4 ms·

MIT found that reusing a design made plants more expensive to build, not less, because of costly on-site last minute design changes. Taking your point more cha

by Joeri 3y ago

MIT found that reusing a design made plants more expensive to build, not less, because of costly on-site last minute design changes. Taking your point more charitably, it is indeed the lack of a sustainable nuclear energy industry that routinely builds plants that causes costs to skyrocket. There is a chicken and egg situation: nuclear projects don’t get funded because they’re too expensive, so there is no chance to develop expertise in how to build them cheaply, which causes the few that get greenlit to be built by rookie teams that make rookie mistakes that cause costs to skyrocket. The MIT study into the causes of cost overruns: https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118 https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118

phendrenad2 3y ago
> costly on-site last minute design changes I clicked through to the actual study ( https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS254243512030458X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X?_r... ) and I couldn't find a single sentence mentioning on-site last-minute design changes. I searched for "change" and tabbed through all of the results. The closest thing was mention of Westinghouse changing construction standards halfway through an ongoing project, which required many changes to the project design. But, that's one project. So my question is: Is it possible that the MIT News Office can't understand MIT journal articles?
- bpfrh 3y ago
  "Our results point to a gap between expected and realized costs stemming from low resilience to time- and site-dependent construction conditions." Couldn't that be paraphrased to "last minute changes"?
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  From the article's own summary: Our results point to a gap between expected and realized costs stemming from low resilience to time- and site-dependent construction conditions. Guess that's where they took it from. Skimming the paper it seems a large part of the issue is that it's difficult to mass produce something which needs to be integrated into a variable environment, and attempting to do so is detrimental compared to custom solutions. This seems to mirror what I've found in the software world, where a custom integration is often much cheaper and easier to maintain than trying to manhandle some generic library/software to do what's needed.
  - mixdup 3y ago
    There's got to be some middle ground between every reactor in the country being absolutely bespoke and on the other hand trying to build them in a factory like modular housing. IIRC one of the big differences/problems is that every one of them have completely different control rooms and control systems. To the point that you cannot train on one reactor and walk into another and operate it. If we at least standardized that side of things, the cost of operations would surely come down I also question (and happy to be enlightened about) how much the local project needs some massive change. That a pipe might need to be a few hundred yards longer to reach the river surely isn't so consequential that you can't reuse designs These things are built on huge sites that could be completely leveled and turned into identical square clean pieces of dirt with massive empty land around them How much variation can there possibly be that can't be handled outside of the critical reactor design area
    - magicalhippo 3y ago
      Yeah, I can't shake the feeling it should be possible to mass produce most of the difficult bits, and then have a per-site specific foundation of sorts. Then again, perhaps it is one of those things where you actually need to make a few of 'em to gain experience.
ViewTrick1002 3y ago
How many hundreds of billions in subsidies would be required to once again, for the nth time since the 1950s prove that nuclear is truly dead outside of luxury niche applications like submarines? Today renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels which in turn are cheaper than than nuclear. Through pure economic terms the world is steaming towards a new cheaper energy equilibrium based on renewable energy. We are currently in the chaotic transitioning phase but that will of course shake out. Sprinkling some luxury nuclear in top will have miniscule effect.
- Paradigma11 3y ago
  Its pretty clear whats going to happen. Energy companies will provide the absolute minimum redundancies and will make formidable profits most years. Every 10-15 years there will be some catastrophic blackout due to unlikely weather events and everybody will scream murder. The energy companies will swear to do better and maybe some toothless regulations will be legislated. The politicians will be happy to be bought off by those companies since the next event will be most likely after they have left office, so its free money. Rince repeat.
  - nicoburns 3y ago
    In countries with private energy generation perhaps. Energy production is at least partially nationalised (or at least heavily regulated) in a lot of the world, which puts those places in a much stronger position to plan for such events.
    - marcusverus 3y ago
      The nice thing about nationalized companies is that they're happy to spend your money on things you don't want! Given the choice, folks would rather pay $0.18/kWh for energy production (the average US rate) with 99.9% uptime than $0.30-0.40/kWh (the average Western European rate), even if that came with 99.99% uptime.
    - billytetrud 3y ago
      Nationalized industries are great for like 5-10 years, after which it becomes clear they have no ability to make effective plans or react to a changing market.
billytetrud 3y ago
Nuclear projects don't get funded because of regulatory risk, not because they're "too expensive".
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Let's hear what the then-President of Exelon, at the time one of the largest nuclear operators in the US, had to say about that. https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088 “The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.
  - billytetrud 3y ago
    I'm not sure why you think that Exelon didn't consider regulatory risk as one of the things that made it not make sense for them. It was certainly a large factor. The idea that existing nuclear power plants are losing money because they aren't operationally competitive with oil and gas does not square with the facts. The total cost of running a nuclear plant is 30% less than oil and gas per kilowatt-hour. And if all our nuclear plants weren't 50 years old and saddled with massive overregulation, the operation and maintenance of a nuclear plant would probably be equivalent to running a fossil fueled power plant, which would cut ANOTHER 30% off the cost of nuclear because fuel costs of fossil fueled power plants are 4 times the cost of nuclear fuel per kwh. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html And as for construction costs, you can see that the massive increase in construction costs in the early 60s and 70s was because regulation required enormous increases in staffing, which ballooned labor costs. https://ifp.org/nuclear-power-plant-construction-costs/ https://ifp.org/nuclear-power-plant-construction-costs/ And even so a nuclear plant should be expected to be profitable as long as you can manage to operate it for long enough without the government shutting you down (one of the major regulatory risks I mentioned). Nuclear power plants in the past generally took 7 years to build and pay off in 16-24 years. While a natural gas plant can be built in 2 years and pay off in 8 years. Nuclear power plants are so cost effective tho, that if you can manage to run it for 17 years, you'll make more money than running a natural gas plant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC_BCz0pzMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC_BCz0pzMw

by Joeri 3y ago

phendrenad2 3y ago

> costly on-site last minute design changes I clicked through to the actual study ( https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS254243512030458X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X?_r... ) and I couldn't find a single sentence mentioning on-site last-minute design changes. I searched for "change" and tabbed through all of the results. The closest thing was mention of Westinghouse changing construction standards halfway through an ongoing project, which required many changes to the project design. But, that's one project. So my question is: Is it possible that the MIT News Office can't understand MIT journal articles?

bpfrh 3y ago
"Our results point to a gap between expected and realized costs stemming from low resilience to time- and site-dependent construction conditions." Couldn't that be paraphrased to "last minute changes"?
magicalhippo 3y ago
From the article's own summary: Our results point to a gap between expected and realized costs stemming from low resilience to time- and site-dependent construction conditions. Guess that's where they took it from. Skimming the paper it seems a large part of the issue is that it's difficult to mass produce something which needs to be integrated into a variable environment, and attempting to do so is detrimental compared to custom solutions. This seems to mirror what I've found in the software world, where a custom integration is often much cheaper and easier to maintain than trying to manhandle some generic library/software to do what's needed.
- mixdup 3y ago
  There's got to be some middle ground between every reactor in the country being absolutely bespoke and on the other hand trying to build them in a factory like modular housing. IIRC one of the big differences/problems is that every one of them have completely different control rooms and control systems. To the point that you cannot train on one reactor and walk into another and operate it. If we at least standardized that side of things, the cost of operations would surely come down I also question (and happy to be enlightened about) how much the local project needs some massive change. That a pipe might need to be a few hundred yards longer to reach the river surely isn't so consequential that you can't reuse designs These things are built on huge sites that could be completely leveled and turned into identical square clean pieces of dirt with massive empty land around them How much variation can there possibly be that can't be handled outside of the critical reactor design area
  - magicalhippo 3y ago
    Yeah, I can't shake the feeling it should be possible to mass produce most of the difficult bits, and then have a per-site specific foundation of sorts. Then again, perhaps it is one of those things where you actually need to make a few of 'em to gain experience.

ViewTrick1002 3y ago

How many hundreds of billions in subsidies would be required to once again, for the nth time since the 1950s prove that nuclear is truly dead outside of luxury niche applications like submarines? Today renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels which in turn are cheaper than than nuclear. Through pure economic terms the world is steaming towards a new cheaper energy equilibrium based on renewable energy. We are currently in the chaotic transitioning phase but that will of course shake out. Sprinkling some luxury nuclear in top will have miniscule effect.

Paradigma11 3y ago
Its pretty clear whats going to happen. Energy companies will provide the absolute minimum redundancies and will make formidable profits most years. Every 10-15 years there will be some catastrophic blackout due to unlikely weather events and everybody will scream murder. The energy companies will swear to do better and maybe some toothless regulations will be legislated. The politicians will be happy to be bought off by those companies since the next event will be most likely after they have left office, so its free money. Rince repeat.
- nicoburns 3y ago
  In countries with private energy generation perhaps. Energy production is at least partially nationalised (or at least heavily regulated) in a lot of the world, which puts those places in a much stronger position to plan for such events.
  - marcusverus 3y ago
    The nice thing about nationalized companies is that they're happy to spend your money on things you don't want! Given the choice, folks would rather pay $0.18/kWh for energy production (the average US rate) with 99.9% uptime than $0.30-0.40/kWh (the average Western European rate), even if that came with 99.99% uptime.
  - billytetrud 3y ago
    Nationalized industries are great for like 5-10 years, after which it becomes clear they have no ability to make effective plans or react to a changing market.

billytetrud 3y ago

Nuclear projects don't get funded because of regulatory risk, not because they're "too expensive".

pfdietz 3y ago
Let's hear what the then-President of Exelon, at the time one of the largest nuclear operators in the US, had to say about that. https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088 “The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.
- billytetrud 3y ago
  I'm not sure why you think that Exelon didn't consider regulatory risk as one of the things that made it not make sense for them. It was certainly a large factor. The idea that existing nuclear power plants are losing money because they aren't operationally competitive with oil and gas does not square with the facts. The total cost of running a nuclear plant is 30% less than oil and gas per kilowatt-hour. And if all our nuclear plants weren't 50 years old and saddled with massive overregulation, the operation and maintenance of a nuclear plant would probably be equivalent to running a fossil fueled power plant, which would cut ANOTHER 30% off the cost of nuclear because fuel costs of fossil fueled power plants are 4 times the cost of nuclear fuel per kwh. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html And as for construction costs, you can see that the massive increase in construction costs in the early 60s and 70s was because regulation required enormous increases in staffing, which ballooned labor costs. https://ifp.org/nuclear-power-plant-construction-costs/ https://ifp.org/nuclear-power-plant-construction-costs/ And even so a nuclear plant should be expected to be profitable as long as you can manage to operate it for long enough without the government shutting you down (one of the major regulatory risks I mentioned). Nuclear power plants in the past generally took 7 years to build and pay off in 16-24 years. While a natural gas plant can be built in 2 years and pay off in 8 years. Nuclear power plants are so cost effective tho, that if you can manage to run it for 17 years, you'll make more money than running a natural gas plant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC_BCz0pzMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC_BCz0pzMw