5 ms·

The average age of nuclear plants in the US is 40 years old. I can't believe that modern nuclear plants wouldn't be dramatically more profitable. Even if they

The average age of nuclear plants in the US is 40 years old. I can't believe that modern nuclear plants wouldn't be dramatically more profitable. Even if they weren't, it would be worth government incentives to prevent grid destabilization as wind and solar take over as the main sources.

KennyBlanken 4y ago
Nuclear plants aren't used for grid stabilization, because they can't be. They take hours to days to change power levels. Fast-responding natural gas plants are used for rapid response to changing load. Hydro (storage or regular) as well. More recently, energy storage systems like the huge system Tesla deployed in Australia. If I had a dollar for every HN commenter that doesn't understand the basics of grids and generation but considers themselves an expert in how awesome nuclear is...
dale_glass 4y ago
> I can't believe that modern nuclear plants wouldn't be dramatically more profitable. I can. First, nuclear doesn't always get cheaper. Chernobyl happened, how do we fix that? Containment building. That costs money. Fukushima happened, how do we fix that? Better backup plans. That costs money. Renewables skip this completely. Second, renewables also benefit from progress, but a lot more. Solar and wind are mass industry production. Each iteration is cheap. Experimentation is cheap and safe and done all over the world. Production is highly amenable towards automation. Nuclear isn't. So we have factories pumping out millions of solar cells, but we don't have factories pumping out millions of nuclear vessels, because nuclear plants are rare, one off projects that don't justify mass production, and are too rare to have a robust industry and lots of competition. > Even if they weren't, it would be worth government incentives to prevent grid destabilization as wind and solar take over as the main sources. Yeah, but there are other options that can be used. Eg, yeah, we can spend decades building nuclear and waiting until it starts to work, or we can do things like improving the grid transmission which works out to simple tasks that are doable much faster and amenable to mass production. Same goes for say, pumped hydro and battery storage. Those things can already be done, and you can start doing it much faster than you'll get nuclear built.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  > First, nuclear doesn't always get cheaper. Chernobyl happened, how do we fix that? Containment building. That costs money. Western nuclear power plants always had containment buildings, so no, this isn't a factor. > Fukushima happened, how do we fix that? Better backup plans. Most places aren't subject to magnitude 9.1 earthquakes, so no such plans are needed. Nuclear power benefits from economies of scale. Building a nuclear power plant involves constructing things like pressure vessels and steam generators that have no market outside of nuclear power construction. The price history of nuclear plants demonstrates this: The plants built during the nuclear boom during the late 60s and early 70s were some of the cheapest forms of decarbonized energy production [1]. Producing a run of 40 steam generators [2] is a lot cheaper than a run of 4 steam generators. Same with pressure vessels, and other costly components. Serialized production of the same design yields cost savings. > Same goes for say, pumped hydro and battery storage. Those things can already be done, and you can start doing it much faster than you'll get nuclear built. No, we can't. This is just hand-waving away the biggest obstacle to widespread deployment of intermittent sources. Hydro storage is geographically dependent: you essentially need to be able to create an artificial alpine lake, and it needs to be close to an existing lake or river in order to fill it. Battery storage remains prohibitively expensive. The actual cost of battery storage is much higher than the raw cost of lithium batteries [3]. Labor, installation, and DC to AC conversion equipment leads to net costs of ~$500/KWh. This is why plans for a grid primarily powered intermittent sources assume that some other battery chemistry or hydrogen storage will make energy storage essentially free. 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516300106 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power... 3. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/new-york-battery-storage-costs-rise-interconnection-queue-12-gw/621954/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/new-york-battery-storage-co...
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    > Western nuclear power plants always had containment buildings, so no, this isn't a factor. The point is that nuclear is safe because we've been making it safer over time, and that rarely makes it cheaper. The specific ways in which that's done isn't the point. Mass production in general is made cheaper by simplifying and cutting corners. Nuclear isn't terribly friendly towards this, you can't just go "How about we use 30% less concrete?" > Nuclear power benefits from economies of scale. Everything does, but nuclear benefits less. Precisely because of what you said, they have no other market use. You'll need to convince industries that it's worth scaling up for that, and that it won't backfire. That will be tricky. > No, we can't. You're missing the point. Here's what I envision: 1. Renewables continue to eat nuclear's lunch 2. Nuclear keeps not getting built 3. Eventually grid destabilizes 4. People want solutions, right now At point 4, nobody is going to sit there and wait 5-10 years for nuclear to be built. Yeah, batteries are expensive, but remember Tesla's battery in Australia that got done in 100 days? So that's how I see things going. Once the shit hits the fan, urgent solutions will be needed. And pretty much everything is much faster than nuclear. I'm not envisioning some utopic future, but one where problems will be ignored until something goes quite wrong, that's going to suck for a while, then things get hurriedly rectified in a huge rush and at great expense, but that will still favor non-nuclear solutions.
Marsymars 4y ago
Why would you expect modern nuclear plants to be more profitable? Most of the costs of a nuclear plant are capital costs, which have been increasing faster than the increases in what the generated electricity can be sold for.
- llsf 4y ago
  True, it is mostly a capital cost for nuclear. That is probably why it makes more sense to get it paid by government.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
Nuclear has only ever gotten more expensive, never cheaper. SMRs seem interesting, but at this point they're more science fiction than reality.
- epistasis 4y ago
  I did see a more recent and very comprehensive paper that found a few countries where costs haven't ballooned, or even fallen by very tiny amounts. Whether those situations can be replicated is unclear. But even if we get to the best case scenario of small cost drops, nuclear will never compete with the tech cruces of storage and solar. It does not have the characteristics of a tech with falling costs, without a complete revolution in its operation, the likes of which I have not seen imagined by anyone. Thorium and SMRs are minor tweaks that who not reach the type of tech revolution needed to make nuclear into a tech with falling costs. There might be a few niche locations for which nuclear is the cheapest option, such as maybe Finland who was able to finally get their new single reactor online, a year delayed from the first time they declared it online. But these are the exceptions. Unclear is it a general purpose technology, it should be viewed as useful only in special circumstances where traditional tech fails.

KennyBlanken 4y ago

Nuclear plants aren't used for grid stabilization, because they can't be. They take hours to days to change power levels. Fast-responding natural gas plants are used for rapid response to changing load. Hydro (storage or regular) as well. More recently, energy storage systems like the huge system Tesla deployed in Australia. If I had a dollar for every HN commenter that doesn't understand the basics of grids and generation but considers themselves an expert in how awesome nuclear is...

dale_glass 4y ago

> I can't believe that modern nuclear plants wouldn't be dramatically more profitable. I can. First, nuclear doesn't always get cheaper. Chernobyl happened, how do we fix that? Containment building. That costs money. Fukushima happened, how do we fix that? Better backup plans. That costs money. Renewables skip this completely. Second, renewables also benefit from progress, but a lot more. Solar and wind are mass industry production. Each iteration is cheap. Experimentation is cheap and safe and done all over the world. Production is highly amenable towards automation. Nuclear isn't. So we have factories pumping out millions of solar cells, but we don't have factories pumping out millions of nuclear vessels, because nuclear plants are rare, one off projects that don't justify mass production, and are too rare to have a robust industry and lots of competition. > Even if they weren't, it would be worth government incentives to prevent grid destabilization as wind and solar take over as the main sources. Yeah, but there are other options that can be used. Eg, yeah, we can spend decades building nuclear and waiting until it starts to work, or we can do things like improving the grid transmission which works out to simple tasks that are doable much faster and amenable to mass production. Same goes for say, pumped hydro and battery storage. Those things can already be done, and you can start doing it much faster than you'll get nuclear built.

Manuel_D 4y ago
> First, nuclear doesn't always get cheaper. Chernobyl happened, how do we fix that? Containment building. That costs money. Western nuclear power plants always had containment buildings, so no, this isn't a factor. > Fukushima happened, how do we fix that? Better backup plans. Most places aren't subject to magnitude 9.1 earthquakes, so no such plans are needed. Nuclear power benefits from economies of scale. Building a nuclear power plant involves constructing things like pressure vessels and steam generators that have no market outside of nuclear power construction. The price history of nuclear plants demonstrates this: The plants built during the nuclear boom during the late 60s and early 70s were some of the cheapest forms of decarbonized energy production [1]. Producing a run of 40 steam generators [2] is a lot cheaper than a run of 4 steam generators. Same with pressure vessels, and other costly components. Serialized production of the same design yields cost savings. > Same goes for say, pumped hydro and battery storage. Those things can already be done, and you can start doing it much faster than you'll get nuclear built. No, we can't. This is just hand-waving away the biggest obstacle to widespread deployment of intermittent sources. Hydro storage is geographically dependent: you essentially need to be able to create an artificial alpine lake, and it needs to be close to an existing lake or river in order to fill it. Battery storage remains prohibitively expensive. The actual cost of battery storage is much higher than the raw cost of lithium batteries [3]. Labor, installation, and DC to AC conversion equipment leads to net costs of ~$500/KWh. This is why plans for a grid primarily powered intermittent sources assume that some other battery chemistry or hydrogen storage will make energy storage essentially free. 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516300106 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power... 3. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/new-york-battery-storage-costs-rise-interconnection-queue-12-gw/621954/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/new-york-battery-storage-co...
- dale_glass 4y ago
  > Western nuclear power plants always had containment buildings, so no, this isn't a factor. The point is that nuclear is safe because we've been making it safer over time, and that rarely makes it cheaper. The specific ways in which that's done isn't the point. Mass production in general is made cheaper by simplifying and cutting corners. Nuclear isn't terribly friendly towards this, you can't just go "How about we use 30% less concrete?" > Nuclear power benefits from economies of scale. Everything does, but nuclear benefits less. Precisely because of what you said, they have no other market use. You'll need to convince industries that it's worth scaling up for that, and that it won't backfire. That will be tricky. > No, we can't. You're missing the point. Here's what I envision: 1. Renewables continue to eat nuclear's lunch 2. Nuclear keeps not getting built 3. Eventually grid destabilizes 4. People want solutions, right now At point 4, nobody is going to sit there and wait 5-10 years for nuclear to be built. Yeah, batteries are expensive, but remember Tesla's battery in Australia that got done in 100 days? So that's how I see things going. Once the shit hits the fan, urgent solutions will be needed. And pretty much everything is much faster than nuclear. I'm not envisioning some utopic future, but one where problems will be ignored until something goes quite wrong, that's going to suck for a while, then things get hurriedly rectified in a huge rush and at great expense, but that will still favor non-nuclear solutions.

Marsymars 4y ago

Why would you expect modern nuclear plants to be more profitable? Most of the costs of a nuclear plant are capital costs, which have been increasing faster than the increases in what the generated electricity can be sold for.

llsf 4y ago
True, it is mostly a capital cost for nuclear. That is probably why it makes more sense to get it paid by government.

HDThoreaun 4y ago

Nuclear has only ever gotten more expensive, never cheaper. SMRs seem interesting, but at this point they're more science fiction than reality.

epistasis 4y ago
I did see a more recent and very comprehensive paper that found a few countries where costs haven't ballooned, or even fallen by very tiny amounts. Whether those situations can be replicated is unclear. But even if we get to the best case scenario of small cost drops, nuclear will never compete with the tech cruces of storage and solar. It does not have the characteristics of a tech with falling costs, without a complete revolution in its operation, the likes of which I have not seen imagined by anyone. Thorium and SMRs are minor tweaks that who not reach the type of tech revolution needed to make nuclear into a tech with falling costs. There might be a few niche locations for which nuclear is the cheapest option, such as maybe Finland who was able to finally get their new single reactor online, a year delayed from the first time they declared it online. But these are the exceptions. Unclear is it a general purpose technology, it should be viewed as useful only in special circumstances where traditional tech fails.