37 ms·

Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

352 points by spenrose 4y ago

Georgelemental 4y ago
TL;DR rising labor costs and regulation
- thriftwy 4y ago
  Since 50s we've got so many improvements in construction tech that I would expect costs to plummet, instead they are higher than ever. Countries use immigrant labor (sometimes illegal) and have all tech available and the price only goes up. I wonder why.
- kaiju0 4y ago
  Each build is unique and requires way too much overhead. The new generation of preapproved factory assembled SMR's are the future.
  - ortusdux 4y ago
    I have high hopes for prefab modular systems. The same design approval covers 1000+ units, most designs fit on a flat-bed for transport, and instillations can scale up as needed.
  - yvdriess 4y ago
    Having talked to a nuclear engineer about this: SMRs are being politically pushed because of their political and financing convenience, more than engineering reasons. Power output scales really well with reactor size, so it makes much more sense to build the one big expensive power plant than a multitude of smaller ones. SMRs do make sense for off-grid or on-site power, but not for grid electricity.
    - Ericson2314 4y ago
      The ideal case is that SMRs are not the end goal, but a way to rebuild the supply chain. As soon as we have SMRs in prod, rather than building more of them, we should attempt to increase the size of deployments with minimal falling back on in-situ construction. SMRs take the supply chain metaphor a bit too literally: we do need practice but assembling prefabbed parts at a larger scale is fine too. There is a spectrum of options and we just need to avoid "special snowflake boondoggles". Given the US's fucked NIMBY culture, it well may be that SMRs are the best route despite these inefficiencies. Just don't expect the "solar model" where we just shit out lots of lousy product and that's it.
    - zbrozek 4y ago
      From a thermal physics and material science perspective, yes, bigger is definitely better. But there's a lot to be said of the value of being able to mass-produce a product in a factory and ship it in nearly ready-to-use state to its destination. There would also be a lot of value in turning off the ability of folks to NIMBY everything from new power plants to housing.
    - petre 4y ago
      Alvin Weinberg begs to differ, at least concerning PWRs and BWRs. The bigger plants are more efficient but less safe. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iW8yuyk3Ugw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iW8yuyk3Ugw One can scale the size by using several reactors, which is exactly what NuScale and others aim to do. One also doesn't have an unavailability problem having to shut down a large reactor in order to refuel it.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Note that the regulatory costs are only responsible for much of the increases of the 60s and 70s. They're the boogey man, but the increases of the last forty years can't be blamed on them. It's a general problem: HSR and subway stations have seen similar increases.
  - NaNDude 4y ago
    may be the increases of the last forty years have'nt been studied as thoses of the 60s to 70s, but regulatory costs are still a reality, the french EPR for exemple got a 20billion increase in cost during the construction for changes in security standards.
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    That’s also due to regulatory costs. Regulations now require “citizen voice” for large projects, whether infrastructure or just an apartment building. So NIMBYism is able to slow construction (which translates directly to increased costs), require additional measures or features. And NIMBY lawsuits after regulatory approval is given can further increase costs and schedule, even if the court rules in favor of the project. And then because of all these regulatory costs, the experience isn’t gained, so learning doesn’t occur, and if it does, it occurs only for a few firms. Additionally, large state sponsored projects often are treated as jobs programs, etc. Another issue is that the difficulty of complying with the regulations is intentional. The paperwork is difficult as an intentional sort of time-tax on building anything new. We could actually automate and streamline everything to be approved immediately (while following the letter) without large paperwork costs, but that’s not actually what those who push for the regulations actually want. They WANT it to be hard. It’s not just a boogeyman. It’s the real reason. Regulations are responsible for most of the cost of nuclear power.
    - bumby 4y ago
      You're not wrong, but I'm not sure what's a better alternative. Think of it in a different scope: government contracts are also expensive because the have to be open to competition. A lot of the red tape could be reduced with no-bid contracts, but people understand the corruption risk tradeoff is generally not worth it. In your example, it seems like the NIMBYism is the root cause, not the process by which NIMBYism is wielded.
01100011 4y ago
Totally unrelated question but does anyone know if nuclear powered US Navy vessels are able to feed power to the grid while in port? I know it's technically possible, just not sure if anyone has ever implemented such a thing.
- scoopertrooper 4y ago
  My understanding is that they shut down the reactors in port and run off the grid.
  - ortusdux 4y ago
    This is my understanding as well. I believe that they may even shut down at sea and run in on batteries/generators, which doubles as a way to test those systems. Refueling is quite the ordeal, so there is an incentive to minimize fuel depletion.
    - dodobirdlord 4y ago
      Reactors may sometimes be shut down at sea to test backup generators and run reactor restarting drills, but it would not be done otherwise. Aircraft carrier propulsion comes from steam from the reactors - if the reactors are offline the ship cannot move. Moreover, the backup generators burn jet fuel, which is convenient because aircraft carriers already have a store of jet fuel for the planes and so don’t have to carry extra fuel for the backup generators, but it’s very expensive, and not something that would be done outside of an emergency or testing emergency preparedness.
    - nickelpro 4y ago
      Nuclear powered vessels do not spend any significant amount of time shutdown at sea, and there is no reason to. Electrical power is a very small fraction of their total MWh production, with almost all power going to propulsion. When fuel lifetime becomes an issue for a nuclear naval vessel they will have propulsion limits in place that limit transit speeds to those which are most efficient for the propulsion turbines.
- 4y ago
dest 4y ago
On this topic, see the excellent website https://whatisnuclear.com/ https://whatisnuclear.com/ and its webpage about economics https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html
xroche 4y ago
> Because nuclear plants are expensive, and they take a long time to build, financing their construction can also be a significant fraction of their cost, typically around 15-20% of the cost of the plant. For plants that have severe construction delays and/or have high financing costs (such as the Vogtle 3 and 4 plants in Georgia), this can be 50% of the cost or more. This is why nuclear power plants should be state-sponsored projects. States typically have loans at 0% rate, or even negative interests.
- sfe22 4y ago
  Zero percent or negative just means people involuntary pay by inflation. There is not free lunch (someone had to work to make it)
  - danuker 4y ago
    Negative interest rates mean more than your units of currency going down in purchasing power. It also means them going down in number (a bank CHARGES you for the costs incurred holding your money).
  - kube-system 4y ago
    No, interest rates are quoted nominally -- i.e. they are independent of inflation. If you purchase a negative interest rate instrument and experience inflation, you will lose real value to both.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    It is a tax on deposits. You only have to pay if you have deposits. Basically, it means the saver has to pay to store value as currency. On the other hand, they also have to pay if they want to store other valueables, such as gold or the most ancient store of value of all, grain. I don't think a negative real interest rate is inherantly unfair, any more than it was unfair to have 10% of grain go to waste 3000 years ago when storing for a bad year. If you had 7 good years, and expect 7 bad years, the utility of the stored grain may be way higher in the bad years than the good years, even when accounting for the waste. The same goes for cash. The same can be true with cash. To demand that cash maintains its purchasing power, is the same as ancient farmers demanding to purchase grain from their neighbour (who did save) in a bad year as they themselves got paid for their grain during the good years. In periods of growth, we may start to think that positive time preference is natural. But the fact is that throughout most of human history, we would switch to negative time preference in good times, since we expected bad times to come back. During good times, humans would store grain, dry meat, fish and fruit, build housing, tools or boats, all of which were investments into goods that were likely to gradually perish over time. Even after people started to use coins, this was true. If you produced a surplus during one year, you could trade it for cold coin instead of storing it. But not only was there a risk that the coins would be stolen or otherwise vanish, it was also highly likely that at the time where you needed to spend that goal, prices would be higher.
Ericson2314 4y ago
> but all else being equal (ie: assuming total production cost stays constant), it’s better to have a larger fraction of your electricity costs be variable, so that if demand drops then production cost drops as well. This is how capitalism gives us scarcity when there is no reason for scarcity. Infrastructure like trains and nuclear that absolutely swamps current demand, and whose costs cannot be adjusted very much (even if one can run fewer trains, remove some fuel rods) is good. But woe unto anyone that floods the market utopia-style under capitalism --- you will just get paid nothing and your investors will not repeat such a project again.
- bgilroy26 4y ago
  Cow's milk in the United States seems to be an exception to this
- skybrian 4y ago
  Another way to interpret that sentence is “it’s better not to spend too much on construction, and it can be better to spend on fuel if it means spending less on construction.” Building things you don’t need is waste of labor and resources, regardless of the economic system you use or who paid for it. This should be accounted for somehow.
  - Ericson2314 4y ago
    What is needed changes over time. It is better to spend more on capital than operational costs if one actually wants the world to change not just ideal along. The best cost control is in large part doing lots of cookie-cutter work, hence the focus on small modular reactors. It is better to do those, and then ramp up the "small" part over time. Likewise, we should construct lots of rail simultaneously with ramp up to improve those supply chains too. But at no point do you want to spend more on fuel in any global optimal sense. That is just wasteful. It's not like we are actually uncertain that we won't need way more electricity production on a societal scale.
    - skybrian 4y ago
lelag 4y ago
The article misses another important aspect: loss of nuclear competency. Between the 60s and 80s, there were many nuclear reactors projects which allowed an industry to develop and get better at it. But since the 80s, there was comparatively very few new reactors built for over 20-30 years. The workforce that had the skills and knowledge related to actually building nuclear plants had mostly retired and their replacement had only theoretical knowledge and no actual experience. This makes building new reactor much harder than it should be. The embattled EPR project at Flammanville is an exemple of that: the specialised company that was hired to forge the nuclear vessel were simply unable to build to spec and a defective critical piece was delivered, creating delays and cost increases. In the end, they even had to use it anyway as it was not economically feasible to simply have another one made.
- epistasis 4y ago
  The recent US nuclear construction projects have been plagued with similar incompetence, such as trying to build plans that were unconstructable, and then having to get regulatory approval for the changes. I would like to see comparisons to other large construction projects too. The US is really really bad at large construction projects, but European construction seems a lot better.
  - stefanfisk 4y ago
    I'd love to read more about this! do you have any tip on where to start?
    - epistasis 4y ago
      The Pedestrian Observations blog is great for construction cost analysis: https://pedestrianobservations.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/
    - epistasis 4y ago
      Or if you were taking specifically about the nuclear construction incompetence, the loca newspapers in South Carolina and Georgia have been providing the best reporting. Here's South Carolina's archive: https://www.postandcourier.com/business/vc_summer_nuclear_project/ https://www.postandcourier.com/business/vc_summer_nuclear_pr... Search for "Georgia recorder vogtle" to get some of the reports from the Georgia construction delays.
jason-phillips 4y ago
Last year I did a fair amount of consulting work for the GAIN initiative at Idaho National Lab [0]. They're doing so much good work with micro and modular reactors that can basically be "dropped in" decommissioned coal-burning sites because the infrastructure to tie into the electric grid already exists. It was expressed to me that selling this idea to the private-sector energy industry was an uphill battle and uptake was very slow to nonexistent. [0] https://gain.inl.gov/SitePages/Home.aspx https://gain.inl.gov/SitePages/Home.aspx
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "selling this idea to the private-sector energy industry was an uphill battle" Could you elaborate on the why? I would asume, because of risk. A solar plant, you can more or less just put anywhere, but a nuclear power plant, even a small one, needs state permission, has to meet extensive regulation, etc. It would need some convincing for me, too, that a nuclear reactor can be just a drop in replacement for coal. I would think unknown risks, hidden costs due to regulations, neverending building, etc. And are we talking about a battle tested design, or is it new technology? That sounds extra risky.
  - bozhark 4y ago
    Sounds like a good time to get into the energy sector. Time for an HN Wind, water, solar, and nuclear company start-up. Who’s in?
    - _1tan 4y ago
      Here, email is avg@duck.com
    - samstave 4y ago
      There was a nuclear startup that came through YC a few years back... what happened to them?
      - pnw 4y ago
balaji1 4y ago
Might be nitpicking here: Referring to the pie charts under this section[1], I can't help but think images like this are intentionally meant to mislead: [1]https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power-construction?s=r#%C2%A7power-plant-and-electricity-economics https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-nuclear-p... I understand author picked it from some other source, Dawson 2017 or whatever. These pie charts are not like for like, when it includes the renewables -- maybe the coal/gas/nuclear fine. So why put them next to one another. I can't tell if the costs of renewables are for entire "farms" (solar or wind farms). What about lifetime of plants/farms, total value derived, etc.
- zbrozek 4y ago
  What is your objection? The charts are all various fractional contributions to LCOE, which already captures and normalizes for things like plant life. You could argue that the size of the pie should be scaled for the total LCOE, but that doesn't really help with the comparison being made (e.g., the relatively small fractional cost of fuel vs capital for nuclear plants).
DisjointedHunt 4y ago
Way to bury the lede and avoiding the main point: If you plan to build a Nuclear plant *TODAY*, there are financial requirements and regulatory uncertainties that mean you're sitting on high interest(and risky) loans/credit lines/asset pledges etc that increase over time. Very few banks or financial institutions are remotely interested in setting up financing an endeavor that has an almost 0 chance of success to completion since the 90s. Environmental review has become a tool of environmental extremist militants to derail and progress in energy. These organizations are SO short sighted that they have been weaponizing the judicial system against simple projects such as high voltage transmission lines for the silliest of reasons which assures America that her infrastructure will forever be stuck in the past. The cost of operating a plant come after all this is considered. All plants running today are roughly HALF A FUCKING CENTURY old. What the US needs is easy access to cheap credit for people willing to set up Nuclear plants. We need incentive to invest in audacious increases in energy output in exchange for meeting thresholds of performance. Right now, you can kill yourself by filling out thousands of pages of ridiculous review, hire some of the most expensive attorneys to represent you in court to be granted to privilege of even having basic clearance to START building while sitting on a fast bleeding pool of credit, it makes NO sense.
- fatcat500 4y ago
  > Environmental review has become a tool of environmental extremist militants to derail and progress in energy. Hmm... I wonder why they are so bent on blocking the only viable solution to climate change? Almost as if they are being used a pawns to shift over the control of energy to the government... after all, if I wanted to nationalize every industry, I would start with the industry upon which all other industries depend on: energy.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    > they are being used a pawns to shift over the control of energy to the government ...by pushing for domestic solar panels? And improved isolation, heat pumps, passive houses? Sounds like the very opposite of centralizing energy production. So maybe we need a bit more evidence for your conspiracy theory.
photochemsyn 4y ago
This article is very light on the basics of nuclear fission and could use some help there. Here's a good source on background: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/introduction/physics-of-nuclear-energy.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c... To summarize, light water reactors rely on the production of uranium fuel rods, which hold uranium enriched to about 3% U-235 relative to 97% U-238. Naturally occuring uranium ores are about 0.7% U-235 and there is a large variation in the percentage of uranium in a given ore by total rock mass, with a few deposits being as much as 18% uranium ranging down to about 0.1%, which most sources describe as the economically recoverable limit. This will affect the cost of refueling a LWR (which has to be done every ~3 three years). Fission in LWRs is due to slow thermal neutrons, which can only fission U-235 and Pu-239 (odd-numbered isotopes. Fast neutrons are a different story, see above source for that.) These slow neutron/U-235 events generate fission fragments (atomic masses in the range ~80-110 and ~130-150 with peaks at 95 and 135), gamma rays, and free neutrons. The initial energy distribution for heating the circulating fluid (water) is about 85% fission fragment kinetic energy, and about 15% gamma ray and neutron kinetic energy. Some of the neutrons are captured by U-239, forming plutonium-239 (and other transuranics) - which is also subject to fission, and over the lifetime of the fuel, about 66% of this formed Pu-239 is itself fissioned, adding to the total energy output. However, the actual heat produced by the reactor is also due to long-term decay of the fission fragments inside the fuel rods (about 6% of the total). This latter 6% is important because even if you halt the initial fission process, the reactor won't just go to zero, it still has to be cooled to prevent overheating and meltdown, as do the 'spent' fuel rods. It takes about ten years for used fuel rods to go from 10 kW decay heat/ton to 1 kW decay heat/ton. Storage of used fuel rods adds significantly to the operational costs of the reactor over time. Long-term storage of used fuel is necessary almost entirely because of the transuranics, which are alpha-radiation emitters with half-lives of thousands of years. Most of the fission fragments appear to decay via faster beta/gamma processes. Finally, there are the activation products to consider. Tritium is formed in the primary circulating water coolant loop, and is highly radioactive which is why this loop has to be isolated and its heat transferred to the secondary coolant loop which drives the steam turbines. Note here that reactors have to use a lot of water, at least as much as a coal-fired power plant, and these systems need to be highy engineered to prevent breakdowns, which would lead to meltdowns (Fukushima failure mode). The other activation products form in the reactor itself - carbon-14, cobalt-60, iron-55, nickel-63. This significantly adds to the cost of nuclear reactor decommissioning as the entire reactor body has to be treated as high-level waste. These factors explain why nuclear reactors have to be overengineered relative to traditional fossil fuel power plants, oil refineries, etc. which regularly suffer major accidents and fires - but those accidents don't lead to 100-year+ exclusion zones around the accident sites, so it's deemed acceptable. Not to belabor the point, but wind/solar/storage also has much lower costs for these reasons. Security vis-a-vis terrorism, cyberattack, military conflict, etc. is also a major related cost.
mbostleman 4y ago
Doubling the cost consequence of regulations, regulations changing causing in-progress projects to go back and remove and re-do work, negative learning - all of these things are a result of our society not gathering around the mission. If we wanted it, we would fix all these things. But it just doesn't have support. It seems like an incredible tragedy that is at least proportional to that of climate change since from most reasonable projections, nuclear - assuming the technological challenges can be solved - is the quickest way to reduce our impact on climate change. The fact that we insist on suppressing the courage to solve the problems makes me question the integrity of those who run the narratives on climate change policy.
ak217 4y ago
> Nuclear is sometimes praised for having lower fuel costs, but all else being equal (ie: assuming total production cost stays constant), it’s better to have a larger fraction of your electricity costs be variable, so that if demand drops then production cost drops as well. This is not obviously true. I could make an argument that base load generation capacity (nuclear and hydro in particular) should be state-owned or largely state-sponsored, both to avoid economic price shocks/volatility and because it's good for national security (check out what Europe is going through right now).
- stingraycharles 4y ago
  Yeah this statement makes me think that OP had very little actual knowledge about energy pricing. If there’s ever a complicated market of supply and demand it’s energy. Having a huge chunk of the supply be stable and controllable is absolutely desired, will help simplify operations a lot, make supply more predictable, and as a result deliver more stable prices. It’s not as if the population is suddenly getting cheaper windmills if there’s too much supply; if the energy supplier is losing money due to oversupply, they will need to get their money back another way, so it’s always the consumer that pays anyway.
  - logifail 4y ago
    > Having a huge chunk of the supply be stable and controllable Nuclear might be stable, but "controllable"? On the days when it's windy and sunny in your part of the planet, try telling your local nuclear plants they're not required. There's simply no reason to guarantee nuclear generators a fixed electricity price decades in advance, like the UK did with Hinkley Point.[0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/21/hinkley-point-c-dreadful-deal-behind-worlds-most-expensive-power-plant https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/21/hinkley-point-c...
    - dTal 4y ago
      I don't know why you say you can't throttle nuclear up and down. All thermal plants have inertia, but nuclear is if anything easier to throttle than fossil fuels. There's a lot of numbers, and comments from nuclear plant operators, in this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/NuclearPower/comments/m0rwso/how_fast_can_a_nuclear_power_plant_ramp_up/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NuclearPower/comments/m0rwso/how_fa...
belorn 4y ago
It is interesting that personal costs was such huge part of the increase in construction. Construction seems like a field that automation has yet to really start to create waves, but I recall seeing news about small step forward like scaled up 3d printing with cement. Modular construction is an other concept I have not heard much for in the context of nuclear plants.
- freemint 4y ago
  You can never 3d print pre stressed cement.
jokoon 4y ago
I'm not an expert but I'm a bit skeptical about small nuclear reactor designs. I want to believe they would be cost effective, but... It doesn't seem there is a prototype that is cheap?
- larsrc 4y ago
  Prototypes are never cheap. Prototypes are where all the research and design costs go. Once you have a design that works and doesn't have to be customised for each instance, you can get economics of scale because now you're just producing the same items over and over.
  - jokoon 4y ago
    Sure, but would the economics of scale really apply here? Would a small reactor be simpler to build and maintain than a big one, for an equivalent energy output? I'm no nuclear engineer or scientist, but I'm not sure that a smaller reactor can output more energy per dollar. I don't think that smaller reactor equals more safety, and most of the cost involved with nuclear energy has something to do with safety.
DeathArrow 4y ago
>Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Because there isn't enough will to make them cost less. China is building lots of nuclear power plants.
thraway11 4y ago
"For instance, in the 1980s several nuclear power plants in Washington were canceled after the estimated construction costs increased from $4.1 billion to over $24 billion." That's not even 10x. I would say hitting the correct order of magnitude is "on budget" for civil engineering projects. Here is what out of budget looks like: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-13/how-the-cost-of-remaking-the-san-francisco-bay-bridge-soared-to-6-5-billion https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-13/how-the-c...
Oarch 4y ago
I'm enjoy HN's ongoing obsession with this substack. Seeing it regularly appear here lets me forget for a moment that my industry (construction) is still in the technological Dark Ages.
w0mbat 4y ago
If you think the construction costs are high, think about the demolition cost when the facility reaches end of life, and is now radioactive.
- locallost 4y ago
  On top of that the cost of waste disposal is astronomic and in most of the world without a permanent solution. And it is usually not included in the actual calculation -- power plants usually need to put some money on the side and into an index fund, with the hope the fund eventually grows to be large enough to cover the cost. But nobody really knows if it will suffice, so it's likely the public will be on the hook. On top of all the subsidies received during construction and operation. Basically I view it as a type of graft.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Masochism in part, and secondly the Simpsons blackballing the entire industry. Nobody wanted to become a nuclear engineer after that shitty show. The creators of the Simpsons are nuclear war surrender monkeys. Context, in the show, the groundskeeper which is a discriminatory stereotype of Scots, says the French are "cheese-eating surrender monkeys", another discriminatory stereotype, but it's fine according to the bitchvictim media's rules because since they're both white it counts as "poking fun" and not "bigotry". Tucker Max said "cheese-eating surrender monkey!" to a French girl at a bar, game over right there even for a guy with crazy game like him, because it's fucking insulting. Literally calling them monkeys AND submissive cowards? Well if the Simpsons can do it to others, I can do it to the Simpsons. One of my surnames is French, I'm part French, my great-grandfather spoke French and was a Francophile following the Blitzkreig with a map hoping the French could turn the invasion around, he was rooting for them. It's just not fucking funny. The Simpsons is a bigoted show, don't think you can repeat any of those jokes. So this is what I get to reply to the Simpsons, and all those losers: The Simpsons are nuclear armageddon surrender monkeys. Whole bitchvictim media with them. Going back to the topic of nuclear engineers, with 22 minutes of slander on television on every day specifically against them that's the hottest show on television decade after decade, like only a son of a nuke would become a nuke. So that's also sabotage, then the public is like a thousand times as sensitive to a nuclear accident than to a coal plant shitting into the air we breathe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598892 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=daniel-cussen%20coal&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
TheDudeMan 4y ago
Because reactors are much too large, causing far too slow of a design iteration cycle and inability to leverage economies of scale and mass production.
dqpb 4y ago
I would like to see a comparison of energy sources that includes environmental remediation costs.
memco 4y ago
There are efforts in our area to expand solar and they are offering programs to the public to subsidize some of the construction with shares of the panels. Customers are advised that they will not make money but they’ll get back some percentage of their shares each month. Additionally the power company offers a renewable power option for which they charge extra over the standard rate. Given this: will we see a nuclear option to help subsidize the cost? I would love the cost to come down but I feel like they’re never going to come down if we don’t build it anywhere. Would love to help get it going although I have nowhere near enough money to make an offer other than to be a willing paying customer to whoever can get service to me.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
justinsb 4y ago
The only nuclear plant under construction in the US is at Plant Vogtle, in Georgia. Regulators set up a system (CWIP) whereby the companies building the plant earn a 10% return on their costs, until the plants come online. I think it's not surprising therefore that costs keep increasing and the delays keep coming. I don't think we can infer that nuclear power plants cannot be built at reasonable cost, rather that we need to consider "regulatory capture" as a significant construction risk. (Some admittedly one-sided background on CWIP: https://stopcwip.com/ https://stopcwip.com/ )
- ncmncm 4y ago
- mayama 4y ago
  Can anyone compare this to new EPR nuclear plant being built in France, that project also ballooned to almost twice the estimated price and a decade late. Do they use cost+profit accounting too?
  - natmaka 4y ago
    In France the budgeted total cost of building the EPR reactor (at Flamanville) was 3.3 billions €. Work began in 2007 for a 2012 delivery It is not yet completed and the cost is already 19.7 billions €.
mch82 4y ago
The cost of nuclear energy seems seriously understated. Nuclear waste storage costs the US $6B per year and we still don’t have a long-term storage plan. We’ll incur this cost for hundreds or thousands of years. https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us#gs.37rjl0 https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us... There’s also a cost to secure the nuclear infrastructure. https://medium.com/the-future-is-electric/nuclear-generation-has-huge-and-hidden-security-costs-e0a11264bbac https://medium.com/the-future-is-electric/nuclear-generation... Can anyone find a cost per Megawatt Hour calculation for nuclear that includes security and long-term waste storage? The calculations I’ve found for the $96/MWh figure seem like they include construction and operation costs, but exclude decommissioning and waste management.
- com2kid 4y ago
  > Nuclear waste storage costs the US $6B per year and we still don’t have a long-term storage plan. We’ll incur this cost for hundreds or thousands of years. New plants produce a lot less waste. And the reason nuclear waste seems so expensive is because we have externalized the cost of most other forms of power generation. Coal and gas, well we just let people get sick or die. Natural gas, fracking has huge negative impacts on communities, lots of illness, but again, we don't count that as part of the "financial cost" of natural gas. Solar, we have the panels made in some other country, we have the raw materials mined in some other country, we import the final product, now it is clean energy. (I support solar, but there is an environmental cost to solar panels!) Nuclear makes us confront the waste up front, so now we are all freaked out about it. As has been pointed out repeatedly, you could take a football field, dig down a few stories, and put all the nuclear waste needed for energy generation in there, and then have enough left over to keep storing spent fuel from new high efficiency reactors until sometime until well after everyone reading HN is dead and gone. It is a crap shoot if the cost of paying the lawyers to deal with all the lawsuits over where to build the storage site will end up costing more or less than the storage itself.
  - jka 4y ago
    > As has been pointed out repeatedly, you could take a football field, dig down a few stories, and put all the nuclear waste needed for energy generation in there Here are mentions of this talking point on Hacker News: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=nuclear%20waste%20size%20of%20a%20football%20field&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
teslaberri 4y ago
corruption is why, it has become a legal part of doing business. that simple.
cvccvroomvroom 4y ago
Insurance, licensure, and NIMBY pressure. Previously in nuclear industry.
tkdubs 4y ago
The "west" has forgotten how to produce Nuclear. The two largest countries, USA & France, have built 1 plant each, both for 2-4x the original cost, and are 10-15 years late. France has cancelled the only other plant, and the USA has done the same, spending $4.6bn to cancel the plant at the 60% mark Their fleets are now verging on >90% 30 years old, and they are opting to extend the lives rather than build new ones. On the other hand... China is crushing out plants. It is the only country to be accelerating. China will be a nuclear power IP exporter and potentially the only country that has the knowhow and capability to build these plants. Speak about it at length here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvOvKno0N3o&t=2160s&ab_channel=WeAbsolutelyShouldStartAPodcast%21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvOvKno0N3o&t=2160s&ab_chann...
TedShiller 4y ago
The reason is quite simple: because nobody wants one in their backyard
mogadsheu 4y ago
This analysis is incredibly thorough and detailed, but I don’t think it answers the question it poses itself. From my civil engineering and energy economics coursework, the one of the largest economic deterrents to nuclear power adoption was insurance: nobody would insure the construction of a plant, because a failure would bankrupt the insurance company. To give the article credit, they do allude to catastrophic incidents and waste storage costs in near perpetuity, but don’t really mention insurance.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Instead, the insurance is always subsidized 100% by taxpayers, and left off the balance sheet to make nukes seem cheaper than they are. Likewise, decommissioning cost.

352 points by spenrose 4y ago

Georgelemental 4y ago

TL;DR rising labor costs and regulation

thriftwy 4y ago
Since 50s we've got so many improvements in construction tech that I would expect costs to plummet, instead they are higher than ever. Countries use immigrant labor (sometimes illegal) and have all tech available and the price only goes up. I wonder why.
kaiju0 4y ago
Each build is unique and requires way too much overhead. The new generation of preapproved factory assembled SMR's are the future.
- ortusdux 4y ago
  I have high hopes for prefab modular systems. The same design approval covers 1000+ units, most designs fit on a flat-bed for transport, and instillations can scale up as needed.
- yvdriess 4y ago
  Having talked to a nuclear engineer about this: SMRs are being politically pushed because of their political and financing convenience, more than engineering reasons. Power output scales really well with reactor size, so it makes much more sense to build the one big expensive power plant than a multitude of smaller ones. SMRs do make sense for off-grid or on-site power, but not for grid electricity.
  - Ericson2314 4y ago
    The ideal case is that SMRs are not the end goal, but a way to rebuild the supply chain. As soon as we have SMRs in prod, rather than building more of them, we should attempt to increase the size of deployments with minimal falling back on in-situ construction. SMRs take the supply chain metaphor a bit too literally: we do need practice but assembling prefabbed parts at a larger scale is fine too. There is a spectrum of options and we just need to avoid "special snowflake boondoggles". Given the US's fucked NIMBY culture, it well may be that SMRs are the best route despite these inefficiencies. Just don't expect the "solar model" where we just shit out lots of lousy product and that's it.
  - zbrozek 4y ago
    From a thermal physics and material science perspective, yes, bigger is definitely better. But there's a lot to be said of the value of being able to mass-produce a product in a factory and ship it in nearly ready-to-use state to its destination. There would also be a lot of value in turning off the ability of folks to NIMBY everything from new power plants to housing.
  - petre 4y ago
    Alvin Weinberg begs to differ, at least concerning PWRs and BWRs. The bigger plants are more efficient but less safe. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iW8yuyk3Ugw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iW8yuyk3Ugw One can scale the size by using several reactors, which is exactly what NuScale and others aim to do. One also doesn't have an unavailability problem having to shut down a large reactor in order to refuel it.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
Note that the regulatory costs are only responsible for much of the increases of the 60s and 70s. They're the boogey man, but the increases of the last forty years can't be blamed on them. It's a general problem: HSR and subway stations have seen similar increases.
- NaNDude 4y ago
  may be the increases of the last forty years have'nt been studied as thoses of the 60s to 70s, but regulatory costs are still a reality, the french EPR for exemple got a 20billion increase in cost during the construction for changes in security standards.
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  That’s also due to regulatory costs. Regulations now require “citizen voice” for large projects, whether infrastructure or just an apartment building. So NIMBYism is able to slow construction (which translates directly to increased costs), require additional measures or features. And NIMBY lawsuits after regulatory approval is given can further increase costs and schedule, even if the court rules in favor of the project. And then because of all these regulatory costs, the experience isn’t gained, so learning doesn’t occur, and if it does, it occurs only for a few firms. Additionally, large state sponsored projects often are treated as jobs programs, etc. Another issue is that the difficulty of complying with the regulations is intentional. The paperwork is difficult as an intentional sort of time-tax on building anything new. We could actually automate and streamline everything to be approved immediately (while following the letter) without large paperwork costs, but that’s not actually what those who push for the regulations actually want. They WANT it to be hard. It’s not just a boogeyman. It’s the real reason. Regulations are responsible for most of the cost of nuclear power.
  - bumby 4y ago
    You're not wrong, but I'm not sure what's a better alternative. Think of it in a different scope: government contracts are also expensive because the have to be open to competition. A lot of the red tape could be reduced with no-bid contracts, but people understand the corruption risk tradeoff is generally not worth it. In your example, it seems like the NIMBYism is the root cause, not the process by which NIMBYism is wielded.

01100011 4y ago

Totally unrelated question but does anyone know if nuclear powered US Navy vessels are able to feed power to the grid while in port? I know it's technically possible, just not sure if anyone has ever implemented such a thing.

scoopertrooper 4y ago
My understanding is that they shut down the reactors in port and run off the grid.
- ortusdux 4y ago
  This is my understanding as well. I believe that they may even shut down at sea and run in on batteries/generators, which doubles as a way to test those systems. Refueling is quite the ordeal, so there is an incentive to minimize fuel depletion.
  - dodobirdlord 4y ago
    Reactors may sometimes be shut down at sea to test backup generators and run reactor restarting drills, but it would not be done otherwise. Aircraft carrier propulsion comes from steam from the reactors - if the reactors are offline the ship cannot move. Moreover, the backup generators burn jet fuel, which is convenient because aircraft carriers already have a store of jet fuel for the planes and so don’t have to carry extra fuel for the backup generators, but it’s very expensive, and not something that would be done outside of an emergency or testing emergency preparedness.
  - nickelpro 4y ago
    Nuclear powered vessels do not spend any significant amount of time shutdown at sea, and there is no reason to. Electrical power is a very small fraction of their total MWh production, with almost all power going to propulsion. When fuel lifetime becomes an issue for a nuclear naval vessel they will have propulsion limits in place that limit transit speeds to those which are most efficient for the propulsion turbines.
4y ago

dest 4y ago

On this topic, see the excellent website https://whatisnuclear.com/ https://whatisnuclear.com/ and its webpage about economics https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html

xroche 4y ago

> Because nuclear plants are expensive, and they take a long time to build, financing their construction can also be a significant fraction of their cost, typically around 15-20% of the cost of the plant. For plants that have severe construction delays and/or have high financing costs (such as the Vogtle 3 and 4 plants in Georgia), this can be 50% of the cost or more. This is why nuclear power plants should be state-sponsored projects. States typically have loans at 0% rate, or even negative interests.

sfe22 4y ago
Zero percent or negative just means people involuntary pay by inflation. There is not free lunch (someone had to work to make it)
- danuker 4y ago
  Negative interest rates mean more than your units of currency going down in purchasing power. It also means them going down in number (a bank CHARGES you for the costs incurred holding your money).
- kube-system 4y ago
  No, interest rates are quoted nominally -- i.e. they are independent of inflation. If you purchase a negative interest rate instrument and experience inflation, you will lose real value to both.
- trashtester 4y ago
  It is a tax on deposits. You only have to pay if you have deposits. Basically, it means the saver has to pay to store value as currency. On the other hand, they also have to pay if they want to store other valueables, such as gold or the most ancient store of value of all, grain. I don't think a negative real interest rate is inherantly unfair, any more than it was unfair to have 10% of grain go to waste 3000 years ago when storing for a bad year. If you had 7 good years, and expect 7 bad years, the utility of the stored grain may be way higher in the bad years than the good years, even when accounting for the waste. The same goes for cash. The same can be true with cash. To demand that cash maintains its purchasing power, is the same as ancient farmers demanding to purchase grain from their neighbour (who did save) in a bad year as they themselves got paid for their grain during the good years. In periods of growth, we may start to think that positive time preference is natural. But the fact is that throughout most of human history, we would switch to negative time preference in good times, since we expected bad times to come back. During good times, humans would store grain, dry meat, fish and fruit, build housing, tools or boats, all of which were investments into goods that were likely to gradually perish over time. Even after people started to use coins, this was true. If you produced a surplus during one year, you could trade it for cold coin instead of storing it. But not only was there a risk that the coins would be stolen or otherwise vanish, it was also highly likely that at the time where you needed to spend that goal, prices would be higher.

Ericson2314 4y ago

> but all else being equal (ie: assuming total production cost stays constant), it’s better to have a larger fraction of your electricity costs be variable, so that if demand drops then production cost drops as well. This is how capitalism gives us scarcity when there is no reason for scarcity. Infrastructure like trains and nuclear that absolutely swamps current demand, and whose costs cannot be adjusted very much (even if one can run fewer trains, remove some fuel rods) is good. But woe unto anyone that floods the market utopia-style under capitalism --- you will just get paid nothing and your investors will not repeat such a project again.

bgilroy26 4y ago
Cow's milk in the United States seems to be an exception to this
skybrian 4y ago
Another way to interpret that sentence is “it’s better not to spend too much on construction, and it can be better to spend on fuel if it means spending less on construction.” Building things you don’t need is waste of labor and resources, regardless of the economic system you use or who paid for it. This should be accounted for somehow.
- Ericson2314 4y ago
  What is needed changes over time. It is better to spend more on capital than operational costs if one actually wants the world to change not just ideal along. The best cost control is in large part doing lots of cookie-cutter work, hence the focus on small modular reactors. It is better to do those, and then ramp up the "small" part over time. Likewise, we should construct lots of rail simultaneously with ramp up to improve those supply chains too. But at no point do you want to spend more on fuel in any global optimal sense. That is just wasteful. It's not like we are actually uncertain that we won't need way more electricity production on a societal scale.
  - skybrian 4y ago

lelag 4y ago

The article misses another important aspect: loss of nuclear competency. Between the 60s and 80s, there were many nuclear reactors projects which allowed an industry to develop and get better at it. But since the 80s, there was comparatively very few new reactors built for over 20-30 years. The workforce that had the skills and knowledge related to actually building nuclear plants had mostly retired and their replacement had only theoretical knowledge and no actual experience. This makes building new reactor much harder than it should be. The embattled EPR project at Flammanville is an exemple of that: the specialised company that was hired to forge the nuclear vessel were simply unable to build to spec and a defective critical piece was delivered, creating delays and cost increases. In the end, they even had to use it anyway as it was not economically feasible to simply have another one made.

epistasis 4y ago
The recent US nuclear construction projects have been plagued with similar incompetence, such as trying to build plans that were unconstructable, and then having to get regulatory approval for the changes. I would like to see comparisons to other large construction projects too. The US is really really bad at large construction projects, but European construction seems a lot better.
- stefanfisk 4y ago
  I'd love to read more about this! do you have any tip on where to start?
  - epistasis 4y ago
    The Pedestrian Observations blog is great for construction cost analysis: https://pedestrianobservations.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Or if you were taking specifically about the nuclear construction incompetence, the loca newspapers in South Carolina and Georgia have been providing the best reporting. Here's South Carolina's archive: https://www.postandcourier.com/business/vc_summer_nuclear_project/ https://www.postandcourier.com/business/vc_summer_nuclear_pr... Search for "Georgia recorder vogtle" to get some of the reports from the Georgia construction delays.

jason-phillips 4y ago

Last year I did a fair amount of consulting work for the GAIN initiative at Idaho National Lab [0]. They're doing so much good work with micro and modular reactors that can basically be "dropped in" decommissioned coal-burning sites because the infrastructure to tie into the electric grid already exists. It was expressed to me that selling this idea to the private-sector energy industry was an uphill battle and uptake was very slow to nonexistent. [0] https://gain.inl.gov/SitePages/Home.aspx https://gain.inl.gov/SitePages/Home.aspx

hutzlibu 4y ago
"selling this idea to the private-sector energy industry was an uphill battle" Could you elaborate on the why? I would asume, because of risk. A solar plant, you can more or less just put anywhere, but a nuclear power plant, even a small one, needs state permission, has to meet extensive regulation, etc. It would need some convincing for me, too, that a nuclear reactor can be just a drop in replacement for coal. I would think unknown risks, hidden costs due to regulations, neverending building, etc. And are we talking about a battle tested design, or is it new technology? That sounds extra risky.
- bozhark 4y ago
  Sounds like a good time to get into the energy sector. Time for an HN Wind, water, solar, and nuclear company start-up. Who’s in?
  - _1tan 4y ago
    Here, email is avg@duck.com
  - samstave 4y ago
    There was a nuclear startup that came through YC a few years back... what happened to them?
    - pnw 4y ago

balaji1 4y ago

Might be nitpicking here: Referring to the pie charts under this section[1], I can't help but think images like this are intentionally meant to mislead: [1]https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power-construction?s=r#%C2%A7power-plant-and-electricity-economics https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-nuclear-p... I understand author picked it from some other source, Dawson 2017 or whatever. These pie charts are not like for like, when it includes the renewables -- maybe the coal/gas/nuclear fine. So why put them next to one another. I can't tell if the costs of renewables are for entire "farms" (solar or wind farms). What about lifetime of plants/farms, total value derived, etc.

zbrozek 4y ago
What is your objection? The charts are all various fractional contributions to LCOE, which already captures and normalizes for things like plant life. You could argue that the size of the pie should be scaled for the total LCOE, but that doesn't really help with the comparison being made (e.g., the relatively small fractional cost of fuel vs capital for nuclear plants).

DisjointedHunt 4y ago

Way to bury the lede and avoiding the main point: If you plan to build a Nuclear plant *TODAY*, there are financial requirements and regulatory uncertainties that mean you're sitting on high interest(and risky) loans/credit lines/asset pledges etc that increase over time. Very few banks or financial institutions are remotely interested in setting up financing an endeavor that has an almost 0 chance of success to completion since the 90s. Environmental review has become a tool of environmental extremist militants to derail and progress in energy. These organizations are SO short sighted that they have been weaponizing the judicial system against simple projects such as high voltage transmission lines for the silliest of reasons which assures America that her infrastructure will forever be stuck in the past. The cost of operating a plant come after all this is considered. All plants running today are roughly HALF A FUCKING CENTURY old. What the US needs is easy access to cheap credit for people willing to set up Nuclear plants. We need incentive to invest in audacious increases in energy output in exchange for meeting thresholds of performance. Right now, you can kill yourself by filling out thousands of pages of ridiculous review, hire some of the most expensive attorneys to represent you in court to be granted to privilege of even having basic clearance to START building while sitting on a fast bleeding pool of credit, it makes NO sense.

fatcat500 4y ago
> Environmental review has become a tool of environmental extremist militants to derail and progress in energy. Hmm... I wonder why they are so bent on blocking the only viable solution to climate change? Almost as if they are being used a pawns to shift over the control of energy to the government... after all, if I wanted to nationalize every industry, I would start with the industry upon which all other industries depend on: energy.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  > they are being used a pawns to shift over the control of energy to the government ...by pushing for domestic solar panels? And improved isolation, heat pumps, passive houses? Sounds like the very opposite of centralizing energy production. So maybe we need a bit more evidence for your conspiracy theory.

photochemsyn 4y ago

This article is very light on the basics of nuclear fission and could use some help there. Here's a good source on background: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/introduction/physics-of-nuclear-energy.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c... To summarize, light water reactors rely on the production of uranium fuel rods, which hold uranium enriched to about 3% U-235 relative to 97% U-238. Naturally occuring uranium ores are about 0.7% U-235 and there is a large variation in the percentage of uranium in a given ore by total rock mass, with a few deposits being as much as 18% uranium ranging down to about 0.1%, which most sources describe as the economically recoverable limit. This will affect the cost of refueling a LWR (which has to be done every ~3 three years). Fission in LWRs is due to slow thermal neutrons, which can only fission U-235 and Pu-239 (odd-numbered isotopes. Fast neutrons are a different story, see above source for that.) These slow neutron/U-235 events generate fission fragments (atomic masses in the range ~80-110 and ~130-150 with peaks at 95 and 135), gamma rays, and free neutrons. The initial energy distribution for heating the circulating fluid (water) is about 85% fission fragment kinetic energy, and about 15% gamma ray and neutron kinetic energy. Some of the neutrons are captured by U-239, forming plutonium-239 (and other transuranics) - which is also subject to fission, and over the lifetime of the fuel, about 66% of this formed Pu-239 is itself fissioned, adding to the total energy output. However, the actual heat produced by the reactor is also due to long-term decay of the fission fragments inside the fuel rods (about 6% of the total). This latter 6% is important because even if you halt the initial fission process, the reactor won't just go to zero, it still has to be cooled to prevent overheating and meltdown, as do the 'spent' fuel rods. It takes about ten years for used fuel rods to go from 10 kW decay heat/ton to 1 kW decay heat/ton. Storage of used fuel rods adds significantly to the operational costs of the reactor over time. Long-term storage of used fuel is necessary almost entirely because of the transuranics, which are alpha-radiation emitters with half-lives of thousands of years. Most of the fission fragments appear to decay via faster beta/gamma processes. Finally, there are the activation products to consider. Tritium is formed in the primary circulating water coolant loop, and is highly radioactive which is why this loop has to be isolated and its heat transferred to the secondary coolant loop which drives the steam turbines. Note here that reactors have to use a lot of water, at least as much as a coal-fired power plant, and these systems need to be highy engineered to prevent breakdowns, which would lead to meltdowns (Fukushima failure mode). The other activation products form in the reactor itself - carbon-14, cobalt-60, iron-55, nickel-63. This significantly adds to the cost of nuclear reactor decommissioning as the entire reactor body has to be treated as high-level waste. These factors explain why nuclear reactors have to be overengineered relative to traditional fossil fuel power plants, oil refineries, etc. which regularly suffer major accidents and fires - but those accidents don't lead to 100-year+ exclusion zones around the accident sites, so it's deemed acceptable. Not to belabor the point, but wind/solar/storage also has much lower costs for these reasons. Security vis-a-vis terrorism, cyberattack, military conflict, etc. is also a major related cost.

mbostleman 4y ago

Doubling the cost consequence of regulations, regulations changing causing in-progress projects to go back and remove and re-do work, negative learning - all of these things are a result of our society not gathering around the mission. If we wanted it, we would fix all these things. But it just doesn't have support. It seems like an incredible tragedy that is at least proportional to that of climate change since from most reasonable projections, nuclear - assuming the technological challenges can be solved - is the quickest way to reduce our impact on climate change. The fact that we insist on suppressing the courage to solve the problems makes me question the integrity of those who run the narratives on climate change policy.

ak217 4y ago

> Nuclear is sometimes praised for having lower fuel costs, but all else being equal (ie: assuming total production cost stays constant), it’s better to have a larger fraction of your electricity costs be variable, so that if demand drops then production cost drops as well. This is not obviously true. I could make an argument that base load generation capacity (nuclear and hydro in particular) should be state-owned or largely state-sponsored, both to avoid economic price shocks/volatility and because it's good for national security (check out what Europe is going through right now).

stingraycharles 4y ago
Yeah this statement makes me think that OP had very little actual knowledge about energy pricing. If there’s ever a complicated market of supply and demand it’s energy. Having a huge chunk of the supply be stable and controllable is absolutely desired, will help simplify operations a lot, make supply more predictable, and as a result deliver more stable prices. It’s not as if the population is suddenly getting cheaper windmills if there’s too much supply; if the energy supplier is losing money due to oversupply, they will need to get their money back another way, so it’s always the consumer that pays anyway.
- logifail 4y ago
  > Having a huge chunk of the supply be stable and controllable Nuclear might be stable, but "controllable"? On the days when it's windy and sunny in your part of the planet, try telling your local nuclear plants they're not required. There's simply no reason to guarantee nuclear generators a fixed electricity price decades in advance, like the UK did with Hinkley Point.[0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/21/hinkley-point-c-dreadful-deal-behind-worlds-most-expensive-power-plant https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/21/hinkley-point-c...
  - dTal 4y ago
    I don't know why you say you can't throttle nuclear up and down. All thermal plants have inertia, but nuclear is if anything easier to throttle than fossil fuels. There's a lot of numbers, and comments from nuclear plant operators, in this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/NuclearPower/comments/m0rwso/how_fast_can_a_nuclear_power_plant_ramp_up/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NuclearPower/comments/m0rwso/how_fa...

belorn 4y ago

It is interesting that personal costs was such huge part of the increase in construction. Construction seems like a field that automation has yet to really start to create waves, but I recall seeing news about small step forward like scaled up 3d printing with cement. Modular construction is an other concept I have not heard much for in the context of nuclear plants.

freemint 4y ago
You can never 3d print pre stressed cement.

jokoon 4y ago

I'm not an expert but I'm a bit skeptical about small nuclear reactor designs. I want to believe they would be cost effective, but... It doesn't seem there is a prototype that is cheap?

larsrc 4y ago
Prototypes are never cheap. Prototypes are where all the research and design costs go. Once you have a design that works and doesn't have to be customised for each instance, you can get economics of scale because now you're just producing the same items over and over.
- jokoon 4y ago
  Sure, but would the economics of scale really apply here? Would a small reactor be simpler to build and maintain than a big one, for an equivalent energy output? I'm no nuclear engineer or scientist, but I'm not sure that a smaller reactor can output more energy per dollar. I don't think that smaller reactor equals more safety, and most of the cost involved with nuclear energy has something to do with safety.

DeathArrow 4y ago

>Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Because there isn't enough will to make them cost less. China is building lots of nuclear power plants.

thraway11 4y ago

"For instance, in the 1980s several nuclear power plants in Washington were canceled after the estimated construction costs increased from $4.1 billion to over $24 billion." That's not even 10x. I would say hitting the correct order of magnitude is "on budget" for civil engineering projects. Here is what out of budget looks like: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-13/how-the-cost-of-remaking-the-san-francisco-bay-bridge-soared-to-6-5-billion https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-13/how-the-c...

Oarch 4y ago

I'm enjoy HN's ongoing obsession with this substack. Seeing it regularly appear here lets me forget for a moment that my industry (construction) is still in the technological Dark Ages.

w0mbat 4y ago

If you think the construction costs are high, think about the demolition cost when the facility reaches end of life, and is now radioactive.

locallost 4y ago
On top of that the cost of waste disposal is astronomic and in most of the world without a permanent solution. And it is usually not included in the actual calculation -- power plants usually need to put some money on the side and into an index fund, with the hope the fund eventually grows to be large enough to cover the cost. But nobody really knows if it will suffice, so it's likely the public will be on the hook. On top of all the subsidies received during construction and operation. Basically I view it as a type of graft.

daniel-cussen 4y ago

Masochism in part, and secondly the Simpsons blackballing the entire industry. Nobody wanted to become a nuclear engineer after that shitty show. The creators of the Simpsons are nuclear war surrender monkeys. Context, in the show, the groundskeeper which is a discriminatory stereotype of Scots, says the French are "cheese-eating surrender monkeys", another discriminatory stereotype, but it's fine according to the bitchvictim media's rules because since they're both white it counts as "poking fun" and not "bigotry". Tucker Max said "cheese-eating surrender monkey!" to a French girl at a bar, game over right there even for a guy with crazy game like him, because it's fucking insulting. Literally calling them monkeys AND submissive cowards? Well if the Simpsons can do it to others, I can do it to the Simpsons. One of my surnames is French, I'm part French, my great-grandfather spoke French and was a Francophile following the Blitzkreig with a map hoping the French could turn the invasion around, he was rooting for them. It's just not fucking funny. The Simpsons is a bigoted show, don't think you can repeat any of those jokes. So this is what I get to reply to the Simpsons, and all those losers: The Simpsons are nuclear armageddon surrender monkeys. Whole bitchvictim media with them. Going back to the topic of nuclear engineers, with 22 minutes of slander on television on every day specifically against them that's the hottest show on television decade after decade, like only a son of a nuke would become a nuke. So that's also sabotage, then the public is like a thousand times as sensitive to a nuclear accident than to a coal plant shitting into the air we breathe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598892 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=daniel-cussen%20coal&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

TheDudeMan 4y ago

Because reactors are much too large, causing far too slow of a design iteration cycle and inability to leverage economies of scale and mass production.

dqpb 4y ago

I would like to see a comparison of energy sources that includes environmental remediation costs.

memco 4y ago

There are efforts in our area to expand solar and they are offering programs to the public to subsidize some of the construction with shares of the panels. Customers are advised that they will not make money but they’ll get back some percentage of their shares each month. Additionally the power company offers a renewable power option for which they charge extra over the standard rate. Given this: will we see a nuclear option to help subsidize the cost? I would love the cost to come down but I feel like they’re never going to come down if we don’t build it anywhere. Would love to help get it going although I have nowhere near enough money to make an offer other than to be a willing paying customer to whoever can get service to me.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

justinsb 4y ago

The only nuclear plant under construction in the US is at Plant Vogtle, in Georgia. Regulators set up a system (CWIP) whereby the companies building the plant earn a 10% return on their costs, until the plants come online. I think it's not surprising therefore that costs keep increasing and the delays keep coming. I don't think we can infer that nuclear power plants cannot be built at reasonable cost, rather that we need to consider "regulatory capture" as a significant construction risk. (Some admittedly one-sided background on CWIP: https://stopcwip.com/ https://stopcwip.com/ )

ncmncm 4y ago
mayama 4y ago
Can anyone compare this to new EPR nuclear plant being built in France, that project also ballooned to almost twice the estimated price and a decade late. Do they use cost+profit accounting too?
- natmaka 4y ago
  In France the budgeted total cost of building the EPR reactor (at Flamanville) was 3.3 billions €. Work began in 2007 for a 2012 delivery It is not yet completed and the cost is already 19.7 billions €.

mch82 4y ago

The cost of nuclear energy seems seriously understated. Nuclear waste storage costs the US $6B per year and we still don’t have a long-term storage plan. We’ll incur this cost for hundreds or thousands of years. https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us#gs.37rjl0 https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us... There’s also a cost to secure the nuclear infrastructure. https://medium.com/the-future-is-electric/nuclear-generation-has-huge-and-hidden-security-costs-e0a11264bbac https://medium.com/the-future-is-electric/nuclear-generation... Can anyone find a cost per Megawatt Hour calculation for nuclear that includes security and long-term waste storage? The calculations I’ve found for the $96/MWh figure seem like they include construction and operation costs, but exclude decommissioning and waste management.

com2kid 4y ago
> Nuclear waste storage costs the US $6B per year and we still don’t have a long-term storage plan. We’ll incur this cost for hundreds or thousands of years. New plants produce a lot less waste. And the reason nuclear waste seems so expensive is because we have externalized the cost of most other forms of power generation. Coal and gas, well we just let people get sick or die. Natural gas, fracking has huge negative impacts on communities, lots of illness, but again, we don't count that as part of the "financial cost" of natural gas. Solar, we have the panels made in some other country, we have the raw materials mined in some other country, we import the final product, now it is clean energy. (I support solar, but there is an environmental cost to solar panels!) Nuclear makes us confront the waste up front, so now we are all freaked out about it. As has been pointed out repeatedly, you could take a football field, dig down a few stories, and put all the nuclear waste needed for energy generation in there, and then have enough left over to keep storing spent fuel from new high efficiency reactors until sometime until well after everyone reading HN is dead and gone. It is a crap shoot if the cost of paying the lawyers to deal with all the lawsuits over where to build the storage site will end up costing more or less than the storage itself.
- jka 4y ago
  > As has been pointed out repeatedly, you could take a football field, dig down a few stories, and put all the nuclear waste needed for energy generation in there Here are mentions of this talking point on Hacker News: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=nuclear%20waste%20size%20of%20a%20football%20field&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

teslaberri 4y ago

corruption is why, it has become a legal part of doing business. that simple.

cvccvroomvroom 4y ago

Insurance, licensure, and NIMBY pressure. Previously in nuclear industry.

tkdubs 4y ago

The "west" has forgotten how to produce Nuclear. The two largest countries, USA & France, have built 1 plant each, both for 2-4x the original cost, and are 10-15 years late. France has cancelled the only other plant, and the USA has done the same, spending $4.6bn to cancel the plant at the 60% mark Their fleets are now verging on >90% 30 years old, and they are opting to extend the lives rather than build new ones. On the other hand... China is crushing out plants. It is the only country to be accelerating. China will be a nuclear power IP exporter and potentially the only country that has the knowhow and capability to build these plants. Speak about it at length here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvOvKno0N3o&t=2160s&ab_channel=WeAbsolutelyShouldStartAPodcast%21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvOvKno0N3o&t=2160s&ab_chann...

TedShiller 4y ago

The reason is quite simple: because nobody wants one in their backyard

mogadsheu 4y ago

This analysis is incredibly thorough and detailed, but I don’t think it answers the question it poses itself. From my civil engineering and energy economics coursework, the one of the largest economic deterrents to nuclear power adoption was insurance: nobody would insure the construction of a plant, because a failure would bankrupt the insurance company. To give the article credit, they do allude to catastrophic incidents and waste storage costs in near perpetuity, but don’t really mention insurance.

ncmncm 4y ago
Instead, the insurance is always subsidized 100% by taxpayers, and left off the balance sheet to make nukes seem cheaper than they are. Likewise, decommissioning cost.