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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?

#491

Post by fulafel »

trashtester wrote: post #427
fulafel wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

Have a look in eg p.43-46, 75, 117, 143 in https://portal.research.lu.se/en/publications/passive-houses... for one case of building standards back in 2009. There isn't really a energy efficiency limit there being approached, just a matter of what had been picked as a cost efficient target, so there are no absolutes. I'm betting current designs are more efficient, as that has been a constant trend, but don't have newer references on hand.

In practice it seems going much lower than half as much as hot water uses may be wasteful investment as long as water is not heated with local renewables.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#492

Post by solardev »

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?

It will likely have to be a combination of many different types of storage, plus decentralization/distributed storage (electric cars, home & office battery backup), plus smart grids and appliances (time-shiftable smart electric water heaters/HVACs/car chargers), renewable biofuels for peaking, etc., riding on top of a base load of hydro and geothermal. (My vote's for nuclear, but it's wildly unpopular).

They are counting on lithium-ion batteries becoming dramatically cheaper at scale due to increasing demand for electric cars.

There's an entire agency/thinktank/R&D center working on this stuff, NREL: https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/storage-futures.html (or shorter summary: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81779.pdf). They do a lot of good work, but sadly no one really listens to them, either policymakers or the public :(

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#493

Post by 7952 »

trashtester wrote: post #256
7952 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't put all our eggs in one basket. But I don't think rapid growth of the battery industry is far fetched at all. It has already experienced massive growth and is ridiculously mass producable. And we will need batteries anyway for electric cars.

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…

I was arguing that we shouldn't put all our eggs in one basket and the scale of the challenge really confirms that. But yes, I do think that the battery industry has the best chance of scaling up and achieving order of magnitude improvements. But we don't actually need that for that industry to play a part in defeating climate change. And failure to meet some hypothetical objective does not invalidate that. Again, we don't need to put all our eggs in once basket and that certainly means not relying 100% on battery storage.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#494

Post by stingraycharles »

akvadrako wrote: post #288
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…

Nuclear has very low fuel costs, under 1%. So it really doesnt make sense to throttle them unless the price goes negative. Having an upfront guaranteed price is just a way to spread the construction cost over more time.

You're forgetting that the energy market requires an absolute balance between supply and demand; if you're supplying energy without anyone using it, you're going to have a very bad time.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#495

Post by ncmncm »

trashtester wrote: post #430
pfdietz wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 batter…

No, because if wind is predicted to die down for a week, you order liquified ammonia shipped in from solar farms in the tropics. You might even keep a tank of a week or two's worth, banked against the occasion.

You may object that this seems fragile, but it is in fact how we live now. People are importing fuel from dodgy countries all the damn time.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#496

Post by natmaka »

spoonjim wrote: post #490
natmaka wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WP's article about this is quite good, and leads to a terse but to the point "Ocean floor disposal" one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...

Most of this seems to indicate minimal environmental effects?

Minimal measured effects (few studies), the key here is the precautionary principle, applied here by the "London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Convention_on_the_Preve...

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#497

Post by ncmncm »

solardev wrote: post #492
krupan wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will it be then? Flywheels?

It will likely have to be a combination of many different types of storage, plus decentralization/distributed storage (electric cars, home & office battery backup), plus smart grids and appliances (time-shiftable smart electric water heaters/HVACs/car chargers), renewable biofuels for peaking, etc., riding on top of a base load of hydro and geothermal. (My vote's for nuclear, but it's wildly unpopular). They are coun…

Nobody is counting on lithium-ion batteries becoming dramatically ("even") cheaper. Batteries will remain one of the most expensive storage methods. They will be used mainly for load leveling, and in very small-scale systems.

Nukes are not just unpopular, they are also way, way, way more expensive than favored methods.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#498

Post by akvadrako »

stingraycharles wrote: post #494
akvadrako wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear has very low fuel costs, under 1%. So it really doesnt make sense to throttle them unless the price goes negative. Having an upfront guaranteed price is just a way to spread the construction cost over more time.

You're forgetting that the energy market requires an absolute balance between supply and demand; if you're supplying energy without anyone using it, you're going to have a very bad time.

That is covered by the case of negative prices.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#499

Post by solardev »

ncmncm wrote: post #497
solardev wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will likely have to be a combination of many different types of storage, plus decentralization/distributed storage (electric cars, home & office battery backup), plus smart grids and appliances (time-shiftable smart electric water heaters/HVACs/car chargers), renewable biofuels for peaking, etc., riding on top of a base load of hydro and geothermal. (My vote's for nuclear, but it's wildly unpopular). They are coun…

Nobody is counting on lithium-ion batteries becoming dramatically ("even") cheaper. Batteries will remain one of the most expensive storage methods. They will be used mainly for load leveling, and in very small-scale systems. Nukes are not just unpopular, they are also way, way, way more expensive than favored methods.

I'm just paraphrasing NREL there. If you have a better grasp of the industry, which solutions in particular do you see?

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#500

Post by pfdietz »

ncmncm wrote: post #495
trashtester wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 batter…

No, because if wind is predicted to die down for a week, you order liquified ammonia shipped in from solar farms in the tropics. You might even keep a tank of a week or two's worth, banked against the occasion. You may object that this seems fragile, but it is in fact how we live now. People are importing fuel from dodgy countries all the damn time.

I think much of the anti-renewable mindset is white high latitude racism. It's a difficult pill to swallow for some that these mid to high latitude areas are going to become the world's energy ghettos.
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