I’m not anti-nuclear, but from my understanding it’s not necessarily cost or resource-effective to build new plants, since other renewables have advanced so rapidly
If you just want the cheapest grid possible (regardless of emissions), renewables paired with gas is the cheapest. There are some exceptions to this, places like cloudy Seattle don’t make for good solar farms, which drives up the effective cost of solar significantly.
If you are shooting for a carbon-free grid, nuclear is notably cheaper than renewables paired with grid-scale storage. Notably, much of the nuclear cost is bureaucracy that keeps the plants in limbo for decades and are quite good at making this carbon-free power source unnaturally expensive. This bureaucracy can be brought to a reasonable level if there is political will.
They do and they don’t. They don’t because they’re machines the size of buildings, but they do because most of their construction is just standard plumbing. Except the reactor itself, of course.
It’s pretty similar to shipbuilding. You can have a bunch of mass-produced components, even enormous components like shipping container engines, but the hull and superstructure still get made from scratch each time. And not just because of their size, but because each ship is going to be slightly custom, because it needs to fit a certain size envelope, or needs to deal with certain cargos or environmental conditions.
Similarly, a reactor needs to be built to fit the site, in terms of plain old footprint, but also for geology, water access (if using a river for cooling), and to be protected from storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other local disasters.
It probably isn’t right now because interest rates are high.
NuScale’s project a bit back got cancelled after they skyrocketed.
Nuclear power plants have a big up-front cost and then provide a return over a long period of time. So how much it costs to get that capital is really important.
Nuclear power plants have a big up-front cost and then provide a return over a long period of time
It appears the problem is a bit worse than that. Its a big up-front cost, then expensive operation, which means high prices to consumers for electricity generated by nuclear power compared to other power generation methods. Its the reason the plant was shut down in 2022.
“Entergy explained, “market conditions have changed substantially, and more economic alternatives are now available to provide reliable power to the region.”” source
So how eager are consumers to having their electricity bills go up to support nuclear power? Those in Georgia are feeling this on their electric bills with their additional reactors finally online:
“Bills went up $5 this month after Unit 3 entered commercial operation. That’s atop a $16-a-month increase to pay for higher fuel costs two months ago. There was also an increase in base rates early this year, with another scheduled next year.” source
So contrasting the Michigan plant, which is being restarted from cold, the Georgia plant which represents some new construction of reactors, Ohio electricity bills went up with a surcharge to subsidize two unprofitable nuclear plants.
“Bail out two nuclear plants: From 2021 until 2027, Ohio ratepayers will pay a new monthly surcharge on their electricity bills, from 85 cents for residential customers up to $2,400 for big industrial customers. The surcharge will produce about $170 million a year; $150 million of that will be used by the utility FirstEnergy Solutions to subsidize its two big nuclear power plants — Davis-Besse, outside of Toledo, and Perry, northeast of Cleveland — which it claims are losing money and will be closed in the next couple of years without bailouts” source
…Except Ohio is even worse than you think. The power company bribed the Republican Speaker of the House to get this legislation passed. After it was found out he’s now in prison for 20 years. source
…However, the corrupt legislation his bribery got signed into law still stand on the books today and Ohioans continue to literally pay for this corrupt action to subsidize these unprofitable nuclear plants.
As much as I like the zero-carbon electricity, nuclear is pretty darn expensive for what you get. You’ll open your wallet to pay for it, whether you want to or not.
After the boondoggle that Vogtle became I don’t think building new ones is a good idea. That’s a lot of money tied up and not making energy.
I do think refurbishing and reactivating old plants when possible makes sense. The timeline is a lot shorter, and it’s a lot cheaper than renewables. For example, the plant in the article can produce 2.5GW, and the same price would only get about 500MW of solar.
Why not (instead of gas and nuclear) building more renewables, which are cheeper? Wind and solar should be the priority, nuclear should be the alternative when wind and solar does not work.
Good. We keep shutting down nuclear plants and replacing them with gas. We need to stop shutting them down and go further, build more.
I’m not anti-nuclear, but from my understanding it’s not necessarily cost or resource-effective to build new plants, since other renewables have advanced so rapidly
If you just want the cheapest grid possible (regardless of emissions), renewables paired with gas is the cheapest. There are some exceptions to this, places like cloudy Seattle don’t make for good solar farms, which drives up the effective cost of solar significantly.
If you are shooting for a carbon-free grid, nuclear is notably cheaper than renewables paired with grid-scale storage. Notably, much of the nuclear cost is bureaucracy that keeps the plants in limbo for decades and are quite good at making this carbon-free power source unnaturally expensive. This bureaucracy can be brought to a reasonable level if there is political will.
Nuclear power plants also don’t have standardized parts afaik, driving up costs.
They do and they don’t. They don’t because they’re machines the size of buildings, but they do because most of their construction is just standard plumbing. Except the reactor itself, of course.
It’s pretty similar to shipbuilding. You can have a bunch of mass-produced components, even enormous components like shipping container engines, but the hull and superstructure still get made from scratch each time. And not just because of their size, but because each ship is going to be slightly custom, because it needs to fit a certain size envelope, or needs to deal with certain cargos or environmental conditions.
Similarly, a reactor needs to be built to fit the site, in terms of plain old footprint, but also for geology, water access (if using a river for cooling), and to be protected from storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other local disasters.
That’s simply an issue of not building enough of them.
Yes that’s my point
It probably isn’t right now because interest rates are high.
NuScale’s project a bit back got cancelled after they skyrocketed.
Nuclear power plants have a big up-front cost and then provide a return over a long period of time. So how much it costs to get that capital is really important.
It appears the problem is a bit worse than that. Its a big up-front cost, then expensive operation, which means high prices to consumers for electricity generated by nuclear power compared to other power generation methods. Its the reason the plant was shut down in 2022.
“Entergy explained, “market conditions have changed substantially, and more economic alternatives are now available to provide reliable power to the region.”” source
So how eager are consumers to having their electricity bills go up to support nuclear power? Those in Georgia are feeling this on their electric bills with their additional reactors finally online:
“Bills went up $5 this month after Unit 3 entered commercial operation. That’s atop a $16-a-month increase to pay for higher fuel costs two months ago. There was also an increase in base rates early this year, with another scheduled next year.” source
So contrasting the Michigan plant, which is being restarted from cold, the Georgia plant which represents some new construction of reactors, Ohio electricity bills went up with a surcharge to subsidize two unprofitable nuclear plants.
“Bail out two nuclear plants: From 2021 until 2027, Ohio ratepayers will pay a new monthly surcharge on their electricity bills, from 85 cents for residential customers up to $2,400 for big industrial customers. The surcharge will produce about $170 million a year; $150 million of that will be used by the utility FirstEnergy Solutions to subsidize its two big nuclear power plants — Davis-Besse, outside of Toledo, and Perry, northeast of Cleveland — which it claims are losing money and will be closed in the next couple of years without bailouts” source
…Except Ohio is even worse than you think. The power company bribed the Republican Speaker of the House to get this legislation passed. After it was found out he’s now in prison for 20 years. source
…However, the corrupt legislation his bribery got signed into law still stand on the books today and Ohioans continue to literally pay for this corrupt action to subsidize these unprofitable nuclear plants.
As much as I like the zero-carbon electricity, nuclear is pretty darn expensive for what you get. You’ll open your wallet to pay for it, whether you want to or not.
After the boondoggle that Vogtle became I don’t think building new ones is a good idea. That’s a lot of money tied up and not making energy.
I do think refurbishing and reactivating old plants when possible makes sense. The timeline is a lot shorter, and it’s a lot cheaper than renewables. For example, the plant in the article can produce 2.5GW, and the same price would only get about 500MW of solar.
They’re expensive
Expensive to build much cheaper to run. Doesn’t take much time at all at the scale of the electrical grid for it to pay itself off.
If this were true, the levelized cost of nuclear energy would be much lower than it is:
Nuclear is expensive to build and expensive to run.
The heck why’s it’s more expensive now? I hadn’t looked in years wtf
In France, they are expensive to build and expensive to maintain… And you need to buy stuff from Russia to keep them running…
Why not (instead of gas and nuclear) building more renewables, which are cheeper? Wind and solar should be the priority, nuclear should be the alternative when wind and solar does not work.