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I worked in commercial nuclear power for a while, including a stint at three mile island. The regulatory compliance burden alone, from the NRC and DOE, is crippling financially.

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Exactly. Regulation has led to larger plants, and longer construction times.

https://i.redd.it/djub5auudfj91.png

I really hope pre-approved, pre-built modular reactors lower costs, delays, and regulatory overhead.

https://www.nuscalepower.com/

I'm also hopefully that molten salt reactors, once viable, are different enough to not be hampered by the full breath of traditional reactor regulations.

That seems to conflict with the low operating expenses of nuclear reactors. Once they are built, what is the crippling aspect?

low operating expenses over the whole lifetime of the plant including deconstruction or just the fun part?

Typically decommissioning costs are collected throughout the lifetime of operation, and to my knowledge these costs do not significantly raise the operating expenses. But I'm not familiar in detail with many examples, so if I'm wrong on the general trend, I would like to know!

Typically the energy corps gets rid of their assets before decommissioning puts them in a "bad bank corp" and lets us pay for it.

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