10 ms·

Small reactors don't add up as a viable energy source

30 points by tapper 2y ago

sp332 2y ago
Proponents assert that SMRs would cost less to build and thus be more affordable. However, when evaluated on the basis of cost per unit of power capacity, SMRs will actually be more expensive than large reactors. That's not what affordable means. People are building smaller reactors because it's more likely that a project will be completed, not because of unit costs.
- readyman 2y ago
  This needs to be recognized as an indictment of our society. An inability to accomplish anything in a collective and intentional manner is only one of the many disasterous outcomes of the wretched individualism promoted by the neoliberal agenda. And make no mistake; this is not a result of a so-called "free market". It is the result of top-down privatization. The US government, for example, has a much larger budget than ever before, accounting for inflation and so on. It's just being delivered to private firms for profit instead of on building big things or maintaining the big things we used to build. This lack of cooperation across society is also the primary source of cultural breakdown and the sense of "division" felt by all of us, both rich and poor.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    When the market is telling you something over and over, it's best to listen.
    - readyman 2y ago
      The so-called "market" isn't telling anybody anything here. The financiers are the only ones speaking and all they're saying is they can't turn as much profit in their own individual lifetimes. It is a total disregard for society as a whole, which is why we're in this mess.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        > “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. https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/71/12/26/904707/US-nuclear-industry-fights-for-survivalA-glut-of https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/71/12/26/904707/US...
        readyman 2y ago
        What is your point? Cost is not a problem when near-term profit is high, and nuclear energy has an unbeatable track record with long-term ROI. Saying "it's expensive" is meaningless nonsense. There is absolutely no excuse besides the time to ROI.
        pfdietz 2y ago
        Every one of your statements there is obviously false.
        readyman 2y ago
        Source? France's investments in nuclear energy are very well known as being incomparably successful, both in terms of return on capital investment and emissions. There is literally nothing to compare it to because nothing comes close. The only downside is literally upfront cost. Even the US has had great ROI in long term nuclear investments, especially if you discount the losses of all the prematurely decommissioned plants.
    - neglesaks 2y ago
      There is no market in the regular sense when it comes to large-scale enterprises, especially one that is so government-entangled as the energy and infrastructure sectors.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        There are plenty of markets in the electrical power sector. In addition to the market for energy sources, selling generating assets to utilities, there are markets in the power itself in many places, for example ERCOT in Texas. No one has ever built a nuclear plant to sell into a competitive power market. One can trace the downfall of nuclear in the US to the time when markets were opened to competition, with PURPA.
        readyman 2y ago
        Nonsense. PURPA was just more regulation, regardless of how it was sold. It had nothing to do with "markets being opened to competition". One can trace the downfall of nuclear in the US to the end of the New Deal coalition and the divestment of public infrastructure, which meant short-term planning only. It has nothing to do with "markets". Markets in energy don't exist now and did not exist then.
        pfdietz 2y ago
        https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0096340213485949 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/009634021348594... > The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA) triggered a restructuring of the previously monolithic utility sector, stipulating in particular that electricity produced by independent power producers must be purchased by utilities at "avoided cost." The new power from independent producers, combined with lack of demand for electricity, further eroded utilities' need for new nuclear plants. In large part owing to the provisions of PURPA, nonutility generation rose steadily from 71 billion kilowatt-hours per year in 1979 to almost 400 billion kilowatt-hours per year by 1995 -- this new, nonutility generation was the equivalent of adding more than 50 typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear plants (Energy Information Administration, 1996). As Peter Bradford (2011), a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, argued in the Wall Street Journal: > "Nuclear-plant construction in this country came to a halt because a law passed in 1978 [PURPA] created competitive markets for power. These markets required investors rather than utility customers to assume the risk of cost overruns, plant cancellations, and poor operation. Today, private investors still shun the risks of building new reactors in all nations that employ power markets."
  - justahuman74 2y ago
    Collective intention requires some amount of collective agreement. Many people are unfortunately scared of nuclear power and politicians know this.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      The idea that nuclear is struggling because people are "scared" is a form of denial from nuclear advocates. Nuclear is struggling because it's much too expensive, not because people are "scared".
      - chii 2y ago
        It's expensive because people are scared, and to alleviate that fear, regulation is put in place. Some of those fears are founded, but some are not. But overall, the regulation required is what drives the cost up.
        cycomanic 2y ago
        That is simply not true and repeating it all the time does not make it more true. There have been several analysis posted here on HN which showed that compliance with regulations is not a major cost factor for nuclear power. In fact nuclear power operators have often lobbied to be exempt from regulations that apply to other power generation schemes. Solar and wind often have significantly higher compliance costs as percentage of their budget than nuclear.
        neglesaks 2y ago
        Could you post a link to one or two of the sumissions where these analyses have been presented please?
      - rayiner 2y ago
        It’s expensive because environmentalists put in too many barriers to building nuclear power plants because they’re scared (in addition to being innumerate). If we had started building out nuclear power in the 1960s the same as the French, we would have much more runway today to address climate change.
- mc32 2y ago
  Would this not relegate this option to niche areas? Elsewhere it needs to compete on price against other viable options.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    Yes. Also, there really aren't any such niche areas save some military naval applications. Even there, most ships in the US navy are not nuclear, because burning liquid hydrocarbons is cheaper.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  Also, not every application of nuclear energy requires 1GW...
  - justahuman74 2y ago
    I'm thinking of all the new datacenters we need to build, imagine if you could just slot a small reactor down on-site
    - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
      NuScale's SMR is ~77MW - which is a medium sized data center. AFAIK, that's typical consumption for data centers being built today.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        A site that contained a single NuScale reactor would have unacceptable fixed costs per MW. The UAMPS/NuScale CFPP was planned to have six reactors to amortize those fixed costs (like personnel) over more output. Note also that the cost figures NuScale gave for that was the cost after 40-50 reactors had been built (and with federal subsidy), not FOAK costs.
        justahuman74 2y ago
        If you can build N reactors, the datacenters will suddenly appear nearby if they're allowed to. Power is the current bottleneck in the US
- mikeyouse 2y ago
  There’s clearly some value to consistent power sources producing clean energy but if SMRs are in the $0.15/kwh wholesale range, they’re DOA. Solar+battery gets you there today, is getting cheaper every day, and there’s almost zero project risk. If the install is small enough, you could likely beat the realistic costs for SMRs with solar + battery + diesel generators if you need a guarantee of 100% uptime.
  - throw0101c 2y ago
    > Solar+battery gets you there today, is getting cheaper every day, and there’s almost zero project risk. Debatable. In Ontario nuclear costs 10¢/kWh while wind costs 15¢ and solar 50¢ (Table 2): * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20221021.pdf https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2022... And when wind goes to zero at night, then (natural/methane) gas generators are often spun up (generating carbon emissions). Meanwhile the refurbishments of Ontario's nuclear plants are on-budget, and often ahead of schedule: * https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/infrastructure/2023/07/unit-3-at-darlington-nuclear-completed-ahead-of-schedule https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/infrastructure/...
    - chickenbig 2y ago
      Ontario gives hope to the nuclear dreams. Being able to deliver projects on-budget gives decision-makers cause to believe project plans. Lets hope that another 4-pack of CANDU reactors will be built, to further the soverign industry.
    - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
      Existing nuclear, in Canada, is basically the best case scenario for nuclear Vs the worst case scenario for solar and batteries. It's not globally representative though.
      - mikeyouse 2y ago
        And this very article is about how SMRs by their nature are going to be more expensive than traditional nuclear so seems pretty silly to make any comparison to the costs of production for reactors that were built 40 years ago. A better comparison would be how much are we expecting wholesale costs for Hinkley’s new reactor to be? Don’t want to ruin the surprise but people will be shocked if they look up what they’re charging in a sub-$0.10/kwh world.
- bjourne 2y ago
  What do you mean? The lower unit costs is exactly the point of SMRs.
  - rafaelmn 2y ago
    Unit cost of reactor not unit cost of power ?
    - chickenbig 2y ago
      Indeed, the selling point is probably that a single entity can build an SMR without risk of going bankrupt. Perhaps this speaks to the problem of building consortia of like-minded companies. Currently EDF are being stung for a large chunk of money now that CGN are refusing to put any more cash into Hinkley Point C construction.
- DennisP 2y ago
  And because if you build a lot of reactors, then you get a learning curve where they get cheaper over time, just like any other mass-produced item. Some of the SMR designs can even be built in factories. The article ignores this, and in fact complains about the cost of the first six reactors proposed by NuScale (which, fwiw, is just a smaller LWR, not one of the more innovative designs). Before anyone talks about the negative learning curve of large reactors in the US, bear in mind that we mostly build those as one-offs, so no learning curve exists. We don't build many, regulations change pretty frequently, and sometimes the NRC requires design changes after construction starts.
  - cycomanic 2y ago
    Economies of scale don't work for infrastructure. I mean if it would work for nuclear plants why have people not done it for coal plants? There have been many of them build, and a nuclear power plant is 70% the same as a coal power plant (which incidentally also explains much of the cost for nuclear power generation, it's essentially a thermal plant with added complexity, so can't really be significantly cheaper than a coal plant).
    - DennisP 2y ago
      The fact that something hasn't been done is not necessarily evidence that it won't work. A few years ago you could have asked why everybody was still using disposable rockets, if reusables would be so great. And coal is not exactly fertile ground for innovation, given that we'd like to stop burning coal entirely. Matching the price of coal, with clean dispatchable power, is not such a bad outcome. There's a bit of wiggle room for extra complexity since coal pays 2 cents/kWh for fuel, and has to handle large amounts of incoming fuel and outgoing ash. For a reliable zero-carbon grid of only wind/solar/battery, we need about 2X overproduction and 4 days of battery storage[1]. Maybe that still ends up the cheapest option, but it's not so obvious that a backup plan isn't worth considering. [1] https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/07/12/grid-storage-batteries-will-win/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/07/12/grid-storage-b...
      - 2y ago
- ooterness 2y ago
  In terms of cost per ton moved, trains and semi-trucks outperform taxis. And yet taxis still exist. Turns out cost per vehicle (or per reactor) is important in some situations.
throw0101c 2y ago
SMRs are 'fine' for smaller grids. For example, the province of New Brunswick has a CANDU 6 reactor, which is 1x660MW of capacity: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Lepreau_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Lepreau_Nuclear_Generati... CANDUs are pretty flexible in that there's a lot of maintenance (including refuelling) that can be done while it is running, but there's still some stuff that needs to be done when the system is powered down, which means taking down a large source of power for the grid. If there were 2-3x300MW reactors, when there could be rotating maintenance without much impact to the grid.
- chickenbig 2y ago
  CANDU are a great design; the calandria is a nice adaptation to the capabilities of Canadian maufacturing, and it is impressive to see the lines of reactors at Bruce, Pickering and Darlington. It is also a widely exported design, with China constructing reactors on a 4 year timeline. Granted a single large reactor would dominate the grid, but I presume there is grid connectivity to adjacent provinces. An alternative would be a large energy user (aluminium, heavy water production) to soak up the excess power and turn down when one unit comes offline.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Some people present Alaska as a good place for SMRs. But the largest grid there, the Railbelt Grid, has an average power flow of just 600 MW. A 300 MW reactor would be too large to integrate into that system.
evrimoztamur 2y ago
Is energy independence and lower land use priced in?
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Land is a small fraction of the cost of a renewable energy source (save for biomass), especially in lesser populated regions.
- dalyons 2y ago
  There is a lot of empty practically free land in the world. Also, it is estimated that it would take about ~7 million acres to power the US entirely with solar. The US currently uses about 40 million (!!!!) acres for corn for ethanol. Land is just not a problem, at all. https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us-solar/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20report%20from,14%25%20efficiency%20for%20solar%20modules https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us.... https://frontiergroup.org/resources/ethanols-outsized-place-us-energy-system/#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20according%20to%20a,5%25%20of%20the%20nation's%20energy https://frontiergroup.org/resources/ethanols-outsized-place-....
  - neglesaks 2y ago
    Land is not a problem in land-rich nations like Russia or Canada, of the US for that matter. It is however a problem in Europe where distances are shorter, population density is higher and so are the land values and thus both direct & shadow costs associated with infrastructure development.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      Average price of arable land in the EU in 2022 was a shade over 10,000 euros/hectare. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:F1average-prices-arable-land-eu-2022.png https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... At this price, the cost of land is quite small compared to the cost of a PV field on that land.
Linda231 2y ago
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math_dandy 2y ago
In much of Western Canada, energy use is highest at night in deepest winter when there is no appreciable wind, meaning that the grid is completely reliant on gas-fired power. If we want to reduce gas-fired capacity, we need another source of on-demand power. Meaning either nuclear or a robust storage solution. There seems to be more enthusiasm for the latter, but there’s no buzz about any viable solutions on the horizon.
- xgkickt 2y ago
  I can’t understand why, with winters known to be how they are, there is no district heating. If that infrastructure had been in place, a transition to carbon-less sources of heat could be well underway.
  - Slava_Propanei 2y ago
    [dead]
  - lazide 2y ago
    Canada is very dispersed/low density in many areas. Think ‘US if it wasn’t so crowded’, outside of a few cities close to the US border.
    - xgkickt 2y ago
      For Edmonton & Calgary at least, which house the majority of Alberta’s population, such infrastructure would’ve meant better planning for growth, reducing the low-density sprawl we see today.
      - lazide 2y ago
        Only if one knew what it would end up looking like - and it would have looked like that if everything had been done differently getting here.
  - math_dandy 2y ago
    Canada doesn't invest in infrastructure until it's too late. And by then, it's too late.
hscontinuity 2y ago
The cost over time generally tends to weigh heavily on the initial budget. Small reactors don't replace large ones for large needs, even if multiple are built (this hasn't even happened yet!). What small ones can do is afford either government/public/private energy sources in localized areas. Infrastructure was built upon technology stacked on top of previous; dirt to stone, stone to asphalt, and on; etc. The same is inherent with nuclear. It is easy to tie in to the existing grid, but the grids are extremely out of date for the growth of populations in general. A large mix of SMR's could absolutely fuel energy needs in both the short and long term as technology continues to improve. The cost is a metric of current economics/interest. That's the problem right now - perspective states it's unaffordable because we've pivoted it that way.
throw0101c 2y ago
One thing I was surprised to learn about nuclear costs is that there's a fixed component that is basically the same regardless of technology (SMR vs 'LMR'): the civil works. There's a certain amount of concrete and such that needs to always be built, and if you go with a "cheaper" SMR, then the fixed cost becomes a large portion of the total project budget. So unless there's a specific local need for ≤300MW, it might be better to go with a 600/900(+) MW design if you can tie into a large grid where all of those 'extra' MWs can be soaked up.
roughly 2y ago
Part of the problem in building conventional nuclear reactors is that an $11Bn project like the conventional build mentioned in the article is of such a scale that it’s inevitable that something will go wrong that causes the budget to explode. The sales pitch for small reactors is they’re not $11Bn projects, so there’s a possibility they could actually be completed on time and somewhat near budget. The author is also clearly anti-nuclear - that’s not to say they’re not right, but they’re motivated.
- lokimedes 2y ago
  Indeed, if SMRs can serve as a way to get the industrial learning loop of nuclear working again, it may be worth it. The size of the current power plants were defined exactly due to the need of scaling the energy output to a level worth the auxiliary costs of lower output temperatures than coal, combined with increasingly expensive safeguards. Why being anti-nuclear is even a legitimate stand is a good indicator that people still don’t take climate change (and general over consumption) seriously. It’s like being anti-chemicals because some of them can be toxic to ingest.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    Why people are still pro-nuclear is a good indicator they don't take climate change seriously. CO2 emissions are reduced more quickly and more cheaply by going with renewables instead of pouring the money down the nuclear rathole. This is especially the case when experience effects on renewables and storage are included. The faster we spend on them, the faster they get cheaper, and the more quickly even existing fossil fuel capacity becomes cash flow negative.
    - lokimedes 2y ago
      Let’s make a bet and see how this will hold up to scale.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        At this point nuclear is effectively dead; this SMR stuff is just the corpse twitching. Anyone investing in nuclear is making a bet that renewable/storage technologies are going to immediately run into a brick wall, or even get more expensive, while nuclear gets considerably cheaper.
moring 2y ago
Does this prediction include the effect of cost and time overruns? These overruns are mentioned in the article, but then not dealt with at all -- but it is very important whether SMRs are more expensive according to made-up "planned" numbers or actual costs. Flyvbjerg mentions SMRs as an example for modularity in his book, How Big Things Get Done, and predicts that they will be much less prone to overruns because experience can be accumulated along a series of reactors, whereas traditional reactors are one-off, bespoke projects which directly implies that they will be built with a lack of experience. Even if a nuclear power plant gets built that is "like" an existing one, it is never the same.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  If the overruns are due to salesmanship and lowballing, not unforeseeable problems, then one can expect SMRs to be subject to them just like traditional nuclear. This was the UAMPS/NuScale experience.
- masklinn 2y ago
  > traditional reactors are one-off, bespoke projects TBF they don't have to be, obviously they don't number in the hundreds and site-specific concerns matter (especially as they have a large surface, they matter for SMRs too but the footprint means they matter a lot less). However you have to commit, hard. During its buildup, France built 54 reactors of just two classes (34 C-class, with 3 variants, and 20 P-class, with 2 variants) in 22 years: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_réacteurs_nucléaires_en_France#/media/Fichier:Chrono-parc-nucleaire-francais.svg https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_réacteurs_nucléaires...
jacknews 2y ago
It seems to me there's a lot more 'mass production' efficiency still to be found for small reactors. The whole article is just comparing historical costs. Large reactors are highly bespoke, and therefore increasingly expensive, and the whole idea of small reactors is that they can be produced identically from an assembly line, and so you get the same kind of learning-curve price reductions as for solar panels or whatever. I don't think that's the case, yet, though, so the argument might be compared to criticisms of solar in the 1980s and anyway this article seems to be a simple attack on nuclear in favor of 'renewables', which have already experience a learning curve.
- chickenbig 2y ago
  You can produce significant fractions of a large modular reactor (e.g. AP1000) in a factory. There are arguments that for a small modular reactor the civil works that happen onsite (e.g. foundations) could make up a larger proportion of the costs than for a large modular reactor!
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Just how many small reactors do you think would have to be made to reach this promised land of "mass production"?
mobilefriendly 2y ago
The United States Navy, which operates 83 nuclear-powered ships, demonstrates that small reactors are clearly a viable energy source.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  Interestingly, if you said that “The Federal Government” should build and run small nuclear reactors, I bet you’d get a lot of pushback; I’m always fascinated by how “the military” is culturally considered very different from “the government” in the US. The military is perceived as able to do most anything while the government is considered lazy and wasteful.
  - tonyarkles 2y ago
    I’m Canadian and don’t know all of the inner workings of the US Military, but an observation from the outside is that it seems that the US Military oddly captures a lot of the more left-leaning ideals: - Health care provided by the VA - Education, both before the job (officer school or trades training) and for post-military life (GI Bill) - Decent pension after retiring Etc
    - silverquiet 2y ago
      Oh, it's all incredibly ironic; I think that's most of my point.
Slava_Propanei 2y ago
[dead]
PedroBatista 2y ago
While "common knowledge" says small can't compete with big when it comes to price/unit due to economies of scale, this article reads as very partial and anti-nuclear so I would trust the things that were said and the facts that were left out. From the outside, this SMR situation looks a bit like monolith vs micro-services where there is a great deal of non-technical reasons why SMRs are a route being taken and it appears it's mostly political and organizational ie. approve and build the damn thing.
downvotetruth 2y ago
> Vogtle nuclear power plant being built in Georgia, US It was finished on April 29 and has been online since that time.

30 points by tapper 2y ago

Proponents assert that SMRs would cost less to build and thus be more affordable. However, when evaluated on the basis of cost per unit of power capacity, SMRs will actually be more expensive than large reactors. That's not what affordable means. People are building smaller reactors because it's more likely that a project will be completed, not because of unit costs.

readyman 2y ago
This needs to be recognized as an indictment of our society. An inability to accomplish anything in a collective and intentional manner is only one of the many disasterous outcomes of the wretched individualism promoted by the neoliberal agenda. And make no mistake; this is not a result of a so-called "free market". It is the result of top-down privatization. The US government, for example, has a much larger budget than ever before, accounting for inflation and so on. It's just being delivered to private firms for profit instead of on building big things or maintaining the big things we used to build. This lack of cooperation across society is also the primary source of cultural breakdown and the sense of "division" felt by all of us, both rich and poor.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  When the market is telling you something over and over, it's best to listen.
  - readyman 2y ago
    The so-called "market" isn't telling anybody anything here. The financiers are the only ones speaking and all they're saying is they can't turn as much profit in their own individual lifetimes. It is a total disregard for society as a whole, which is why we're in this mess.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      > “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. https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/71/12/26/904707/US-nuclear-industry-fights-for-survivalA-glut-of https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/71/12/26/904707/US...
      - readyman 2y ago
        What is your point? Cost is not a problem when near-term profit is high, and nuclear energy has an unbeatable track record with long-term ROI. Saying "it's expensive" is meaningless nonsense. There is absolutely no excuse besides the time to ROI.
        pfdietz 2y ago
        Every one of your statements there is obviously false.
        readyman 2y ago
        Source? France's investments in nuclear energy are very well known as being incomparably successful, both in terms of return on capital investment and emissions. There is literally nothing to compare it to because nothing comes close. The only downside is literally upfront cost. Even the US has had great ROI in long term nuclear investments, especially if you discount the losses of all the prematurely decommissioned plants.
  - neglesaks 2y ago
    There is no market in the regular sense when it comes to large-scale enterprises, especially one that is so government-entangled as the energy and infrastructure sectors.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      There are plenty of markets in the electrical power sector. In addition to the market for energy sources, selling generating assets to utilities, there are markets in the power itself in many places, for example ERCOT in Texas. No one has ever built a nuclear plant to sell into a competitive power market. One can trace the downfall of nuclear in the US to the time when markets were opened to competition, with PURPA.
      - readyman 2y ago
        Nonsense. PURPA was just more regulation, regardless of how it was sold. It had nothing to do with "markets being opened to competition". One can trace the downfall of nuclear in the US to the end of the New Deal coalition and the divestment of public infrastructure, which meant short-term planning only. It has nothing to do with "markets". Markets in energy don't exist now and did not exist then.
        pfdietz 2y ago
        https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0096340213485949 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/009634021348594... > The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA) triggered a restructuring of the previously monolithic utility sector, stipulating in particular that electricity produced by independent power producers must be purchased by utilities at "avoided cost." The new power from independent producers, combined with lack of demand for electricity, further eroded utilities' need for new nuclear plants. In large part owing to the provisions of PURPA, nonutility generation rose steadily from 71 billion kilowatt-hours per year in 1979 to almost 400 billion kilowatt-hours per year by 1995 -- this new, nonutility generation was the equivalent of adding more than 50 typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear plants (Energy Information Administration, 1996). As Peter Bradford (2011), a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, argued in the Wall Street Journal: > "Nuclear-plant construction in this country came to a halt because a law passed in 1978 [PURPA] created competitive markets for power. These markets required investors rather than utility customers to assume the risk of cost overruns, plant cancellations, and poor operation. Today, private investors still shun the risks of building new reactors in all nations that employ power markets."
- justahuman74 2y ago
  Collective intention requires some amount of collective agreement. Many people are unfortunately scared of nuclear power and politicians know this.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    The idea that nuclear is struggling because people are "scared" is a form of denial from nuclear advocates. Nuclear is struggling because it's much too expensive, not because people are "scared".
    - chii 2y ago
      It's expensive because people are scared, and to alleviate that fear, regulation is put in place. Some of those fears are founded, but some are not. But overall, the regulation required is what drives the cost up.
      - cycomanic 2y ago
        That is simply not true and repeating it all the time does not make it more true. There have been several analysis posted here on HN which showed that compliance with regulations is not a major cost factor for nuclear power. In fact nuclear power operators have often lobbied to be exempt from regulations that apply to other power generation schemes. Solar and wind often have significantly higher compliance costs as percentage of their budget than nuclear.
        neglesaks 2y ago
        Could you post a link to one or two of the sumissions where these analyses have been presented please?
    - rayiner 2y ago
      It’s expensive because environmentalists put in too many barriers to building nuclear power plants because they’re scared (in addition to being innumerate). If we had started building out nuclear power in the 1960s the same as the French, we would have much more runway today to address climate change.
mc32 2y ago
Would this not relegate this option to niche areas? Elsewhere it needs to compete on price against other viable options.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Yes. Also, there really aren't any such niche areas save some military naval applications. Even there, most ships in the US navy are not nuclear, because burning liquid hydrocarbons is cheaper.
onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
Also, not every application of nuclear energy requires 1GW...
- justahuman74 2y ago
  I'm thinking of all the new datacenters we need to build, imagine if you could just slot a small reactor down on-site
  - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
    NuScale's SMR is ~77MW - which is a medium sized data center. AFAIK, that's typical consumption for data centers being built today.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      A site that contained a single NuScale reactor would have unacceptable fixed costs per MW. The UAMPS/NuScale CFPP was planned to have six reactors to amortize those fixed costs (like personnel) over more output. Note also that the cost figures NuScale gave for that was the cost after 40-50 reactors had been built (and with federal subsidy), not FOAK costs.
      - justahuman74 2y ago
        If you can build N reactors, the datacenters will suddenly appear nearby if they're allowed to. Power is the current bottleneck in the US
mikeyouse 2y ago
There’s clearly some value to consistent power sources producing clean energy but if SMRs are in the $0.15/kwh wholesale range, they’re DOA. Solar+battery gets you there today, is getting cheaper every day, and there’s almost zero project risk. If the install is small enough, you could likely beat the realistic costs for SMRs with solar + battery + diesel generators if you need a guarantee of 100% uptime.
- throw0101c 2y ago
  > Solar+battery gets you there today, is getting cheaper every day, and there’s almost zero project risk. Debatable. In Ontario nuclear costs 10¢/kWh while wind costs 15¢ and solar 50¢ (Table 2): * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20221021.pdf https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2022... And when wind goes to zero at night, then (natural/methane) gas generators are often spun up (generating carbon emissions). Meanwhile the refurbishments of Ontario's nuclear plants are on-budget, and often ahead of schedule: * https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/infrastructure/2023/07/unit-3-at-darlington-nuclear-completed-ahead-of-schedule https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/infrastructure/...
  - chickenbig 2y ago
    Ontario gives hope to the nuclear dreams. Being able to deliver projects on-budget gives decision-makers cause to believe project plans. Lets hope that another 4-pack of CANDU reactors will be built, to further the soverign industry.
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    Existing nuclear, in Canada, is basically the best case scenario for nuclear Vs the worst case scenario for solar and batteries. It's not globally representative though.
    - mikeyouse 2y ago
      And this very article is about how SMRs by their nature are going to be more expensive than traditional nuclear so seems pretty silly to make any comparison to the costs of production for reactors that were built 40 years ago. A better comparison would be how much are we expecting wholesale costs for Hinkley’s new reactor to be? Don’t want to ruin the surprise but people will be shocked if they look up what they’re charging in a sub-$0.10/kwh world.
bjourne 2y ago
What do you mean? The lower unit costs is exactly the point of SMRs.
- rafaelmn 2y ago
  Unit cost of reactor not unit cost of power ?
  - chickenbig 2y ago
    Indeed, the selling point is probably that a single entity can build an SMR without risk of going bankrupt. Perhaps this speaks to the problem of building consortia of like-minded companies. Currently EDF are being stung for a large chunk of money now that CGN are refusing to put any more cash into Hinkley Point C construction.
DennisP 2y ago
And because if you build a lot of reactors, then you get a learning curve where they get cheaper over time, just like any other mass-produced item. Some of the SMR designs can even be built in factories. The article ignores this, and in fact complains about the cost of the first six reactors proposed by NuScale (which, fwiw, is just a smaller LWR, not one of the more innovative designs). Before anyone talks about the negative learning curve of large reactors in the US, bear in mind that we mostly build those as one-offs, so no learning curve exists. We don't build many, regulations change pretty frequently, and sometimes the NRC requires design changes after construction starts.
- cycomanic 2y ago
  Economies of scale don't work for infrastructure. I mean if it would work for nuclear plants why have people not done it for coal plants? There have been many of them build, and a nuclear power plant is 70% the same as a coal power plant (which incidentally also explains much of the cost for nuclear power generation, it's essentially a thermal plant with added complexity, so can't really be significantly cheaper than a coal plant).
  - DennisP 2y ago
    The fact that something hasn't been done is not necessarily evidence that it won't work. A few years ago you could have asked why everybody was still using disposable rockets, if reusables would be so great. And coal is not exactly fertile ground for innovation, given that we'd like to stop burning coal entirely. Matching the price of coal, with clean dispatchable power, is not such a bad outcome. There's a bit of wiggle room for extra complexity since coal pays 2 cents/kWh for fuel, and has to handle large amounts of incoming fuel and outgoing ash. For a reliable zero-carbon grid of only wind/solar/battery, we need about 2X overproduction and 4 days of battery storage[1]. Maybe that still ends up the cheapest option, but it's not so obvious that a backup plan isn't worth considering. [1] https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/07/12/grid-storage-batteries-will-win/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/07/12/grid-storage-b...
    - 2y ago
ooterness 2y ago
In terms of cost per ton moved, trains and semi-trucks outperform taxis. And yet taxis still exist. Turns out cost per vehicle (or per reactor) is important in some situations.

throw0101c 2y ago

SMRs are 'fine' for smaller grids. For example, the province of New Brunswick has a CANDU 6 reactor, which is 1x660MW of capacity: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Lepreau_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Lepreau_Nuclear_Generati... CANDUs are pretty flexible in that there's a lot of maintenance (including refuelling) that can be done while it is running, but there's still some stuff that needs to be done when the system is powered down, which means taking down a large source of power for the grid. If there were 2-3x300MW reactors, when there could be rotating maintenance without much impact to the grid.

chickenbig 2y ago
CANDU are a great design; the calandria is a nice adaptation to the capabilities of Canadian maufacturing, and it is impressive to see the lines of reactors at Bruce, Pickering and Darlington. It is also a widely exported design, with China constructing reactors on a 4 year timeline. Granted a single large reactor would dominate the grid, but I presume there is grid connectivity to adjacent provinces. An alternative would be a large energy user (aluminium, heavy water production) to soak up the excess power and turn down when one unit comes offline.
pfdietz 2y ago
Some people present Alaska as a good place for SMRs. But the largest grid there, the Railbelt Grid, has an average power flow of just 600 MW. A 300 MW reactor would be too large to integrate into that system.

evrimoztamur 2y ago

Is energy independence and lower land use priced in?

pfdietz 2y ago
Land is a small fraction of the cost of a renewable energy source (save for biomass), especially in lesser populated regions.
dalyons 2y ago
There is a lot of empty practically free land in the world. Also, it is estimated that it would take about ~7 million acres to power the US entirely with solar. The US currently uses about 40 million (!!!!) acres for corn for ethanol. Land is just not a problem, at all. https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us-solar/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20report%20from,14%25%20efficiency%20for%20solar%20modules https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us.... https://frontiergroup.org/resources/ethanols-outsized-place-us-energy-system/#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20according%20to%20a,5%25%20of%20the%20nation's%20energy https://frontiergroup.org/resources/ethanols-outsized-place-....
- neglesaks 2y ago
  Land is not a problem in land-rich nations like Russia or Canada, of the US for that matter. It is however a problem in Europe where distances are shorter, population density is higher and so are the land values and thus both direct & shadow costs associated with infrastructure development.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    Average price of arable land in the EU in 2022 was a shade over 10,000 euros/hectare. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:F1average-prices-arable-land-eu-2022.png https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... At this price, the cost of land is quite small compared to the cost of a PV field on that land.

Linda231 2y ago

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math_dandy 2y ago

In much of Western Canada, energy use is highest at night in deepest winter when there is no appreciable wind, meaning that the grid is completely reliant on gas-fired power. If we want to reduce gas-fired capacity, we need another source of on-demand power. Meaning either nuclear or a robust storage solution. There seems to be more enthusiasm for the latter, but there’s no buzz about any viable solutions on the horizon.

xgkickt 2y ago
I can’t understand why, with winters known to be how they are, there is no district heating. If that infrastructure had been in place, a transition to carbon-less sources of heat could be well underway.
- Slava_Propanei 2y ago
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- lazide 2y ago
  Canada is very dispersed/low density in many areas. Think ‘US if it wasn’t so crowded’, outside of a few cities close to the US border.
  - xgkickt 2y ago
    For Edmonton & Calgary at least, which house the majority of Alberta’s population, such infrastructure would’ve meant better planning for growth, reducing the low-density sprawl we see today.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Only if one knew what it would end up looking like - and it would have looked like that if everything had been done differently getting here.
- math_dandy 2y ago
  Canada doesn't invest in infrastructure until it's too late. And by then, it's too late.

hscontinuity 2y ago

The cost over time generally tends to weigh heavily on the initial budget. Small reactors don't replace large ones for large needs, even if multiple are built (this hasn't even happened yet!). What small ones can do is afford either government/public/private energy sources in localized areas. Infrastructure was built upon technology stacked on top of previous; dirt to stone, stone to asphalt, and on; etc. The same is inherent with nuclear. It is easy to tie in to the existing grid, but the grids are extremely out of date for the growth of populations in general. A large mix of SMR's could absolutely fuel energy needs in both the short and long term as technology continues to improve. The cost is a metric of current economics/interest. That's the problem right now - perspective states it's unaffordable because we've pivoted it that way.

throw0101c 2y ago

One thing I was surprised to learn about nuclear costs is that there's a fixed component that is basically the same regardless of technology (SMR vs 'LMR'): the civil works. There's a certain amount of concrete and such that needs to always be built, and if you go with a "cheaper" SMR, then the fixed cost becomes a large portion of the total project budget. So unless there's a specific local need for ≤300MW, it might be better to go with a 600/900(+) MW design if you can tie into a large grid where all of those 'extra' MWs can be soaked up.

roughly 2y ago

Part of the problem in building conventional nuclear reactors is that an $11Bn project like the conventional build mentioned in the article is of such a scale that it’s inevitable that something will go wrong that causes the budget to explode. The sales pitch for small reactors is they’re not $11Bn projects, so there’s a possibility they could actually be completed on time and somewhat near budget. The author is also clearly anti-nuclear - that’s not to say they’re not right, but they’re motivated.

lokimedes 2y ago
Indeed, if SMRs can serve as a way to get the industrial learning loop of nuclear working again, it may be worth it. The size of the current power plants were defined exactly due to the need of scaling the energy output to a level worth the auxiliary costs of lower output temperatures than coal, combined with increasingly expensive safeguards. Why being anti-nuclear is even a legitimate stand is a good indicator that people still don’t take climate change (and general over consumption) seriously. It’s like being anti-chemicals because some of them can be toxic to ingest.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Why people are still pro-nuclear is a good indicator they don't take climate change seriously. CO2 emissions are reduced more quickly and more cheaply by going with renewables instead of pouring the money down the nuclear rathole. This is especially the case when experience effects on renewables and storage are included. The faster we spend on them, the faster they get cheaper, and the more quickly even existing fossil fuel capacity becomes cash flow negative.
  - lokimedes 2y ago
    Let’s make a bet and see how this will hold up to scale.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      At this point nuclear is effectively dead; this SMR stuff is just the corpse twitching. Anyone investing in nuclear is making a bet that renewable/storage technologies are going to immediately run into a brick wall, or even get more expensive, while nuclear gets considerably cheaper.

moring 2y ago

Does this prediction include the effect of cost and time overruns? These overruns are mentioned in the article, but then not dealt with at all -- but it is very important whether SMRs are more expensive according to made-up "planned" numbers or actual costs. Flyvbjerg mentions SMRs as an example for modularity in his book, How Big Things Get Done, and predicts that they will be much less prone to overruns because experience can be accumulated along a series of reactors, whereas traditional reactors are one-off, bespoke projects which directly implies that they will be built with a lack of experience. Even if a nuclear power plant gets built that is "like" an existing one, it is never the same.

pfdietz 2y ago
If the overruns are due to salesmanship and lowballing, not unforeseeable problems, then one can expect SMRs to be subject to them just like traditional nuclear. This was the UAMPS/NuScale experience.
masklinn 2y ago
> traditional reactors are one-off, bespoke projects TBF they don't have to be, obviously they don't number in the hundreds and site-specific concerns matter (especially as they have a large surface, they matter for SMRs too but the footprint means they matter a lot less). However you have to commit, hard. During its buildup, France built 54 reactors of just two classes (34 C-class, with 3 variants, and 20 P-class, with 2 variants) in 22 years: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_réacteurs_nucléaires_en_France#/media/Fichier:Chrono-parc-nucleaire-francais.svg https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_réacteurs_nucléaires...

jacknews 2y ago

It seems to me there's a lot more 'mass production' efficiency still to be found for small reactors. The whole article is just comparing historical costs. Large reactors are highly bespoke, and therefore increasingly expensive, and the whole idea of small reactors is that they can be produced identically from an assembly line, and so you get the same kind of learning-curve price reductions as for solar panels or whatever. I don't think that's the case, yet, though, so the argument might be compared to criticisms of solar in the 1980s and anyway this article seems to be a simple attack on nuclear in favor of 'renewables', which have already experience a learning curve.

chickenbig 2y ago
You can produce significant fractions of a large modular reactor (e.g. AP1000) in a factory. There are arguments that for a small modular reactor the civil works that happen onsite (e.g. foundations) could make up a larger proportion of the costs than for a large modular reactor!
pfdietz 2y ago
Just how many small reactors do you think would have to be made to reach this promised land of "mass production"?

mobilefriendly 2y ago

The United States Navy, which operates 83 nuclear-powered ships, demonstrates that small reactors are clearly a viable energy source.

silverquiet 2y ago
Interestingly, if you said that “The Federal Government” should build and run small nuclear reactors, I bet you’d get a lot of pushback; I’m always fascinated by how “the military” is culturally considered very different from “the government” in the US. The military is perceived as able to do most anything while the government is considered lazy and wasteful.
- tonyarkles 2y ago
  I’m Canadian and don’t know all of the inner workings of the US Military, but an observation from the outside is that it seems that the US Military oddly captures a lot of the more left-leaning ideals: - Health care provided by the VA - Education, both before the job (officer school or trades training) and for post-military life (GI Bill) - Decent pension after retiring Etc
  - silverquiet 2y ago
    Oh, it's all incredibly ironic; I think that's most of my point.

Slava_Propanei 2y ago

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PedroBatista 2y ago

While "common knowledge" says small can't compete with big when it comes to price/unit due to economies of scale, this article reads as very partial and anti-nuclear so I would trust the things that were said and the facts that were left out. From the outside, this SMR situation looks a bit like monolith vs micro-services where there is a great deal of non-technical reasons why SMRs are a route being taken and it appears it's mostly political and organizational ie. approve and build the damn thing.

downvotetruth 2y ago

> Vogtle nuclear power plant being built in Georgia, US It was finished on April 29 and has been online since that time.