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Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy

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Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy

#11

Post by megaman821 »

orangecat wrote: post #9
ok_dad wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only solves part of the problem, the civilian reactors are still too expensive to build. Nuclear is great, I went through the Naval Nuclear Power Program several decades ago myself, but it's not financially viable . Let me say that again to those engineers who weren't listening: Nuclear (fission) power is not, and will never be, financially viable for civilian powerplants. I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered…

Ok, but France exists.

I doubt Americans would be happy paying what France pays for electricity (both directly and government aid).

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy

#12

Post by [deleted] »

ok_dad wrote: post #5
Spivak wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why don’t we have the US fricking navy actually run and manage the reactors? It’s not as if they only exist at sea. And if the reactors are actually wholly military operated we might get the added benefit of being able to use the Navy’s 20ish year lead on civilian nuclear. Amazing what you can learn when you have a navy nuclear engineer a few beers in and trying to impress you.

That only solves part of the problem, the civilian reactors are still too expensive to build. Nuclear is great, I went through the Naval Nuclear Power Program several decades ago myself, but it's not financially viable . Let me say that again to those engineers who weren't listening: Nuclear (fission) power is not, and will never be, financially viable for civilian powerplants. I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered…

[deleted]

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy

#13

Post by jjoonathan »

orangecat wrote: post #9
ok_dad wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only solves part of the problem, the civilian reactors are still too expensive to build. Nuclear is great, I went through the Naval Nuclear Power Program several decades ago myself, but it's not financially viable . Let me say that again to those engineers who weren't listening: Nuclear (fission) power is not, and will never be, financially viable for civilian powerplants. I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered…

Ok, but France exists.

Also 20% of the US's electric grid for the last 30 years.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy

#14

Post by aaaaaaaaaaab »

ok_dad wrote: post #5
Spivak wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why don’t we have the US fricking navy actually run and manage the reactors? It’s not as if they only exist at sea. And if the reactors are actually wholly military operated we might get the added benefit of being able to use the Navy’s 20ish year lead on civilian nuclear. Amazing what you can learn when you have a navy nuclear engineer a few beers in and trying to impress you.

That only solves part of the problem, the civilian reactors are still too expensive to build. Nuclear is great, I went through the Naval Nuclear Power Program several decades ago myself, but it's not financially viable . Let me say that again to those engineers who weren't listening: Nuclear (fission) power is not, and will never be, financially viable for civilian powerplants. I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered…

>I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered in hot sauce if someday nuclear fission is financially viable enough to produce power for civilians at a decent scale.

So all the world’s nuclear power plants operate at a loss? That’s a pretty strong proposition…

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy

#15

Post by remarkEon »

ok_dad wrote: post #5
Spivak wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why don’t we have the US fricking navy actually run and manage the reactors? It’s not as if they only exist at sea. And if the reactors are actually wholly military operated we might get the added benefit of being able to use the Navy’s 20ish year lead on civilian nuclear. Amazing what you can learn when you have a navy nuclear engineer a few beers in and trying to impress you.

That only solves part of the problem, the civilian reactors are still too expensive to build. Nuclear is great, I went through the Naval Nuclear Power Program several decades ago myself, but it's not financially viable . Let me say that again to those engineers who weren't listening: Nuclear (fission) power is not, and will never be, financially viable for civilian powerplants. I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered…

Can we better define what “financially viable” means?

I don’t know that I need a nuclear power plant to “turn a profit”. That would be great, I suppose, but my view on electricity is a little more nuanced than a dogmatic adherence to market forces.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy

#16

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #14
ok_dad wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only solves part of the problem, the civilian reactors are still too expensive to build. Nuclear is great, I went through the Naval Nuclear Power Program several decades ago myself, but it's not financially viable . Let me say that again to those engineers who weren't listening: Nuclear (fission) power is not, and will never be, financially viable for civilian powerplants. I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered…

>I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered in hot sauce if someday nuclear fission is financially viable enough to produce power for civilians at a decent scale. So all the world’s nuclear power plants operate at a loss? That’s a pretty strong proposition…

The problem is that people want to talk about fully-loaded life-cycle costs; and depending on who is doing the talking you get wildly different numbers.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy

#17

Post by dickholesalad »

Spivak wrote: post #3
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #2

I am stunned by the "Navy has operated 5,000 years of reactors". But, I come back to my basic thesis on nuclear power. It's the A+ game or bust Yes the US fricking Navy can do it well, but the minute the Soviet's ran out of cash they just let it all rust. If we lean on nuclear in the carbon energy transition then when we run out of money, can we afford to let them rust.

So why don’t we have the US fricking navy actually run and manage the reactors? It’s not as if they only exist at sea. And if the reactors are actually wholly military operated we might get the added benefit of being able to use the Navy’s 20ish year lead on civilian nuclear. Amazing what you can learn when you have a navy nuclear engineer a few beers in and trying to impress you.

I’m an ex navy nuke (I did the whole thing, school through startups, sea trials, refuel, operations, maintenance, was nuke mechanic). I think some of the main impediments to adoption of navy-style training, operations, and maintenance in the civilian world are that the work is challenging and high stress. The school is very mentally and spiritually challenging to most people. When you get to the fleet the work is very challenging both mentally and physically. You are taking weekly technical short answer tests, operating the thing in 100F degrees doing legit physical work, responding to emergency stuff at 2 am before a 6 am shift. It’s nuts. The navy selects smart people through asvab test requirements. Most students are still challenged by the coursework. When you stay in by reenlisting it gets a little easier because you have less physical work to do but you still have to maintain excellence and train the junior people to the required competency level. Combine this with the fact that the pay is shitty compared to other jobs in industry available and the incentives just aren’t there. Where do we find these highly motivated, fit, young, intelligent people to work like dogs? They don’t exist in sufficient quantity to do this. The navy doesn’t have superior technology; most of the ships are old and maintained. The secret sauce is the personnel and their desperation. You aren’t going to contract people in the civillian world to do this stuff. I really don’t think it’s feasible.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy

#18

Post by fweimer »

orangecat wrote: post #9
ok_dad wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only solves part of the problem, the civilian reactors are still too expensive to build. Nuclear is great, I went through the Naval Nuclear Power Program several decades ago myself, but it's not financially viable . Let me say that again to those engineers who weren't listening: Nuclear (fission) power is not, and will never be, financially viable for civilian powerplants. I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered…

Ok, but France exists.

EDF has recently been re-nationalized, and has always been under strong government influence. It's not a good example of a civilian/free market nuclear power plant operator.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy

#19

Post by insane_dreamer »

ok_dad wrote: post #5
Spivak wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why don’t we have the US fricking navy actually run and manage the reactors? It’s not as if they only exist at sea. And if the reactors are actually wholly military operated we might get the added benefit of being able to use the Navy’s 20ish year lead on civilian nuclear. Amazing what you can learn when you have a navy nuclear engineer a few beers in and trying to impress you.

That only solves part of the problem, the civilian reactors are still too expensive to build. Nuclear is great, I went through the Naval Nuclear Power Program several decades ago myself, but it's not financially viable . Let me say that again to those engineers who weren't listening: Nuclear (fission) power is not, and will never be, financially viable for civilian powerplants. I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered…

Counterpoint: France gets over 70% of its total energy from nuclear power (and exports some to other EU countries).

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy

#20

Post by dale_glass »

kinghajj wrote: post #8
ok_dad wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only solves part of the problem, the civilian reactors are still too expensive to build. Nuclear is great, I went through the Naval Nuclear Power Program several decades ago myself, but it's not financially viable . Let me say that again to those engineers who weren't listening: Nuclear (fission) power is not, and will never be, financially viable for civilian powerplants. I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered…

Even assuming that's the case, isn't the counterargument "Fine, then governments need to subsidize investment into nuclear power plants, just as we do with other green technologies."

I think not really. It depends on why you think subsidizing is a good thing.

My personal take is that we should subsidize tech to take it from an early stage to a production stage as soon as possible. We need better power sources yesterday, not next century. So we can't sit around waiting for some sort of Elon Musk to get really passionate and dump heaps of cash into it.

But the assumption there is that once the tech is developed and mature, it'll be good enough to stand on its own. Because if it'll never not be expensive, we're just artifically choosing a power source that's permanently more expensive than the alternatives, and that's an unstable situation. Eventually people will get tired of dumping money into it, or there will be some other urgent matter to throw money at, and then we have a bunch of expensive tech that's falling out of use, and underdeveloped alternatives.

Subsidizing nuclear forever also doesn't make any sense economically. Money is fungible. There's no real difference between say, paying $200/month to your power company, or paying $100/month to your power company, and $100 in taxes that ends up going to the power company. The amount you have to spend at the end of the month is the same either way. Now paying $200/month for 5 years so that then your power bill drops to $50/month afterwards, that's a different proposition.

So, I support subsidizing solar, wind and storage because I believe that in their perfected, mass produced versions they're cheap and competitive. They just need a push now. I don't support subsidizing nuclear because I believe it'll always be expensive because it's a fundamentally complex technology that's not amenable to mass production and will always lose to brute force mass applications of simpler technologies.

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