Restart of Three Mile Island tests US appetite for nuclear revival
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It will still be the cheapest bidder, most corrupt, every corner cutting subpar material using fake report producing contractors building, inspecting, certifying and operating this stuff.
Well, then there is also the issue of long term storage of radioactive waste ...
You have that issue regardless if you have nuclear power plants or not as you have radiation devices in hospitals or industry.
The type and volume of waste differs and is very relevant.
And we are not even getting to burning coal and subsequent nuclear fallout from it, which is completely uncontrolled.
Shutting down functioning reactors with no issues in an era where electricity consumption is growing on multiple fronts is wasteful, especially while there is no grid scale storage available and we need to decarbonise. Adding more reactors, as expensive as it is, will pay for itself over their lifetime (we have reactors today operating for 70 years and scheduled to operate past that, meanwhile solar panels and wind turbines have much shorter lifespans).
It won't be used to decarbonize our economy. It will be used to further the profits of Big Tech, who are already preventing coal power plants from shutting down, in their desire to feed their data centers. (Eg, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/08/google-me... )
This will make it harder for other sectors to switch away from fossil fuels, by raising the price of fossil-free electricity relative to planet-killing sources.
As this article points out, Microsoft is willing to pay twice normal rates for the area, which means none of the TMI electricity will help decarbonize the local area.
Microsoft's new electrical consumption being carbon free is a good start. Their other deals with small modular reactor companies will also give them money that will hopefully bring this tech to life, and make it available and affordable.
No, it isn't. Tax corporate profits at rates we did in the 1950s, use the taxes and regulations to decarbonize, similar to how we used taxes to electrify and provide phone service.
If we build out 20% new non-fossil energy sources, and all of its goes to data centers, then we haven't decarbonized our economy in any ecologically meaningful way.
> will also give them money that will hopefully bring this tech to life
And if it doesn't, we are 10-15 years later with even more CO2 in the air. This is a Hail Mary by companies afraid to suffer from the consequences of their pollution.
With the current crop of renewables you can reinvest the profit 2-3 times over the lira of a nuclear power plant.
Maybe you have heard of calculating interest and how much more value money now has rather than in 90 years adding 20 years to your 70 year lifespan. Or when being able to reinvest your profits every 10-20 years.
Touting the “long lifespan” is simply an admission that nuclear powers economics are horrific.
Why don't we then? And what about the associated storage needed to replicate what a nuclear power plant does?
And note, 70 years as of now, many as scheduled to go up to 90-100 years.
> Touting the “long lifespan” is simply an admission that nuclear powers economics are horrific.
Long term, not horrific.
> Maybe you have heard of calculating interest and how much more value money now has rather than in 90 years adding 20 years to your 70 year lifespan. Or when being able to reinvest your profits every 10-20 years
Exactly, paying an obscene amount of money now means that in 90 years' time, that money is much cheaper compared if you had to spend it in 90 years, or every 20 years to replace your renewables and storage parks.
Then some storage boogeyman. Do check out California.
https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/
A recent study found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load.
> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources. However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour. For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...
> Exactly, paying an obscene amount of money now means that in 90 years' time, that money is much cheaper compared if you had to spend it in 90 years, or every 20 years to replace your renewables and storage parks.
Great that you admit to having zero economic knowledge. That is the exact reverse of how it works.
Money now are worth way more than money in the future, even when adjusting for inflation etc.
Thus the need for short cycles and the huge risk premiums that get added when going above 10-20 years.
Here’s some reading for you:
Not when we're talking about infrastructure at the state level. Project costs of big infrastructure projects, as well as inflation, mean that getting stuff done now is better and cheaper, usually, than waiting to do it in a few decades, or redoing it every few decades. State-level infrastructure investment doesn't have the same earnings potential as regular investment. It's practically all very long term, kind of by definition (if it were short term profitable, private investors would be all over it).
You do know that the full cost including investment for renewables with a 10-20 year ROI are about equal to what running paid off nuclear plant costs? Excluding the accident insurance [1] and decommissioning costs for nuclear power.
A 90 year nuclear project compared to investing every 20 years in more efficient renewables mean:
Assume a 20% ROI, which is very low but easy to calculate.
Year 0: 100% in renewables
Year 20: You have 120% to reinvest. You can now build 120% of renewables plus whatever efficiency gains we had in the last 20 years.
Year 40: you have you have 144% of the original investment to deploy + 40 years of efficiency gains.
Year 60: you have 173% of the original investment to deploy + 60 years of efficiency gains.
Year 80: you have 207% of the original investment to deploy + 60 years of efficiency gains
This is why building nuclear power with a 90 year pay off time is pure idiocy. Building renewables with a short pay off time led to us to have double the energy in 80 years time while also being able to deploy 80 years more modern technology.
Maybe you should look up how compound interest works? [2]
Why you do you keep suggesting the scenario where we simply lose money? Because you entwined your identity with a power source and are using you lack of understanding of economics to try justify it?
Private investors are all over renewables?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...
[2]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/compoundinterest.asp
20% net ROI sounds a bit high for renewables from 20 years ago, do you have any source?
> You do know that the full cost including investment for renewables with a 10-20 year ROI are about equal to what running paid off nuclear plant costs
Source? Cost of electricity in France being lower than Germany seems to imply otherwise. And that's ignoring the need for storage in a fully renewable grid.
> Private investors are all over renewables?
Exactly, private investors are all over short-term profitable ventures. They won't be all over something which requires multiple decades to become profitable.
See: https://imgur.com/a/187i2CO
From: https://www.lazard.com/media/gjyffoqd/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...
The ARENH for French nuclear is now at €70/MWh. Horrifically expensive.
The wholesale electricity costs in Germany and France are about equal. Germany has higher taxes on private consumers electricity to promote efficiency gains.
> Exactly, private investors are all over short-term profitable ventures. They won't be all over something which requires multiple decades to become profitable.
Which is an admission that nuclear power is only economical when you do bad math.
Nuclear at $32 seems pretty cheap, and none of the + storage options come anywhere close. What am I missing?
>>Which is an admission that nuclear power is only economical when you do bad math.
That's like saying that any long term infrastructure is only possible with bad math...
So for 4 hours of storage you have 20 hours of the pure renewable cost supplying the grid and charging the storage and 4 hours with storage filling in the gaps.
That is also the marginal cost of nuclear power. What Hinkley Point C is expected to end up at after running for 35 years. So sometime 2065.
Before that Hinkley Point C is costing the consumers ~$180/MWh which are energy crisis costs.
> That's like saying that any long term infrastructure is only possible with bad math...
Not at all. The difference with nuclear power is that we have viable alternatives which do not need bad math financing the subsidies to get built.
Thus nuclear power becomes forced into ever more marginalized peaking roles.
Try calculate the cost for a kWh of electricity from a peaking nuclear power plant.
That depends on the market setup of the grid; if generator and retailer bypass the various market arrangements (as is the case in the UK since NETA) the price on the market is irrelevant. EDF can choose to have their own power transported to their consumers, leaving intermittent generators to be constrained away. Hence the CfD for Hinkley Point C is a relatively assured revenue stream, unlike for offshore wind merchant generators who are increasingly at risk from being constrained away (at the loss of their CfD payments, in exchange for a smaller constraint payment).