Which companies would benefit from a shift to nuclear power?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36819223

by parisivy • 3 years ago

1 10 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Apparently, 76% of the US public favors nuclear energy in 2023 compared with 49% in the 1983.

Which public companies would stand to gain the most?

pfdietz4• 3 years ago

What exactly was the poll question used to conclude 76% of the US public favors nuclear energy?

lavezza• 3 years ago

"Overall, do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose, or strongly oppose the use of nuclear energy as one of the ways to provide electricity in the United States?"

https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Record-level-of-US-s...

PaulHoule3• 3 years ago

There may be a convergence of liberals thinking he climate crisis needs a strong response and conservatives not knowing that and thinking they can still own the libs.

If you asked conservatives if they wanted to trade their gas stove for one powered by nuclear electricity you might get a different opinion ;-)

pfdietz4• 3 years ago

That could just mean continuing to use existing nuclear power plants, not building new ones.

Also, 76% seems inconsistent with the 2022 Gallup Poll on the same issue (which gets 51% for the same question):

https://news.gallup.com/poll/392831/americans-divided-nuclea...

PaulHoule3• 3 years ago

Winners in the industry. Who that’s going to be is not so clear.

General Electric is getting a lot of early interest in the BWRX300 but it is based on the ESBWR which got no firm orders and the previous ABWR sold very few units.

There are not many orders in the west for large LWRs (Russia is the only country that is building them on an n-th-of-a-kind basis today) and those are all running terribly late. The economics of the LWR will never be great, even if the constructibility problems are solved. China is far along on the ACP100 small LWR and there is Nuscale, that BWRX300 and some others. Such a machine might get to an nth-of-a-kind basis for constructibility but the economics on paper usually aren’t better than the large LWR though the hope is somehow you can delete something from the design and still have good safety.

The economics may not have to be great if the social price of carbon is added to fossil fuels and if the current level of exuberance over renewables subsides (say storage turns out to be as hard as we thought it was in 2000, or building more power lines takes as long as building large LWRs, …)

Then there is

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

which might improve on the economics because the steam turbine is a major weight on the LWR. In principle a reactor without water can operate at much higher temperatures and power a closed-cycle gas turbine or maybe make hydrogen directly with a thermochemical process. None of those is a bird in the hand neither in terms of the nuclear part nor the “what are you going to do with the heat?” question.

parisivy• 3 years ago

Great reply!

pfdietz4• 3 years ago

Only 35% of Americans believe the government should encourage production of nuclear power. In constrast, 72% answer affirmatively for the same question about wind and solar.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/23/americans...

Which companies would benefit from a shift to nuclear power?

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