Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

constructionphysics.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 512 posts

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#61

Post by DennisP »

alex_young wrote: post #47
ImHereToVote wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article they have

From the article: > The only country where the costs of nuclear plant construction seem to have steadily decreased is South Korea: > The fact that South Korea is the only country to exhibit this trend has led some experts to speculate that the cost data (which comes directly from the utility and hasn’t been independently audited) has been manipulated and we shouldn’t draw conclusions from it.

In absolute terms, Japan and India have costs similar to South Korea's.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...

See figure 12 for a quick overview. And from the introduction: "In contrast to the rapid cost escalation that characterized nuclear construction in the United States, we find evidence of much milder cost escalation in many countries, including absolute cost declines in some countries and specific eras. Our new findings suggest that there is no inherent cost escalation trend associated with nuclear technology."

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#62

Post by jandrese »

alex_young wrote: post #47
ImHereToVote wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article they have

From the article: > The only country where the costs of nuclear plant construction seem to have steadily decreased is South Korea: > The fact that South Korea is the only country to exhibit this trend has led some experts to speculate that the cost data (which comes directly from the utility and hasn’t been independently audited) has been manipulated and we shouldn’t draw conclusions from it.

If anything this seems to support the position that the only way to reduce costs is to increase volume. A classic economies of scale example. Instead the experts want to disregard the data for vague reasons.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#63

Post by nickelpro »

ortusdux wrote: post #9
scoopertrooper wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that they shut down the reactors in port and run off the grid.

This is my understanding as well. I believe that they may even shut down at sea and run in on batteries/generators, which doubles as a way to test those systems. Refueling is quite the ordeal, so there is an incentive to minimize fuel depletion.

Nuclear powered vessels do not spend any significant amount of time shutdown at sea, and there is no reason to. Electrical power is a very small fraction of their total MWh production, with almost all power going to propulsion.

When fuel lifetime becomes an issue for a nuclear naval vessel they will have propulsion limits in place that limit transit speeds to those which are most efficient for the propulsion turbines.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#64

Post by this_user »

xroche wrote: post #10

> Because nuclear plants are expensive, and they take a long time to build, financing their construction can also be a significant fraction of their cost, typically around 15-20% of the cost of the plant. For plants that have severe construction delays and/or have high financing costs (such as the Vogtle 3 and 4 plants in Georgia), this can be 50% of the cost or more. This is why nuclear power plants should be state-…

> This is why nuclear power plants should be state-sponsored projects. States typically have loans at 0% rate, or even negative interests.

Not anymore with inflation at around 8% in many western countries. And even so, construction and operation still remain expensive. France's EDL is basically bankrupt if it were not for the state backstopping them. However you want to slice it, nuclear power is not economically viable, and looks even worse compared to the rapidly decreasing costs of renewable sources of energy.

So why waste more money on an obsolete technology rather than use it for solving the remaining issues with renewables like energy storage? Invest that money in battery technology and everything that comes with that. That approach will do a lot more good in the long run than trying to keep the nuclear industry on life support even though it has failed for half a century to deliver on its promises.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#65

Post by yvdriess »

kaiju0 wrote: post #7
Georgelemental wrote: post #2

TL;DR rising labor costs and regulation

Each build is unique and requires way too much overhead. The new generation of preapproved factory assembled SMR's are the future.

Having talked to a nuclear engineer about this: SMRs are being politically pushed because of their political and financing convenience, more than engineering reasons. Power output scales really well with reactor size, so it makes much more sense to build the one big expensive power plant than a multitude of smaller ones. SMRs do make sense for off-grid or on-site power, but not for grid electricity.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#66

Post by nickelpro »

01100011 wrote: post #3

Totally unrelated question but does anyone know if nuclear powered US Navy vessels are able to feed power to the grid while in port? I know it's technically possible, just not sure if anyone has ever implemented such a thing.

Navy nuclear vessels have (relative to the grid) little real power generation capability and cannot handle grid reactive loading at all. The grid appears as an infinite reactive load to shipboard electrical switching equipment.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#67

Post by Ericson2314 »

LatteLazy wrote: post #54
Ericson2314 wrote: post #13

> but all else being equal (ie: assuming total production cost stays constant), it’s better to have a larger fraction of your electricity costs be variable, so that if demand drops then production cost drops as well. This is how capitalism gives us scarcity when there is no reason for scarcity. Infrastructure like trains and nuclear that absolutely swamps current demand, and whose costs cannot be adjusted very much (…

If your costs are all fixed, and demand falls, you have to put prices up to stay alive. That's the issue with Nuclear: If it costs $1bn a year for the plant, it costs that whether you generate 1bn kWh (at $1 each) or 1 kWh (at $1Bn each). What you call artificial shortage, others call "not making something no one wants and then forcing them to pay for it"...

There is no non-depressing future where demand for electricity doesn't go way up as fossil fuel is phased out. An uncertainty is a shit situation we should work to prevent, not have a contingency plan for.

This is where the Keynesian "socialization of investment" stuff comes in. Private markets get skiddish over change even when our economies are fully capable of dealing with the issues. Don't be held hostage to private capital playing "nose goes" when the solution is obvious.

Abundance really does mean everything is too cheap to meter on margin. There is no other definition. To get there we have to make people more risk tolerant, and the only way to do that is guaranteeing consumption.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#68

Post by stefanfisk »

epistasis wrote: post #21
lelag wrote: post #15

The article misses another important aspect: loss of nuclear competency. Between the 60s and 80s, there were many nuclear reactors projects which allowed an industry to develop and get better at it. But since the 80s, there was comparatively very few new reactors built for over 20-30 years. The workforce that had the skills and knowledge related to actually building nuclear plants had mostly retired and their replace…

The recent US nuclear construction projects have been plagued with similar incompetence, such as trying to build plans that were unconstructable, and then having to get regulatory approval for the changes. I would like to see comparisons to other large construction projects too. The US is really really bad at large construction projects, but European construction seems a lot better.

I'd love to read more about this! do you have any tip on where to start?

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#69

Post by hansel_der »

01100011 wrote: post #3

Totally unrelated question but does anyone know if nuclear powered US Navy vessels are able to feed power to the grid while in port? I know it's technically possible, just not sure if anyone has ever implemented such a thing.

quick google suggests it has been done in emergencies.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#70

Post by arethuza »

sofixa wrote: post #42
pydry wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Grid-scale storage is purely theoretical today bar pumped-up hydro, which is infeasible in most locations Viable locations arent in short supply at all: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-spot-530-000-potenti...

They aren't in short supply, but aren't present everywhere - e.g. in Europe there's nothing north of Slovakia. If Denmark wants storage, they have to work with other countries and rely on transit. It's even worse for the Baltics.

Norway, UK and Ireland aren't in Europe?

Edit: I was a bit puzzled as there are already pumped-storage plants in Wales and Scotland with more planned.

Post reply on HN