying to secure their future using all the tools available in our system, and neither party seems very innocent in terms of what they fight for and for whom and at what price. The reality is that as long as we are a society that needs energy to grow - and that’s unlikely to change, ever - we will need all existing forms of energy until we come up with something better. So, do those highly-anti-carbon people care that we won’t survive as a country without energy? I doubt it. Sometimes, I think they’d be happy going back to horses and buggies, but then the argument would be about horse flatulence and it’s effect on limited. And they forget that when we go there, they won’t have power for their iPads. There’s no reasoning with unreasonable people.

@@mracicot Those same people would probably also start horse activism and we'd go back to pulling our stuff around ourselves. Jokes aside, there's s many issues with the push for green energy. Like, I understand where they come from, and if they only wanted revolution in energy generation, we'd be in for tough times, but could make it. However, the very same lobby, at the very same time, is pushing for electric powered everything. Cars, planes, boats, trains, you name it. Biggest issue is with cars, especially in US - households would charge these mainly during night time, exactly the time, where renewables like solar and wind are least reliable for a stable supply. If it was down to a decision between the two, most of those folks would go for amenities > energy generation. But they keep denying the reality that we would need to face if that takes place.

Oof

That’s kept me intrigued .... much more than the material! 🤣

I am perplexed as to why this is not the top comment, if not purely for the memes.

Maby he wrote normally and then just mirrored the video.... Seems easier than learning to write backwards 🤣

He writes on a mirror with camera behind him...

and he's really good at writing backwards!

I'll take my freedom with coal over nuclear with slavery any day. However, I have been telling people that in the long run, a nuclear plant is the best way to generate the massive amounts of electricity needed to get the cost down so people might consider purchasing electric only vehicles. People also don't understand that the electricity infrastructure needs to be massively increased too. In the USA, it simply won't happen, and the country is gradually breaking apart culturally/politically. However, it might happen in two generations if the USA splits into more than one country where the countries may be able to get these projects rolling.

This is the tragedy of Western style democracy which is unfortunately what was exported all over the world

He also forgot to add a debt unit. So he messed up twice and got the right total.

Right??

I'm trying to figure out if he is left-handed but wearing his watch on the right or if that is some sort of fancy optical illusion/edditing.

It’s probably a mirrored video.

I was about to say that's the most impressive thing about his presentation.

It’s because he’s left handed. I think they can do that automatically.

Lots of things can be said about nuclear, which is safe, including, for traditional nuclear Uranium / non-Thorium designs, the problem of Peak Uranium. See Is Nuclear Power Green? by Sabine Hossenfelder for a fair and balanced review.

@@raylopez99 Thank you for this resource! I'm currently writing a paper on nuclear energy and she cleared up so much confusion. I'm so grateful to you 🙏

​@@raylopez99It's funny because that's the only point Sabine got wrong. Taking into account that U238 can be bred into fissile Pu, there are almost unlimited available resources of uranium and thorium (4x more abundant than U238) on Earth... she obviously got confused with the reserves (which are much smaller, because with such low consumption there is no need to open 1000 mines looking for it, a few are enough). And then it has been demonstrated that it is possible to extract the uranium which is in saltwater at costs of about 200 $/kg, which is still enough to make the power plants profitable, and would further extend the resources by a factor of about 1000 (at least, no one knows exactly gow much because it gets replenished by submarine ores who get dissolved, it's an equilibrium reaction)

@@raffaeledivora9517 Let Google be your guide my friend: "The concept of peak uranium refers to the point at which maximum uranium production has been reached worldwide, after which the rate will steadily decline.1 The WNA predicts a production peak of 85 kilotons/year around 2025, about 10 years later than in the present model, followed by a steep decline to about 70 kilotons/year in 2030. " Good starting point. In theory of course you can have infinite fissile materials with breeder reactors and the like, but as a practical matter existing designs depend on types of mined uranium which have a peak.

Like decommissioning costs? Or cost overruns (Hinkley C ~23 BILLION POUNDS) ?

Exactly.

I was thinking of Hinckley but couldn't remember the name. Texas Utilities spent 12 billion dollars for 2.3 GW plant under construction for 14 years. Patted themselves on the back for it when it came online in 1992. Who believes that figure accounted for inflation over such a timespan? If you do, please contact me as I have a bridge in Brooklyn I need to sell at a fire sale price. The climate situation is so dire that only a World War II type effort can help. Gigawatt plants are too slow and expensive. ITER is a perfect example as I believe it won't come online until 2030 and what we end up with is a pilot plant. Modular mass produced units are the only way to go and thorium is probably the best solution.

This video doesnt consider a lot of costs. 1) employee wages 2) how much electricity the plant itself consumes 3) recurring costs for other consumable materials that arent fuel ( simple example: water ) 4) taxes??? Taxes are a HUGE cost ( if the owner is the country this doesnt apply ) And there are probably many more costs. Considering only employees cost, a nuclear power plant usually has around 500 employees ( on the low side ). Let's say that on average the salary of each one is 50k/year. That's 25 millions dollars, kinda stupid not to include it in the calculations.

There is a video for that by the same guy ... look it up.

@@agarcia658 And where's the video including the cost of storing the waste for thousands of years?

@@therealctoo4183 There isn't one because nuclear waste takes up significantly less space than other forms of power production per kWh. All of the nuclear waste produced could fit inside a medium-sized cave.

Yeah, storing waste isn’t very expensive compared to the other costs involved. And it would be even cheaper if Yucca Mountain hadn’t gotten NIMBY’d.

The Real c too it’s still a far better option then other forms of electricity production which produces any amount of toxic waste. A lot of forms of toxic waste does not break down over time. Nuclear waste will over a long period of time, but toxic waste will stay around til the end of the universe.

Left handed people who were forced to learn to write with the right hand are most of the time able to write letters mirrored. That was pretty common when that professor was younger, I assume.

If you look at the buttons on his suit coat you can tell the video is mirrored. Buttons are always on the right with men's clothing.

@sleepyhead well spotted ^^

@@tpolley5 good eyes i don't even see them.

We had to write from the back on status boards on Navy ships in the 70's. It does not take long to learn to do this.

Either way it is really hard to buy into a 25 year project. Especially when technology is accelerating.

Well not for every country...

@@jackmiddleton2080 Not really. This is one place where the Chinese can make huge strides. American government is thinking in 4-8 year cycles....China thinks in MUCH longer cycles, allowing them to see the long run benefits more clearly and leverage them.

Cheaper power/more money can lead to faster advancements in tech. Imagine a few reactors powering a few huge particle accelerators. Those guys are definitely gonna win the anti matter fuel race, that and pretty much then control the world.

Hoppe was right.

This is very sad.

Funding of plants should be from company profits, not a separately billed item. Regulations that artificially limit profits should have a generic investment clause not restricting power companies to specific projects within the area of future power delivery.

@@johndododoe1411 You don't take into account the American system of public costs for private profits. Power should be nationalized.

It's corruption of lawmakers creating wromg incentives disguised as being business friendly.

If nothing goes wrong, then yes.

@@AximandTheCursed more people are killed in or by natural gas plants than nuclear by a LONG margin, only 2 large scale nuclear disasters EVER is a very good track record, and both of those were easily avoidable

@@MsArchitectschannel I am aware, as long as they stick to safety protocols, and don't cut corners, nuclear has got some really bad PR over the decades, which is a shame, it really could solve a lot of problems.

@@MsArchitectschannel If they were esily avoidable, why didn't the responsable people avoid them? Shit happens.

In principle yes: as companies prefer not to go bankrupt in the short run in order to have the chance to make a fortune in the long run, the often avoid this risk if there is no insurance policy either by the government or rate-payers in non-liberalised energy markets. What do you think happened with the already spend money in the VC Summer case?

Are you me?

Can't really talk about that which doesn't yet actually exist as a product. Needs another 11 years

Year 19 error

Hes clearly accounting for hush money and lobbying cash

@@penguinking2515 Ah yes ofc, how could I have been such a dunce.

year 3 error compounded in year 13 ! in year 3 the profit on the Gas is +2 no more mortgage ! in year 13 Nuke pays off the mortgage and gets+1 IN YEAR 14 Nuke GOES TO +9 ! ! ! Gas is at +24 By year 17 Gas has made 30M in profit But Nuke goes to $33,000,000 in profit ! and it gets more lopsided to NUKE for every year after by+6 (though considering repair/replacement cost by year 9 you are rebuilding the Gas plant completely and the Nuke maintenance is minimal for the life of the unit. at a 20 year life of a CO-Gen plant the Nuke will have made $21million MORE profit !

@@briancreegan827 But you need to compare the one plant to five gas plants. Not one

There have been at least a couple of plants in the US that started construction but never finished. I'm looking up at you Washington.

@@RobertLugg There is sadly only one that is going forward, and that's Vogtle 3 and 4... sadly going to be 8 and 9 years respectively to complete construction (current estimates for both AP1000's puts them operational in May of 2021 and 2022 when they started construction in 2013). The murdering of the nuclear industry by anti-science whack jobs has really killed off the ability to build nuclear power plants... If we standardized the plant design today and began a massive build out of AP1000's (not my preferred choice, but it's available today), the price would fall dramatically per unit, as would the time to build because we'd be building experience in building the plants.

Yes, there is huge regulatory risk in nuclear right now. You can plan on a 5 billion dollar plant that takes 5 years and 4 years into construction there can be an entirely arbitrary regulatory change that sets you back 2 years and 2 billion dollars. This is NOT a problem with nuclear (and not even unique to nuclear) this is a general problem in US construction in most states, just the stakes are higher with a bigger project and nuclear has a much higher chance (like 100%) of multiple delays due to environmental lawsuits. It's really insane. I'm waiting for the Tom Styer's of the world to get on board with nuclear. If you believe in man-made global warming and you are not a huge nuclear advocate, you don't really believe.

@@RobertLugg Not to mention plants shut down before their useful service life is up.

My state uses mostly nuclear, its possible for others to join the wave:))

bruh, he's talking about homogeneous goods, which is electricity in this case.

@@FeoRache bro I really didn't not know, thanks fam.

Well, your argument is shit! Lets consider this: virtual brand pear realeases their new phone called jphone, which is at least as cool than the new iphone (and lets be honest the biggest point on buying an iphone is the prestige and coolness this brand sublimes to you in certain circles of society), but with one tremendous difference: jphona costs half of what an iphone costs... Now what do you think will be the answer of the market....

@666NedFlanders ouphhh I think I gonna die now, due to your fatal comment...

@@semenovroman87 Apple products never had quality to begin with

Have you ever played the board game called Power Grid?

@@weenisw I have actually. Though I don't remember the relation to this video since I watched it so long ago!

I don't think he did. The presentation was probably filmed regularly and then just mirrored in post production. It's either that or he spent a whole lot of time preparing for this by learning to write mirrored :p

@@fredrikhylerstedt3487 I think he practiced and only goofed a few times during the presentation. You can actually see whatever he writes on the "5" for $5 Bn gets replaced by a black box.

Some additional major hints that it was mirrored in post: he is wearing a ring on his “right” hand, whereas American men typically wear their wedding band on their left hand. And his unbutton jacket has buttons on the “left” side, whereas men’s clothing typically has buttons on the right side.

No one does these things by writing backwards. They write normally and then the image if mirrored later.

oddly the numbers for capital cost and years to build were both post edited.. hard to tell if that was a mistake in writing it backwards or a different number. It almost appears that the capital cost was written as 6 billion even though he says 5 billion. edit: nvm he actually says 6 billion and its been overdubbed.

Not really, maintenance vs capex is pennies on the dollar for these plants until they get towards the end of their service lives

with shale gas at its infancy, NG supply will be very reliable. US has NG supply will last them +200 years and all this gas was found at super low NG price.

@@mtube620 Shale isn't super low, but it's consistently fairly low. Unless there's heavy political pressure, in which case it could be heavily tax or completely banned

@@Septimus_ii the social leftist have no solution but love banning things and steal from producers of wealth

@@mtube620 'steal from the producers of wealth' The irony of hearing a capitalist say this, lol

capitalist steal from the stupid ones which sounds like you.

It is useless, because solar and wind can't cover the baseload... or well, they could, but the cost of the batteries that would be needed is prohibitive. Batteries would need to cost at least 5 times less for it to be even in the same price range (and this is in the copper plate model, i.e. where the energy can freely move and there is no need of transformers, inverters, etc. Factor those in and providing baseloads with solar or wind would cost about 10 times more than with gas (which is the reason nobody does it)

@@raffaeledivora9517 people are plugging EVs into their homes. The batteries aren’t prohibitively expensive because you can get an auto loan and use said batteries for transportation. Maybe batteries to provide legacy power station levels of energy is prohibitively expensive but units sized to keep a home running for a few days that serves the dual purpose of powering your car is not prohibitively expensive.

There is one deep storage already in operation: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant It uses a salt deposit, which is ductile like play doh and also conducts heat from waste easily.

There actually is a long term disposal site and they are designing it so people hundreds of years from now know now to go near it.

Pretending that storing, quarantining, and protecting nuclear waste in perpetuity is a negligible cost is obscene.

MSR would solve the waste problem. And the cost problem and the time to build problem. Too bad we were more interested in building bombs instead of making the world a better place 50 years ago when the technology was first demonstrated.

@@willwires8348 I wonder why modular small reactors should solve the waste problem? Does en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov produce no waste?

Notice how cold it is getting - time to freshen up on Solar Minimum and Grand Solar Minimum - climate is changing, just not due to C02. We will need coal back, as the return on energy investment is very good, hydro being the best. Wood stove in the home will be wise when there is no more Natural Gas for heat.

@@zombieshoot4318 You can totally believe in global warming and be against nuclear power. During hundreds of millennia, we had no nuclear power plant, and no human-caused global warming. History proved that you don't need nuclear power to prevent global warming. Also, global warming may be only the 2nd biggest problem of mankind. We are exterminating life on earth rapidly. Not because of global warming, but because of pollution and destruction of natural habitats. Global warming is a problem only if you're alive. But at this rate, there will not be a lot of life left at the end of the century. We need to preserve life. Otherwise, we don't care if we have +10°C in year 2100. So, why do we want nuclear power? To power what? Playstations, iPhones, RU-vid videos? Those things, and many others, are destroying life currently. That's the terrorism. Exterminating a significant part of life on earth, for things that are mostly futile. Of course, electricity can have noble purposes. But do we need to build nuclear power plants all around the world for that?

@@brinckau Nuclear makes sense because it is more efficient and produces less waste. People can focus on reducing demand for electricity, making electricity more efficiently, and protecting ecosystems. This isn't a choose one type of situation.

@@YourArmsGone All the time, we hear questions like "Should we stop using nuclear power?". But we rarely, if ever, hear questions like "Should we stop playing video games?". Try to find one article on the Internet about this question. Not easy. But you can find plenty of articles about whether or not we should use nuclear power. So even though what you say is true in theory, it seems that in reality, people mostly focus on how electricity is made. They don't want to question our way of life. They want to be able to have exactly the same life, just with better power plants. That can not be achieved in a sustainable way, no matter how good our power plants are.

Nuclear energy is marginal, representing 2% of worldwide energy consumpted and save virtually 0 greenshouse gaz emissions. Uranium is non renewable either and we have less than 100 years of reserve

Sure they would. It would behave in many ways like a 25 year bond ... Since fossil fuel prices fluctuate nuclear power stocks would sell for more when fossil fuel is expensive and sell for less when fossil fuel is cheap. What you would be trading is the potential to make money ...

AGarcia, that makes sense, depending on the liquidity of the underlying financial instruments.

That’s what separates a millionaire from a billionaire

Not to mention, he continues to pay interest on what be premused a paid debt that wouldn't require it. Based on his analysis, nuclear should get 5 more units of profit and NG would get another unit. This would send those profit numbers skyrocketing and decrease the ROI. Although, that's all based on this very elaborate demo.

This is why government can help fix market failures. Government can invest into these projects to the benefit of the tax payer instead of individual investors.

You have to keep in mind, that almost all US power plants are using ancient inefficient generations of nuclear power

@@Songfugel Correct and it is because currently with the low natural gas prices it's not economical for US private sector companies to build them.

Probably 3-6 reactor nuclear plants are more economical. I think the new UK nuke is planned to have about 600 workers but that's a dual 3.3GW reactor so the staff cost should be about 1/3rd of your old reactor Still staffing costs significantly more for a nuke than a CCGT. Nukes work in China where they are able to build them in just 4.5 years and wages for staff are about 1/6th if USA wages so the high staff count is less of a problem. Plus they have massively increasing electricity demand so need new units. And they don't have much if a natural gas grid and little to no domestic natural gas so need to import far more expensive LNG and foreign gas. For the USA CCGTs make sense For places like China Japan Korea India nuclear makes sense And of course in some places wind power is getting affordable. Offshore wind in the UK is down to about £47/MWh delivered 2024/2025 which is affordatbt and about half the price of the new UK nukes. Sure it's intermittent but the UK can go 50% offshore wind 50% natural gas that's a pretty good grid (in fact it would be more like 50% wind 20% combination of nuclear solar hydro 20% imports and 10% natural gas that's roughly the target for 2030)

Is he mirror writing or did they mirror the video at the end?

@@thespecialwon4797 if you check then he is behind the glass board on which he is writing

Same

Education is fun

@@3User and interesting.

I wanna buy a nuclear reactor for my backyard

So next time nuclear legislation is on the table, you'll be a slightly more informed voter!

This professor has a video on decommissioning. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XDHCpZKiECM.html

www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/decommissioning-nuclear-facilities.aspx Keep in mind that decomissioning has historically come in *two* orders of magnitude more expensive than projected *and* private industry won't even insure it. And the excess decommissioning costs is *always* involuntarily paid for by citizens not by clawbacks on corporate profits or executive salaries and pensions.

I'd also like to know the cost of decomissioning coal/oil plants. Two of those are in proccess right now near me and our nuclear plant is 5 yrs overdue to begin decomissioning.

Typically the cost of decommissioning is set aside in a trust that the company can't access at the time it's built. This is in case the place goes bankrupt and can't afford to decommission itself.

@@cringenuclearfan9391 My understanding is that companies that had nuclear plants were allowed a surcharge to decommission the plant. However that money was never set aside and the costs increased beyond what was set aside.

Not showing how interest builds even though you pay some off hurt my soul. The cost of building nuclear is insane when you think about that.

Bunch of fkn beurocrats Esspecially liberals , because if a nuclear power plant is actually up and running people will see it isnt so bad and then liberals wont be able to yell about the climate and how we need to change

william nebe This is the dumbest shit. Nuclear power is great for climate change. If you support nuclear power how are your views different from those who want to change our source of energy? That being said, liberals do have a tendency to fear monger about nuclear power.

@@leroture7750 pretty sure that is what he is saying, and I tend to agree. Ever since peak oil, global cooling, and nuclear winter turned out to be myths the liberal establishment has been frantically searching for new issues. It's been going on since Malthus threw out his own wild and easily disproved speculation, and now that they finally got lucky with global warming the political authoritarians are equally desperate to cash in on it. Nuclear power and intelligent use of GMOs would solve global warming the same way they would have solved so-called peak oil. That would mean no need for reduction of freedoms or concentration of power, so finding any excuse to prevent nuclear plants from going up is the name of the game.

@@chrisdelzell8467 These comments are peak right wing campaign nonsense. Nuclear power plants are high risk, high reward projects, and many of the risks are born entirely by government and citizens, mostly in the form of possible death or impossibility of getting damages payouts from bankrupt companies. Thus society needs to make strict requirements to protect itself.

Not quite. Despite having a bad name, Nuclear power is actually really safe. For every nuclear disaster there was, you can probably find 5 for natural gas. 6 for oil and uncountable numbers for coal. Simply put, nuclear power is among the safest. Up there with renewable energy sources

@@snakevenom4954 I believe the "risk" he is discussing here is the economic risk which is why it was a bit ironic that one of the profit post-its fell off. Otherwise you are correct about the safety of the nuclear plants compared to other mainstream plants. I have found that the Cold War era left a lasting stigma on nuclear as a whole so nuclear disasters, such as the one in Fukushima, often get more publicity and attention. Hope you have a wonderful day.

@@guestguest4943 The main risk for nuclear is the government barging in during construction or the first ~18years when it's still going red. Majority of "issues" with nuclear, except perhaps the waste, are manmade.

@@snakevenom4954 the "risk" is the economic risk of the plant not actually getting built/getting shutdown by the government/outcompeted etc.

Newer reactors will produce no dangerous waste. Non-issue.

Yes. It's not free to deposit endless cubic kilometers of fly ash from burning fossil fuels

Just being able to build a nuclear reactor in the 6 years he used for the "simulation" already assumes a lot of optimization over what's sadly happening with new reactor construction right now (10+ years is the normal case in Europe and USA)

Well, with negative interest rates...

@@tedarcher9120 Current 20 year rates are 3.5% fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HQMCB20YR

Have a look at Bruce Hannon's "Energy discounting" doi.org/10.1016/0040-1625(82)90042-7

@@Ikbeneengeit EDF bonds for 20-25 years are currently at 4% rate of return.

@Eric Wesson The citibank called the risks involved in the contruction of new nuclear power plants "corporate killers". npolicy.org/article_file/New_Nuclear-The_Economics_Say_No.pdf This was ten years ago. Meanwhile, Westinghouse went bankrupt, Toshiba as parent company is in severe trouble, Areva was restructured and renamed Framatome again, but China seems to do well with their nuclear entreprises. CGN even dares to touch European contruction sites in Hinkley Point.

Well that is an "externality", which is fancy econ speak for "someone else's problem". IE, the taxpayer deals with it with the eventual superfund environmental cleanup site.

To answer your question. You have already payed for that. The government built a multi billion dollar facility under a mountain in a desert to store nuclear waste (yucca mountain), however because of politics we don't use it so instead nuclear power plants just keep nuclear waste in a steel drum outside of their plants. So we the taxpayers have already payed a multi billion dollar facility to store nuclear waster (certified for 10,000 years) but greedy politician make it so we cant even use it. So celebrate for greedy politicians wasting our money.

Yeah but it's a fantastic visual representation for those who would be bored by the math, who are also probably the people that are the least knowledgeable about this topic

@@almachizit3207 yeah, let's educate people who do not understand high school math and teach how a nuclear reactor works + the economics of its operation.

@@goethe528 lets educate people and let them be decision makers, we need all the knowledge to make the best decisions, and this presentation is informative for all. Keep them coming.

@@goethe528 Well, these are the people who still have the right to vote. Let's have them understand the "rhetoric" spewed by politicians when it comes to massive amounts of investments from their tax dollar!

@@almachizit3207, those two linear functions could be also represented visually quite well even with all the points at each year of operation if one wants. Moreover, this would be even better visually, because whole lifetime is accesible at one glance.

A good post. He did say that the assumption was for China cost levels. The disturbing part of your analysis, to me, is that we will be dependent on natural gas (a fossil fuel) for the foreseeable future. Better than coal, but not really good enough from a CO2 perspective.