2 ms·

> “Areva, the French nuclear plant operator, offers that 70% of the cost of a kWh of nuclear electricity is accounted for by the fixed costs from the constructi

by xyzzyz 7y ago

> “Areva, the French nuclear plant operator, offers that 70% of the cost of a kWh of nuclear electricity is accounted for by the fixed costs from the construction process.” Yes, this exactly means that operating costs are very cheap: if 70% of the cost per kWh is amortization of construction costs, and only 30% is operating costs, and the kWh from nuclear plants are still the cheapest, or exactly means that the operating costs of running a nuclear power plant are very, very low, much lower than coal plants. > Looking at pure construction costs in a steady state environment without loans it’s a significantly smaller fraction which continues to increase with age. This is why several viable nuclear power plants have been decommissioned early, their operating costs are to expensive even after construction has been paid off. Which ones? What were their operating costs? > So if you want 2.2 TW 24/7 you need to build ~1,112 of them not 1,000 of them. Sure, but as I noted, we can build twice the amount we need rather easily, while building enough of utility scale batteries to ride out the variations in solar/wind production is just infeasible. Of course nuclear isn’t perfect, but I thought your alternative is solar/wind, which has all the same problem, but worse - instead of predictable and controllable 90%, you get 40-50% of installed capacity on average, and it can be all down at times beyond your control. > Up to a point, your talking days of downtime not hours so you still need peaking power. The cheapest approach is for a steady state of workers smoothly moving from one project to the next. That’s hard to pull off, and you end up needing even more generation to cover scheduling issues and unexpected problems. That’s okay, since we can build twice our peaks and still be firmly in the realm of feasible. I note, however, that you gave up on the idea of utility scale batteries being feasible approach to work around the inherent unpredictability of solar and wind. Good.

Retric 7y ago
> Which ones? What were their operating costs? “Each nuclear power plant employs 500 to 1,000 workers. Nuclear worker salaries are 20 percent higher on average than those of other electricity generation sources.” 40 mill x 50 years = 2 Billion dollars just for wages. https://www.nei.org/advantages/jobs https://www.nei.org/advantages/jobs As giant complex mechanical systems over time moving components like pumps and turbines need to be replaced. Due to contamination some of these costs are crazy high. Insurance is a big one. They need normal insurance for stuff like fires and workplace accidents, plus government subsidized insurance for the rare major accidents that could be horrifically expensive. While cheap relative to coal they still need fuel which adds up to 14% of operating costs. While U3O8 is $68 by the time it’s ready to be used the costs increase to $1390 per kg (https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-a...) and a 1GW reactor goes through ~25,000kg of enriched uranium per year. https://www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power-plant/nuclear-fuel/fuel-consumption-of-conventional-reactor/ https://www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power-plant/nuclear-fu... That’s 35 million dollars per year and 1.75 billion over 50 years. (As a sanity check. If it’s 14% of total operating costs then it’s operating costs are 12.5 billion for a 1GW nuclear power plant operating for 50 years. If 12.5 billion operating costs = 30% of total costs then a 1GW Nuclear reactor costs 41.5 billion over 50 years or 830 million per year and at 90% capacity factor it’s 10.6c/kWh which is close to the 12.5c/kWh I have seen quoted frequently.) With reprocessing it’s about only 3kg for 1GW of electrical power per day at 33% thermal efficiency, but without repressing they need significantly more fuel. Unfortunately repressing is not currently cost effective. They also need the basics like office equipment like computers and supplies, as well as the normal costs associated with buildings like lightbulbs, roof repair, water and sewage etc. Plus the normal taxes etc. They also need to set aside money for decommissioning. PS: Digging into those fuel costs where really interesting it’s interesting to see how 68$/kg and 3kg per day which I have seen quoted before gets transformed in a much larger expense.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  “Each nuclear power plant employs 500 to 1,000 workers. Nuclear worker salaries are 20 percent higher on average than those of other electricity generation sources.” 40 mill x 50 years = 2 Billion dollars just for wages. https://www.nei.org/advantages/jobs" https://www.nei.org/advantages/jobs" Yes, if you multiply things by 50, you get large numbers. Note, however, that $40M per year for a plant generating 2200 MW day in day out (well, let's say 90% of the time) results in $40M / (2200 MW * 0.9 * 1 year) = $0.002 per kWh, that is, 1/5th of 1 cent per kWh in employees cost. I say that's really cheap. > As giant complex mechanical systems over time moving components like pumps and turbines need to be replaced. Same is true for all kinds of power plants. You need to compare the costs between all for a sensible comparison. It's fun to make all these calculations by yourself, but fortunately, there's already a metric for that, called levelised cost of electricity (LCOE). It's basically the total lifetime cost of a facility (construction, operation and decomissioning) divided by total amount of energy produced. As you can see in [1], LCOE of nuclear easily beats solar, and matches wind plants, which suffer from the disadvantage of only producing electricity when the wind blows. If you didn't have option of base load fossil or nuclear plants, you'd have to build storage for wind and solar, which would make their LCOE jump through the roof. Look, it's clear that nuclear isn't free, so yeah, you really need to spend a billion on fuel and another on wages over 50 years. More importantly, though, over those 50 years you'll produce $50 billion worth of electricity. Just look at the published LCOEs, and consider how much they'd have to go up for solar & wind if we couldn't fall back on fossils and nuclear. In future, if we ever manage to get off fossil fuels, the way we do it will be nuclear for base load along with some amount of wind and solar (though not much, due to environmental concerns that will make it very hard to build significant amounts of wind and solar). As I hope is clear for you, it most definitely will not be wind & solar + batteries, and no nuclear. [1] - https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/LCOE.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/LCOE.pdf

by xyzzyz 7y ago

Retric 7y ago

> Which ones? What were their operating costs? “Each nuclear power plant employs 500 to 1,000 workers. Nuclear worker salaries are 20 percent higher on average than those of other electricity generation sources.” 40 mill x 50 years = 2 Billion dollars just for wages. https://www.nei.org/advantages/jobs https://www.nei.org/advantages/jobs As giant complex mechanical systems over time moving components like pumps and turbines need to be replaced. Due to contamination some of these costs are crazy high. Insurance is a big one. They need normal insurance for stuff like fires and workplace accidents, plus government subsidized insurance for the rare major accidents that could be horrifically expensive. While cheap relative to coal they still need fuel which adds up to 14% of operating costs. While U3O8 is $68 by the time it’s ready to be used the costs increase to $1390 per kg (https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-a...) and a 1GW reactor goes through ~25,000kg of enriched uranium per year. https://www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power-plant/nuclear-fuel/fuel-consumption-of-conventional-reactor/ https://www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power-plant/nuclear-fu... That’s 35 million dollars per year and 1.75 billion over 50 years. (As a sanity check. If it’s 14% of total operating costs then it’s operating costs are 12.5 billion for a 1GW nuclear power plant operating for 50 years. If 12.5 billion operating costs = 30% of total costs then a 1GW Nuclear reactor costs 41.5 billion over 50 years or 830 million per year and at 90% capacity factor it’s 10.6c/kWh which is close to the 12.5c/kWh I have seen quoted frequently.) With reprocessing it’s about only 3kg for 1GW of electrical power per day at 33% thermal efficiency, but without repressing they need significantly more fuel. Unfortunately repressing is not currently cost effective. They also need the basics like office equipment like computers and supplies, as well as the normal costs associated with buildings like lightbulbs, roof repair, water and sewage etc. Plus the normal taxes etc. They also need to set aside money for decommissioning. PS: Digging into those fuel costs where really interesting it’s interesting to see how 68$/kg and 3kg per day which I have seen quoted before gets transformed in a much larger expense.

xyzzyz 7y ago
“Each nuclear power plant employs 500 to 1,000 workers. Nuclear worker salaries are 20 percent higher on average than those of other electricity generation sources.” 40 mill x 50 years = 2 Billion dollars just for wages. https://www.nei.org/advantages/jobs" https://www.nei.org/advantages/jobs" Yes, if you multiply things by 50, you get large numbers. Note, however, that $40M per year for a plant generating 2200 MW day in day out (well, let's say 90% of the time) results in $40M / (2200 MW * 0.9 * 1 year) = $0.002 per kWh, that is, 1/5th of 1 cent per kWh in employees cost. I say that's really cheap. > As giant complex mechanical systems over time moving components like pumps and turbines need to be replaced. Same is true for all kinds of power plants. You need to compare the costs between all for a sensible comparison. It's fun to make all these calculations by yourself, but fortunately, there's already a metric for that, called levelised cost of electricity (LCOE). It's basically the total lifetime cost of a facility (construction, operation and decomissioning) divided by total amount of energy produced. As you can see in [1], LCOE of nuclear easily beats solar, and matches wind plants, which suffer from the disadvantage of only producing electricity when the wind blows. If you didn't have option of base load fossil or nuclear plants, you'd have to build storage for wind and solar, which would make their LCOE jump through the roof. Look, it's clear that nuclear isn't free, so yeah, you really need to spend a billion on fuel and another on wages over 50 years. More importantly, though, over those 50 years you'll produce $50 billion worth of electricity. Just look at the published LCOEs, and consider how much they'd have to go up for solar & wind if we couldn't fall back on fossils and nuclear. In future, if we ever manage to get off fossil fuels, the way we do it will be nuclear for base load along with some amount of wind and solar (though not much, due to environmental concerns that will make it very hard to build significant amounts of wind and solar). As I hope is clear for you, it most definitely will not be wind & solar + batteries, and no nuclear. [1] - https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/LCOE.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/LCOE.pdf