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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?

#331

Post by trashtester »

sanxiyn wrote: post #305
trashtester wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of flying has come down by 50% since 1980, and while an airplane is a simpler machine than a nuclear plant, the two industries also have a lot in common (such as the perception of risk not being in their favour). By doing international standardization and coordination in ways similar to the aircraft industry, the same should be possible for the nuclear power industry. It should be possible to consolidate mos…

By the way, this blog (Construction Physics) is about why construction in general (not nuclear power construction in particular) is expensive. One big part is that construction is done on site, and site-to-site variation hurts standardization and economies of scale. Finished airplanes can transport itself by flying. This advantage is particular to aircraft industry and probably can't be copied by other industries. Fi…

According to the original article, only 16.5% of the costs of a nuclear plant is from the buildings, though.

Most are things like reactor equipment, turbine equipment and electrical equipment. I'd bet most of that could be built in a central factory, and then shipped to the site.

In fact, when comparing to air travel costs, the reactor buildings can be compared to the airports.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#332

Post by ncmncm »

SECProto wrote: post #310
mch82 wrote: post #253

The cost of nuclear energy seems seriously understated. Nuclear waste storage costs the US $6B per year and we still don’t have a long-term storage plan. We’ll incur this cost for hundreds or thousands of years. https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us... There’s also a cost to secure the nuclear infrastructure. https://medium.com/the-future-is-electric/nuclear-generation... Can anyone find a cost…

> The cost of nuclear energy seems seriously understated. Nuclear waste storage costs the US $6B per year and we still don’t have a long-term storage plan. We’ll incur this cost for hundreds or thousands of years. Wait til you hear about the costs of fossil fuel waste storage!

Fortunately, that is not the alternative: fossil fuel use is already uncompetitive, so on its way down. But not fast enough, as societal inertia props it up against what cost favors.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#333

Post by [deleted] »

ncmncm wrote: post #317
pyrale wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one has offered any plausible suggestion for how to contain corruption costs for nuke construction Honestly, I had assumed this was how the US worked in any industry. The tech industry (most recently crypto) has certainly spent lavishly on politics in recent years, either to escape accountability or to get special status.

It is particularly a problem in high capex projects with opaque cost accounting, particularly nukes, urban tunnels, weapons procurement, and crewed spaceflight. Solar and wind projects seem thus far relatively immune.

[deleted]

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#334

Post by otter-rock »

jacquesm wrote: post #297
otter-rock wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a requirements change. Those happen all the time in everything. Why would that be completely forbidden or impossible here? Like you said, it might really suck. But the NRC does not allow trading off safety the way you suggest.

Requirements changes are not driven by one-off material defects in critical pieces of hardware. That's simply a bending of the rules for economic reasons. And it is one of the main reasons for me to oppose nuclear: the fact that people will be people and that at the root of every one of those disaster and near disasters there was someone who thought they could get away with something. We are ill equipped to deal with…

I see your concerns, and I think you're probably just unaware that they're addressed better than you know, but in a different way than you'd expect.

When they accept an expensive out-of-spec part, it's because they can safely redesign the less expensive parts. The only thing that hurts is their long-term profitability because it'll be less efficient than they hoped.

Big, expensive parts are always treated as one-of-a-kind articles with unique requirements. It's how bridges and roads get built, for example.

With nuclear, they have special teams that do nothing but manage every type of risk you could ever think of for every piece of nuclear material in the country. It's very advanced, and many industries are trying to use those techniques themselves now.

Nobody is normalizing or bending anything. Every potential problem is thoroughly addressed on an individual basis. There is no deviance from the safety requirements. Nuclear is decades ahead of every other field in terms of risk management.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#335

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

nixonpjoshua1 wrote: post #186
brandmeyer wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reasons for continuing to incrementally design and build new submarine and aircraft carrier reactors. If the expertise is to re-emerge in the US commercial sector, it may require another cross-pollination effort from the military. The difficulty is that both military reactors and commercial power reactors have evolved considerably since their initial branch point. Commercial power reactors provide…

Perhaps military style reactors designed for propulsion loads would be a good match for balancing renewables on the grid as an alternative to natural gas peaker plants

Military style reactors use highly enriched fuel, often near weapons grade. That's an acceptable thing for a carrier or submarine that's also full of things that have to be continuously secured, like nuclear weapons, but is a big challenge for a small modular reactor scheme. Most of the stuff proposed in recent years for small non military reactors has focused on a middle ground of partial enrichment that's more approachable.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#336

Post by ncmncm »

krupan wrote: post #314
ncmncm wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries are the most expensive storage. They cost per kWh stored, while others cost mainly only per W inserted or extracted. Only a minuscule fraction of utility scale storage will ever be batteries, so even mentioning batteries only details discussion.

What will it be then? Flywheels?

There are many storage alternatives, each more attractive for certain circumstances. Undersea methods are particularly cheap, but synthetic fuels -- ammonia and hydrogen -- have advantages that offset higher cost.

What we can be certain of is that Energy Vault (ERGV) investors who get out last will lose badly.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#337

Post by bcrosby95 »

theptip wrote: post #323
krupan wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will it be then? Flywheels?

I like gravity storage. Pumping water up a hill, or pumping air into an underwater tank to displace water. Seems that you can get quite good efficiency with these approaches.

AFAIK though only pumped water and batteries have been done at anything approaching utility scale. Anything else and you're probably looking at several decades to reach maturity, and then another several decades to roll it out.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#338

Post by ncmncm »

justinsb wrote: post #246

The only nuclear plant under construction in the US is at Plant Vogtle, in Georgia. Regulators set up a system (CWIP) whereby the companies building the plant earn a 10% return on their costs, until the plants come online. I think it's not surprising therefore that costs keep increasing and the delays keep coming. I don't think we can infer that nuclear power plants cannot be built at reasonable cost, rather that we…

No post body was provided.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#339

Post by trashtester »

pfdietz wrote: post #313
trashtester wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that a combination of batteries and hydrogen would be a bit cheaper, but generally I would trust the MIT study over the model above, that states directly that it is a toy model. It's fun to play with, though, so definitely upvoted. Do you have an alternative peer reviewed study to support the conclusions?

(Edited to actually look at the link) Looking at that first link, it appears to cost/kWh is the cost for just the seasonal power that is being produced from hydrogen. It is not the average cost/kWh over all the energy being consumed off the grid. Comparing this to nuclear is to compare apples and oranges. Nuclear supplies baseload, not additional seasonal power. If you tried to use nuclear to supply seasonal power th…

> Looking at that first link, it appears to cost/kWh is the cost for just the seasonal power that is being produced from hydrogen.

I interpreted those numbers as average LCOE for the electricy supply, but I could be wrong.

Let's assume that you're right, and this only applies to maybe 25% of total energy needs. The averge price would still be increased by $1000/MWh, on top of the renewable costs themselves, grid costs, etc.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#340

Post by speed_spread »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #296
coredog64 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest nuclear plant in the United States (Palo Verde) is in the middle of the Sonoran Desert and uses treated sewage output for cooling. People probably won’t stop urinating during a drought.

oh thats cool. I imagine all the pathogens are effectively killed for free

It also gives arguments to both sides, "nuclear is shit" and "nuclear is the shit"
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