Finally good news from the UK!
Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years
81–90 of 206 posts
Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years
#82I'm glad the article talks about the positive impact this will have on Sizewell C. The UK completely disregards the long term impact of skills and experience lost when debating whether we should do this kind of project.
Of course, EDF is trying to push the Sizewell C Final Investment Decision over the line, but equally a skilled workforce is being trained for these most complex of projects.
https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/...
It takes time to find and develop good people, so hopefully Sizewell C plus Rolls Royce SMR will gain momentum to allow their retention.
Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting, thank you for that. Do you have a source for that and any context (eg: "not power" time being used for "experiments" related to UK military nuclear uses, etc)?
No context sorry - there are enough experimental reactors in the UK for experimentation without interruption the commercial fleet. What would be interesting is expected vs unexpected downtime, some sort of reliability factor. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5c9a5d37ed915...
No drama, good link, thank you.
It appears approx ballpark with Europe reactors and as if they're designed with a 70% of max load operating target to allow for downtime inspections and statutory fettling, etc.
Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats a very good comparison-- to be fair though, 3.2GW nuclear are comparable to pretty much the whole Dogger Bank (including Sofia/South) at ~8GW (nameplate power), because offshore capacity factor is about ~40% in the UK. Total cost for the wind farm is probably around 20-ish billion $, but the lifetime is likely shorter than the reactor (possibly less than half!). It's surprising to me that the reactor at $35bill…
Do you mean it's competitive due to the longer lifetime? Is the operation cost of the reactor over such a long duration not significant? Also why are you comparing 8gw to 3.2gw? Is it due to peek output? if so won't this be solved by grid level storage?
> Do you mean it's competitive due to the longer lifetime?
> Is the operation cost of the reactor over such a long duration not significant?
Yes. Also because maintenance costs are probably somewhat similar-- offshore turbines are still mechanical systems in a very unpleasant environment, after all.
> Also why are you comparing 8gw to 3.2gw? Is it due to peek output? if so won't this be solved by grid level storage?
Yes-- the turbines give you 8GW, but only 40% of the time. Reactor gives you its ~3GW basically all the time. This difference would NOT be erased by storage-- you would need the storage on top of the windpower, but it is not trivial to tell how much storage you really need (electrical grid connectivity can also somewhat compensate, or large consumers that only turn on when energy is cheap...).
Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dogger Bank will when fully built-out at a cost of some £11bn. Lifetime cost will be much lower - near 0 staff - no anti-terrorism policing operation - no fuel. If it were onshore, cost would be significantly cheaper and would be able to scale onto the grid and generate revenue (nearly) one turbine at a time as they are installed which makes a massive difference for financing and servicing a debt. Cost wise certainly…
£11Bn is just Dogger Bank A, B, C (which is only 3.6GW total nameplate power, not 8GW)-- but this is in fact where my "~£20Bn total cost" estimate came from :P Maintenance cost for offshore wind is NOT negligible. This is possibly as high as the reactor maintenance cost already by itself. Then, for a fair comparison, you would also have to add costs for improving grid connectivity and/or local battery storage... I'm…
Ahh fair comparison!
GE's 170 full-time turbine servicing jobs for Dogger Bank phases A, B and C will be based out of the Port of Tyne. That is more staff than I would have guessed, one worker for every 1.6 turbines!
Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years
#86As far as I understood it takes so long because UK has some customization requirements which impacted a lot delivery time
That's one of the reasons. Others include, but are not limited to: 1. The EPR is a FOAK build of a new design All of the EPR instances were started before any other instances were completed. FOAK (First of a Kind) builds are notoriously more difficult, costly and risky than NOAK (Nth of a Kind) builds. Think how much more a prototype of car costs than one you get off the assembly line. The difference is not quite tha…
> Once you've built one, the EPR is apparently a great reactor
https://youtu.be/6fM2k1xEHGg?feature=shared&t=2137 with World Nuclear Association's China lead Francois Morin
Now, if you look at the price per kilowatt, for instance, Chinese yuan per kilowatt, the, the, the Ap1000 are more expensive than the EPR.
Sticking to the UK EPR. There is no point in building another FOAK for marginal benefit.
Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's one of the reasons. Others include, but are not limited to: 1. The EPR is a FOAK build of a new design All of the EPR instances were started before any other instances were completed. FOAK (First of a Kind) builds are notoriously more difficult, costly and risky than NOAK (Nth of a Kind) builds. Think how much more a prototype of car costs than one you get off the assembly line. The difference is not quite tha…
thanks for additional contribution! Agree, AP-1000 is extremely cool, China already has 4 reactors with it and more are in building phase
The localised version being the CAP1000 (with a scaled up CAP1400 in the works). The main competition is the Hualong One (a.ka. HPR1000), a more conventional plant based on an imported French design (itself an evolution of a Westinghouse PWR).
Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Enough wind + solar + storage to deliver > which gives Hinkley Point C a total output of over 3.2GW. at least 3 GW 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 50 weeks a year (allowing for some step down in output for maintainance, etc) for some 30+ (?) years.
The UK’s average nuclear load factor for 1970 to 2017 was 67.4 per cent 3 GW 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 34 weeks a year. or 3 GW 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.
IAEA's PRIS database is good for reactor information.
For instance https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.... shows Sizewell B has a load factor of 83.1% which is better than the AGR fleet.
Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
No context sorry - there are enough experimental reactors in the UK for experimentation without interruption the commercial fleet. What would be interesting is expected vs unexpected downtime, some sort of reliability factor. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5c9a5d37ed915...
No drama, good link, thank you. It appears approx ballpark with Europe reactors and as if they're designed with a 70% of max load operating target to allow for downtime inspections and statutory fettling, etc.
To be fair the European average (depending on which average that is) is skewed by France where the reactors load-follow.
Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats a very good comparison-- to be fair though, 3.2GW nuclear are comparable to pretty much the whole Dogger Bank (including Sofia/South) at ~8GW (nameplate power), because offshore capacity factor is about ~40% in the UK. Total cost for the wind farm is probably around 20-ish billion $, but the lifetime is likely shorter than the reactor (possibly less than half!). It's surprising to me that the reactor at $35bill…
Yeah, that's one point that gets lost in the brouhaha over nuclear cost overruns: Even the most catastrophic nuclear projects are competitive if not better than the best renewable projects. Yeah, I know this sounds like frothing-at-the-mouth nuclear fanboiism, but run the numbers! I did, and once I did I started sounding like a frothing-at-the-mouth nuclear fanboi. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Looking at the numbers for this, I don't see how it is better or even competitive at today's cost. Not taking into account the operating costs and decommissioning costs.
Off-shore wind is still scaling to become cheaper and cheaper. In 30 years it might cost much less. How can Nuclear compete?