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Let's do some more math From the article, this new reactor is "estimated to cost more than $30 Billion." (Let's call it 30) & It generates 1,114 Mega Watts. T

by grecy 3y ago

Let's do some more math From the article, this new reactor is "estimated to cost more than $30 Billion." (Let's call it 30) & It generates 1,114 Mega Watts. This article [1] says solar panels cost between $0.90 and $1.50 per watt. Let's go with $1/watt to keep the math easy, though I bet it's much cheaper by now, and especially at the scale we'll be buying them at. So for $30 billion dollars, we can have 30 billion watts of solar, which is 30,000 mega watts, or 27x the amount of power of the new nuke. Obviously solar doesn't produce at night and it's seasonal. So let's make it more useful. I saw elsewhere in this thread to get an actual output number from solar you have to divide by 6 to account for night and seasonality. So that means to equal the 1,114 mega watts from the nuke, we need 6,6684 mega watts of solar. call it 7mW to keep the math easy. So we use 7 billion dollars buying 7mW of solar. We have a tidy $23 billion dollars left over to spend on storage. This site [2] says grid scale storage costs something like $300/kWh. (I bet it's cheaper now, and cheaper at massive scale, but we'll go with that.) So with our $23 billion left over dollars we go and buy 76.6 million kWh of storage (which is 76,666 MWh). So even when there is no sun coming in, our storage can maintain the 1,114 mega watts of output for something around 68 hours. That sounds like overkill, so it probably makes sense to spend more of the money on solar and less on storage, but you get the idea. Also note for the same $30 billion dollars our solar + storage setup now has no running costs, no refuelling costs, no downtime due to refuelling and maintenance and no radioactive waste disposal problem. Also note the $30 billion nuke plant is a single point of failure, and needs big lossy power transmission lines coming in/out to go useful places. I would be interested to see the numbers on how much of that 1,114 mW of nuke power winds up lost in transmission. The solar setup can be distributed all over, and can generate and store the power right where it's needed - on factories, houses, schools and where ever else needs power. Transmission loss of close to zero. Nukes are awesome, but they're not even in the realm of making sense financially. Year after year the price of solar and storage will go down again, then again, then again. This is not a fair fight. [1] https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/solar/cost-of-solar-panels/ https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/solar/cost-of-solar-... [2] https://thundersaidenergy.com/downloads/battery-storage-costs-the-economics/ https://thundersaidenergy.com/downloads/battery-storage-cost... (Please point out any holes / problems in my math) EDIT: as pointed out below the cost for grid scale storage is more like $500/kWh. So for our $23 billion we can buy 46 million kWh of storage (46,000 mWh). So we can equal the nukes 1,114 mW output for about 41 hours. Still plenty

formercoder 3y ago
Why can’t we make it cheaper and easier to build nuclear plants?
- chris222 3y ago
  It would require a radically new design that takes a lot of the cost out. You also have the spent fuel storage problem and the risk factors of a meltdown (however small) to tackle which are always working against you. Technology development in the Nuclear area is SLOW. Now compare to batteries. There are thousands of companies working on new technology development. It’s just a matter of brain power and capital working on the problems. I don’t see a viable path forward for Nuclear at the current costs and with how dramatic the rise of renewables and battery storage is increasing.
  - qwebfdzsh 3y ago
    Just starting build them at a much bigger scaled would probably result in significant decrease in costs on it's own. China, Korea and Russia somehow manage to build at much lower cost. > risk factors of a meltdown (however small) to tackle which are always working against you. Technology development in the Nuclear area is SLOW. True, then again these really aren't a big deal. Burning coal is about the same as having a Chernobyl size disaster every few year (even when we 100% ignore climate change) and most people don't seem to mind that much.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      Yes, I'm sure governments are going to fork over a trillion dollars to demonstrate that this time, for sure, honest, nuclear costs will decline with experience. /s
- pfdietz 3y ago
  The generic problem is that nuclear plants have to be big to amortize fixed costs (like personnel to operate and guard them), but if they're big they have lots of parts and more connections between parts, so to make them sufficiently reliable they need expensive careful construction. The more welds a NPP has, the more reliable each individual weld must be. In contrast, something like a solar field, while it has lots of parts, doesn't depend on all those parts working for the field to work. It's by its nature highly redundant and fault tolerant. It also doesn't require supervision anywhere near the same extent as a nuclear plant.

by grecy 3y ago

formercoder 3y ago

Why can’t we make it cheaper and easier to build nuclear plants?

chris222 3y ago
It would require a radically new design that takes a lot of the cost out. You also have the spent fuel storage problem and the risk factors of a meltdown (however small) to tackle which are always working against you. Technology development in the Nuclear area is SLOW. Now compare to batteries. There are thousands of companies working on new technology development. It’s just a matter of brain power and capital working on the problems. I don’t see a viable path forward for Nuclear at the current costs and with how dramatic the rise of renewables and battery storage is increasing.
- qwebfdzsh 3y ago
  Just starting build them at a much bigger scaled would probably result in significant decrease in costs on it's own. China, Korea and Russia somehow manage to build at much lower cost. > risk factors of a meltdown (however small) to tackle which are always working against you. Technology development in the Nuclear area is SLOW. True, then again these really aren't a big deal. Burning coal is about the same as having a Chernobyl size disaster every few year (even when we 100% ignore climate change) and most people don't seem to mind that much.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Yes, I'm sure governments are going to fork over a trillion dollars to demonstrate that this time, for sure, honest, nuclear costs will decline with experience. /s
pfdietz 3y ago
The generic problem is that nuclear plants have to be big to amortize fixed costs (like personnel to operate and guard them), but if they're big they have lots of parts and more connections between parts, so to make them sufficiently reliable they need expensive careful construction. The more welds a NPP has, the more reliable each individual weld must be. In contrast, something like a solar field, while it has lots of parts, doesn't depend on all those parts working for the field to work. It's by its nature highly redundant and fault tolerant. It also doesn't require supervision anywhere near the same extent as a nuclear plant.