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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?

#451

Post by goodpoint »

JetAlone wrote: post #400
goodpoint wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are being used a pawns to shift over the control of energy to the government ...by pushing for domestic solar panels? And improved isolation, heat pumps, passive houses? Sounds like the very opposite of centralizing energy production. So maybe we need a bit more evidence for your conspiracy theory.

I like the possibilities of solar energy. I like the possibilities of decentralized energy. I am a conspiracy theory type of guy. Here's what I really think about all the state and corporate SDG campaign sloganing I see on the streets every damn day: The reasonably accessible domestic solar panels that do come out will most likely be IoT devices. It will be energy as a service. They will gather information in a way y…

This was the most deranged and illogical conspiracy theory that I heard in a while.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#452

Post by Paradigma11 »

logifail wrote: post #234
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are countries where no combination of renewables + storage is possible. Places with little sunlight and little wind. What do they do?

Q: Do those countries already have long term nuclear waste storage facilities? There are countries that have been spectacularly failing to provide their own such facilities for decades.

Nuclear produces very little waste. One or two sites world wide should be enough for the current or 100 times the amount. Since we already need these sites and they cost practically the same regardless how much waste is buried, any additional nuclear waste is stored for free.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#453

Post by logifail »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #441
logifail wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see why it has to be local If we propose to allow countries to outsource their nuclear waste disposal, wouldn't it be simpler, cheaper and safer to just skip nuclear entirely and outsource the power generation? All those countries with apparently not enough access to sunlight or wind will save an awful lot of time and money messing about with nuclear and just buy in their renewable power. If it works, could…

I think whether it's cheaper is begging the question. And I couldn't tell you what's safer. But there's definite risk in outsourcing the majority of your power production, risk that doesn't exist if you're outsourcing long-term storage. If something goes wrong with the storage ecosystem, you can keep it on-site for a few extra months.

> there's definite risk in outsourcing the majority of your power production, risk that doesn't exist if you're outsourcing long-term storage. If something goes wrong with the storage ecosystem, you can keep it on-site for a few extra months

I think trusting another country to look after your radioactive waste for a few thousand years might involve a fair amount of risk. It's hard enough trying to look after it yourself.

At the simplest level, what if the storage facility has a design fault or some geological event happens and suddenly loads more work and/or money is required?

Or, in the spirit of bad movie plots:

What happens if the other country changes its mind, perhaps after a major change of government or referendum? "We instruct you to take all your nuclear waste back. Right Now!"

What happens if the other country doesn't maintain the storage properly / fails to keep it safe? Who's to blame for any leak / accident / incident / attack?

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#454

Post by stewbrew »

ryan93 wrote: post #223
stewbrew wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state better invests the money in cheaper technologies. Why should it waste the money on nuclear plants? Edit: To the downvoters: Seriously, why should the state waste money on a technology that doesn't work and never has? More than half of France's nuclear power plants are currently offline and in maintainence mode. Maybe also because they could not produce electricity at market prices.

They get 80% of their electricity from nuclear. And even export some.

They also import electricity, e.g. last Winter from Germany.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#455

Post by greyhair »

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

Imagine all the pathogens that are mutated for free.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#456

Post by otter-rock »

jacquesm wrote: post #440
otter-rock wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate you engaging in a two way discussion. As a general comment, you still jump to many exaggerated conclusions apparently without seeking to understand. For example, your conclusion about an elevated class of engineers that use magic, which you explicitly said is an assumption. Having worked with these processes and techniques myself for many years in other industries, I know from daily firsthand experience…

I think my main point is that engineers operate in a field that is always going to be subject to pressure, both commercial, political, prestige and so on and that even though the engineering profession in general can be relied upon to do their level best to produce high quality and reliable solutions the various pressures have the ability to push that which is commercially still viable into the realm of danger. The s…

You're still misusing the term out of spec. Everything else you said is uncontroversial.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#457

Post by greyhair »

cratermoon wrote: post #348
cultofmetatron wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

killed, or mutated?

I said the same just now, before I saw yours. I know it is going to get down voted, because I didn't append the '\s' tag, and it was a little to obscure. Cheers!

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#458

Post by greyhair »

spoonjim wrote: post #227
photochemsyn wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Construction costs are only part of the picture and utility operators are well aware that they need to look at lifecycle costs. This includes everything from costs of fuel rods (look at the historically volatile uranium market), availability of large volumes of cooling water (see more frequent droughts), maintenance costs (maintenance being a major factor in the retirement of California's nuclear power plants), secur…

Can’t you just dump radioactive uranium into the bottom of the ocean? Can’t imagine it would do much damage with all of the water around it.

The historic problem of just 'drop it in the ocean' is that (so far) it almost always comes back to bite you. Hence the thousands of rusting barrels of DDT off the coast of California.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2021-04-26/ddt-was...

Did I say thousands? Wow.

Don't ever trust anyone that says "We'll just safely dispose of that in the deep ocean.".

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#459

Post by epistasis »

ncmncm wrote: post #408
epistasis wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's not enough time to do so with batteries alone. I suggest you run the numbers on this, because I think you have them exactly reversed. We are increasing battery production capacity 10x every five years. This could be accelerated if there was government investment as is done for every single nuclear reactor. At current rates we expect to produce 20-30TWh/year of lithium ion batteries, not including other chem…

Anyway only the tiniest fraction of utility storage will ever be batteries.

Your comment conveys cynicism, but I'm not sure what you're saying.

So you're proposing 100s to 1000s of TWh of utility storage in what form, exactly?

Or are you saying that there will be almost not utility storage?

Are you counting EV batteries as part of utility storage? How about if the batteries take part in vehicle to grid transmission?

People have been skeptical of batteries for decades, claiming that they are never going to be ready for EVs. Then they were ready. You can still find absolutely ridiculous videos on YouTube only a few years old of people going through all sorts of numerical arguments about volume and size to say that EVs will never work on lithium ion batteries. Millions of Tesla owners are proving them wrong on their bad "physics" every single day.

I have a feeling that utility battery storage skepticism is even less rational. Batteries are being deployed extremely effective on the grid right now, disproving the faith.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#460

Post by otter-rock »

ncmncm wrote: post #404
otter-rock wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So nuclear engineers just aren't allowed to do their jobs, and the safety requirements were never good enough to begin with.

They certainly were not good enough at Fukushima, in a half-dozen particulars. The next pile of reactors down the coast did not melt down, solely on the strength of a single engineer who succeeded, with enormous difficulty, in upholding standards management objected to, but that he knew were essential. Without him, there would now be two major uninhabitable areas there. He must have known Fukushima would melt down, a…

> They certainly were not good enough at Fukushima

Then why would remaking the part be any better than redesigning the system?

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