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Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

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Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#411

Post by Krasnol »

larsrc wrote: post #204
Krasnol wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's inaccurate. Germany has replaced half of its _electricity_ production with renewables (modulo dispatchability), but electricity only accounts for a quarter of the energy usage. We frequently have to import electricity from France now, where it's largely made by nuclear, and electricity in France is a lot cheaper than here. Closing the German nuclear plants was grand scale stupid.

I may have been inaccurate but you are wrong.

We buy sometimes electricity from France on the EEX because it's cheap. Not because we lac electricity. We actually sell more than we buy and that never changed.

France has to sell cheap because they can't shut down their rotting fleet. They HAVE to produce and they HAVE to sell. Even when the price is low. This is just another reason why the company running this hilarious "business" is bankrupt.

Germany has long ago replaced what nuclear has produced.

The only thing we HAVE to buy is gas because we need it for heating. Something nuclear can't replace since we don't even have 5% electrical heating in this country.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#412

Post by ncmncm »

masklinn wrote: post #188
orangeoxidation wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, that seems a strange argument. Power usage varies during the day, but it doesn't really go below some "base load". Nuclear can run basically 24/7, but you cannot turn it on or off quick enough to to react to hourly changes in demand. So nuclear power is only good for base load. We need peaker plants to get the rest. Gas plants are the popular (cheap) choice for this. Carbon free alternatives are pumped hydro or…

> Nuclear can run basically 24/7, but you cannot turn it on or off quick enough to to react to hourly changes in demand. So nuclear power is only good for base load. That's not exactly true, you can build nuclear plants for load following which provides some amount of flexibility, at the cost of some efficiency (about 1% I think). IIRC French plants can operate between 30 and 100% rated power, and ramp rates can reac…

The less they produce, the higher is the cost of each kWh. But they are already not competitive at 100%.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#413

Post by ncmncm »

logifail wrote: post #202
SiempreViernes wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you cannot turn it on or off quick enough to to react to hourly changes in demand To be precise, it cannot stop consuming fuel quick enough that there's any important savings, and so nuclear power plants always want to run at full capacity because otherwise they are wasting fuel. But more than that, fuel consumption is simply not a very big part of the running cost of a nuclear power plant, most is fixed cost s…

> To be precise, it cannot stop consuming fuel quick enough that there's any important savings, and so nuclear power plants always want to run at full capacity because otherwise they are wasting fuel. But more than that, fuel consumption is simply not a very big part of the running cost of a nuclear power plant, most is fixed cost so that even if they could change the fuel consumption quickly there's just not enough…

Correct. We know nukes are not economically viable. They get less so with every passing day. Starting any new ones under the present circumstances would be extremely stupid, as no one would pay for power from it at a price it could offer.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#414

Post by ncmncm »

mogadsheu wrote: post #382

This analysis is incredibly thorough and detailed, but I don’t think it answers the question it poses itself. From my civil engineering and energy economics coursework, the one of the largest economic deterrents to nuclear power adoption was insurance: nobody would insure the construction of a plant, because a failure would bankrupt the insurance company. To give the article credit, they do allude to catastrophic inc…

Instead, the insurance is always subsidized 100% by taxpayers, and left off the balance sheet to make nukes seem cheaper than they are.

Likewise, decommissioning cost.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#415

Post by Krasnol »

trashtester wrote: post #273
Krasnol wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

> There is always wind somewhere for example. There is always wind somewhere. But grid capacity is not free, in fact it is quite expensive. Let's say, on a given day, the only place in Europe with reasonable winds would be west of Cadiz, transporting all that power through Spain, Portugal and France to cover the needs of all of Europe, would require immensive grid capacity expansion. And even with super-high-voltage,…

> There is always wind somewhere. But grid capacity is not free, in fact it is quite expensive.

No it's not...as I said several times over: IT'S ALREADY WORKING and has been for years...

> Also, if this load causes a brownout in Spain, due to improper maintaince, for instance,

This is not the US here. We have the most stable grid on the whole planet. Countries do maintain their networks here.

> In other words, while a better grid can mitigate _some_ of the variability of renewable supply, you still need massive expansion of storage capacity when you stop using natural gas, especially when you switch heating and transportation to use electricity too.

Sure more storage is nice. Especially if you want to profit locally but it's not something which would make true green energy possible NOW. Because: as I said several times over: IT'S ALREADY WORKING. We have been "pumping" massively energy into storage in the alps. Now with NordLink we do the same in the other direction too. It's all there.

> Seen from the outside, it surely looks like the German population has been seriously misled.

This must seem so if you're completely uninformed or even misinformed as you have shown here. In fact though as g8oz says: you should be thankful for us showing the world that true green future technology can be made to work and power a high tech and densely populated country. We'll keep on showing you and those countries which WASTE taxpayer money on nuclear just that.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#416

Post by ncmncm »

jandrese wrote: post #167
loeg wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I'm not sure what the current percentage is or how fast that change is happening.

Solar and Wind have really been exploding in the past few years. I fully expect this hand wringing over nuclear will end up being overtaken by events in the next 30 years or so. The real limitation at the moment is battery technology, there is a lot riding on finding cheap and efficient energy storage.

There is no need to "find" cheap energy storage. Many different methods are already known to store energy.

But building storage before you have enough renewables to charge it from would be stupid. So, the money goes to generating capacity, in the meantime. When storage is needed, it will be much cheaper than today, as cost is falling even faster than generating capacity.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#417

Post by AtlasBarfed »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #322
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the green movement was ultimately correct. They didn't know why and had nonsense arguments, but the fact is that "old nuclear" was developed with insufficient long-term safety. Fukushima showed that. What also seems true is that you can't trust a company to run them properly, no matter the regulations and audits. TEPCO showed that. From people I know who've dealt with the nuclear industry, there is a strong conte…

> the fact is that "old nuclear" was developed with insufficient long-term safety. Fukushima showed that. How many people died again? We can do a lot better, but I think we'd be worse off if we hadn't built any of those plants at all.

2000 people died in the evacuation.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#418

Post by mschuster91 »

logifail wrote: post #229
mschuster91 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More broadly: what's the actual use case for 'base load generation capacity' over the coming decades? The use case is that there should be enough capacity under governmental control to ensure that even in a case of crisis (such as, say, an oil price hike, a war or import blockades) the base load of the citizenry is still accounted for - big industries might be temporarily restricted, but no citizen should freeze in…

> there should be enough capacity under governmental control [..] Q: You really want to nationalize power generation?

Yes, why not? Full or partial public ownership of power plants, nation-scale grid and regional distribution companies is common here in Europe.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#419

Post by Krasnol »

trashtester wrote: post #262
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…

> Germany managed to replace almost half of their generation in 2 decades: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-renewable-powe ... Still, only 16% of Germany's total energy consumption comes from renewables: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... If Germany wants to replace all uses of fossil fuels for heating, transportation, industrial use, etc, with renewables, HUGE investments re…

> Still, only 16% of Germany's total energy consumption comes from renewables:

Sure but this has nothing to do with nuclear.

Germany heats with gas and oil. We don't even have 5% electrical heating here.

> In particular, giving up the ability to smooth out variations in production without the use of fossil fuels will be extremely costly,

It's not even close to how costly nuclear is and will continue to be for GENERATIONS.

Germany is connected to the most stable continental grid on this planet. Something other "developed" countries like the US can only dream of. Germany has been expanding their national grid and will continue to do so. Also we have build up renewable energy for the whole world. Paying for it. So don't worry. We'll manage. It's the rest of the world you have to worry about since they're stuck in the past. Especially France with their single source which is a rotting fleet run by a bankrupt state company eating up taxpayer money with no end in sight.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#420

Post by hypertele-Xii »

MisterMower wrote: post #396
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear waste can be reprocessed Arguing that we should adopt smr reactors because their proportionally larger amount of waste can be burned by a much larger/more expensive reactor that we'd _also_ have to fund/build? One that would likely cost >10b and take 20 years to construct? That doesn't seem like a good response to the waste issues with SMRs.

As they say, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. Just because it takes a while to bring it online doesn't mean it isn't a worthwhile investment.

Actually that's exactly what it means. Investments are measured in Rate of Return on Investment - the time to break even. Because the sooner you get your money back, the sooner you can re-invest it.
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