3 ms·
Oh good grief, not that Lazard "study" again. They took the cost to build Vogtle, which is one of the most or even the most expensive outlier in terms of time/
by mpweiher 3y ago
Oh good grief, not that Lazard "study" again.
They took the cost to build Vogtle, which is one of the most or even the most expensive outlier in terms of time/cost overruns of all time, and decided to make that the baseline for "the cost of nuclear power".
When the average time to build a nuclear reactor in the world has consistently been around 7.5 years. For the last 50 years, and also for the ones that came online in 2022, lest you think these were just the bygone good old days.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-construction-time https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi...
- adrianN 3y agoWhich new nuclear would you suggest instead? Hinkley C will cost about $160/MWh, right in the range given by Lazard.
- mpweiher 3y agoI would suggest we look at overall stats instead of isolated examples. Time to construct a nuclear plant takes on average 7.5 years, a number that hasn't really budged in the last 50 years. https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-construction-time https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi... And since financing (i.e. interest) is the primary cost of nuclear (~50%), time is money. Hinkley and Flamanville are examples of the EPR, a brand new reactor type that is both at the start of its learning curve, always problematic, and also apparently a design that is particularly difficult to build. And both Europe and the US haven't really built any nuclear plants for quite a long time, so the know-how to build them is just not there. Oh, and the regulators sometimes change regulations after parts of the plants have been built so they have to tear down what they have built and start again. These are obviously all solvable problems, and mostly solvable by just building more. The problem is that we didn't build enough. Just build more.
- adrianN 3y agoConstruction time is misleading. It takes a few days to a couple of weeks to build a wind turbine, but at least in Germany a wind turbine construction project takes more than five years. So what better estimate would you suggest? What nuclear power plants where built in the last decade or so, for how much do they sell their power? How big will their decomissioning costs be per MWh?
- mpweiher 3y ago> Construction time is misleading. Please support your claim. We were talking about cost, and cost is directly proportional to construction time because financing (interest) is the primary cost of nuclear power plant construction.
- adrianN 3y agoIt’sa lot harder to find investors for a project that takes 20+ years from planning to first income than for a project that takes seven and a half years. I’m still waiting for better cost estimates than what Lazard gives.
- mpweiher 3y agoSimple: Take the Vogtle-3 time, divide by average time to construct a nuclear reactor. Apply factor to Lazard "estimate".
- hef19898 3y agoIf it is so simple, can you do that math for us?
- adrianN 3y agoEven going by that ridiculously oversimplified calculation, and taking best-case numbers 0.75*$141 (10 years from first concrete poured to grid connection vs your 7.5 years average) is still barely competitive with worst-case Wind+Storage and more expensive than solar as Lazard estimates. And those are proven numbers from real projects not some pie in the sky guesstimates.
- natmaka 3y agoMean project cost over-runs: Nuclear power 120% Oil and gas 34% Mining 27% Fossil thermal power 16% Wind 13% Energy transmission 8% Solar 1% https://www.enr.com/articles/55774-oxford-professors-latest-book-examines-roots-of-project-failure https://www.enr.com/articles/55774-oxford-professors-latest-...