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

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

#201

Post by kragen »

adrianN wrote: post #197
kragen wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could happen! But, right now, at most latitudes, building a PV farm is cheaper than building a coal power plant with the same average output, and a coal power plant is basically a conventional nuclear power plant without the reactor. I think that, to be cost-competitive with PV as a source of energy, nuclear reactors need either much cheaper heat engines than a Parsons turbine, or some way of converting nuclear po…

To be fair, to make the average output of a PV plant comparable to the average output of a nuclear plant you need to add some storage, which drives up the cost a bit. Probably not enough to account for the extra cost of nuclear though.

You do, although it's still unclear how much storage you'll need to add. On the other hand, while you can't turn PV plants on at night, you can't turn conventional nuclear plants off, and so to go all nuclear you need some form of load following: either gas peakers, or PV that carries a higher load during the day, or storage, or giant resistor banks.

Evidently naval reactors are a lot better at this, though.

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

#202

Post by adrianN »

VintageCool wrote: post #190
bombcar wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile California has increased population and kept their energy production relatively stable. We may have reached a peak.

With the increase in EVs, AC, and heat pumps, I'd expect electricity demand to increase in the next decade.

Electricity demand will surely increase. Primary power demand on the other hand will most likely go down. An EV is about 80% efficient from solar panel to movement, an ICE is only about 30% efficient from gas to movement (and you have to invest a whole bunch of energy to get gas into tank starting from oil underground). Similarly, heating with a heat pump is about three times more energy efficient than heating with oil or gas.

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

#203

Post by cycomanic »

grej wrote: post #181

Just remember that a huge part of the current excess cost is in part: (a) because nuclear power is the only energy technology for which the full lifecycle costs have to be fully accounted for upfront. No one is accounting for the disposal costs of solar panels in their initial capital expenditure, for example. (b) The build costs in terms of energy of wind and solar are comparably high. They are raw material and ener…

That would be nice arguments if they would actually be true.

a) typically nuclear plants don't have to include all life cycle cost into their calculations. Insurance is essentially not included (no insurance is willing to cover nuclear disaster), storage costs are not included to the full extend (partly because we actually don't know the cost, storage for these amounts of time is unprecedented)

b) is also falso both wind and solar have significantly lower ROI on energy than nuclear. A wind turbine has a break even (when you have produced more energy than it took to build it) after 18-24 month or so

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222703134_Meta-Anal....

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

#204

Post by fallingknife »

ncmncm wrote: post #133
xupybd wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was rarely needed and only needed for a few hours we wouldn't need all the fossil fuel based generation to fill the gaps. I'm not aware of any significant battery based storage system deployed at scale that solves this problem. There are some large battery banks but none even close to the scale required. It's a hard problem as it would require a huge increase in global manufacturing. I'd like to be wrong here.…

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 that revenue source.

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

#205

Post by adrianN »

kragen wrote: post #201
adrianN wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, to make the average output of a PV plant comparable to the average output of a nuclear plant you need to add some storage, which drives up the cost a bit. Probably not enough to account for the extra cost of nuclear though.

You do, although it's still unclear how much storage you'll need to add. On the other hand, while you can't turn PV plants on at night, you can't turn conventional nuclear plants off , and so to go all nuclear you need some form of load following: either gas peakers, or PV that carries a higher load during the day, or storage, or giant resistor banks. Evidently naval reactors are a lot better at this, though.

As far as I know it's not terribly difficult to model how much storage you'll need. It has a couple of variables, like how well connected your grid is, or how well you can shape demand, but then it's just looking at past weather data and deciding how low you want the probability for blackouts to be. Here for example is a toy implementation: https://model.energy/

From what I've heard the amount of storage is not very large if you assume sufficiently large grids and the total system cost is expected to be lower than what we currently pay for electricity.

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

#206

Post by specialist »

dylan604 wrote: post #182
ncmncm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the above is true enough, but it is not the full story on why US nukes cost like they do. The ones attempted recently in South Carolina and Georgia cost so much because people in a position to block building them want it that way. Once a nuke project starts, a torrent of money starts flowing. Everybody with a stake expects a share, and none want it ever to end. Finishing a plant would plug that flow. If it loo…

>We see the same process with urban tunnels and big military procurements. It is all perfectly legal. It is probably not fixable. Not being a lawyer and all that, would some of this holding of the hands-out not qualify as some sort of grift or worse? Are there not laws already in place for this stuff? Is it a case of it being too hard to prove so no prosecutions are brought?

Extortion is the metaphor I use.

Francis Fukuyama uses the term "vetocracy" for our government. So many layers, so many checks and balances. Some of them were even a good idea at the time (eg in response to abusers like Robert Caro).

Every petty tyrant or crank has to be bought off, rolled over, or buried under. That takes time, resources, lawyers, political capital, stamina, tenacity.

I'm not even so sure vetocracy is a wholly bad thing, in principle. Of course people impacted by projects should be considered, heard, and hopefully accommodated. But, as others have already stated, vetocracy has been weaponized to thwart all progress, regardless of how much popular support is behind them.

For instance, we need expand our power grid, roughly 3x bigger. The challenge is our current patchwork of veto points (local, county, state, regional, national). So someone(s) will have to expend huge political capital to overhaul the regulatory and permitting system. Or we simply won't reach our goal for net zero carbon emissions.

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

#207

Post by cycomanic »

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…

That argument should apply to houses as well, but building houses has become more expensive in the last 50 years not less.

Generally construction does not significantly benifit from economies of scale, while fabrication does. Now we could build lots of small scale reactors, but while construction costs might come down (so far completely unproven) running costs most definitely would go up. You don't want to run even a small scale nuclear reactor without qualified staff, security etc..

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

#208

Post by ryoshu »

ncmncm wrote: post #164
credit_guy wrote: post #137

Whenever we talk about nuclear power on HN, people are split in two groups: those who'd love to see nuclear power succeeding, and those who are against it and who support solar and wind. I am pro both nuclear and renewables. Solar and wind have been on an absolute tear lately. At least in the US (where I live) new solar and wind construction has been growing at a breathtaking pace during the last decade. Take a look…

There has never been a nuke plant operated without subsidies, anywhere in the world, and probably never will be. In the US, taxpayers pick up the tab for disaster insurance because no private insurer is big enough. No reactor would be left enough to operate, paying the premiums on that policy. By 2040, all the existing nukes will have been shut down, unable to deliver enough power at the spot price to continue operat…

What are the subsidies of nuclear compared to wind, solar, fossil fuels, etc. Do those subsidies include the cost of externalities like nuclear waste disposal/storage vs. pollution from fossil fuels or disposal of things like batteries for renewables? And costs for things like mining, building, etc. raw materials to get the various systems up and running, maintenance, etc. Honest questions. I haven't seen anyone run those numbers.

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

#209

Post by croes »

ryoshu wrote: post #194
croes wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe (a) is because solar panels are less dangerous than nuclear waste.

we need to account for the danger of disposal/long term storage of the dead batteries for solar as well. But I'm not sure what the calculation for that is vs. nuclear waste.

The difference is that you usually store garbage to protect people from it. With nuclear waste, however, you also have to protect the waste from people like ISIS & Co.

It's cheaper to store something in such a way that you can't just trip over it. But it's something else to store it in a way that you can't reach it even if you know where it is.

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

#210

Post by cycomanic »

nine_k wrote: post #78
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…

* Technology makes machines cheaper, and makes human work more expensive in comparison. Nuclear projects involve a lot of highly qualified human work. * Technology makes repetitive operations cheaper. You build a factory for hundred million dollars, make a billion gadgets on it, and every gadget costs you ten cents to make. Nuclear projects lack the economy of scale: even the Navy is going to order reactors by a doze…

> Nuclear is now in a position similar to solar cells 15 years ago: a promising technology which is too expensive due to small scale and bespoke nature of their production. It took a decade of betting on them, pouring money into them, and giving various discounts to the customers to get where we are now, with solar panels which are efficient, affordable, and available. I suppose nuclear tech would need the same to become cost-efficient. France did / does something along these lines; the US does not.

Unlike solar 15 years ago, nuclear has been around 60 years already and received huge amounts of subsidies (much more than solar, excluding all the extra military subsidies). So what is fundamentally different now that would change the essentially linear scaling to an exponential scaling and why should we not invest into the tech where we see ongoing exponential scaling of cost already with no indication of slowing (solar and wind)?

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