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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Phud who wrote (572019)	6/16/2010 5:19:40 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575709

The regulatory, political, and court delays and costs, are an important part of the problem, but not all of it. A new generation of designs (including possibly "passively safe" designs, where if the reaction goes semi-out of control the extra heat shuts down the reaction without human intervention required to avoid a meltdown), and the idea of picking one good one and then following "copy exactly" (or at least copying the basic design with tweaks rather than creating a new design for each reactor or small group of reactors), could address a lot of the other costs. The reactors would still be very expensive, a major capital investment, but without the extra delays, and with one good advanced design copied over and over, they might become cost effective. Of course beyond actually being cost-effective, major utilities would have to start believing that they are cost effective. They have gotten so used to extraordinary costs, and high subsidies to cover the cost, that they are either going to demand a ton of subsidies (which IMO they shouldn't get), or they are going to be reluctant to build.