5 ms·

Sweet, these new reactors will be online in 10-15 years in the absolute best case. How cheap will wind, solar and batteries be then?

by grecy 2y ago

Moldoteck 2y ago
but ppl say wind+solar+batteries are already much cheaper. Why then pour money in nuclear? Unless things are a bit more complicated...
- grecy 2y ago
  That was my point. There is no universe where starting in on a new nuke today makes financial sense. They just take too long, cost to much to build and run.
  - Moldoteck 2y ago
    but big corpos are pouring money in it instead of pouring them in own renewable combo. So maybe they know something? And nuclear doesn't take much to run. EDF in France got 11bn profit last year and will beat it this year. And that's WITH govt limitation called arenh that forces them to sell 1/4 energy at lower price. EDF basically got f'd with foak builds in france,finland and uk, especially uk due to their overregulation and need for custom components but actually running nuclear is great business
  - mpweiher 2y ago
    In the Real World™, that turns out not to be the case. So your model of the real world needs updating.
    - grecy 2y ago
      2GW of nuclear cost $34B in Georgia, and took decades to come online. China are currently building 27 reactors [1], and the average time is still 7 years for completion. [1] https://itif.org/publications/2024/06/17/how-innovative-is-china-in-nuclear-power/ https://itif.org/publications/2024/06/17/how-innovative-is-c...
      - mpweiher 2y ago
        And electricity in Georgia is, after prices being raised to pay for this particular disaster, around half as expensive as electricity in California. Important point: even the most disastrous nuclear projects are better than "succesful" intermittent renewables. Nuclear power plants are big and take a while to build. They also reliably deliver truly stupendous amounts of electricity over an amazing amount of time. Totally worth it. Nuclear: an expensive way to generate cheap electricity. Intermittent renewables: a cheap way to generate expensive electricity.
      - Moldoteck 2y ago
        Afaik china now builds 30+ reactors with additional 10+ approved. And completion time for many projects tends to be closer to 5 years Also vogtle was foak build, it's natural to be over time and budget. Still unit 4 was 30% cheaper than unit 3. The more you build the cheaper it gets
        mpweiher 2y ago
        Not just FOAK, they also had to rebuild the industry. And of course there was politicking of the industrial players. And they had some major f-ups. For example, they used a new licensing process, which is all-up-front. This is great, because it means you can get a single design approved and then just built that design over and over, instead of all these one-offs that then are all FOAK. Except. Their design wasn't actually done (correctly) when it was approved. So what got approved was safe (that's what the NRC checks). But it wasn't actually buildable, which is not the NRC's problem. So they had to go back to the NRC again and again to make changes, but within a process that wasn't meant to work that way. So sometimes it was cheaper just to tear down what they had built. COVID also didn't help. But now the Vogtles are built, and as you said the second AP-1000 was already 30% cheaper than the first. The next ones should be significantly better, not only for the usual FOAK stuff, but they have now built two of these, so they have plans that are actually buildable. Poland selected it, so did Ukraine.
        Moldoteck 2y ago
  - 7952 2y ago
    Maybe if you have high levels of renewables penetration. And for a couple of days per month the wholesale electricity price gets very high. And you can sell your nuclear power at very high rates to the market. Or at cheap market beating rates to your private customers.

Sweet, these new reactors will be online in 10-15 years in the absolute best case. How cheap will wind, solar and batteries be then?

by grecy 2y ago

Sweet, these new reactors will be online in 10-15 years in the absolute best case. How cheap will wind, solar and batteries be then?

Moldoteck 2y ago

but ppl say wind+solar+batteries are already much cheaper. Why then pour money in nuclear? Unless things are a bit more complicated...

grecy 2y ago
That was my point. There is no universe where starting in on a new nuke today makes financial sense. They just take too long, cost to much to build and run.
- Moldoteck 2y ago
  but big corpos are pouring money in it instead of pouring them in own renewable combo. So maybe they know something? And nuclear doesn't take much to run. EDF in France got 11bn profit last year and will beat it this year. And that's WITH govt limitation called arenh that forces them to sell 1/4 energy at lower price. EDF basically got f'd with foak builds in france,finland and uk, especially uk due to their overregulation and need for custom components but actually running nuclear is great business
- mpweiher 2y ago
  In the Real World™, that turns out not to be the case. So your model of the real world needs updating.
  - grecy 2y ago
    2GW of nuclear cost $34B in Georgia, and took decades to come online. China are currently building 27 reactors [1], and the average time is still 7 years for completion. [1] https://itif.org/publications/2024/06/17/how-innovative-is-china-in-nuclear-power/ https://itif.org/publications/2024/06/17/how-innovative-is-c...
    - mpweiher 2y ago
      And electricity in Georgia is, after prices being raised to pay for this particular disaster, around half as expensive as electricity in California. Important point: even the most disastrous nuclear projects are better than "succesful" intermittent renewables. Nuclear power plants are big and take a while to build. They also reliably deliver truly stupendous amounts of electricity over an amazing amount of time. Totally worth it. Nuclear: an expensive way to generate cheap electricity. Intermittent renewables: a cheap way to generate expensive electricity.
    - Moldoteck 2y ago
      Afaik china now builds 30+ reactors with additional 10+ approved. And completion time for many projects tends to be closer to 5 years Also vogtle was foak build, it's natural to be over time and budget. Still unit 4 was 30% cheaper than unit 3. The more you build the cheaper it gets
      - mpweiher 2y ago
        Not just FOAK, they also had to rebuild the industry. And of course there was politicking of the industrial players. And they had some major f-ups. For example, they used a new licensing process, which is all-up-front. This is great, because it means you can get a single design approved and then just built that design over and over, instead of all these one-offs that then are all FOAK. Except. Their design wasn't actually done (correctly) when it was approved. So what got approved was safe (that's what the NRC checks). But it wasn't actually buildable, which is not the NRC's problem. So they had to go back to the NRC again and again to make changes, but within a process that wasn't meant to work that way. So sometimes it was cheaper just to tear down what they had built. COVID also didn't help. But now the Vogtles are built, and as you said the second AP-1000 was already 30% cheaper than the first. The next ones should be significantly better, not only for the usual FOAK stuff, but they have now built two of these, so they have plans that are actually buildable. Poland selected it, so did Ukraine.
        Moldoteck 2y ago
- 7952 2y ago
  Maybe if you have high levels of renewables penetration. And for a couple of days per month the wholesale electricity price gets very high. And you can sell your nuclear power at very high rates to the market. Or at cheap market beating rates to your private customers.