3 ms·

> 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

> 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
  If we're counting capacity factor, then the cost of solar and wind increase by ~4x since they have capacity factors of ~25%, which is a lot less than nuclear's typical ~90% capacity factor [1]. Oconee's capacity factor is 81% over its life and 97% in a typical year. It's actually the opposite: focusing on lifetime capacity makes most nuclear plants look worse than in a typical year. For all their supposed lack of safety, nuclear power - including these early and supposedly unsafe designs - safer than most renewables [2]. There's an immense double standard between renewable safety (nobody seems to care about the tens of thousands of people killed by dams) and nuclear power. 1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity#:~:text=It%20basically%20measures%20how%20often,of%20the%20time%20in%202021 https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity#.... 2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Lifetime capacities up to TMI are fair for a proposal to build what was built before TMI. Including reliability improvements deployed over cumulative decades of downtime at costs of billions per reactor isn't comparing the thing that was purchased before TMI. Of course renewables should be capacity weighted. Noone is saying they shouldn't. Capacity weighted new solar in germany is about $3.80/W or new onshore wind is about $3/W. These are both dropping 10-20% YoY. New 4 hour battery is around $2/W. The up front cost is about the same, but the operating costs of NPP exceed what many wind and solar projects are able to bid for. Even if we assume unrealistically short construction times of the 70s for a new Gen III+ reactor the extra 6 years of operation will have the solar park half paid off by the time it opens. Those early designs were safe enough to mostly keep operating thanks to the exorbitantly expensive upgrades. This is an engineering feat, and a testament to the care and excellence of the US NRC, but it came at a cost which you are trying to pretend does not need paying. Gen III+ reactors are far more complex and so cost more on top of the additional costs incurred by not operating in the unique environment of the 60s.
    - Manuel_D 4y ago

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
If we're counting capacity factor, then the cost of solar and wind increase by ~4x since they have capacity factors of ~25%, which is a lot less than nuclear's typical ~90% capacity factor [1]. Oconee's capacity factor is 81% over its life and 97% in a typical year. It's actually the opposite: focusing on lifetime capacity makes most nuclear plants look worse than in a typical year. For all their supposed lack of safety, nuclear power - including these early and supposedly unsafe designs - safer than most renewables [2]. There's an immense double standard between renewable safety (nobody seems to care about the tens of thousands of people killed by dams) and nuclear power. 1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity#:~:text=It%20basically%20measures%20how%20often,of%20the%20time%20in%202021 https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity#.... 2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Lifetime capacities up to TMI are fair for a proposal to build what was built before TMI. Including reliability improvements deployed over cumulative decades of downtime at costs of billions per reactor isn't comparing the thing that was purchased before TMI. Of course renewables should be capacity weighted. Noone is saying they shouldn't. Capacity weighted new solar in germany is about $3.80/W or new onshore wind is about $3/W. These are both dropping 10-20% YoY. New 4 hour battery is around $2/W. The up front cost is about the same, but the operating costs of NPP exceed what many wind and solar projects are able to bid for. Even if we assume unrealistically short construction times of the 70s for a new Gen III+ reactor the extra 6 years of operation will have the solar park half paid off by the time it opens. Those early designs were safe enough to mostly keep operating thanks to the exorbitantly expensive upgrades. This is an engineering feat, and a testament to the care and excellence of the US NRC, but it came at a cost which you are trying to pretend does not need paying. Gen III+ reactors are far more complex and so cost more on top of the additional costs incurred by not operating in the unique environment of the 60s.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago