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Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

constructionphysics.substack.com

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Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#81

Post by Krasnol »

xienze wrote: post #58
Krasnol wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should states invest it's taxpayer money into overpriced and slow technology when there are cheaper and fast improving alternatives?

Because transitioning over to green technology is a decades-long project, it's not something you can just snap your fingers and make happen, as many countries are discovering. You still need non-renewable energy sources to fill in the gaps that renewables currently have.

You don't have to transition completely in decades. You can start today. Meanwhile building a single nuclear reactor is a "decade-long" project, you can't start today and in the end you're still left with an old and expensive tech while the green tech moved ahead rapidly during the same time.

Germany managed to replace almost half of their generation in 2 decades: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-renewable-powe...

When they started out the technology was terrible and managed to do all that despite a just recently retired government which did everything to stop further expansion.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#82

Post by danans »

strainer wrote: post #51
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-…

A project should garner favorable financing arrangements for its merits, not for its risks.

Merit must be determined in a way that includes known risks. Anything otherwise would be fraudulent.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#83

Post by zbrozek »

yvdriess wrote: post #65
kaiju0 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From a thermal physics and material science perspective, yes, bigger is definitely better. But there's a lot to be said of the value of being able to mass-produce a product in a factory and ship it in nearly ready-to-use state to its destination.

There would also be a lot of value in turning off the ability of folks to NIMBY everything from new power plants to housing.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#84

Post by Krasnol »

BurningFrog wrote: post #27
Krasnol wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should states invest it's taxpayer money into overpriced and slow technology when there are cheaper and fast improving alternatives?

Note that solar and wind power are NOT alternatives to the predictable base load of nuclear, hydro, or fuel burning power generation.

"Steve Holliday, CEO National Grid: “The idea of large power stations for baseload is outdated”"

https://energypost.eu/interview-steve-holliday-ceo-national-...

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#85

Post by kube-system »

sfe22 wrote: post #23
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-…

Zero percent or negative just means people involuntary pay by inflation. There is not free lunch (someone had to work to make it)

No, interest rates are quoted nominally -- i.e. they are independent of inflation.

If you purchase a negative interest rate instrument and experience inflation, you will lose real value to both.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#86

Post by nradov »

jason-phillips wrote: post #19

Last year I did a fair amount of consulting work for the GAIN initiative at Idaho National Lab [0]. They're doing so much good work with micro and modular reactors that can basically be "dropped in" decommissioned coal-burning sites because the infrastructure to tie into the electric grid already exists. It was expressed to me that selling this idea to the private-sector energy industry was an uphill battle and uptak…

Private industry uptake is slow because the required changes to staffing, security, and waste disposal are so expensive. Until there are higher costs for CO2 emissions, it will be cheaper for power companies to convert those facilities to natural gas, or just shut them down.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#87

Post by Krasnol »

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.

You make it sound like it's some burden while the EU grid is actually a single market with a significant expansion last year: https://www.tennet.eu/our-grid/international-connections/nor...

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#88

Post by epistasis »

stefanfisk wrote: post #68
epistasis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The Pedestrian Observations blog is great for construction cost analysis:

https://pedestrianobservations.com/

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#89

Post by renewiltord »

sofixa wrote: post #38
renewiltord wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this commenter, we can't build with the proven and expensive tech today because we don't have it any more https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31682876

Depends who. For EPR, we're almost over the hump, with the latest projects in Finland and France coming online and becoming fully operational in the near future. Rosatom has continued pumping out reactors at a decent rate.

Looks like they should do it and we shouldn't in America unless we can somehow allow them to build ours (I think a fear of competition will make this infeasible but if we're lucky we'll get the stuff).

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#90

Post by fatcat500 »

DisjointedHunt wrote: post #52

Way to bury the lede and avoiding the main point: If you plan to build a Nuclear plant *TODAY*, there are financial requirements and regulatory uncertainties that mean you're sitting on high interest(and risky) loans/credit lines/asset pledges etc that increase over time. Very few banks or financial institutions are remotely interested in setting up financing an endeavor that has an almost 0 chance of success to comp…

> Environmental review has become a tool of environmental extremist militants to derail and progress in energy.

Hmm... I wonder why they are so bent on blocking the only viable solution to climate change?

Almost as if they are being used a pawns to shift over the control of energy to the government... after all, if I wanted to nationalize every industry, I would start with the industry upon which all other industries depend on: energy.

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