Nothing more to say.
Figure 1. Hinkley Point C Tombstone. $18,000/kW and counting. RIP.
No posts on the Gordian Knot News since mid-April. The reason is simple. I've run out of different ways of saying the same thing over and over. The GKN thesis is:
1). Humanity must have cheap nuclear electricity to solve both energy poverty and global warming. Expensive nuclear power gets us nowhere.
2. Nuclear power could and should be cheap, 3 cents/kWh cheap. In fact, it was that cheap in current money in the 1960's when it was still moving down a steep learning curve.
3. The reason nuclear is prohibitively expensive in the West is the body politic opted to replace competitive market pressures with an omnipotent regulatory system whose overriding priority is preventing a release of radioactive material. This was the result of a freakish combination of circumstances surrounding the initial development of nuclear electricity.
4. That regulatory system is both tragically unnecessary and disastrously self-perpetuating. Nuclear power can and should be regulated by a variant of the same system by which we regulate other highly beneficial but potentially harmful activities, such as ocean transportation and high pressure steam.
It is a simple argument that has been fulsomely elucidated in over 100 posts. It has resulted in a 400 page book expounding on the tragedy in excruciating detail, and a 100 page manual describing the replacement regulatory system, which we call Underwriter Certification or UCert.
To date, this effort has has zero impact. I am continually reminded that UCert is politically impossible. But we are rapidly moving toward a self-inflicted grid crisis. Friedman once said.
Only a crisis --- actual or perceived --- produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That I believe is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.
Perhaps keeping the UCert alternative alive is all we can hope for.
There is a bit of good news. Despite the lack of new posts, the GKN has had an influx in new followers and a strong pop in views. Rather than scrolling through the maze of posts, I strongly suggest the newcomers use the Site Directory in the Navigation Bar at the top of the substack. The Site Directory groups the posts by subject and gives them a grade. It offers links to both the substack version of the post and in most cases a PDF version.1 The PDF version is usually better referenced and often has important or more recent material that the substack post does not. The PDF version is almost always the better choice. Start with the top listed A's.
Since I am prone to lapse into technical jargon, there is also a Glossary in the Navigation Bar. This has yet to be integrated into the posts, so I recommend keeping the Glossary open in a Tab, and referring to it as necessary. The definitions are ordered in such a way that, if you read the Glossary from top to bottom, you will have all the technical background needed to read the GKN posts.
Frustrated readers will be happy to know that all the broken links have been fixed. I think.
Hi Jack…..from the uk.
Finally managed A contribution to GKN.
Please ignore my earlier email, here is a copy.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/66bn-nuclear-graveyard-became-britain-130500677.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANLQl9dKTnI4dvO-j2_aeSDLiCDDgDnHB71k3a8xqK0YTTyyVQyRyxysP_CbKb5uy-StX88PlzsWEz1Rj4xS6cnuXr9TgjgSwk4_Gwfux5NmeDzBjmzmhrukvs3ekQH3f5Rm3HoIp3yWkaV_Dxzfcej0qKCq-sM1PSq-Sr1IP3bx
With you 100% re big nuclear generation.
Unfortunately it continues to be strangled by regulation here in the UK to.
However thinking outside the box I find myself in is not that easy.
Getting a handle on the cost’s associated with the life storage of high level nuclear waste (HLNW) continues to haunt me.
The following dropped in my in box this weekend putting me on the back foot, your valued views would be much appreciated.
Love to comment on GKN replies but getting on board is proving difficult due to my limited techy abilities.
Thanks in anticipation…….Barry Wright, Lancashire.
Notice that, even though the expense was so high, the profits are there, mostly because fuel is only about 5% of the cost of nuclear power and the plants last from 60-100 years, still producing power. Once the mortgage is paid off, the power costs less than 3 cents per kWh. Also, it runs all the time placing AC power directly on the grid. So, imagine how better our lives would be if free enterprise still worked in America. We need to get back to our Constitution and fire all the petty egotistical managers we now have in DC (we can vote them out, of course). Now, we just have to find some patriotic benevolent leaders to replace them with. Oh, well, we could not hire people any worse, and we can fire them if they do not work. Yes, it is political, not technical or economic.