Comment by illiarian | Hacker News Reader

Comment by illiarian | Hacker News Reader

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> Total cost estimated at 16bn GBP

Somehow this estimation is taken at face value, and yet:

> Hinkley Point C is a 3.2 GWe nuclear plant and is currently estimated at 32.7 GBP

This is taken at actual value. Even though original cost was estimated at 12.4 bn GBP. A lot of cost and budget overruns for nuclear plants are purely political, amidst a rising ocean of FUD.

Meanwhile, https://www.offshorewind.biz/2016/12/02/offshore-wind-projec...

--- start quote ---

Ernst & Young (EY) has found that an average power and utility megaproject is delivered 35% over budget and two years behind schedule

Of the megaprojects surveyed, 64% were delayed and 57% were over budge. Almost three-quarters of hydropower, water, coal and nuclear infrastructure projects were over budget by 49% on average,

--- end quote ---

So that estimated 16bn GBP is very likely to be significantly over 25bn GBP by the time it's completed.

Edit.

More:

https://percepto.co/solar-construction-delays-budget-overrun...

"Data shows the avg. 50MW PV construction project delays cost $2M. The average solar construction project is delayed by about 20% with the consequences hovering around $2M in costs."

https://www.qualenergia.it/sites/default/files/articolo-doc/...

"we assessed the construction costs affiliated with 401 electricity infrastructure projects worldwide. We found that these projects collectively involved $820 billion worth of investment, and represented more than 325,000 MW of installed capacity and 8500 km of transmission lines. Taken together, these projects incurred $388 billion in cost overruns, equivalent to a mean cost escalation of $968 million per project, or a 66.3 percent overrun per project."

And so on.

Even a 66.3% cost overrun would still make this project cheaper, and would be vastly less than the (so far) 200% overrun of Hinkley Point C. And I'm taking those numbers at your word, without poking into them for details.

To quote the first link (note: it's from 2014):

--- start quote ---

Most nuclear power plants incurred time overruns, due to both engineering issues and public opposition. Considering the long development times of such plants and the large amount of capital required, these time overruns likely caused large increases in interest charges and contributed significantly to the large levels of overruns seen [29]. Moreover, as Table 3 indicates, the most severe cost overruns for nuclear power were confined to the United States and the 1980s, it is likely that they were significantly influenced by the nuclear power accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. These accidents resulted in “regulatory ratcheting” where safety requirements were significantly altered in the middle of construction periods, with meaningful impacts on equipment needs, construction designs, labor, and materials.

--- end quote ---

After nearly 30 years of FUD and underinvestment I'm not surprised these projects now take longer. There's regulatory capture, political issues etc. It's possible that they now require safety levels way beyond any reason (Fukushima, commissioned in 1971, and hit by an earthquake and a tsunami at or exceding its safety baseline resulted in 1 death directly attributable to the accident).

Unfortunately, there are very few good-faith discussions around nuclear power, it's always emotionaly charged and manipulative. That's why you end up in situations like Germany: https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1647799729734971396

Look, you are obviously very passionate about nuclear power. And you may be right that nuclear's bad economics stem from unfairness. And it might even be true that there is some hypothetical world where people stop being so unfair, and in that world good/safe nuclear will suddenly become cheap for the first time ever.

But we have to live in the real world, and here in the real world we need to build an enormous amount of low-carbon power generation in a ridiculously short amount of time. And right now nuclear prices are not comparable to wind/solar prices as we actually build nuclear today. This holds even when you apply the most generous assumptions when comparing them. And non-nuclear renewables are getting cheaper every day, something that just isn't happening to nuclear.

So fine, build some nuclear around the edges. Baseload is great! But people need to recognize that short of a political and technological revolution of which there is currently no sign whatsoever, solar/wind/storage are going to form the bulk of a decarbonized grid. So let's please get on with making that happen quickly, because every month we burn fossil fuels brings more future devastation.

> But we have to live in the real world, and here in the real world we need to build an enormous amount of low-carbon power generation in a ridiculously short amount of time.

We do. Moreover, we need to overbuild those sources by yet nknown amounts because they are intermittent.

> This holds even when you apply the most generous assumptions when comparing them. And non-nuclear renewables are getting cheaper every day, something that just isn't happening to nuclear.

Are they getting cheaper enough? Including all the required overbuilding and all the (yet non-existent) grid-scale storage that is required for renewable energy?

> So fine, build some nuclear around the edges. Baseload is great!

Indeed. Baseload is great. And when talking about renewables their proponents almost never talk about it. Or about daily power fluctuations. About requirement spikes etc. Because we just have to believe that there's some magical solution just around the corner.

And yeah, that revolution you're talking about is definitely not going to happen precisely of the emotionally-charged discourse. And we don't really need a tech. revolution for nuclear. We're already pretty capable of building them quickly, given the political will.

The great renewable project project we're talking about? It started in 2018. On top of that "As of November 2021, [cable production] production is planned to start in 2024, and it will take four years to produce the cables required by the project." [1] Expected to be completed by 2030. [2]

So, about 10 years or more. On par with some nuclear stations. Expect costs overruns to be just as on par.

Meanwhile in China. Fuqing Nuclear Power Plant. Construction of each reactor is about 6 years. Total nameplate capacity is now 6GW. Estimated cost of construction: 16 bln USD.

> So let's please get on with making that happen quickly, because every month we burn fossil fuels brings more future devastation.

Meanwhile Germany shut down its nuclear plants and replaced them with fossil fuels. Additionally 13% of the country is given over to corn to create biofuel which is also burned.

It's hard to be passionate about these moronic things. Especially since the renewable revolution needs to bring in probably as much of a technological revolution to become truly scalable (e.g. grid storage required at these scales is literally nowhere to be found).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco-UK_Power_Projec...

[2] https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/

> yet nknown amounts because they are intermittent

The intermittency is sufficiently predictable that we know the overbuild requirement well enough for a variety of possible solutions, including cheapest overall, or least storage requirements. I tend to go for x10 in armchair discussions like these because that's the level needed given the current global average power factor of PV.

> Are they getting cheaper enough? Including all the required overbuilding and all the (yet non-existent) grid-scale storage that is required for renewable energy?

Yes.

> grid storage required at these scales is literally nowhere to be found

The fact I can say the same for the uranium mines needed for sufficient nuclear power, isn't an argument against nuclear power.

Why?

Because we don't have a current need for those mines.

Why is this a useful comparison?

Because until we decide we want to electrify transport (it's mainly about that not about PV vs. Wind vs. Hydro), there hasn't been demand for that many battery factories.

But in both cases, we know what to do, and how to do it.

> The intermittency is sufficiently predictable

Is it?

> that we know the overbuild requirement well enough for a variety of possible solutions

Here's a quiet night from a few days ago. 0 solar production. https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1647799729734971396

--- start quote ---

Germany's 66.5 GW of installed wind is only producing as much as the 3 reactors that turned off last night used to produce.

400% expansion of wind would only provide half present need!

--- end quote ---

> Yes.

And the source for that claim is?

> The fact I can say the same for the uranium mines needed for sufficient nuclear power, isn't an argument against nuclear power.

You're trying to confuse fuel requirements with grid storage requirements. One we have. Other we don't, and almost no one talks about the cost and the requirements. See the quote and link above.

> Because until we decide we want to electrify transport (it's mainly about that not about PV vs. Wind vs. Hydro), there hasn't been demand for that many battery factories.

What does electric transport have to do with an absolute requirement for renewable energy sources to be backed up with grid-scale energy sources?

> But in both cases, we know what to do, and how to do it.

Ah yes. It's that emotionally charged magical thinking again. If we pretend that problems don't exist, they don't exist.

Meanwhile, renewable energy is:

- intermittent

- is extremely slow to ramp up

For both cases you need to have grid-scale energy storage to handle demand. And overbuild renewable storage in for cases when (not if) generation drops.

And yet, no one talks about the cumulative costs for that (and the fact that we literally don't have storage on that scale).

And yet, everyone is clapping each other on the back that hey, there's this Morocco-UK project that is 100% cheaper than nuclear be cause estimations have said so, and so much faster to build than nuclear even though even estimations say it'll take 10 years.

> Is it?

Yes

> And the source for that claim is?

Prices on Amazon for even non-bulk purchases of batteries and PV. Even cheaper elsewhere.

> You're trying to confuse fuel requirements with grid storage requirements.

False.

I'm giving an analogy.

Uranium mines have a production rate.

Battery factories have a production rate.

Both are presently insufficient to be be 100% of global power.

This doesn't matter in either case.

> It's that emotionally charged magical thinking again. If we pretend that problems don't exist, they don't exist.

???

My emotion in this case is "boredom".

Boring is good. Nobody wants civil infrastructure to be exciting. Exciting is bad.

And AFAICT nobody is denying that e.g. PV needs sunlight. What we're doing is giving you the very solutions you're saying don't exist, even though you're almost certainly holding an example of it in your hand right now while reacting emotionally to the suggestion that there are other solutions besides nuclear.

> What does electric transport have to do with an absolute requirement for renewable energy sources to be backed up with grid-scale energy sources?

55kWh per car * number of cars >> multiple day energy use per person * number of people

> is extremely slow to ramp up

???

Newly installed nameplate capacity for PV last year is 286 GW. Even accounting for 10% capacity factor, that's quite nice. Then there's wind.

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