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Here is a peer-reviewed global survey of nuclear reactor costs: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516300106 https://www.sciencedirect.co

Here is a peer-reviewed global survey of nuclear reactor costs: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516300106 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151... For a quick overview, skip down to figure 12, which shows a plot of overnight construction costs across time and countries. Note that the bulk of them are below $3000/kW, quite a bit less than the most expensive reactors in the US. So here's an optimizer that finds the lowest overall grid cost, based on various assumptions you can modify: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ Pick a country. "Show advanced assumption settings." Check the box for "dispatchable technology 2." Set the overnight cost down to $3000. The lifetime of 25 years is unrealistic, given that the average age of US reactors is 40 years. Set that to a more accurate value, like 60 years. Finally, give it the same discount rate as everything else. You'll find that in many countries, nuclear does quite well. In countries without good wind/solar resources, even a higher capital cost can result in a 100% nuclear grid.

epistasis 4y ago
That paper is about historical costs, which is not informative for current costs. Saying 60 years is "more accurate" is kind of putting one's thumb on the scale, as is putting an overnight cost at $3000/kW. These sorts of overly rosy and unrealistically optimistic assumptions are how we get into such terrible estimates for nuclear. Even though MIT has been one of the sources of inaccurate nuclear optimism in the past, I think that this is perhaps the best assessment of how to make nuclear competitive again: https://energy.mit.edu/research/future-nuclear-power/ https://energy.mit.edu/research/future-nuclear-power/ I still thinks it's somewhat overly optimistic, but it at least tried to address the real and deep issues within the industry instead of hand waving them away. Until nuclear proponents both acknowledge the full reality of construction, in the 2020s, and the errors of the past, they will never be able to get to $10k/kW or even $5k/kW. A future at $3k/kW in the US is not worth even contemplating until we could reliably even hit $5k/kW, and a world with $5k/kW is currently not worth contemplating because we are so far away from that.
- DennisP 4y ago
  If it's been done before, then we don't need a "large advancement of construction productivity" to do it again. If, as the paper shows, other countries have managed lower costs recently, then we should look at what they're doing. If the average lifespan of our existing nuclear reactors is 40 years, then setting a lifespan of more than 40 years is indeed more accurate than setting it to 25 years.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    We live in a different technological setting than we did in the past, and all sorts of skilled labor that was economical in the past is no longer economical. As parts of the economy become more productive, labor costs rise, and the less productive parts of the economy become more expensive in comparison. We see this cost disease in all sorts of large construction projects, not just nuclear. Though nuclear seems to be particularly bad. And that's why we need breakthrough in productivity. Personally I think that such a construction productivity breakthrough would have its greatest impact on decarbonization through cheaper subway construction, high speed rail construction, and through increased urban density with cheaper big buildings. These type of construction projects have few realistic alternatives, whereas renewables plus storage are already a great way to power an energy system. So if we can fix companies like Bechtel, we will see lots of improvement throughout our society far beyond nuclear construction.
    - DennisP 4y ago
      Yet there's Japan, with low nuclear costs within the past couple decades. Were their skilled labor costs all that low? High cost of large projects is certainly a general problem in the US, but it may not be due to labor costs alone. Here's a Bloomberg article that attributes it to "over-design, inefficient project management and misaligned politics." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/why-building-roads-and-transit-costs-more-in-the-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/why-build... I think it's entirely possible that in the US, where we have copious wind and solar resources and we've gotten bad at doing large projects economically, nuclear is not the best option. That says little about the rest of the world, though. And it's possible that small modular reactors would help even in the US, because while we suck at big infrastructure projects, we're not too bad at high-volume production in factories. And that brings us back to fusion, because a lot of modern fusion designs would be more like factory-produced modular devices rather than large site-built infrastructure projects.

epistasis 4y ago

That paper is about historical costs, which is not informative for current costs. Saying 60 years is "more accurate" is kind of putting one's thumb on the scale, as is putting an overnight cost at $3000/kW. These sorts of overly rosy and unrealistically optimistic assumptions are how we get into such terrible estimates for nuclear. Even though MIT has been one of the sources of inaccurate nuclear optimism in the past, I think that this is perhaps the best assessment of how to make nuclear competitive again: https://energy.mit.edu/research/future-nuclear-power/ https://energy.mit.edu/research/future-nuclear-power/ I still thinks it's somewhat overly optimistic, but it at least tried to address the real and deep issues within the industry instead of hand waving them away. Until nuclear proponents both acknowledge the full reality of construction, in the 2020s, and the errors of the past, they will never be able to get to $10k/kW or even $5k/kW. A future at $3k/kW in the US is not worth even contemplating until we could reliably even hit $5k/kW, and a world with $5k/kW is currently not worth contemplating because we are so far away from that.

DennisP 4y ago
If it's been done before, then we don't need a "large advancement of construction productivity" to do it again. If, as the paper shows, other countries have managed lower costs recently, then we should look at what they're doing. If the average lifespan of our existing nuclear reactors is 40 years, then setting a lifespan of more than 40 years is indeed more accurate than setting it to 25 years.
- epistasis 4y ago
  We live in a different technological setting than we did in the past, and all sorts of skilled labor that was economical in the past is no longer economical. As parts of the economy become more productive, labor costs rise, and the less productive parts of the economy become more expensive in comparison. We see this cost disease in all sorts of large construction projects, not just nuclear. Though nuclear seems to be particularly bad. And that's why we need breakthrough in productivity. Personally I think that such a construction productivity breakthrough would have its greatest impact on decarbonization through cheaper subway construction, high speed rail construction, and through increased urban density with cheaper big buildings. These type of construction projects have few realistic alternatives, whereas renewables plus storage are already a great way to power an energy system. So if we can fix companies like Bechtel, we will see lots of improvement throughout our society far beyond nuclear construction.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    Yet there's Japan, with low nuclear costs within the past couple decades. Were their skilled labor costs all that low? High cost of large projects is certainly a general problem in the US, but it may not be due to labor costs alone. Here's a Bloomberg article that attributes it to "over-design, inefficient project management and misaligned politics." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/why-building-roads-and-transit-costs-more-in-the-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/why-build... I think it's entirely possible that in the US, where we have copious wind and solar resources and we've gotten bad at doing large projects economically, nuclear is not the best option. That says little about the rest of the world, though. And it's possible that small modular reactors would help even in the US, because while we suck at big infrastructure projects, we're not too bad at high-volume production in factories. And that brings us back to fusion, because a lot of modern fusion designs would be more like factory-produced modular devices rather than large site-built infrastructure projects.