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New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

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Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#111

Post by petre »

Reason077 wrote: post #40
sudosysgen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main advantage that EDF has that allows it to work well isn't that effective out of France. They still do good work, but they act much more like a private company than an SoE, which is why it's so much more successful in France.

Well, EDF have not been so successful with their most recent project in France, Flamanville 3. Construction started in 2007, with estimated completion in 2012 at a cost of €3.3 billion. As of 2020, the plant is still not complete and the cost has spiralled to €19.1 billion. It is now tentatively planned to go online at the end of 2022.

We saw what happened to Areva building reactors on a fixed cost contract. Today's economic realities do not quite let one plan a 10 year project on a fixed cost. 3.3bn do not equate to 2007 3.3bn in 2020. The Chinese are able to do it because they not a free market economy, they can force people to work at gunpoint.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#112

Post by 7952 »

manfredo wrote: post #61
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if you build enough nuclear power to fill in the gap in the duck curve, then you could just run those plants all day and ditch renewables. If you build enough nuclear power to fill the gap in the duck curve without storage, and remove fossil fuels, you're basically running entirely nuclear and hydro, and mostly nuclear. You end up building almost double the amount of capacity that you actually use, because you n…

The point is that nuclear is the only known geographically independent way of generating carbon free energy that isn't subject to intermittency. The redundancy isn't an issue with nuclear, it's an issue of the notion that we need nuclear and renewables. Just cut out the renewables, and only use nuclear. Using nuclear to fill in the duck curve makes renewables redundant, thus the aversion to nuclear of many proponents…

I wonder which is easier? Large scale battery deployment or scaling nuclear.

I think there are good reasons to be bullish about battery storage. It is already an area of massive research. It is something we need to scale anyway due to electric cars. And it is very easy to deploy to the existing grid. You just need a concrete pad, some power gear, and a substation.

Being optimistic about nuclear does not mean we cannot be optimistic about batter storage.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#113

Post by GlennS »

adrianN wrote: post #89
credit_guy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a 10 year project. 2 mil becomes 200k per year. Still a lot, but then it's not really a purely job project. If you send 10000 people 200k per year you will end up with the same hole in your pockets of 20 billion after 10 years, but with a nuclear power plant less. And 10000 people with zero work experience.

With 2 million in the bank you can easily retire to a low cost of living area. That's 50k for forty years.

That's assuming no returns on investment. With £2 million you could spend £75,000 a year and reasonably expect to preserve your $2 million (and grow it by inflation) forever.

(Going with 3.75% rule instead of usual 4% rule so you have a safety margin.)

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#114

Post by GlennS »

sudosysgen wrote: post #11
Gwypaas wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy due to failed nuclear construction in the U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/westinghouse-tos... Areva, responsible for the construction of Olkiluoto-3 in Finland on a fixed price contract. Restructured and sold all of it's reactor business except Olkiluoto-3, which it still is liable for, to EDF. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areva

It's always astonishing how hydro and nuclear are so much better handled by SoEs like EDF or HydroQuebec that manage to turn a profit too, while private companies can never do it well.

This is basically about the cost of capital for the build and inability to insure for liability and future unforeseen costs.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#115

Post by KaiserPro »

onion2k wrote: post #90
belorn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless how expensive it get, it won't burn tons of fossil fuels. Government should just set the conditions for new power and heating infrastructure. No fossil fuels. Zero carbon. A minimum and peak capacity based on current and projected demands. Private companies can bid, but they can't change the conditions. If a private company can more cheaply and faster build massive amount of battery and use exclusively win…

If the whole UK energy grid could become fossil free, and the only cost would be a 2x increase in costs, then that would be to me a fair price to pay. A large number of people would die as a result of such a policy. Fuel poverty is already a significant problem, the UK government gives out 'winter fuel payment' benefits to some, but doubling the price of energy would push a lot of elderly, infirm, and poor people to…

https://www.businesselectricityprices.org.uk/historical/

They've already doubled.

Now, of course this is more complex because some of that price rise is due to "levies" being placed to support both "green" initiatives and support for the vulnerable.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#116

Post by Krasnol »

roenxi wrote: post #22
LatteLazy wrote: post #3

The others are already over budget and behind schedule, the private companies meant to be heading them are dropping like flies. This won't end well... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54158091 https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/energy-news/toshiba-withdraw... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/sep/25/hinkley-poin...

> The others are already over budget and behind schedule The reason why is important though. Is it because of: 1) Political issues, where the government has set up incentives for the builder to lie? 2) Social issues, where environmentalists attack the project to drive up costs? It seems unbelievable to me that nuclear plant planners are unable to plan because ... dunno, maybe they hear nuclear and lose the ability to…

It's astonishing how decades into nuclear energy, there are still people who attempt to shift the blame for this over budget and behind schedule technology on somebody else.

You have literally nothing in your hands but it still won't stop you from blaming the government (which blindly throws money on it) and "environmentalists" (which obviously failed or those projects would not have started).

This is hilarious.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#117

Post by 7952 »

fuoqi wrote: post #85
erentz wrote: post #48

Here’s an article discussing the costs more: “The Hinkley Point C case: is nuclear energy expensive?” https://medium.com/generation-atomic/the-hinkley-point-c-cas...

Importance of mass-production can not be underestimated. ERP has only 2 working reactors and 3 in construction. Meanwhile Russia produces VVER reactors in an almost conveyor-like fashion (see list in [0]), iterating on design and streamlining construction process, which results in more than twice smaller CAPEX per GW and less delays. Such mass production allows to lower cost of R&D per built reactor and in general to…

Arguably the reason for the success of renewables in the UK is that the government gave big subsidy opportunities early on, and then made cost reduction a condition of future subsidy. And there is a strong grid operator that can do strategic planning. This worked for wind, solar, and maybe battery storage now. And this regulated/grid based approach is what deals with issues like intermittency. People may forget these things in a discussion on the web, but the grid and regulators do not.

And actually Hinckley and Sizewell do fit within this model. They have been given very high strike prices and hopefully will be able to deliver a more cost effective pipeline of projects later on. But this approach is more difficult with large, monolithic projects.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#118

Post by makomk »

wahern wrote: post #105
Gwypaas wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy due to failed nuclear construction in the U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/westinghouse-tos... Areva, responsible for the construction of Olkiluoto-3 in Finland on a fixed price contract. Restructured and sold all of it's reactor business except Olkiluoto-3, which it still is liable for, to EDF. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areva

Western industry has progressively lost their ability to efficiently manage many types of heavy industry and large construction projects. This is particularly true for nuclear, which requires the application of disparate and highly specialized techniques and skillsets that are quickly lost. Though not to the same extent as the U.S., Japan, France, and South Korea have lost many of the same skills even though only a c…

To some extent, it turns out that the problem is France never actually had those specialized nuclear techniques and skillsets. For example, they had huge problems with defective welding and large forgings that weren't up to spec and had faked QA testing documentation which caused big delays. Then the regulators went back and looked at the old plants from the original wave of nuclear building, and they had the same problems. It's just that French nuclear wasn't so well scrutinized back then, possibly for political reasons.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#119

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

tedk-42 wrote: post #82
eunos wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point probably only the Chinese, Korean and Russian that can build Nuclear Power Plant properly.

This. It's quite sad to see the lack of innovation in western countries around the build and development of nuclear power plants. Red tape, regulation and lack of political will (due to unfavourable views on nuclear technology) will continue to see most countries fall behind on this. It's really quite sad. Nuclear has a negative connotation to most but it's the future. Interstellar space travel will rely on the nucle…

> lack of innovation in western countries [...], Red tape, regulation

Red tape is invariably written in innocent victims' blood. And "regulation" is not a bogeyman.

But for a complex problem like this, I assure you there are no simple explanations - but people always seem to want simple explanations. That disappoints me.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#120

Post by guerby »

manfredo wrote: post #61
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if you build enough nuclear power to fill in the gap in the duck curve, then you could just run those plants all day and ditch renewables. If you build enough nuclear power to fill the gap in the duck curve without storage, and remove fossil fuels, you're basically running entirely nuclear and hydro, and mostly nuclear. You end up building almost double the amount of capacity that you actually use, because you n…

The point is that nuclear is the only known geographically independent way of generating carbon free energy that isn't subject to intermittency. The redundancy isn't an issue with nuclear, it's an issue of the notion that we need nuclear and renewables. Just cut out the renewables, and only use nuclear. Using nuclear to fill in the duck curve makes renewables redundant, thus the aversion to nuclear of many proponents…

"geographically independent"

Well nuclear needs water, not a very strong constraint I agree but one nevertheless.

In France when it gets too hot they have to stop the nuclear plants since by environnement regulations they cannot pump out too hot water in the river.

By now offshore wind is still behind in capacity factor compared to nuclear but it's closer and closer.

For the past two years (2018 2019) capacity factor of nuclear power in France has been around 70% mainly due to maintenance according to RTE (1)

For reference best UK offshore wind farm had 55.3% capacity factor in 2019 and UK offshore wind average capacity factor was 40.6% in 2019 (2)

(1) https://media.rte-france.com/bilan-electrique-2019-2/ 379.5 Twh produced, 63.1 GW installed, 68.7% capacity factor

(2) https://energynumbers.info/uk-offshore-wind-capacity-factors

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