That's not what affordable means. People are building smaller reactors because it's more likely that a project will be completed, not because of unit costs.
The article ignores this, and in fact complains about the cost of the first six reactors proposed by NuScale (which, fwiw, is just a smaller LWR, not one of the more innovative designs).
Before anyone talks about the negative learning curve of large reactors in the US, bear in mind that we mostly build those as one-offs, so no learning curve exists. We don't build many, regulations change pretty frequently, and sometimes the NRC requires design changes after construction starts.
And coal is not exactly fertile ground for innovation, given that we'd like to stop burning coal entirely.
Matching the price of coal, with clean dispatchable power, is not such a bad outcome. There's a bit of wiggle room for extra complexity since coal pays 2 cents/kWh for fuel, and has to handle large amounts of incoming fuel and outgoing ash.
For a reliable zero-carbon grid of only wind/solar/battery, we need about 2X overproduction and 4 days of battery storage[1]. Maybe that still ends up the cheapest option, but it's not so obvious that a backup plan isn't worth considering.
[1] https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/07/12/grid-storage-b...
Switch off (curtailment) is almost instantaneous for wind and PV.
And otherwise, batteries, hydropower and gas turbines are dispatchable on the second/minute scale.
How dispatchable nuclear is depends on the specific design, which is important given our context of small reactors with new designs.
According to the DOE, "Certain designs, like DOE-supported NuScale Power, LLC, can vary their energy output over days, hours and even minutes."[1]
According to NuScale, "The NuScale Power Module is capable of a ramp rate of 40% per hour in reactor power change, which aligns with specifications set by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). For even quicker responses to electricity demand, the NuScale SMR can rapidly lower its electric power output up to 10% per minute and return to full output at the same rate utilizing turbine bypass. This is significantly faster than conventional nuclear power."[2]
More advanced designs may be even better.
[1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/department-energy-report-...
[2] https://www.nuscalepower.com/-/media/nuscale/pdf/publication...
Solar+battery gets you there today, is getting cheaper every day, and there’s almost zero project risk. If the install is small enough, you could likely beat the realistic costs for SMRs with solar + battery + diesel generators if you need a guarantee of 100% uptime.
Debatable. In Ontario nuclear costs 10¢/kWh while wind costs 15¢ and solar 50¢ (Table 2):
* https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2022...
And when wind goes to zero at night, then (natural/methane) gas generators are often spun up (generating carbon emissions).
Meanwhile the refurbishments of Ontario's nuclear plants are on-budget, and often ahead of schedule:
* https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/infrastructure/...
It's not globally representative though.
[1] Yes, really: the populated places of Canada are comparable to northern Italy in terms of latitude. The Gulf Stream really does an unbelievable job hiding that fact.
Global problems need global solutions and most people are not in nations near the poles with decades old nuclear plants they can coast on.
They need to build new energy plants, and live in areas where solar plus battery beat nuclear on multiple dimensions.
That's why every prediction has solar accelerating past nuclear deployment and heading for multiples of nuclear output.
A bit less actually. But you cannot dismiss a technology that works for 10% of people. And we still weight more than this in terms of CO2.
> Global problems need global solutions
No, global problems need custom solutions suited to all the different situations. Thinking there exist one technology to rule them all that will solve the problem everywhere is not helpful to anyone.
> That's why every prediction has solar accelerating past nuclear deployment and heading for multiples of nuclear output.
This isn't a race! Stop thinking of technologies as if it was sport teams.
> > Solar+battery gets you there today, is getting cheaper every day, and there’s almost zero project risk.
> Debatable. In Ontario nuclear costs 10¢/kWh while wind costs 15¢ and solar 50¢ (Table 2):
Please stop acting as if we don't exist.
SMR are a huge opportunity for 300+M people to dramatically reduce C02 emissions from electricity generation, for which there is no credible alternative.
If I go to https://model.energy/ and ask it to solve for a cost optimized renewable + storage system for Ontario, I get a cost out of 55 Euro/MWh for providing synthetic baseload (2030 cost assumptions). That solution doesn't include using hydro to deal with variance in supply and demand; Canada has large amounts of hydro.
Well, the price is irrelevant when solar supply (and wind supply) goes to zero:
* https://www.ieso.ca/power-data § Supply
> […] Canada has large amounts of hydro.
Some parts of Canada have large amounts of hydro. Others do not.
I'd rather use hydro to reduce/eliminate gas plants:
* https://www.ieso.ca/power-data § Supply
Looking at the variability of renewables, I do not wish for the grid in Ontario (where I live) to be more dependent on them.
Batteries would best be used for diurnal leveling; don't overestimate demand by assuming they are used for (say) seasonal leveling.
The batteries used by electrified motor vehicles would exceed those needed for the grid.
Solar + battery cannot be sufficient for most Europe except Mediterranean countries, it's not a matter of cost, there's just not enough sun in Winter and you need months of electricity worth of storage which isn't happening in our lifetime.
In general, talking about energy price ($/kWh) only make sense when you have fossil fuel as a near majority of your mix (because you have practically unlimited power as long as you spend money on fuel), but cease to make sense without it, because nobody cares about energy (Wh), what you (and the grid) need is power (W). With either nuclear or renewable, energy is practically free, but power is what costs money, and as we move towards a decarbonized mix, we'll need to change how the economics work to adapt to the underlying changes (including how we price electricity to consumers and businesses), because when you don't align the economics with the how the supply works the system collapses (like it did in Texas as few winters ago).
Germany has not tried to roll out hydrogen yet. CO2 charges are not yet at the point where natural gas must stop being used for long period leveling.
Also, a big part of Germany's large expenditure was in 2009-2012 when solar (in particular) was far more expensive. Funny how you didn't mention that, isn't it.
And for good reason…
> CO2 charges are not yet at the point where natural gas must stop being used for long period leveling.
During that period, Germany has emitted more CO2 than hundreds of millions of peoole, and we're way past the moment where we should have stopped using coal and gas really.
> Also, a big part of Germany's large expenditure was in 2009-2012 when solar (in particular) was far more expensive. Funny how you didn't mention that, isn't it.
And why hasn't Germany completed the transition now that “solar is dirt cheap” for years now, then? Solar makes no sense in Europe, period. Wind, hydro and nuclear, yes, but every solar panel installed in non-mediteranean European country has been a tragic waste of taxpayer's money (giving the panels to Greece or Arab/African countries would have been a much better investment, by an order of magnitude)
For Germany to be saved from this fate by nuclear, nuclear has to be as cheap as solar is in the best locations in the world, not just better than solar in Germany.
Germany (and Europe) should probably be putting more money into CO2 sequestration, so they can keep burning fossil fuels.
Are you extrapolating rooftop solar rates in California to a large, industrial solar installation in Canada, or where do these figures come from?
Elsewhere it needs to compete on price against other viable options.
AFAIK, that's typical consumption for data centers being built today.
Note also that the cost figures NuScale gave for that was the cost after 40-50 reactors had been built (and with federal subsidy), not FOAK costs.
Some of those fears are founded, but some are not. But overall, the regulation required is what drives the cost up.
I’m not presenting environmentalists as powerful. I’m presenting them as innumerate feelers. Unfortunately that’s contagious.
What we do know is that France can no longer do what they once maybe did. Their recent attempts to build nuclear plants have been disastrous. They've also given up on fast reactors, which is a clear tell they do not expect the world to go nuclear anytime soon (if the world did, it would quickly need breeders).
The "environmentalists did it" argument is not a good one. It falls apart when examined closely. If they were so powerful as to suppress nuclear worldwide, why can't they (for example) stop oil pipelines? Or coal combustion? The argument has all the signs of something cooked up to save a tenuous position, not because the evidence actually supports it.
For example, Greenpeace has recently successfully lobbied the Phillipne government to ban golden rice despite its obvious advantages:
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-philippine-court-blocks-gmo-go...
So please don't present the environmental lobby as being selectively powerless.
One way to subsidize nuclear is to artificially reduce the interest rate on its financing, but market rates for nuclear financing would make a 60 year lifespan almost irrelevant. The NPV of the out year revenue would be very low.
Put another way: for nuclear to pay out over 60 years, it also has to compete with the cheaper energy sources that will be discovered and improved over those generations. This obsolescence risk cannot be ignored, and gets reflected in interest rates charged. Now that wind/solar are becoming dominant, their inherent rapid evolution has pulled in the time horizons for all other energy sources. I sometimes think this has kept natural gas going longer than it otherwise might have, since the uncertainty adds incentive for sources with more operating cost and lower investment cost, as these have less obsolescence risk.
Expecting AP1000 to show NOAK improvements is optimistic.
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/71/12/26/904707/US...
No one has ever built a nuclear plant to sell into a competitive power market. One can trace the downfall of nuclear in the US to the time when markets were opened to competition, with PURPA.
One can trace the downfall of nuclear in the US to the end of the New Deal coalition and the divestment of public infrastructure, which meant short-term planning only. It has nothing to do with "markets". Markets in energy don't exist now and did not exist then.
> The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA) triggered a restructuring of the previously monolithic utility sector, stipulating in particular that electricity produced by independent power producers must be purchased by utilities at "avoided cost." The new power from independent producers, combined with lack of demand for electricity, further eroded utilities' need for new nuclear plants. In large part owing to the provisions of PURPA, nonutility generation rose steadily from 71 billion kilowatt-hours per year in 1979 to almost 400 billion kilowatt-hours per year by 1995 -- this new, nonutility generation was the equivalent of adding more than 50 typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear plants (Energy Information Administration, 1996). As Peter Bradford (2011), a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, argued in the Wall Street Journal:
> "Nuclear-plant construction in this country came to a halt because a law passed in 1978 [PURPA] created competitive markets for power. These markets required investors rather than utility customers to assume the risk of cost overruns, plant cancellations, and poor operation. Today, private investors still shun the risks of building new reactors in all nations that employ power markets."