5 ms·

..... But why? If it was up and running it would be 4-8x or so more expensive than solar/wind. I guess if there was proper carbon taxation it would be price co

..... But why? If it was up and running it would be 4-8x or so more expensive than solar/wind. I guess if there was proper carbon taxation it would be price competitive with gas turbine, but ... there isn't. On top of that you need to install new control systems and probably do huge amounts of integrity checks. Probably an entire new round of NIMBY approvals and delays and lawsuits.

chaffroomba 2y ago
>it would be 4-8x or so more expensive than solar/wind Is that accounting for the renewable's inherent need for very expensive energy storage? Because otherwise you need to build that gas turbine to cover for when sun isn't shining.
- 35mm 2y ago
  Or the cost of processing nuclear waste for 1,000s of years?
  - sofixa 2y ago
    I don't know about this particular power plant, but on new constructions all costs, including decommissioning and storage of waste, are included.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      "Storage of waste" is also a farce. All of the components of "nuclear waste" are commercially valuable, especially the exotic and hazardous ones. The issue is that we don't reprocess most of the spent fuel for political reasons.
      - Lutzb 2y ago
        That is not true, stop perpetuating that myth. Most of the nuclear waste by volume is of low level waste (90%) or intermediate level (7%) and only 3% is high level waste i.e. spent fuel. We still have to store the 97% of waste that cannot be reused. https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear-waste-and-what-do-we-do-with-it https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear...
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        Low-level waste is basically just ordinary rubbish. You don't have to store it in a mountain for a million years, it will be indistinguishable from background before anybody finishes arguing about what to do with it. A lot of it is indistinguishable from background to begin with but is legally required to be treated differently because of where it came from. The people who think this is a problem haven't internalized a fact about radioactivity: Half life is the inverse of radioactivity. The more radioactive something is, the less time before it's gone. Anything with a short half life is not a problem because it will be gone soon; anything with a long half life is not a problem because it's about as radioactive as a banana.
        Lutzb 2y ago
        You said *All* of the components of "nuclear waste" are commercially valuable, especially the exotic and hazardous ones. Which is untrue. Most of it is waste that needs to be dealt with and has no value.
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        This is just using a different definition of "nuclear waste". What most people mean by this (and are concerned by) is something that is radiologically dangerous and has to be stored for thousands of years, but no such thing exists. There are things that are radiologically dangerous, but they have short half lives and are commercially valuable. Then there are things that "last for thousands of years" (e.g. Pu-239), but Pu-239 is only mildly radioactive and has commercial and government uses as fissile material. In fact, building new reactors is the best way we know of to get rid of it. What you're referring to ("low-level waste") is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Low-level_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Low-level_wa... > Low-level wastes include paper, rags, tools, clothing, filters, and other materials which contain small amounts of mostly short-lived radioactivity. Materials that originate from any region of an Active Area are commonly designated as LLW as a precautionary measure even if there is only a remote possibility of being contaminated with radioactive materials. Such LLW typically exhibits no higher radioactivity than one would expect from the same material disposed of in a non-active area, such as a normal office block. This isn't really "nuclear waste", it's ordinary rubbish that was near radioactive material so people are paranoid about it out of an abundance of caution. And any radioisotopes that are present in it will follow the same rule -- anything with high radioactivity decays quickly. It's no great mystery how to deal with that sort of thing; you store it for a short number of years to let anything with a short half life decay and then you treat it as any other trash.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  The current trend is moving from "baseload and peaker" to "renewables and firming". Peaker and firming are both traditionally gas. If you think that renewables have an inherent need for expensive storage then you're holding them to a higher standard than nuclear. This is both inaccurate and ahistorical given all the pumped hydro built specifically to complement nuclear. Though the continued reduction in price of renewables and batteries means they probably already meet and exceed your higher standard anyway (see the recent Fraunhofer report that solar and batteries were cheaper than gas in Germany).
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > If you think that renewables have an inherent need for expensive storage then you're holding them to a higher standard than nuclear. This is both inaccurate and ahistorical given all the pumped hydro built specifically to complement nuclear. It's a different kind of storage. Nuclear generates the same amount of electricity all the time but then there is higher demand during certain parts of the day. You then make up the difference between the baseload and the peak with a different kind of power plant. Typically nuclear is not used with storage at all, it's instead used for baseload with the peaks handled by other types of primary generation, traditionally natural gas or non-pumped hydro that dams a river. Renewables have entirely variable output, so you need alternative generation with enough capacity to supply the whole grid at any given time, and enough storage to be able to do this for a week or more in the event that renewable generation is low for an extended period of time. It's the difference between building a grid which is half nuclear and half something else vs. fully duplicating the whole capacity of the grid.
    - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
      In California the lowest yearly demand is ~13 GW. The yearly peak is ~48 GW. Assume that 3 reactors at a time are in revision during the spring and autumn. This means the "base demand" is 16 GW. I don't see a material difference in handling 32 GW or 48 GW of dispatchable power generation, assuming the lowest possible renewable generation is zero for the renewable side (which is not the case.) The other option would be having more nuclear plants and turning them off for large parts of the year. That is incredibly expensive. All this entails forcing the customers to pay for more expensive nuclear energy rather than utilize cheaper energy when it is available. In reality the more expensive nuclear power plants are turned off. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/energy-prices-negative-france-solar-panel-wind-renewable-nuclear-green-2024-6 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/energy-...
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Disclaimer: I worked a nuclear shop of ex-GE folks in the 90's. It feeds an all-too-common techno-religious obsession rather than big-picture economic and risk management for specific projects in specific locations. One of the biggest hurdles and costliest aspects of proposing nuclear projects in the US is getting insurance first for construction and then operation, and the few insurers who can cover them aren't going to underwrite risky projects. It's so much simpler and cheaper to put up solar and wind nowadays that it doesn't make any sense compared to the past when renewables were very expensive. Renewables are the path of least resistance. Centralized and distributed grid storage in various forms then becomes a bonus feature that allows for more resiliency under load and unplanned outages.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  I thought the Us government was providing insurance directly for new projects/operations? It’s like one of their biggest subsidies for the industry.
- belorn 2y ago
  Centralized and distributed grid storage sits at the same problem in that its generally much simpler and cheaper to put up natural gas turbines. Outside of solar + battery with hours of capacity and a predictable recharge cycles, grid storage are very expensive. The wast majority of countries in Europe is currently build fresh new solar, wind and natural gas power plants. Centralized and distributed grid storage are delegated to future tech with heavy subsidized test projects for non-commercial scale, like the green hydrogen in northern Sweden. This while new natural gas power plants are under constructions and even more sites being approved. The US seems to be in a similar situations. Some states has weather that is suitable for battery and solar, but then the other states invest in more natural gas.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Grid storage is not expensive. Texas is building storage like crazy, they wouldn't be doing that if something else was cheaper.
olejorgenb 2y ago
> If it was up and running it would be 4-8x or so more expensive than solar/wind What? Isn't the majority of cost associated with nuclear power capital cost? Have you computed the estimated cost based on the cost of getting plant up and running again? I couldn't find those numbers in the article (the one linked in the comments)
- NikkiA 2y ago
  Dozens of on-site staff vs 3 shifts of 1 or 2 people remote monitoring and scheduling a maintenance crew when needed.

chaffroomba 2y ago

>it would be 4-8x or so more expensive than solar/wind Is that accounting for the renewable's inherent need for very expensive energy storage? Because otherwise you need to build that gas turbine to cover for when sun isn't shining.

35mm 2y ago
Or the cost of processing nuclear waste for 1,000s of years?
- sofixa 2y ago
  I don't know about this particular power plant, but on new constructions all costs, including decommissioning and storage of waste, are included.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    "Storage of waste" is also a farce. All of the components of "nuclear waste" are commercially valuable, especially the exotic and hazardous ones. The issue is that we don't reprocess most of the spent fuel for political reasons.
    - Lutzb 2y ago
      That is not true, stop perpetuating that myth. Most of the nuclear waste by volume is of low level waste (90%) or intermediate level (7%) and only 3% is high level waste i.e. spent fuel. We still have to store the 97% of waste that cannot be reused. https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear-waste-and-what-do-we-do-with-it https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear...
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        Low-level waste is basically just ordinary rubbish. You don't have to store it in a mountain for a million years, it will be indistinguishable from background before anybody finishes arguing about what to do with it. A lot of it is indistinguishable from background to begin with but is legally required to be treated differently because of where it came from. The people who think this is a problem haven't internalized a fact about radioactivity: Half life is the inverse of radioactivity. The more radioactive something is, the less time before it's gone. Anything with a short half life is not a problem because it will be gone soon; anything with a long half life is not a problem because it's about as radioactive as a banana.
        Lutzb 2y ago
        You said *All* of the components of "nuclear waste" are commercially valuable, especially the exotic and hazardous ones. Which is untrue. Most of it is waste that needs to be dealt with and has no value.
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        This is just using a different definition of "nuclear waste". What most people mean by this (and are concerned by) is something that is radiologically dangerous and has to be stored for thousands of years, but no such thing exists. There are things that are radiologically dangerous, but they have short half lives and are commercially valuable. Then there are things that "last for thousands of years" (e.g. Pu-239), but Pu-239 is only mildly radioactive and has commercial and government uses as fissile material. In fact, building new reactors is the best way we know of to get rid of it. What you're referring to ("low-level waste") is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Low-level_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Low-level_wa... > Low-level wastes include paper, rags, tools, clothing, filters, and other materials which contain small amounts of mostly short-lived radioactivity. Materials that originate from any region of an Active Area are commonly designated as LLW as a precautionary measure even if there is only a remote possibility of being contaminated with radioactive materials. Such LLW typically exhibits no higher radioactivity than one would expect from the same material disposed of in a non-active area, such as a normal office block. This isn't really "nuclear waste", it's ordinary rubbish that was near radioactive material so people are paranoid about it out of an abundance of caution. And any radioisotopes that are present in it will follow the same rule -- anything with high radioactivity decays quickly. It's no great mystery how to deal with that sort of thing; you store it for a short number of years to let anything with a short half life decay and then you treat it as any other trash.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
The current trend is moving from "baseload and peaker" to "renewables and firming". Peaker and firming are both traditionally gas. If you think that renewables have an inherent need for expensive storage then you're holding them to a higher standard than nuclear. This is both inaccurate and ahistorical given all the pumped hydro built specifically to complement nuclear. Though the continued reduction in price of renewables and batteries means they probably already meet and exceed your higher standard anyway (see the recent Fraunhofer report that solar and batteries were cheaper than gas in Germany).
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > If you think that renewables have an inherent need for expensive storage then you're holding them to a higher standard than nuclear. This is both inaccurate and ahistorical given all the pumped hydro built specifically to complement nuclear. It's a different kind of storage. Nuclear generates the same amount of electricity all the time but then there is higher demand during certain parts of the day. You then make up the difference between the baseload and the peak with a different kind of power plant. Typically nuclear is not used with storage at all, it's instead used for baseload with the peaks handled by other types of primary generation, traditionally natural gas or non-pumped hydro that dams a river. Renewables have entirely variable output, so you need alternative generation with enough capacity to supply the whole grid at any given time, and enough storage to be able to do this for a week or more in the event that renewable generation is low for an extended period of time. It's the difference between building a grid which is half nuclear and half something else vs. fully duplicating the whole capacity of the grid.
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    In California the lowest yearly demand is ~13 GW. The yearly peak is ~48 GW. Assume that 3 reactors at a time are in revision during the spring and autumn. This means the "base demand" is 16 GW. I don't see a material difference in handling 32 GW or 48 GW of dispatchable power generation, assuming the lowest possible renewable generation is zero for the renewable side (which is not the case.) The other option would be having more nuclear plants and turning them off for large parts of the year. That is incredibly expensive. All this entails forcing the customers to pay for more expensive nuclear energy rather than utilize cheaper energy when it is available. In reality the more expensive nuclear power plants are turned off. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/energy-prices-negative-france-solar-panel-wind-renewable-nuclear-green-2024-6 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/energy-...

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

Disclaimer: I worked a nuclear shop of ex-GE folks in the 90's. It feeds an all-too-common techno-religious obsession rather than big-picture economic and risk management for specific projects in specific locations. One of the biggest hurdles and costliest aspects of proposing nuclear projects in the US is getting insurance first for construction and then operation, and the few insurers who can cover them aren't going to underwrite risky projects. It's so much simpler and cheaper to put up solar and wind nowadays that it doesn't make any sense compared to the past when renewables were very expensive. Renewables are the path of least resistance. Centralized and distributed grid storage in various forms then becomes a bonus feature that allows for more resiliency under load and unplanned outages.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
I thought the Us government was providing insurance directly for new projects/operations? It’s like one of their biggest subsidies for the industry.
belorn 2y ago
Centralized and distributed grid storage sits at the same problem in that its generally much simpler and cheaper to put up natural gas turbines. Outside of solar + battery with hours of capacity and a predictable recharge cycles, grid storage are very expensive. The wast majority of countries in Europe is currently build fresh new solar, wind and natural gas power plants. Centralized and distributed grid storage are delegated to future tech with heavy subsidized test projects for non-commercial scale, like the green hydrogen in northern Sweden. This while new natural gas power plants are under constructions and even more sites being approved. The US seems to be in a similar situations. Some states has weather that is suitable for battery and solar, but then the other states invest in more natural gas.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Grid storage is not expensive. Texas is building storage like crazy, they wouldn't be doing that if something else was cheaper.

olejorgenb 2y ago

> If it was up and running it would be 4-8x or so more expensive than solar/wind What? Isn't the majority of cost associated with nuclear power capital cost? Have you computed the estimated cost based on the cost of getting plant up and running again? I couldn't find those numbers in the article (the one linked in the comments)

NikkiA 2y ago
Dozens of on-site staff vs 3 shifts of 1 or 2 people remote monitoring and scheduling a maintenance crew when needed.