9 ms·

Why is nuclear so expensive?

by seventytwo 4y ago

himlion 4y ago
Because of complexity, safety requirements and disposal of spent material.
- hedora 4y ago
  If that's true, why is coal cheap? It releases way more radiation than nuclear, and kills > 100x more people per kWh on average. Nuclear is expensive because of politics.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    So we should add safety requirements to fossil fuels, then they'll be even more obsolete. You're not making a great argument for your trustworthiness "not letting us poison the world and directly kill millions is unfair and political" is at least a rare piece of honesty, but hardly a compelling argument.
cassepipe 4y ago
Because it is the only industry that is legally obliged to take into account almost all of its negative externalities, that is waste management and potential accidents.
- pydry 4y ago
  If it did that it would actually be even more expensive. The disaster liability cap in America means plants need insurance that pays out up to $300 million but no more. Fukushima cost ~$800 billion, so they are essentially subsidized by the general public to the tune of 99.97% of what is probably their "real" insurance costs. So no, we are measurably on the hook for more negative externalities than we are for solar/wind.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    A “subsidy” that has never been paid. You’d be hard pressed to find a reactor with its backup power in the basement in the US, and especially not on the coast.
    - pydry 4y ago
      >A “subsidy” that has never been paid. Free insurance is a subsidy. Pretending that it isnt is dishonest. Japan paid $0 in 2010 and by 2012 an $800 billion bill came due. Recent nuclear legislation has focused on extending the legal life of aging plants. Nuclear power is getting more dangerous in America not safer. It ought to be a moot point anyway given the extreme cost of nuclear power without the subsidy.
      - ch4s3 4y ago
        Japan’s accident was entirely preventable and a similar scenario couldn’t happen at any facility in the US. Needing to build an ice wall to contain radioactive water pumped in from the ocean was a huge portion of the cost and truly unique.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        This will be equally true of the next trillion dollar accident and the one after. Circumstances that defeat defense in depth are necessarily unique and convoluted. My guess is the next one will involve at least one set of forged documents about components and some manager pushing past a boundary to meet ever tightening cost targets.
        ch4s3 4y ago
        There is no precedent for this. The NRC is constantly monitoring plants in the US and operating staff are regularly rotated geographically to prevent them from becoming complacent. There are so many layers of protection around nuclear power in the US that it would take many pages to describe. That you think it would be possible to forge documents under managerial pressure shows that you Don know the first thing about nuclear power in the US.
- consumer451 4y ago
  > is legally obliged to take into account almost all of its negative externalities I always thought waste disposal was not accounted for. Could you point me to any information indicating otherwise?
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    Sorry for the amp link but here you go https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/12/18/nuclear-waste-why-theres-no-permanent-nuclear-waste-dump-in-us.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/12/18/nuc...
    - consumer451 4y ago
      Wow! Thanks, I had no idea. Usually localities fight for federal money, this is one case where that appears to not be the case. That article is a great read in any case.
      - ch4s3 4y ago
        Np. You should check out James Mahaffey’s books like Atomic Awakening if you’re interested in the subject. https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Awakening-History-Future-Nuclear/dp/1605981273 https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Awakening-History-Future-Nucle...
- pencilguin 4y ago
  That is not, in fact, why nukes are super-expensive. It is just a very cost-intensive technology, at every stage. Even its natural output after everything, process heat, is expensive to turn into useful power.
robocat 4y ago
Apart from externalities, there are two other common reasons why commenters make wind/solar look wayyy cheaper than it is. 1: Commenters don’t compare like-for-like energy production, instead they often compare using the nameplate capacity e.g. compare construction cost of a 1GW nuclear plant with a 1GW solar plant. The right thing to compare is GWh produced. Capacity factor converts GW to GWh, and the capacity factor for nuclear is about 90% and for solar is about 15%[1]. Therefore the equivalent of a 1GW nuclear plant is 6GW of installed solar. 2: Commenters ignore the cost of systems needed to provide power in winter on windless dark nights. The real cost of wind/solar needs to include the necessary energy storage (batteries or pumped hydro or stored chemical energy or whatever). Some of that can be overcome by installing overcapacity (e.g. install 3x as much GW solar to cover aircon usage in early evening in Texas). Nuclear is very good at providing power at all times. Storage is very expensive - usually doubles or triples the cost of the wind/solar installation. The need for storage goes up as our dependency on wind/solar power increases. By ignoring the above, solar/wind can look 5x to 10x cheaper than a fair comparison with nuclear. Many commenters are not interested in facts or numbers - they pick heavily biased numbers to make the argument they want to (usually that nuclear = bad). A worked example of wind versus nuclear using chemical storage that shows 10% difference in cost: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-cheaper-and-greener-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea... even with their obvious biases towards wind, and comparing against the crappy Hinkley-C, they are really struggling to show wind is cheaper. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/799330/global-solar-pv-installation-cost-per-kilowatt/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/799330/global-solar-pv-i...
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > 1: Commenters don’t compare like-for-like energy production, instead they often compare using the nameplate capacity e.g. compare construction cost of a 1GW nuclear plant with a 1GW solar plant. The right thing to compare is GWh produced. Capacity factor converts GW to GWh, and the capacity factor for nuclear is about 90% and for solar is about 15%[1]. Therefore the equivalent of a 1GW nuclear plant is 6GW of installed solar This is captured by net capacity and LCOE. LCOE of new solar is rapidly approaching MCOE of existing nuclear. > Commenters ignore the cost of systems needed to provide power in winter on windless dark nights. The real cost of wind/solar needs to include the necessary energy storage (batteries or pumped hydro or stored chemical energy or whatever). Some of that can be overcome by installing overcapacity (e.g. install 3x as much GW solar to cover aircon usage in early evening in Texas). Nuclear is very good at providing power at all times. Storage is very expensive - usually doubles or triples the cost of the wind/solar installation. The need for storage goes up as our dependency on wind/solar power increases. This is captured by total system cost. While they're about on par (or favouring nuclear in europe) right now, today's optimistic renewable price is tomorrow's pessimistic. Storage is about to do what PV did in the 2010s, and anyone being forced to pay for a half working AP-1000 or EPR in 2030 rather than 2x the net production in PV panels made of sand and a battery array made of rust all hooked together with aluminum for their utility money is rightfully going to be extremely angry.

Why is nuclear so expensive?

himlion 4y ago

Because of complexity, safety requirements and disposal of spent material.

hedora 4y ago
If that's true, why is coal cheap? It releases way more radiation than nuclear, and kills > 100x more people per kWh on average. Nuclear is expensive because of politics.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  So we should add safety requirements to fossil fuels, then they'll be even more obsolete. You're not making a great argument for your trustworthiness "not letting us poison the world and directly kill millions is unfair and political" is at least a rare piece of honesty, but hardly a compelling argument.

cassepipe 4y ago

Because it is the only industry that is legally obliged to take into account almost all of its negative externalities, that is waste management and potential accidents.

pydry 4y ago
If it did that it would actually be even more expensive. The disaster liability cap in America means plants need insurance that pays out up to $300 million but no more. Fukushima cost ~$800 billion, so they are essentially subsidized by the general public to the tune of 99.97% of what is probably their "real" insurance costs. So no, we are measurably on the hook for more negative externalities than we are for solar/wind.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  A “subsidy” that has never been paid. You’d be hard pressed to find a reactor with its backup power in the basement in the US, and especially not on the coast.
  - pydry 4y ago
    >A “subsidy” that has never been paid. Free insurance is a subsidy. Pretending that it isnt is dishonest. Japan paid $0 in 2010 and by 2012 an $800 billion bill came due. Recent nuclear legislation has focused on extending the legal life of aging plants. Nuclear power is getting more dangerous in America not safer. It ought to be a moot point anyway given the extreme cost of nuclear power without the subsidy.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      Japan’s accident was entirely preventable and a similar scenario couldn’t happen at any facility in the US. Needing to build an ice wall to contain radioactive water pumped in from the ocean was a huge portion of the cost and truly unique.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        This will be equally true of the next trillion dollar accident and the one after. Circumstances that defeat defense in depth are necessarily unique and convoluted. My guess is the next one will involve at least one set of forged documents about components and some manager pushing past a boundary to meet ever tightening cost targets.
        ch4s3 4y ago
        There is no precedent for this. The NRC is constantly monitoring plants in the US and operating staff are regularly rotated geographically to prevent them from becoming complacent. There are so many layers of protection around nuclear power in the US that it would take many pages to describe. That you think it would be possible to forge documents under managerial pressure shows that you Don know the first thing about nuclear power in the US.
consumer451 4y ago
> is legally obliged to take into account almost all of its negative externalities I always thought waste disposal was not accounted for. Could you point me to any information indicating otherwise?
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Sorry for the amp link but here you go https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/12/18/nuclear-waste-why-theres-no-permanent-nuclear-waste-dump-in-us.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/12/18/nuc...
  - consumer451 4y ago
    Wow! Thanks, I had no idea. Usually localities fight for federal money, this is one case where that appears to not be the case. That article is a great read in any case.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      Np. You should check out James Mahaffey’s books like Atomic Awakening if you’re interested in the subject. https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Awakening-History-Future-Nuclear/dp/1605981273 https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Awakening-History-Future-Nucle...
pencilguin 4y ago
That is not, in fact, why nukes are super-expensive. It is just a very cost-intensive technology, at every stage. Even its natural output after everything, process heat, is expensive to turn into useful power.

robocat 4y ago

Apart from externalities, there are two other common reasons why commenters make wind/solar look wayyy cheaper than it is. 1: Commenters don’t compare like-for-like energy production, instead they often compare using the nameplate capacity e.g. compare construction cost of a 1GW nuclear plant with a 1GW solar plant. The right thing to compare is GWh produced. Capacity factor converts GW to GWh, and the capacity factor for nuclear is about 90% and for solar is about 15%[1]. Therefore the equivalent of a 1GW nuclear plant is 6GW of installed solar. 2: Commenters ignore the cost of systems needed to provide power in winter on windless dark nights. The real cost of wind/solar needs to include the necessary energy storage (batteries or pumped hydro or stored chemical energy or whatever). Some of that can be overcome by installing overcapacity (e.g. install 3x as much GW solar to cover aircon usage in early evening in Texas). Nuclear is very good at providing power at all times. Storage is very expensive - usually doubles or triples the cost of the wind/solar installation. The need for storage goes up as our dependency on wind/solar power increases. By ignoring the above, solar/wind can look 5x to 10x cheaper than a fair comparison with nuclear. Many commenters are not interested in facts or numbers - they pick heavily biased numbers to make the argument they want to (usually that nuclear = bad). A worked example of wind versus nuclear using chemical storage that shows 10% difference in cost: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-cheaper-and-greener-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea... even with their obvious biases towards wind, and comparing against the crappy Hinkley-C, they are really struggling to show wind is cheaper. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/799330/global-solar-pv-installation-cost-per-kilowatt/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/799330/global-solar-pv-i...

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> 1: Commenters don’t compare like-for-like energy production, instead they often compare using the nameplate capacity e.g. compare construction cost of a 1GW nuclear plant with a 1GW solar plant. The right thing to compare is GWh produced. Capacity factor converts GW to GWh, and the capacity factor for nuclear is about 90% and for solar is about 15%[1]. Therefore the equivalent of a 1GW nuclear plant is 6GW of installed solar This is captured by net capacity and LCOE. LCOE of new solar is rapidly approaching MCOE of existing nuclear. > Commenters ignore the cost of systems needed to provide power in winter on windless dark nights. The real cost of wind/solar needs to include the necessary energy storage (batteries or pumped hydro or stored chemical energy or whatever). Some of that can be overcome by installing overcapacity (e.g. install 3x as much GW solar to cover aircon usage in early evening in Texas). Nuclear is very good at providing power at all times. Storage is very expensive - usually doubles or triples the cost of the wind/solar installation. The need for storage goes up as our dependency on wind/solar power increases. This is captured by total system cost. While they're about on par (or favouring nuclear in europe) right now, today's optimistic renewable price is tomorrow's pessimistic. Storage is about to do what PV did in the 2010s, and anyone being forced to pay for a half working AP-1000 or EPR in 2030 rather than 2x the net production in PV panels made of sand and a battery array made of rust all hooked together with aluminum for their utility money is rightfully going to be extremely angry.