Figure 1. Two Tradeoff Curves. Old tech in blue. New improved tech in orange. The last piece on the tradeoff between nuclear cost and release frequency left an obvious question unanswered and a key implication unexplored. The inexcusably omitted question is: what keeps a regulator whose only job is preventing releases from climbing ever higher on the cost curve? My only defense for this omission is the answer is pretty obvious. A nuclear regulator needs some nuclear to keep his job. So the rule becomes drive the costs up as far as you can without completely shutting down the application stream. The applicant must have some hope of getting approved with a design that will be able to compete with alternate sources of electricity. He can't push the applicant's perceived cost much higher than the cost of the alternatives to nuclear, without the applicant balking. The regulators have come up with a acronym for this constraint. It's called ALARA,
There are only tradeoffs, part 2
There are only tradeoffs, part 2
There are only tradeoffs, part 2
Figure 1. Two Tradeoff Curves. Old tech in blue. New improved tech in orange. The last piece on the tradeoff between nuclear cost and release frequency left an obvious question unanswered and a key implication unexplored. The inexcusably omitted question is: what keeps a regulator whose only job is preventing releases from climbing ever higher on the cost curve? My only defense for this omission is the answer is pretty obvious. A nuclear regulator needs some nuclear to keep his job. So the rule becomes drive the costs up as far as you can without completely shutting down the application stream. The applicant must have some hope of getting approved with a design that will be able to compete with alternate sources of electricity. He can't push the applicant's perceived cost much higher than the cost of the alternatives to nuclear, without the applicant balking. The regulators have come up with a acronym for this constraint. It's called ALARA,