5 ms·

> 1. Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and falling). Here in the UK the government is promising to subsidise this to make it viable. You can't

> 1. Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and falling). Here in the UK the government is promising to subsidise this to make it viable. You can't directly compare cost per generating capacity, because nuclear, gas, coal etc. are available according to schedule, while most renewables aren't. Adding storage around renewables to make them schedulable raises costs.

bakuninsbart 4y ago
You can however price this in, and I doubt it accounts for 110$/MW. Furthermore, nuclear energy specifically only runs according to schedule. Reducing or raising output is expensive and slow.
- belorn 4y ago
  For simplicity, lets use the cost of for every $ that a KG of green hydrogen costs, this mean that the cost per MW will be 30x of that. So if green hydrogen cost $1/KG you the cost in term of MW will be $30. The current cost of green hydrogen is somewhere between $2 -> $12. That is the production cost. The market price for green hydrogen sits around $4-$20, since there are multiple industries that demands hydrogen. For 110 to break even the hydrogen need to cost $3.5/kg, and in order to really displace natural gas, it is estimated that it need to reach $1/kg. Now I noticed that those $150/MW is not a range, so I took a look. Projected nuclear LCOE costs for plants built 2020-2025 places nuclear around $27/MW to $147/MW depending on financing and country (source: OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s (NEA's) calculation). Russia has the lowest cost and Slovakia or Japan (depending on financing method) has the highest. So in summery, it can definitively cost more than $110/MW to produce viable green storage solution, especially in northern countries where low duration lithium batteries is not a working solution for long winter periods with low wind production and the sun is only up for a max few hours per day. Nuclear can also be much cheaper depending on where it is built and how it is financed.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Why would opex and amortised capital scale with fuel price?
    - belorn 4y ago
      The report is likely this one: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2019-12/7057-proj-costs-electricity-2015.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2019-12... The $147 figure is basically the worst case scenario.
- jules 4y ago
  > You can however price this in, and I doubt it accounts for 110$/MW. What do you base this on?
- illiac786 4y ago
  EDF has published a paper stating they can scale 80% down and then up again, every day, within 30min. In practice, they have done something like 20% within an hour. It was early 2019, there was such a crazy wind that they had to reduce nuclear production also (after already reducing coal, gas etc. to the min). I think what they really can do is somewhere in between. sources, it was on l’energeek, but in French.
legulere 4y ago
Scheduling also raises costs though. Costs don’t go down much for nuclear power plants if you let them run at reduced output. Nuclear also isn’t as reliable as it seems as it can be seen in France. Renewables even have the advantage that they produce electricity mostly when it’s needed. Photovoltaics during the day and wind during winter when heating is most needed.
- fredestine 4y ago
  macron removed investment and focus on nuclear in his last mandate before realising that being woke made france broke (luckily not like germany broke - you know like in a way that when there is no sun or wind they need to call Putin to send some energy) now he reverted his thinking because money and energy is more important than beliefs when you needs them. just like usa or germany reactivated coal and biden is selling fracked gas to europe at gold price.
  - Krasnol 4y ago
    > macron removed investment and focus on nuclear in his last mandate before realising that being woke made france broke None of those problems OP described have anything to do with that overblown statement. Investment may have been removed for FUTURE projects but not for current operation which is highly subsidised by the French taxpayer guaranteeing the fixed price the Government decides on. Also Germany reactivated those dirty plants also to help France out. The whole European grid is helping the nuclear nation out and will continue to do so until France diversifies its power generation infrastructure.
    - fredestine 4y ago
      the investments included maintenance of existing infrastructure. france has more than half its reactor being off right now. guess what? invest more 5 years before and we wouldnt be there today. so yes. it is not overblown it is factual
      - Krasnol 4y ago
ncmncm 4y ago
Raises cost, but it is still way below cost of nukes.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Nuclear in the UK has a capacity factor of around 60%. Availability is in the 70-80% range. Yeah it's (usually) planned, but it's a decently long time in which you need those gas plants. Why not just build solar instead and fuel those same gas plants with hydrogen or methane you plucked from the air with your $20-30/MWh unscheduled electricity? Plus, you can get solar and storage as an off the shelf item today as a retail customer for less per watt than recent reactors in UK/France or even USA. 8kW nameplate solar and 16kWh storage capacity is about $10k which matches 1kW of net from eg UK projects of around 2.5GW net for 26 billion pounds fairly closely. Yeah if you live far north or have a long cloudy month in winter you'll be relying on that gas plant, but so does the nuclear reactor. Plus you'll be dumping 10-20kWh/day into the grid on the good days. Provides a decent incentive to figure out how to store it, and even if you're only getting 5c/kWh for it, it'll pay for replacement in 7-10 years or so when prices have dropped another 50-80% without sacrificing your kilowatt.
- neilwilson 4y ago
  Solar requires land area. Storage requires land area. Britain isn't that sunny - particularly not in winter. Nuclear has a very small footprint on a crowded island. Plus we have Rolls Royce SMRs who have been building nuclear reactors for a while.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    That is the admitted cost of Hinkley C and lower bound on the cost of Sizewell (it will go up, they always do). Sizewell is a rolls royce smr. Matching end user retail cost of solar. Right now. By the time sizewell comes online it'll be a fraction. It's also calculated with a 12.5% capacity factor which is winter in the UK. Add in overnight costs and it's extremely one sided. You could add as much net capacity as the UK has in nuclear in just above the space used for parking cars. You could add twice to four times that again just on detached house rooftops. Even as a commercial installation with no other purpose, a 4km square is hardly an insurmountable barrier. The initial capital budget of sizewell and hinkley alone could provide 30-80GW of nameplate solar or a rooftop system on every building in the country. If there are trillions in the pot, by all means go ham with fission, but when low carbon sources are fighting for the scraps left over after subsidizing fossil fuels we have to do the thing that is effective first.
dignick 4y ago
I’m a firm believer in distributed generation and storage, i.e. solar on the roof and battery on premises. This has the added benefits of reducing load on the grid and increasing resiliency. It should be required for all new buildings in regulations.
- dfjklseldklk 4y ago
  In fact, solar on roof often loads the local grid in unhelpful ways (they were designed for asymmetric loads). I'm in favour of renewables, but done in the way that actually makes most economic and environmental sense. In the Uk we threw money at rich people with £15k to install 4kwh solar rigs on their houses. That money would have been much better spent subsidising large industrial installations.
dfjklseldklk 4y ago
This is oft repeated, but once the cost of renewables is low enough it would have (usually un-modelled) second order effects on end users which may make this less important. Some industries literally can't turn off production without damaging plant, but if some can then where energy cost is ~30% of fossil/nuclear than it might make sense to over-provision industrial capacity and only run it when the sun is shining.

bakuninsbart 4y ago

You can however price this in, and I doubt it accounts for 110$/MW. Furthermore, nuclear energy specifically only runs according to schedule. Reducing or raising output is expensive and slow.

belorn 4y ago
For simplicity, lets use the cost of for every $ that a KG of green hydrogen costs, this mean that the cost per MW will be 30x of that. So if green hydrogen cost $1/KG you the cost in term of MW will be $30. The current cost of green hydrogen is somewhere between $2 -> $12. That is the production cost. The market price for green hydrogen sits around $4-$20, since there are multiple industries that demands hydrogen. For 110 to break even the hydrogen need to cost $3.5/kg, and in order to really displace natural gas, it is estimated that it need to reach $1/kg. Now I noticed that those $150/MW is not a range, so I took a look. Projected nuclear LCOE costs for plants built 2020-2025 places nuclear around $27/MW to $147/MW depending on financing and country (source: OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s (NEA's) calculation). Russia has the lowest cost and Slovakia or Japan (depending on financing method) has the highest. So in summery, it can definitively cost more than $110/MW to produce viable green storage solution, especially in northern countries where low duration lithium batteries is not a working solution for long winter periods with low wind production and the sun is only up for a max few hours per day. Nuclear can also be much cheaper depending on where it is built and how it is financed.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Why would opex and amortised capital scale with fuel price?
  - belorn 4y ago
    The report is likely this one: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2019-12/7057-proj-costs-electricity-2015.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2019-12... The $147 figure is basically the worst case scenario.
jules 4y ago
> You can however price this in, and I doubt it accounts for 110$/MW. What do you base this on?
illiac786 4y ago
EDF has published a paper stating they can scale 80% down and then up again, every day, within 30min. In practice, they have done something like 20% within an hour. It was early 2019, there was such a crazy wind that they had to reduce nuclear production also (after already reducing coal, gas etc. to the min). I think what they really can do is somewhere in between. sources, it was on l’energeek, but in French.

legulere 4y ago

Scheduling also raises costs though. Costs don’t go down much for nuclear power plants if you let them run at reduced output. Nuclear also isn’t as reliable as it seems as it can be seen in France. Renewables even have the advantage that they produce electricity mostly when it’s needed. Photovoltaics during the day and wind during winter when heating is most needed.

fredestine 4y ago
macron removed investment and focus on nuclear in his last mandate before realising that being woke made france broke (luckily not like germany broke - you know like in a way that when there is no sun or wind they need to call Putin to send some energy) now he reverted his thinking because money and energy is more important than beliefs when you needs them. just like usa or germany reactivated coal and biden is selling fracked gas to europe at gold price.
- Krasnol 4y ago
  > macron removed investment and focus on nuclear in his last mandate before realising that being woke made france broke None of those problems OP described have anything to do with that overblown statement. Investment may have been removed for FUTURE projects but not for current operation which is highly subsidised by the French taxpayer guaranteeing the fixed price the Government decides on. Also Germany reactivated those dirty plants also to help France out. The whole European grid is helping the nuclear nation out and will continue to do so until France diversifies its power generation infrastructure.
  - fredestine 4y ago
    the investments included maintenance of existing infrastructure. france has more than half its reactor being off right now. guess what? invest more 5 years before and we wouldnt be there today. so yes. it is not overblown it is factual
    - Krasnol 4y ago

ncmncm 4y ago

Raises cost, but it is still way below cost of nukes.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Nuclear in the UK has a capacity factor of around 60%. Availability is in the 70-80% range. Yeah it's (usually) planned, but it's a decently long time in which you need those gas plants. Why not just build solar instead and fuel those same gas plants with hydrogen or methane you plucked from the air with your $20-30/MWh unscheduled electricity? Plus, you can get solar and storage as an off the shelf item today as a retail customer for less per watt than recent reactors in UK/France or even USA. 8kW nameplate solar and 16kWh storage capacity is about $10k which matches 1kW of net from eg UK projects of around 2.5GW net for 26 billion pounds fairly closely. Yeah if you live far north or have a long cloudy month in winter you'll be relying on that gas plant, but so does the nuclear reactor. Plus you'll be dumping 10-20kWh/day into the grid on the good days. Provides a decent incentive to figure out how to store it, and even if you're only getting 5c/kWh for it, it'll pay for replacement in 7-10 years or so when prices have dropped another 50-80% without sacrificing your kilowatt.

neilwilson 4y ago
Solar requires land area. Storage requires land area. Britain isn't that sunny - particularly not in winter. Nuclear has a very small footprint on a crowded island. Plus we have Rolls Royce SMRs who have been building nuclear reactors for a while.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  That is the admitted cost of Hinkley C and lower bound on the cost of Sizewell (it will go up, they always do). Sizewell is a rolls royce smr. Matching end user retail cost of solar. Right now. By the time sizewell comes online it'll be a fraction. It's also calculated with a 12.5% capacity factor which is winter in the UK. Add in overnight costs and it's extremely one sided. You could add as much net capacity as the UK has in nuclear in just above the space used for parking cars. You could add twice to four times that again just on detached house rooftops. Even as a commercial installation with no other purpose, a 4km square is hardly an insurmountable barrier. The initial capital budget of sizewell and hinkley alone could provide 30-80GW of nameplate solar or a rooftop system on every building in the country. If there are trillions in the pot, by all means go ham with fission, but when low carbon sources are fighting for the scraps left over after subsidizing fossil fuels we have to do the thing that is effective first.

dignick 4y ago

I’m a firm believer in distributed generation and storage, i.e. solar on the roof and battery on premises. This has the added benefits of reducing load on the grid and increasing resiliency. It should be required for all new buildings in regulations.

dfjklseldklk 4y ago
In fact, solar on roof often loads the local grid in unhelpful ways (they were designed for asymmetric loads). I'm in favour of renewables, but done in the way that actually makes most economic and environmental sense. In the Uk we threw money at rich people with £15k to install 4kwh solar rigs on their houses. That money would have been much better spent subsidising large industrial installations.

dfjklseldklk 4y ago

This is oft repeated, but once the cost of renewables is low enough it would have (usually un-modelled) second order effects on end users which may make this less important. Some industries literally can't turn off production without damaging plant, but if some can then where energy cost is ~30% of fossil/nuclear than it might make sense to over-provision industrial capacity and only run it when the sun is shining.