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> nuke generation is cheap if you push all the risks for construction cost overruns onto someone else. I am a big fan of nuke as the generation source that is

> nuke generation is cheap if you push all the risks for construction cost overruns onto someone else. I am a big fan of nuke as the generation source that is mostly environmentally benign right now today full stop. It's well known, though, that the main problem with nuke is that it's very expensive to build because we're quite worried about the safety so we have a lot of process and regulatory approval built into the design and construction. That extra process and regulatory approval is quite expensive. Of course it's a lot cheaper if you just disregard those things.

pydry 4y ago
> nuke generation is cheap if you push all the risks for construction cost overruns onto someone else. This is what France tried to do with the reactor they built for Finland. There was a budget hole of a few billion and an argument/lawsuit over who would pay for it. Nuclear costs are a hot potato.
- Kuinox 4y ago
  The EPR design is bloated because germany wanted to sabotage the project and achieved to increase the cost through additional security no other nuclear plant ever needed.
  - Maakuth 4y ago
    That's an interesting idea, any source? Certainly the containment building is very heavy construction, supposed to be able to withstand a passenger jet collision. Keep in mind the design was made right after the WTC attacks.
    - Kuinox 4y ago
      > That's an interesting idea, any source? Sadly, I had one months ago but I can't find it again. The EPR have a double containement layer where EPR2 have a single one. The EPR was also an industrial demonstrator. > supposed to be able to withstand a passenger jet collision. Our autorithy of nuclear safety says any regular nuclear plants should be able to whistand an passanger jet collision, but added extra protection on the EPR for it: https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/le-vrai-du-faux/segolene-royal-les-centrales-sont-concues-pour-resister-aux-chutes-d-avions_1768265.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/le-vrai-du-faux/seg... > Even if "they are not built to withstand such a shock without damage, nuclear power plants would offer a good resistance capacity", assures the Nuclear Safety Authority. But no evaluation exists because this type of accident was considered at the time as totally improbable. That said, after the authorities and EDF claim to have made arrangements for the construction of the future Flamanville EPR. "The specific protection against falling aircraft called aircraft hull is a reinforced concrete structure covering the following buildings: the reactor building, two divisions of the safeguard auxiliaries building and the fuel building". The fact remains that zero risk does not exist, as Jacques Repussard, Director General of IRSN, affirmed during his hearing before a parliamentary commission of inquiry last February: "I could not affirm under oath that in the event crash of a very large aircraft, loaded with tens of tons of fuel, the consequences of the fire would be brought under control"
- g8oz 4y ago
  Further to your point - South Korea built 4 reactors for the UAE at the Barakah site. Took 11 years from deal to first grid connection and cost $25 billion for 5.3 GW of nameplate capacity. It's expected to cost another $20 billion for operation, maintenance and fuel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant supply. Contrast that to the Al Dhafra PV project also in the UAE - $1 billion for 2 GW of nameplate capacity. One can apply whatever discount is wanted to account for solar's shortcomings and it still comes out ahead when planning an energy generation portfolio. Further away from the equator a similar case can be made for wind. The Barakah reactors will be generating 5.3 GWh from 6 pm to 8am which of course solar can't do. In that time it will deliver 14 hours X 5.3 GW ~= 75 GWh of electricity. Capital costs for 4 hour utility scale lithium storage are expected to be $250 million per GWh by 2025. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79236.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79236.pdf 75 GWh x $250 million = ~$19 billion to get those gigawatt hours from storage. The nameplate capacity of the solar plant to generate 75 GWh for night time use in the hours from 8 am to 6pm is 7.5 GW. To prove my point let's double that to 15 GW. The cost of that 15 GW solar plant, based on the Al Dhafra PV plant would be $7.5 billion. Another 5 GW solar plant to deliver the same day time GWh that the reactors do...let's double that to 10 GW so another $5 billion. So my back of the napkin calculations say that the cost to replace the Barakah reactors with solar + storage are: - $19 billion for Li-ion storage - $7.5 billion for a solar plant to charge that storage for nighttime use. - $5 billion for a solar plant to deliver (more than) equivalent daytime use. $31.5 billion in total. Very much competitive with the nuclear option taking into account a) time to completion / general project risk b) the falling cost of storage plus the development of new options like sodium ion storage c) radioactive waste risks, solvable as they are d) security concerns - Houthi rebels fired a few missiles at the Barakah site a while back. e) construction and operational workforce skill requirements
  - msandford 4y ago
    The math here seems pretty well reasoned. But it assumes that the price doesn't change as the amount of materials increases. Can an organization just write a $10b check and get the batteries? Does anyone just have the stock of them sitting around? I'd have to imagine not. And that it might take as long to get all the batteries built and installed as it does to build a nuke plant.
adventured 4y ago
We should disregard the cost and aggressively subsidize a massive expansion of nuclear power, guaranteeing the price for consumers (matching something reasonable re the market). Some might proclaim that's not fair competitively. I have no interest in being fair about the matter, I don't want my government to be either.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
There are certainly a lot of excuses for why nuclear is so expensive. As far as I can tell they are all just that, excuses. Korea is by far the largest producer of nuclear power plants today. They have the scale that people claim is necessary to reduce cost. They have the pro nuclear regulatory environment that would never be politically possible in the states. Nuclear still costs them more than solar and wind.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  In Poland literally overbuilding wind/solar by 10x would not sustain consumption on multiple days in December or January.
  - HDThoreaun 4y ago
    Just use the existing fossil fuels plants on those days and build some extra capacity for carbon sequestration...
    - greedo 4y ago
      Are there any realistic carbon sequestration methodologies (other than planting trees) that scale?
      - abfan1127 4y ago
        planting trees isn't a realistic carbon sequestration. it just delays when the carbon is released (dead decaying tree). The only proper carbon sequestration is to capture it and stick it back in the ground from where it came. there's obvious challenges with that.
        elevaet 4y ago
        Standing forests are perpetual carbon storage. At some point a given area of forest reaches maturity/stability and the rate of tree decay is more or less matched by the rate of tree growth. Once in a while the forest burns down, grows back and reaches maturity again, and once again becomes stored carbon. On average, an area of land that is forest will be carbon storage (as well as wildlife habitat etc). Trees are great: solar-powered, recursive, self-assembling, carbon sequestration tech. Forests can't be the only solution to carbon, because of the scale of emissions, but they can be a fraction of the solution.
Jedd 4y ago
Nuclear fission power apologists frequently make a claim like this when trying to establish why costs are so high (it doesn't necessarily explain why cost overruns are so high, as presumably the regulation set is known at the time of project initiation). If this were the / a major factor in cost competitiveness, we'd expect to see much higher uptake of nuclear fission power plants in places where, as you might say, those things are disregarded (to varying degrees). I don't believe that's the case, but can't find convincing data one way or the other. I wonder if there are examples of massive cost overrun / delayed commissioning nuclear fission plants - say Hinkley in the UK - that could be pointed at to substantiate the 'process and regulatory approval' costs, where those process and regulations changed after the initial cost calculations.
- stcredzero 4y ago
  > If this were the / a major factor in cost competitiveness, we'd expect to see much higher uptake of nuclear fission power plants in places where, as you might say, those things are disregarded (to varying degrees). Aircraft carriers and submarines.
  - gumby 4y ago
    I STM reading (via HN!) that submarine nuke plants are designed not to require (or even have the affordances for) significant maintenance — that when they are “done” (fuel spent?) the power plant is discarded. If this is in fact the case I can imagine it would make for a more reliable and less expensive device. The economics of nuclear powered subs is quite different from a commercial product. But it’s interesting to consider. (And just for fun: imagine what effect a “right to repair” law would have…)
    - Jedd 4y ago
      Good points. In addition, military spend capabilities will more readily compensate for the other two sides of the project management triangle. And AIUI a lot of those systems, once initial development occurred, were cookie-cutter / evolutionary designs. I also understand the mini-reactors for seafaring vessels are much less efficient - but they don't need to be hugely efficient, primarily for the reason you mention. In any case, I expect the regulatory-driven quality of those devices is ridiculously high. Well the USA systems at least -- obviously Russia had a much less pleasant experience with small reactors on submarines.
grepfru_it 4y ago
>main problem with nuke Is waste. The main problem is waste, we need to store it somewhere and it’s never in my backyard
- CountHackulus 4y ago
  It's absolutely not. Waste is a solved problem, you bury it VERY deep using the same borehole technology currently used for fracking. And I think you grossly overestimate the amount of waste a nuclear plant generates. Here's a source (also check the sourced on the video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU3kLBo_ruo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU3kLBo_ruo The problem is more likely PERCEPTION of nuclear waste.
  - guelo 4y ago
    "PERCEPTION" == politics, which is very much not a solved problem. It's the same reason we can't tax carbon emissions to properly account for its externalities.
  - greenthrow 4y ago
    That is not solving the problem. That is hiding it. Our civilization needs to move beyond the caveman level thinking that burying somethibg in the ground is solving it. Solar panels are highly recyclable. We are figuring out how to recycle the composite materials used for windmill blades. We need to move to a circular economy.
    - lmm 4y ago
      > That is not solving the problem. That is hiding it. Our civilization needs to move beyond the caveman level thinking that burying somethibg in the ground is solving it. It came out of the ground, if we put it back there then how have we made things worse than they were? There are natural nuclear reactors in places untouched by humans. > Solar panels are highly recyclable. Really? At what energy cost? > We are figuring out how to recycle the composite materials used for windmill blades. Which is a fancy way of saying we can't and don't currently recycle them. There are reasonably advanced plans for reprocessing nuclear waste too. > We need to move to a circular economy. Fundamentally impossible. We need to keep pollution at manageable levels and expand into the universe. The environmental impact of nuclear waste is tiny in comparison to virtually everything else we do in everyday life; it should be a long long way down the list of concerns.
Retric 4y ago
It’s really not build costs alone that make nuclear expensive. Just as an example, you’re looking at roughly 500 employees per GW of capacity. Assuming they cost 100k/y including benefits that’s ~50 million per year or roughly 0.6c/kWh. Multiply that by * 50 years and your talking 2.5 billion over the plants lifetime just for the workers. Ore is cheap, natural uranium is still cheap, enriched uranium isn’t, and making fuel rods isn’t. Insurance, land, replacement equipment, decommissioning, etc it all adds up. People love to talk about how cheap various aspects of nuclear power are compared to other types of energy, but it’s the total costs that matter not just individual parts in isolation. Small modular reactors still need cooling, they still need turbines, workers, spent fuel cooling ponds and processing, security, etc etc.
- tiedieconderoga 4y ago
  There are plenty of communities that would be happy to see hundreds of jobs that they could expect to last for an entire working lifetime.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    Which also applies to renewables. Actually it applies even more, because renewables are decentralised and small scale, so there's a wide range of jobs from house-level local installations to international infrastructure.
  - Retric 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window Jobs for 500 people vs cheaper electricity for 1 million people which allows them to spend more money elsewhere and thus also creates jobs. The second option might seem roughly equal, except those new jobs are creating value and thus society is better off with increased efficiency. Of course those benefits aren’t spread equally, but being poor today is still better than being poor 500 years ago. Hopefully being poor in 500 years will be a similar improvement.
ExoticPearTree 4y ago
I really hope the mini nuclear reactors that are planned take off and you can just order them for residential power generation. It is astonishing the amount of red-tape when it comes to nuclear power, just because of all the FUD pushed by environmental groups, when it is the cleanest form of energy in the world.

pydry 4y ago

> nuke generation is cheap if you push all the risks for construction cost overruns onto someone else. This is what France tried to do with the reactor they built for Finland. There was a budget hole of a few billion and an argument/lawsuit over who would pay for it. Nuclear costs are a hot potato.

Kuinox 4y ago
The EPR design is bloated because germany wanted to sabotage the project and achieved to increase the cost through additional security no other nuclear plant ever needed.
- Maakuth 4y ago
  That's an interesting idea, any source? Certainly the containment building is very heavy construction, supposed to be able to withstand a passenger jet collision. Keep in mind the design was made right after the WTC attacks.
  - Kuinox 4y ago
    > That's an interesting idea, any source? Sadly, I had one months ago but I can't find it again. The EPR have a double containement layer where EPR2 have a single one. The EPR was also an industrial demonstrator. > supposed to be able to withstand a passenger jet collision. Our autorithy of nuclear safety says any regular nuclear plants should be able to whistand an passanger jet collision, but added extra protection on the EPR for it: https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/le-vrai-du-faux/segolene-royal-les-centrales-sont-concues-pour-resister-aux-chutes-d-avions_1768265.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/le-vrai-du-faux/seg... > Even if "they are not built to withstand such a shock without damage, nuclear power plants would offer a good resistance capacity", assures the Nuclear Safety Authority. But no evaluation exists because this type of accident was considered at the time as totally improbable. That said, after the authorities and EDF claim to have made arrangements for the construction of the future Flamanville EPR. "The specific protection against falling aircraft called aircraft hull is a reinforced concrete structure covering the following buildings: the reactor building, two divisions of the safeguard auxiliaries building and the fuel building". The fact remains that zero risk does not exist, as Jacques Repussard, Director General of IRSN, affirmed during his hearing before a parliamentary commission of inquiry last February: "I could not affirm under oath that in the event crash of a very large aircraft, loaded with tens of tons of fuel, the consequences of the fire would be brought under control"
g8oz 4y ago
Further to your point - South Korea built 4 reactors for the UAE at the Barakah site. Took 11 years from deal to first grid connection and cost $25 billion for 5.3 GW of nameplate capacity. It's expected to cost another $20 billion for operation, maintenance and fuel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant supply. Contrast that to the Al Dhafra PV project also in the UAE - $1 billion for 2 GW of nameplate capacity. One can apply whatever discount is wanted to account for solar's shortcomings and it still comes out ahead when planning an energy generation portfolio. Further away from the equator a similar case can be made for wind. The Barakah reactors will be generating 5.3 GWh from 6 pm to 8am which of course solar can't do. In that time it will deliver 14 hours X 5.3 GW ~= 75 GWh of electricity. Capital costs for 4 hour utility scale lithium storage are expected to be $250 million per GWh by 2025. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79236.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79236.pdf 75 GWh x $250 million = ~$19 billion to get those gigawatt hours from storage. The nameplate capacity of the solar plant to generate 75 GWh for night time use in the hours from 8 am to 6pm is 7.5 GW. To prove my point let's double that to 15 GW. The cost of that 15 GW solar plant, based on the Al Dhafra PV plant would be $7.5 billion. Another 5 GW solar plant to deliver the same day time GWh that the reactors do...let's double that to 10 GW so another $5 billion. So my back of the napkin calculations say that the cost to replace the Barakah reactors with solar + storage are: - $19 billion for Li-ion storage - $7.5 billion for a solar plant to charge that storage for nighttime use. - $5 billion for a solar plant to deliver (more than) equivalent daytime use. $31.5 billion in total. Very much competitive with the nuclear option taking into account a) time to completion / general project risk b) the falling cost of storage plus the development of new options like sodium ion storage c) radioactive waste risks, solvable as they are d) security concerns - Houthi rebels fired a few missiles at the Barakah site a while back. e) construction and operational workforce skill requirements
- msandford 4y ago
  The math here seems pretty well reasoned. But it assumes that the price doesn't change as the amount of materials increases. Can an organization just write a $10b check and get the batteries? Does anyone just have the stock of them sitting around? I'd have to imagine not. And that it might take as long to get all the batteries built and installed as it does to build a nuke plant.

adventured 4y ago

We should disregard the cost and aggressively subsidize a massive expansion of nuclear power, guaranteeing the price for consumers (matching something reasonable re the market). Some might proclaim that's not fair competitively. I have no interest in being fair about the matter, I don't want my government to be either.

HDThoreaun 4y ago

There are certainly a lot of excuses for why nuclear is so expensive. As far as I can tell they are all just that, excuses. Korea is by far the largest producer of nuclear power plants today. They have the scale that people claim is necessary to reduce cost. They have the pro nuclear regulatory environment that would never be politically possible in the states. Nuclear still costs them more than solar and wind.

KptMarchewa 4y ago
In Poland literally overbuilding wind/solar by 10x would not sustain consumption on multiple days in December or January.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  Just use the existing fossil fuels plants on those days and build some extra capacity for carbon sequestration...
  - greedo 4y ago
    Are there any realistic carbon sequestration methodologies (other than planting trees) that scale?
    - abfan1127 4y ago
      planting trees isn't a realistic carbon sequestration. it just delays when the carbon is released (dead decaying tree). The only proper carbon sequestration is to capture it and stick it back in the ground from where it came. there's obvious challenges with that.
      - elevaet 4y ago
        Standing forests are perpetual carbon storage. At some point a given area of forest reaches maturity/stability and the rate of tree decay is more or less matched by the rate of tree growth. Once in a while the forest burns down, grows back and reaches maturity again, and once again becomes stored carbon. On average, an area of land that is forest will be carbon storage (as well as wildlife habitat etc). Trees are great: solar-powered, recursive, self-assembling, carbon sequestration tech. Forests can't be the only solution to carbon, because of the scale of emissions, but they can be a fraction of the solution.

Jedd 4y ago

Nuclear fission power apologists frequently make a claim like this when trying to establish why costs are so high (it doesn't necessarily explain why cost overruns are so high, as presumably the regulation set is known at the time of project initiation). If this were the / a major factor in cost competitiveness, we'd expect to see much higher uptake of nuclear fission power plants in places where, as you might say, those things are disregarded (to varying degrees). I don't believe that's the case, but can't find convincing data one way or the other. I wonder if there are examples of massive cost overrun / delayed commissioning nuclear fission plants - say Hinkley in the UK - that could be pointed at to substantiate the 'process and regulatory approval' costs, where those process and regulations changed after the initial cost calculations.

stcredzero 4y ago
> If this were the / a major factor in cost competitiveness, we'd expect to see much higher uptake of nuclear fission power plants in places where, as you might say, those things are disregarded (to varying degrees). Aircraft carriers and submarines.
- gumby 4y ago
  I STM reading (via HN!) that submarine nuke plants are designed not to require (or even have the affordances for) significant maintenance — that when they are “done” (fuel spent?) the power plant is discarded. If this is in fact the case I can imagine it would make for a more reliable and less expensive device. The economics of nuclear powered subs is quite different from a commercial product. But it’s interesting to consider. (And just for fun: imagine what effect a “right to repair” law would have…)
  - Jedd 4y ago
    Good points. In addition, military spend capabilities will more readily compensate for the other two sides of the project management triangle. And AIUI a lot of those systems, once initial development occurred, were cookie-cutter / evolutionary designs. I also understand the mini-reactors for seafaring vessels are much less efficient - but they don't need to be hugely efficient, primarily for the reason you mention. In any case, I expect the regulatory-driven quality of those devices is ridiculously high. Well the USA systems at least -- obviously Russia had a much less pleasant experience with small reactors on submarines.

grepfru_it 4y ago

>main problem with nuke Is waste. The main problem is waste, we need to store it somewhere and it’s never in my backyard

CountHackulus 4y ago
It's absolutely not. Waste is a solved problem, you bury it VERY deep using the same borehole technology currently used for fracking. And I think you grossly overestimate the amount of waste a nuclear plant generates. Here's a source (also check the sourced on the video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU3kLBo_ruo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU3kLBo_ruo The problem is more likely PERCEPTION of nuclear waste.
- guelo 4y ago
  "PERCEPTION" == politics, which is very much not a solved problem. It's the same reason we can't tax carbon emissions to properly account for its externalities.
- greenthrow 4y ago
  That is not solving the problem. That is hiding it. Our civilization needs to move beyond the caveman level thinking that burying somethibg in the ground is solving it. Solar panels are highly recyclable. We are figuring out how to recycle the composite materials used for windmill blades. We need to move to a circular economy.
  - lmm 4y ago
    > That is not solving the problem. That is hiding it. Our civilization needs to move beyond the caveman level thinking that burying somethibg in the ground is solving it. It came out of the ground, if we put it back there then how have we made things worse than they were? There are natural nuclear reactors in places untouched by humans. > Solar panels are highly recyclable. Really? At what energy cost? > We are figuring out how to recycle the composite materials used for windmill blades. Which is a fancy way of saying we can't and don't currently recycle them. There are reasonably advanced plans for reprocessing nuclear waste too. > We need to move to a circular economy. Fundamentally impossible. We need to keep pollution at manageable levels and expand into the universe. The environmental impact of nuclear waste is tiny in comparison to virtually everything else we do in everyday life; it should be a long long way down the list of concerns.

Retric 4y ago

It’s really not build costs alone that make nuclear expensive. Just as an example, you’re looking at roughly 500 employees per GW of capacity. Assuming they cost 100k/y including benefits that’s ~50 million per year or roughly 0.6c/kWh. Multiply that by * 50 years and your talking 2.5 billion over the plants lifetime just for the workers. Ore is cheap, natural uranium is still cheap, enriched uranium isn’t, and making fuel rods isn’t. Insurance, land, replacement equipment, decommissioning, etc it all adds up. People love to talk about how cheap various aspects of nuclear power are compared to other types of energy, but it’s the total costs that matter not just individual parts in isolation. Small modular reactors still need cooling, they still need turbines, workers, spent fuel cooling ponds and processing, security, etc etc.

tiedieconderoga 4y ago
There are plenty of communities that would be happy to see hundreds of jobs that they could expect to last for an entire working lifetime.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  Which also applies to renewables. Actually it applies even more, because renewables are decentralised and small scale, so there's a wide range of jobs from house-level local installations to international infrastructure.
- Retric 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window Jobs for 500 people vs cheaper electricity for 1 million people which allows them to spend more money elsewhere and thus also creates jobs. The second option might seem roughly equal, except those new jobs are creating value and thus society is better off with increased efficiency. Of course those benefits aren’t spread equally, but being poor today is still better than being poor 500 years ago. Hopefully being poor in 500 years will be a similar improvement.

ExoticPearTree 4y ago

I really hope the mini nuclear reactors that are planned take off and you can just order them for residential power generation. It is astonishing the amount of red-tape when it comes to nuclear power, just because of all the FUD pushed by environmental groups, when it is the cleanest form of energy in the world.