5 ms·

Building _new_ nuclear is not going to make their energy costs cheaper. It is the most expensive form of generation

by dalyons 6mo ago

dmix 6mo ago
Then why is China building 30 new reactors on top of the 60 they already have, if it's not competitive? https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/china-says-it-can-now-build-50-nuclear-reactors-at-once-what-about-the-united-states/ https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/china-says-i... The answer is usually more about how China can actually build things, not that nuclear isn't economically feasible.
- nikanj 6mo ago
  China can build ten reactors for the cost of Germany running the appeals, environmental studies and neighborhood consultations for one
- dalyons 6mo ago
  And yet, even with their buildout the nuclear share of electricity is projected to decline y/y. Because renewables are cheaper. And yes it does show china can build things, but it also highlights the different calculus of a single party state. They can force people & the state to buy uncompetitive nuclear power (under the banner of energy stability) and not worry about being voted out.
  - mpweiher 6mo ago
    No it's not. You actually have to build out intermittent renewables much faster than nuclear even for comparable generating capacity due to the much shorter lifetime of the equipment. See Little's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law China recently signed up to the COP28 pledge to triple nuclear generation. In the same time period, worldwide electricity generation is predicted to rise by 50-100%, so the nuclear share will grow by 50% - 100%.
    - dalyons 6mo ago
      Are you referring to the debunked idea that solar panels only last 20 years? Because yeah, bunk. https://www.ecoticias.com/en/goodbye-to-the-idea-that-solar-panels-die-after-25-years-a-new-study-says-the-warranty-does-not-mark-the-end-and-real-world-performance-can-last-for-decades/26007/#google_vignette https://www.ecoticias.com/en/goodbye-to-the-idea-that-solar-...
  - Moldoteck 6mo ago
    china wants nuclear to provide 10-20% of their needs. If china wants that, they'll achieve it. Nuclear is extremely competitive in china.
    - dalyons 6mo ago
      competitive is the wrong word. It does not have to compete on price or all in lifecycle cost, because its single party state that owns everything and cant be voted out. But i do agree that if they want it, they'll make it happen.
      - Moldoteck 5mo ago
        it's not a wrong word. Competitive - it's in the sesnse of what price can it sell to get profits, even if the price is set by govt. Even our existing fleet of npp is competitive on the market -> www.kkg.ch/de/uns/geschaefts-nachhaltigkeitsberichte.html https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-their-impact-on-the-electricity-price/ https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th... But chinese nuclear is built faster and cheaper vs our units even during messmer in france. So their price guarantee is lower too. Probably similar to what distributed solar got there of 0.4y/kwh in the past. Albeit subsidies for solar were cut last year to stimulate a healthier growth
        dalyons 5mo ago
        i mean competitive as in "free market competitive". chinas plants do not have to compete on their own all in costs as a private enterprise, they are majority state owned. So they dont have to pay insurance, cleanup, or long term capex loan interest costs. Which are a huge part of the costs for free-market nukes (and why they dont get built). Plus, the "price" is set between a state owned supplier and a state owned consuming grid ... do you think thats really representative of a true free market price?
        Moldoteck 5mo ago
        Their insurance, cleanup is included in state mandated price. Their capex loans aren't so problematic since it costs about 2.5bn to build and is done in under 5y now China doesn't have free market in the way we have it anyway. It wasn't valid even for solar
- j16sdiz 6mo ago
  The way China building new reactor is not typical. Most of the countries builds _one_ type of reactor, or a group of similar type of reactor. This help reduce the cost of training and certification. China, otoh, tries to _diversify_ their reactor type. If you look closely on how China treat techs, they have been doing the same for all tech for past 15+ years. They are strategically growing their tech profile.
  - marcosdumay 6mo ago
    They have a huge number of people that can specialize in many different things. But their government has actually explained it. They purposely diversify any tech that doesn't have a clear winner, so in the long term a winner appears and they can focus on it.
  - dalyons 6mo ago
    They also, most importantly, don’t have to care if any of their reactors make economic sense. It is a single party state, and the incentive structure is very different.
  - Moldoteck 6mo ago
    most of chinese units are hualongs now
  - mpweiher 5mo ago
    Actually the way China builds nuclear reactors is very typical of the way western countries built reactors back when we still did it well: standardize, build a bunch in overlapping batches. Keep building. That shouldn't be surprising, because they learned it from us. We stopped doing it that way because we effectively stopped building. China is building enough reactors that they can do this with several standardized designs. Which is smart. The EPR has basically failed, so in the west we currently have 3 standardized generation III(+) designs: The Westinghouse AP-1000, the South Korean APR-1400 and the Japanese ABWR. Of these, both the ABWR and the APR-1400 have been built quickly and cheaply, with the ABWR holding the record for fastest build times: under 4 years. The AP-1000 had some very rough initial builds, because the design wasn't actually finished and it turned out what they had "finished" wasn't actually buildable. Ooops. These issues appear to have been ironed out, and a lot of countries are betting on the AP-1000: the US, Poland, China, and Ukraine. Turkey, Slovakia and Bulgaria have also expressed interest. The EPR is essentially dead, with only the UK wanting to build two more UK-EPRs at Sitwell-C. Hopefully the EPR2 will be better, what I've seen of the specs suggests it has a good chance. Anyway, one point I want to come back to is the "keep building". This is actually crucial, and one of the reasons many western projects in recent years went so badly. We had forgotten how to build, no longer building a bunch in overlapping bunches, but single units decades apart. And there comes to rub: in order to "keep building", you have to build slowly. Slow is smooth and smooth fast my guitar teacher used to say. The French built out far too quickly, constructing 55 reactors in just 15 years. Then they were done. Nothing to build until that initial batch wears out. Reactors last a long time, easily 60-80 years. Ooops. The key to this comes from queueing theory, Little's Law: L = ƛW "the long-term average number of customers (L) in a stationary system is equal to the long-term average effective arrival rate (λ) multiplied by the average time that a customer spends in the system (W)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law So if you have a desired fleet size of 80 units and they last 80 years, you should be completing 1 unit per year. China is currently permitting 15 per year. If they keep that up throughout the construction phase, this would imply a steady-state fleet size of 1200 reactors. That's a lot of reactors. If you build more quickly, you won't be in steady state. Of course you can still do better than going full tilt and then stopping, smoothly modulating the build-rate. For France, this would have meant a fleet size of 320 reactors at the rate they were going. Alternatively, the build rate for the fleet size they have would have been around one reactor every two years. Something to keep in mind for the "not a lot of nuclear is being built"-crowd.
716dpl 6mo ago
While this is true, we don't have a good solution for long term energy storage. Even with plummeting costs and new technologies like sodium ion, batteries still only get you maybe ~12 hours of discharge. Pumped hydro give you longer storage, but there are limited places where you can build it. Unless geothermal becomes competitive, nuclear is still the best solution for carbon-free baseload.
- dalyons 6mo ago
  I agree storage is a problem. But the concept of “base load” is outdated. As I mentioned in another comment - Because actually “base load” nuclear is terrible in a grid increasingly full of nearly-free variable sources (solar&wind). The nukes need to stay at 100% all the time selling their power at a high fixed price to have any remote chance of being economical. Cheap variables push nuke's expensive power off the grid during the day, and increasingly into the evenings with batteries. This is unavoidable in an open energy market, and is fatal to the economics of nuclear. The only way you can make it work is state subsidies and/or forcing people to buy the more expensive nuke power. Which will be unpopular. But maybe you can sell it as a “grid backup fee” or something.
  - vince14 6mo ago
    Storage is not just 'a problem', it doesn't exist and won't for many many decades. The planned solution is hydrogen power plants, but no one wants to build them because the infrastructure, including electrolysers, is way too economically unfeasible. Therefore, Germany is and will continue to be dependent on coal and gas, as these are the main producers every night. That's your 'grid backup fee' for you.
    - dalyons 6mo ago
      Long term storage is a problem. Nightly will be solved soon by batteries. California is well on the way, down to 25% fossil in 2025 from 45% in 2022, due to batteries. And they just keep getting built. Australia is on the same track. If we have to burn some gas to cover the occasional long term weather issue, I’m ok with that , if we’re at 90+% decarbonized at that point it’s still a huge win.
mpweiher 6mo ago
Citation needed. (Narrator: yes it will, and no it's not).
flakeoil 6mo ago
You probably have to look at the whole picture. Having part of the energy generation from nuclear probably makes the total cheaper than having no nuclear. Even if nuclear maybe is the most expensive. Not having enough energy or having it cut off by a neighbour is very expensive.
- ViewTrick1002 6mo ago
  That is not the case. Grid modelers always land on renewables being cheaper. Except for the cases when the studies start with "assuming cheap and fast to build nuclear power". https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/04/17/new-metric-shows-renewables-are-53-cheaper-than-nuclear-power/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/04/17/new-metric-shows-rene...
  - vince14 6mo ago
    That is not the case. There are LCOLC, LFSCOE and others which land on renewables being way more expensive. Even without your made up claim about "assuming cheap and fast to build nuclear power".
    - ViewTrick1002 6mo ago
      Which are extremely simplified metrics. Like the LFSCOE study is only using one source of renewables through all weather together with 2020 data on battery costs. Which is why I linked a recent full system analysis. With Danish data so a vastly harder problem than a place with abundant solar. So tell me what they missed. They even tilted the study heavily towards nuclear power and assumed that the nuclear costs are 40% lower than Flamanville 3 and 70% lower than Hinkley Point C while modeling solar as 20% more expensive. Still finding that renewables are vastly cheaper when it comes to meeting a real grid load.
      - Moldoteck 5mo ago
        you should be very careful with 'papers' written by people that stayed at the core of Danish antinuclear movement like Henrik Lund (famous “for me, nuclear power is not a dream. It’s a nightmare. My dream is renewable energy”, but there are more interesting turns there, including EnergyPLAN which was criticized a lot for it's nonsense assumptions which I can bet is used here too. It was so severe that the issue was addressed in a peer reviewed publication https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261925016186 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192... ) and a paper that includes frauds like jacobson in citations. These two are famous for citation rings and both are public antinuclear activists. I can bet they have very "optimistic" estimations for Hydrogen and gas firming on top of the most evident issues adressed in peer review
Moldoteck 6mo ago
its expensive if it takes 20y. It's cheap if it takes under 6-8, like Barakah or China

Building _new_ nuclear is not going to make their energy costs cheaper. It is the most expensive form of generation

by dalyons 6mo ago

Building _new_ nuclear is not going to make their energy costs cheaper. It is the most expensive form of generation

dmix 6mo ago

Then why is China building 30 new reactors on top of the 60 they already have, if it's not competitive? https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/china-says-it-can-now-build-50-nuclear-reactors-at-once-what-about-the-united-states/ https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/china-says-i... The answer is usually more about how China can actually build things, not that nuclear isn't economically feasible.

nikanj 6mo ago
China can build ten reactors for the cost of Germany running the appeals, environmental studies and neighborhood consultations for one
dalyons 6mo ago
And yet, even with their buildout the nuclear share of electricity is projected to decline y/y. Because renewables are cheaper. And yes it does show china can build things, but it also highlights the different calculus of a single party state. They can force people & the state to buy uncompetitive nuclear power (under the banner of energy stability) and not worry about being voted out.
- mpweiher 6mo ago
  No it's not. You actually have to build out intermittent renewables much faster than nuclear even for comparable generating capacity due to the much shorter lifetime of the equipment. See Little's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law China recently signed up to the COP28 pledge to triple nuclear generation. In the same time period, worldwide electricity generation is predicted to rise by 50-100%, so the nuclear share will grow by 50% - 100%.
  - dalyons 6mo ago
    Are you referring to the debunked idea that solar panels only last 20 years? Because yeah, bunk. https://www.ecoticias.com/en/goodbye-to-the-idea-that-solar-panels-die-after-25-years-a-new-study-says-the-warranty-does-not-mark-the-end-and-real-world-performance-can-last-for-decades/26007/#google_vignette https://www.ecoticias.com/en/goodbye-to-the-idea-that-solar-...
- Moldoteck 6mo ago
  china wants nuclear to provide 10-20% of their needs. If china wants that, they'll achieve it. Nuclear is extremely competitive in china.
  - dalyons 6mo ago
    competitive is the wrong word. It does not have to compete on price or all in lifecycle cost, because its single party state that owns everything and cant be voted out. But i do agree that if they want it, they'll make it happen.
    - Moldoteck 5mo ago
      it's not a wrong word. Competitive - it's in the sesnse of what price can it sell to get profits, even if the price is set by govt. Even our existing fleet of npp is competitive on the market -> www.kkg.ch/de/uns/geschaefts-nachhaltigkeitsberichte.html https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-their-impact-on-the-electricity-price/ https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th... But chinese nuclear is built faster and cheaper vs our units even during messmer in france. So their price guarantee is lower too. Probably similar to what distributed solar got there of 0.4y/kwh in the past. Albeit subsidies for solar were cut last year to stimulate a healthier growth
      - dalyons 5mo ago
        i mean competitive as in "free market competitive". chinas plants do not have to compete on their own all in costs as a private enterprise, they are majority state owned. So they dont have to pay insurance, cleanup, or long term capex loan interest costs. Which are a huge part of the costs for free-market nukes (and why they dont get built). Plus, the "price" is set between a state owned supplier and a state owned consuming grid ... do you think thats really representative of a true free market price?
        Moldoteck 5mo ago
        Their insurance, cleanup is included in state mandated price. Their capex loans aren't so problematic since it costs about 2.5bn to build and is done in under 5y now China doesn't have free market in the way we have it anyway. It wasn't valid even for solar
j16sdiz 6mo ago
The way China building new reactor is not typical. Most of the countries builds _one_ type of reactor, or a group of similar type of reactor. This help reduce the cost of training and certification. China, otoh, tries to _diversify_ their reactor type. If you look closely on how China treat techs, they have been doing the same for all tech for past 15+ years. They are strategically growing their tech profile.
- marcosdumay 6mo ago
  They have a huge number of people that can specialize in many different things. But their government has actually explained it. They purposely diversify any tech that doesn't have a clear winner, so in the long term a winner appears and they can focus on it.
- dalyons 6mo ago
  They also, most importantly, don’t have to care if any of their reactors make economic sense. It is a single party state, and the incentive structure is very different.
- Moldoteck 6mo ago
  most of chinese units are hualongs now
- mpweiher 5mo ago
  Actually the way China builds nuclear reactors is very typical of the way western countries built reactors back when we still did it well: standardize, build a bunch in overlapping batches. Keep building. That shouldn't be surprising, because they learned it from us. We stopped doing it that way because we effectively stopped building. China is building enough reactors that they can do this with several standardized designs. Which is smart. The EPR has basically failed, so in the west we currently have 3 standardized generation III(+) designs: The Westinghouse AP-1000, the South Korean APR-1400 and the Japanese ABWR. Of these, both the ABWR and the APR-1400 have been built quickly and cheaply, with the ABWR holding the record for fastest build times: under 4 years. The AP-1000 had some very rough initial builds, because the design wasn't actually finished and it turned out what they had "finished" wasn't actually buildable. Ooops. These issues appear to have been ironed out, and a lot of countries are betting on the AP-1000: the US, Poland, China, and Ukraine. Turkey, Slovakia and Bulgaria have also expressed interest. The EPR is essentially dead, with only the UK wanting to build two more UK-EPRs at Sitwell-C. Hopefully the EPR2 will be better, what I've seen of the specs suggests it has a good chance. Anyway, one point I want to come back to is the "keep building". This is actually crucial, and one of the reasons many western projects in recent years went so badly. We had forgotten how to build, no longer building a bunch in overlapping bunches, but single units decades apart. And there comes to rub: in order to "keep building", you have to build slowly. Slow is smooth and smooth fast my guitar teacher used to say. The French built out far too quickly, constructing 55 reactors in just 15 years. Then they were done. Nothing to build until that initial batch wears out. Reactors last a long time, easily 60-80 years. Ooops. The key to this comes from queueing theory, Little's Law: L = ƛW "the long-term average number of customers (L) in a stationary system is equal to the long-term average effective arrival rate (λ) multiplied by the average time that a customer spends in the system (W)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law So if you have a desired fleet size of 80 units and they last 80 years, you should be completing 1 unit per year. China is currently permitting 15 per year. If they keep that up throughout the construction phase, this would imply a steady-state fleet size of 1200 reactors. That's a lot of reactors. If you build more quickly, you won't be in steady state. Of course you can still do better than going full tilt and then stopping, smoothly modulating the build-rate. For France, this would have meant a fleet size of 320 reactors at the rate they were going. Alternatively, the build rate for the fleet size they have would have been around one reactor every two years. Something to keep in mind for the "not a lot of nuclear is being built"-crowd.

716dpl 6mo ago

While this is true, we don't have a good solution for long term energy storage. Even with plummeting costs and new technologies like sodium ion, batteries still only get you maybe ~12 hours of discharge. Pumped hydro give you longer storage, but there are limited places where you can build it. Unless geothermal becomes competitive, nuclear is still the best solution for carbon-free baseload.

dalyons 6mo ago
I agree storage is a problem. But the concept of “base load” is outdated. As I mentioned in another comment - Because actually “base load” nuclear is terrible in a grid increasingly full of nearly-free variable sources (solar&wind). The nukes need to stay at 100% all the time selling their power at a high fixed price to have any remote chance of being economical. Cheap variables push nuke's expensive power off the grid during the day, and increasingly into the evenings with batteries. This is unavoidable in an open energy market, and is fatal to the economics of nuclear. The only way you can make it work is state subsidies and/or forcing people to buy the more expensive nuke power. Which will be unpopular. But maybe you can sell it as a “grid backup fee” or something.
- vince14 6mo ago
  Storage is not just 'a problem', it doesn't exist and won't for many many decades. The planned solution is hydrogen power plants, but no one wants to build them because the infrastructure, including electrolysers, is way too economically unfeasible. Therefore, Germany is and will continue to be dependent on coal and gas, as these are the main producers every night. That's your 'grid backup fee' for you.
  - dalyons 6mo ago
    Long term storage is a problem. Nightly will be solved soon by batteries. California is well on the way, down to 25% fossil in 2025 from 45% in 2022, due to batteries. And they just keep getting built. Australia is on the same track. If we have to burn some gas to cover the occasional long term weather issue, I’m ok with that , if we’re at 90+% decarbonized at that point it’s still a huge win.

mpweiher 6mo ago

Citation needed. (Narrator: yes it will, and no it's not).

flakeoil 6mo ago

You probably have to look at the whole picture. Having part of the energy generation from nuclear probably makes the total cheaper than having no nuclear. Even if nuclear maybe is the most expensive. Not having enough energy or having it cut off by a neighbour is very expensive.

ViewTrick1002 6mo ago
That is not the case. Grid modelers always land on renewables being cheaper. Except for the cases when the studies start with "assuming cheap and fast to build nuclear power". https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/04/17/new-metric-shows-renewables-are-53-cheaper-than-nuclear-power/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/04/17/new-metric-shows-rene...
- vince14 6mo ago
  That is not the case. There are LCOLC, LFSCOE and others which land on renewables being way more expensive. Even without your made up claim about "assuming cheap and fast to build nuclear power".
  - ViewTrick1002 6mo ago
    Which are extremely simplified metrics. Like the LFSCOE study is only using one source of renewables through all weather together with 2020 data on battery costs. Which is why I linked a recent full system analysis. With Danish data so a vastly harder problem than a place with abundant solar. So tell me what they missed. They even tilted the study heavily towards nuclear power and assumed that the nuclear costs are 40% lower than Flamanville 3 and 70% lower than Hinkley Point C while modeling solar as 20% more expensive. Still finding that renewables are vastly cheaper when it comes to meeting a real grid load.
    - Moldoteck 5mo ago
      you should be very careful with 'papers' written by people that stayed at the core of Danish antinuclear movement like Henrik Lund (famous “for me, nuclear power is not a dream. It’s a nightmare. My dream is renewable energy”, but there are more interesting turns there, including EnergyPLAN which was criticized a lot for it's nonsense assumptions which I can bet is used here too. It was so severe that the issue was addressed in a peer reviewed publication https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261925016186 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192... ) and a paper that includes frauds like jacobson in citations. These two are famous for citation rings and both are public antinuclear activists. I can bet they have very "optimistic" estimations for Hydrogen and gas firming on top of the most evident issues adressed in peer review

Moldoteck 6mo ago

its expensive if it takes 20y. It's cheap if it takes under 6-8, like Barakah or China