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The newest AP1000s in Georgia cost 34B (and counting) for 2.2GWe. As usual, horrible ROI and massive cost overruns: > During the construction of Vogtle's firs

The newest AP1000s in Georgia cost 34B (and counting) for 2.2GWe. As usual, horrible ROI and massive cost overruns: > During the construction of Vogtle's first two units, capital investment required jumped from an estimated $660 million to $8.87 billion.[7] ($18.3 billion in 2022 dollars[8]) > Two additional units utilizing Westinghouse AP1000 reactors were under construction since 2009, with Unit 3 being completed in July 2023.[9][10][11] This last report blames the latest increase in costs on the contractor not completing work as scheduled. Another complicating factor in the construction process is the bankruptcy of Westinghouse in 2017.[12] In 2018 costs were estimated to be about $25 billion.[13] By 2021 they were estimated to be over $28.5 billion.[14] In 2023 costs had increased to $34 billion, with work still to be completed on Vogtle 4.[15] So why bother? Because base load? I mean damn, why not just toss in a couple Moss Landing type tesla Megapack installations instead? At 2.2GW, even if u wanted to store power for 12h, thats 26GWh. Moss Landing is 2.8GWh and it cost $560 million. Ten of these is 5B, so an entire solar+megapack installation still ends up at half the cost of nuclear. And you don’t need to store 12h of solar. And the rapid response of Megapacks is incredibly helpful for grid stability. And they can be spread out making the grid more resilient to natural disasters, attacks etc

Maxion 3y ago
Depends on where you are, up here in Finland we have no solar in the winter when our power consumption peaks. Wind is unreliable and can be too low for over a week.
- pydry 3y ago
  Wind energy is the fastest growing form of power in Finland. Plenty of hydro too. Enough to push electricity prices below zero in may 2023. Luckily youve also got a choice of nuclear reactors built by Russia or reactors where you get the privilege to fight with France over whose responsibility it is to pay for the billions of euros in cost overruns.
- _w1tm 3y ago
  And every time some minor issue puts our biggest reactor offline the price of electricity spikes. Large nuclear reactors are huge single points of failure.
  - Krssst 3y ago
    Large reactor not generating is a failure (so it does not happen often and steps are supposed to be taken to limit the risk). NREs not generating is normal behavior (it happens often because that's how it is).
  - KptMarchewa 3y ago
    That's why you need to have more of them.
realusername 3y ago
> And you don’t need to store 12h of solar. No you don't need 12h of storage but 3 to 4 months to sustain the attrocious winter production where the highest load actually is. And this is why the battery packs are uneconomical to smooth out renewables, it doesn't even get you 1% of the way with 5B.
- iknowstuff 3y ago
  Thankfully you can built 4GW of renewables for the price of 1GW of nuclear lol. Don’t need to store the energy, just build more generation capacity to offset lower winter production. Still cheaper, and getting cheaper. Don’t ignore wind power too.
  - realusername 3y ago
    "Just build more" would work better if the production wasn't so unbalanced. 70% of the production is done during 6 months and it's 3% in December and January. Being mere 4 times cheaper than nuclear (in the short term) isn't nearly enough to counterbalance that. If it would be 20 times cheaper it would start to make more sense for a winter load. > Still cheaper, and getting cheaper. Don’t ignore wind power too. Wind is even worse than solar in this aspect, it can be down unpredictability and unlike solar, is closed to the maximum theoretical efficiency already anyways which means the only thing you can do is count on the economy of scale. And before people tell me that it usually produces more in winter, yes it does, until it doesn't like the 3 weeks wind anomaly we had two years ago in the EU with close to no production. I'm not predicting future tech of course, it's possible that "just build more" will work in the future, for now it doesn't though and from a large margin.
    - KptMarchewa 3y ago
      Wind is better if you actually build offshore, which for some reason is very underinvested. We should have 100s of GWs in offshore power in Europe now. The fact that UK does not have even 100GW is a shame.
      - 3y ago

Maxion 3y ago

Depends on where you are, up here in Finland we have no solar in the winter when our power consumption peaks. Wind is unreliable and can be too low for over a week.

pydry 3y ago
Wind energy is the fastest growing form of power in Finland. Plenty of hydro too. Enough to push electricity prices below zero in may 2023. Luckily youve also got a choice of nuclear reactors built by Russia or reactors where you get the privilege to fight with France over whose responsibility it is to pay for the billions of euros in cost overruns.
_w1tm 3y ago
And every time some minor issue puts our biggest reactor offline the price of electricity spikes. Large nuclear reactors are huge single points of failure.
- Krssst 3y ago
  Large reactor not generating is a failure (so it does not happen often and steps are supposed to be taken to limit the risk). NREs not generating is normal behavior (it happens often because that's how it is).
- KptMarchewa 3y ago
  That's why you need to have more of them.

realusername 3y ago

> And you don’t need to store 12h of solar. No you don't need 12h of storage but 3 to 4 months to sustain the attrocious winter production where the highest load actually is. And this is why the battery packs are uneconomical to smooth out renewables, it doesn't even get you 1% of the way with 5B.

iknowstuff 3y ago
Thankfully you can built 4GW of renewables for the price of 1GW of nuclear lol. Don’t need to store the energy, just build more generation capacity to offset lower winter production. Still cheaper, and getting cheaper. Don’t ignore wind power too.
- realusername 3y ago
  "Just build more" would work better if the production wasn't so unbalanced. 70% of the production is done during 6 months and it's 3% in December and January. Being mere 4 times cheaper than nuclear (in the short term) isn't nearly enough to counterbalance that. If it would be 20 times cheaper it would start to make more sense for a winter load. > Still cheaper, and getting cheaper. Don’t ignore wind power too. Wind is even worse than solar in this aspect, it can be down unpredictability and unlike solar, is closed to the maximum theoretical efficiency already anyways which means the only thing you can do is count on the economy of scale. And before people tell me that it usually produces more in winter, yes it does, until it doesn't like the 3 weeks wind anomaly we had two years ago in the EU with close to no production. I'm not predicting future tech of course, it's possible that "just build more" will work in the future, for now it doesn't though and from a large margin.
  - KptMarchewa 3y ago
    Wind is better if you actually build offshore, which for some reason is very underinvested. We should have 100s of GWs in offshore power in Europe now. The fact that UK does not have even 100GW is a shame.
    - 3y ago