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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

#51

Post by dickholesalad »

whearyou wrote: post #44

Until fail-safe fission technology is ready (unlike fail deadly technology which all current and planned systems currently are) nuclear power seems to me a sophisticated example of cutting off your nose to spite your face

If by fail safe you mean that powering off the reactor makes it cool down then the Navy uses fail safe reactors. Water is used as the moderator to absorb radiation. When water is heated its density decreases (edit), thereby making it a less good moderator of radiation. This effect lowers reactor reactivity and heat output. This effect is combined with various devices to produce what is called an inherently safe design. Losing power will not make the reactor have a fuel element failure or melt down.

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

#52

Post by towaway15463 »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #50
virissimo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Concrete infrastructure projects in particular seem to have gotten more expensive and time consuming.

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

#53

Post by andbberger »

epistasis wrote: post #46
andbberger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

$2B is the cost to decommission diablo canyon. energy austerity is planning to use less energy when we know for a fact we're going to need more.

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

#54

Post by pstuart »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #7

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

Thoughts on LFTR? The presentation that made the rounds many years ago made it seem like it was a solved problem (1965!). That made me rethink the value of nuclear and I'm curious if it's legit.

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

#55

Post by jjk166 »

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.

Nuclear is not fundamentally expensive[0], and most nuclear power plants currently in operation were cheap when they were built. The high costs of building new powerplants is a result of going decades without building any, leading to a loss of experience. Even still, nuclear remains competitive with other traditional power generation technologies like coal. Only with recent advancements in fracking did natural gas supplant coal as the go to fuel, and Wind and solar have become extremely inexpensive, but only in the past 10 years, in large part due to a concerted effort to scale up those industries. In other parts of the world where nuclear power did not have a decades long hiatus it remains extremely competitive with even these renewables, for example in South Korea where LCOE for nuclear is half that of solar.

Of course you may have only became bearish on nuclear when the costs got high, but there are a large number of people who were bearish before then, which is what made costs high.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #16
aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by oceanplexian »

megaman821 wrote: post #11
orangecat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but France exists.

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

I mean, if the choice is expensive electricity and rolling blackouts because the entire country relied on unreliable sources of energy, I'd take the former. The best energy source is one that's robust and dependable, not one that's theoretically cheaper in some ideal circumstances.

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

#58

Post by towaway15463 »

epistasis wrote: post #42
stormbrew wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Some questions jump out there:

What does that amount of solar and storage look like in terms of material used for its construction as well as area occupied once it’s deployed?

What current examples do we have of projects at this scale?

What is the lifespan of the solar arrays and batteries?

What are the operating costs? How many personnel are required for maintenance and day to day operation?

What other infrastructure is necessary to support such a deployment? Transmission lines, buildings, monitoring facilities, security, roads, office space, etc.

What is the construction timeline for such a project?

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

#59

Post by acidburnNSA »

implements wrote: post #47
godelski wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Yeah I made my HN username on a whim years ago after watching that movie and didn't realize it was a dumb choice. I wanted it to be 'hackery' and anon. Oops.

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

#60

Post by BonoboIO »

jjk166 wrote: post #55
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.

Nuclear is not fundamentally expensive[0], and most nuclear power plants currently in operation were cheap when they were built. The high costs of building new powerplants is a result of going decades without building any, leading to a loss of experience. Even still, nuclear remains competitive with other traditional power generation technologies like coal. Only with recent advancements in fracking did natural gas su…

Building it maybe can get cheaper ... destruction and disposal will be even more expensive.

Look at Germany. They are the first to really destruct the first power plant and it will take 20 to 25 years. Everything has to be checked.

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