5 ms·
Describing these as mini-plants gave me the impression that they're talking about say a container sized "unit". While they would be considered small at 440MW,
by derriz 6y ago
Describing these as mini-plants gave me the impression that they're talking about say a container sized "unit".
While they would be considered small at 440MW, they are still full nuclear plants - the novelty seems to be that as much of the structure as possible will be assembled from prefabricated modules constructed off-site.
I can't figure out the economics here. They project $2.7B to construct each 440MW plant. This is presumably an optimistic estimate since they haven't even designed it.
Then you have high running and security costs and subsequent decommissioning costs. You need security infrastructure for storage and transport of fuel and waste.
And I guess it's envisioned it will take a least 10 years to get the first one operational given they've just started on design work?
In contrast, you can build 2GW of on-shore wind capacity for that money and have it delivering electricity in a year or less. The plant will require almost no personal at all to run, and maintenance can be done one or two part-time engineers. Operating costs are effectively zero.
Sure, depending on location 10% of the time you'll dip below 1/3 operating capacity but that will still exceed the output from one of these plants. Even if the peak 2GW cannot be utilised efficiently immediately, advancements in storage and increases in BEV sales will make the excess valuable.
I think there little future role for fusion for electricity generation - it's just too complex and expensive. The collapse in price for wind/solar in the last decade have changed all the numbers. Prices are so cheap that you can basically over-provision wind/solar by a factor of 3 to minimise effect of fluctuations. Add in cheap efficient combined-cycle gas peaker plants to provide smoothing in production and you can get to 80% carbon-free relatively easily and economically.
- Schiendelman 6y agoYep. These projects continue to be military-industrial at worst, and corporate handouts at best.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoIndeed. This government has made it absolutely clear that its Prime Directive is handing public money to cronies and party donors. So this fits perfectly. And these are not small reactors, and there's nothing "mini" about them. They're comparable in power output to the first generation of UK reactors which operated from the 50s/60s to the 90s/00s.
- edogg 6y agoIt’s 6000 jobs, generating electricity without producing carbon, sustaining an industry and construction and manufacturing know how, and creation of a product for export. These seem like worthwhile pursuits to me and a good use of public funds.
- Schiendelman 6y agoAbsolute numbers of jobs without a number of years aren’t useful (most of those may be transient), and they especially aren’t useful when not compared to the job creation impact of other expenditures of those same dollars.
- edogg 6y agoGiving a grant to an existing company with a long history of technical excellence and delivering products to build a new product and a factory for it means jobs that don’t go away. A power plant built creates jobs to run it for as long as it exists. On the other hand All construction jobs are not permanent - they finish building the project and have to move on to the next one, if it is the factory for the power plants, the power plant itself, the next power plant, or something else. 18 million pounds is a lot of money, but it’s a pittance compared to what tech companies are raising from VCs. In relation to the size of tech companies and the size of investments in them, 6000 jobs and the kick start to an industry for 18 million pounds seems like a bargain to me.
- cure 6y ago> I can't figure out the economics here. They project $2.7B to construct each 440MW plant. This is presumably an optimistic estimate since they haven't even designed it. Same here, this makes no sense from an economic perspective. The article quote was even worse: they think that after they have built a few, they think they will be able to build them at roughly $2.7B a pop. How much will the first few cost? Who pays for the handling and storage of the nuclear waste? That's never included in the cost estimates for nuclear plants, mini or not. How much grid-scale battery would $2.7B buy today? Looks like a Tesla megapack is ~$300/kWh with all the batteries and electronics included (https://cleantechnica.com/2020/10/05/tesla-megapack-powerpack-powerwall-battery-storage-prices/ https://cleantechnica.com/2020/10/05/tesla-megapack-powerpac...). $2.7B would pay for ~9GWh of grid-scale storage, or about 20 hours of output from a 440MW plant. Of course you would still need to add the generation piece - solar or wind is cheapest today. I'm going to guess that in 10 years, when those mini-plants may finally be a reality, the combination of grid-scale batteries with solar/wind or wave generation will be so much cheaper that there will be no market for mini-nuclear plants.
- SiempreViernes 6y agoThey might be a worthwhile investment if you can use them to straight up buy political support for green policies like co2 taxes and energy efficiency regulations.
- jl6 6y agoHow much would it cost for wind capacity plus enough battery storage capacity to make the whole setup functionally equivalent to a 440MW nuclear plant?
- toomuchtodo 6y agoCan't speak to wind, but I know off hand that solar and storage is cheaper than coal [1], and onshore wind is cheaper than solar at utility scale [2]. Offshore wind still has a premium, but is still coming down in cost. [1] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/10/12/solar-plus-storage-replaces-coal-plant-in-new-mexico-makes-carbon-capture-retrofit-moot/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/10/12/solar-plus-storage-re... ("Solar-plus-storage replaces coal plant in New Mexico, makes carbon-capture retrofit moot") [2] https://www.lazard.com/media/451419/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-140.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/451419/lazards-levelized-cost-o... (PDF, slide 3, center of page)
- xyzzyz 6y agoYour link only has 4 hours of storage, won't even last the whole night. Also, solar in UK will perform significantly worse than in New Mexico, for obvious reasons.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoIt’s not meant to last all night, just to bridge the later hours between when the sun sets and everyone goes to bed (and load drops substantially). Europe has enough wind potential to power the world, its simply a deployment, storage, and transmission issue [1]. The New Mexico example was only to demonstrate that renewables and storage paired are cheaper than coal and nuclear, today. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/europe-giant-wind-farm-could-power-entire-world/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/europe-giant-wind-far...
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoThat is deeply misleading, there are sometimes several days of little to no wind, you 4 hours of storage are going to lead to nationwide blackouts and bodies in the streets
- bigbubba 6y ago440MW really pushes the bounds of the S in SMR (Small Modular Reactor). Most SMR proposals are a fraction of that.
- baking 6y agoLooks more like at Medium Modular Reactor. The Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) and three Steam Generators (SG) are all sized to fit on large trucks, 4.5m wide.
- krona 6y agoThe cost of compensating wind farms for overloading the power grid, which considering the UK's current (and future!) wind generation capacity, is not inconsequential. Wind farms in the UK have to be disabled for periods during the Winter, which is hardly ideal, even if such downtime is a few hours at a time.
- pydry 6y agoIf you factor in the cost of upgrading the grid wind turbines are still a bargain. Especially if you consider the economic possibilities of periods of nearly free electricity - e.g. fleets of electric cars/storage heaters/aluminium shelters demand shifting to take advantage.
- Devils-Avocado 6y agoWe need to begin building that smart charging/discharging capability into electric cars now, then. We need to establish the regulatory and user interface standards around this ideally before we start manufacturing tens of millions of EVS each month. It might make sense to also unbundle electricity for consumers, charging the live wholesale rate and indicating the pricing via apps, alerts, or indicators on the meter itself.
- boogies 6y ago> it's just too complex and expensive This seems like a verbose rehash of an older comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25058145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25058145) that has already been refuted. You’re not accounting for the real life costs like paying consumers to take excess energy when demand is lower than fluctuating supply, or replacing renewable infrastructure as often as every other decade (nuclear reactors may be able to last centuries, and their “waste” is recyclable).
- pfdietz 6y agoRenewable sources can be easily curtailed, so in a high renewable grid prices cannot often go negative, unless someone is paying extra for the renewable sources to produce (which production tax credits do today in the US.)
- boogies 6y agoGood point, though my larger point that they’re more expensive per watt still stands.
- pfdietz 6y agoRenewable sources are much cheaper per watt than new nuclear. By like an order of magnitude, for PV. They are also cheaper per kWh (levelized cost). Nuclear's sole remaining argument is that the cost of intermittency of renewables is too high. But if that argument has any remaining validity, it requires that the rapidly decline of the cost of renewables and storage soon and suddenly runs into a brick wall.
- boogies 6y ago> They are also cheaper per kWh (levelized cost). That seems to contradict the thread I linked to above. > the rapidly [sic] decline of the cost of renewables and storage soon and suddenly runs into a brick wall That doesn’t seem too unlikely given how tiny the combined storage capacity of all the batteries ever made, and all that could be made with all the raw lithium that can mined on Earth, would be compared to modern energy needs.
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago> I think there little future role for fusion for electricity generation... Not to deviate from the main discussion, I believe you meant fission instead of fusion. Fusion energy is still being researched and will (hopefully) play its role in our carbon free future (... also hopefully not too far into the future).
- derriz 6y agoGood spot. Yes you are correct - I had meant to say fission.