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Economics of Nuclear Reactor (YouTube)
- nabla9 7y agoThat lecturer writes in reverse!!
- PaulHoule 7y agoHe misses a number of issues: * The steam turbine attached to a light water reactor is huge compared to a modern gas turbine; like an order of magnitude larger and more expensive. Even if the heat was free, the cost of the turbine makes it hard for a LWR plant to be economic. (Switching to a liquid metal reactor, liquid salt, or gas cooled, would be alternatives, but the closed-cycle gas turbine required is not yet off-the-shelf) * A nuclear power plant not only takes a long time to build but it seems to take an indeterminent time to build, so that adds to the risk, the interest rates you can pay, so well as your expectation value for the project * With the longer construction and larger amount of debt you will pay a higher interest rate for the nuke.
- nabla9 7y ago8o% of electricity generated in the world comes from steam turbines. It's not used only in nuclear reactors. Steam turbines have very high operational efficiency and they can be installed in series. You can build them in MW scale unlike gas turbines and you can couple them direly into the grid. When coupled with nuclear power they typically operate at 1500 RPM.