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Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

constructionphysics.substack.com

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Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#431

Post by pas »

ncmncm wrote: post #301
mch82 wrote: post #253

The cost of nuclear energy seems seriously understated. Nuclear waste storage costs the US $6B per year and we still don’t have a long-term storage plan. We’ll incur this cost for hundreds or thousands of years. https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us... There’s also a cost to secure the nuclear infrastructure. https://medium.com/the-future-is-electric/nuclear-generation... Can anyone find a cost…

Waste management is by far the smallest of all the problems with nukes. Overwhelmingly the biggest problem is wholly legal corruption, as cost and schedule are allowed to balloon without limit. For everyone involved, the gravy train stops when a plant is delivered, which no one actually involved wants ever to happen. (If it must end anyway, there is some incentive to actually deliver, as happened at Olkiluoto, but no…

> No one has offered any plausible suggestion for how to contain corruption costs for nuke construction, ...

standardization. transparency. enough market participants to have meaningful competition. (even if not for the top level project, but for parts)

order 100+ plants, get economies of scale.

sure, political feasibility is ludicrously close to zero, hence the US is stuck with short term workarounds and incremental changes based on fanatics/startups/lobbying or other regional perturbations.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#432

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

ncmncm wrote: post #332
SECProto wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cost of nuclear energy seems seriously understated. Nuclear waste storage costs the US $6B per year and we still don’t have a long-term storage plan. We’ll incur this cost for hundreds or thousands of years. Wait til you hear about the costs of fossil fuel waste storage!

Fortunately, that is not the alternative: fossil fuel use is already uncompetitive, so on its way down. But not fast enough, as societal inertia props it up against what cost favors.

You're right, fossil fuel waste storage costs aren't the alternative to nuclear waste storage costs.

We've chosen to have to deal with both fairly indefinitely, for any time scale we're likely to want to talk about.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#433

Post by k8wk1 »

mandevil wrote: post #160
epistasis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent US nuclear construction projects have been plagued with similar incompetence, such as trying to build plans that were unconstructable, and then having to get regulatory approval for the changes. I would like to see comparisons to other large construction projects too. The US is really really bad at large construction projects, but European construction seems a lot better.

Unfortunately, when it comes to nuclear Europe's (excluding Russia) basically in the same boat as the US. Consulting the current list of nuclear power plants under construction around the world by a pro-nuclear power group here: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... I see the following as the only ones still under construction in all of Europe (not counting Belarus and Russia): 1) Mochovce 3…

Hinkley point construction started 2017, not 2008. In 2008 even the site wasn't picked yet.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#434

Post by k8wk1 »

mandevil wrote: post #280
spc476 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also recall reading (somewhere) that France basically ended up with two nuclear power plan designs used repeatedly, unlike in the US where nearly every nuclear power plant is unique. That might account for the lower costs shown in the article.

That is true for the 1970's and 1980's boom of production in France, but is not true at present: the EPR they are building at Flamenville 3 and Hinkley Point C1+C2 are the sum total of those reactors currently under construction, and none are currently operational, so those three are likely to be the total number ever built. It is true that the 34 CPY reactors, and the 20 P4 reactors, were produced in large enough nu…

There are also 2 EPR designs producing electricity in China since 2019, so your sources aren't correct.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#435

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

ncmncm wrote: post #286
devoutsalsa wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear waste isn't a problem if you drill a hole that's deep enough, encase the waste in a "dry cask", and drop it in the hole. Kyle Hill did a great video on this... "We solved nuclear waste decades ago" => https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k

Or just drop it in the ocean, as US, Brits and Russians have preferred in the past. But this has nothing to do with construction cost.

Speaking of offer dumping.

One good use for stainless steel nuclear waste dry casks would be to build an encasement for the 25,000 odd drums of DDT dumped off the coast of California.

Fortunately, those decaying drums are only a problem every so often when the news media gets around to reminding us.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#436

Post by k8wk1 »

ncmncm wrote: post #345
freemint wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen needs an complete overhaul to the pipeline system. Burning natural gas for energy is a fraction of it's use. More important are heating (where it can't be transported too), steel making and chemistry (CoViD vaccine ingredients are made using natural gas by BASF).

Hydrogen can be added to dilute NG, during the transition.

This would still cause hydrogen embrittlement which results in cracked steel pipes.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#437

Post by Jedd »

stephen_g wrote: post #398
Jedd wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind turbine blades are next to impossible to recycle or (at the scale we're talking about) re-purpose. 'What What happens to all the old wind turbines?' (bbc.co.uk) [2020] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22265321

Even if that was always the case (I'm confident it won't be), compare it to, say, coal fly ash. In my country, coal ash is 1/5th of all waste generated (by weight, I think) over a year. 12 million metric tonnes per year [1]. And that's before even thinking about CO2 and other air pollutants. Wind turbine waste is almost nothing compared to that. Still worth fixing, but perspective is important. 1. https://www.abc.net…

Oh, I don't think this is a significant problem - and agree that the volume of this fairly inert waste product is trivial in comparison to the huge volumes of nasties that come out of fossil fuel power stations.

I'm sure these turbine blades will likely continue to be iteratively re-designed to be increasingly recyclable or at least re-purposable as times goes on.

I was just answering the question about remediation costs for wind turbines, as this feature of the current popular implementations is often a surprise.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#438

Post by logifail »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #320
logifail wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Q: Do those countries already have long term nuclear waste storage facilities? There are countries that have been spectacularly failing to provide their own such facilities for decades.

How about they just prepay another country for ten thousand years of storage multiplied by 100 square meters? I don't see why it has to be local.

> I don't see why it has to be local

If we propose to allow countries to outsource their nuclear waste disposal, wouldn't it be simpler, cheaper and safer to just skip nuclear entirely and outsource the power generation?

All those countries with apparently not enough access to sunlight or wind will save an awful lot of time and money messing about with nuclear and just buy in their renewable power.

If it works, could the Xlinks Morocco-UK power project could be a template for this kind of solution?[0]:

"A 10.5 gigawatt (GW) solar and wind farm will be built in Morocco’s Guelmim-Oued Noun region, and it will supply the UK with clean energy via subsea cables. The twin 1.8 GW high voltage direct current (HVDC) subsea cables will be the world’s longest."

[0] https://electrek.co/2022/04/21/the-worlds-longest-subsea-cab...

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#439

Post by trashtester »

ncmncm wrote: post #378
trashtester wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of flying has come down by 50% since 1980, and while an airplane is a simpler machine than a nuclear plant, the two industries also have a lot in common (such as the perception of risk not being in their favour). By doing international standardization and coordination in ways similar to the aircraft industry, the same should be possible for the nuclear power industry. It should be possible to consolidate mos…

Ideally , we could have started building out solar in 1989, and would have had today's PV prices by the '90s, and would be well along to mitigating the climate catastrophe now. But we chose otherwise. Starting nuke construction now would just be kicking the can down the road again.

How much of the development in PV tech is linked to developments in other technologies, and how much is due to dedicated R&D on PV's? My personal understanding is that basic science is the main long-term driver, while directed R&D into a specific field is important for short-term gains in efficiency, but will tend to reach diminishing returns if it goes beyond what is enabled by basic science.

Economies of scale is more of a fixed saving on top. This may have helped take the cost per kwh of solar from $10 to $3, but the scientific development was what made it possible to go to $0.1.

In any case, PV prices are already very low. We are reaching a point where installation and maintaince are becoming limiting factors, and where storage is becoming the primary bottleneck.

Development in storage (batteries and hydrogen) already has so much momentum that building out some nuclear power would not threaten it.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#440

Post by jacquesm »

otter-rock wrote: post #384
jacquesm wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I see is a whole pile of unsupported assertions, let's take them one by one: > When they accept an expensive out-of-spec part, it's because they can safely redesign the less expensive parts. 'They' presumably being the engineers, and because they are engineers it is automatically assumed that the less expensive parts can always be redesigned. But in the case of a reactor vessel it isn't clear at all how and if th…

I appreciate you engaging in a two way discussion. As a general comment, you still jump to many exaggerated conclusions apparently without seeking to understand. For example, your conclusion about an elevated class of engineers that use magic, which you explicitly said is an assumption. Having worked with these processes and techniques myself for many years in other industries, I know from daily firsthand experience…

I think my main point is that engineers operate in a field that is always going to be subject to pressure, both commercial, political, prestige and so on and that even though the engineering profession in general can be relied upon to do their level best to produce high quality and reliable solutions the various pressures have the ability to push that which is commercially still viable into the realm of danger. The shuttle debacle is an excellent example of how even though everybody worked with the best of intentions this can eventually lead to a disastrous outcome and it is exactly the use of out-of-spec parts for critical applications that you find as the root cause. Once you start doing that the pressure is on to keep doing it right up to the moment that mother nature gives you the kind of wake up call that you really don't want to have. The big trick is simply not to make that first move down the slope.

Nuclear engineers, while possible made of different stuff than your average bridge-and-road engineers are not exempt from such pressures, and examples that prove this abound.

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