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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?

#101

Post by bozhark »

outworlder wrote: post #98
this_user wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Had to delete my one line response because you embodied everything I meant. Cheers

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#102

Post by _1tan »

bozhark wrote: post #96
hutzlibu wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

Here, email is avg@duck.com

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#103

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#104

Post by petre »

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.

Yeah, we've seen how it (hasn't) worked out for Germany.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#105

Post by jacquesm »

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…

I find it disconcerting that a defective critical piece ended up being used anyway, regardless of the economies involved. That might mean you have no reactor, but you can't just go an substitute broken or out of spec parts for good ones.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#106

Post by logifail »

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…

> micro and modular reactors

Umm, are these the ones that - relatively speaking - produce significantly more radioactive waste than traditional designs?

"The next generation of small nuclear reactors will be big on producing radioactive waste"[0]

"Small nuclear reactors produce '35x more waste' than big plants"[1]

Sorry for the scepticism, but the nuclear lobby were the ones that brought us the phrase "too cheap to meter"[2], and we're still waiting...

[0] https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/the-next-generation-of-n... [1] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/02/nuclear_reactors_wast... [2] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1613/ML16131A120.pdf

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#107

Post by treme »

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.

Koreans excel in cost-efficient construction projects. Korean companies are often considered for best bang-for-buck value when developing countries are interested in big infrastructure projects nowadays.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1915_%C3%87anakkale_Bridge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan%E2%80%93Cavite_Interlin...

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#108

Post by belorn »

It is interesting that personal costs was such huge part of the increase in construction. Construction seems like a field that automation has yet to really start to create waves, but I recall seeing news about small step forward like scaled up 3d printing with cement. Modular construction is an other concept I have not heard much for in the context of nuclear plants.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#109

Post by samstave »

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…

That sounds like a brilliant idea. However, the tooling and staffing requirements of a Coal Plant arent going to suffice for a nuke.

How do they propose training for existing employees of a coal plant.

We think of Coal folks as "dirty stupid miners from kentucky" and we think of people that work at nuke sites as "white lab coat wearing scientists"

The only dirty stupid person from Kentucky is Mitch.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#110

Post by samstave »

bozhark wrote: post #96
hutzlibu wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

There was a nuclear startup that came through YC a few years back... what happened to them?
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