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

constructionphysics.substack.com

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

#31

Post by andbberger »

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…

there's a reference I can't find discussing the financials of hinkley point C, a wildly expensive reactor and concluding that even with the extreme cost overruns, the levelized cost would still be superior to renewables if not for aggressive interest rates by financiers.

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

#32

Post by nradov »

dqpb wrote: post #26
dickholesalad wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ver…

> 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? We increase the pay. It's that simple.

Thus killing the economics of nuclear power relative to competing sources. The Navy uses nuclear power on a few dozen carriers and submarines because that's the only practical way to accomplish the mission. But after building a handful of nuclear powered surface combatants they abandoned that approach, and returned to conventional engines largely for cost reasons. Civilian power plants have to find a way to operate at a profit.

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

#33

Post by jmyeet »

This is a well-written series (Parts 1 and 2 are linked in this article). This last part makes comparisons to the reactors designed and used by the US Navy.

If you read through all of this the message I got was that size is the enemy. In one part it notes that a 100MWe core meltdown could likely be contained by the vessel but a 1000MWe reactor meltdown likely wouldn't. This concern is part of why there are ever stricter requirements on civilian reactors.

So you have opposing forces: bigger reactors produce more power and scale better. Smaller reactors are safer and easier and cheaper to build. Smaller reactors probably means more of them, each requiring separate planning permission, design approval and so on. It also probably means people living closer to the reactor, which many would and do oppose.

This series makes a good case for regulation being a significant cost component but it doesn't really make the case (nor does it try to) that said regulation is overly onerous or otherwise unnecessary. A lot of regulation came about because of our experience with nuclear reactors, accidents and near-accidents and the bigger failur emodes of the larger reactors power supplies would likely want to build.

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

#34

Post by tomComb »

Yes, cost is the issue.

Everyone assumes that anyone hesitant about Nuclear power is focussed on the environmental or safety concerns, but that is wrong. The costs (and cost overruns) of the construction and maintenance of Nuclear reactors have been enough reason on their own to be bearish on Nuclear.

I'm hopeful that new technologies, such as small nuclear reactions that can be built in a factory, will address this.

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

#35

Post by epistasis »

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."

The amount of subsidy required for nuclear is at least an order of magnitude larger than renewables.

Switching to renewable energy with massive amounts of storage is a world of cheaper energy than today. There has been zero learning curve for oil, and coal, and nuclear. If anything nuclear gets more expensive rather than less.

In contrast, renewables and storage are technologies that behave like semiconductors, or hard disks. There's a fairly predictable improvement in costs over time, resulting in massive changes in capabilities over the course of decades.

So not only is switching to renewables and storage cheaper than our current every sources, the faster we perform the change, the more money we save, the more of our resources we can devote to improving the quality of human lives, instead of devoting all that effort to make-work of welding pipes and pouring concrete.

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

#36

Post by manuel_w »

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."

Aren't governments subsidizing nuclear power plants a whole lot more than anything else?

I heard without government subsidies, nuclear power plants would simply not be buildable. No insurance company would insure them. The cost in case of a nuclear fallout is just too high.

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

#37

Post by godelski »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #7

I wrote a similar take here on the topic: https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html

To give context to who acidburn is, he's been a long time HN user, has a PhD in nuclear engineering, has worked in fission and fusion for over a decade, and has blogged about it for years. The take here is the take of an expert and not just a nuclear bro.

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

#38

Post by epistasis »

andbberger wrote: post #30
epistasis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Environmentalists have pretty much zero impact on the ability of nuclear plants to be started and demonstrate feasibility. In the US, Georgia and South Carolina started building with nary a peep. France started building again without any environmental objections. Yet these builds are all catastrophic failures, to the point that any other financial backer is scared away from even touching nuclear. The decision makers…

"environmentalists" in california have succesfully prevented at least 6GW from coming online, and were directly responsible for plans that shutter california's last operating reactor. They lobbied PG&E with a study they paid for that, under the insane assumption that california's energy use would _decrease_ in the future, concluded renewables would be cheaper. Meanwhile CAISO issued increasingly urgent press releases…

> They lobbied PG&E with a study they paid for that, under the insane assumption that california's energy use would _decrease_ in the future, concluded renewables would be cheaper

Usage in California has gone down, and renewables are cheaper, just look at the blog series in the original article. Calling these well-known and irrefutable facts "insane" does not bode well for the plethora of other questionable assertions in your comment. For the usage:

https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

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

#39

Post by franckl »

fweimer wrote: post #18
orangecat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Careful, the renationalization is due to a lot of factors, the main one is that the EU forced EDF to sell its nuclear eneegy at a loss to private energy providerd in order to "free the market". Look for ARENH if you would like to learn more (quick Google https://www.nusconsulting.com/energy-blog/arenh-reform-could...)

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

#40

Post by andbberger »

epistasis wrote: post #38
andbberger wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"environmentalists" in california have succesfully prevented at least 6GW from coming online, and were directly responsible for plans that shutter california's last operating reactor. They lobbied PG&E with a study they paid for that, under the insane assumption that california's energy use would _decrease_ in the future, concluded renewables would be cheaper. Meanwhile CAISO issued increasingly urgent press releases…

> They lobbied PG&E with a study they paid for that, under the insane assumption that california's energy use would _decrease_ in the future, concluded renewables would be cheaper Usage in California has gone down, and renewables are cheaper, just look at the blog series in the original article. Calling these well-known and irrefutable facts "insane" does not bode well for the plethora of other questionable assertion…

energy austerity is incompatible with climate change mitigations. eg thermal industrial processes currently powered by fossil fuels need to be moved to grid power.

their proposal was to spend $2B to lose 2GW of carbon free baseline power

everything in my statement is true and based on documents in the public record

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