5 ms·

> Except the construction wasn't at its peak in 1982. Construction was at its peak during the early 1970s, and lurched to a halt after 3 mile island and nuclear

> Except the construction wasn't at its peak in 1982. Construction was at its peak during the early 1970s, and lurched to a halt after 3 mile island and nuclear panic took hold. https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/reactors.html#tab=iso;region=North%20America https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/reactors.html#tab=iso;reg... >So $1.7 billion per GW. This is an exceptionally good price for a system of generation that is geographically independent, is non-intermittent, and is energy dense (and so does not have to involve long transmission lines moving electricity from solar fields and wind farms to cities). You're really stretching here. That's a single pilot plant in an industry with a massive negative learning rate without necessary safety features which is the all-time outlier. I had to go out of my way to find it, and it is not the same metric as you're judging renewables on. You've picked the single ripest possoble cherry. It was also the first turnkey plant so it being the cheap directly contradicts your hypothesis. > So solar panels' cost has to include all the military and communications satellites that pioneered solar panel tech? Most renewable systems also use electronic computers to some degree. This technology was originally pioneered for military encryption and firing computers. You could apply this kind of broken logic to anything. Military and civilian reactor designs are vastly different: the latter are usually mobile, use highly enriched uranium, and are relatively small. If the PV on Jim Doe's roof was required to power the satellite, and the government sold the polysilicon and sent experts to Jinko to help design the manufacturing facility, and provided the funding then yeah. > Except the construction wasn't at its peak in 1982. Construction was at its peak during the early 1970s, and lurched to a halt after 3 mile island and nuclear panic took hold. https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/reactors.html#tab=iso;region=North%20America https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/reactors.html#tab=iso;reg... You appear to be struggling with the difference between start and finish. The largest capacity of plants ever finished in the US was '82. The Arkansaw plant I picked as an example was the last one finished before TMI and was wholly consistent with $6/W (or higher including cost of finance) and a negative learning rate since Paliside. > Do you not see this big cluster of cheap plants built before 3 mile island and then plants got a lot more expensive afterward? I'll draw this in MS paint to make it easier for you: https://i.imgur.com/VD34Zhi.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/VD34Zhi.jpeg I've pointed out a primary source which contradicts the numbers that graph is based on and posited a causal mechanism for the disparity. Refute the primary source, demonstrate that my understanding of their use of the term 'nominal dollars' is wrong, or find another primary source (or the primary source the paper uses).

Manuel_D 4y ago
> You're really stretching here. That's a single pilot plant in an industry with a massive negative learning rate without necessary safety features which is the all-time outlier. I had to go out of my way to find it, and it is not the same metric as you're judging renewables on. If I were cherry picking I could pick even cheaper plants. Zion 1 and 2 were built for less, as was Oconee 1 and 2. > You appear to be struggling with the difference between start and finish. The largest capacity of plants ever finished in the US was '82. Most of which were delayed after the 3 mile island incident, and correspondingly experienced greater costs. Sure, if you want to get pedantic the peak number of plants under construction at any one time peaked just after three mile island. But that's because so many plants were delayed, and this led to higher costs. > I've pointed out a primary source which contradicts the numbers that graph is based on and posited a causal mechanism for the disparity. Refute the primary source, demonstrate that my understanding of their use of the term 'nominal dollars' is wrong, or find another primary source (or the primary source the paper uses). I'm looking over the OSTI report and calculating the inflation adjusted numbers line by line. They match the costs listed in my source. It doesn't look like there's anything to refute: both of our sources show that nuclear plants built during the nuclear boom were some of the cheapest forms of decarbonized energy there is. I don't have anything refute, because your source agrees with my point. Your own source's data reinforces the claim that nuclear built during the nuclear boom (plants started after 1965 and built before three mile island) were often delivered between 1 and 2 billion dollars (2010 adjusted) per GW of capacity, and some even less than 1 billion.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Zion 1 and 2 were 276 million each at 58% CF or between $3 and $4.2 per net Watt. Better than the last plant to open before TMI, which supports a negative learning rate. And again. This doesn't include safety retrofits, and it doesn't include O&M which is higher than new renewables. Even after retrofit, it was destroyed due to a design and management failure in 1998. All of those early plants are more expensive than you are saying, they had state controlled funding. They were inefficient, and they were unsafe when they opened. Additionally they all had abysmal capacity factors in the 70s and 80s, around the 50-60% range so using lifetime CF is incredibly biased towards making them look good. The cost of retrofits which was almost entirely unrelated to TMI was about 40c/Watt https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0360544285900040?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/036054... or about 80c per net watt just for the retrofit to meet 1980s standards. Include all the failed reactors, and stop looking at just the lowest cost ones, include the cost of the free loans, and you're back up around $6/W

Manuel_D 4y ago

> You're really stretching here. That's a single pilot plant in an industry with a massive negative learning rate without necessary safety features which is the all-time outlier. I had to go out of my way to find it, and it is not the same metric as you're judging renewables on. If I were cherry picking I could pick even cheaper plants. Zion 1 and 2 were built for less, as was Oconee 1 and 2. > You appear to be struggling with the difference between start and finish. The largest capacity of plants ever finished in the US was '82. Most of which were delayed after the 3 mile island incident, and correspondingly experienced greater costs. Sure, if you want to get pedantic the peak number of plants under construction at any one time peaked just after three mile island. But that's because so many plants were delayed, and this led to higher costs. > I've pointed out a primary source which contradicts the numbers that graph is based on and posited a causal mechanism for the disparity. Refute the primary source, demonstrate that my understanding of their use of the term 'nominal dollars' is wrong, or find another primary source (or the primary source the paper uses). I'm looking over the OSTI report and calculating the inflation adjusted numbers line by line. They match the costs listed in my source. It doesn't look like there's anything to refute: both of our sources show that nuclear plants built during the nuclear boom were some of the cheapest forms of decarbonized energy there is. I don't have anything refute, because your source agrees with my point. Your own source's data reinforces the claim that nuclear built during the nuclear boom (plants started after 1965 and built before three mile island) were often delivered between 1 and 2 billion dollars (2010 adjusted) per GW of capacity, and some even less than 1 billion.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
Zion 1 and 2 were 276 million each at 58% CF or between $3 and $4.2 per net Watt. Better than the last plant to open before TMI, which supports a negative learning rate. And again. This doesn't include safety retrofits, and it doesn't include O&M which is higher than new renewables. Even after retrofit, it was destroyed due to a design and management failure in 1998. All of those early plants are more expensive than you are saying, they had state controlled funding. They were inefficient, and they were unsafe when they opened. Additionally they all had abysmal capacity factors in the 70s and 80s, around the 50-60% range so using lifetime CF is incredibly biased towards making them look good. The cost of retrofits which was almost entirely unrelated to TMI was about 40c/Watt https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0360544285900040?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/036054... or about 80c per net watt just for the retrofit to meet 1980s standards. Include all the failed reactors, and stop looking at just the lowest cost ones, include the cost of the free loans, and you're back up around $6/W