5 ms·

Nuclear is roughly equal to wind on a modular foundation if you account for the fact that the tower and foundation outlast the nacelle. The "$2/GW" nuclear reac

Nuclear is roughly equal to wind on a modular foundation if you account for the fact that the tower and foundation outlast the nacelle. The "$2/GW" nuclear reactors were all built by state run agencies with opaque budgets and in France's, Japan's, and South Korea's cases have all proved wildly unreliable in addition to having opaque public subsidy on top of the very large visible subsidies in the supply chain and finance. If you think it's possible to match the prices China reports that megaprojects cost, I'd like to see any examples of projects in the global north with auditable accounting matching their figures in hydro, or highways, or rail, or ports or... basically anything. In mediocre to good areas with something like the PEG racking system solar uses about the same raw material than nuclear already and it's almost all sand. By the time a new nuke came online this will be far less. Both are recyclable. 12 hour storage adds negligible mass and can easily cover daily variation. Intermittent power without storage can easily feed dispatchable loads like EV charging, chemical feedstock and heat production. These vastly exceed non-dispatchable electricity and can be used for virtual seasonal storage. There are only a small handful of areas best served by nuclear, and most of them have hydro or nuclear already. There's a narrow niche where nuclear is optimal: Grid electricity between 50% and 80% penetration in the 50% of areas where hybrid CSP + e-fuel backup isn't better. This niche is rapidly shrinking and could easily be gone by the time one is built. More carbon can be removed faster and with fewer resources by throwing renewables at the other 10 or so TW of fossil fuels currently being burnt. Until those resources are committed, new nuclear just delays things.

Manuel_D 4y ago
> Nuclear is roughly equal to wind on a modular foundation if you account for the fact that the tower and foundation outlast the nacelle. Except intermittent sources also need storage. They also need long distance transmission lines to bring power from remote areas of generation to places of demand (whereas you can just place nuclear plants next to areas of demand). This is a common pattern in renewables discussion: laser focus on generation and ignoring the fact that wind and solar have storage and transmission requirements that other energy sources don't have. > The "$2/GW" nuclear reactors were all built by state run agencies with opaque budgets Nope, do more research. These were all built in the US with public cost history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peach_Bottom_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peach_Bottom_Nuclear_Generat... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nuclear_Generating_Sta... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuire_Nuclear_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuire_Nuclear_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_C._Cook_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_C._Cook_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_Point_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_Point_Nuclear_Generat... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Nuclear_One https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Nuclear_One https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucie_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucie_Nuclear_Power_Plan... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Anna_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Anna_Nuclear_Generatin... > 12 hour storage adds negligible mass and can easily cover daily variation 12 hours of storage for the world is 30,000 GWh. This is 70-100 times the global battery production output. "Negligible mass" is going to have to see a hundredfold increase in som extraction industries. By comparison, nuclear already produces 20% of the US's electricity hand about a tenth of the world's electricity. A tenfold increase is much more manageable than a hundredfold increase. > Intermittent power without storage can easily feed dispatchable loads like EV charging, chemical feedstock and heat production. These vastly exceed non-dispatchable electricity and can be used for virtual seasonal storage. If you're going to tell chemical industries and metallurgy plants that they'll have to cease production for part of the year when renewables are producing lower than average output, then that has to be factored into your costs. If the price of steel and ammonia goes up because they can't run their plants as usual, then that cost is ultimately borne by consumers. You can't just use load shifting as part of the plan and ignore the costs of load shifting. "Virtual seasonal storage" amounts to "tell industries to shut off during winter". And no, heat production is not non-dispatchable unless you're okay with people freezing to death.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > Nope, do more research. These were all built in the US with public cost history. On top of not including the cost of finance, liabity, or upstream supply chain which was provided by state military projects. The first one you linked had repeated safety violations and maintenance issues and has no record if how much they cost to remedy. The quoted price leads here: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6259203 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6259203 And is in nominal dollars not 1986 dollars. $763 million 1966 dollars is $7 billion, not $3 billion. Add in the cost of finance and you get $10-14 billion or around $7/watt for an unsafe, inefficient plant with corrupt management. And this was not a greenfield site, it already had work for unit 1. Do more research. Every pro nuclear claim turns out to be a lie when examined even with the slightest scrutiny. All of them.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Your article studies plants built after the nuclear boom, which of course leads to higher prices. See the cluster of plants built cheaply starting in the mid 60s [1]? That's the nuclear boom. Your article studies plants still in construction at the end of 1986, which is when the nuclear boom tapered off following thee mile island. Deliberately or not you're pulling a slight of hand here by shifting the time frame. But in the end, this helps reinforce my point: nuclear is expensive when built in small numbers as your study demonstrates, and cheaper when built at scale as the study I'll link below explains. Finance liability is a fancy word for debt: this has nothing to do with construction costs, and everything to do with financing models. You're right, nuclear would be even cheaper if better financing was done. Upstream supply chain is accounted for by the downstream purchase costs. This is like saying wind turbine costs don't include the costs of mining copper for the dynamos. That cost is in included when the wind turbine manufacturer pays for copper coils. Research on nuclear's cost history overwhelmingly finds that costs are lower when built at scale: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516300106 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151... 1. https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0301421516300106-gr2.jpg https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S03014215163001... > Every pro nuclear claim turns out to be a lie when examined even with the slightest scrutiny. All of them. Well, you sound like you're engaging with this topic in well-adjusted and unbiased manner!

Manuel_D 4y ago

> Nuclear is roughly equal to wind on a modular foundation if you account for the fact that the tower and foundation outlast the nacelle. Except intermittent sources also need storage. They also need long distance transmission lines to bring power from remote areas of generation to places of demand (whereas you can just place nuclear plants next to areas of demand). This is a common pattern in renewables discussion: laser focus on generation and ignoring the fact that wind and solar have storage and transmission requirements that other energy sources don't have. > The "$2/GW" nuclear reactors were all built by state run agencies with opaque budgets Nope, do more research. These were all built in the US with public cost history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peach_Bottom_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peach_Bottom_Nuclear_Generat... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nuclear_Generating_Sta... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuire_Nuclear_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuire_Nuclear_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_C._Cook_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_C._Cook_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_Point_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_Point_Nuclear_Generat... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Nuclear_One https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Nuclear_One https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucie_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucie_Nuclear_Power_Plan... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Anna_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Anna_Nuclear_Generatin... > 12 hour storage adds negligible mass and can easily cover daily variation 12 hours of storage for the world is 30,000 GWh. This is 70-100 times the global battery production output. "Negligible mass" is going to have to see a hundredfold increase in som extraction industries. By comparison, nuclear already produces 20% of the US's electricity hand about a tenth of the world's electricity. A tenfold increase is much more manageable than a hundredfold increase. > Intermittent power without storage can easily feed dispatchable loads like EV charging, chemical feedstock and heat production. These vastly exceed non-dispatchable electricity and can be used for virtual seasonal storage. If you're going to tell chemical industries and metallurgy plants that they'll have to cease production for part of the year when renewables are producing lower than average output, then that has to be factored into your costs. If the price of steel and ammonia goes up because they can't run their plants as usual, then that cost is ultimately borne by consumers. You can't just use load shifting as part of the plan and ignore the costs of load shifting. "Virtual seasonal storage" amounts to "tell industries to shut off during winter". And no, heat production is not non-dispatchable unless you're okay with people freezing to death.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Nope, do more research. These were all built in the US with public cost history. On top of not including the cost of finance, liabity, or upstream supply chain which was provided by state military projects. The first one you linked had repeated safety violations and maintenance issues and has no record if how much they cost to remedy. The quoted price leads here: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6259203 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6259203 And is in nominal dollars not 1986 dollars. $763 million 1966 dollars is $7 billion, not $3 billion. Add in the cost of finance and you get $10-14 billion or around $7/watt for an unsafe, inefficient plant with corrupt management. And this was not a greenfield site, it already had work for unit 1. Do more research. Every pro nuclear claim turns out to be a lie when examined even with the slightest scrutiny. All of them.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Your article studies plants built after the nuclear boom, which of course leads to higher prices. See the cluster of plants built cheaply starting in the mid 60s [1]? That's the nuclear boom. Your article studies plants still in construction at the end of 1986, which is when the nuclear boom tapered off following thee mile island. Deliberately or not you're pulling a slight of hand here by shifting the time frame. But in the end, this helps reinforce my point: nuclear is expensive when built in small numbers as your study demonstrates, and cheaper when built at scale as the study I'll link below explains. Finance liability is a fancy word for debt: this has nothing to do with construction costs, and everything to do with financing models. You're right, nuclear would be even cheaper if better financing was done. Upstream supply chain is accounted for by the downstream purchase costs. This is like saying wind turbine costs don't include the costs of mining copper for the dynamos. That cost is in included when the wind turbine manufacturer pays for copper coils. Research on nuclear's cost history overwhelmingly finds that costs are lower when built at scale: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516300106 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151... 1. https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0301421516300106-gr2.jpg https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S03014215163001... > Every pro nuclear claim turns out to be a lie when examined even with the slightest scrutiny. All of them. Well, you sound like you're engaging with this topic in well-adjusted and unbiased manner!