Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by LatteLazy » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

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…

They built them only for non economic reasons. Either because they wanted material for bombs, or as national vanity projects or because they convinced themselves it would be cheap.

If you want those reasons, go for it. Iran for instance is pursuing at least one of these goals when it works towards nuclear "power". Just don't expect affordable electricity at the end...

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

#62

Post by aidenn0 » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

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…

TFA (if you include parts 1 and 2) addresses all of these points, though it's only answer for SK is:

> The fact that South Korea is the only country to exhibit this trend has led some experts to speculate that the cost data (which comes directly from the utility and hasn’t been independently audited) has been manipulated and we shouldn’t draw conclusions from it.

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

#63

Post by whearyou » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 10:35 PM UTC

dickholesalad wrote: post #51

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 desig…

Fail safe means that in a catastrophic failure of the reactor’s regulatory systems it stops functioning rather than overloads. Entropy trends it to not working rather than working too much - for example a gas furnace will stop burning if the systems running the furnace stop working and are unable to provide more gas to the burn chamber.

Is that how Navy reactors work?

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

#64

Post by epistasis » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 10:39 PM UTC

towaway15463 wrote: post #58

epistasis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 infrastructur…

I don't have exact numbers for any of these questions. However, we know that regardless of the inputs in materials or land, the ultimate dollar cost, all in, is cheaper than nuclear. Take the levelized cost of solar for the MWh coinciding with daylight hours, and the levelized cost of storage during the other hours, and nuclear is blown out of the water:

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

Also, the scale doesn't matter, we have built far more than 6GW of solar, deployed more than 24GWh of storage, but it doesn't have to be at one location for these resources. Solar and batteries scale far better than nuclear, because they can be deployed on smaller installations without nearly as much hassle as nuclear. Or they can be sited at one location.

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

#65

Post by jjk166 » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

BonoboIO wrote: post #60

jjk166 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The cost of decommissioning is included

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

#66

Post by oliwary » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 10:41 PM UTC

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…

But the fact is that we did go years without building any, leading to nuclear power plants being more expensive. It is the path we chose (rightly or wrongly) and today solar and wind is cheaper in the western world. Even if continuing to invest in nuclear in the 1970s was the right choice, it may no longer be the case today that we have those. (see Path Dependence, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence)

In my opinion, rather than spending the many years and billions of dollars on regaining the edge in nuclear, we should expand the capacity of the cheap and clean energy sources we have access to today.

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

#67

Post by MichaelZuo » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

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...

In fact, the opposite, there’s been a noticeable productivity decline in the US in most of the construction industry.

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

#68

Post by aidenn0 » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 10:43 PM UTC

acidburnNSA wrote: post #7

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

One comment on your sustainability argument, now that I know you are the author:

Calculating "years of energy" based off of current usage seems silly to me given that global energy usage has been rising exponentially for centuries.

For example, if you assume a 3% per-year increase in global energy usage, 12 billion years becomes a bit less than 1000 years.

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

#69

Post by jjk166 » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 10:46 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #62

jjk166 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

TFA (if you include parts 1 and 2) addresses all of these points, though it's only answer for SK is: > The fact that South Korea is the only country to exhibit this trend has led some experts to speculate that the cost data (which comes directly from the utility and hasn’t been independently audited) has been manipulated and we shouldn’t draw conclusions from it.

If you read the paper, South Korea is clearly not the only country to exhibit this trend. Pretty much every non-western developed nation has nuclear power which is competitive with other nations. It makes perfect sense that South Korea, being an extremely advanced economy which also waited to go nuclear and thus did so with technologies that incorporate many lessons learned, along with a very well structured program for implementation, saw some of the best results.

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

#70

Post by jacobsenscott » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 10:46 PM UTC

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…

It is more viable than any other form of energy. You need to count the externalized costs of fossil fuel power plants. The cost of climate change has already exceeded the cost of building many nuclear plants, and that cost will continue to compound at an accelerating rate. One nuc plant costs less than twitter, and twitter is useless. So as a society we have more than enough resources, just not the will. Let it burn.