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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

#41

Post by virissimo »

tomComb wrote: post #34

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.

Our nations were far less wealthy when the existing stock of nuclear power plants were built, the technology available for building them have improved since then, and the raw resources needed as their inputs aren't a constraint, so why have costs risen so much relative to what we are willing to spend on it?

Environmental and safety regulations are supposed to be explanations for this rise in cost, not rival explanations to "cost is the issue" (since they take that as given).

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

#42

Post by epistasis »

stormbrew wrote: post #27
dale_glass wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The US government makes a steady stream of trillions of dollars appear in order to, among other things, build single use missiles for millions of dollars each and jets that have never seen real combat for billions each. The idea that any durable public work is somehow "too expensive" in the face of that is comically absurd.

Putting aside the wisdom of such massive defense spending, the question is what is the alternate good that could perform the job?

If we spend $12B on a 1GW reactor, we have far far better alternatives. A 1GW nuclear reactor has a 90% capacity factor of undispatchable, hard to throttle electricity. At today's prices, thay $12B could instead buy 6GW of solar at 20% capacity factor, and 24GWh of batteries. This combined solar plus storage is more flexible, more responsive, and delivers 30% more overall energy. And this is with a stupid design of splitting the cash to half storage half solar. A smarter design more tailored to the actual demand curve would remove some flexibility but become far cheaper.

There's zero reason to build nuclear unless you want to line Bechtel's pockets.

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

#43

Post by IncRnd »

orangecat wrote: post #10
kinghajj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Right. It's fascinating how this is the one area where so-called environmentalists suddenly become very concerned about fiscal responsibility.

Environmentalists have not been, are not now, and will likely never be the decision makers for building nuclear power plants.

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

#45

Post by jjk166 »

jmyeet wrote: post #33

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 stric…

> 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.

The major selling point for smaller reactors is that you can make a mass produced design that doesn't need separate planning, permission, and design approval every time. You can still have large power plants to get the benefits of scale, you just put more of these small units together at the same site. In fact you get some bonuses as you can shut down some reactors for maintenance while still producing power. Indeed most nuclear power plants already have multiple cores for exactly this reason, but typically its 2-6 rather than 20-60 and thus they are still pretty big.

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

#46

Post by epistasis »

andbberger wrote: post #40
epistasis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I have followed the documents carefully, doing a deep dive on Diablo Canyon around 2020, but I do not recognize your framing of the situation as anywhere close to accurate. I'm also not sure what you mean when you are referring to energy austerity in your comment, of what $2B you are talking about.

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

#47

Post by implements »

godelski wrote: post #37
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.

(“Acid Burn” was also Angelina Jolie’s handle in Hackers - if it was ringing anyone else’s bell).

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

#48

Post by landemva »

dickholesalad wrote: post #17
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.

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…

Personnel are a key ingredient for success. In civilian world for construction the regulatory environment is wildly different. Calls for Navy to run civilian nukes would likely not work with the civilian regulator.

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

#49

Post by SECProto »

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.

> I am stunned by the "Navy has operated 5,000 years of reactors".

When they've been building them for 70 years and have over 200 nuclear powered vessels, it shouldn't be that surprising. For comparison, Ontario Power Generation has operated 787 years of nuclear reactors (343 combined at Pickering, 120 at Darlington, 324 at Bruce), each of which is at least 3.5 times larger than the biggest navy nuclear reactor. France has dramatically more than that.

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

#50

Post by KptMarchewa »

virissimo wrote: post #41
tomComb wrote: post #34

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.

Our nations were far less wealthy when the existing stock of nuclear power plants were built, the technology available for building them have improved since then, and the raw resources needed as their inputs aren't a constraint, so why have costs risen so much relative to what we are willing to spend on it? Environmental and safety regulations are supposed to be explanations for this rise in cost, not rival explanati…

>the technology available for building them have improved since then

Broadly, construction is the singular industry where productivity hasn't improved with modern technology.

https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/sketch-of-a-theor...

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