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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?

#421

Post by logifail »

dTal wrote: post #304
logifail wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know why you say you can't throttle nuclear up and down. All thermal plants have inertia, but nuclear is if anything easier to throttle than fossil fuels. In that case why don't we let the market build nuclear plants without any state guarantees or insurance and they can simply "throttle up" when they're required. No need to fix a strike price for decades before investors are interested. I'm sure it makes f…

That's quite the non-sequitor. An exploration of how broken "the market" is would be an entirely separate discussion. If you wanted to have that discussion, we could start by analyzing the massive subsidies enjoyed by fossil fuels, not to mention the complete lack of accounting for its toxic byproducts which are dumped into the atmosphere (while nuclear power is legally required to track and safely store every molecu…

> That's quite the non-sequitor

Is it? If nuclear is indeed able to throttle output up and down to match demand - or perhaps we should say, to match spot pricing(!) - why on Earth would we need to fix a minimum price for decades in advance in order to attract investment to build new ones?

"Given its commitment to building Hinkley Point C, the [UK] government had no choice but to make EDF an offer that was too good to resist. It offered to guarantee EDF a fixed price for each unit of energy produced at Hinkley for its first 35 years of operation. In 2012, the guaranteed price – known as the 'strike price' – was set at £92.50 per megawatt hour (MWh), which would then rise with inflation. (One MWh is roughly equivalent to the electricity used by around 330 homes in one hour.) This means that if the wholesale price of electricity across the country falls below £92.50, EDF will receive an extra payment from the consumer as a 'top-up' to fill the gap. This will be added to electricity bills around the country – even if you aren’t receiving electricity from Hinkley Point C, you will still be making a payment to EDF."[0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/21/hinkley-point-c...

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#422

Post by ncmncm »

MertsA wrote: post #376
ncmncm wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vitrified waste is, despite naive assumptions, porous

Er, but it's still vitrified and stable as a glassy material that's less prone to leaching fission products into any water right? As far as I understand it, the whole point of vitrifying it is to trap anything and everything aside from Xenon and Tritium into the vitrified end product.

Momentarily, yes. Longer term, no.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#423

Post by mayama »

danans wrote: post #112
DennisP wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In absolute terms, Japan and India have costs similar to South Korea's. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151... See figure 12 for a quick overview. And from the introduction: "In contrast to the rapid cost escalation that characterized nuclear construction in the United States, we find evidence of much milder cost escalation in many countries, including absolute cost declines in some countries…

> In absolute terms, Japan and India have costs similar to South Korea That countries like Japan and Korea have similar absolute costs as India which has a 4-5x lower PPP adjusted GDP per capita suggests that the price for labor for nuclear power plant construction is globally set (relatively few qualified engineers who can demand a high price), or India uses a lot more labor, or a combination of both.

India was under nuclear sanctions until recently and had to build and design everything from scratch. Every component is made in India for PHWR which adds a lot of cost, due to r&d and economies of scale. Also, India is still not a member of NSG, due to repeatedly being blocked by China.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#424

Post by Dylan16807 »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #417
Dylan16807 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Which mostly means the evacuation was far too aggressive, but even if we pretend they were unavoidable that's basically all the nuclear deaths for multiple decades, which is vastly less harm than fossil fuels.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#425

Post by trashtester »

Krasnol wrote: post #415
trashtester wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> This is not the US here.

I live in Europe. The grid in Europe is not designed to transport 100% of electricity needs from one edge of the continenent to the other. Most energy produced in Europe is still renewable or nuclear, and it is produced relatively close to where it is consumed, for the most part.

> We have been "pumping" massively energy into storage in the alps.

The storage capacity of electricity in the alps is tiny compared to total electricity consumption.

> Now with NordLink we do the same in the other direction too.

Nordlink has is getting seriously unpopular in Norway, even if it is only 1400MW out of a total installed capacity in Norway of 37GW.

What is working in Europe is fossil fuel plants and nuclear plants, oil for transportation and, in most plases, fossil fuels for heating. Wind and solar is still a tiny percentage (around 10%) of total energy consumption in Europe. Maybe in 20 years it will be 25%.

At best.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#426

Post by trashtester »

Krasnol wrote: post #419
trashtester wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 GENERAT…

Germany, for all it's renewables, let out significantly more greenhouse gases per capita than surrounding countries, such as France.

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

Modern nuclear plants are designed to last for a minimum of 60 years, and can be renewed to last another 40.

Modern wind turbines as well as most solar panels have an expected lifetime of around 25 years.

> Also we have build up renewable energy for the whole world. Paying for it.

Germany even pays Denmark to shut down their wind power on days when production is high, to make the statistics of German renewable production look prettier.

Germany is still using fossil fuels for most of their energy.

> Also we have build up renewable energy for the whole world.

Norway has been on 100% renewable electricity since forever, and unlike Germany, Norway actually uses electricity for heating. Fossil fuel heating was banned in Norway i 2020. So Norway uses electricity for everything, meaning the population is not willing to pay German prices for much longer. Most likely, the Norwegian government will have to strangle exports through Nordlink and similar cables in the coming winter, if prices remain high.

Norway did NOT need German help for that.

On the other hand, Norway also provides Germany with a large percentage of Germany's fossil fuel needs, both natural gas and oil (most of the imports not coming from Russia comes from Norway).

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#427

Post by trashtester »

fulafel wrote: post #410
trashtester wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The battery capacity needed to replace all cars with electric ones is about two orders of magnitude lower than the battery capacity needed to replace all fossil fuels with wind and solar, at least in temperate regions, where you need heating during the winter. According to this MIT study, the cost (LCOE) of doing this today, would be $3000/MWH: https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/08/20210829-mitei.html Even if the…

That link is summarizing a nonpublic paper from a research group making the case for hydrogen as grid storage for California, not a very strong cite for this. Generally keeping houses warm with low evergy is solved, well insulated passive houses need little heating energy even in places with long cold winters.

That link links to MIT's summary, which in turn links to this original paper:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03062...

(probably paywalled)

> Generally keeping houses warm with low evergy is solved, well insulated passive houses need little heating energy even in places with long cold winters.

What is your definition of "places with long cold winters" and how much energy do you think it takes (kwh) to heat a house in such climates during winter?

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#428

Post by adastra22 »

natmaka wrote: post #399
adastra22 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear waste is only a problem if you don’t allow breeder reactors. Otherwise it is a fuel resource and an asset, not a liability.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31689996

From your linked post:

> after decades of often huge projects in many nations there is not a single industrial fast breeder reactor working satisfactorily

The key word is "industrial." I assume you mean this as a synonym for "commercial." Let me emphasize the part of my original post, which you are replying to:

> Nuclear waste is only a problem *if you don’t allow breeder reactors*

There have been, as you link to, dozens of research fast breeder reactor in almost all the nuclear-signatory countries. Many of these "research" reactors operated continuously for decades providing consistent power, and were only shut down when the plant reached end-of-life. They were/are operated by government-run research organizations because only these organizations have the authority to run new / unapproved nuclear reactor designs. And they remain unapproved for commercial use due to political reasons ranging from general fear of nuclear power, lobbying from energy companies (for whom traditional designs are more profitable, externalities be damned), and fear over nuclear proliferation since the uranium-based reactors technically produce some weapons-grade material in their fuel cycle. The last point is a major one, but manageable if there was political will to do so.

We know how to build fast breeder reactors economically. We're just not allowed to.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#429

Post by masklinn »

ncmncm wrote: post #412
masklinn wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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%.

Ah yes, the “heads I win, tails you lose” gambit, thank you for your very useful contributions.

Do carefully avoid looking at french electricity prices and compare them to germany’s too.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#430

Post by trashtester »

pfdietz wrote: post #347
trashtester wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cost…

If you go to https://model.energy/ and solve for California, 2011 weather data, 2030 cost assumptions, hydrogen is contributing just 5.9 euro/MWh to the average cost of electricity (less than 10% of the total cost of 68.1 euro/MWh). This is for supplying "synthetic baseload", the best case for nuclear (for varying demand, renewables could only do better, since one could always just swap out the nuclear source with th…

> hydrogen is contributing just 5.9 euro/MWh

I'm afraid I don't trust those numbers, or rather, the calculations. For instance, if I select only Wind + Battery, and keep raising the storage cost for battery, the battery cost of the calculations go down, and are replaced by 100% wind plant costs. (Battery capacity is only enough for 1 hour of storage in such a scenario.)

On the other hand, if I drop the cost of battery to almost zero, the battery fraction of production goes to about 30-40%, and storage capacity is about 20 days.

In other words, it seems that the model is optimizing for an extreme overprovisioning of windmills when storage capacity is expensive, compared to when storage is cheap. (Basically, it "constructs" 10x or more windmills than what is needed from a pure energy production perspective.) I suspect that there are some issues with doing that is not taken into account by the model, such as available space at that level of density, risk calculations for completely dead winds, etc.

> Nuclear will do best in more northerly places that are away from coasts. Poland, for example.

Solar in dry, sunny places will likely be able to fully replace fossil fuels way before wind will be, since you do get some sunlight every day, while the wind may be gone for a week at a time. (And you have to plan for the worst case, in terms of available storage.)

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