Crémieux Profile picture
Mar 28, 2024 9 tweets 4 min read Read on X
The American nuclear industry illustrates negative learning: the costs of plants have increased over time.

But this is not nuclear's fault. Almost everywhere else, the learning rate is positive: costs decline as the industry gains experience building!

🧵

Consider France:Image
The U.S. has really only been experiencing cost overruns since the Three Mile Island incident, and the reason has to do with the industry becoming overregulated as a result of the public outcry that ensued. Image
In general, nuclear cost overruns are driven by indirect costs, like having to hire more safety professionals due to added regulatory burdens.

Those explain 72% of the price hike in the U.S., 1976-87: Image
In a more recent OECD report on nuclear from 2020, it was noted that "indirect cost[s] are the main driver of these cost overruns" and 80% of those indirect costs are attributable to largely unnecessary labor. Image
The regulatory costs levied against nuclear are so extreme that they can make components cost 50 times what they should, like in the case of 75 mm stainless steel gate valves.

The main factor differentiating nuclear and industrial grade? Unnecessary quality certification. Image
The question is less "Why is nuclear expensive?" and more "Why is nuclear overregulated?"

And the reason isn't clear-cut. It's obvious it's not so simple as saying "ALARA!", since many countries manage positive learning despite sticking to the same philosophy.
It's more likely a combination of factors involving activism

Thanks to activism, the U.S. nuclear fleet won't achieve French emission levels because, under the Carter administration, activists managed to get reprocessing banned, tarring nuclear's reputation via the 'waste' issue
In any case, nuclear remains a viable option for cleanly powering the future, and continued research into it is necessary for taking us into the stars.

Moreover, for consumers, it remains beneficial ($!) so long as intermittent forms of generation are, well, intermittent.
There's more that can be said, but I'll cut it off there

Sources:







To read way more on this, check out this IFP piece:

And a Construction Physics favorite: oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/ap…
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
ifp.org/nuclear-power-…
construction-physics.com/p/why-are-nucl…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Crémieux

Crémieux Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @cremieuxrecueil

Jul 2
I've seen people mentioning that Europe's heat-related death issue is larger than American gun violence—true!

But people neglect saying how many heat-related deaths America has.

Approximately 1% of what Europe does even though America is hotter and Americans are less healthy! Image
Those factors mean Americans are more at-risk for heat-related deaths, even after accounting for Europe being a little older than America.

So let's be clear:

Europeans die from heat at relatively high rates; Americans survive it with technology. Image
Image
What technology?

It's the terraforming technology of air conditioning.

Install A/C and the heat-related deaths will mostly disappear, if Europe can keep their grid operational. Image
Read 7 tweets
Jul 2
What happens when scholars get canceled?

They end up publishing fewer papers and they receive fewer citations.

In other words, scientific productivity falls🧵 Image
Tons of scholars have been cancelled in recent years.

That is, they've received professional backlash for expressing views that people deem "controversial, unpopular, or misaligned with prevailing norms." Image
Cancellations happen outside of academia, but it's very bad in it.

Large portions of the academy dislike the freedom of speech. Many of those free speech opponents have high agency and the clout to cause material harm to people they dislike = particularly bad cancel culture. Image
Read 13 tweets
Jun 28
You must pick one:

Double the productivity of the bottom 20% or double the productivity of the top 1%:
Double the productivity of the bottom 40% or double the productivity of the top 1%:
Double the productivity of the bottom 60% or double the productivity of the top 1%:
Read 7 tweets
Jun 27
Phenotyping is the vast, minimally-explored frontier in genome-wide association studies.

Important thread🧵

Briefly, phenotyping is how you measure people's traits. Measure poorly, get bad results; measure well, get good results.

Example? Janky knees. Image
The janky knee example refers to osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis, which occurs when the cartilage between bones is worn down, so bones start rubbing against each other.

This ends up being very painful. Image
Everyone with this condition isn't necessarily diagnosed with it.

This is especially true for men, who tend to just ignore this (and many other conditions) more often than women do.

This is, in a word, annoying, because it means that if you study it, sampling is likely biased. Image
Read 35 tweets
Jun 25
ADHD is a condition that's suffered from diagnostic drift: it's been defined more leniently over time, so more people are getting diagnosed.

One way to see this is to look at the benefits of taking ADHD medication. As prescription rates increased, the benefits have declined. Image
Another way to understand diagnostic drift is to look at the factors that promote it.

For example, school accountability laws lead to more diagnoses and, as a result, more psychoactive drug prescriptions.

Schools are pressured by law into making this happen. Image
An even more direct way to understand ADHD's diagnostic drift is to look at what types of diagnoses happen over time.

The increase has been more about non-severe ADHD than clinical ADHD. In other words, people with less and lesser symptoms are getting diagnosed. Image
Read 4 tweets
Jun 24
I have a story to break.

Columbia is still practicing racially discriminatory admissions in defiance of the Supreme Court's ruling in SFFA v. Harvard.

Newly-leaked data shows they still prefer less-qualified Blacks and Hispanics over more-qualified Asians🧵Image
Columbia has made a big show of "complying" with SFFA v. Harvard by noting that their 2024 batch of admits involved slightly less discrimination:

Fewer Black and Hispanic students, more Asian students.

That's what should happen, because Asian students tend to perform better.Image
But, with this leaked admissions data, we can see that race still predicts admissions.

With fair admissions, race should not have a significant effect, and it should not be directionally consistent.

And yet, in this data, it's clear Columbia still discriminates against Asians. Image
Read 14 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(