5 ms·

Quite a lot of repetition in the text. Why wouldn't the learning curve apply to nuclear power? There the fuel cost is almost negligible. I think the large unit

Quite a lot of repetition in the text. Why wouldn't the learning curve apply to nuclear power? There the fuel cost is almost negligible. I think the large unit size hampers learning - less iterations per decade.

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pfdietz 5y ago
Also, some of the parts are mature technology. We already built lots of steam turbines before building them for nuclear plants.
- panick21_ 5y ago
  While true the extreme low volume and high complexity and large size make it very expensive. There are just not enough of them built even if its older technology. Nuclear will never be cost competitive unless they can use the same turbines gas and coal plants use. And that is of course what most GenIV reactors do.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Just in time for that supply pipeline to dry up because there are no more new coal plants. :) There are still steam turbines for gas fired combined cycle, but I'm not sure those are suitable. What nuclear needs to do is go to something radical, like supercritical CO2 turbines. But that involves a large cost and delay to mature those, and it may be too late. Perhaps it can be combined with the CO2 turbine technology for the Allam cycle (oxyfuel combustion of gas in CO2 for zero marginal cost CO2 separation.)
    - Gravityloss 5y ago
      One can read about the Olkiluoto 3 EPR and it just seems very complex. The turbine has hydrogen cooling for example. (Can't seem to locate it anymore, but there was a really good pdf explaining the plant.) It's a mystery to me why the CO2 turbines haven't gone forward? The talk has been there for 15 years.
      - namibj 5y ago
        Hydrogen-cooled turbo generators are not unusual. Could it have been the generator half of the turbine genset that had the hydrogen-cooling you remembered?
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      More coal plant will be built for a while yet. Even at smaller volume they are still far cheaper then the current steam turbines. And yeah, a CO2 based turbine will be better, but those are not commercially available. Supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle seems to be a good candidate.
newuser94303 5y ago
China is planning on learning how to make nuclear reactors cheaper
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  So is the UK: https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#section-the-technology https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactor...
adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
Nulcear reactors cost millions of dollars to make. Solar Panels and wind turbines are much smaller and more modular. It's much easier to optimize production if you are making millions of panels than dozens of reactors. Also, some important parts of reactor design involve local conditions like water availability which makes it harder to have a single design that can be widely copied.
- worik 5y ago
  And they make thousands of coming generations pay to store the waste we generated for our consumption. High level nuclear waste is not something you can responsibly lock up in a vault and forget about for 200,000 years. What ever is done with it, where ever it is put, it will need some monitoring for 200,000 years. What are those future generations going to think of us? Will they characterise this as: "The Age of Greed"? Maybe the "Age of Stupid"?
  - ericd 5y ago
    Or maybe they’ll just reprocess it, as is currently done in France?
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      Reprocessing as done in France doesn't really help. The separated Pu can be sent back to be used again, in MOX fuel for thermal reactors, but spent MOX fuel can't be further reprocessed, as it has more of the troublesome higher actinides (which dominate the heat load in a repository that dictates how spread out it has to be.) Making MOX fuel is sufficiently expensive that the separated Pu has negative value. Reprocessing only really helps if you can feed the Pu into fast reactors that can more effectively consume the actinides. And France has given up on its fast reactor program.
      - koheripbal 5y ago
        Long term storage is a solved problem. People vastly over-estimate the amount of waste involved. It is ONE barrel PER YEAR for an operating reactor. That is a non-issue.
rstuart4133 5y ago
> Why wouldn't the learning curve apply to nuclear power? You would think so. Which is why nuclear's apparent negative learning curve in the west is such a surprise. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/does-nuclear-power-have-a-negative-learning-curve-b389ef2de998/ https://archive.thinkprogress.org/does-nuclear-power-have-a-... "Apparently negative learning curve" means from the raw data it is each plant is getting more expensive to build. Worse, when they analyse it, the main driver behind the cost increases doesn't appear to be government regulation or politics. It's all about construction and supply issues. I can't help but think that in post industrial societies, maybe we are getting worse at building things.
- godelski 5y ago
  > the main driver behind the cost increases doesn't appear to be government regulation or politics. It's all about construction and supply issues. My understanding is that the reason construction and supply costs is so high is because we go so long between building new ones that the process has to essentially be re-invented. That nuclear does not benefit from economies of scale. One could argue that this here is coupled with government and politics given that if the approval rate is low and people fight them, then it drives the cost up. And on the other side, that's why they were so much cheaper when we first built them and why they were cheap for France. There were lots of orders and so there was a benefit from scale.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    No. Nukes cost so much and take so long mainly because they are big capital projects that attract wholly legal corruption. Once the money starts flowing, it would be stopped by completing construction, so that is delayed, sometimes indefinitely, sometimes until all the money available has been spent. Occasionally an actual reactor may be delivered, in the end, but that is increasingly rare, thus evidently optional. And no one ever gives back any of the money.
    - spupe 5y ago
      Ok, but by that logic refineries would also show the same pattern. I'm not aware that they do, although I'm having a hard time finding data to back this up.
oconnor663 5y ago
> I think the large unit size hampers learning - less iterations per decade. This article makes a similar argument: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/06/21/is-nuclear-power-a-solution-to-climate-change/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/06/21/is-nuclear-pow...
legulere 5y ago
A huge chunk of costs for nuclear is construction, which greatly suffers from Baumol’s cost disease. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease

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pfdietz 5y ago

Also, some of the parts are mature technology. We already built lots of steam turbines before building them for nuclear plants.

panick21_ 5y ago
While true the extreme low volume and high complexity and large size make it very expensive. There are just not enough of them built even if its older technology. Nuclear will never be cost competitive unless they can use the same turbines gas and coal plants use. And that is of course what most GenIV reactors do.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  Just in time for that supply pipeline to dry up because there are no more new coal plants. :) There are still steam turbines for gas fired combined cycle, but I'm not sure those are suitable. What nuclear needs to do is go to something radical, like supercritical CO2 turbines. But that involves a large cost and delay to mature those, and it may be too late. Perhaps it can be combined with the CO2 turbine technology for the Allam cycle (oxyfuel combustion of gas in CO2 for zero marginal cost CO2 separation.)
  - Gravityloss 5y ago
    One can read about the Olkiluoto 3 EPR and it just seems very complex. The turbine has hydrogen cooling for example. (Can't seem to locate it anymore, but there was a really good pdf explaining the plant.) It's a mystery to me why the CO2 turbines haven't gone forward? The talk has been there for 15 years.
    - namibj 5y ago
      Hydrogen-cooled turbo generators are not unusual. Could it have been the generator half of the turbine genset that had the hydrogen-cooling you remembered?
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    More coal plant will be built for a while yet. Even at smaller volume they are still far cheaper then the current steam turbines. And yeah, a CO2 based turbine will be better, but those are not commercially available. Supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle seems to be a good candidate.

newuser94303 5y ago

China is planning on learning how to make nuclear reactors cheaper

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
So is the UK: https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#section-the-technology https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactor...

adgjlsfhk1 5y ago

Nulcear reactors cost millions of dollars to make. Solar Panels and wind turbines are much smaller and more modular. It's much easier to optimize production if you are making millions of panels than dozens of reactors. Also, some important parts of reactor design involve local conditions like water availability which makes it harder to have a single design that can be widely copied.

worik 5y ago
And they make thousands of coming generations pay to store the waste we generated for our consumption. High level nuclear waste is not something you can responsibly lock up in a vault and forget about for 200,000 years. What ever is done with it, where ever it is put, it will need some monitoring for 200,000 years. What are those future generations going to think of us? Will they characterise this as: "The Age of Greed"? Maybe the "Age of Stupid"?
- ericd 5y ago
  Or maybe they’ll just reprocess it, as is currently done in France?
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Reprocessing as done in France doesn't really help. The separated Pu can be sent back to be used again, in MOX fuel for thermal reactors, but spent MOX fuel can't be further reprocessed, as it has more of the troublesome higher actinides (which dominate the heat load in a repository that dictates how spread out it has to be.) Making MOX fuel is sufficiently expensive that the separated Pu has negative value. Reprocessing only really helps if you can feed the Pu into fast reactors that can more effectively consume the actinides. And France has given up on its fast reactor program.
    - koheripbal 5y ago
      Long term storage is a solved problem. People vastly over-estimate the amount of waste involved. It is ONE barrel PER YEAR for an operating reactor. That is a non-issue.

rstuart4133 5y ago

> Why wouldn't the learning curve apply to nuclear power? You would think so. Which is why nuclear's apparent negative learning curve in the west is such a surprise. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/does-nuclear-power-have-a-negative-learning-curve-b389ef2de998/ https://archive.thinkprogress.org/does-nuclear-power-have-a-... "Apparently negative learning curve" means from the raw data it is each plant is getting more expensive to build. Worse, when they analyse it, the main driver behind the cost increases doesn't appear to be government regulation or politics. It's all about construction and supply issues. I can't help but think that in post industrial societies, maybe we are getting worse at building things.

godelski 5y ago
> the main driver behind the cost increases doesn't appear to be government regulation or politics. It's all about construction and supply issues. My understanding is that the reason construction and supply costs is so high is because we go so long between building new ones that the process has to essentially be re-invented. That nuclear does not benefit from economies of scale. One could argue that this here is coupled with government and politics given that if the approval rate is low and people fight them, then it drives the cost up. And on the other side, that's why they were so much cheaper when we first built them and why they were cheap for France. There were lots of orders and so there was a benefit from scale.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  No. Nukes cost so much and take so long mainly because they are big capital projects that attract wholly legal corruption. Once the money starts flowing, it would be stopped by completing construction, so that is delayed, sometimes indefinitely, sometimes until all the money available has been spent. Occasionally an actual reactor may be delivered, in the end, but that is increasingly rare, thus evidently optional. And no one ever gives back any of the money.
  - spupe 5y ago
    Ok, but by that logic refineries would also show the same pattern. I'm not aware that they do, although I'm having a hard time finding data to back this up.

oconnor663 5y ago

> I think the large unit size hampers learning - less iterations per decade. This article makes a similar argument: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/06/21/is-nuclear-power-a-solution-to-climate-change/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/06/21/is-nuclear-pow...

legulere 5y ago

A huge chunk of costs for nuclear is construction, which greatly suffers from Baumol’s cost disease. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease