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Comment by mgoetzke | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear is also quite a lot more expensive than people sometimes calculate here.

It cost about 35 billion USD (total cost during build, no maintenance, no fuel) At current potential earning rates of eg. max 10ct/kWh (Georgia) and 1100 MW peak continuous operation it will take 36 years to make the money back.

That is without just investing that 35 billion into something else or even adding maintenance and fuel cost which makes the entire project never return a profit.

Now in general I like machines, and nuclear reactors are fantastic engineering feats. I dislike the potential for a meltdown of course no matter how 'unlikely'

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> and 1100 MW peak continuous operation it will take 36 years to make the money back

That total cost is for 2 reactors, not one. Vogtle 3 just started operating and Vogtle 4 will start in a few months. If you divide your 36 years by 2, you get 18 years.

add in increasing energy demand, fossil fuel scarcity, battery storage for off peak solar and wind,

The reason they're built it is because its worth it. Nuclear has always been worth it, sensationalism has always been the problem

Not only that but the cost to decommission one is absurdly high and I've read in previous articles that this cost isn't even a consideration at all when building a reactor. Like it's just completely unplanned for and often paid into by the taxpayer.

In the UK, the decommissioning process is definitely considered for new nuclear reactors:

> The Funded Decommissioning Programme (FDP) ensures that the developer will meet the costs of decommissioning the plant and managing and disposing of its waste so that the taxpayer does not to bear the burden of these costs in future.

> Under the Energy Act 2008 operators of new nuclear power stations are required to have secure financing arrangements in place to meet the full costs of decommissioning and their full share of waste management and disposal costs. These arrangements are set out in a FDP.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hinkley-point-c-f...

This is false for the US (and UK as the other commenter pointed out).

> In the USA, utilities are collecting 0.1 to 0.2 cents/kWh to fund decommissioning. They must then report regularly to the NRC on the status of their decommissioning funds. About two-thirds of the total estimated cost of decommissioning all US nuclear power reactors has already been collected, leaving a liability of about $9 billion to be covered over the remaining operating lives of about 100 reactors (on the basis of an average of $320 million per unit). NRC data for the end of 2018 indicated that there was a combined total of $64.7 billion held in the decommissioning trust funds covering the 119 operational and retired US nuclear power reactors.

But you will make the money back. This isn’t private industry. This is government. Many programs are ran at a loss, this however nets a sure profit in some time. Bonds can always be sold to take care of upfront costs.

There are federal loans involved, but this is not a government project. Georgia Power is part of an investor owned utility.

> I dislike the potential for a meltdown of course no matter how 'unlikely'

Why? A meltdown is really not a big deal at all. If we're fine with burning coal we should be perfectly with a having a meltdown or two every few years (even if we 100% ignored climate change the degree of damage caused by either of those is not that different)

People think "meltdown" means Chernobyl. For those who don't know, a nuclear meltdown means the fuel inside the reactor overheated, (possibly permanently) damaging the reactor. It's essentially happened at some level three times in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_meltdown#Core_damage_e...

A meltdown essentially means an expensive remediation.

A Chernobyl style event in the west is extremely unlikely due to reactor design as well as the containment buildings. The closest western equivalent, Fukushima, did have a core meltdown. But the spread of radiation was actually caused by the spent fuel no longer able to be cooled, causing the rods to be exposed to air, which generated hydrogen, that then exploded. While a disaster, it wasn't Chernobyl style where the open reactor pumped out radiation continuously until it could be contained.

in addition; Chernobyl, three mile island, and fukushima were all early nuclear design. Construction began in 1972, 1968, and 1967.

The first nuclear reactor was built in 1942. We have more than 50 YEARS of technological advancement in nuclear design gained after any one of those reactors.

Modern reactors have made radical improvements. Imagine comparing the safety of a car from the 1960-70s to the safety of a modern car. They are NOT equivalent.

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