Great stuff! Perhaps you can do for regulation what Alex Epstein is doing for energy, that is bring an ongoing, rational evaluation of the 'good' and the bad of regulatory policies with human flourishing as the standard.
Surely the Nuclear Regulartory Commission can't be the main reason that nuclear power didn't 'take off'. If the NRC is the main reason power plants aren't being built in the United States, surely the market would have responded, and the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border would be full of (lightly regulated, cheap and efficient) nuclear power plants, supplying the United States with power at prices that put all those coal fired plants out of business. And politicians of various stamps would be fretting about the US 'losing the race for high tech power generation' to Mexico.
“… the politicization and safety concerns about nuclear power mean that there is a powerful international demonstration and ratcheting effect. For reactors with similar generic design, there is a strong pressure for meeting at least the minimum standards of safety that are perceived to apply elsewhere. Thus if in the home of the technology, safety standards continuously become more stringent, then it is difficult to argue for lower standards in any other country. So the early (1970s) experience of regulation in the USA had a powerful impact on the design of LWRs throughout the world.”
CPSC mucked a lot of things up for bicycling. There might be some lessons or something to dig in that.
It’s a story only known to a few people.
https://www.bikexprt.com/research/cpsc/index.htm#table
Great stuff! Perhaps you can do for regulation what Alex Epstein is doing for energy, that is bring an ongoing, rational evaluation of the 'good' and the bad of regulatory policies with human flourishing as the standard.
Surely the Nuclear Regulartory Commission can't be the main reason that nuclear power didn't 'take off'. If the NRC is the main reason power plants aren't being built in the United States, surely the market would have responded, and the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border would be full of (lightly regulated, cheap and efficient) nuclear power plants, supplying the United States with power at prices that put all those coal fired plants out of business. And politicians of various stamps would be fretting about the US 'losing the race for high tech power generation' to Mexico.
“… the politicization and safety concerns about nuclear power mean that there is a powerful international demonstration and ratcheting effect. For reactors with similar generic design, there is a strong pressure for meeting at least the minimum standards of safety that are perceived to apply elsewhere. Thus if in the home of the technology, safety standards continuously become more stringent, then it is difficult to argue for lower standards in any other country. So the early (1970s) experience of regulation in the USA had a powerful impact on the design of LWRs throughout the world.”
From Gordon MacKerron, “Nuclear costs: Why do they keep rising?” (1992): https://doi.org/10.1016/0301-4215(92)90006-N