5 ms·

The second article says "The target cost for each station is GBP1.8 billion (USD2.4 billion) by the time five have been built, with further savings possible."

The second article says "The target cost for each station is GBP1.8 billion (USD2.4 billion) by the time five have been built, with further savings possible." This indicates that cost per station could be significantly higher before 5 of them have been built. It's reasonable to believe that doggedly continuing to build more of them will bring costs down eventually, but if early units have high costs (or worse, if build progress falls behind schedule) then it could be difficult to maintain support for building more of them.

nicoburns 5y ago
I imagine given that the whole point of these small units is batch manufacturing that several would be ordered together.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Also that building multiple facilities at once will streamline regulations and building codes. What killed the large nuclear reactors was the need for so many "one-off" design changes to accommodate safety regulations, which would vary by site. This means that economies of scale are lost when compared to gas power stations, because every nuclear reactor was essentially unique.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    There were plenty of repeated design that started during the 1960s and 70s. Accordingly, costs were considerably lower, often in the range 1 to 2 billion USD per GW.
    - mywittyname 5y ago
      After this period, costs to build nuclear power plants skyrocketed. When the reasons behind these escalating costs were studied in depth, it was found to be due to the fact that plants lack standardization across the board, leading to ballooning engineering and labor costs as designs are reworked in site-specific ways: > Overall, a common theme emerging from this analysis is the lack of anticipation in engineering models of the cost-increasing contributions of soft technology external to standard reactor hardware, in response to changing regulations and other factors such as variable project-specific conditions. Prospective modeling shows the potentially transformative effect of rethinking engineering design to adapt to these factors, for example through reduced commodity usage and the automation of some construction processes. https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS254243512030458X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X?_r...
moralestapia 5y ago
I could imagine they already have contracts in place, even at a higher price tag. It's Rolls-Royce after all, also, they mention they have some MoUs in place. (This is not based on any facts, it's just a moonshot) If they manage to drive cost down to 1/10th of that, while actually delivering and showing their design is safe (which I think it is), this could be a global energy game changer. The world's total energy consumption from "dirty" sources is ~140,000TWh, one of these SMRs could plausibly produce 3TWh/year, so about ~45k would be needed to match our current energy demands. The world is not going to switch to 100% of these, obviously, but nonetheless their market is HUGE (trillions!).
KaiserPro 5y ago
at £120(current price is £240) per mwhr that's still £430 million a year income. With a 60 year lifespan, naively 5-8 years to profitability. The main risk to nuclear plant building is overuns of the reactor and problems with commissioning. If all your doing is hooking up pipes to heat exchangers then that simplifies significantly the building of a plant.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > at £120(current price is £240) £120/MWh is a rather terrible price. That's basically Hinkley Point C level rate, which is something many grid operators would never accept. So much for "export potential"?
  - KaiserPro 5y ago
    You're damn right its shit. Hinkley was bollocks because the strike price was that high. If we don't agree to stupid strike prices (ie £60 per mwh) then its not a disaster. Even at £60 profitability is inside 12 years. Unless we start building generation capacity, then the wholesale price will go up as time goes on. Or as new renewable come on line, we'll get even more price fluctuations. it doesn't take many of these to even out pricing.
    - pydry 5y ago
      If the strike price wasnt that high it never would have been financed.
      - KaiserPro 5y ago
        Because of the way that the finance was structured. from my understanding it was because the government didn't want to shoulder any risk (or reward) from this.
        pydry 5y ago
        Someone has to subsidize nuclear or it never gets built. In the UK ended up being ratepayers. In a way it's better that the costs arent disguised.
bobthepanda 5y ago
That actually seems reasonable for the cost of a power station. The problem recently is that privatized energy operators have a hard time securing financing in the orders of tens of billions. Wind, solar and gas may have higher per-unit costs but you can actually build one for under a billion dollars, and in the case of rooftop solar we are talking tens of thousands of dollars, and it is a lot easier to secure loans of that size. Tens of billions of dollars is basically reserved for the bond markets and state actors.
- AdamN 5y ago
  There's also the lifecycle cost of the fuel and the power station itself to account for. This is higher for nuclear than for solar/wind.
  - rmbyrro 5y ago
    I would expect lifecycle costs to be largely underestimated for solar. Regulations are way more relaxed to dispose panels in comparison to nuclear waste, for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, panel disposal is still expensive, we're just leaving the bill for future generations, just like with nuclear, unfortunately...
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      A PV module has a weight of about 0.05 kg/W. If it costs $0.20/W, that's $4000/tonne. The disposal cost of waste in a landfill in the US is about $60/tonne. So, even with no recycling at all, the cost of landfilling old PV modules is not a significant part of the cost of PV here. And much of the cost of PV installations (the steel mountings and earth anchors, the aluminum frames of the modules, the glass covers) is highly recyclable.
      - rmbyrro 5y ago
        Is this $60 disposal sustainable? I mean, if we're concerned about using a renewable energy source, shouldn't we be concerned that its materials are also renewable? How much does it cost to renew that $4000/kg solar panel so that it can continue to be used? I bet renewing will cost more than $4000/kg. If that's true, we're taking a 50-75% discount on the expense of future generations, as I said. Solar is more expensive than we are lead to think it is. This should be accounted in decision and policy making. Just my person opinion.
benlumen 5y ago
They spent 100 billion pounds on lateral flow tests alone. I enjoyed the free test kits as much as everyone else, but think of the infrastructure that could have paid for.
- tblt 5y ago
  I thought it was £50bn and was the total allocated budget of NHS Test & Trace to include PCR testing and contract tracing, as well as LFT distribution etc. It has not been spent yet and with the current rolling back of testing the final cost should (hopefully) be well under that figure. I still agree it's a gargantuan sum that could have been spent in many other important areas, but pandemic response is important too.

nicoburns 5y ago

I imagine given that the whole point of these small units is batch manufacturing that several would be ordered together.

mywittyname 5y ago
Also that building multiple facilities at once will streamline regulations and building codes. What killed the large nuclear reactors was the need for so many "one-off" design changes to accommodate safety regulations, which would vary by site. This means that economies of scale are lost when compared to gas power stations, because every nuclear reactor was essentially unique.
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  There were plenty of repeated design that started during the 1960s and 70s. Accordingly, costs were considerably lower, often in the range 1 to 2 billion USD per GW.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    After this period, costs to build nuclear power plants skyrocketed. When the reasons behind these escalating costs were studied in depth, it was found to be due to the fact that plants lack standardization across the board, leading to ballooning engineering and labor costs as designs are reworked in site-specific ways: > Overall, a common theme emerging from this analysis is the lack of anticipation in engineering models of the cost-increasing contributions of soft technology external to standard reactor hardware, in response to changing regulations and other factors such as variable project-specific conditions. Prospective modeling shows the potentially transformative effect of rethinking engineering design to adapt to these factors, for example through reduced commodity usage and the automation of some construction processes. https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS254243512030458X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X?_r...

moralestapia 5y ago

I could imagine they already have contracts in place, even at a higher price tag. It's Rolls-Royce after all, also, they mention they have some MoUs in place. (This is not based on any facts, it's just a moonshot) If they manage to drive cost down to 1/10th of that, while actually delivering and showing their design is safe (which I think it is), this could be a global energy game changer. The world's total energy consumption from "dirty" sources is ~140,000TWh, one of these SMRs could plausibly produce 3TWh/year, so about ~45k would be needed to match our current energy demands. The world is not going to switch to 100% of these, obviously, but nonetheless their market is HUGE (trillions!).

KaiserPro 5y ago

at £120(current price is £240) per mwhr that's still £430 million a year income. With a 60 year lifespan, naively 5-8 years to profitability. The main risk to nuclear plant building is overuns of the reactor and problems with commissioning. If all your doing is hooking up pipes to heat exchangers then that simplifies significantly the building of a plant.

jhgb 5y ago
> at £120(current price is £240) £120/MWh is a rather terrible price. That's basically Hinkley Point C level rate, which is something many grid operators would never accept. So much for "export potential"?
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  You're damn right its shit. Hinkley was bollocks because the strike price was that high. If we don't agree to stupid strike prices (ie £60 per mwh) then its not a disaster. Even at £60 profitability is inside 12 years. Unless we start building generation capacity, then the wholesale price will go up as time goes on. Or as new renewable come on line, we'll get even more price fluctuations. it doesn't take many of these to even out pricing.
  - pydry 5y ago
    If the strike price wasnt that high it never would have been financed.
    - KaiserPro 5y ago
      Because of the way that the finance was structured. from my understanding it was because the government didn't want to shoulder any risk (or reward) from this.
      - pydry 5y ago
        Someone has to subsidize nuclear or it never gets built. In the UK ended up being ratepayers. In a way it's better that the costs arent disguised.

bobthepanda 5y ago

That actually seems reasonable for the cost of a power station. The problem recently is that privatized energy operators have a hard time securing financing in the orders of tens of billions. Wind, solar and gas may have higher per-unit costs but you can actually build one for under a billion dollars, and in the case of rooftop solar we are talking tens of thousands of dollars, and it is a lot easier to secure loans of that size. Tens of billions of dollars is basically reserved for the bond markets and state actors.

AdamN 5y ago
There's also the lifecycle cost of the fuel and the power station itself to account for. This is higher for nuclear than for solar/wind.
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  I would expect lifecycle costs to be largely underestimated for solar. Regulations are way more relaxed to dispose panels in comparison to nuclear waste, for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, panel disposal is still expensive, we're just leaving the bill for future generations, just like with nuclear, unfortunately...
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    A PV module has a weight of about 0.05 kg/W. If it costs $0.20/W, that's $4000/tonne. The disposal cost of waste in a landfill in the US is about $60/tonne. So, even with no recycling at all, the cost of landfilling old PV modules is not a significant part of the cost of PV here. And much of the cost of PV installations (the steel mountings and earth anchors, the aluminum frames of the modules, the glass covers) is highly recyclable.
    - rmbyrro 5y ago
      Is this $60 disposal sustainable? I mean, if we're concerned about using a renewable energy source, shouldn't we be concerned that its materials are also renewable? How much does it cost to renew that $4000/kg solar panel so that it can continue to be used? I bet renewing will cost more than $4000/kg. If that's true, we're taking a 50-75% discount on the expense of future generations, as I said. Solar is more expensive than we are lead to think it is. This should be accounted in decision and policy making. Just my person opinion.

benlumen 5y ago

They spent 100 billion pounds on lateral flow tests alone. I enjoyed the free test kits as much as everyone else, but think of the infrastructure that could have paid for.

tblt 5y ago
I thought it was £50bn and was the total allocated budget of NHS Test & Trace to include PCR testing and contract tracing, as well as LFT distribution etc. It has not been spent yet and with the current rolling back of testing the final cost should (hopefully) be well under that figure. I still agree it's a gargantuan sum that could have been spent in many other important areas, but pandemic response is important too.