Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#91

Post by ratsmack » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #71

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…

My grandfather was a Nuclear Engineer for General Electric his whole life (worked like 60 years at GE - he was one of the designers of Hanford. He died of cancer, thyroid cancer of exenguination (bleeding out of your mouth) My grandmother received a fairly large settlement from the class action lawsuit against GE for exposing engineers to radiation for decades without proper safety...

My uncle worked at Hanford his entire life but his last few years of life were not good. He he retired with numerous health issues and was essentially a mental vegetable the last few years of his life. He was at Hanford from it's inception up to around the seventies when he retired.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#92

Post by Krasnol » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #24

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 you can start a project with the existing, proven and expensive tech today . Grid-scale storage is purely theoretical today (bar pumped-up hydro, which is infeasible in most locations). There's lots of hope, and money should be invested in the various alternatives, absolutely. But nobody can say when and if that tech would be ready.

You make it sound like it's some SciFi tech where in reality Germany has replaced half of it's whole production with true green energy in the last two decades. Replacing nuclear years ago.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#93

Post by ak217 » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

> Nuclear is sometimes praised for having lower fuel costs, 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 not obviously true. I could make an argument that base load generation capacity (nuclear and hydro in particular) should be state-owned or largely state-sponsored, both to avoid economic price shocks/volatility and because it's good for national security (check out what Europe is going through right now).

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#94

Post by bozhark » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

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…

We could always start _new_ companies…

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#95

Post by Retric » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #62

alex_young wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

South Korea, Japan, and India all have similar costs which suggests South Korea isn’t benefiting significantly from continuous construction.

Economies of scale generally exist, but it’s not magic. A large fraction of construction costs for nuclear power plants is very similar to other structures. A high pressure steam pipe is a high pressure steam pipe and people are constantly building structures using them.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#96

Post by bozhark » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #72

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…

"selling this idea to the private-sector energy industry was an uphill battle" Could you elaborate on the why? I would asume, because of risk. A solar plant, you can more or less just put anywhere, but a nuclear power plant, even a small one, needs state permission, has to meet extensive regulation, etc. It would need some convincing for me, too, that a nuclear reactor can be just a drop in replacement for coal. I wo…

Sounds like a good time to get into the energy sector.

Time for an HN Wind, water, solar, and nuclear company start-up.

Who’s in?

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#97

Post by Arrath » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #86

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.

> ...waste disposal are so expensive. Until there are higher costs for CO2 emissions...

Perhaps we should also examine the requirements and costs associated with storing waste from coal-fired power plants. Oft overlooked in favor of the fuel rod boogeyman.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/coal-...

If we treated such waste with the care and security it deserved, the cost equation may balance out differently.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#98

Post by outworlder » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

this_user wrote: post #64

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 via…

> So why waste more money on an obsolete technology

It is not obsolete. At all. You can argue that some reactor designs should not be used and I would agree. But fission is the only answer we currently have for baseline power that doesn't involve burning things. It will become obsolete if we can ever make fusion work.

We should be deploying more reactors. There are small reactors (shipping container-sized) that could be used to power small towns and are pretty safe. Good luck getting one approved and installed in your neighborhood. It's not the tech that's being held back, it's people.

Look, I love batteries, I drive EVs since 2015. But if we want to avoid the worst effects of climate change, we need to provide cheap and reliable baseline power 24/7. There's not enough time to do so with batteries alone.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#99

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

this_user wrote: post #64

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 via…

[deleted]

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#100

Post by belorn » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

this_user wrote: post #64

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 via…

> 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.

A few years ago Sweden did a study on green hydrogen, the energy storage that Germany and many other countries seem to view as the best bet as a storage for places where solar + daily discharging batteries won't work. The cost was then around 10-20 times more expensive than nuclear. Those costs has gone down a bit since then, but it is still several times more expensive than nuclear.

Sweden and Germany are still very much in favor of green hydrogen, and there are on-going experiment to use it for industries that need hydrogen itself (rather than burning it for energy), but they are no investments for a grid storage. If nuclear is not economically viable, a technology that is several time more expensive is not something they are just going to throw money at. Those money are currently going towards fossil fuels, since that is cheaper than nuclear.

If however we would ban fossil fuel, especially cheap fossil fuel from Russia, the economics might change. There is also always the hope that politicians investment into fossil fuels today will give green hydrogen enough time to become economical viable for the energy sector.