3 ms·

I'm still confused as to why you think the 60-80% figure is a lie. Even if you reallocate 1 billion out of the construction cost into the operational cost, that

I'm still confused as to why you think the 60-80% figure is a lie. Even if you reallocate 1 billion out of the construction cost into the operational cost, that's still a single digit percentage out of a plant cost of $35B. Land is not a big factor in nuclear power plant cost. Not even remotely.

Retric 3y ago
It’s a lie because they calculated 60% of a smaller number than the total costs. There’s no well it’s not actually that big a deal if it’s really 58% or whatever no it’s just a lie. The upfront land cost isn’t that big I think that 1980 estimate had 0.2%. Except lands gone up a lot faster than inflation and loans are setup so you pay interest on that land for several years of construction and only after operating do you start paying down those loans. Land costs and plant sizes vary wildly let’s suppose you’re going to spend 100m on land and you’re paying 6%. Construction takes say 7 years from purchase though it can get a lot worse. By the time you have an actual power plant that’s 150m, but you still haven’t actually paid for the land you take another 30 years to pay off the loan so it’s more like 330 million. Not a huge number, but many different not huge numbers add up. Again, I am not saying land costs themselves are that significant, just that lumping those in when you talk about saving money on construction is misleading.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  Again, 60-80% of projects that cost tens of billions is in construction. 100m on land is trivial and doesn't budge this figure. The interest on financing has nothing to do with the actual cost of construction. That depends on how much working capital the builder has and how much they're taking out via loans. And it applies to any big construction project, not just nuclear power plants. Furthermore it means that improvements that hasten the completion of nuclear plants have an outsized effect because it means you pay off the load sooner. There is nothing of substance in your comments that contradicts the claim that 60-80% of nuclear power's cost is in construction.
  - Retric 3y ago
    0.33 billion or 0.15 billion alone might not make a difference, but it isn’t alone here. Someone needs to pay all the costs not just those you happen to want to talk about. But there’s no reason to be abstract, let’s see a breakdown for the full lifecycle of a single rector and see what all the individual costs add up to. I’ll even let you pick any fully decommissioned reactor for cost comparisons to find one within that 60-80% range.

Retric 3y ago

It’s a lie because they calculated 60% of a smaller number than the total costs. There’s no well it’s not actually that big a deal if it’s really 58% or whatever no it’s just a lie. The upfront land cost isn’t that big I think that 1980 estimate had 0.2%. Except lands gone up a lot faster than inflation and loans are setup so you pay interest on that land for several years of construction and only after operating do you start paying down those loans. Land costs and plant sizes vary wildly let’s suppose you’re going to spend 100m on land and you’re paying 6%. Construction takes say 7 years from purchase though it can get a lot worse. By the time you have an actual power plant that’s 150m, but you still haven’t actually paid for the land you take another 30 years to pay off the loan so it’s more like 330 million. Not a huge number, but many different not huge numbers add up. Again, I am not saying land costs themselves are that significant, just that lumping those in when you talk about saving money on construction is misleading.

Manuel_D 3y ago
Again, 60-80% of projects that cost tens of billions is in construction. 100m on land is trivial and doesn't budge this figure. The interest on financing has nothing to do with the actual cost of construction. That depends on how much working capital the builder has and how much they're taking out via loans. And it applies to any big construction project, not just nuclear power plants. Furthermore it means that improvements that hasten the completion of nuclear plants have an outsized effect because it means you pay off the load sooner. There is nothing of substance in your comments that contradicts the claim that 60-80% of nuclear power's cost is in construction.
- Retric 3y ago
  0.33 billion or 0.15 billion alone might not make a difference, but it isn’t alone here. Someone needs to pay all the costs not just those you happen to want to talk about. But there’s no reason to be abstract, let’s see a breakdown for the full lifecycle of a single rector and see what all the individual costs add up to. I’ll even let you pick any fully decommissioned reactor for cost comparisons to find one within that 60-80% range.