[HN Gopher] $60/MWh for advanced nuclear electricity is achievab... ___________________________________________________________________ $60/MWh for advanced nuclear electricity is achievable: GE Hitachi Executive Author : PaulHoule Score : 77 points Date : 2023-04-03 20:42 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.utilitydive.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.utilitydive.com) | tastyfreeze wrote: | Every time I read about SMRs the idea sounds fantastic. But, | until a company actually starts building SMRs it is just a grift. | The first company to actually build a usable SMR will have | customers lined up at the door. No need to advertise to the | public how neat your plans for SMRs are. Save that for investors. | Just start building and testing. This technology is like landing | and reusing rockets. It will completely change the calculus for | choosing fission. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | You need to be able to build them for a reasonable price. | | NuScale can build them. | | The line is almost no one. | | It needs to be a lot cheaper. | PaulHoule wrote: | They are building one in China | | https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsmilestone-for-chinas-ac... | | https://nucleus.iaea.org/sites/INPRO/df13/Presentations/011_... | | Like Nuscale's reactor is is a PWR with the steam generators | built into the pressure vessel. | | Site preparation is underway in Ontario for a BWRX-300 | | https://www.ans.org/news/article-4697/contract-for-darlingto... | tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: | Also in the article: "Utility-scale solar-plus-storage costs are | about $45/MWh; wind power costs are $30/MWh; and stand-alone | utility-scale solar costs are at $32/MWh" | | Wikipedia has higher numbers, but still comparable. And | "technology proponent says technology can achieve X" is a really | bad selling point if another technology _already delivers X_ , | especially if the new technology is going to face social hurdles. | PaulHoule wrote: | i don't know if i believe the $45/MWh figure for solar+storage | just yet. Maybe someday, maybe not far in the future, but grid | scale storage isn't scaled out that far in 2023 so far as i | know. | ZeroGravitas wrote: | The independent review of costs for nuscale they link is brutal: | | https://ieefa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/NuScales-Small-... | | > As currently structured, those project risks will be borne by | the buying entities (participants), not NuScale or Fluor, its | lead investor. In other words, potential participants need to | understand that they would be responsible for footing the bill | for construction delays and cost overruns, as well as being bound | by the terms of an expensive, decades-long power purchase | contract. | | > These compelling risks, coupled with the availability of | cheaper and readily available renewable and storage resources, | further weaken the rationale for the NuScale SMR. | idiotsecant wrote: | > nuke generation is cheap if you push all the risks for | construction cost overruns onto someone else. | | I am a big fan of nuke as the generation source that is mostly | environmentally benign right now today full stop. It's well | known, though, that the main problem with nuke is that it's | very expensive to build because we're quite worried about the | safety so we have a lot of process and regulatory approval | built into the design and construction. That extra process and | regulatory approval is quite expensive. | | Of _course_ it 's a lot cheaper if you just disregard those | things. | adventured wrote: | We should disregard the cost and aggressively subsidize a | massive expansion of nuclear power, guaranteeing the price | for consumers (matching something reasonable re the market). | | Some might proclaim that's not fair competitively. I have no | interest in being fair about the matter, I don't want my | government to be either. | pydry wrote: | > nuke generation is cheap if you push all the risks for | construction cost overruns onto someone else. | | This is what France tried to do with the reactor they built | for Finland. There was a budget hole of a few billion and an | argument/lawsuit over who would pay for it. | | Nuclear costs are a hot potato. | Kuinox wrote: | The EPR design is bloated because germany wanted to | sabotage the project and achieved to increase the cost | through additional security no other nuclear plant ever | needed. | HDThoreaun wrote: | There are certainly a lot of excuses for why nuclear is so | expensive. As far as I can tell they are all just that, | excuses. Korea is by far the largest producer of nuclear | power plants today. They have the scale that people claim is | necessary to reduce cost. They have the pro nuclear | regulatory environment that would never be politically | possible in the states. Nuclear still costs them more than | solar and wind. | adastra22 wrote: | He seems to be complaining that NuScale keeps increasing the | energy output of its modules. Am I reading that right? | idiotsecant wrote: | Nuscale is moving the goalposts - they started off with lots | of modules with small power output on each and slowly | approached few modules with lots of power each. A few more | iterations and they will be indistinguishable from a regular | nuke plant. | ZeroGravitas wrote: | Yes, out of context that is the least damning of the many | issues raised. | | But if you claim you can reduce costs by building something | you call a small modular reactor, and it keeps getting less | small and less modular, questions do arise as to whether the | initial costs will similarly become more like traditional | fission. | Turing_Machine wrote: | For perspective, the current average residential price for | electricity in the United States is about $0.168/kWh, or | $168/MWh. | | https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/AverageEnergyPrices... | | Since I've been muzzled again, let me respond to those below | here. | | Yeah, that's what "residential cost" means. | | And? | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | That's the price the consumer pays. | | The $60/MWh quoted above is the price the utility would buy | electricity. | | Much different prices. | loeg wrote: | That's the price consumers pay, but not the cost of the | utility's supply. | zizee wrote: | "A small modular reactor should last a minimum of 60 years. | Probably more, up to 100, frankly, if maintained properly. Wind | and solar, after about 20 years you have to replace everything." | | I'm a big fan of the SMR concept, but this line about having to | throw everything away for solar after 20 years is just wrong. | bullfightonmars wrote: | It's also irrelevant. Cost of maintenance and service lifetime | are built into the price/MWh. | asynchronous wrote: | Windmill technician IS the largest growing job in the US this | year | blacksmith_tb wrote: | That does seem exaggerated, though people throw around 25yr as | a standard lifetime for PV[1] (with an approx. degradation of | 1% output per year). 20-25yr for a wind turbine also looks | believable (pretty good given that's not solid state like the | PV). | | 1: https://energy.mit.edu/news/study-even-short-lived-solar- | pan... | jeffbee wrote: | There are panels in NREL's PV Lifetime Project that are on | pace to have 80% rated output after 200 years. | https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81172.pdf | | PV "lifetime" is overblown fossil industry propaganda. It | does not factor into any economic decision. | crote wrote: | PV is now being sold with a 25-year _warranty_ - it 'll still | have at least 80% capacity after that time. | | As the article rightly points out, it often just makes more | economic sense to replace them earlier due to improvements in | panel technology. There isn't really a _technical_ reason to | replace them. | hathawsh wrote: | If nuclear technology improves in efficiency as much as solar | has, we'll want to replace the SMRs also in 20 years. Check out | this amazing graph [1] of solar efficiency improvements from | 1976 to the present. I wonder which kind of cells are on | typical roofs. | | 1. https://www.nrel.gov/pv/cell-efficiency.html - high | resolution at https://www.nrel.gov/pv/assets/pdfs/best- | research-cell-effic... | cyberpunk wrote: | Can you elaborate? Is there a solar farm in prod right now | older than 20 years that you know of? Im all for solar, and | honestly didn't consider this angle.. | bryanlarsen wrote: | The main reason why solar farms are replaced before 20 years | are up is because modern panels are much more efficient than | they were 20 years ago. By replacing the panels you can get | 2-4x as much power in the same footprint and using the same | infrastructure. | tormeh wrote: | Wouldn't it be more cost-effective to put up the new panels | somewhere else? Are panel costs such a negligible part of | solar farm costs that expending doesn't make sense? | adaml_623 wrote: | So you don't _have_ to replace everything. But there's a | compelling economic argument in upgrading the components in | the Solar array as better ones become available. | | I guess you don't need permits for upgrading to newer | components. | sbierwagen wrote: | There's a panel in Germany that was in use for 36 years: | https://www.presse.uni- | oldenburg.de/einblicke/54/files/asset... | | Efficiency went from 8.55% to 8.2% | Turing_Machine wrote: | Well, maybe 30 years rather than 20, but they do degrade. | | See: https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2022/aging-gracefully- | how... | | "A major question in the solar energy industry is exactly how | much we should expect solar modules to degrade each year...and | when they will eventually degrade so much that they no longer | produce adequate power...For modules built today, it is | probably 30 years." | ZeroGravitas wrote: | That stat is when they think it'll drop below 80% of original | production, not when it needs scrapped. | jeffbee wrote: | I wonder if those guys have ever met the people from the | other side of the NREL office who are running the PV Lifetime | project. They have commercial, non-research panels in the | field that are aging much less than 0.5% per year. | johnea wrote: | Well sure, once you dump the construction and clean up costs on | we-the-idiot-herd it makes a really convincing economic | argument... | adastra22 wrote: | Same goes for solar and wind... | toomuchtodo wrote: | Please. There are no insurance issues, no proliferation | issues, no clean up issues. Everything fails gracefully. | Nuclear, outside of edge cases, is a scam compared to battery | firmed renewables. | adastra22 wrote: | https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-14/californi | a... | | https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2022/04/05/feds- | wan... | | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind- | turb... | | There are unaccounted for external costs in renewables, | which are not accounted for in those numbers. Nuclear is | the only energy source with all-in, full-lifecycle | accounting. | toomuchtodo wrote: | You're being disingenuous. Those are old links, and state | of the art is that solar panels and wind turbines can be | almost fully recyclable. And nuclear waste in the US is | still kept in "temporary" storage cooling ponds | indefinitely. | | (Veolia and Siemens are the biggest players in this | space, but there are many others who have established end | of life supply chains for these products) | zizee wrote: | The links you shared about solar panels don't paint a | hugely worrying picture. The vast majority of materials | in panels are inert, and newer panels are using less and | less toxic materials like lead. | | And all the talk about panels and wind turbine blades | ending up in landfills sounds alarming, but these "big" | numbers they spout need to be put in context. I'm betting | it is just a tiny percentage on the total landfill | generated by society, and the costs mentioned in those | linked articles don't seem "unaccounted for", they seem | pretty reasonable at a few dollars per panel. | arghandugh wrote: | ...that is borne by Not The Entities Operating It. Which | is a real problem when we're talking about, at best, 300% | premiums over the competing power suppliers. And at | worst: $12-digit cleanups. | adastra22 wrote: | Are you talking about nuclear? The external costs are | paid by the operator. They have to setup a fund to handle | decommissioning and cleanup before even beginning | operation, and the costs of that are worked into the | total-cost-per-MWh numbers. | wahern wrote: | The major difference is that nuclear waste ends up in rich | countries' backyards, whereas heavy metals from construction | and disposal of solar panels contaminate communities | thousands of miles away. Out of sight, out of mind. | ntonozzi wrote: | Nuclear waste from power plants is not a legitimate issue: | https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/the-boring- | truth-a..., https://zionlights.substack.com/p/everything-i- | believed-abou.... | jeffbee wrote: | Neither is waste from PV panels. | nicoburns wrote: | My understanding is that the heavy metals are almost | entirely from thin film cadmium telluride panels. Not from | the much more common silicon based panels which are made of | silicon, glass and aluminum for the frame. About as safe | materials as one could hope for. The regular panels do | sometimes contain a little lead, but this is small amounts | for solder which could quite easily be replaced by lead | free solder. | todd8 wrote: | Interesting, much cheaper than solar. | Traubenfuchs wrote: | The article states the opposite? | | "Utility-scale solar-plus-storage costs are about $45/MWh; wind | power costs are $30/MWh; and stand-alone utility-scale solar | costs are at $32/MWh, according to the Institute for Energy | Economics and Financial Analysis." | RC_ITR wrote: | >a levelized cost | | _The LCOE "represents the average revenue per unit of | electricity generated that would be required to recover the | costs of building and operating a generating plant during an | assumed financial life and duty cycle", and is calculated as | the ratio between all the discounted costs over the lifetime | of an electricity generating plant divided by a discounted | sum of the actual energy amounts delivered. Inputs to LCOE | are chosen by the estimator. They can include the cost of | capital, decommissioning, fuel costs, fixed and variable | operations and maintenance costs, financing costs, and an | assumed utilization rate_ | | I think solar should be a major part of any future energy | generation regime, but I've also never seen an LCOE for solar | that I actually believe. They also ignore the timing mismatch | between generation and consumption (batteries help there, but | even then, it's still a challenge to maintain an on-demand | grid with solar). | adastra22 wrote: | Nuclear is fundamentally cheaper than nearly any other energy | source. However our laws are backwards: regulators are required | to increase safety standards for nuclear so long as it is | cheaper, until the costs are brought up to par with other | energy sources. As a result, nuclear is orders of magnitude | safer than anything else, and burdens costs that other energy | sources don't have to account for, yet it is perpetually no | cheaper than coal or natural gas. It's blatant regulatory | capture by fossil fuel in the name of "environmentalism." | pydry wrote: | It isnt the law making it expensive. It's capital costs. | | It would be even _more_ expensive if it didnt get a free ride | on insurance - through disaster liability caps set at ~0.05% | of the costs of one Fukushima. | adastra22 wrote: | But the point is those capital costs are so high _because_ | nuclear is required to meet a threshold of safety far, far | in excess of any other energy source. There are instances | of nuclear plants having to shield radiation to be _lower_ | than background levels. Which beyond being absolutely | pointless, it adds weight, which adds concrete, which adds | capital costs and CO2 emissions. | pydry wrote: | The only reason it exists at all is because it gets a | free ride on insurance through the catastrophe liability | cap. | | IMHO it's a bit premature to talk about deregulating it | without first making sure it shoulders full liability for | the damage it would cause by neglecting _important_ | safety. | rainsford wrote: | > However our laws are backwards: regulators are required to | increase safety standards for nuclear so long as it is | cheaper, until the costs are brought up to par with other | energy sources. | | Any citation for that? It's a convenient villain to blame, | but absent any proof regulators are deliberately trying to | make nuclear less competitive, it seems much more plausible | that regulations are driven by concern over accidents. If a | wind turbine fails it doesn't make the entire region | uninhabitable for decades. | joseph_grobbles wrote: | [dead] | nicoburns wrote: | > As a result, nuclear is orders of magnitude safer than | anything else | | How exactly is nuclear safer than solar or wind? Solar panels | in particular are about as dangerous as an inert rock. | crote wrote: | Very few people die in nuclear accidents, but quite a lot | of construction workers end up falling off roofs while | installing solar panels. | crote wrote: | Nuclear _has_ to be orders of magnitude safer because nuclear | incidents have a way bigger economic impact. A gas plant or | solar farm blowing up will be in the hundreds of millions of | $, but Fukushima is counting in the hundreds of _billions_ of | $. | | The nuclear industry has a history of creating plants which | are "totally safe, really, you can trust me!" and ending up | with really expensive accidents. If they can't get their shit | together and get basically unlimited insurance for whatever | accident might still happen, the government has to enforce | safety rules for them so the taxpayers don't end up having to | pay for their whoopsies over and over again. | 35208654 wrote: | Really expensive accidents that cost money and very few | lives. Meanwhile, coal had gotten a pass on hundreds of | years of added costs to healthcare and loss of life | expectancy. | deepsun wrote: | There's no conspiracy here -- the nuclear safety is just so | darn expensive, and for rational reasons. | | It is safer, yes, but only once a lot of resources is spent | on safety. So nuclear power generation is very inexpensive | and expensive at the same time, depending on amount of effort | put into its safety (with modern scientific knowledge on | fission, I'd say like 90% of a reactor cost is ensuring its | safety). | | I honestly hoped that NuScale production could reduce some | significant fraction of that safety costs by "commoditizing" | the production. Kinda like airplanes are very safe in a big | part because their production and maintenance processes are | streamlined and actively practiced ("economy of scale"). | jltsiren wrote: | The real issue is the risk profile. When you build a new | reactor, it's almost certainly going to be safe. But there is | a small risk of a catastrophic outcome, where most of the | damage is local or at most regional. | | Normally this would be the kind of a situation where | insurance is the right solution. But because the potential | magnitude of the catastrophe is too great, the insurance | sector is incapable of handling it. No one is willing to | provide a sufficient insurance policy on a commercial basis. | | Because the assets of the company operating the reactor are | also insufficient in the worst case, that leaves the | government as the ultimate insurer. And as with any insurer, | they require you to take various steps to mitigate the risks. | jnsaff2 wrote: | I don't know what your comparison is. Here solar is about half | that. I even managed to install solar on my roof for about | 35EUR/MWh. | 4wsn wrote: | I assume you mean with subsidies and grants. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-04-03 23:01 UTC)