> There is no "extra safety systems" because it's already there.
No. Every time we have an accident we think of what could have prevented it, and invent more safety systems.
Eg, Fukushima wasn't just "account for tsunamis", which is a local problem. One resulting requirement is "Ensure that the required parts to keep the reactor said can be made available and brought in by helicopter within 24 hours even if the terrain is impassable".
So that added a nigh universal requirement to store various replacement parts and to ensure some way to deliver water, as well as the availability of helicopters to bring that in. That increases the price of every nuclear plant out there. Maybe not by a huge amount, but it does.
And renewables escape that because nobody cares if something knocks down a wind turbine, so long it doesn't fall on somebody's head.
> As a contrast to nuclear power components - where nuclear plants are the only market - so a tenfold increase in the production of nuclear plants leads to a tenfold increase in the production of pressure vessels.
10X of approximately nothing might still not be enough to bother automating anything, and you'd have to convince those companies that demand is going to stay and make the investment worthwhile. Meanwhile we're not about to stop needing gearboxes and generators.
> Correct, and the solution to intermittency that we've found is to burn fossil fuels.
Fair, but again backs up my view that nuclear isn't going to happen.
> No. Every time we have an accident we think of what could have prevented it, and invent more safety systems.
And for the third time, the safety systems that would have prevented Chernobyl are already present in western reactors:
* Western reactors have secondary containment
* Western reactors also use dedicated control and moderator rods
We don't need to spend the money to invent more safety systems if we already have them.
> 10X of approximately nothing might still not be enough to bother automating anything, and you'd have to convince those companies that demand is going to stay and make the investment worthwhile. Meanwhile we're not about to stop needing gearboxes and generators.
It's not a question of automation, it's more of a factor of institutional knowledge and overhead cost of design. When building something unique like a steam generator a new manufacturer typically builds a broken first model and has to iterate a couple times before nailing down the manufacturing process. That overhead cost can be amortized over a larger production run.
> And for the third time, the safety systems that would have prevented Chernobyl are already present in western reactors
You're stuck on Chernobyl. I repeat, it was an example of a trend. The specific example wasn't intended to be of any particular importance. The trend of accident -> extra security is.
So yeah, Chernobyl was a bad example, but that does nothing to change that when something on a nuclear plant goes wrong, we look at how to stop future accidents, and add extra tech for monitoring/backups/etc, making nuclear more expensive, which is one of the reasons why price hasn't gone down over time. Because we've added extra stuff on top to patch up both big and smaller problems that cropped up.
Though I think that without Chernobyl it's well possible somebody would have eventually suggested maybe a containment building isn't quite necessary. Because it sure isn't free.
Meanwhile, if a wind turbine falls apart somewhere, for the most part we just ignore it. It's a problem for the operator. We're not trying to ensure no wind turbine anywhere doesn't fall apart ever.
No. Every time we have an accident we think of what could have prevented it, and invent more safety systems.
Eg, Fukushima wasn't just "account for tsunamis", which is a local problem. One resulting requirement is "Ensure that the required parts to keep the reactor said can be made available and brought in by helicopter within 24 hours even if the terrain is impassable".
So that added a nigh universal requirement to store various replacement parts and to ensure some way to deliver water, as well as the availability of helicopters to bring that in. That increases the price of every nuclear plant out there. Maybe not by a huge amount, but it does.
And renewables escape that because nobody cares if something knocks down a wind turbine, so long it doesn't fall on somebody's head.
> As a contrast to nuclear power components - where nuclear plants are the only market - so a tenfold increase in the production of nuclear plants leads to a tenfold increase in the production of pressure vessels.
10X of approximately nothing might still not be enough to bother automating anything, and you'd have to convince those companies that demand is going to stay and make the investment worthwhile. Meanwhile we're not about to stop needing gearboxes and generators.
> Correct, and the solution to intermittency that we've found is to burn fossil fuels.
Fair, but again backs up my view that nuclear isn't going to happen.