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Nuclear is not fundamentally expensive[0], and most nuclear power plants currently in operation were cheap when they were built. The high costs of building new
by jjk166 4y ago
Nuclear is not fundamentally expensive[0], and most nuclear power plants currently in operation were cheap when they were built. The high costs of building new powerplants is a result of going decades without building any, leading to a loss of experience. Even still, nuclear remains competitive with other traditional power generation technologies like coal. Only with recent advancements in fracking did natural gas supplant coal as the go to fuel, and Wind and solar have become extremely inexpensive, but only in the past 10 years, in large part due to a concerted effort to scale up those industries. In other parts of the world where nuclear power did not have a decades long hiatus it remains extremely competitive with even these renewables, for example in South Korea where LCOE for nuclear is half that of solar.
Of course you may have only became bearish on nuclear when the costs got high, but there are a large number of people who were bearish before then, which is what made costs high.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516300106 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...
- BonoboIO 4y agoBuilding it maybe can get cheaper ... destruction and disposal will be even more expensive. Look at Germany. They are the first to really destruct the first power plant and it will take 20 to 25 years. Everything has to be checked.
- jjk166 4y agoThe cost of decommissioning is included
- Galaxeblaffer 4y agoWhich is mind bendingly stupid.. why would you switch from nuclear to coal in the middle of an energy crisis. Germany is the epitome of failed, stupid and corrupt energy planning and are now pulling the whole of Europe down with them.
- BonoboIO 4y agoIn fact France is pulling Europe down. France was 80% nuclear energy, but half their power plants are down or failing so they have to import power from Germany (which is produced with natural gas). France was a net exporter, now they need massively import power. Germany could handle their power load, but not theirs + france.
- Galaxeblaffer 4y agoMaybe for a short while, all reactors will be back online before winter and they are planning to build 10 new plants. France's only problem is that they also have a crazy "green" movement trying to ruin their nuclear program and has successfully hindered modernization until now. All i all France's nuclear program has been an overwhelming success, and they've managed to cover almost 40% of their total energy consumption with nuclear compare that to the <10% that renewables cover in Germany and it's easy to see that it was much much faster building nuclear for green energy.
- aidenn0 4y agoTFA (if you include parts 1 and 2) addresses all of these points, though it's only answer for SK is: > The fact that South Korea is the only country to exhibit this trend has led some experts to speculate that the cost data (which comes directly from the utility and hasn’t been independently audited) has been manipulated and we shouldn’t draw conclusions from it.
- jjk166 4y agoIf you read the paper, South Korea is clearly not the only country to exhibit this trend. Pretty much every non-western developed nation has nuclear power which is competitive with other nations. It makes perfect sense that South Korea, being an extremely advanced economy which also waited to go nuclear and thus did so with technologies that incorporate many lessons learned, along with a very well structured program for implementation, saw some of the best results.
- oliwary 4y agoBut the fact is that we did go years without building any, leading to nuclear power plants being more expensive. It is the path we chose (rightly or wrongly) and today solar and wind is cheaper in the western world. Even if continuing to invest in nuclear in the 1970s was the right choice, it may no longer be the case today that we have those. (see Path Dependence, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence) In my opinion, rather than spending the many years and billions of dollars on regaining the edge in nuclear, we should expand the capacity of the cheap and clean energy sources we have access to today.
- jjk166 4y agoThat's a perfectly sensible argument, my point was just that for most of its history, the anti-nuclear movement was not making that argument.
- oliwary 4y agoThat is fair! I do wonder where we would be had we never stopped investing in nuclear. Probably much better from a global warming perspective - alas, here we are.
- xupybd 4y agoNuclear runs constantly. Solar and wind don't. This is a significant problem. Storage is hard and inefficient. We don't currently have a viable complete renewable solution. Nuclear is much better for the planet than fossil fuels and is the only option to bridge the gap required to operate the current renewables.
- donmaq 4y ago> Nuclear is much better for the planet than fossil fuels and is the only option to bridge the gap required to operate the current renewables. That's a strong declaration without any solution in sight for nuclear power-generated waste: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-waste https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-waste
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago> The high costs of building new powerplants is a result of going decades without building any, leading to a loss of experience current economic model assigns $0 to skilled and experienced workforce. In reality it is worth billions. This productive asset is degrading or beind destroyed through union busting, precarious working conditions, wage fixing, etc.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago> The high costs of building new powerplants is a result of going decades without building any, leading to a loss of experience Cool, let's get the price ratio between the early PWR reactors in the west and the ones started in the early 90s (just after the peak of spending) then and multiply it by current costs to get a enstimate. That comes to what, $20000/kWe?