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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?

#211

Post by pfdietz »

colinmhayes wrote: post #28
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…

This is undoubtedly true, but south korea has now been building nuclear plants for decades, and their costs haven't really dropped at all.

They've built four NPPs in the UAE that may end up producing at $0.08/kWh.

Unfortunately, UAE is also building PV that will be producing at $0.013/kWh. And since they're still burning gas for most of their power, every kWh from solar goes straight to reducing the overall cost and CO2 emission, five times cheaper than the NPPs will.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#212

Post by Krasnol »

xienze wrote: post #134
Krasnol wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-renewab…

> You don't have to transition completely in decades. You can start today. Yes, I agree. If you start today, you’ll be done in decades. The boneheaded move is to start a green energy transition and immediately start decommissioning existing nuclear power plants and stonewall creating new ones by throwing up your hands and saying “well it’ll take forever to build them.” By the way, have you ever considered why it take…

I don't know why you're ignoring my reality example. Germany is part of a EU wide market and it just works. Also it's not like you put all your wind on one spot. There is always wind somewhere for example.

The idea that it's an "political, environmental and special interest" problem while we're watching several nuclear plants being FAR over budget and over due being constructed in pro-nuclear countries proves that your argument is false.

So basically: everything you wrote there is wrong...why are you doing this?

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#213

Post by otter-rock »

jacquesm wrote: post #105
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.

Out-of-spec doesn't mean it can't work. It just means you have to redo the design using what's effectively a different part than you originally planned on.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#214

Post by fulafel »

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-…

States tend to have self imposed debt limiting policies, so opportunity costs are still there for investments.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#215

Post by intrasight »

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 first job was doing software in the nuclear industry. Was the late 80s. Probably the best job I ever had in terms of working with extremely competent engineers. But they were all in their 50s and 60s. After TMI, a generation of engineers said "no" to nuclear careers. We can only imagine the alternate history where that accident hadn't occurred.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#216

Post by logifail »

theptip wrote: post #147
logifail wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

35x of a small problem is not necessarily a big problem. You need to quantify that objection. Nuclear waste can be reprocessed (see Fast Breeder reactors); the concern raised here is usually proliferation risk. Given a binary choice, I'd rather have to deal with some nuclear waste than climate change, and I don't even think that climate change is an existential risk for humanity (just likely to cause large and uneven…

> Does this technology make a good cost/benefit trade-off now, or not?

Given the progress (or lack of it) with the EPRs[0], I don't think "now" is something nuclear can claim to deliver on.

If we'd started planning dozens of reactors a decade ago, perhaps - but we didn't.

Nuclear simply isn't any kind of "quick fix", by a long stretch.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#218

Post by logifail »

avianlyric wrote: post #183
SiempreViernes wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does this technology make a good cost/benefit trade-off now, or not? Specifically, compared to the other options we actually have available to us now. That is the conversation I think we should be having. Then why are you making so many arguments about how we must find ways to make it cheaper? That doesn't seem very committed to the idea of discussing the current cost benefit trade-off.

> Then why are you making so many arguments about how we must find ways to make it cheaper? They don’t appear to be making those arguments at all. Just stating that Nuclear regulations sets safety standards substantially higher than safety stands for other power sources. It quite reasonable to include a question about “how safe is safe enough” when talking about trade offs. It’s easy to change safety standards, and t…

> Just stating that Nuclear regulations sets safety standards substantially higher than safety stands for other power sources.

Errm, than renewables?

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#219

Post by memco »

There are efforts in our area to expand solar and they are offering programs to the public to subsidize some of the construction with shares of the panels. Customers are advised that they will not make money but they’ll get back some percentage of their shares each month. Additionally the power company offers a renewable power option for which they charge extra over the standard rate. Given this: will we see a nuclear option to help subsidize the cost? I would love the cost to come down but I feel like they’re never going to come down if we don’t build it anywhere. Would love to help get it going although I have nowhere near enough money to make an offer other than to be a willing paying customer to whoever can get service to me.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#220

Post by logifail »

zackees wrote: post #170
theptip wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

35x of a small problem is not necessarily a big problem. You need to quantify that objection. Nuclear waste can be reprocessed (see Fast Breeder reactors); the concern raised here is usually proliferation risk. Given a binary choice, I'd rather have to deal with some nuclear waste than climate change, and I don't even think that climate change is an existential risk for humanity (just likely to cause large and uneven…

Post like this make me hopeful that rational minds will prevail and we get clean abundant nuclear energy. It’s becoming clear that the climate alarmism isn't about solutions or even a tax, but forcing us to purchase “carbon credits” from Saudi Arabia and other sovereign wealth funds ranked high in the ESG index.

> ESG

Is that the same ESG that Exxon is part of but Tesla isn't?

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