3 ms·
One of them being in China and the other being in UK would probably explain the costs by itself.
by glogla 5y ago
One of them being in China and the other being in UK would probably explain the costs by itself.
- Arnt 5y agoYou mean that labour is cheap in China? I've no idea whether it's representative, but I know a construction project where the labour costs were 12% of the final bill. That Hinkley Point project mentioned spends about $8m per day, how much does a construction worker cost per day in that area?
- pydry 5y agoFor reference, coire glas pumped storage in the UK is $1.3 billion and 1.5 GW / 30 GWh. More expensive than China, but not wildly so. 5 days' worth of nuclear power plant's output's worth of storage is 384 GWh. Assuming coire glas prices, $1.3 billion*384/30 maxes out at $16.6 billion or roughly half a hinkley. That also gives max output of 19.5GW that is fully dispatchable as compared to 3.2GW which comes out whether you need it or not (& must still be paired with storage/gas to match demand). Lowering the power rating will lower the cost of the pumped storage. Wind energy is currently about 1/3 the price of nuclear, so assuming 5-6 day lulls it still comes out break-even at the very least. Until you consider insuring against $800 billion fukushima style clean up costs. If we properly accounted for the cost incurred by insuring against this risk we'd never build another nuclear plant ever again.