2 ms·

Again, the energy density of uranium is such that even if seawater extraction remains expensive, it has negligible impact on nuclear power costs: https://en.m.w

Again, the energy density of uranium is such that even if seawater extraction remains expensive, it has negligible impact on nuclear power costs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_p... > The cost of raw uranium contributes about $0.0015/kWh Even if this increases by an order of magnitude, this is not significantly impacting the cost of nuclear power. Heck, even two orders of magnitude still amounts to ~1% increase in net cost per KWh. RE your edit after I commented: > Uranium is a small fraction of nuclear's cost at current uranium prices. But eventually that runs out, and the price of uranium would increase dramatically. This has always been the motivation for breeders. Again, the cost of raw uranium extraction amounts to $0.0015/kWh in nuclear generation. A 100x cost increase will not amount to even a quarter of a cent per KWh. This is the power of fissile energy density: it's so energy dense that the cost of extraction is largely decoupled from the net cost of nuclear power. By comparison, how would the price of lithium ion batteries be affected if the price of lithium carbonate increases by 100x? Half of a battery's cost comes from the cost of cathode material: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-an-ev-battery-cell/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-a...

philipkglass 3y ago
If $0.0015/kWh is the current fuel cost, a 100x increase would bring it up to $0.15/kWh. That's 15 cents per kilowatt hour, not a fraction of a cent. It would make nuclear power among the most expensive of electricity sources from fuel cost alone.
pfdietz 3y ago
If lithium increased in price by 100x, we'd switch over to one of the many other options for energy storage. If uranium increases in price by 100x, burner reactors are screwed (well, even more screwed than they already are.)
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  "many other options" like what? You can't just say we'd use alternatives and then neglect to specify what those alternatives are. All storage options available to us fall short. Hydropower is geographically limited. Batteries are in too short supply, and are mostly being directed to other applications. Plans for a mostly intermittent grid invariably call for hydrogen, compressed air, giant flywheels, or something else to solve the storage problem. We have no practical experience building electric storage with these systems, so it's effectively a giant hand-wave. A plan that's dependent on something like hydrogen electric storage is like a plan calling for widespread deep-drilled geothermal power: We have plenty of experience with drilling, and steam turbines. Iceland has plenty of geothermal power - but it sits right on a fault line. That's no guarantee we'll actually be able to build geographically-independent geothermal power. Would you view a plan that involves widespread installation of geothermal power as feasible?
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    There are many chemistries for batteries. We're even seeing some of them pushed to commercialization. Chemistries based on common elements like sodium or iron would evade concerns about material availability. There are thermal storage technologies. An example is pumped thermal storage. This involves (1) adiabatically compressing argon, (2) transferring heat from the compressed argon to a hot store (say, molten "solar salt", a potassium/sodium nitrate salt mix) by a countercurrent heat exchanger, (3) expanding the cooled argon back to the initial pressure, (4) using that now cold argon to extract heat from a "cold store", say liquid hexane, cooling it to -100 C. To discharge, reverse this process. Round trip efficiencies similar to pumped hydro could be achieved. The high temperature side of this process is within the creep range of ordinary steel, so no exotic materials are required. Resistively heated thermal stores would not be quite as efficient (maybe in the low 50s%) and involve higher temperature (~1200 C), but could work with existing gas turbines. Babcock and Wilcox are commercializing this now, using their very nifty direct contact sand/gas fluidized bed heat exchanger. The storage medium here would be ordinary sand, of which there is an unlimited supply. This last approach also allows an external heat source, such as hydrogen combustion, to act as a backup heat source. So if your thermal stores run out, you can keep running them by burning hydrogen (or some other e-fuel). The marginal capital cost of this capability would be very low, just that of adding a fluidized bed hydrogen combustor to heat the sand.

philipkglass 3y ago

If $0.0015/kWh is the current fuel cost, a 100x increase would bring it up to $0.15/kWh. That's 15 cents per kilowatt hour, not a fraction of a cent. It would make nuclear power among the most expensive of electricity sources from fuel cost alone.

pfdietz 3y ago

If lithium increased in price by 100x, we'd switch over to one of the many other options for energy storage. If uranium increases in price by 100x, burner reactors are screwed (well, even more screwed than they already are.)

Manuel_D 3y ago
"many other options" like what? You can't just say we'd use alternatives and then neglect to specify what those alternatives are. All storage options available to us fall short. Hydropower is geographically limited. Batteries are in too short supply, and are mostly being directed to other applications. Plans for a mostly intermittent grid invariably call for hydrogen, compressed air, giant flywheels, or something else to solve the storage problem. We have no practical experience building electric storage with these systems, so it's effectively a giant hand-wave. A plan that's dependent on something like hydrogen electric storage is like a plan calling for widespread deep-drilled geothermal power: We have plenty of experience with drilling, and steam turbines. Iceland has plenty of geothermal power - but it sits right on a fault line. That's no guarantee we'll actually be able to build geographically-independent geothermal power. Would you view a plan that involves widespread installation of geothermal power as feasible?
- pfdietz 3y ago
  There are many chemistries for batteries. We're even seeing some of them pushed to commercialization. Chemistries based on common elements like sodium or iron would evade concerns about material availability. There are thermal storage technologies. An example is pumped thermal storage. This involves (1) adiabatically compressing argon, (2) transferring heat from the compressed argon to a hot store (say, molten "solar salt", a potassium/sodium nitrate salt mix) by a countercurrent heat exchanger, (3) expanding the cooled argon back to the initial pressure, (4) using that now cold argon to extract heat from a "cold store", say liquid hexane, cooling it to -100 C. To discharge, reverse this process. Round trip efficiencies similar to pumped hydro could be achieved. The high temperature side of this process is within the creep range of ordinary steel, so no exotic materials are required. Resistively heated thermal stores would not be quite as efficient (maybe in the low 50s%) and involve higher temperature (~1200 C), but could work with existing gas turbines. Babcock and Wilcox are commercializing this now, using their very nifty direct contact sand/gas fluidized bed heat exchanger. The storage medium here would be ordinary sand, of which there is an unlimited supply. This last approach also allows an external heat source, such as hydrogen combustion, to act as a backup heat source. So if your thermal stores run out, you can keep running them by burning hydrogen (or some other e-fuel). The marginal capital cost of this capability would be very low, just that of adding a fluidized bed hydrogen combustor to heat the sand.