…is happening, but very slowly.
And I wonder if it’s happening in space at all? I haven’t looked at the new budget in detail, so I’m not sure if nuclear is one of the technologies being restored. If not, it’s futile to develop new propulsion technologies if there’s no way to power them.
The nukes are only a sop to try and get cap and tax over the line. They’ll approve only as many as it takes to get that to happen.
I wish they would source this statement: ” …nuclear power has a cost both certain to be high and hard to predict precisely.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. Nuclear plants have a capital outlay which can be predictably depreciated over many years. Variable costs, particularly fuel and manpower are puny compared to gas and coal and are also readily predictable. Nuclear plants and hydroelectric are the only two sources which can predict with any certainty what the cost per kilowatt will be one, two or ten years out.
The talk in the article about the difficulty of making the large steel pressure vessels reminded me that one of the features of the CANDU reactors was the lack of large unitary pressure vessels. Instead, the pressurized volume is made with smaller steel elements (like pipes) that can be assembled onsite.
Jardeinero1: the capital cost of new nuclear plants is actually somewhat hard to predict. The new efforts recently around the world have not been meeting cost projections all that well.
The capital cost is easier to predict if the reactor has been previously built. I am saying this in relation to, say, EPR which is a new reactor design that is having a rather protracted construction schedule. The Chinese have built several (nearly all that matter?) current reactor designs in AFAIK well defined periods and costs. South Korea also seems to build them on time.
To a large degree cost is also dependent on how well shielded from long lawsuits the project is, or how good is the construction business in that area, or what is the interest rate for paying back the initial loan.