4 ms·

My understanding is on-shore windmills cost about ~$1.5M and $50k in maintenance per year - last for 20 years - for 1MW. I'm skeptical this can come anywhere c

My understanding is on-shore windmills cost about ~$1.5M and $50k in maintenance per year - last for 20 years - for 1MW. I'm skeptical this can come anywhere close to that. But if it's within an order of magnitude - it could replace old coal powerplants as they're decommissioned.

beambot 4y ago
Apples & oranges: wind is an intermittent generator versus eVinci for base generation
- Galaxeblaffer 4y ago
  bingo! it's crazy that people keep comparing this to wind turbines.
aeyes 4y ago
A problem with on-shore wind is that it is already getting hard to find more space for it in some European countries. You also can't put windmills in densely populated areas where most power is needed so you have to take energy transmission cost into account as well. If it can be demonstrated that these reactors are safe, you could put them almost anywhere.
- Galaxeblaffer 4y ago
  the number one problem with onshore wind is a capacity factor around 30% and on top of that you could have long periods with no wind at all.
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    Periods where wind operates below 5% capacity in Poland are really common. I've seen it once below 1%. When I write this it's 7,5% - below 10% for 14 hours already.
- pifm_guy 4y ago
  Nobody in the developed world will allow a nuclear reactor to be built anywhere near their house... So, however safe these are, they'll still be relegated to 100+ miles from any big city. So the transmission costs will be similar to wind/solar.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  While the operational safety sounds excellent, I am worried about what a generalization of this kind of reactor would entail. Your typical reactor is under heavy surveillance and 200 (67?) times more powerful : we are very unlikely to "lose track" of the fuel. Let's say this becomes moderately popular and we soon have a million of them across the world (enough for about 10% of our today's energy needs)... who is going to keep track of all of them ?! The High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium required here is enriched between 5% and 20% compared to a conventional reactor using between 3% and 5% fuel. Because enriching from the natural 0.7% to 20% is 90% of the effort, 20% is considered to be the line separating civilian and military uses. And we're much closer to that limit with these reactors. I am baffled that this is not being even mentioned in the article, nor the pdf ? (I guess they are not particularly willing to disclose just how many of those would need to be gathered for the minimum 25 kg of 90% enriched Uranium for a bomb ?) And as safe as these might be under normal operation, how many decades for a forgotten abandoned one, exposed to the weather, to leak ? How much and what kind of radiation release can we expect ? (Carried by water to the closest steam I assume?)
  - XorNot 4y ago
    You need over 90% enriched for practical nuclear weapon use. It is not "most of the effort" to get to 20%: in fact, if you're stealing it then it's none of the effort: you don't have a centrifuge operation, so whether it's natural or 20% or 70% it is all equally useless. The difficulty of enrichment is the plant and logistics of doing it, none of which you can steal.
    - BlueTemplar 4y ago
      I should have been more clear that I am assuming an hostile nation-state with some minimal capabilities : the biggest difficulty is probably to be able to deliver the bomb to a target once you have one, which gets even worse if you want to use it as an open threat for deterrence rather than a (frankly suicidal) surprise attack : you pretty much need an ICBM (see all the North Korean failures before they (supposedly) stole SSR-Ukrainian tech). Difficulty of enrichment seems to be heavily proportional to time : the whole "game" around Iran's enrichment seems to be about not letting them get it high enough that they can go from weapons-useless uranium to a ready bomb in a short enough amount of time for the other countries not being able to react. (There's also a possibility of a much smaller actor to make a dirty bomb from that mildly enriched uranium, but I have even less ideas about how likely that is.)
thinkmcfly 4y ago
Uh, you can't run life saving medical equipment or refrigerator service on wind turbines. That means that all the bodies of people that die without ventilators etc, during no wind days would have no chilled morgue to sit in, and would rot
- justatdotin 4y ago
  you can run life saving medical equipment or refrigerator service on batteries. I think it's a standard thing for vital infrastructure to be backed by generators. big industrial consumers can factor their own specialised requirements for storage, backup.
- bobkazamakis 4y ago
  >Uh, you can't run life saving medical equipment or refrigerator service on wind turbines Man! If only there was some device that stored energy for later use!
  - loeg 4y ago
    You gotta include it in the cost figures, though.
    - mikeyouse 4y ago
      Wind has the distinct advantage compared to this tech in that it actually exists. I can buy a turbine tomorrow and have it online in a month or two.
      - joebob42 4y ago
        Sure, but that's a different and unrelated argument to the question of theoretical cost which is what was being discussed.
        mikeyouse 4y ago
        Sure. This costs infinity because it doesn't exist and 100% wind based power generation would cost less than that, but more than a wind turbine by itself to include storage.
c2h5oh 4y ago
Current wholesale price of electricity in EU is 110-120 USD / MWh. 5 * 110 Euro * 24 hours * 365 days * 8 years planned service life = $38,533,000. If they can offer a price under 5M USD per MW they won't have problem finding buyers. This doesn't even account for savings for businesses that can consume most of that output - they save another 20-30% on transmission fees + there are several MW of waste heat as low temperature steam that can be used directly or indirectly in many industrial processes.
- XorNot 4y ago
  Yeah dedicated units for large industry would be a huge buyer here: if you can hit the right price point, aluminium smelters in particular would be very interested customers I suspect.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 4y ago
  This thing only outputs hot water, you need a lot more equipment and people to turn that into useful power on the grid.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Fuel costs, maintenance, and operation would be over $2M. Normal energy prices are about half of what you quoted. It's TBD if they come back down to normal in the near future in the EU. You're looking at $18M in revenue. This thing will probably cost more than $10M to purchase, and then you need land, a grid-tie in, and permits. It would still work - but the numbers aren't going to look as good as wind & especially solar.
  - rsj_hn 4y ago
    Comparing the price of unreliable energy to reliable energy is like comparing the price of a junk bond with a treasury and wondering why the latter costs so much more. It costs more because when you turn it on you get a known and reliable source of power, day or night, cloudy or sunny, windy or quiet. That's why it costs more.

beambot 4y ago

Apples & oranges: wind is an intermittent generator versus eVinci for base generation

Galaxeblaffer 4y ago
bingo! it's crazy that people keep comparing this to wind turbines.

aeyes 4y ago

A problem with on-shore wind is that it is already getting hard to find more space for it in some European countries. You also can't put windmills in densely populated areas where most power is needed so you have to take energy transmission cost into account as well. If it can be demonstrated that these reactors are safe, you could put them almost anywhere.

Galaxeblaffer 4y ago
the number one problem with onshore wind is a capacity factor around 30% and on top of that you could have long periods with no wind at all.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  Periods where wind operates below 5% capacity in Poland are really common. I've seen it once below 1%. When I write this it's 7,5% - below 10% for 14 hours already.
pifm_guy 4y ago
Nobody in the developed world will allow a nuclear reactor to be built anywhere near their house... So, however safe these are, they'll still be relegated to 100+ miles from any big city. So the transmission costs will be similar to wind/solar.
BlueTemplar 4y ago
While the operational safety sounds excellent, I am worried about what a generalization of this kind of reactor would entail. Your typical reactor is under heavy surveillance and 200 (67?) times more powerful : we are very unlikely to "lose track" of the fuel. Let's say this becomes moderately popular and we soon have a million of them across the world (enough for about 10% of our today's energy needs)... who is going to keep track of all of them ?! The High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium required here is enriched between 5% and 20% compared to a conventional reactor using between 3% and 5% fuel. Because enriching from the natural 0.7% to 20% is 90% of the effort, 20% is considered to be the line separating civilian and military uses. And we're much closer to that limit with these reactors. I am baffled that this is not being even mentioned in the article, nor the pdf ? (I guess they are not particularly willing to disclose just how many of those would need to be gathered for the minimum 25 kg of 90% enriched Uranium for a bomb ?) And as safe as these might be under normal operation, how many decades for a forgotten abandoned one, exposed to the weather, to leak ? How much and what kind of radiation release can we expect ? (Carried by water to the closest steam I assume?)
- XorNot 4y ago
  You need over 90% enriched for practical nuclear weapon use. It is not "most of the effort" to get to 20%: in fact, if you're stealing it then it's none of the effort: you don't have a centrifuge operation, so whether it's natural or 20% or 70% it is all equally useless. The difficulty of enrichment is the plant and logistics of doing it, none of which you can steal.
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    I should have been more clear that I am assuming an hostile nation-state with some minimal capabilities : the biggest difficulty is probably to be able to deliver the bomb to a target once you have one, which gets even worse if you want to use it as an open threat for deterrence rather than a (frankly suicidal) surprise attack : you pretty much need an ICBM (see all the North Korean failures before they (supposedly) stole SSR-Ukrainian tech). Difficulty of enrichment seems to be heavily proportional to time : the whole "game" around Iran's enrichment seems to be about not letting them get it high enough that they can go from weapons-useless uranium to a ready bomb in a short enough amount of time for the other countries not being able to react. (There's also a possibility of a much smaller actor to make a dirty bomb from that mildly enriched uranium, but I have even less ideas about how likely that is.)

thinkmcfly 4y ago

Uh, you can't run life saving medical equipment or refrigerator service on wind turbines. That means that all the bodies of people that die without ventilators etc, during no wind days would have no chilled morgue to sit in, and would rot

justatdotin 4y ago
you can run life saving medical equipment or refrigerator service on batteries. I think it's a standard thing for vital infrastructure to be backed by generators. big industrial consumers can factor their own specialised requirements for storage, backup.
bobkazamakis 4y ago
>Uh, you can't run life saving medical equipment or refrigerator service on wind turbines Man! If only there was some device that stored energy for later use!
- loeg 4y ago
  You gotta include it in the cost figures, though.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Wind has the distinct advantage compared to this tech in that it actually exists. I can buy a turbine tomorrow and have it online in a month or two.
    - joebob42 4y ago
      Sure, but that's a different and unrelated argument to the question of theoretical cost which is what was being discussed.
      - mikeyouse 4y ago
        Sure. This costs infinity because it doesn't exist and 100% wind based power generation would cost less than that, but more than a wind turbine by itself to include storage.

c2h5oh 4y ago

Current wholesale price of electricity in EU is 110-120 USD / MWh. 5 * 110 Euro * 24 hours * 365 days * 8 years planned service life = $38,533,000. If they can offer a price under 5M USD per MW they won't have problem finding buyers. This doesn't even account for savings for businesses that can consume most of that output - they save another 20-30% on transmission fees + there are several MW of waste heat as low temperature steam that can be used directly or indirectly in many industrial processes.

XorNot 4y ago
Yeah dedicated units for large industry would be a huge buyer here: if you can hit the right price point, aluminium smelters in particular would be very interested customers I suspect.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Retric 4y ago
This thing only outputs hot water, you need a lot more equipment and people to turn that into useful power on the grid.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Fuel costs, maintenance, and operation would be over $2M. Normal energy prices are about half of what you quoted. It's TBD if they come back down to normal in the near future in the EU. You're looking at $18M in revenue. This thing will probably cost more than $10M to purchase, and then you need land, a grid-tie in, and permits. It would still work - but the numbers aren't going to look as good as wind & especially solar.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  Comparing the price of unreliable energy to reliable energy is like comparing the price of a junk bond with a treasury and wondering why the latter costs so much more. It costs more because when you turn it on you get a known and reliable source of power, day or night, cloudy or sunny, windy or quiet. That's why it costs more.