Why not nuclear power?

[progree]

5. Economics - they have gotten very expensive, so expensive that even ones

Last edited Wed Sep 25, 2019, 04:15 PM - Edit history (1)

built long ago whose construction costs have decades ago been paid off are being shut down (in other words fuel and ongoing maintenance combined is too high). They just can't compete against natural gas or renewable energy, and legislatures don't seem to care about the carbon difference against natural gas, or that wind and solar are intermittent -- and that's fine up to a point, but an electrical system MUST MUST MUST at all times have generation match the load (within small tolerances) or the electrical system falls apart -- it is physics (I've been an electrical engineer in the generation and transmission planning of Xcel's forerunner NSP, and in the systems operations department, this is not hyperbole, it is physics). Meaning it is not only desirable, but NECESSARY for there to be sufficient reliable generation on the grid to back up the intermittent generation sources, or get used to frequent load shedding (meaning rotating brownouts and blackouts).

Re: storage to go with renewables -- I keep reading about projects with 4-hour batteries, I've never read or heard about any with batteries longer than that. Well that's great and wonderful and all that for getting solar to cover the late afternoon / early evening peak when the sun fades, and so can replace a gas turbine peaking plant in some places, but it isn't going to cover the night or cloudy days. I am hopeful for better storage economics in a few years, but right now it isn't here. (I here all the glam about pumped storage hydro, compressed air and all that, but haven't seen the beef except for a few pumped storage projects built many decades ago -- there are only so many locations to do this economically.)

The only new nuclear construction in the U.S. is units 3 and 4 at the Vogtle Nuclear Plant in Georgia, right now at $26 billion (double the original estimate) for two 1117 MWe net reactors, so that's 26B$/(2*1117MW) = .012 B$/MW = 12 M$/MW = $12/watt = $12,000/KW.

A quick Google on natural gas - fired plants: the EIA estimated that for a simple cycle plant the cost is about US$ 389/kW, whereas combined cycle plants are US$ 500-550/kW. (They of course on top of the construction cost, burn what is still expensive fuel, but I'm too lazy to go look up the levelized costs, or try to figure out the levelized construction cost of Vogtle and Flamanville (below) )

Another Google: "Most of the commercial-scale wind turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3-$4 million installed." Math: so that's $1.5 to $2.0 per watt or $1,500 to $2,000/KW.

France, whose electric sector is majority nuclear, and is famously a nuclear success story, is having troubles too building new plants -- Flamanville reactor #3 in construction $7,700/KW as of 7/25/18, a factor of 3 times over the original budget.

There may be all kinds of exciting nuclear concepts in the lab and in various prototype stages, and we can all goo and gurgle about thorium and modular units, but at best they aren't going to have any significant impact for the next 20 years on the climate problem. Not unless we are willing to pay much higher electricity rates and start massively building like right now, and then they might have some impact near the end of 20 years.

Edited: the commercial scale turbines that are $1,500 to $2,000/KW are wind turbines, I left the "wind" out.

Edited Wednesday 9/25/19: Hinkley Point C reactors, being built in Somerset, England by mainly state-owned EDF of France and state-owned CGN of China, is a twin reactor project totalling 2 X 1630 MWe = 3260 Mwe. News reports today, 9/25/19, is that its cost estimate has risen to somewhere between 21.5 billion and 22.5 billion pounds. That comes to 8,370 US$/KW --
Details in post#18 ( https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=132417 )