7 ms·

Where have you seen nuclear is the cheapest solution for electrity production? Nuclear has some benefits, but price does seem to be one of them (and actually on

by forty 5y ago

Where have you seen nuclear is the cheapest solution for electrity production? Nuclear has some benefits, but price does seem to be one of them (and actually one of the reasons for preferring renewable)

lazide 5y ago
On a ‘basic capacity price’ type basis, nuclear is dirt cheap. When you throw in endless political tarpits and their side effects (like having no economies of scale at all despite the clear opportunity for them) then yes, it is very expensive. shrug Most nuclear projects outside of China basically turned into exercises in endless planning churn and endless delays for no rational reason to appease anti-progress political factions long ago. For an example of a similar money pit/tarpit playing out in a similar way, check out “High Speed” Rail in California.
- mcguire 5y ago
  "When you throw in endless political tarpits and their side effects..." Like "where are you going to put the waste?" and "I don't want my property values to go to zero when an accident occurs"? :-) If one were suitably cynical, one might suggest China does not have that kind of problem.
  - evilos 5y ago
    Fun fact: all the nuclear waste that the US has ever produced fits in football field at a height of 30 feet. Currently, spent fuel just stays at the nuclear plants because there is so little of it and it's not a problem. You just put them in sealed casks and they sit there. You don't really want to lose access to the spent fuel either because if you develop breeder reactors that spent fuel is now just 'fuel'.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Nah, those (if legitimate) aren’t tarpits. We’ve had, at various times, approved locations for waste, and we actually still approve the storage of waste on site - indefinite storage of ‘temporary waste’. Paying into an insurance fund in case of a nuclear disaster would be far cheaper than what has been happening. What happens instead is 1) a set of requirements is made, 2) someone spends years figuring it out. 3) it gets approved, 4) before it finishes getting built (or started to be built in some case), someone files a lawsuit causing it to stop or changes the rules, 5) rinse and repeat, or; Someone gets the bright idea to try something new and unproven, and then they pay all the R&D time, and then the first thing starts happening, and then you’re tarpitted again. In California it even appears to be part of the plan for high speed rail; as the engineering firms get paid every time the plan needs to get redrawn, and they can keep juking between plans forever until the funds are gone. This happened with Caltrain electrification for a decade. Billions spent for literally a 45 miles’ish stretch of track to electrify it, with zero progress over that time. If folks are being paid to make plans instead of make a project, that’s usually what they are going to do.
    - lazide 5y ago
      Also a situation I got reminded of near where my parents live - hydrogen plant being built in the middle of the desert. Developers get courted by city A who has cheap land available. City A has a city manager that works out a sweet heart deal that basically funds some of the planning costs (and cuts city revenue by a couple million/yr for a few years doing so), but in exchange for approval and at the last minute, requires they hook to the recycled water source he stupidly had run several miles away instead of the normal way to cover his ass for that bad decision. City B, literally borders on the other side of the street, has a recycled water pipe literally on the other side of the street. After years of planning and millions spent on their side, the numbers don’t pencil out anymore because of this, so the developers go ‘wtf’, and buy a plot on the other side of the street that is in City B (more expensive, but still cheaper than running 5 miles of large diameter water pipe), cut and paste the plans, and are going to build next year after 3+ years of wasted time and millions in cash wasted. And this is for a private, for profit project that they want to actually happen ASAP. When the taxpayers are footing the bill, the shenanigans get way worse. When no one seems to notice when the schedule keeps sleeping year after year? Even worse.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Indeed! Rail and nuclear power seem to play out the exact same tragedy. Very sad.
  - forty 5y ago
    If you like trains and nuclear, you should move to France, we have lots of both. And pastry too ;)
    - kmonsen 5y ago
      But you also need to be able to speak French well. If not it would be my number 1 country :-)
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      I know, but but your costs for both are going up, you're loosing your skills. (The Macron -- Le Pen culture war politics might be even more depressing than here, too. At least I think the right side is winning here in that arena.)
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  If Amory Lovins had designed a nuclear reactor that would be unaffordable to build it would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) You can make the case that regulation inflates the cost of nuclear power plants, and that's somewhat true, but the deep problem is the cost of the steam turbine and other facilities (e.g. heat exchangers) to accept energy at the low temperatures that the LWR works at. All of that is so big and expensive it would be hard to make the economics work even if you got the heat for free. A liquid metal fast reactor or a molten salt reactor or a high temperature gas cooled reactor could power a closed-cycle gas turbine https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1221819 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1221819 which would fit in the employee break room of the turbine house at a nuclear plant. Such a "fourth-generation" nuclear power plant might have compelling economics to build, but it's hard to believe anybody is going to start and finish an LWR outside of China. It's little appreciated that the cost of the steam turbine is what killed coal circa 1980. Once GE adapted aerospace turbines for low-capital cost power plants on the ground, it made no sense to build more thermal coal plants. In the late 1970s you see various attempts to save the coal industry, plausibly you could have gotten better capital costs pyrolyzing the coal and running the gas through a gas turbine. This kind of technology is making a comeback because it can be coupled with carbon storage to make CO2 free or CO2 negative energy.
  - makomk 5y ago
    The UK tried building gas cooled reactors that produced more useful and efficient steam temperatures on the output. They worked - in fact, they make up pretty much the entire UK nuclear generation capacity these days - but turned out not to be as practical as boring PWR reactors due to various annoying engineering issues. There are other reactor concepts out there which promise to do better but they're pretty untested and would also likely turn out to be harder to build than they look.
    - PaulHoule 5y ago
      They're still running a steam turbine but it is more compact and efficient. Fourth-generation reactors won't be easy, but the motivation to develop them is strong. Arguably there is a lot of experience with liquid metal fast reactors, many of the problems like sodium fires and problems with inspection are probably solved. Think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Flux_Test_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Flux_Test_Facility as opposed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix
woko 5y ago
For instance, it is discussed in this press article [1] published in 2016 and available in French. It is mentioned that nuclear power costs 60€/MWh, compared to 80€/MWh for wind power. It is also mentioned quite often in the French press: I have seen it mentioned a few days ago. The source mentioned in the 2016 press article is an official report [2] published in 2014. However, it is true that the maintenance cost increases as the power plants get older. [1] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/le-vrai-du-faux/le-nucleaire-coute-120-euros-le-mwh-contre-80-pour-l-eolien_1777537.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/le-vrai-du-faux/le-... (in French) [2] https://www.ccomptes.fr/fr/publications/le-cout-de-production-de-lelectricite-nucleaire-actualisation-2014 https://www.ccomptes.fr/fr/publications/le-cout-de-productio... (in French)
- forty 5y ago
  Yeah I feel the end of life has not yet been factored in the price (ie the cost of dismantling the reactor or maintaining it alive forever). It would be very aligned with the general philosophy of nuclear ^^ (ie "the next generations will either figure it out or pay the price")
  - digianarchist 5y ago
    Decommissioning costs are huge and were kicked into the long grass in the UK instead of being factored in at the start like here in Canada.
  - renox 5y ago
    The dismantling cost has been factored in but given that they don't manage to reliably estimate construction costs I don't see why the estimate of the dismantling cost would be more accurate..
godelski 5y ago
Most of the French nuclear reactors were built when they had the capacity to build many reactors and thus it was cheaper. The problem with a lot of current nuclear costs is that you have to reinvent the wheel every time. If you're mass producing then things get cheaper. We haven't mass produced reactors in decades.
Manuel_D 5y ago
Comparing non-dispatchable sources with dispatchable sources is comparing apples to oranges. Solar is cheap, until you saturate daytime consumption and have to start building storage. Similar with wind.
- derriz 5y ago
  Nuclear isn't dispatchable - most reactors have a design output and are not intended to be ramped up and down. They require a big chunk of actual dispatchable power (natural gas mainly) to provide demand following. LACE is a measure which takes into account the value of the generated electricity as well as the cost of production but nuclear does poorly here also as much of its output occurs when wholesale prices are low.
  - NaNDude 5y ago
    nuclear dispatching is mostly done over international distribution in UE. the requirements in more dispatchables power like gaz or hydro is'nt comparable with weather randomized energy sources with poor efficiency which usually require a 1:1 alternative dispatchables sources (gaz or hydro again). France electric energy mix is/was around 70-80% nuclear.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    A better term might be "non-intermittent". Nuclear plants produce the same amount of energy regardless of time of day or wind speed. And power output can be modulated with more aggressive cooling. Same thermal output of the reactor, but lessened electrical output. By comparison, any plan for a renewable grid requires massive storage capacity. Most hand-wave this away by assuming some new technology will effectively make storage free.
    - derriz 5y ago
      Nuclear plants are also "intermittent" - the average US reactor spends 32 days offline per year. Does that mean a grid relying heavily on nuclear needs massive amounts of storage? No - it means you need to have redundant capacity which is the solution also used for wind and solar. The benefit of nuclear in this regard isn't that it's "non-intermittent" - it's that the most common failure modes for a nuclear nuclear are statistically independent (except when it's not like in a natural catastrophe situation - like Fukushima). But as a grid operator trying to match supply and demand, it's just a variant of the same problem. The solution preferred by grids heavily dependent on wind for example is simply to over-provision wind and use de-rating while maintaining natural gas capacity reserve (which is relatively cheap). This approach is relatively proven at this stage with some European countries deriving around half their electricity from "intermittent" renewables.

by forty 5y ago

lazide 5y ago

On a ‘basic capacity price’ type basis, nuclear is dirt cheap. When you throw in endless political tarpits and their side effects (like having no economies of scale at all despite the clear opportunity for them) then yes, it is very expensive. shrug Most nuclear projects outside of China basically turned into exercises in endless planning churn and endless delays for no rational reason to appease anti-progress political factions long ago. For an example of a similar money pit/tarpit playing out in a similar way, check out “High Speed” Rail in California.

mcguire 5y ago
"When you throw in endless political tarpits and their side effects..." Like "where are you going to put the waste?" and "I don't want my property values to go to zero when an accident occurs"? :-) If one were suitably cynical, one might suggest China does not have that kind of problem.
- evilos 5y ago
  Fun fact: all the nuclear waste that the US has ever produced fits in football field at a height of 30 feet. Currently, spent fuel just stays at the nuclear plants because there is so little of it and it's not a problem. You just put them in sealed casks and they sit there. You don't really want to lose access to the spent fuel either because if you develop breeder reactors that spent fuel is now just 'fuel'.
- lazide 5y ago
  Nah, those (if legitimate) aren’t tarpits. We’ve had, at various times, approved locations for waste, and we actually still approve the storage of waste on site - indefinite storage of ‘temporary waste’. Paying into an insurance fund in case of a nuclear disaster would be far cheaper than what has been happening. What happens instead is 1) a set of requirements is made, 2) someone spends years figuring it out. 3) it gets approved, 4) before it finishes getting built (or started to be built in some case), someone files a lawsuit causing it to stop or changes the rules, 5) rinse and repeat, or; Someone gets the bright idea to try something new and unproven, and then they pay all the R&D time, and then the first thing starts happening, and then you’re tarpitted again. In California it even appears to be part of the plan for high speed rail; as the engineering firms get paid every time the plan needs to get redrawn, and they can keep juking between plans forever until the funds are gone. This happened with Caltrain electrification for a decade. Billions spent for literally a 45 miles’ish stretch of track to electrify it, with zero progress over that time. If folks are being paid to make plans instead of make a project, that’s usually what they are going to do.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Also a situation I got reminded of near where my parents live - hydrogen plant being built in the middle of the desert. Developers get courted by city A who has cheap land available. City A has a city manager that works out a sweet heart deal that basically funds some of the planning costs (and cuts city revenue by a couple million/yr for a few years doing so), but in exchange for approval and at the last minute, requires they hook to the recycled water source he stupidly had run several miles away instead of the normal way to cover his ass for that bad decision. City B, literally borders on the other side of the street, has a recycled water pipe literally on the other side of the street. After years of planning and millions spent on their side, the numbers don’t pencil out anymore because of this, so the developers go ‘wtf’, and buy a plot on the other side of the street that is in City B (more expensive, but still cheaper than running 5 miles of large diameter water pipe), cut and paste the plans, and are going to build next year after 3+ years of wasted time and millions in cash wasted. And this is for a private, for profit project that they want to actually happen ASAP. When the taxpayers are footing the bill, the shenanigans get way worse. When no one seems to notice when the schedule keeps sleeping year after year? Even worse.
Ericson2314 5y ago
Indeed! Rail and nuclear power seem to play out the exact same tragedy. Very sad.
- forty 5y ago
  If you like trains and nuclear, you should move to France, we have lots of both. And pastry too ;)
  - kmonsen 5y ago
    But you also need to be able to speak French well. If not it would be my number 1 country :-)
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    I know, but but your costs for both are going up, you're loosing your skills. (The Macron -- Le Pen culture war politics might be even more depressing than here, too. At least I think the right side is winning here in that arena.)
PaulHoule 5y ago
If Amory Lovins had designed a nuclear reactor that would be unaffordable to build it would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) You can make the case that regulation inflates the cost of nuclear power plants, and that's somewhat true, but the deep problem is the cost of the steam turbine and other facilities (e.g. heat exchangers) to accept energy at the low temperatures that the LWR works at. All of that is so big and expensive it would be hard to make the economics work even if you got the heat for free. A liquid metal fast reactor or a molten salt reactor or a high temperature gas cooled reactor could power a closed-cycle gas turbine https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1221819 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1221819 which would fit in the employee break room of the turbine house at a nuclear plant. Such a "fourth-generation" nuclear power plant might have compelling economics to build, but it's hard to believe anybody is going to start and finish an LWR outside of China. It's little appreciated that the cost of the steam turbine is what killed coal circa 1980. Once GE adapted aerospace turbines for low-capital cost power plants on the ground, it made no sense to build more thermal coal plants. In the late 1970s you see various attempts to save the coal industry, plausibly you could have gotten better capital costs pyrolyzing the coal and running the gas through a gas turbine. This kind of technology is making a comeback because it can be coupled with carbon storage to make CO2 free or CO2 negative energy.
- makomk 5y ago
  The UK tried building gas cooled reactors that produced more useful and efficient steam temperatures on the output. They worked - in fact, they make up pretty much the entire UK nuclear generation capacity these days - but turned out not to be as practical as boring PWR reactors due to various annoying engineering issues. There are other reactor concepts out there which promise to do better but they're pretty untested and would also likely turn out to be harder to build than they look.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    They're still running a steam turbine but it is more compact and efficient. Fourth-generation reactors won't be easy, but the motivation to develop them is strong. Arguably there is a lot of experience with liquid metal fast reactors, many of the problems like sodium fires and problems with inspection are probably solved. Think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Flux_Test_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Flux_Test_Facility as opposed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix

woko 5y ago

For instance, it is discussed in this press article [1] published in 2016 and available in French. It is mentioned that nuclear power costs 60€/MWh, compared to 80€/MWh for wind power. It is also mentioned quite often in the French press: I have seen it mentioned a few days ago. The source mentioned in the 2016 press article is an official report [2] published in 2014. However, it is true that the maintenance cost increases as the power plants get older. [1] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/le-vrai-du-faux/le-nucleaire-coute-120-euros-le-mwh-contre-80-pour-l-eolien_1777537.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/le-vrai-du-faux/le-... (in French) [2] https://www.ccomptes.fr/fr/publications/le-cout-de-production-de-lelectricite-nucleaire-actualisation-2014 https://www.ccomptes.fr/fr/publications/le-cout-de-productio... (in French)

forty 5y ago
Yeah I feel the end of life has not yet been factored in the price (ie the cost of dismantling the reactor or maintaining it alive forever). It would be very aligned with the general philosophy of nuclear ^^ (ie "the next generations will either figure it out or pay the price")
- digianarchist 5y ago
  Decommissioning costs are huge and were kicked into the long grass in the UK instead of being factored in at the start like here in Canada.
- renox 5y ago
  The dismantling cost has been factored in but given that they don't manage to reliably estimate construction costs I don't see why the estimate of the dismantling cost would be more accurate..

godelski 5y ago

Most of the French nuclear reactors were built when they had the capacity to build many reactors and thus it was cheaper. The problem with a lot of current nuclear costs is that you have to reinvent the wheel every time. If you're mass producing then things get cheaper. We haven't mass produced reactors in decades.

Manuel_D 5y ago

Comparing non-dispatchable sources with dispatchable sources is comparing apples to oranges. Solar is cheap, until you saturate daytime consumption and have to start building storage. Similar with wind.

derriz 5y ago
Nuclear isn't dispatchable - most reactors have a design output and are not intended to be ramped up and down. They require a big chunk of actual dispatchable power (natural gas mainly) to provide demand following. LACE is a measure which takes into account the value of the generated electricity as well as the cost of production but nuclear does poorly here also as much of its output occurs when wholesale prices are low.
- NaNDude 5y ago
  nuclear dispatching is mostly done over international distribution in UE. the requirements in more dispatchables power like gaz or hydro is'nt comparable with weather randomized energy sources with poor efficiency which usually require a 1:1 alternative dispatchables sources (gaz or hydro again). France electric energy mix is/was around 70-80% nuclear.
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  A better term might be "non-intermittent". Nuclear plants produce the same amount of energy regardless of time of day or wind speed. And power output can be modulated with more aggressive cooling. Same thermal output of the reactor, but lessened electrical output. By comparison, any plan for a renewable grid requires massive storage capacity. Most hand-wave this away by assuming some new technology will effectively make storage free.
  - derriz 5y ago
    Nuclear plants are also "intermittent" - the average US reactor spends 32 days offline per year. Does that mean a grid relying heavily on nuclear needs massive amounts of storage? No - it means you need to have redundant capacity which is the solution also used for wind and solar. The benefit of nuclear in this regard isn't that it's "non-intermittent" - it's that the most common failure modes for a nuclear nuclear are statistically independent (except when it's not like in a natural catastrophe situation - like Fukushima). But as a grid operator trying to match supply and demand, it's just a variant of the same problem. The solution preferred by grids heavily dependent on wind for example is simply to over-provision wind and use de-rating while maintaining natural gas capacity reserve (which is relatively cheap). This approach is relatively proven at this stage with some European countries deriving around half their electricity from "intermittent" renewables.