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You are comparing to the worst case scenario of catastrophic nuclear overbudgeting. Normally nuclear plants don’t cost nearly as much.

Korea has built 5.6 GW Barakah NPP for about 25B dollars. It took less than 8 years. Russia is building its standard VVER-1200 reactors at about 10-15B for 2.4 GW

China is building its reactors at about 5B per 1.2 GW reactor.

These costs might fall further if standardized designs get deployed at larger scales, just like with solar.

Given steady and predictable generation regardless of weather and location that nuclear can provide, your numbers don’t look that impressive now, do they?

The thing you are missing is regulatory costs. All of those examples are great but they are not dealing with the United States regulatory frameworks. It’s extremely difficult to get Nuclear projects developed here.

Then that is an administrative obstacle, not technological. Nuclear power by itself shouldn't be (and isn't) that expensive and can be made much cheaper with standardized mass production.

It's a shame that Vogtle NPP is now made to be a poster child of "nuclear is inviably expensive organizational mess" argument whereas none of its problems are the technology's fault.

If we truly want to decarbonize, nuclear power is absolutely a part of the solution, together with renewables. Given the climate emergency that we are facing, ignoring nuclear’s massive benefits and not removing unnecessary obstacles from its way is almost criminal at this point.

I don’t see it happening in the United States. I’ll give a small example from my area of the country which is New England.

We had 5 Nuclear power plants (one each in ME, MA, NH, CT and VT) of which the last to be commissioned was in New Hampshire (Seabrook) in 1990. This took from the late 1960’s to 1990 to be commissioned with similar regulatory obstacles.

Since 1990 Maine Yankee shut down in 1997 due to NRC safety concerns and additional money required to fix them. The plant operated from 1972 to 1997. Vermont Yankee shut down in 2014 due to overwhelming public support for not renewing it’s license to operate. The plant operated from 1972 to 2014. Pilgrim in Plymouth Mass shut down in 2019 due to the cost of safety upgrades. The plant operated from 1972 to 2019. Two Nuclear plants remain at Seabrook NH and Waterford CT.

The New England energy market was deregulated in 1998 moving to a wholesale market run by New England ISO. Since 2000 older oil fired and coal fired generation plants have largely been replaced with Natural Gas. Recently renewables and net imports from other areas are trending higher. We have almost no coal or oil fired generation in the entire region today.

The stated plan for NE ISO is to continue to pursue renewables. No new Nuclear projects are on the horizon. The current remaining reactors make up approx. 20-30% of the regions baseload power and are nearing end of life.

The Nuclear plants require bailouts to continue to function. In 2019 CT mandated that half of the Waterford plants output was purchased for 10 years at 4.9 cents/kWh. While this increased customer bills initally, it recently saved money when Nat Gas spiked last year. It also saved a 25% spike in the regions total emissions if the plant were to close and be replaced by Nat Gas.

A summary of some of the risks is explained here:

https://www.iso-ne.com/about/what-we-do/in-depth/power-plant...

It would take a significant political shift — which would require a significant shift in public opinion about nuclear energy — for nuclear power to gain ground in the US. Nuclear energy needs to be not just tolerated, but desired as the energy source of the future, just as renewables have been over the last 50 years, with massive funding directed into R&D and subsidies for deployment. I don't think there's any disagreement with that.

What would be required is:

* A concerted effort to develop advanced nuclear reactor designs, particularly small modular reactors (SMRs).

* Streamlining the regulatory process and adjusting its risk tolerances to more reasonable levels.

* Subsidizing the deployment of advanced reactor types (e.g. SMRs) to create larger economies of scale.

This would all be an extremely expensive endeavor, but the payoff would be robust market for small modular nuclear reactors that offer increasingly cost-competitive energy as production scales. Keep in mind that with nuclear, the overriding cost is manufacturing.

The fuel costs are almost zero the land use is negligible, and the pollution is minimal. And of course as a base load source, there is no need for storage, unlike with intermittent energy sources, which do require it.

Thats a good summary of what it would take but I really think the ship has sailed on Nuclear. I don’t think it will have a significant revival in the United States any time soon.

We did have a chance to be like France in the early 1970’s and we were trending that way as I outlined for the NE region.

For now the focus is all on renewables [wind, solar and lithium based storage]. Technology development is moving quickly and capital is being deployed.

The aging Nuclear, Oil and Coal plants continue to shut down or be propped up for a few years until renewables fully take over.

Don't know about the United States regulatory frameworks, but in Europe, building hydro power, or big wind farms for that matter is getting hard too. Both with local protests and regulatory requirements.

There is a lot of FUD about wind (less so for hydro which has some real issues) but the scale of the problems that can occur are orders of magnitude less than Nuclear.

This napkin math is so hand wavy and rudimentary that it pretty much means nothing. For starters, you took near the bottom range from your source, and omitted the 25% labor fee.

Also FFS were comparing a nuclear reactor to residential solar?! In what world is it a safe assumption that those figures scale? What happens when we start running out of rare earth metals?

Let’s just step away from this poorly thought out hypothetical…ask yourself why solar is barely producing any power. Theres a massive financial incentive here. Is everyone stupid? Are you a genius that noticed something everyone else missed?

Our nuclear fleet is ancient, and still produces ~8% of domestic supply. Solar is ~1.6%: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/

With a renewed investment and more efficient regulatory practices, we could be like france who produces >70% of their domestic supply with nuclear: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France

> For starters, you took near the bottom range from your source, and omitted the 25% labor fee.

Here's the National Renewable Energy Laboratory site saying large solar farms are $1.06 per watt, fully installed and operational. [1]

Also the 2,245 mW solar farm of Bhadla Solar Park cost $2.175 billion [2]. Less that $1/watt. Let's just build three of those and we're good for our 7mW of solar, proven very doable.

> Also FFS were comparing a nuclear reactor to residential solar

No, we're comparing it to solar farms.

> Let’s just step away from this poorly thought out hypothetical…ask yourself why solar is barely producing any power. Theres a massive financial incentive here. Is everyone stupid? Are you a genius that noticed something everyone else missed?

The nuke we're talking about started construction more than 20 years ago. Obviously back then the calculation was very different. The value proposition for solar + storage is changing much, much faster than almost everyone realizes, and will continue to do so.

Also it would be good if you didn't resort to ad hominem attacks. If my "napkin math" is grossly wrong, please correct it. There is no need to attack me.

[1] https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-in...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park

You’re comparing the largest solar plant in the world to a SINGLE reactor at a nuclear plant. You’re forgetting that solar plants are not able to produce anywhere near their nameplate capacity (and the fraction they do produce is not reliable). You misunderstood that the $30B figure is for two reactors, only one of which is operational atm. Solar farms have much shorter lifespans, and the panels are toxic and non recyclable.

Also why do we pretend that we can just magically clone 3x of the Bhadla plant from pakistan to the US for identical costs? Why do we assume we have infinite rare earth metals for panel/battery production?

Im down to have a discussion, but youre leaving so much out that its hard to take the argument seriously.

> You’re comparing the largest solar plant in the world to a SINGLE reactor at a nuclear plant.

I'm using that as an illustration of what is possible. You know, be inspired to do new and better things. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (in the US) says solar is $1.06/watt installed, today. Go with that if you don't want to believe the US can do things that other countries have already done.

> You’re forgetting that solar plants are not able to produce anywhere near their nameplate capacity (and the fraction they do produce is not reliable).

No I'm not. I very clearly show the fact that the nameplate number of solar needs to be divided by 6 to account for night and seasonality. Read the numbers again. I proposed installing 7mW of solar to "equal" 1,114 mW of nuke.

> You misunderstood that the $30B figure is for two reactors, only one of which is operational atm.

OK, so let's say it's $30 billion for 2,228mW of nuke capacity (even though the article clearly says it's more than $30 billion... but it doesn't say how much more).

So now we need 13,368 mW of Solar to allow for our nameplate capacity thing of 6 for solar, leaving only $16.7 billion for storage.

At $500 kWh as pointed out by another comment from a real installation that has happened, we can buy 33,400,000 kWh of storage (33,400 mWh), or enough to output the required 13,368 mW for about two and a half hours.

> Solar farms have much shorter lifespans

This [1] says most nuclear plants were designed for a thirty year lifespan, while new plants are more like 40-60. I couldn't find real-world numbers on the nuke being discussed in the article.

> the solar panels are toxic and non recyclable.

... ahh, are they as toxic and non recyclable as nuclear waste and the entire nuclear facility and the land it's built on? Also how much of that is recyclable?

Remember we're comparing the nuke to solar+storage here, so it is the comparison that is relevant.

> Also why do we pretend that we can just magically clone 3x of the Bhadla plant from pakistan to the US for identical costs?

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (that is .gov in the US) says installed solar farms are $1.06/watt installed, today. So we're not magically assuming anything.

> Why do we assume we have infinite rare earth metals for panel/battery production?

From this article [2] "A new report by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe) shows that rare earth minerals are not widely used in solar energy and battery storage technologies. And despite their name, they aren't actually that rare at all."

Do you know something the French Environment and Energy Management Agency doesn't?

Please enlighten us.

> Im down to have a discussion, but youre leaving so much out that its hard to take the argument seriously.

I'm not leaving anything out, you're just conveniently ignoring parts of what I'm saying.

I understand nukes have made a lot of sense for a lot of years, and if we had built a ton of them in the 80s and 90s we'd be in a better position today. We didn't do that, and we shouldn't start building hundreds of billions of dollars worth of things in 2024 using assumptions and numbers from the 80s and 90s. We need to realize the equation has shifted DRASTICALLY in those years, and it's going to continue to do so.

Look at the price of installed solar and installed storage capacity prices by year [3]. Where do you think they'll be in just five years before a single nuke is even approved? Where do you think they'll be in 10 years before a single nuke is even built?

What do you think that will do to all my calculations above?

It feels like you want to spend decades building out new regular trains when other countries have tens of thousands of miles of bullet trains operating TODAY.

Skate to where the puck is going, not where it is now.

[1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...

[2] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/11/28/are-rare-earths-used-...

[3] https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-in...

You do have a point, but directly comparing costs is somewhat dishonest until solar plans start working 24 hours a day.

I already divided the nameplate capacity of solar by 6 to account for night and seasonality.

So 7mW of solar is "equal" to 1,114 mW of nuke.

We have just barely started investing into the extremely large solar projects that could easily change that 1.6% figure you quoted. I also don’t know if that number included behind-the-meter residential solar which is mostly what we have in the United States right now.

As a small example of how renewables can change I would examine wind power in the UK.

https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/solar-panels/biggest-solar-f...

According to the article it is $30 Billion for 2 reactors, not 1. You may need to update your calculation

Sorry for nitpicking, but please use "M" for mega, not "m". At least be consistent.

A consistent decimal separator would be good too, preferably "." as we're writing in English.

Which version?

The price for storage is closer to $500/kWh for the large utility scale projects using Teslas Megapacks and falling fast [1]. I wouldn’t be surprised to see $200-300 fairly soon (within the next 5 years). Tesla is only starting to seriously ramp up production on Megapacks. I couldn’t find reliable pricing for a project usings BYD’s new MC Cube system but Las Vegas is installing half a gigawatt hour worth of those units.

[1] 413 million dollars for 800,000 kWh = $516.25/kWh installed price.

https://carboncredits.com/tesla-413m-megapacks-revolutionize...

No need to do back-of-envelope maths:

LCOE (total, incl. CAPEX, in USD per MWh):

coal 82.6, combined cycle 39.9, advanced nuclear 81.7, geothermal 37.6, biomass 90.1, onshore wind 40, offshore wind (that one was a surprise, since offshore wind should be quite cheap, mainly driven by capital cost of 104 USD per MWh) 105, solar 33.8, solar hybrid 49 and hydro 64.

Variable cost (same as above):

coal 23.7, combined cycle 27.7, adv. nuclear 10.3, geothermal 1.2, biomass 30, onshore wind 0, offshore wind 0, solar 0, solar hybrid 0, hydro 4.1

All number from here:

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation...., page 9.

Directly comparing solar or even wind with nuclear, gas, coal isn't exactly fair though unless you account for storage costs.

Well, tell that the EIA and not me, it's their official government numbers...

Edit: Just realized the link is broken for some reason... This one should work:

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....

Why? I'm not challenging the validity of the data itself. Just the interpretation.

Gas and coal, yes. But nuclear also requires storage or expensive overbuilding.

Why can’t we make it cheaper and easier to build nuclear plants?

It would require a radically new design that takes a lot of the cost out. You also have the spent fuel storage problem and the risk factors of a meltdown (however small) to tackle which are always working against you. Technology development in the Nuclear area is SLOW.

Now compare to batteries. There are thousands of companies working on new technology development.

It’s just a matter of brain power and capital working on the problems.

I don’t see a viable path forward for Nuclear at the current costs and with how dramatic the rise of renewables and battery storage is increasing.

Just starting build them at a much bigger scaled would probably result in significant decrease in costs on it's own. China, Korea and Russia somehow manage to build at much lower cost.

> risk factors of a meltdown (however small) to tackle which are always working against you. Technology development in the Nuclear area is SLOW.

True, then again these really aren't a big deal. Burning coal is about the same as having a Chernobyl size disaster every few year (even when we 100% ignore climate change) and most people don't seem to mind that much.

Yes, I'm sure governments are going to fork over a trillion dollars to demonstrate that this time, for sure, honest, nuclear costs will decline with experience. /s

The generic problem is that nuclear plants have to be big to amortize fixed costs (like personnel to operate and guard them), but if they're big they have lots of parts and more connections between parts, so to make them sufficiently reliable they need expensive careful construction. The more welds a NPP has, the more reliable each individual weld must be.

In contrast, something like a solar field, while it has lots of parts, doesn't depend on all those parts working for the field to work. It's by its nature highly redundant and fault tolerant. It also doesn't require supervision anywhere near the same extent as a nuclear plant.

32 independent reactors at one site would not require 32x personnel and the welds would not have to be 32x as reliable