Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

GenCost has an amazing FAQ section you evidently either ignored, or did not peruse.

For example here they discuss economic life vs operational life, when you live in reality rather than grasping for straws:

> Why is the economic life used in LCOE calculations instead of the fulloperational life?

> The LCOE calculation converts all upfront and ongoing costs to annual costs which is then divided by annual production. The capital cost component of a technology is converted to an annual repayment to the debt and equity providers. The annual repayment amount is determined using the economic life and the weighted average cost of capital. The economic life is shorter than the asset life for some technologies such as coal, nuclear and hydro. Some stakeholders have queried why this is so.

> Debt and equity providers require a shorter payback period than the total asset life for some technologies to avoid the risk that part of the equipment might fail or might need new investment (sometimes called refurbishment or extension costs) to keep operating safely and reliably. To determine the economic life, debt and equity providers might look to the warranties provided with the equipment. They might also look at the typical timing of refurbishments or life extensions for that technology. The economic life is an input provided by the engineering firm that AEMO commissions each year as an input to GenCost.

> Some stakeholders suggested that coal and nuclear could access special financing arrangements to move the economic life closer to the asset life. However, our preference is not to introduce special arrangements for technologies where there is limited Australian evidence. A common approach to the LCOE calculation is important to maintain comparability. The 2024-25 report does explore the impact of longer capital recovery periods in Section 2. It finds there is no significant benefit from the longer operational life of nuclear relative to shorter-lived technologies whose costs have been falling over time.

Even looking at China and South Korea they see essentially zero learning effects across plants after the FOAK build. Small ones at the same plant.

Crying about FOAK vs NOAK is not even close to solving the absolutely stupidly large subsidies new built nuclear power needs.

Again with the loaded terms. Sad. The market is limited until for example Jevons paradox expands it. Which will never happen with new built nuclear power due to how expensive the electricity is, that leads to energy poverty for generations instead. But I digress.

Look at Texas or California. About all new renewable projects in those markets are coupled with storage.

What you call cannabilisation, and try to paint like the end of the world, is simply the market working. Now pure renewable projects aren’t enough, instead you need to sell the electricity when the consumers demand it.

In just a year or two storage has massively smoothed out the price swings in Texas.

But again, that would require curiosity rather than desperately trying to poke holes the study already answered.

Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?

Nuclear really either goes big or it goes home. And you're saying it won't go big.

>For example here they discuss economic life vs operational life, when you live in reality rather than grasping for straws:

It's essentially just saying the market can't think long term enough leading to drastic differences in your calculations. But hence it's typically governments pushing these projects forward.

>The market is limited until for example Jevons paradox expands it. Which will never happen with new built nuclear power due to how expensive the electricity is

But it did happen for nuclear power in the past. Now you see essentially the opposite.

>Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?

I'm not. I think it's a great set of technologies. But I think if one tries to get to 100% everywhere one's going to stub their toes on the scenarios where it's not all roses. Why? Because the storage part is hard at scale in a lot of places and the intermitency more pronounced. In Texas and Cali are incredibly sunny places in the south of the US. Silicon valley where it's already an issue gets 3 times as much sunshine hours during winter as let's say berlin and those hours are far less usefull.

>Crying about FOAK vs NOAK is not even close to solving the absolutely stupidly large subsidies new built nuclear power needs.

Is this not intentionally sidestepping the ludicrous amount of subsidies that have been handed out to renewables in aggregate?

Berlin would need to overproduce insane amounts in summer to handle it's winters.

What are you on about?

>Jevons Paradox did not happen for nuclear power. What happened was crazy cost overruns, cancellations and the industry collapsing into its current state.

And the opposite happened in the past whilst europe was building bunch more of them.

>Who cares if we get 95%, 97, 99% or 100% when we still need to decarbonize agriculture, aviation, chemicals, industry, construction and so on?

Funny you say that when some of those are significantly harder. Are you going to turn on steel plants only in summer? Do you think that might have some effect?

>You do realize that renewable subsidies are being phased out all over the world? They aren't needed anymore. Complaining about "equality" because your desired solution didn't deliver in time is a kindergarten level argument.

You should tell my government and the neighbouring governments.

>We've spent the past 70 years subsidizing nuclear power. It just never delivered on its promise.

It did exactly that?

>The relevant question is: Where does Germany spend the next €100 billion today to avoid the most emissions?

it has spent €700 billion to $1 trillion on the energywende (a metric which doesn't properly include a lot of private investment) and ends as one of the worst emitters in europe whilst deindustrialising due to high energy prices. They jerk eachother off about how high their renewables share of the economy is every summer and then import and fire up the browncoal and gasplants again troughout the other seasons. When that solar panel is producing a 10th of it's average summer output (already below the capacity everyone loves to roll with for articles) in winter there's only one big winner possible. People like to point out how france's electricity production is subsidised when they come out looking good even when the gov intentionally puts a stick in it's wheels by essentially forcing it to subsidise pricing to competition.

They could spend much less and restart some nuclear. https://www.radiantenergygroup.com/reports/radiant-energy-gr...

> You do realize that renewable subsidies are being phased out all over the world?

CfD is going strong in the UK; it seems about the only way of deploying it, given the revenue uncertainty associated with market saturation/cannibalisation.

Denmark required CfDs too. https://windeurope.org/news/successful-danish-offshore-wind-...

Of course, other subsidies exist. Feed in tariffs. Transmission charges. Capacity and ancillary service payments to provide services that solar/wind do not.