[HN Gopher] Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? ___________________________________________________________________ Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Author : spenrose Score : 286 points Date : 2022-06-09 15:22 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (constructionphysics.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (constructionphysics.substack.com) | teslaberri wrote: | corruption is why, it has become a legal part of doing business. | that simple. | Georgelemental wrote: | TL;DR rising labor costs and regulation | bryanlarsen wrote: | Note that the regulatory costs are only responsible for much of | the increases of the 60s and 70s. They're the boogey man, but | the increases of the last forty years can't be blamed on them. | | It's a general problem: HSR and subway stations have seen | similar increases. | NaNDude wrote: | may be the increases of the last forty years have'nt been | studied as thoses of the 60s to 70s, but regulatory costs are | still a reality, the french EPR for exemple got a 20billion | increase in cost during the construction for changes in | security standards. | Robotbeat wrote: | That's also due to regulatory costs. Regulations now require | "citizen voice" for large projects, whether infrastructure or | just an apartment building. So NIMBYism is able to slow | construction (which translates directly to increased costs), | require additional measures or features. And NIMBY lawsuits | after regulatory approval is given can further increase costs | and schedule, even if the court rules in favor of the | project. And then because of all these regulatory costs, the | experience isn't gained, so learning doesn't occur, and if it | does, it occurs only for a few firms. Additionally, large | state sponsored projects often are treated as jobs programs, | etc. | | Another issue is that the difficulty of complying with the | regulations is intentional. The paperwork is difficult as an | intentional sort of time-tax on building anything new. We | could actually automate and streamline everything to be | approved immediately (while following the letter) without | large paperwork costs, but that's not actually what those who | push for the regulations actually want. They WANT it to be | hard. | | It's not just a boogeyman. It's the real reason. Regulations | are responsible for most of the cost of nuclear power. | Ericson2314 wrote: | I don't think it's useful to conflate construction code | style regulation and NIMBYism. | | There can be excess of the former, but ultimately rules- | based regulation isn't the worst. NIMBYism and other | discretionary review adds more much delays and uncertainty | and _that_ is the Achilles heel. | | Ultimately we need build out the literal and metaphorical | supply chains, i.e. do the same thing over and over and | over again. Economies of scale are real, and so are | diseconomies of discale, and the latter is the NIMBY's | greatest weapon for collective action. | | Are Stadtbahns the SMRs of transit? | philipkglass wrote: | _It's not just a boogeyman. It's the real reason. | Regulations are responsible for most of the cost of nuclear | power._ | | In a counterfactual world with fewer regulations, I can | believe that construction would be cheaper. But regulations | don't explain why new projects have drastic cost and | schedule overruns. The United States started building new | AP1000 reactors in Georgia and South Carolina in 2013 [1] | [2]. There were no regulatory changes/increases after 2013. | But the projects went drastically over the budget and | schedule numbers that they had in 2013. | | The South Carolina project was ultimately canceled and the | SCANA CEO ended up in federal prison: | https://www.powermag.com/former-scana-ceo-will-land-in- | priso... | | _Following the project 's demise, an "exhaustive and | multi-year joint investigation" was conducted by the U.S. | Attorney's Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the | U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the South Carolina | Attorney General's Office, and the South Carolina Law | Enforcement Division. Marsh's sentencing is the result of | that investigation. | | "Kevin Marsh deceived regulators and customers to | financially benefit SCANA," Susan Ferensic, special agent | in charge of the FBI Columbia Field Office, said in a | statement. "Unfortunately, Marsh's and other executive's | actions resulted in South Carolinians bearing the financial | brunt of the failed Summer Nuclear Station." | | "Due to this fraud, an $11 billion nuclear ghost town, paid | for by SCANA investors and customers, now sits vacant in | Jenkinsville, S.C.," DeHart said._ | | The Georgia project is still in progress. | | https://apnews.com/article/business-environment-united- | state... | | "Georgia nuclear plant's cost now forecast to top $30 | billion" | | _A nuclear power plant being built in Georgia is now | projected to cost its owners more than $30 billion. | | A financial report from one of the owners on Friday clearly | pushed the cost of Plant Vogtle near Augusta past that | milestone, bringing its total cost to $30.34 billion._ | | ... | | _When approved in 2012, the third and fourth reactors were | estimated to cost $14 billion, with the first electricity | being generated in 2016. Now the third reactor is set to | begin operation in March 2023, and the fourth reactor is | set to begin operation in December 2023._ | | It's reasonable to say that a pacemaker costs more to | develop than an MP3 player because medical devices are | heavily regulated by the FDA. But it's not reasonable to | say that a project to develop a new pacemaker is 100% over | budget and 7 years late because of FDA regulations if the | FDA regulations didn't change in the mean while. In this | case, the regulations didn't change. So earlier estimates | were due to fraud or incompetence (either execution- | incompetence or planning-incompetence). I tend to blame | incompetence -- after all, _many_ megaprojects end up | horribly late and over budget, not just nuclear ones -- but | in the case of South Carolina 's VC Summer there was | outright fraud too. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generatin | g_Pla... | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_C._Summer_Nuclear_ | Gener... | jandrese wrote: | Is this due to "citizen voice" or is it just that all of | the land is now someone's back yard? A century ago most of | the land around cities was forest, plains, or sometimes | farm. Building out rail, transmission lines, or pipelines | was relatively easy because barely anybody lived near where | you were building. | | Today there are people scattered all around and they will | absolutely complain when you start building something near | the property they bought specifically to be away from other | people. | bumby wrote: | You're not wrong, but I'm not sure what's a better | alternative. | | Think of it in a different scope: government contracts are | also expensive because the have to be open to competition. | A lot of the red tape could be reduced with no-bid | contracts, but people understand the corruption risk | tradeoff is generally not worth it. | | In your example, it seems like the NIMBYism is the root | cause, not the process by which NIMBYism is wielded. | thriftwy wrote: | Since 50s we've got so many improvements in construction tech | that I would expect costs to plummet, instead they are higher | than ever. Countries use immigrant labor (sometimes illegal) | and have all tech available and the price only goes up. I | wonder why. | kaiju0 wrote: | Each build is unique and requires way too much overhead. The | new generation of preapproved factory assembled SMR's are the | future. | ortusdux wrote: | I have high hopes for prefab modular systems. The same design | approval covers 1000+ units, most designs fit on a flat-bed | for transport, and instillations can scale up as needed. | yvdriess wrote: | Having talked to a nuclear engineer about this: SMRs are | being politically pushed because of their political and | financing convenience, more than engineering reasons. Power | output scales really well with reactor size, so it makes much | more sense to build the one big expensive power plant than a | multitude of smaller ones. SMRs do make sense for off-grid or | on-site power, but not for grid electricity. | Ericson2314 wrote: | The ideal case is that SMRs are not the end goal, but a way | to rebuild the supply chain. As soon as we have SMRs in | prod, rather than building more of them, we should attempt | to increase the size of deployments with minimal falling | back on in-situ construction. | | SMRs take the supply chain metaphor a bit too literally: we | do need practice but assembling prefabbed parts at a larger | scale is fine too. There is a spectrum of options and we | just need to avoid "special snowflake boondoggles". | | Given the US's fucked NIMBY culture, it well may be that | SMRs are the best route despite these inefficiencies. Just | don't expect the "solar model" where we just shit out lots | of lousy product and that's it. | zbrozek wrote: | From a thermal physics and material science perspective, | yes, bigger is definitely better. But there's a lot to be | said of the value of being able to mass-produce a product | in a factory and ship it in nearly ready-to-use state to | its destination. | | There would also be a lot of value in turning off the | ability of folks to NIMBY everything from new power plants | to housing. | petre wrote: | Alvin Weinberg begs to differ, at least concerning PWRs and | BWRs. The bigger plants are more efficient but less safe. | | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iW8yuyk3Ugw | | One can scale the size by using several reactors, which is | exactly what NuScale and others aim to do. One also doesn't | have an unavailability problem having to shut down a large | reactor in order to refuel it. | 01100011 wrote: | Totally unrelated question but does anyone know if nuclear | powered US Navy vessels are able to feed power to the grid while | in port? I know it's technically possible, just not sure if | anyone has ever implemented such a thing. | pydry wrote: | Russia did it https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic- | industry-and-energy... | loeg wrote: | I think they do while in port in Hawaii. Hawaiian electricity | is largely diesel (other than nuclear coming from Navy ships). | jandrese wrote: | Isn't Hawaii also transitioning a significant fraction of its | generation to solar? Diesel can be ramped up and down easily | to account for varying production from solar. | db65edfc7996 wrote: | The Hawaii government page [0] list a goal of getting to | 100% renewables by 2045. If I am reading the report | correctly, the 2020 number was already at 36% renewables. | | [0]: https://energy.hawaii.gov/wp- | content/uploads/2022/01/HSEO_20... ( pdf warning ) | loeg wrote: | Yes, but I'm not sure what the current percentage is or how | fast that change is happening. | jandrese wrote: | Solar and Wind have really been exploding in the past few | years. I fully expect this hand wringing over nuclear | will end up being overtaken by events in the next 30 | years or so. The real limitation at the moment is battery | technology, there is a lot riding on finding cheap and | efficient energy storage. | scoopertrooper wrote: | My understanding is that they shut down the reactors in port | and run off the grid. | ortusdux wrote: | This is my understanding as well. I believe that they may | even shut down at sea and run in on batteries/generators, | which doubles as a way to test those systems. Refueling is | quite the ordeal, so there is an incentive to minimize fuel | depletion. | dodobirdlord wrote: | Reactors may sometimes be shut down at sea to test backup | generators and run reactor restarting drills, but it would | not be done otherwise. Aircraft carrier propulsion comes | from steam from the reactors - if the reactors are offline | the ship cannot move. Moreover, the backup generators burn | jet fuel, which is convenient because aircraft carriers | already have a store of jet fuel for the planes and so | don't have to carry extra fuel for the backup generators, | but it's very expensive, and not something that would be | done outside of an emergency or testing emergency | preparedness. | nickelpro wrote: | Nuclear powered vessels do not spend any significant amount | of time shutdown at sea, and there is no reason to. | Electrical power is a very small fraction of their total | MWh production, with almost all power going to propulsion. | | When fuel lifetime becomes an issue for a nuclear naval | vessel they will have propulsion limits in place that limit | transit speeds to those which are most efficient for the | propulsion turbines. | acidburnNSA wrote: | Sometimes, in relief missions like after big earthquakes. | | More often they use the onboard desalination plants (also | nuclear powered) to make lots of fresh water. | | e.g. https://www.militarynews.com/norfolk-navy- | flagship/oceana/ne... | colechristensen wrote: | The largest nuclear vessel produces up to 160 MW, the smallest | single nuclear reactor power plant about 500 MW (sites often | have multiples), the largest nuclear reactor in the US is about | 4 GW. An average wind turbine produces 2-3 MW. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | CVN-78s reactor according to Wikipedia: | | > It is estimated that the total thermal power output of the | A1B will be around 700 MW | | CVN-78 has two of them. | comrh wrote: | I think the discrepancy is not all the thermal output is | converted to electricity: | | > A1B reactors likely produce enough steam to generate 125 | megawatts (168,000 hp) of electricity, plus 350,000 shaft | horsepower (260 MW) to power the four propeller shafts. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | Ah, yes. Most steam is not converted to electricity. | Should have mentioned that. | jeffbee wrote: | A naval reactor produces most of its power in direct steam | propulsion and relatively little (~1/3rd) converted to | electricity. I think the largest vessels can generate just | 125MW which isn't much at all. The only beneficial use of a | navy vessel as mobile infrastructure that I can recall is when | the USS Carl Vinson was used to produce drinking water for | Haiti after their earthquake. | nickelpro wrote: | Navy nuclear vessels have (relative to the grid) little real | power generation capability and cannot handle grid reactive | loading at all. The grid appears as an infinite reactive load | to shipboard electrical switching equipment. | 01100011 wrote: | Sure, relative to the total grid capacity it's not much but | during peak loads every bit helps. | | I suppose you'd want to transition from ship to shore via a | DC path and convert it back to synchronized AC which should | avoid issues with reactive loads. | hansel_der wrote: | quick google suggests it has been done in emergencies. | cvccvroomvroom wrote: | Insurance, licensure, and NIMBY pressure. | | Previously in nuclear industry. | justinsb wrote: | The only nuclear plant under construction in the US is at Plant | Vogtle, in Georgia. Regulators set up a system (CWIP) whereby the | companies building the plant earn a 10% return on their costs, | until the plants come online. I think it's not surprising | therefore that costs keep increasing and the delays keep coming. | I don't think we can infer that nuclear power plants cannot be | built at reasonable cost, rather that we need to consider | "regulatory capture" as a significant construction risk. | | (Some admittedly one-sided background on CWIP: | https://stopcwip.com/ ) | ak217 wrote: | > Nuclear is sometimes praised for having lower fuel costs, but | all else being equal (ie: assuming total production cost stays | constant), it's better to have a larger fraction of your | electricity costs be variable, so that if demand drops then | production cost drops as well. | | This is not obviously true. I could make an argument that base | load generation capacity (nuclear and hydro in particular) should | be state-owned or largely state-sponsored, both to avoid economic | price shocks/volatility and because it's good for national | security (check out what Europe is going through right now). | jacquesm wrote: | What Europe is going through right now is _mostly_ caused by | those large, state sponsored conglomerates. It 's the smaller | private operators that are doing just fine. | stingraycharles wrote: | Yeah this statement makes me think that OP had very little | actual knowledge about energy pricing. | | If there's ever a complicated market of supply and demand it's | energy. Having a huge chunk of the supply be stable and | controllable is absolutely desired, will help simplify | operations a lot, make supply more predictable, and as a result | deliver more stable prices. | | It's not as if the population is suddenly getting cheaper | windmills if there's too much supply; if the energy supplier is | losing money due to oversupply, they will need to get their | money back another way, so it's always the consumer that pays | anyway. | logifail wrote: | > Having a huge chunk of the supply be stable and | controllable | | Nuclear might be stable, but "controllable"? | | On the days when it's windy and sunny in your part of the | planet, try telling your local nuclear plants they're not | required. | | There's simply no reason to guarantee nuclear generators a | fixed electricity price decades in advance, like the UK did | with Hinkley Point.[0] | | [0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/21/hinkley- | point-c... | dTal wrote: | I don't know why you say you can't throttle nuclear up and | down. All thermal plants have inertia, but nuclear is if | anything easier to throttle than fossil fuels. | | There's a lot of numbers, and comments from nuclear plant | operators, in this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ | NuclearPower/comments/m0rwso/how_fa... | logifail wrote: | > I don't know why you say you can't throttle nuclear up | and down. All thermal plants have inertia, but nuclear is | if anything easier to throttle than fossil fuels. | | In that case why don't we let the market build nuclear | plants without any state guarantees or insurance and they | can simply "throttle up" when they're required. No need | to fix a strike price for decades before investors are | interested. | | I'm sure it makes financial sense. Honest. /s | dTal wrote: | That's quite the non-sequitor. An exploration of how | broken "the market" is would be an entirely separate | discussion. If you wanted to have that discussion, we | could start by analyzing the massive subsidies enjoyed by | fossil fuels, not to mention the complete lack of | accounting for its toxic byproducts which are dumped into | the atmosphere (while nuclear power is legally required | to track and safely store every molecule). | | Or we could just keep building gas peaker plants and | ignore the mass die-offs, because "the market" can't | possibly be wrong, right? /s | akvadrako wrote: | Nuclear has very low fuel costs, under 1%. So it really | doesnt make sense to throttle them unless the price goes | negative. | | Having an upfront guaranteed price is just a way to | spread the construction cost over more time. | danielmarkbruce wrote: | "all else equal" is in there. | | He was trying to make a point - that flexibility is valuable. | And it is valuable. _All else equal_ you 'd take more | flexibility than less, especially since demand moves around a | good amount. | stingraycharles wrote: | But it isn't flexibility we can control. It's either | fluctuations in supply which we need to absorb somehow, or | it's scaling down supply. The big differentiator is the | flexibility to scale _up_ supply when you need it, and it's | precisely this flexibility that's missing. | logifail wrote: | > base load generation capacity | | What's the consensus on the meaning of 'base load generation | capacity'? | | There are those who'd say it's an archaic term often used to | defend power sources that can't ramp up and down to meet | demand, and nuclear would be top of that list. If - for | instance - there are times when it's windy _and_ sunny, why | should consumers have to pay more than the market rate to | nuclear generators, just because nuclear is inflexible? | | More broadly: what's the actual use case for 'base load | generation capacity' over the coming decades? | mschuster91 wrote: | > More broadly: what's the actual use case for 'base load | generation capacity' over the coming decades? | | The use case is that there should be enough capacity under | governmental control to ensure that even in a case of crisis | (such as, say, an oil price hike, a war or import blockades) | the base load of the citizenry is still accounted for - big | industries might be temporarily restricted, but no citizen | should freeze in winter because the forces of the market deem | it more profitable to have some large company buy their way | out. | logifail wrote: | > there should be enough capacity under governmental | control [..] | | Q: You really want to nationalize power generation? | Paradigma11 wrote: | Use Case: You pay more to get a reliable service for the same | price regardless of weather conditions. | [deleted] | orangeoxidation wrote: | Yup, that seems a strange argument. Power usage varies during | the day, but it doesn't really go below some "base load". | | Nuclear can run basically 24/7, but you cannot turn it on or | off quick enough to to react to hourly changes in demand. So | nuclear power is only good for base load. | | We need peaker plants to get the rest. Gas plants are the | popular (cheap) choice for this. Carbon free alternatives are | pumped hydro or batteries. | | With renewables the production capacity is variable as well. | | To fill possible "holes" in it we don't need more base load. | What renewables need are ... peaker plants. A role nuclear | reactors are exceptionally unsuited to fill. | logifail wrote: | > you cannot turn it on or off quick enough to to react to | hourly changes in demand | | Surely you'd want actually want suppliers to react to | changes in spot price, not just demand? If it's windy and | sunny, it might not matter if demand is high! If it's calm | and cloudy, you have a problem. | | If the spot electricity price is high, you want providers | to jump in and supply electricity. If it's low, or indeed | goes negative[0], you want them to shut down. | | Nuclear just doesn't fit this model, since investors appear | to want the strike price guaranteed for several decades | before they'll even start pouring concrete for their plant. | | [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666 | 79242... | masklinn wrote: | > Nuclear can run basically 24/7, but you cannot turn it on | or off quick enough to to react to hourly changes in | demand. So nuclear power is only good for base load. | | That's not exactly true, you can build nuclear plants for | load following which provides some amount of flexibility, | at the cost of some efficiency (about 1% I think). | | IIRC French plants can operate between 30 and 100% rated | power, and ramp rates can reach 5% per minute (though | normal rates are 1 to 3). French nukes regularly have to | ramp up and down quickly to compensate for wind variation | and monday pickup (electricity consumptions goes way down | over the weekend, especially nice spring weekends, then | back way up on week start). | SiempreViernes wrote: | > but you cannot turn it on or off quick enough to to react | to hourly changes in demand | | To be precise, it cannot _stop consuming fuel_ quick enough | that there 's any important savings, and so nuclear power | plants always want to run at full capacity because | otherwise they are wasting fuel. | | But more than that, fuel consumption is simply not a very | big part of the running cost of a nuclear power plant, most | is fixed cost so that even if they could change the fuel | consumption quickly there's just not enough savings to | really bother with it. | logifail wrote: | > To be precise, it cannot stop consuming fuel quick | enough that there's any important savings, and so nuclear | power plants always want to run at full capacity because | otherwise they are wasting fuel. But more than that, fuel | consumption is simply not a very big part of the running | cost of a nuclear power plant, most is fixed cost so that | even if they could change the fuel consumption quickly | there's just not enough savings to really bother with it | | (Sorry) but that sounds like a slightly long-winded way | of saying that nuclear just isn't economically viable. | | "the costs of renewables continue to fall due to | incremental manufacturing and installation improvements | while nuclear, despite over half a century of industrial | experience, continues to see costs rising"[0] | | [0] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/09/24/nuclear-power- | is-now-... | necheffa wrote: | The technology to do load follow at a nuclear plant exists. | | If you think about it, "base load" has nothing to do with the | power source. Given some period of time, say a day, you are | always going to have a certain minimum demand for power | generation in a geographic location. Congratulations, you | have identified base load. | | As the grid becomes more distributed and therefore less | centralized, you are going to see base load hitting lower | peaks because individual power generation stations will have | less aggregate demand. But until society reaches a point | where at least part of the day there is zero demand on the | grid (fat chance) you will always have base load in some | shape or form. | logifail wrote: | > you are always going to have a certain minimum demand for | power generation in a geographic location. Congratulations, | you have identified base load. | | If it's - say - sunny and windy, your renewables are always | going to undercut _all_ other generators. So when they | undercut nuclear, basic market forces should mean nuclear | doesn 't get to supply a single MW, and if that means | investors lose out, well, tough. | | Base load should _always_ be supplied by the cheapest | supplier. Not the least flexible and /or the ones with the | highest fixed costs. | fallingknife wrote: | I tend to disbelieve the people who say it's unnecessary | because there are many places where the cheapest power | generation has come from renewables for quite some time, and | yet all of those places still have base load on the grid. | jacquesm wrote: | Baseload has several major ingredients: the required | continuous consumption, connectivity of areas that are | remote from each other where the one has a surplus and the | other a deficit, local overcapacity storage options and | installed capacity from 'guaranteed' sources (and no source | is 100% guaranteed, typically even the most stable sources | are down 20 to 40% of the time for maintenance, refueling, | repairs and so on). | | The required baseload is then further influenced by load | variability, and rate-of-change. Not all generation | equipment can spin up / down equally fast, and sometimes | the effect of for instance a shut-down is that it will take | a long time to go back online. | | Baseload is a function of a whole interconnected grid | rather than of some locality, and this is a big difference | between how laypeople see this and how people in the power | business see it. It's not as if the electrons that are | pushed into a wire in say Southern France need to get all | the way to Poland to light a bulb there, all that the | various generators do is maintain their local grid by | making available enough power locally that lightbulbs in | France are served by their local power stations and | lightbulbs in Poland are served by theirs. This minimizes | transmission losses. | | If you have a surplus and the distance is large then with | conventional (AC) transmission lines there is an upper | limit to how big an area you can serve before the losses | make that no longer economical. HVDC has nicer properties | for long distance transmission which has some very | interesting consequences for baseload: suddenly wind and | solar thousands of KM (multiple timezones) away can be used | to provide power to some locality, reducing the need for | local generation capacity if the price is right. | | This revolution is happening right now, the HVDC grid | interconnects are shaping up rapidly with more and more of | these coming on-line. Especially the longer East-West runs | have the possibility to materially affect the amount of | fossil/nuclear required for when solar and wind are | insufficient, as well as the North-South ones from areas | where there is a lot of hydro generation capacity. | danielmarkbruce wrote: | The statement is obviously true. | | The part which makes it so is "all else being equal". He is | just saying "flexibility is more valuable than it might seem on | the surface, because demand moves around". | mbostleman wrote: | Doubling the cost consequence of regulations, regulations | changing causing in-progress projects to go back and remove and | re-do work, negative learning - all of these things are a result | of our society not gathering around the mission. If we wanted it, | we would fix all these things. But it just doesn't have support. | It seems like an incredible tragedy that is at least proportional | to that of climate change since from most reasonable projections, | nuclear - assuming the technological challenges can be solved - | is the quickest way to reduce our impact on climate change. The | fact that we insist on suppressing the courage to solve the | problems makes me question the integrity of those who run the | narratives on climate change policy. | lelag wrote: | The article misses another important aspect: loss of nuclear | competency. | | Between the 60s and 80s, there were many nuclear reactors | projects which allowed an industry to develop and get better at | it. | | But since the 80s, there was comparatively very few new reactors | built for over 20-30 years. The workforce that had the skills and | knowledge related to actually building nuclear plants had mostly | retired and their replacement had only theoretical knowledge and | no actual experience. This makes building new reactor much harder | than it should be. | | The embattled EPR project at Flammanville is an exemple of that: | the specialised company that was hired to forge the nuclear | vessel were simply unable to build to spec and a defective | critical piece was delivered, creating delays and cost increases. | In the end, they even had to use it anyway as it was not | economically feasible to simply have another one made. | colinmhayes wrote: | This is undoubtedly true, but south korea has now been building | nuclear plants for decades, and their costs haven't really | dropped at all. | ImHereToVote wrote: | According to the article they have | alex_young wrote: | From the article: > The only country where | the costs of nuclear plant construction seem to have | steadily decreased is South Korea: > The fact | that South Korea is the only country to exhibit this trend | has led some experts to speculate that the cost data (which | comes directly from the utility and hasn't been | independently audited) has been manipulated and we | shouldn't draw conclusions from it. | bhc wrote: | The government that was in power from 2017 to 2022 put a | moratorium on new reactor construction there and promised | a full phase-out, and although the newly-elected | government promised to reverse this, it likely has done | some damage to S. Korea's civilian nuclear capabilities. | DennisP wrote: | In absolute terms, Japan and India have costs similar to | South Korea's. | | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142 | 151... | | See figure 12 for a quick overview. And from the | introduction: "In contrast to the rapid cost escalation | that characterized nuclear construction in the United | States, we find evidence of much milder cost escalation | in many countries, including absolute cost declines in | some countries and specific eras. Our new findings | suggest that there is no inherent cost escalation trend | associated with nuclear technology." | danans wrote: | > In absolute terms, Japan and India have costs similar | to South Korea | | That countries like Japan and Korea have similar absolute | costs as India which has a 4-5x lower PPP adjusted GDP | per capita suggests that the price for labor for nuclear | power plant construction is globally set (relatively few | qualified engineers who can demand a high price), or | India uses a lot more labor, or a combination of both. | 8ytecoder wrote: | India probably uses a lot of foreign expertise. It's | either the French or the Russians that supply the | reactor. That would change in the future I suppose and | cost would drop. Also, corruption. | mandevil wrote: | Japan ceased all construction of nuclear reactors in | response to Fukushima daiichi, and since that was a | decade ago I'm betting that all the competence they built | up has disappeared. | | In other words, very similar to what happened in the US | in response to Three Mile Island: after a scary nuclear | incident there was a lengthy pause in nuclear | construction which meant that all of the skills and | learning-by-doing that had accumulated up to that point | went away, and starting again would be significantly more | expensive and subject to massive schedule and cost | overruns. | jandrese wrote: | If anything this seems to support the position that the | only way to reduce costs is to increase volume. A classic | economies of scale example. Instead the experts want to | disregard the data for vague reasons. | Retric wrote: | South Korea, Japan, and India all have similar costs | which suggests South Korea isn't benefiting significantly | from continuous construction. | | Economies of scale generally exist, but it's not magic. A | large fraction of construction costs for nuclear power | plants is very similar to other structures. A high | pressure steam pipe is a high pressure steam pipe and | people are constantly building structures using them. | clairity wrote: | also, quantity is the (primary) independent variable in | economies of scale, and at quantities of dozens for | nuclear plants, you can't get much economies, as opposed | to when quantities are in the many thousands/millions. | trashtester wrote: | 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 most of global | production down to a handful of companies (like Boing and | Airbus), with a forest of subcontractors in the same way | that was done for airliners, and achieve similar | economies of scale. | | Successful designs could be re-used over a period of 20 | years or more, with only minor modernizations of things | like electronics, like the Airbus A320 or Boing 747. | | Ideally, we should have done this in 1980, but even if we | start today, nuclear can provide a lot of energy at very | competitive prices in the next 60-100 years. By then, we | should have fusion or the ability to build energy storage | cheeply enough to make renewables (probably solar) | competitive. | sanxiyn wrote: | By the way, this blog (Construction Physics) is about why | construction in general (not nuclear power construction | in particular) is expensive. One big part is that | construction is done on site, and site-to-site variation | hurts standardization and economies of scale. | | Finished airplanes can transport itself by flying. This | advantage is particular to aircraft industry and probably | can't be copied by other industries. Finished buildings | can't transport itself. | treme wrote: | Koreans excel in cost-efficient construction projects. | Korean companies are often considered for best bang-for- | buck value when developing countries are interested in | big infrastructure projects nowadays. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1915_%C3%87anakkale_Bridge | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan%E2%80%93Cavite_Inter | lin... | [deleted] | pfdietz wrote: | They've built four NPPs in the UAE that may end up producing | at $0.08/kWh. | | Unfortunately, UAE is also building PV that will be producing | at $0.013/kWh. And since they're still burning gas for most | of their power, every kWh from solar goes straight to | reducing the overall cost and CO2 emission, five times | cheaper than the NPPs will. | samstave wrote: | My grandfather was a Nuclear Engineer for General Electric his | whole life (worked like 60 years at GE - he was one of the | designers of Hanford. | | He died of cancer, thyroid cancer of exenguination (bleeding | out of your mouth) | | My grandmother received a fairly large settlement from the | class action lawsuit against GE for exposing engineers to | radiation for decades without proper safety... | ratsmack wrote: | My uncle worked at Hanford his entire life but his last few | years of life were not good. He he retired with numerous | health issues and was essentially a mental vegetable the last | few years of his life. He was at Hanford from it's inception | up to around the seventies when he retired. | cco wrote: | Son of a Hanford man here. I believe my father started work | at Hanford _after_ the bulk of their issues were wrapped up | but I'm sure there was some increased exposure relative to | background. | | Sorry to hear about your uncle's experience, a lot of pain | came out of that facility. | samstave wrote: | My grandfather was Kenneth Victor Stave. If that name means | anything to your family. | | Also, I dont know if your uncle was part of that suit | against GE - but it may be something you want to look up. | | I don't have any further info to provide on the subject, my | grandfather passed in 1996. My grandmother last year. So I | cant ask anyone... | AtlasBarfed wrote: | I think this is actually a good thing. | | The old designs are dangerous, expensive, and wasteful. The | regulatory, economic, and political environment that resulted | in their design ultimately resulted in reactors run without | proper controls, supervision, or long term safety. The | resulting waste was not properly considered from a life cycle | perspective. | | Disclaimer: I'm not a nuclear expert, but man I loved those | LFTR presentations. What really appeals to me about LFTR is the | inherent safety, the near-full use of fuel, and the | scalability. I understand there are challenges for the | materials and containment, but I believe the smaller size of | the reactor can lend itself to replacement and manufacturing. | | So a "clean slate" with new people, regulations, standards, | expectations, computer simulation, and lifecycle planning would | do nuclear a huge bonus. | | But ultimately it doesn't matter. It won't be price competitive | with wind/solar and can't even target a 10-year price point | with the wind/solar improvement curves. Same issue the fusion | story on the front page faces. | | Let's continue active research, but commercialization is a | waste of time and money right now. When wind/solar stabilize | their cost curves, then nuclear (or fusion) will have something | to target commercially. IF they can get there. | nomel wrote: | > The article misses another important aspect | | I don't think that's a fair claim, considering "Part I" is in | the title. | sky-kedge0749 wrote: | I'm just riffing here but this doesn't seem like an | insurmountable problem if you're willing to spend. Open up a | training school, put the old guard in as instructors, get some | good students, pay everyone big money. Build a lab reactor for | hands-on practice, and pay to put students as glorified interns | into under-construction and operating plants across the world. | A few years later, you've got your people. | | I don't mean to say it would be trivial but it seems like you | could do the whole thing for a couple billion USD a year. | masklinn wrote: | TBF Flamanville 3 was a shitshow from top to bottom, starting | from anyone actually taking Areva's completely unrealistic | timeframes seriously: the claim was something like 3 years for | the build, EDF assumed production within 4.5 years. | | For a novel build of a barely finished design. | | 4.5 years is probably the shortest time it took to build a CP | (900MW) reactor at the height of France's reactor-building | frenzy (St-Laurent-B-1 construction started in May 1976 and | ended in January 1981, 4 years and 8 months). | | The next generation (P4) I don't think any took less than 6 | years to build, and the embattled N4 generation immediately | preceding the EPR the first reactor (Chooz 1, of only 4) had a | build time of _12 years_ (and 7 months), the last (and | fastest), Civaux 2, being completed in a "mere" 8 ( and 8 | months). | | And the N4 had and still has significant teething issues: soon | after they were put into production they suffered from leaks in | cooling pipes leading to all 4 being stopped for 10 months, and | at the 10 years revision in 2021 extensive stress corrosion | cracking of the primary circuit was discovered, all the N4s | have been stopped and the last news are they won't be restarted | until 2023. | epistasis wrote: | 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. | mandevil wrote: | 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 in Slovakia. Construction started November 2008, | originally scheduled to complete in 2012, now hopefully | complete later this year, so 15 years total, 10 years late. | 2) Flamenville 3 in France. Construction started in 2007, | originally scheduled to complete in 2012. Hopefully complete | in 2023, so 16 years later, 11 years late. 3) Mochovce 4 in | Slovakia. Construction started November 2008, original | scheduled to complete in 2013, now hopefully complete in | 2023, so 16 years total, 10 years late. 4,5) Hinkley Point C1 | and C2 in the UK. Construction started in roughly 2008, | originally expected to be online 2022 or so ("early 2020s" is | the best I can find with Google now, and that's for both C1 | and C2 to be online). Now C1 is expected to be complete in | 2027, and C2 in 2028. So 19-20 years total, 6 years late. | | (The US has two reactors on the list, Vogtle 3 and 4, started | in 2009, originally expected to finish in 2016 and 2017, now | expected to finish in 2023.) | | I suspect that Europe's success in building rapid transit, | compared to America, is due to the fact that they were | continuously building such systems, whereas the US largely | hasn't, so there is no cohort of engineers and workers who | learned-by-doing and get better over time. But in nuclear, | those workers seem to have gone in Europe as well- you can | see from this 2020 chart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucle | ar_power_in_France#/media...) that France built almost all of | their reactors in a giant lump between 1970 and 1983, built a | few reactors later in the 1980s (presumably late career work | from the people who had built so many earlier), and has found | building a new reactor to be really hard, e.g. Flamenville 3 | is just as big a disaster as Vogtle. | thow-58d4e8b wrote: | To add one more data point - Olkiluoto 3, started 2005, was | expected to finish in 2009. Completed late 2021, 12 years | late | | Cherry on top - after producing electricity for about a | week, it had to shut down for another 3 months. Then, after | ramping up to about 30% of the capacity, it encountered | another problem, delaying it for another 5 months. Here we | are in June 2022, 17 years later, Olkiluoto 3 provides | exactly 0 MW to the Finnish grid | spc476 wrote: | 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. | mandevil wrote: | 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 numbers to create | a skilled class of workers and engineers who were deeply | experienced with building these reactors, but right now | all of those workers are retired. | | And honestly, from observation, it appears that | rebuilding competence like this is a lot harder than | building it in the first place: when you are building the | first time everyone- the general public, the regulators, | the workers themselves- are more forgiving. When you've | lost that capacity and are trying to rebuild it you have | expectations set for a mature industry, but the skills | aren't there to deliver it. | krylon wrote: | > European construction seems a lot better | | Unless the situation in the US is really, really _REALLY_ | horrible, I doubt that. I don 't remember where, but one | country is in the process of building a nuclear power plant, | that is AFAIK unfinished, but already took way more time and | money than originally planned. | | Doesn't even have to be nuclear - ask the Internet about | Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie or Stuttgart's train station. | Having public construction projects overrun their schedules | and budgets is a well-honored tradition, at least in Germany, | but I suspect our neighbors have similar customs. | mandevil wrote: | An excellent (English language) podcast about Berlin's | fiasco of an airport, BER: | https://www.radiospaetkauf.com/ber/ (29 years from planning | to completion, 14 years from construction start to opening, | 9 years late, budget from 1 billion Euro to almost 6). | | One of the points they made in the podcast was similar to | TFA's: changes in construction are really expensive and | blow things out in costs. A new mayor came in and demanded | major changes once construction was underway in Berlin. And | then, when people said "this will cause problems" his | response was basically "we're Germany, we are the best at | planning, building and constructing, of course we can | handle this with no problems"... | ajmurmann wrote: | US is absolutely terrible at large infrastructure projects. | This article has some good details and statistics: | https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp- | content/uploads/2021/03/le... | | In general, Alon Levy's blog has great articles on this | topic and he lives in Berlin | https://pedestrianobservations.com/ | stefanfisk wrote: | I'd love to read more about this! do you have any tip on | where to start? | epistasis wrote: | Or if you were taking specifically about the nuclear | construction incompetence, the loca newspapers in South | Carolina and Georgia have been providing the best | reporting. Here's South Carolina's archive: | | https://www.postandcourier.com/business/vc_summer_nuclear_p | r... | | Search for "Georgia recorder vogtle" to get some of the | reports from the Georgia construction delays. | epistasis wrote: | The Pedestrian Observations blog is great for construction | cost analysis: | | https://pedestrianobservations.com/ | intrasight wrote: | My first job was doing software in the nuclear industry. Was | the late 80s. Probably the best job I ever had in terms of | working with extremely competent engineers. But they were all | in their 50s and 60s. After TMI, a generation of engineers said | "no" to nuclear careers. We can only imagine the alternate | history where that accident hadn't occurred. | jacquesm wrote: | I find it disconcerting that a defective critical piece ended | up being used anyway, regardless of the economies involved. | That might mean you have no reactor, but you can't just go an | substitute broken or out of spec parts for good ones. | otter-rock wrote: | Out-of-spec doesn't mean it can't work. It just means you | have to redo the design using what's effectively a different | part than you originally planned on. | jacquesm wrote: | Yes, but the idea here was to construct a nuclear power | plant, not to build a large pot for boiling soup in. You | can't take a critical component like that, spec it and then | suddenly pretend the spec never mattered in the first | place, then you have to admit that you're just winging it. | Changing the spec of the reactor vessel essentially | translates into a complete redesign of the reactor itself | unless you are willing to compromise on other aspects, such | as safety, longevity and so on. | | We're not talking about a bracket here. Or an O-ring. When | was the last time something as stupid as an O-ring decided | the fate of... oh, never mind. | otter-rock wrote: | It's a requirements change. Those happen all the time in | everything. Why would that be completely forbidden or | impossible here? Like you said, it might really suck. But | the NRC does not allow trading off safety the way you | suggest. | jacquesm wrote: | Requirements changes are not driven by one-off material | defects in critical pieces of hardware. | | That's simply a bending of the rules for economic | reasons. And it is one of the main reasons for me to | oppose nuclear: the fact that people will be people and | that at the root of every one of those disaster and near | disasters there was someone who thought they could get | away with something. We are ill equipped to deal with | this kind of responsibility, especially across a | timeframe measures in decades. | | At the same time I would love to see us solve the climate | change problem, and I recognize that we will likely have | a nuclear component in there. But it will have to be done | by the book or we'll end up regretting it - again. | | If we're going to start out with the normalization of | deviance on the #1 critical component of a reactor then I | think we are on the wrong path: | | https://becht.com/becht-blog/entry/normalization-of- | deviance... | curiousllama wrote: | I mean depends how it's broken, right? Broken could just mean | anything from "will blow up momentarily" to "more inefficient | than spec, but totally safe" | sveme wrote: | But with that position any spec is useless. | immmmmm wrote: | Carbon migration problems during forging if i recall | correctly. So steel is out of specs. How badly will | certainly remain secret, like most things in this industry. | rob_c wrote: | yes, well said. | | It's a shame the idiotic "green" movement after chernobyl is | rather annoying that it has set energy production in developed | nations back ~50 years and caused so much climate damage in the | mean time... but hey 'radioactive waste is corporate greed | maaannnn'..... | AtlasBarfed wrote: | But the green movement was ultimately correct. They didn't | know why and had nonsense arguments, but the fact is that | "old nuclear" was developed with insufficient long-term | safety. Fukushima showed that. | | What also seems true is that you can't trust a company to run | them properly, no matter the regulations and audits. TEPCO | showed that. From people I know who've dealt with the nuclear | industry, there is a strong contempt of regulation in | sentiment/culture, likely due to the annoyances and perceived | costs. | | This contempt however breeds a long term apathy towards | safety and maintenance. It's human nature. | | There are reactor designs that are inherently meltdown proof | (LFTR) and use almost all their nuclear fuel (LFTR) and can, | I believe, breed old nuclear waste into usable fuel (LFTR). | They scale down to small closet sizes (LFTR) and so can be | more economically flexible. I believe pebble bed and others | can do similar things. LFTR allegedly can be designed to be | proliferation resistant, although I've seen opposing views | from much better educated people. | | But the LFTR goals should be the standard of the nuclear | industry for next-gen. Not these massive solid rod huge dome | boondoggle-prone eyesores. | bsedlm wrote: | I think there's a larger point around the general notion of | "spread of competency". | | the competency is not allowed to spread. there's a thick shroud | of secrecy around how all this sophisticated technology comes | about. | | This is also why semiconductors are so difficult. | | Back in the early 20th century the nuclear stuff was secret so | the nazis and then the russians would not get it. | | Now semiconductors are also closely related to national | security stuff (china and taiwan). I find it quite suggestive | that most of the tech used to make the semiconductors is owned | european companies. | | Finally, I have a sensation that in the 18-19th century it was | the chemical sciences that were similarly shrouded in secrecy | of this sort. | | There was a topic here on HN the other day about how there's so | little popularization of chemistry... IMO, this is why, the | legacy of secrecy so to guarantee competitive industrial | advantages still casts its shadow. | djtango wrote: | At least in the UK, I found that salaries for Chemists were | depressingly low - PhD grads would earn around 30k GBP which | made it hard for me to justify studying for so long. | | I really liked Chemistry but ended up moving into software | instead. | bsder wrote: | > the competency is not allowed to spread. there's a thick | shroud of secrecy around how all this sophisticated | technology comes about. > > This is also why semiconductors | are so difficult. | | The dirty secret is that _all_ factories are hard to build | because nobody knows all the details to make them work. | | It's that simple. | | People bring operative knowledge to bear in the running of a | factory. Over time, that knowledge becomes baked into the | procedures, equipment, maintenance and people. | | This is, in my opinion, something that everybody overlooks | about nuclear. Power plants and factories _need_ to evolve | and optimize over time to be successful. | | Nuclear plants get encased in amber and can't do that. I | understand why people don't want to allow that. However, I | really think that this inability to evolve will doom _any_ | large scale nuclear reactor design. Probably the only way | that nuclear becomes successful is very small, semi-sealed | power plants as the whole plant evolves at the manufacturing | facility rather than at the site. | | > I find it quite suggestive that most of the tech used to | make the semiconductors is owned european companies. | | This is hardly surprising. They're spinouts of the big | conglomerates from the 1980s (ASML is from Philips, no?). | These conglomerates _didn 't exist_ in Japan (maybe--MITI was | funding the hell out of things in Japan in the early 1980s so | my memory may be off), China, etc. back when this stuff was | getting started and spun out. | | _TSMC_ is actually the anomaly. It took a _very_ determined | effort with a lot of money being shoveled around by the | government combined with a disgruntled TI executive of | Chinese background and all of his knowledge and contacts to | put it all together. | bumby wrote: | > _I have a sensation that in the 18-19th century it was the | chemical sciences that were similarly shrouded in secrecy._ | | I'm not sure this is the case. Chemistry and geology were | both popular with hobbyists (albeit, it seemed to often be | aristocratic hobbyists) during that period. | selimthegrim wrote: | Link to the topic? | bsedlm wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31648981 | brandmeyer wrote: | This is one of the reasons for continuing to incrementally | design and build new submarine and aircraft carrier reactors. | If the expertise is to re-emerge in the US commercial sector, | it may require another cross-pollination effort from the | military. | | The difficulty is that both military reactors and commercial | power reactors have evolved considerably since their initial | branch point. Commercial power reactors provide base load (run | at full power) for a year or two and then get refueled. | Military reactors now last the life of the ship without | refueling at all, but are optimized for propulsion's variable | demands. | nixonpjoshua1 wrote: | Perhaps military style reactors designed for propulsion loads | would be a good match for balancing renewables on the grid as | an alternative to natural gas peaker plants | rndmind wrote: | Consider how new the industry is, this comment is an hilarious | load of logical fallacies | Oarch wrote: | I'm enjoy HN's ongoing obsession with this substack. | | Seeing it regularly appear here lets me forget for a moment that | my industry (construction) is still in the technological Dark | Ages. | DeathArrow wrote: | >Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? | | Because there isn't enough will to make them cost less. | | China is building lots of nuclear power plants. | w0mbat wrote: | If you think the construction costs are high, think about the | demolition cost when the facility reaches end of life, and is now | radioactive. | locallost wrote: | On top of that the cost of waste disposal is astronomic and in | most of the world without a permanent solution. And it is | usually not included in the actual calculation -- power plants | usually need to put some money on the side and into an index | fund, with the hope the fund eventually grows to be large | enough to cover the cost. But nobody really knows if it will | suffice, so it's likely the public will be on the hook. On top | of all the subsidies received during construction and | operation. Basically I view it as a type of graft. | DisjointedHunt wrote: | Way to bury the lede and avoiding the main point: | | If you plan to build a Nuclear plant *TODAY*, there are financial | requirements and regulatory uncertainties that mean you're | sitting on high interest(and risky) loans/credit lines/asset | pledges etc that increase over time. | | Very few banks or financial institutions are remotely interested | in setting up financing an endeavor that has an almost 0 chance | of success to completion since the 90s. | | Environmental review has become a tool of environmental extremist | militants to derail and progress in energy. These organizations | are SO short sighted that they have been weaponizing the judicial | system against simple projects such as high voltage transmission | lines for the silliest of reasons which assures America that her | infrastructure will forever be stuck in the past. | | The cost of operating a plant come after all this is considered. | All plants running today are roughly HALF A FUCKING CENTURY old. | What the US needs is easy access to cheap credit for people | willing to set up Nuclear plants. | | We need incentive to invest in audacious increases in energy | output in exchange for meeting thresholds of performance. Right | now, you can kill yourself by filling out thousands of pages of | ridiculous review, hire some of the most expensive attorneys to | represent you in court to be granted to privilege of even having | basic clearance to START building while sitting on a fast | bleeding pool of credit, it makes NO sense. | fatcat500 wrote: | > Environmental review has become a tool of environmental | extremist militants to derail and progress in energy. | | Hmm... I wonder why they are so bent on blocking the only | viable solution to climate change? | | Almost as if they are being used a pawns to shift over the | control of energy to the government... after all, if I wanted | to nationalize every industry, I would start with the industry | upon which all other industries depend on: energy. | [deleted] | goodpoint wrote: | > they are being used a pawns to shift over the control of | energy to the government | | ...by pushing for domestic solar panels? And improved | isolation, heat pumps, passive houses? | | Sounds like the very opposite of centralizing energy | production. | | So maybe we need a bit more evidence for your conspiracy | theory. | jason-phillips wrote: | Last year I did a fair amount of consulting work for the GAIN | initiative at Idaho National Lab [0]. | | They're doing so much good work with micro and modular reactors | that can basically be "dropped in" decommissioned coal-burning | sites because the infrastructure to tie into the electric grid | already exists. | | It was expressed to me that selling this idea to the private- | sector energy industry was an uphill battle and uptake was very | slow to nonexistent. | | [0] https://gain.inl.gov/SitePages/Home.aspx | hutzlibu wrote: | "selling this idea to the private-sector energy industry was an | uphill battle" | | Could you elaborate on the why? I would asume, because of risk. | A solar plant, you can more or less just put anywhere, but a | nuclear power plant, even a small one, needs state permission, | has to meet extensive regulation, etc. | | It would need some convincing for me, too, that a nuclear | reactor can be just a drop in replacement for coal. I would | think unknown risks, hidden costs due to regulations, | neverending building, etc. | | And are we talking about a battle tested design, or is it new | technology? That sounds extra risky. | bozhark wrote: | Sounds like a good time to get into the energy sector. | | Time for an HN Wind, water, solar, and nuclear company start- | up. | | Who's in? | samstave wrote: | There was a nuclear startup that came through YC a few | years back... what happened to them? | pnw wrote: | Oklo is still around, recent news article wasn't great | though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29937836 | _1tan wrote: | Here, email is avg@duck.com | cupofpython wrote: | I have government contracting experience in construction | management QAQC | 7952 wrote: | Not the parent but have some experience with this on the UK. | Typically energy companies will start with the technology | they want to develop and then find a site that will suit it. | Starting with the plot of land is the wrong way around. And | existing decomissioned sites are just an asset like any | other. They may be sold for a distribution centre or a data | centre. And the grid connection may be used by a new power | station built on a neighboring plot or to connect an offshore | wind farm. | samstave wrote: | That sounds like a brilliant idea. However, the tooling and | staffing requirements of a Coal Plant arent going to suffice | for a nuke. | | How do they propose training for existing employees of a coal | plant. | | We think of Coal folks as "dirty stupid miners from kentucky" | and we think of people that work at nuke sites as "white lab | coat wearing scientists" | | The only dirty stupid person from Kentucky is Mitch. | MisterTea wrote: | > However, the tooling and staffing requirements of a Coal | Plant arent going to suffice for a nuke. | | I am not sure what you mean by Tooling but I am sure these | retrofit reactors aren't going to be dropped off by UPS and | someone on site has to figure out how to plug it in. | SoftTalker wrote: | I think there is a good amount of overlap. | | Operating the reactor is of course specialized. But once you | have the steam, the rest of the power plant is conventional. | Steam turbines, generators, and all the grid tie-in would be | mostly the same as a coal plant. | bozhark wrote: | We could always start _new_ companies... | cryptonector wrote: | Here's an idea: offer one of these micro/modular reactors for | _free_ to a developer of a new residential division, and | indemnify them by offering to remove it after at least N years | in operation and up to M years after that. | | I would consider living in a division that has extra low-cost | electricity. It couldn't be zero cost because nuclear could | only provide base load power, unless one of these micro/modular | reactor types is so innovative that it can provide base _and_ | peak load power, in which case such a division could have truly | zero-cost power for a bunch of years. | | I.e., _promote_ the darned things, loss-lead if need be. | | If the manufacturer won't take such risks, then might never | break through. | | I bet that after a few years you could get such good press out | of it that other developers might sign on. | ethbr0 wrote: | > _Here 's an idea: offer one of these micro/modular reactors | for free to a developer of a new residential division..._ | | One word: Epcot | | It's something Disney and Florida could probably agree on, | would be a wholesome PR story about investing in Walt's | futurism dreams, and would be easier to negotiate than with a | less-planned development. | | And finally, what better showcase than "If it's safe enough | for Disney"? | | _Our Friend the Atom_ , indeed | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRzl1wHc43I | photochemsyn wrote: | Construction costs are only part of the picture and utility | operators are well aware that they need to look at lifecycle | costs. This includes everything from costs of fuel rods (look | at the historically volatile uranium market), availability of | large volumes of cooling water (see more frequent droughts), | maintenance costs (maintenance being a major factor in the | retirement of California's nuclear power plants), security | costs, the cost of storing fuel rods onsite for decades, and | finally, decommissioning costs (as reactors themselves become | contaminated with in-situ activation products, i.e. radioactive | cobalt/iron/carbon/nickel isotopes). | | It's basically a huge long-term liability that just doesn't | exist with solar/wind/storage, hydropower, or geothermal. | spoonjim wrote: | Can't you just dump radioactive uranium into the bottom of | the ocean? Can't imagine it would do much damage with all of | the water around it. | iancmceachern wrote: | No | | https://theecologist.org/2009/mar/01/somalia-used-toxic- | dump... | Dylan16807 wrote: | That doesn't really show anything because it's such a | huge mixture and the vast majority is random toxic | chemicals, not plain old spent fuel. | stormbrew wrote: | I'm not saying I think dumping nuclear waste in the ocean | is a good idea (though I am also curious if there's been | specific impact studies done on it, if we're talking | about very very deep ocean) but I'm pretty sure somalia | isn't _in_ the ocean. | iancmceachern wrote: | They were dumping waste off the coast of Somalia, in the | ocean | Dylan16807 wrote: | "Bottom of the ocean" here doesn't mean on the | continental shelf. | JodieBenitez wrote: | There's life down there. | [deleted] | coredog64 wrote: | The largest nuclear plant in the United States (Palo Verde) | is in the middle of the Sonoran Desert and uses treated | sewage output for cooling. People probably won't stop | urinating during a drought. | cultofmetatron wrote: | oh thats cool. I imagine all the pathogens are effectively | killed for free | dqpb wrote: | > the cost of storing fuel rods onsite for decades | | This environmental remediation cost is generally missing in | comparisons with all other energy sources. | iancmceachern wrote: | And mining too | anamexis wrote: | It's generally missing from the other energy sources as | well. | nradov wrote: | Private industry uptake is slow because the required changes to | staffing, security, and waste disposal are so expensive. Until | there are higher costs for CO2 emissions, it will be cheaper | for power companies to convert those facilities to natural gas, | or just shut them down. | Arrath wrote: | > ...waste disposal are so expensive. Until there are higher | costs for CO2 emissions... | | Perhaps we should also examine the requirements and costs | associated with storing waste from coal-fired power plants. | Oft overlooked in favor of the fuel rod boogeyman. | | https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/coal-. | .. | | If we treated such waste with the care and security it | deserved, the cost equation may balance out differently. | krallja wrote: | One of the victims of coal was Pat McCrory in the 2016 NC | governors race. Signing "H.B. 2," the stupid transgender- | bathroom law, is often cited as the main reason for his | loss, but I believe the coal-ash spill[1] and subsequent | coverup scandal were decisive in his losing support in | rural areas. | | I certainly agree: the true costs of coal should be better | believed! | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_McCrory#Duke_Energy | paulmd wrote: | Yes. The problem with nuclear is basically twofold: | | first, the approval and regulatory process is deliberately | cumbersome and in obvious need of reform. Treating every | plant as a one-off design rather than standardizing has | enormously inflated costs. And generally much higher | scrutiny requirements for new designs have strangled the | ability to roll out better/safer designs. It's very similar | to what happens in the FAA with aircraft/engine designs, we | can design much better engines/reactors than we could in | 1960, but the new ones require an onerous approval process | while the old ones got grandfathered approval. So we only | build the old/worse ones! | | If you don't want any more nuclear constructed, set policy | to that effect, don't use the approval process to | artificially inject costs to make it unfavorable. And the | disposal situation just needs to happen, period. The waste | has to go somewhere, we can't just have it sitting around | forever. Even if we never ran another nuclear plant ever, | the _existing_ waste still has to go somewhere, and that | process was dragged to a halt for political reasons too. | The Yucca Mountain repository needs to be moved forward | again. | | Second, we need to stop letting coal externalize its costs. | Tax carbon emissions heavily, require secure disposal of | radioactive coal ash rather than letting it sit around in | storage ponds that eventually spill and destroy miles and | miles of land, etc. | | Unfortunately, in both cases, the fossil fuel industry has | its finger on the pulse of washington and isn't going to | allow a trillion-dollar industry to be torn down without a | massive fight. Existing stakeholders are just too | entrenched for it to ever be successful and construction | costs/disposal/externalities are just the place where that | iceberg breaks the surface. | | The "once you build the expertise, costs come down for the | Nth plant" is also probably true, but there's also other | things going on here with the process as a whole. | ncmncm wrote: | Doesn't seem to have helped any at Vogtle. | logifail wrote: | > micro and modular reactors | | Umm, are these the ones that - relatively speaking - produce | significantly more radioactive waste than traditional designs? | | "The next generation of small nuclear reactors will be big on | producing radioactive waste"[0] | | "Small nuclear reactors produce '35x more waste' than big | plants"[1] | | Sorry for the scepticism, but the nuclear lobby were the ones | that brought us the phrase "too cheap to meter"[2], and we're | still waiting... | | [0] https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/the-next-generation- | of-n... [1] | https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/02/nuclear_reactors_wast... | [2] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1613/ML16131A120.pdf | a_shovel wrote: | There was a discussion about this a few days ago, and this | comment thread [0] featured some criticism from experts on | these claims. | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31642424 | logifail wrote: | and yet one of the comments from that thread stated: | | > The correct answer is that there is no way to make | fission cost-competitive with the near-term price of | renewables + storage, or even with imported synthetic fuel | produced with renewables, waste or no waste. Thus, the | whole issue is moot. No such SMRs will be built except | where coerced funding carefully excludes true cost from the | process (as indeed happened on behalf of every single | utility reactor in operation | ClumsyPilot wrote: | There are countries where no combination of renewables + | storage is possible. Places with little sunlight and | little wind. What do they do? | logifail wrote: | 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. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | Suppose they don't - so what is you proposed solution - | they live in the dark ages? | ncmncm wrote: | They today import fuel and burn it. They are equipped to | continue doing so. | | They can add transmission lines, for cheaper importation. | | As fuel synthesis -- ammonia and hydrogen -- comes online | and undercuts NG, they can import that instead, at times | when their transmission line power capacity or | availability is exceeded. | | Fuel synthesis from solar in the tropics undercutting NG | extraction will be a big business. Synthesis using | reliable wind, in other places, likewise. | theptip wrote: | 35x of a small problem is not necessarily a big problem. You | need to quantify that objection. Nuclear waste can be | reprocessed (see Fast Breeder reactors); the concern raised | here is usually proliferation risk. | | Given a binary choice, I'd rather have to deal with some | nuclear waste than climate change, and I don't even think | that climate change is an existential risk for humanity (just | likely to cause large and uneven/unjust levels of harm). I | think it's misleading to throw out individual objections like | this without considering the systemic trade-offs that we need | to make. | | > the nuclear lobby were the ones that brought us the phrase | "too cheap to meter" | | I think this kind of blame-throwing is unhelpful. I couldn't | care less what marketing claims were made in the past. Does | this technology make a good cost/benefit trade-off now, or | not? Specifically, compared to the other options we actually | have available to us now. That is the conversation I think we | should be having. | | To address your object-level claim, as the OP describes in | detail, one reason nuclear is more expensive now is the ever- | increasing regulatory framework that has changed under the | feet of in-progress projects. Maybe those regulations have | resulted in a good ROI, but it's hard for me to buy that | claim. Nuclear is now 10-100x safer than most other | traditional/fossil forms of power generation[1], and it's | excruciatingly expensive to buy that safety margin. These are | tiny death rates caused by power generation. | | The problem here is that it's political suicide to say "I | think we should reduce safety regulations to make nuclear | power 10x more dangerous, because that will avert far more | deaths from climate change". In practice perhaps a major push | for solar/wind/geothermal would be a higher-ROI solution to | our problems, but that's politically much harder to get | consensus on. | | [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy | zackees wrote: | Post like this make me hopeful that rational minds will | prevail and we get clean abundant nuclear energy. | | It's becoming clear that the climate alarmism isn't about | solutions or even a tax, but forcing us to purchase "carbon | credits" from Saudi Arabia and other sovereign wealth funds | ranked high in the ESG index. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | "It's becoming clear that the climate alarmism isn't | about solutions or even a tax, but forcing us to purchase | "carbon credits" | | Every half educated climate activist knows thay carbon | credits are a fraud perpetuates by wallstreet types to | pretend they are doing something when they are not. | | This post is breathtakingly uninformed. I suggest calling | it climate illiteracy | throw827474737 wrote: | Posts like this make me just despair... we couldn't even | scale up this to the world wide needs, but if we could | the waste would be huge. | | Only thing that could get us out there and would only | make sense is going renewables everywhere in Manhatten- | like projects, but that won't happen because people | argueing like this got us into this situation where there | is allegedly only a binary choice between failed and | failed.. | towaway15463 wrote: | > the waste would be huge | | Isn't the opposite true? Nuclear fuel has the highest | energy density of any fuel source by a gigantic margin. | The entire US stockpile of waste since the 50s is only | 83,000 metric tonnes and could fit on a single football | field stacked less than 10 yards deep. If we could all | stop clutching our pearls about scary radiation and just | agree to store the spent fuel deep underground there'd be | absolutely no danger from it. Add to that the fact you | can recycle the fuel and get even more energy out of it. | logifail wrote: | > ESG | | Is that the same ESG that Exxon is part of but Tesla | isn't? | throwaway23234 wrote: | > In practice perhaps a major push for | solar/wind/geothermal would be a higher-ROI solution to our | problems, but that's politically much harder to get | consensus on. | | The most awesome thing you get from Solar is that it's | going to move forward no matter what. It's just something | you can do to lower your bill, or even disconnect from the | grid altogether. Personally I am off grid with no propane. | Almost unheard of in CA. Solar is now THAT cheap if you are | willing to put the up-front investment instead of paying | PGE $600 a month. And if you don't have the space - buy a | solar panel on a business from that other company they are | starting - it was on here a week or so ago. | theptip wrote: | I agree with the trend here. It's inevitable that solar | will displace fossil fuels eventually (especially when | you consider that fossil fuels will gradually increase in | price as the cost to extract goes up). | | The problem is that moving to solar solely by riding out | the market-led transition won't happen fast enough. We | would need to subsidize a lot more to avert the worst | outcomes of climate change. | criley2 wrote: | Solar is a perfect solution for like 1/3 of the world for | like 1/3 of the day. | | Batteries though, current batteries are a horrible | solution. | | It's funny that this threads main objection to nuclear is | waste/mining/etc but the solar battery revolution | generates some far worse environmental effects getting | all those rare earth minerals. Compared to the tiny | amounts of fuel needed for reactors, the sheer amount of | metal needed for worldwide grid solar batteries is | astronomical. | ncmncm wrote: | Mentioning batteries can only distract from sensible | discussion, because only the tiniest fraction of utility- | scale storage will ever be batteries. | solardev wrote: | Solar is great at small scale, but at utility/grid scale, | that means needing to ramp up storage too. The grid | doesn't currently have much storage capacity (batteries, | pumped hydro, phase shifting materials, etc.) to support | current needs, much less future needs if we want to phase | out fossil fuels. | | Getting the lithium and cobalt infrastructure up to scale | takes time and has a lot of geopolitical considerations. | It's not impossible but also far from trivial. It's not | just a matter of throwing up more panels and turbines and | calling it a day. | | Unless we can solve storage at scale, generation at night | will continue to be an issue, and nuclear is the least | climatically damaging way to do that in the interim. | megaman821 wrote: | Isn't this the crux of the argument for investing more | money into solar/wind/storage vs nuclear. The solar and | wind stuff is already cheap enough, so its storage vs | nuclear. Will nuclear get cheaper faster than grid-scale | batteries? There is only so much capital that can be | invested, and potential advancements in batteries are | looking a lot more promising than advancements in | nuclear. I think the lion's share of money should be | going to renewables and batteries. | ncmncm wrote: | Batteries are the _most expensive_ storage. They cost per | kWh stored, while others cost mainly only per W inserted | or extracted. Only a minuscule fraction of utility scale | storage will ever be batteries, so even mentioning | batteries only details discussion. | SiempreViernes wrote: | > Does this technology make a good cost/benefit trade-off | now, or not? Specifically, compared to the other options we | actually have available to us now. That is the conversation | I think we should be having. | | Then why are you making so many arguments about how we must | find ways to make it cheaper? That doesn't seem very | committed to the idea of discussing the _current_ cost | benefit trade-off. | theptip wrote: | The technology might make a good cost/benefit trade-off, | if we fixed the regulatory framework but not otherwise. | Or it might already make a good trade-off in the current | regulatory environment. I don't see the technology and | the regulatory framework as being tightly-coupled here, | though they do obviously affect each other. My point is | that we need to look at both of these factors, rather | than considering the regulatory framework as a given that | is set in stone, definitely correct, and something we | can't change. | | In this case it may be easier to change the regulatory | environment than to come up with new dramatically-cheaper | nuclear technology that complies with the restrictions of | the current regulations (though that is happening too | with modular reactors). | SiempreViernes wrote: | > I don't see the technology and the regulatory framework | as being tightly-coupled here | | You're saying the safety standards regulation is not | couple to the technology being used? Then what is it | regulating if it's not the technology? | avianlyric wrote: | > Then why are you making so many arguments about how we | must find ways to make it cheaper? | | They don't appear to be making those arguments at all. | Just stating that Nuclear regulations sets safety | standards substantially higher than safety stands for | other power sources. | | It quite reasonable to include a question about "how safe | is safe enough" when talking about trade offs. It's easy | to change safety standards, and they're constantly | evolving in all industries, so it's hardly disingenuous | to consider as part of the current cost benefit trade- | off. | | However to insist that Nuclear energy can only be | evaluated in strict unchanging state, or to suggest that | GP was suggesting such an evaluation, is somewhat | disingenuous, and substantially undermines the | authenticity of your argument. | SiempreViernes wrote: | > Nuclear regulations sets safety standards substantially | higher than safety stands for other power sources. | | Ok, but this surely only is an argument that _other_ | sources should be regulated harsher (and fossil fuels | absolutely should), not that we must make nuclear less | safe. | logifail wrote: | > Just stating that Nuclear regulations sets safety | standards substantially higher than safety stands for | other power sources. | | Errm, than renewables? | bipson wrote: | The whole problem with the whole argument is: It _isn 't_ a | binary choice. | theptip wrote: | I was using that phrasing to illustrate my ranking of | preference between those two options, I wasn't claiming | that we have a binary choice. | | To be clear, I am explicitly advocating for a proper | cost/benefit analysis that keeps all options on the | table, rather than getting caught up on single factors | ("we can't do micro-nuclear because it produces more | nuclear waste"). As I mentioned later in the post, a | major push to renewables is another option (I also don't | see these as mutually exclusive). | | I know that the most popular plan here is "push hard for | renewables". I like that plan; I think a Green New Deal | is an excellent idea. But empirically, how is that plan | going? If that's your plan A, do you think it's going | well enough to reject a plan B that you deem to be worse, | but still dramatically better than climate change? I | think the stakes are high enough that we should be | hedging our bets. | freemint wrote: | The number of plants you build is an integer valued | choice though. This has profound implications. | Octoth0rpe wrote: | > Nuclear waste can be reprocessed | | Arguing that we should adopt smr reactors because their | proportionally larger amount of waste can be burned by a | much larger/more expensive reactor that we'd _also_ have to | fund/build? One that would likely cost >10b and take 20 | years to construct? That doesn't seem like a good response | to the waste issues with SMRs. | logifail wrote: | > Does this technology make a good cost/benefit trade-off | now, or not? | | Given the progress (or lack of it) with the EPRs[0], I | don't think "now" is something nuclear can claim to deliver | on. | | If we'd started planning dozens of reactors a decade ago, | perhaps - but we didn't. | | Nuclear simply isn't any kind of "quick fix", by a long | stretch. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) | photochemsyn wrote: | This article is _very_ light on the basics of nuclear fission and | could use some help there. Here 's a good source on background: | | https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c... | | To summarize, light water reactors rely on the production of | uranium fuel rods, which hold uranium enriched to about 3% U-235 | relative to 97% U-238. Naturally occuring uranium ores are about | 0.7% U-235 and there is a large variation in the percentage of | uranium in a given ore by total rock mass, with a few deposits | being as much as 18% uranium ranging down to about 0.1%, which | most sources describe as the economically recoverable limit. This | will affect the cost of refueling a LWR (which has to be done | every ~3 three years). | | Fission in LWRs is due to slow thermal neutrons, which can only | fission U-235 and Pu-239 (odd-numbered isotopes. Fast neutrons | are a different story, see above source for that.) These slow | neutron/U-235 events generate fission fragments (atomic masses in | the range ~80-110 and ~130-150 with peaks at 95 and 135), gamma | rays, and free neutrons. The initial energy distribution for | heating the circulating fluid (water) is about 85% fission | fragment kinetic energy, and about 15% gamma ray and neutron | kinetic energy. | | Some of the neutrons are captured by U-239, forming plutonium-239 | (and other transuranics) - which is also subject to fission, and | over the lifetime of the fuel, about 66% of this formed Pu-239 is | itself fissioned, adding to the total energy output. | | However, the actual heat produced by the reactor is also due to | long-term decay of the fission fragments inside the fuel rods | (about 6% of the total). This latter 6% is important because even | if you halt the initial fission process, the reactor won't just | go to zero, it still has to be cooled to prevent overheating and | meltdown, as do the 'spent' fuel rods. It takes about ten years | for used fuel rods to go from 10 kW decay heat/ton to 1 kW decay | heat/ton. Storage of used fuel rods adds significantly to the | operational costs of the reactor over time. | | Long-term storage of used fuel is necessary almost entirely | because of the transuranics, which are alpha-radiation emitters | with half-lives of thousands of years. Most of the fission | fragments appear to decay via faster beta/gamma processes. | | Finally, there are the activation products to consider. Tritium | is formed in the primary circulating water coolant loop, and is | highly radioactive which is why this loop has to be isolated and | its heat transferred to the secondary coolant loop which drives | the steam turbines. Note here that reactors have to use a lot of | water, at least as much as a coal-fired power plant, and these | systems need to be highy engineered to prevent breakdowns, which | would lead to meltdowns (Fukushima failure mode). The other | activation products form in the reactor itself - carbon-14, | cobalt-60, iron-55, nickel-63. This significantly adds to the | cost of nuclear reactor decommissioning as the entire reactor | body has to be treated as high-level waste. | | These factors explain why nuclear reactors have to be | overengineered relative to traditional fossil fuel power plants, | oil refineries, etc. which regularly suffer major accidents and | fires - but those accidents don't lead to 100-year+ exclusion | zones around the accident sites, so it's deemed acceptable. Not | to belabor the point, but wind/solar/storage also has much lower | costs for these reasons. Security vis-a-vis terrorism, | cyberattack, military conflict, etc. is also a major related | cost. | TheDudeMan wrote: | Because reactors are much too large, causing far too slow of a | design iteration cycle and inability to leverage economies of | scale and mass production. | jokoon wrote: | I'm not an expert but I'm a bit skeptical about small nuclear | reactor designs. | | I want to believe they would be cost effective, but... It doesn't | seem there is a prototype that is cheap? | larsrc wrote: | Prototypes are never cheap. Prototypes are where all the | research and design costs go. Once you have a design that works | and doesn't have to be customised for each instance, you can | get economics of scale because now you're just producing the | same items over and over. | daniel-cussen wrote: | Masochism in part, and secondly the Simpsons blackballing the | entire industry. Nobody wanted to become a nuclear engineer after | that shitty show. The creators of the Simpsons are nuclear war | surrender monkeys. | | Context, in the show, the groundskeeper which is a discriminatory | stereotype of Scots, says the French are "cheese-eating surrender | monkeys", another discriminatory stereotype, but it's fine | according to the bitchvictim media's rules because since they're | both white it counts as "poking fun" and not "bigotry". Tucker | Max said "cheese-eating surrender monkey!" to a French girl at a | bar, game over right there even for a guy with crazy game like | him, because it's fucking insulting. Literally calling them | monkeys AND submissive cowards? Well if the Simpsons can do it to | others, I can do it to the Simpsons. One of my surnames is | French, I'm part French, my great-grandfather spoke French and | was a Francophile following the Blitzkreig with a map hoping the | French could turn the invasion around, he was rooting for them. | It's just not fucking funny. The Simpsons is a bigoted show, | don't think you can repeat any of those jokes. So this is what I | get to reply to the Simpsons, and all those losers: The Simpsons | are nuclear armageddon surrender monkeys. Whole bitchvictim media | with them. | | Going back to the topic of nuclear engineers, with 22 minutes of | slander on television on every day specifically against them | that's the hottest show on television decade after decade, like | only a son of a nuke would become a nuke. | | So that's also sabotage, then the public is like a thousand times | as sensitive to a nuclear accident than to a coal plant shitting | into the air we breathe. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598892 | | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... | dqpb wrote: | I would like to see a comparison of energy sources that includes | environmental remediation costs. | memco wrote: | There are efforts in our area to expand solar and they are | offering programs to the public to subsidize some of the | construction with shares of the panels. Customers are advised | that they will not make money but they'll get back some | percentage of their shares each month. Additionally the power | company offers a renewable power option for which they charge | extra over the standard rate. Given this: will we see a nuclear | option to help subsidize the cost? I would love the cost to come | down but I feel like they're never going to come down if we don't | build it anywhere. Would love to help get it going although I | have nowhere near enough money to make an offer other than to be | a willing paying customer to whoever can get service to me. | dest wrote: | On this topic, see the excellent website | https://whatisnuclear.com/ and its webpage about economics | https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html | xroche wrote: | > Because nuclear plants are expensive, and they take a long time | to build, financing their construction can also be a significant | fraction of their cost, typically around 15-20% of the cost of | the plant. For plants that have severe construction delays and/or | have high financing costs (such as the Vogtle 3 and 4 plants in | Georgia), this can be 50% of the cost or more. | | This is why nuclear power plants should be state-sponsored | projects. States typically have loans at 0% rate, or even | negative interests. | stewbrew wrote: | The state better invests the money in cheaper technologies. Why | should it waste the money on nuclear plants? | | Edit: To the downvoters: Seriously, why should the state waste | money on a technology that doesn't work and never has? More | than half of France's nuclear power plants are currently | offline and in maintainence mode. Maybe also because they could | not produce electricity at market prices. | ryan93 wrote: | They get 80% of their electricity from nuclear. And even | export some. | pmyteh wrote: | Yes, probably. This can bring its own problems, though. In | Britain, for example, the Treasury is extremely reluctant to | approve new public capital projects, even at negative real | interest rates. Investment is effectively rationed by requiring | a benefit/cost ratio of above 2 (at net present value, after | making heavy optimism bias adjustments) before it will approve | funding. New nuclear won't get close to that on any | conventional appraisal, which is one reason why _our_ current | nuclear new build is happening on an eye-wateringly expensive | private finance arrangement. | ImHereToVote wrote: | This is because of "not corruption" | pmyteh wrote: | It's mostly because the ability of the economy to produce | positive economic (but not direct financial) returns on | very cheap credit is basically infinite, and borrowing | money to invest in all of these things would need a huge | amount of extra tax revenue to pay off the loans, which is | hard. (Even in principle it's not straightforward for | government to capture the consumer surplus of | infrastructure investment. And in practice tax increases | are politically problematic). So it's rationed, instead. | strainer wrote: | A project should garner favorable financing arrangements for | its merits, not for its risks. | danans wrote: | Merit must be determined in a way that includes known risks. | Anything otherwise would be fraudulent. | Krasnol wrote: | Why should states invest it's taxpayer money into overpriced | and slow technology when there are cheaper and fast improving | alternatives? | BurningFrog wrote: | Note that solar and wind power are NOT alternatives to the | predictable base load of nuclear, hydro, or fuel burning | power generation. | Krasnol wrote: | "Steve Holliday, CEO National Grid: "The idea of large | power stations for baseload is outdated"" | | https://energypost.eu/interview-steve-holliday-ceo- | national-... | trashtester wrote: | This is a sales pitch from someone who makes a living | from selling grid capacity. | jacquesm wrote: | But is it true or not? | trashtester wrote: | I'm not sure he's lying on purpose. But it's pretty | common that people just stop thinking further when | someone tells him what they want to hear. | | The article certainly dismisses the need for storage way | too easily, imo. It claims that consumption can be | adjusted to match supply. There are not that many uses of | electricity where you can simply lower your consumption | when the supply is low. | | There are some cases, like car batteries that can, sort | of, be seen as consumption, but unless your car has some | extreme storage capacity, you typically want to be able | to recharge it when YOU need to have that range, instead | of when the power company has additional supply. | | And if you don't want to use fossil fuels for heating, | the power saved by not charging your car is NOT enough to | keep your house warm for a few cold days with no winds | (unless you live in a place with no real winter). | xienze wrote: | Because transitioning over to green technology is a decades- | long project, it's not something you can just snap your | fingers and make happen, as many countries are discovering. | You still need non-renewable energy sources to fill in the | gaps that renewables currently have. | Krasnol wrote: | You don't have to transition completely in decades. You can | start today. Meanwhile building a single nuclear reactor is | a "decade-long" project, you can't start today and in the | end you're still left with an old and expensive tech while | the green tech moved ahead rapidly during the same time. | | Germany managed to replace almost half of their generation | in 2 decades: | https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-renewable- | powe... | | When they started out the technology was terrible and | managed to do all that despite a just recently retired | government which did everything to stop further expansion. | trashtester wrote: | > Germany managed to replace almost half of their | generation in 2 decades: | https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-renewable- | powe... | | Still, only 16% of Germany's total energy consumption | comes from renewables: | | https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/style | s/g... | | If Germany wants to replace all uses of fossil fuels for | heating, transportation, industrial use, etc, with | renewables, HUGE investments remain. | | In particular, giving up the ability to smooth out | variations in production without the use of fossil fuels | will be extremely costly, unless the cost comes down by | at least a factor or 50. | xienze wrote: | > You don't have to transition completely in decades. You | can start today. | | Yes, I agree. If you start today, you'll be done in | decades. The boneheaded move is to start a green energy | transition and immediately start decommissioning existing | nuclear power plants and stonewall creating new ones by | throwing up your hands and saying "well it'll take | forever to build them." By the way, have you ever | considered why it takes so long to build nuclear power | plants? It's a political and environmental special | interest problem, not a technical one. | | At the end of the day, when the wind isn't blowing or the | sun isn't shining, you still have to generate power | somehow. Until the day that problem is solved (that's the | "decades" part), you want something like nuclear power to | fall back on. | Krasnol wrote: | I don't know why you're ignoring my reality example. | Germany is part of a EU wide market and it just works. | Also it's not like you put all your wind on one spot. | There is always wind somewhere for example. | | The idea that it's an "political, environmental and | special interest" problem while we're watching several | nuclear plants being FAR over budget and over due being | constructed in pro-nuclear countries proves that your | argument is false. | | So basically: everything you wrote there is wrong...why | are you doing this? | trashtester wrote: | > There is always wind somewhere for example. | | There is always wind somewhere. But grid capacity is not | free, in fact it is quite expensive. Let's say, on a | given day, the only place in Europe with reasonable winds | would be west of Cadiz, transporting all that power | through Spain, Portugal and France to cover the needs of | all of Europe, would require immensive grid capacity | expansion. And even with super-high-voltage, the losses | before the power reaches Estonia would be huge. | | Also, if this load causes a brownout in Spain, due to | improper maintaince, for instance, all of Europe could go | dark, cold and stop moving (in a time after fossil | fuels). | | (I can imagine seeing this from space during some cold | winter night around 2045, all the lights in Western and | Central Europe disappear at once. Only Norway and parts | of Sweden can be seen, since they have their hydro | power.) | | In other words, while a better grid can mitigate _some_ | of the variability of renewable supply, you still need | massive expansion of storage capacity when you stop using | natural gas, especially when you switch heating and | transportation to use electricity too. | | Seen from the outside, it surely looks like the German | population has been seriously misled. | petre wrote: | Yeah, we've seen how it (hasn't) worked out for Germany. | xyzzyz wrote: | There are no cheaper and fast improving alternatives to | provide plentiful electricity at 9pm every single day. | Kon5ole wrote: | Here are a few: | | https://www.energy-storage.news/department-of-energy- | confirm... | | https://www.energy-storage.news/batteries-at-worlds- | largest-... | | https://www.energy-storage.news/energy-dome-launches-4mwh- | de... | xyzzyz wrote: | That's not cheaper. Run the numbers and you'll see. Solar | by itself is indeed pretty cheap per kWh if you don't | care about matching supply with demand, but storage very | much is not. If it was, you'd see investors build | standalone storage, to buy cheap electricity, store it, | and resell when demand goes up. This is not what's | happening: instead, existing projects are based either on | heavy government subsidies, or on vanity buyers, who want | to pay above market prices to signal eco awareness, like | Starbucks in one of your links. | Kon5ole wrote: | The problem with running the numbers is that the actual | numbers for nuclear are basically unknowable and most | governments have given a taxpayer insurance that covers | this unknown number "in blanco". | | This means that most of the costs that will be caused by | operating a nuclear power plant are not included in the | costs of operations, and therefore not in the "price per | MWh" or similar numbers. We don't know what this number | is but we do know it's a very large number, and by | removing it from the resposibility of the plant operators | it represents a very large hidden subsidy for nuclear | power. | | Chernobyl and Fukushima are the familiar elephants in | this particular room of course with he most recent | estimate for Chernobyl passing 600bn usd in 2016 (and | counting still of course and for the forseeable future) | but I like to use the Asse II salt mine in Germany as a | more digestable example. | | This mine was used to store nuclear waste in the 70s | which turned out to be a very bad mistake that has to be | fixed in the coming few decades. The cost of this | project, (estimated to be at least several bn euros) is | not added to the cost of nuclear, it's just charged to | the current taxpayers. The power plants that generated | the waste stored in this mine are closed long ago but | they keep costing money decades later. | | Nuclear seems cheap because we're paying for it with | credit cards issued to our grandchildren. | sofixa wrote: | Because you can start a project with the existing, proven and | expensive tech _today_. Grid-scale storage is purely | theoretical today (bar pumped-up hydro, which is infeasible | in most locations). There 's lots of hope, and money should | be invested in the various alternatives, absolutely. But | nobody can say when and if that tech would be ready. | jeffbee wrote: | This is really not correct at all. Half of the utility- | scale generating projects waiting for interconnect approval | are combined solar and battery installation. Grid-scale | storage is a solved problem, technically and economically. | There were over 400GW of grid storage project proposed in | the U.S. at the end of 2021. | renewiltord wrote: | According to this commenter, we can't build with the proven | and expensive tech today because we don't have it any more | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31682876 | sofixa wrote: | Depends who. | | For EPR, we're almost over the hump, with the latest | projects in Finland and France coming online and becoming | fully operational in the near future. | | Rosatom has continued pumping out reactors at a decent | rate. | [deleted] | renewiltord wrote: | Looks like they should do it and we shouldn't in America | unless we can somehow allow them to build ours (I think a | fear of competition will make this infeasible but if | we're lucky we'll get the stuff). | orthecreedence wrote: | Storage is not not purely theoretical!! In fact there are | <lists five completely theoretical storage methods that | rely on stable climate or perfect geography>. | epistasis wrote: | This is inaccurate, GW scale batteries could be deployed | today, but because storage is so scalable it's often a | better idea to build multiple smaller batteries that help | alleviate grid congestion. | belorn wrote: | A month or so back someone posted a report by a financial | investing advisor for the energy sector, and they were | pretty clear what is and what isn't economical viable | right now. | | Solar + storage of 1-6 hrs can be made economical viable | as long as the storage can have 365 discharge cycles each | year, assuming prices get high enough each such cycle. | Each unit of storage get a return on investment each day, | and each are used fully at the point in time when the | market price is at peak. | | Under those precise circumstances the economics of | storage is cheaper than nuclear. The only other cheaper | alternative to nuclear is to use renewables when the | weather is optimal and fossil fuel when the weather is | not optimal, or just use fossil fuels (through that is | just a waste of money and the climate). | | Naturally this advisor firm could be wrong and someone | here could start the world first economical viable | operation that uses wind for renewables and then charge a | reverse hydro operation. It would make for a nice news | item. | epistasis wrote: | Making such broad statements about economical versus not | economical is difficult, because batteries serve so many | purposes and have so many revenue streams that deployment | is highly locational, depending on the specifics of the | grid and where and when demand causes congestion. | | There's also little incentive to install storage when | solar and wind penetration is low, but as higher | percentages of the grid is powered by renewables, then | storage quickly becomes far more attractive. | | Currently, there are 14.5GW of batteries in development | across the US, and this is just a tiny nascent industry. | Even as a small industry, this is many times the power | capacity of nuclear currently in development. | | This biggest challenge with batteries right now is low | supply, and competing with demand from EV production, | which provides higher margins: | | https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable- | business/how-ba... | belorn wrote: | If we are talking about the US and not like places like | northern Europe, then they have a lot of existing | capacity for fossil fuel production. The cheapest way to | produce energy would be to just add more renewables and | use that fossil fuel whenever that weather isn't optimal. | Batteries might be competitive to fossil fuel in places | such situation as highlighted by the financial advisor, | ie when they can discharge fully each day of the year at | the maximum price point. | epistasis wrote: | The batteries can often be cheaper than fossil fuels, | especially when colocated with existing solar. Most solar | designs currently under size the inverters compared to | maximum solar power output, to get the cost optimal | balance. Batteries on-site allow storage of that extra DC | energy, and then reuse of the same inverters outside | normal solar generation hours to discharge the batteries. | | This means that hitting the cost peak is really easy for | batteries. | | As this cheapest form of energy begins to dominate, and | the "baseload" generators like coal or combined cycle gas | become more expensive than solar, then it becomes less | economical to run the "baseload generators because they | don't have sufficient price support during the peak solar | output times. This will raise the night time prices of | energy, as the daytime prices decrease, and eventually | storage plus solar becomes cheaper than new "baseload" | facilities, and then cheaper than continuing to run | existing "baseload" facilities. | | I put "baseload" in quotes because on the past baseload | meant cheapest energy, in addition to slow and expensive | dispatchability. That is all changing. | belorn wrote: | > and then reuse of the same inverters outside normal | solar generation hours to discharge the batteries. | | Yes, if we are talking about hours of capacity then | batteries can be very cost competitive to fossil fuels. | That is exactly what the financial advisor stated in | their report. | | In areas where solar + batteries can reliable handle all | year round demands for energy, those technologies should | just replace fossil fuels. There will likely be some | natural gas plants that get subsidies to exist as reserve | in case there is a sudden weather change, but nuclear | wouldn't be a great option in such places. | jacquesm wrote: | A big variable too is the price development of batteries, | which is trending in the right direction due to more and | more production capacity coming on-line but once grid | storage and EVs start to compete for those batteries the | price could well be going up. | pydry wrote: | >Grid-scale storage is purely theoretical today bar pumped- | up hydro, which is infeasible in most locations | | Viable locations arent in short supply at all: | | https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists- | spot-530-000-potenti... | sofixa wrote: | They aren't in short supply, but aren't present | everywhere - e.g. in Europe there's nothing north of | Slovakia. If Denmark wants storage, they have to work | with other countries and rely on transit. It's even worse | for the Baltics. | arethuza wrote: | Norway, UK and Ireland aren't in Europe? | | Edit: I was a bit puzzled as there are already pumped- | storage plants in Wales and Scotland with more planned. | raphaelj wrote: | Well, that also applies if Denmark wants uranium, oil or | gas. | freemint wrote: | You know that you can just pump all the water Denmark | has. Build underground caverns full with air, let water | in for energy and pump it out later. | Krasnol wrote: | You make it sound like it's some burden while the EU grid | is actually a single market with a significant expansion | last year: https://www.tennet.eu/our-grid/international- | connections/nor... | Krasnol wrote: | You make it sound like it's some SciFi tech where in | reality Germany has replaced half of it's whole production | with true green energy in the last two decades. Replacing | nuclear years ago. | larsrc wrote: | That's inaccurate. Germany has replaced half of its | _electricity_ production with renewables (modulo | dispatchability), but electricity only accounts for a | quarter of the energy usage. We frequently have to import | electricity from France now, where it's largely made by | nuclear, and electricity in France is a lot cheaper than | here. Closing the German nuclear plants was grand scale | stupid. | babypuncher wrote: | Hedging your bets. We know nuclear works. Grid-scale energy | storage for renewables still feels far fetched. Maybe it's | not. Either way, we should not put all our eggs in one | basket. | 7952 wrote: | We shouldn't put all our eggs in one basket. But I don't | think rapid growth of the battery industry is far fetched | at all. It has already experienced massive growth and is | ridiculously mass producable. And we will need batteries | anyway for electric cars. | trashtester wrote: | The battery capacity needed to replace all cars with | electric ones is about two orders of magnitude lower than | the battery capacity needed to replace all fossil fuels | with wind and solar, at least in temperate regions, where | you need heating during the winter. | | According to this MIT study, the cost (LCOE) of doing | this today, would be $3000/MWH: | | https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/08/20210829-mitei.h | tml | | Even if the cost of batteries continue to come down by x4 | in price every decade from now on, it will take 30-40 | years for prices to come below current energy prices. | | If we hit an S-curve before then, it could take much | longer. | jacquesm wrote: | No, it also works: | | https://arstechnica.com/information- | technology/2018/04/austr... | | We just need a lot more of it, but it _definitely_ works. | fulafel wrote: | States tend to have self imposed debt limiting policies, so | opportunity costs are still there for investments. | Tenoke wrote: | If you think 50% cost overruns and overheads are uncommon for | state sponsored projects.. you will be right but only because | often the actual numbers are much higher. | sfe22 wrote: | Zero percent or negative just means people involuntary pay by | inflation. There is not free lunch (someone had to work to make | it) | imtringued wrote: | If there is a negative interest rate of 4% on cash, then the | easiest way to avoid it would be to lend out your money at | 0%. Since there is no growth dependence and excessive savings | do not grow automatically anymore there is no need for | inflation and the central bank can do price level targeting | instead. | kube-system wrote: | No, interest rates are quoted nominally -- i.e. they are | independent of inflation. | | If you purchase a negative interest rate instrument and | experience inflation, you will lose real value to both. | trashtester wrote: | It is a tax on deposits. You only have to pay if you have | deposits. Basically, it means the saver has to pay to store | value as currency. On the other hand, they also have to pay | if they want to store other valueables, such as gold or the | most ancient store of value of all, grain. | | I don't think a negative real interest rate is inherantly | unfair, any more than it was unfair to have 10% of grain go | to waste 3000 years ago when storing for a bad year. | | If you had 7 good years, and expect 7 bad years, the utility | of the stored grain may be way higher in the bad years than | the good years, even when accounting for the waste. The same | goes for cash. | | The same can be true with cash. | | To demand that cash maintains its purchasing power, is the | same as ancient farmers demanding to purchase grain from | their neighbour (who did save) in a bad year as they | themselves got paid for their grain during the good years. | | In periods of growth, we may start to think that positive | time preference is natural. But the fact is that throughout | most of human history, we would switch to negative time | preference in good times, since we expected bad times to come | back. During good times, humans would store grain, dry meat, | fish and fruit, build housing, tools or boats, all of which | were investments into goods that were likely to gradually | perish over time. | | Even after people started to use coins, this was true. If you | produced a surplus during one year, you could trade it for | cold coin instead of storing it. But not only was there a | risk that the coins would be stolen or otherwise vanish, it | was also highly likely that at the time where you needed to | spend that goal, prices would be higher. | imtringued wrote: | One has to consider that the storage capacity of the | economy isn't infinite. Charging money for storing | something is a very straightforward business model. When | your economy is growing the storage capacity appears | endless as no storage is actually needed, you can just | produce the good in the future with your expanded | production capacity. Once the economy stops growing for | even a single year, then you will effectively hit the | storage capacity of the economy and must pay to store | additional goods that are intended to be consumed in the | future. | danuker wrote: | Negative interest rates mean more than your units of currency | going down in purchasing power. | | It also means them going down in number (a bank CHARGES you | for the costs incurred holding your money). | this_user wrote: | > This is why nuclear power plants should be state-sponsored | projects. States typically have loans at 0% rate, or even | negative interests. | | Not anymore with inflation at around 8% in many western | countries. And even so, construction and operation still remain | expensive. France's EDL is basically bankrupt if it were not | for the state backstopping them. However you want to slice it, | nuclear power is not economically viable, and looks even worse | compared to the rapidly decreasing costs of renewable sources | of energy. | | So why waste more money on an obsolete technology rather than | use it for solving the remaining issues with renewables like | energy storage? Invest that money in battery technology and | everything that comes with that. That approach will do a lot | more good in the long run than trying to keep the nuclear | industry on life support even though it has failed for half a | century to deliver on its promises. | samstave wrote: | Inflation is WAY fn higher than 8%. | | Try more like 30% | | Go to costco's meat section, walmarts juice section, any fn | gas station. | | Fleecing is whats happening. | | EDIT: | | Cool, clearly you arent tracking prices like I do. | | Costco's meat section is up ~22%$ | | Walmarts Juices are up ~30% | | We all know what gas prices are. $7 a gallon in Napa. | outworlder wrote: | > So why waste more money on an obsolete technology | | It is not obsolete. At all. You can argue that some reactor | designs should not be used and I would agree. But fission is | the only answer we currently have for baseline power that | doesn't involve burning things. It will become obsolete if we | can ever make fusion work. | | We should be deploying more reactors. There are small | reactors (shipping container-sized) that could be used to | power small towns and are pretty safe. Good luck getting one | approved and installed in your neighborhood. It's not the | tech that's being held back, it's people. | | Look, I love batteries, I drive EVs since 2015. But if we | want to avoid the worst effects of climate change, we need to | provide cheap and reliable baseline power 24/7. There's not | enough time to do so with batteries alone. | derriz wrote: | The electricity from small modular reactors is far more | expensive than that from large reactors - about twice as | expensive by some estimates[1]. They also produce more | waste per MWh generated. | | The industry has been pushing in the opposite direction | with larger reactors like the EPR[2] to reduce costs. | | When measured by LCOE, a MWh from a new conventionally | sized nuclear plant is 4 to 7 times as expensive as a MWh | from solar PV, then SMR are simply out of the question from | a cost point of view. | | [1] https://publications.csiro.au/publications/publication/ | PIcsi... [2] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) | trashtester wrote: | Solar is great in deserts, where the sun always shines | and were the main use of electricity is air conditioning | during the hottest parts of the day. | | Solar is near-useless in colder areas, where you want to | use the power for heating in the winter. | | If you include the storage + grid expansion needed to | compensate for the intermittent nature of most renewables | (especially if you don't want to rely on fossil fuels | when the wind is not blowing), the LCOE of many of them | will be many times higher than just the production cost. | | Meanwhile, Korea claims to be able to construct Nuclear | capacity at prices down to $0.03/kwh with their APR1400 | reactors: | | https://www.kns.org/files/pre_paper/34/15A-435%EC%9D%B4%E | A%B... | | That's at least an order of magnitude lower than the cost | of renewables when constant output is required. | Gwypaas wrote: | Awesome then that on-shore wind is even cheaper than | solar, and exists at night. Then for some more, still | less than 1/3 to 1/4 of nuclear you get off-shore wind | with higher capacity factors. | trashtester wrote: | When the wind is not blowing, the cost of wind per kwh is | infinite. | freemint wrote: | > Solar is near-useless in colder areas, where you want | to use the power for heating in the winter. | | Heating is super awesome with renewables. As you can | store heat in an well isolated home. Yes you need | capacity for that but heat pumps well a lot with that. | trashtester wrote: | > Heating is super awesome with renewables. As you can | store heat in an well isolated home. | | Sounds like you're not speaking from experience. | Actually, houses are pretty lousy batteries. Most people | have a range of only a few degrees that they find | comfortable indoors. They will tend to set the thermostat | to about the middle of that range. If they turn off the | head, the temperature will go the lower end of that range | after a few hours. Very few hours if it's really cold | outside, and that's when it matters most. | | Admittedly, my house is old and not super-well isolated, | but during the coldest days of winter (around -20C), it | can easily require 10kw, constantly, to keep it warm | enough to prevent my wife from becoming agressive. | | If we turn off the power for 2 hours, it's already pretty | cold. | | Heat pumps would reduce overall energy consumption, but | not the need for constant use, and more isloation would | reduce both, but it would still likely take several kw | constantly on days like that. | bozhark wrote: | Had to delete my one line response because you embodied | everything I meant. Cheers | epistasis wrote: | > There's not enough time to do so with batteries alone. | | I suggest you run the numbers on this, because I think you | have them exactly reversed. | | We are increasing battery production capacity 10x every | five years. This could be accelerated if there was | government investment as is done for every single nuclear | reactor. At current rates we expect to produce | 20-30TWh/year of lithium ion batteries, not including other | chemistries that could be used for stationary storage but | not mobile applications. | | Currently in the US we are only building 2GW of reactors, | but we have ~100GW of reactors quickly reaching retirement | age. Even if we scale our current nuclear construction | capacity 10x every five years like we do for batteries, and | add in the 10 year construction time, we are going to see a | big decrease in nuclear before we see an increase. | epistasis wrote: | Argh, there's a typo there, we expect 20-30TWh/year in | 2031. | samstave wrote: | I have long thought there should be a global nuclear | consortium and have that organization build and run and | manage and secure all the nuclear power plants in the | world. | | Earth/Humanity needs electricity FOREVER. Its bizarre that | we cant come together over this expressly universal need. | This and water. | freemint wrote: | > But fission is the only answer we currently have for | baseline power that doesn't involve burning things. | | Patently false. The sun shines 24/7. This (besides power | satellites) offers other possibilities like a world wide | connected grid. Even if you are a proponent of nuclear you | will also need that, as i assume you do not want to put | reactors in every country. | [deleted] | belorn wrote: | > So why waste more money on an obsolete technology rather | than use it for solving the remaining issues with renewables | like energy storage? Invest that money in battery technology | and everything that comes with that. | | A few years ago Sweden did a study on green hydrogen, the | energy storage that Germany and many other countries seem to | view as the best bet as a storage for places where solar + | daily discharging batteries won't work. The cost was then | around 10-20 times more expensive than nuclear. Those costs | has gone down a bit since then, but it is still several times | more expensive than nuclear. | | Sweden and Germany are still very much in favor of green | hydrogen, and there are on-going experiment to use it for | industries that need hydrogen itself (rather than burning it | for energy), but they are no investments for a grid storage. | If nuclear is not economically viable, a technology that is | several time more expensive is not something they are just | going to throw money at. Those money are currently going | towards fossil fuels, since that is cheaper than nuclear. | | If however we would ban fossil fuel, especially cheap fossil | fuel from Russia, the economics might change. There is also | always the hope that politicians investment into fossil fuels | today will give green hydrogen enough time to become | economical viable for the energy sector. | pfdietz wrote: | China is selling electrolyzers for < $300/kw. Given that | renewable electricity's LCOE is a fraction of nuclear, I | don't see how hydrogen could be 10-20 times the cost of | nuclear. Were they doing something ridiculous like assuming | it's stored as liquid hydrogen? | | Also, remember the big use of hydrogen on the grid would be | as a dispatchable backstop to cheap renewable sources, not | as something that's used 24/7. So most of the energy flow | would not be through hydrogen, it would be from the | renewables directly (or through batteries for short term | smoothing.) | belorn wrote: | There is a massive war and shortage of natural gas in | Europe so if there exist cheap electrolyzers + wind power | combinations that can solve that issue today then people | should rush to invest before next winter where prices are | predicted to sky rock. I recall that the study did say | that existing natural gas power plants could cheaply and | easily be converted to run on hydrogen. Hydrogen prices | has also gone up a lot since the war. | | And it was 10-20 times a few years ago. Prices has gone | down a significant bit. If you get the prices to around | $1 per/kg (about 3-10x reduction from this year prices), | and we don't account for transportation, infrastructure | and physical storage, the price would start to look | really competitive to nuclear. | | If you search online you will find plenty of predictions | that prices _might_ reach that magical $1 per /kg in say | 2030 or so, in which case that will be a great choice. As | a bonus it will make medical oxygen dirt cheap. At that | point all discussions about nuclear power will mostly be | made moot since hydrogen will be the factual best choice. | freemint wrote: | 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). | trashtester wrote: | This study from MIT found that the LCOE of fully | renewable energy production, backed by LI batteries would | be $3000/MWh vs $2400/MWh for hydrogen instead of | batteries for storage: | | https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/08/20210829-mitei.h | tml | | Either alternative is about 15x to 50x more expensive | than Nuclear, though.... | freemint wrote: | I thought the article we are replying to said | >>$4000+/MWh for nuclear not including financing. | trashtester wrote: | No, it is saying that it is currently about $6000000/MW | construction cost. Then you devide by number of hours of | operations to get the cost per MW/h. (Not adjusted for | interest rate.) | | The LCOE of new nuclear plants have estimates ranging | from less than $30/MWh to around $150/MWh, while | estimates for the cost of plants built a few decades ago | end up at around $40-60/MWh, from the numbers I've seen. | pfdietz wrote: | That's grossly excessive. This website lets you look at | optimization vs. actual historical weather data and | reaches a much lower cost. BTW, you use both batteries | AND storage; their combination can be cheaper than either | alone. You also store the hydrogen underground rather | than above ground. | | https://model.energy/ | trashtester wrote: | I agree that a combination of batteries and hydrogen | would be a bit cheaper, but generally I would trust the | MIT study over the model above, that states directly that | it is a toy model. | | It's fun to play with, though, so definitely upvoted. | | Do you have an alternative peer reviewed study to support | the conclusions? | mellavora wrote: | Huh. I'd argue that they should be state-sponsored because that | is what the state is for-- investing in long-term | infrastructure where the value is widely diffused and thus hard | to capture via market mechanisms, i.e. investments which are | foundational to the more focused investments which business is | so well suited to maximize. | | similar to things like interstate highways or internets or | public schooling. I'd add "healthcare" to the list, but some | countries haven't realized this yet. | joe_the_user wrote: | Indeed, US large-construction has reached a point of | fundamental/terminal corruption through the process of | private contracting and especially through the bid-based | system. | | You can see this with the disastrous failure of public | transit construction and planning in the country and if | nuclear became an option, it seems very likely that the same | corrupt mouths that eat up transit spend would also eat | nuclear spending. Something for nuclear proponents to | consider. | belorn wrote: | One of the largest problem is the concept of cost-plus | contracts, where the construction doesn't have a fixed cost | from the beginning. Government could in theory avoid this | problem by doing the design first and then have companies | bid on the construction without a cost-plus contract. This | assumes that the regulations remain constant from start to | finish, as well as the contractual obligations. | balaji1 wrote: | Might be nitpicking here: Referring to the pie charts under this | section[1], I can't help but think images like this are | intentionally meant to mislead: | [1]https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are- | nuclear-p... | | I understand author picked it from some other source, Dawson 2017 | or whatever. | | These pie charts are not like for like, when it includes the | renewables -- maybe the coal/gas/nuclear fine. So why put them | next to one another. I can't tell if the costs of renewables are | for entire "farms" (solar or wind farms). What about lifetime of | plants/farms, total value derived, etc. | zbrozek wrote: | What is your objection? The charts are all various fractional | contributions to LCOE, which already captures and normalizes | for things like plant life. You could argue that the size of | the pie should be scaled for the total LCOE, but that doesn't | really help with the comparison being made (e.g., the | relatively small fractional cost of fuel vs capital for nuclear | plants). | Ericson2314 wrote: | > but all else being equal (ie: assuming total production cost | stays constant), it's better to have a larger fraction of your | electricity costs be variable, so that if demand drops then | production cost drops as well. | | This is how capitalism gives us scarcity when there is no reason | for scarcity. Infrastructure like trains and nuclear that | absolutely _swamps_ current demand, and whose costs cannot be | adjusted very much (even if one can run fewer trains, remove some | fuel rods) is _good_. But woe unto anyone that floods the market | utopia-style under capitalism --- you will just get paid nothing | and your investors will not repeat such a project again. | bgilroy26 wrote: | Cow's milk in the United States seems to be an exception to | this | skybrian wrote: | Another way to interpret that sentence is "it's better not to | spend too much on construction, and it can be better to spend | on fuel if it means spending less on construction." | | Building things you don't need is waste of labor and resources, | regardless of the economic system you use or who paid for it. | This should be accounted for somehow. | Ericson2314 wrote: | What is needed changes over time. | | It is better to spend more on capital than operational costs | if one actually wants the world to change not just ideal | along. | | The best cost control is in large part doing lots of cookie- | cutter work, hence the focus on small modular reactors. It is | better to do those, and then ramp up the "small" part over | time. | | Likewise, we should construct lots of rail simultaneously | with ramp up to improve those supply chains too. | | But at no point do you _want_ to spend more on fuel in any | global optimal sense. That is just wasteful. It 's not like | we are _actually_ uncertain that we won 't need way more | electricity production on a societal scale. | skybrian wrote: | I agree that we are going to need more power generation as | electricity replaces other forms of energy. | | But for any given level of electricity generation, doing it | in a cheaper way is still better than doing it in a more | expensive way. For one thing, it allows capacity to be | increased for the same cost. | LatteLazy wrote: | If your costs are all fixed, and demand falls, you have to put | prices up to stay alive. That's the issue with Nuclear: If it | costs $1bn a year for the plant, it costs that whether you | generate 1bn kWh (at $1 each) or 1 kWh (at $1Bn each). | | What you call artificial shortage, others call "not making | something no one wants and then forcing them to pay for it"... | Ericson2314 wrote: | There is no non-depressing future where demand for | electricity doesn't go _way_ up as fossil fuel is phased out. | An uncertainty is a shit situation we should work to prevent, | not have a contingency plan for. | | This is where the Keynesian "socialization of investment" | stuff comes in. Private markets get skiddish over change even | when our economies are fully capable of dealing with the | issues. Don't be held hostage to private capital playing | "nose goes" when the solution is obvious. | | Abundance really does mean everything is too cheap to meter | on margin. There is no other definition. To get there we have | to make people more risk tolerant, and the only way to do | that is guaranteeing consumption. | LatteLazy wrote: | It's not so much that your points are wrong, as that they | fail to see a bigger picture. | | When you say there is no no depressing future without | increased electrical demand, that's true. But who | guaranteed you a non depressing future? | | And the same was true in 1990, but we've made almost no | progress to removing fossil fuels. So if you'd started | nuclear projects then, you'd be just coming online. And | have no new customers. And in the mean time the price of | gas and solar and wind would have collapsed in comparison. | And you couldn't afford to shut down when the price crashed | like they can. You're fixed costs would rapidly drive you | bankrupt. | | That's the problem here. | | The future isn't nice. And it's not predictable. Even over | relatively short periods. | | So it's much better to plan 6m ahead and then do it again | 40 times, than to try and plan 20 years ahead in one go. | That makes it much much better to run small incremental | short-term projects like gas plants and renewables. | | And if you do have to make some sort of medium term plan | then it needs to be very flexible. Like a gas plant that | can shut down for a year and avoid 90% of its costs. | | Nuclear is long term, fixed cost. And that's terrible. | | But go ahead, by some shares in a nuclear operator (or | someone else in the supply chain etc). Make your fortune | being right in 2045. Just don't sign up the rest of us via | the public finances please! | | This has always been one of the issues with control | economies: people vastly over estimate their ability to | predict the future, they don't appreciate flexibility and | they don't manage risk. That's how the USSR ended up | producing enormous amounts of steel and no washing | machines: no one asked what people wanted, they just said | 20% more of the same compared to last year! China are doing | the same thing right now with electricity targets and no | financial services... | thraway11 wrote: | "For instance, in the 1980s several nuclear power plants in | Washington were canceled after the estimated construction costs | increased from $4.1 billion to over $24 billion." | | That's not even 10x. I would say hitting the correct order of | magnitude is "on budget" for civil engineering projects. | | Here is what out of budget looks like: | | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-13/how-the-c... | [deleted] | mch82 wrote: | 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 per Megawatt Hour calculation for nuclear | that includes security and long-term waste storage? The | calculations I've found for the $96/MWh figure seem like they | include construction and operation costs, but exclude | decommissioning and waste management. | ncmncm wrote: | 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. | No one has offered any plausible suggestion for how to contain | corruption costs for nuke construction, at least in the US, | never mind who should apply such containment. | | No such dynamic is apparent in solar and wind projects, where | expected cost is easy to estimate as a multiple of generating | units -- panels and turbines. | | We may expect that SMRs will not find traction specifically | because they do not seem to offer the conduit for graft that | bespoke nuke construction guarantees. | Guvante wrote: | It is complicated: $6B is supposedly related to nuclear waste | from the weapons program which is likely hard to compare to | power production sites for a huge number of reasons. | | Technically there is a $40B fund paid for from taxes on nuclear | production to deal with the long term storage problem by NIMBY | has prevented that from going from a concept into a reality. As | with many things "we need X but not here" makes getting things | done hard. | | So from a planning standpoint the long term problem is solved | but in reality it isn't. How you boil that down into a cost I | couldn't begin to solve. | adastra22 wrote: | Nuclear waste is only a problem if you don't allow breeder | reactors. Otherwise it is a fuel resource and an asset, not a | liability. | devoutsalsa wrote: | 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 | ncmncm wrote: | 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. | com2kid wrote: | > 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. | | New plants produce a lot less waste. | | And the reason nuclear waste seems so expensive is because we | have externalized the cost of most other forms of power | generation. Coal and gas, well we just let people get sick or | die. | | Natural gas, fracking has huge negative impacts on communities, | lots of illness, but again, we don't count that as part of the | "financial cost" of natural gas. | | Solar, we have the panels made in some other country, we have | the raw materials mined in some other country, we import the | final product, now it is clean energy. | | (I support solar, but there _is_ an environmental cost to solar | panels!) | | Nuclear makes us confront the waste up front, so now we are all | freaked out about it. | | As has been pointed out repeatedly, you could take a football | field, dig down a few stories, and put all the nuclear waste | needed for energy generation in there, and then have enough | left over to keep storing spent fuel from new high efficiency | reactors until sometime until well after everyone reading HN is | dead and gone. | | It is a crap shoot if the cost of paying the lawyers to deal | with all the lawsuits over where to build the storage site will | end up costing more or less than the storage itself. | jka wrote: | > As has been pointed out repeatedly, you could take a | football field, dig down a few stories, and put all the | nuclear waste needed for energy generation in there | | Here are mentions of this talking point on Hacker News: | | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que. | .. | belorn wrote: | It is interesting that personal costs was such huge part of the | increase in construction. Construction seems like a field that | automation has yet to really start to create waves, but I recall | seeing news about small step forward like scaled up 3d printing | with cement. Modular construction is an other concept I have not | heard much for in the context of nuclear plants. | freemint wrote: | You can never 3d print pre stressed cement. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-09 23:00 UTC)