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Construction costs are the big cost in nuclear power. Uranium comprises between $0.0015/kWh and $0.000015/kWh. You don't really need armed security, but a coup

Construction costs are the big cost in nuclear power. Uranium comprises between $0.0015/kWh and $0.000015/kWh. You don't really need armed security, but a couple guys with guns in America are a dime a dozen. Decomissioning is $300-400M after a 30-50Y lifecycle and operators are generally allowed to collect that money over the plant life. [1] That's compared to the $17B in construction costs for Vogtle. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/decommissioning.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/d...

Retric 4y ago
Uranium costs are the kind of meaningless fact that’s true and wildly misleading. Fuel rods are not simply long sticks of unprocessed uranium. Refueling is expensive because of many separate costs. Even simply being forced to take a power plant offline for a long period is inherently expensive. Similarly building a cooling pond and equipment to move extremely high level nuclear waste is costly. Add up all those individual costs and fuel represents a significant faction of the total lifetime costs for a nuclear reactor.
moloch-hai 4y ago
We don't actually know what most decommissionings will cost. $300M is just a lower bound. Nukes' fuel cost seems low only in comparison to their other very high costs.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  > We don't actually know what most decommissionings will cost. $300M is just a lower bound. Of course we do, we've decommissioned plants before. About 200 commercial and 500 research reactors. That's a sufficient sample size. [1] > Nukes' fuel cost seems low only in comparison to their other very high costs. $0.0015/kWh is objectively cheap on an absolute scale. I don't know if you noticed, but California pays about $0.19/kWh, so this would be 0.78% of the delivered cost. [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/decommissioning-nuclear-facilities.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...
  - Retric 4y ago
    $0.0015/kWh is actually quite expensive. That’s ~7% of the total cost for solar per kWh and doesn’t even get you to fuel rods.
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      The fact it's expensive on a relative scale is irrelevant because it's cheap on an absolute scale. In fact the price of raw uranium input is 100X lower than that in a breeder reactor because more of the fuel is consumed, $0.000015/kWh. Being objectively cheap also allows you the flexibility to collect it in more expensive ways, for instance seawater extraction (which makes nuclear renewable) is only double the price, and falling as the technique is improved. > That’s ~7% of the total cost for solar per kWh and doesn’t even get you to fuel rods. Which again doesn't matter because it's still objectively and on an absolute scale very cheap. About 0.8% of the cost you pay for electricity. Solar is great, nobody, certainly not me, is trying to tell you not to build solar. The reality is the future of the grid is going to be a mix of generation sources. That's going to include solar. It should, in my opinion, also include nuclear due to their different generation characteristics. > The only thing that matters in economics is the relative scale. Nuclear being more expensive compared to the alternatives is a deal killer even if it’s not that expensive per kWh in absolute terms. I disagree because it has different supply characteristics. One supplies a constant amount over a long period of time and is difficult to adjust. The other varies massively over the course of a day and zeroes out at night. Solar alone isn't going to meet needs, you need either or both of base load plus storage in addition. It's disingenuous to compare the price of a kWh of solar by itself to nuclear when one works at night. If you want power at night, which I think many of us do, then you need to price into the $/kWh rate the cost of storage. You need to compare like for like. [edit] In 2021, utility scale solar-plus-storage with a capacity of 50 MW/200 MWh is estimated to reach $0.085-$0.158/kWh. Nuclear is $0.131-$0.204/kWh. [1] They're actually quite comparable, and we have line of sight to making nuclear cheaper. Again, nobody is advocating for a 100% nuclear grid, it's not possible, because it's only suited to providing base load. A 100% solar grid is impossible because of the night time. [edit2] Are you not reading what I'm saying? Nobody is advocating for a 100% nuclear grid. I am advocating for a mixed grid of renewables and nuclear where each operates according to its optimal utility function. [1] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/11/05/utility-scale-solar-reaches-lcoe-of-0-028-0-041-kwh-in-the-us-lazard-finds/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/11/05/utility-scale-solar-r...

Retric 4y ago

Uranium costs are the kind of meaningless fact that’s true and wildly misleading. Fuel rods are not simply long sticks of unprocessed uranium. Refueling is expensive because of many separate costs. Even simply being forced to take a power plant offline for a long period is inherently expensive. Similarly building a cooling pond and equipment to move extremely high level nuclear waste is costly. Add up all those individual costs and fuel represents a significant faction of the total lifetime costs for a nuclear reactor.

moloch-hai 4y ago

We don't actually know what most decommissionings will cost. $300M is just a lower bound. Nukes' fuel cost seems low only in comparison to their other very high costs.

arcticbull 4y ago
> We don't actually know what most decommissionings will cost. $300M is just a lower bound. Of course we do, we've decommissioned plants before. About 200 commercial and 500 research reactors. That's a sufficient sample size. [1] > Nukes' fuel cost seems low only in comparison to their other very high costs. $0.0015/kWh is objectively cheap on an absolute scale. I don't know if you noticed, but California pays about $0.19/kWh, so this would be 0.78% of the delivered cost. [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/decommissioning-nuclear-facilities.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...
- Retric 4y ago
  $0.0015/kWh is actually quite expensive. That’s ~7% of the total cost for solar per kWh and doesn’t even get you to fuel rods.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    The fact it's expensive on a relative scale is irrelevant because it's cheap on an absolute scale. In fact the price of raw uranium input is 100X lower than that in a breeder reactor because more of the fuel is consumed, $0.000015/kWh. Being objectively cheap also allows you the flexibility to collect it in more expensive ways, for instance seawater extraction (which makes nuclear renewable) is only double the price, and falling as the technique is improved. > That’s ~7% of the total cost for solar per kWh and doesn’t even get you to fuel rods. Which again doesn't matter because it's still objectively and on an absolute scale very cheap. About 0.8% of the cost you pay for electricity. Solar is great, nobody, certainly not me, is trying to tell you not to build solar. The reality is the future of the grid is going to be a mix of generation sources. That's going to include solar. It should, in my opinion, also include nuclear due to their different generation characteristics. > The only thing that matters in economics is the relative scale. Nuclear being more expensive compared to the alternatives is a deal killer even if it’s not that expensive per kWh in absolute terms. I disagree because it has different supply characteristics. One supplies a constant amount over a long period of time and is difficult to adjust. The other varies massively over the course of a day and zeroes out at night. Solar alone isn't going to meet needs, you need either or both of base load plus storage in addition. It's disingenuous to compare the price of a kWh of solar by itself to nuclear when one works at night. If you want power at night, which I think many of us do, then you need to price into the $/kWh rate the cost of storage. You need to compare like for like. [edit] In 2021, utility scale solar-plus-storage with a capacity of 50 MW/200 MWh is estimated to reach $0.085-$0.158/kWh. Nuclear is $0.131-$0.204/kWh. [1] They're actually quite comparable, and we have line of sight to making nuclear cheaper. Again, nobody is advocating for a 100% nuclear grid, it's not possible, because it's only suited to providing base load. A 100% solar grid is impossible because of the night time. [edit2] Are you not reading what I'm saying? Nobody is advocating for a 100% nuclear grid. I am advocating for a mixed grid of renewables and nuclear where each operates according to its optimal utility function. [1] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/11/05/utility-scale-solar-reaches-lcoe-of-0-028-0-041-kwh-in-the-us-lazard-finds/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/11/05/utility-scale-solar-r...