12 ms·

This is missing the point. The point is that your house or car would be outrageously expensive too if the engineering cost of the design was amortized over ver

by creato 7y ago

This is missing the point. The point is that your house or car would be outrageously expensive too if the engineering cost of the design was amortized over very few units.

Spooky23 7y ago
That's precisely the point. Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. The capital costs of any traditional power plant are massive, and fix high costs of goods sold for the life of the plant. This Canadian effort may find a way to build more smaller units, which will be great if they succeed. Solar and wind are disruptive because the cost to add a marginal unit of generation is near zero. A marginal add of a natural gas power plant in my US state is nearly $100M and several years. Nuclear is probably 10x that. I understand why nuclear is an appealing technology. Its magical in a way, but it doesn't make sense when engineering a power grid today. It is an awful business with high fixed costs getting disrupted by smaller, cheaper, lower friction alternatives. Again, in my state, New York, despite higher than average rates, nuclear operators like Excelon claim to be losing money operating old plants, and NY ratepayers will be providing $7-10B in subsidy over the next 10-12 years.
- creato 7y ago
  > Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. I don't think there was ever a direct subsidy of civilian nuclear power for weapons production. The ways in which military reactors are run to produce fuel for weapons is different than that of power plants. There are dual use technologies involved, shared R&D costs, and so on, but there is no direct subsidy of civilian nuclear power the way you are implying. > The capital costs of any traditional power plant are massive, and fix high costs of goods sold for the life of the plant. I'm pretty sure you are in fact missing the point. The costs of building a modern nuclear plant include a huge amount of one-off engineering because we build so few of them. If we swapped the numbers of units built of coal and nuclear power plants, the cost structures would (probably close to) swap as well, which was the original parent of this thread's point. Look, I'm not here to advocate for nuclear power. I think renewables + batteries are likely to win on economics in the near future, but with some major challenges (building enough batteries for the long tail of intermittent production lapses seems really difficult to me). But that doesn't argue against the fact that we shot ourselves in the climate change foot by not prioritizing nuclear over coal power for decades, and I think a big part of that is based on a mistake ("nuclear is expensive") is because of this inability to amortize costs over more units. edit to add: I think your singling out of capital costs is a strawman of the original comment ("Frankly if there was a COTS design pre-certified, then it might be possible to wipe out a huge fraction of the built cost."). It's unclear whether you are including certification and engineering costs in "capital costs", but the intention of the original point was to include those costs.
  - bildung 7y ago
    > I don't think there was ever a direct subsidy of civilian nuclear power for weapons production. Most subsidies are not direct and called "subsidy". But as long as nuclear weapons production was a priority, the US had an more of an incentive to research decommissioning, funding final disposing sites, have more people study nuclear engineering, creating job opportunities for nuclear engineers to build up an ecosystem, funding basic research in the area, researching and providing the logistics for transporting waste to disposal sites etc.
- kortilla 7y ago
  Solar and wind aren’t disruptive to base-load though, which is the problem. You can build all of the solar/wind you want, but you’re just falling back to fossil fuels at night and during less windy days.
  - cycomanic 7y ago
    This is simply false. First, "base load" powerplants are actually the most troublesome, because they don't adjust for load and predicting base load is actually hard (except when you just use a very small fraction of overall load). Second if you have a large grid (like the US) that is connected (and modern,) you could run the whole grid of variable loads like wind. This would require investment into the grid which nobody seems to want to do. However the technology is there
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    Solar and wind most certainly do disrupt baseload, and they can do that even if they are not themselves providing a constant output of power. All they have to do is drive the price of power down often enough to ruin the economics of the expensive baseload plants, which depend on there being sufficiently high average prices.
- cjslep 7y ago
  > Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. This is easily false. When you look at historical nuclear powerplant construction via the NRC, you see a flatline of new reactors starting 1979: Three Mile Island accident year. In fact, Ford and Carter (a nuclear engineer himself) banned reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels even before that! Due to nonproliferation concerns (NPT had been around since 1970). The USA kept building nuclear weapons through the 80's, so where were those "subsidies" for civilian powerplants? The answer is the strong anti-nuclear movement in the 80's society that was the culmination of several different political, disaster, and cultural events. Not because we stopped building nukes in the 80's (we didn't stop). Edit: One of the defining features of the US's civilian power fleet of reactors is exactly because of its adherence to non-proliferation, independence of military, and economic viability of "standing on its own two legs". Contrast the PWR designs with the power+breeder designs of the RBMK, the Soviet design to accidentally produce power while also producing weapons grade materials. This is why, in contrast, in the USA the reactors at national labs and military sites are so secure and secretive, and why the fuel used in US civilian powerplants are very tame in comparison: only the military is subsidizing it's own reactors for its own weapons grade fuel.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Swedens (huge and successful!) push for nuclear power began in the 1950s with very much an idea to also produce weapons. Politically the weapons program become obsolete in the 1960s but without it I doubt the power generation program would have went underway.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    Where did the fuel come from? A: US Government enrichment facilities built to support nuclear weapons programs. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/usa-nuclear-fuel-cycle.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
    - cjslep 7y ago
      Sure, today, military-grade plutonium is down-blended in MOX fuels. But your own source backs up the fact that from the 1950's to the 1980's (the time period we are talking about) the USA was the world's leading uranium ore producer. One could argue that the mines were subsidized by the federal government (so they could enrich and breed nuclear-grade materials), but that is a far cry from GP's claim that "Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way", which is incomparable to the degree of subsidization as the USSR and their dual-use for RBMK reactors (why else design a reactor with a positive void coefficient). EDIT: I'm not sure whether you're really concerned about the buildout of nuclear powerplants or the evolution of the USA's policy with regards to the nuclear fuel cycle, but I hope I addressed both. EDIT2: Also: The "big 3" enrichment locations that the military used would also sell to civilian nuclear powerplants. But that's a far cry reason to "subsidize" the construction of nuclear powerplants. This "fuel subsidization" goes on today (MOX fuels) and the American monopoly of uranium enrichment has been broken since 1970 with the formation of Urenco, so the commercial civilian powerplants have always had other places to purchase from (if a regulatory hassle). There's really not a lot of strong evidence that the mining and enrichment of uranium for nuclear weapons somehow subsidized the construction of civilian nuclear powerplants.
- aguyfromnb 7y ago
  >Solar and wind are disruptive because the cost to add a marginal unit of generation is near zero. Can you elaborate here? Solar and wind are relatively cheap, and falling, but a long way from a near zero marginal cost. According to a quick Google, the capital-weighted costs of solar, hydro, wind, geothermal and some newer natural gas plants are similar.

by creato 7y ago

This is missing the point. The point is that your house or car would be outrageously expensive too if the engineering cost of the design was amortized over very few units.

Spooky23 7y ago

That's precisely the point. Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. The capital costs of any traditional power plant are massive, and fix high costs of goods sold for the life of the plant. This Canadian effort may find a way to build more smaller units, which will be great if they succeed. Solar and wind are disruptive because the cost to add a marginal unit of generation is near zero. A marginal add of a natural gas power plant in my US state is nearly $100M and several years. Nuclear is probably 10x that. I understand why nuclear is an appealing technology. Its magical in a way, but it doesn't make sense when engineering a power grid today. It is an awful business with high fixed costs getting disrupted by smaller, cheaper, lower friction alternatives. Again, in my state, New York, despite higher than average rates, nuclear operators like Excelon claim to be losing money operating old plants, and NY ratepayers will be providing $7-10B in subsidy over the next 10-12 years.

creato 7y ago
> Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. I don't think there was ever a direct subsidy of civilian nuclear power for weapons production. The ways in which military reactors are run to produce fuel for weapons is different than that of power plants. There are dual use technologies involved, shared R&D costs, and so on, but there is no direct subsidy of civilian nuclear power the way you are implying. > The capital costs of any traditional power plant are massive, and fix high costs of goods sold for the life of the plant. I'm pretty sure you are in fact missing the point. The costs of building a modern nuclear plant include a huge amount of one-off engineering because we build so few of them. If we swapped the numbers of units built of coal and nuclear power plants, the cost structures would (probably close to) swap as well, which was the original parent of this thread's point. Look, I'm not here to advocate for nuclear power. I think renewables + batteries are likely to win on economics in the near future, but with some major challenges (building enough batteries for the long tail of intermittent production lapses seems really difficult to me). But that doesn't argue against the fact that we shot ourselves in the climate change foot by not prioritizing nuclear over coal power for decades, and I think a big part of that is based on a mistake ("nuclear is expensive") is because of this inability to amortize costs over more units. edit to add: I think your singling out of capital costs is a strawman of the original comment ("Frankly if there was a COTS design pre-certified, then it might be possible to wipe out a huge fraction of the built cost."). It's unclear whether you are including certification and engineering costs in "capital costs", but the intention of the original point was to include those costs.
- bildung 7y ago
  > I don't think there was ever a direct subsidy of civilian nuclear power for weapons production. Most subsidies are not direct and called "subsidy". But as long as nuclear weapons production was a priority, the US had an more of an incentive to research decommissioning, funding final disposing sites, have more people study nuclear engineering, creating job opportunities for nuclear engineers to build up an ecosystem, funding basic research in the area, researching and providing the logistics for transporting waste to disposal sites etc.
kortilla 7y ago
Solar and wind aren’t disruptive to base-load though, which is the problem. You can build all of the solar/wind you want, but you’re just falling back to fossil fuels at night and during less windy days.
- cycomanic 7y ago
  This is simply false. First, "base load" powerplants are actually the most troublesome, because they don't adjust for load and predicting base load is actually hard (except when you just use a very small fraction of overall load). Second if you have a large grid (like the US) that is connected (and modern,) you could run the whole grid of variable loads like wind. This would require investment into the grid which nobody seems to want to do. However the technology is there
- pfdietz 7y ago
  Solar and wind most certainly do disrupt baseload, and they can do that even if they are not themselves providing a constant output of power. All they have to do is drive the price of power down often enough to ruin the economics of the expensive baseload plants, which depend on there being sufficiently high average prices.
cjslep 7y ago
> Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. This is easily false. When you look at historical nuclear powerplant construction via the NRC, you see a flatline of new reactors starting 1979: Three Mile Island accident year. In fact, Ford and Carter (a nuclear engineer himself) banned reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels even before that! Due to nonproliferation concerns (NPT had been around since 1970). The USA kept building nuclear weapons through the 80's, so where were those "subsidies" for civilian powerplants? The answer is the strong anti-nuclear movement in the 80's society that was the culmination of several different political, disaster, and cultural events. Not because we stopped building nukes in the 80's (we didn't stop). Edit: One of the defining features of the US's civilian power fleet of reactors is exactly because of its adherence to non-proliferation, independence of military, and economic viability of "standing on its own two legs". Contrast the PWR designs with the power+breeder designs of the RBMK, the Soviet design to accidentally produce power while also producing weapons grade materials. This is why, in contrast, in the USA the reactors at national labs and military sites are so secure and secretive, and why the fuel used in US civilian powerplants are very tame in comparison: only the military is subsidizing it's own reactors for its own weapons grade fuel.
- jacobush 7y ago
  Swedens (huge and successful!) push for nuclear power began in the 1950s with very much an idea to also produce weapons. Politically the weapons program become obsolete in the 1960s but without it I doubt the power generation program would have went underway.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Where did the fuel come from? A: US Government enrichment facilities built to support nuclear weapons programs. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/usa-nuclear-fuel-cycle.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
  - cjslep 7y ago
    Sure, today, military-grade plutonium is down-blended in MOX fuels. But your own source backs up the fact that from the 1950's to the 1980's (the time period we are talking about) the USA was the world's leading uranium ore producer. One could argue that the mines were subsidized by the federal government (so they could enrich and breed nuclear-grade materials), but that is a far cry from GP's claim that "Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way", which is incomparable to the degree of subsidization as the USSR and their dual-use for RBMK reactors (why else design a reactor with a positive void coefficient). EDIT: I'm not sure whether you're really concerned about the buildout of nuclear powerplants or the evolution of the USA's policy with regards to the nuclear fuel cycle, but I hope I addressed both. EDIT2: Also: The "big 3" enrichment locations that the military used would also sell to civilian nuclear powerplants. But that's a far cry reason to "subsidize" the construction of nuclear powerplants. This "fuel subsidization" goes on today (MOX fuels) and the American monopoly of uranium enrichment has been broken since 1970 with the formation of Urenco, so the commercial civilian powerplants have always had other places to purchase from (if a regulatory hassle). There's really not a lot of strong evidence that the mining and enrichment of uranium for nuclear weapons somehow subsidized the construction of civilian nuclear powerplants.
aguyfromnb 7y ago
>Solar and wind are disruptive because the cost to add a marginal unit of generation is near zero. Can you elaborate here? Solar and wind are relatively cheap, and falling, but a long way from a near zero marginal cost. According to a quick Google, the capital-weighted costs of solar, hydro, wind, geothermal and some newer natural gas plants are similar.