Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

constructionphysics.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 298 posts

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

#251

Post by fweimer »

franckl wrote: post #39
fweimer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... )

I didn't mean to imply that nationalization happened because nuclear power isn't commercially viable. The French situation was special even before full nationalization.

I really doubt ARENH is the problem because as far as I understand it, it only applies to EDF's existing nuclear power plants. At 42 EUR/MWh wholesale, those plants should still make a tidy profit. Apparently, too few of them were actually running last year, and the French government imposed further price restrictions that also affected resale of energy that EDF purchased elsewhere at market prices (not coming from EDF's own nuclear fleet or its other power plants).

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

#252

Post by ncmncm »

fallingknife wrote: post #204
ncmncm wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be stupid to spend money building out storage before there is renewable generating capacity to charge it from. So, they spend on that, first. Most of the storage, in the end, will not be batteries. Most existing storage is pumped hydro, because the dams were already there. There are lots of alternatives: underground or underwater compressed air, liquified air, underground hydrogen, tanked ammonia, buoyancy,…

It's not relevant what source is used to charge the batteries. Right now there is a massive price difference between peak and off peak power (partly due to renewables daily cycle), so anyone able to build a battery can charge at the off-peak rate and sell at the peak rate every day. This means that batteries have a revenue source right now, and therefore, the only reason they don't exist is because the cost exceeds t…

That would not displace any CO2 emission.

Storage as a separate business is not viable beyond a few years, so investment is limited. Original producers of energy will have their own storage, and prices will level out. Excess generation capacity (e.g. noon) after recharging storage will be devoted to synthesizing liquid fuels and desalination, which serve unlimited demand.

By the time there is enough renewable generating capacity to charge storage, storage will be very, very cheap. Right now, it costs more, so money produces much better results building generation capacity and factories for storage. As the factories are completed, production ramps up, and costs fall.

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

#253

Post by epistasis »

coryrc wrote: post #130
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…

> At today's prices, thay $12B could instead buy 6GW of solar at 20% capacity factor, and 24GWh of batteries. I don't think that can actually be done. The world's largest battery installation is less than 1 GWh AFAICT. OTOH we're not doing great at nuclear either.

What do you mean by "can't be done"? If we can build a 500MWh battery we can build a 1GWh battery by doing the 500MWh battery two times.

Similarly if we can build a 1GWh battery we can build also a 24 GWh battery.

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

#254

Post by MaKn »

Nimitz14 wrote: post #233
dragonwriter wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> solar camp likes to tout how it took a decade of subsides before economies of scale kicked in - no reason to believe nuclear wouldn’t come down with same kind of subsides - on a longer scale due to longer iteration cycle. There is: nuclear has been subsidized on a much longer scale than solar already.

Please share more information. What subsidies existed for nuclear?

Well, since nuclear plants cannot be insured these costs as well as the waste cost are mostly carried by the state. There are various calculations on these costs online. Not sure about other costs, but I'm sure there are more (e.g. security for transportation)

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

#255

Post by [deleted] »

ncmncm wrote: post #168
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, to snark on the other half of that post: Instead of building power plants that are deadly when they fail, we'll just build power plants which are deadly all the time.

Hint: no one is building coal plants. Coal is being phased out. Your competition is not coal.

[deleted]

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

#256

Post by wil421 »

pfdietz wrote: post #244
wil421 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My state is building 2 new reactors and they will be the first to be built in the US in 30 years. Despite Westinghouse going bankrupt and a utility company in South Carolina deciding they don’t want to be a part of it, construction continues. Unit 3 will hopefully be fueled this year and start making power next year. Unit 4 will be a few years. You can’t produce power at night with solar and the wind is not always bl…

Vogtle 3/4 are coming in very expensive. Much more CO2 emission would have been avoided by spending that money to build PV and wind. Vogtle 3/4 also were greenlighted back in an environment when it wasn't clear PV would get so cheap so quickly. When it became clear how cheap renewables would become, it was obvious that initial decision was bad. The other nuclear build in the US, V. C. Summer, reached the point where…

There is no path to clean energy without nuclear. If you don’t have nuclear you are going to burn coal and gas. Germany invested heavily on renewables and is having similar issues. The costs overruns are being eaten by the huge Co-Op Georgia Power, they pay for overruns but the other stakeholders will lose their share.

If you stop building reactors for 30 years it’s going to be an extremely massive undertaking only a government can handle. It will be up to the governments to subsides the costs.

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

#257

Post by [deleted] »

ncmncm wrote: post #168
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, to snark on the other half of that post: Instead of building power plants that are deadly when they fail, we'll just build power plants which are deadly all the time.

Hint: no one is building coal plants. Coal is being phased out. Your competition is not coal.

[deleted]

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

#258

Post by pfdietz »

wil421 wrote: post #256
pfdietz wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vogtle 3/4 are coming in very expensive. Much more CO2 emission would have been avoided by spending that money to build PV and wind. Vogtle 3/4 also were greenlighted back in an environment when it wasn't clear PV would get so cheap so quickly. When it became clear how cheap renewables would become, it was obvious that initial decision was bad. The other nuclear build in the US, V. C. Summer, reached the point where…

There is no path to clean energy without nuclear. If you don’t have nuclear you are going to burn coal and gas. Germany invested heavily on renewables and is having similar issues. The costs overruns are being eaten by the huge Co-Op Georgia Power, they pay for overruns but the other stakeholders will lose their share. If you stop building reactors for 30 years it’s going to be an extremely massive undertaking only a…

> There is no path to clean energy without nuclear.

Stop this lying, please. There's clear paths to clean energy without nuclear.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910

> With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels.

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

#259

Post by towaway15463 »

labcomputer wrote: post #107
towaway15463 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even so, when people say that we’ll just spread out this energy generation infrastructure everywhere I still want to know the actual numbers. Are there enough rooftops and vacant lots in LA to provide all the necessary power? What about lower density areas? What about northern climates with lots of snow and rain? There is still maintenance involved, installation costs are likely increased by doing this piecemeal rath…

So, like, why don't you try to calculate this for yourself? As a pedagogical exercise, I think you'll get much more out of it if you compute the numbers for yourself and play through a bunch of "what if" scenarios. Just to get you started with some ballpark numbers: The solar irradiance at ground level on a sunny day is greater than 1kW/m^2 for about 6 hours per day (google for "AM1.5"). Typical commercial panels hav…

I didn’t say that I think it’s impossible. I’m asking for the reasoning behind the belief that it would be the optimal solution. In this context a lot of details are being talked about to argue for or against the viability of nuclear but I don’t see the same critical process being applied to the assertions that we can run everything on solar and batteries. I’ve put forward many of the same questions that have been answered for nuclear, it is up to the solar proponents to answer them.

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

#260

Post by lifeisstillgood »

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…

I get the "nuclear maintenance school is mentally challenging" ... but I am fascinated by spirtually challenging - could you elaborate?
Post reply on HN