The second article says "The target cost for each station is GBP1.8 billion (USD2.4 billion) by the time five have been built, with further savings possible."
This indicates that cost per station could be significantly higher before 5 of them have been built. It's reasonable to believe that doggedly continuing to build more of them will bring costs down eventually, but if early units have high costs (or worse, if build progress falls behind schedule) then it could be difficult to maintain support for building more of them.
That actually seems reasonable for the cost of a power station.
The problem recently is that privatized energy operators have a hard time securing financing in the orders of tens of billions. Wind, solar and gas may have higher per-unit costs but you can actually build one for under a billion dollars, and in the case of rooftop solar we are talking tens of thousands of dollars, and it is a lot easier to secure loans of that size. Tens of billions of dollars is basically reserved for the bond markets and state actors.
I would expect lifecycle costs to be largely underestimated for solar.
Regulations are way more relaxed to dispose panels in comparison to nuclear waste, for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, panel disposal is still expensive, we're just leaving the bill for future generations, just like with nuclear, unfortunately...
A PV module has a weight of about 0.05 kg/W. If it costs $0.20/W, that's $4000/tonne. The disposal cost of waste in a landfill in the US is about $60/tonne. So, even with no recycling at all, the cost of landfilling old PV modules is not a significant part of the cost of PV here. And much of the cost of PV installations (the steel mountings and earth anchors, the aluminum frames of the modules, the glass covers) is highly recyclable.
I mean, if we're concerned about using a renewable energy source, shouldn't we be concerned that its materials are also renewable?
How much does it cost to renew that $4000/kg solar panel so that it can continue to be used?
I bet renewing will cost more than $4000/kg. If that's true, we're taking a 50-75% discount on the expense of future generations, as I said. Solar is more expensive than we are lead to think it is. This should be accounted in decision and policy making.
Of course it's sustainable. The notion that landfilling somehow isn't sustainable is based mostly on silly aesthetics.
About the only concern with sustainability in PV is silver for contact wires, but that can be substituted for. It's being used now because it's marginally cheaper.
To clarify: not the landfill in itself, but the materials are finite. If we don't reuse them, we'll run out of them eventually. Future generations will have to dig through our landfills to recycle them. And that will be quite expensive. That's the future bill I'm mostly concerned about.
So, exactly which material for PV were you concerned about?
This also goes against your original expression about lifecycle cost. Later shortage of some critical material doesn't affect the lifecycle cost of PV built now.
The cheapest PV panels today are cadmium-telluride, with 8g/m^2 of cadmium. That will be valuable reclaimed. Anyway you don't want it in your landfill.
My main worry about the cadmium is whether a house fire makes your neighborhood a superfund site.
Tens of thousands for solar doesn't include the cost of the factory producing the panels though, which has to come from similar, though not nearly as large, capital investments.
right, but the cost of the factory is pretty much amortized over all the units.
that's the problem with nuclear; unless something like this reactor shows up and doesn't change that the costs are always associated with one plant. private companies just cannot afford to put all their eggs in one big, unreliable basket. (state ownership also doesn't necessarily change things, Areva has not done so hot after its nationalization)
I could imagine they already have contracts in place, even at a higher price tag. It's Rolls-Royce after all, also, they mention they have some MoUs in place.
(This is not based on any facts, it's just a moonshot) If they manage to drive cost down to 1/10th of that, while actually delivering and showing their design is safe (which I think it is), this could be a global energy game changer.
The world's total energy consumption from "dirty" sources is ~140,000TWh, one of these SMRs could plausibly produce 3TWh/year, so about ~45k would be needed to match our current energy demands. The world is not going to switch to 100% of these, obviously, but nonetheless their market is HUGE (trillions!).
at £120(current price is £240) per mwhr that's still £430 million a year income. With a 60 year lifespan, naively 5-8 years to profitability.
The main risk to nuclear plant building is overuns of the reactor and problems with commissioning. If all your doing is hooking up pipes to heat exchangers then that simplifies significantly the building of a plant.
£120/MWh is a rather terrible price. That's basically Hinkley Point C level rate, which is something many grid operators would never accept. So much for "export potential"?
A high price, but it's for non-intermittent, geographically independent carbon-free generation. Nothing else offers that capability. Hydro and geothermal are great, but not geographically independent. Renewables are cheaper, but are intermittent and still geographically dependent. To fairly compare them to nuclear you have to take in the cost of storage, which is immense unless you are lucky to have an alpine lake next door.
All power sources are intermittent, and nuclear is no exception. Nuclear power plants go offline unexpectedly all the time. Every energy grid needs a mix of sources to deal with intermittent production, preferably ones that are controllable and can follow loads.
Nuclear power is not quick to follow loads. This makes it good for base load, somewhat able to do load following, and unable to handle peak loads. Currently peak loads are handled using fossil fuel plants. Even if a country embraces nuclear power wholesale they will still have to invest in storage as well if they want a green energy grid, to be able to fully handle peaks. Hydro (dam) storage is not what is being looked at in most places because of cost and climate impact (concrete), the current plans involve a mix of batteries and hydrogen.
And finally, current nuclear power depends on uranium, and many countries have to import that, so it’s not quite geographically independent. There are approaches for nuclear power technologies that reduce the need for uranium, but all attempts to build those and run them at reasonable cost have failed.
No, nuclear plants go offline very rarely. The have the highest capacity factor of any source [1]. And more importantly, this downtime is scheduled. Where's your source for your claim that "nuclear power plants go offline unexpectedly all the time"?
Nuclear power can be modulated by more aggressively cooling reactors. France has been able to operate a grid over 70% nuclear (over 80% at its peak) without issue, so these concerns about nuclear's inability to match shifting loads are demonstrably false.
Nuclear plants are geographically independent. Sure, uranium has to be shipped. But that's the point: uranium fuel can be shipped. Rivers and valleys cannot be put in shipping containers and moved to where they're needed. Geothermal vents cannot either.
> France has been able to operate a grid over 70% nuclear (over 80% at its peak) without issue, so these concerns about nuclear's inability to match shifting loads are demonstrably false.
France is a perfect example that things can go south with nuclear, too. They operate 56 reactors, of which 17 (!) went unexpectedly offline last winter. Some had deferred maintenance due to the pandemic, others showed micro-fractures in pipes forcing other similar designed plants to go offline as well [1]. Not to mention their EPR projects that have been plagued by cost and time overruns that put Germany's infamous BER airport to shame.
To make it worse, France always is proud of their nuclear technology and its supposed "green energy" mix... but the reality is, the nuclear plants are too slow to follow the demands of electric heating and so France imports a shitload of energy from Germany and the UK every winter [2]. To put it blunt: The German CO2 budget is suffering and we can't get rid of our coal stinkers because France can't be arsed to set up a resilient grid on their own.
> Sure, uranium has to be shipped. But that's the point: uranium fuel can be shipped.
And every time uranium fuel is shipped, you have massive protests from civilians, incurring a lot of side effects - acts of sabotage, blockades, expenses for police and judiciary system. Additionally, Russia is currently used as a dumping ground for French nuclear waste [3] and supplies 26% of the EU's consumption of enriched uranium [4].
tl;dr: France should STFU about their nuclear plants. Nuclear is a dead end unless "fusion is always 50 years in the future" becomes obsolete in the future, the only thing that will help us scraping by regarding CO2 emissions and keep us independent from Russian imperialism, Arabic oil sheiks and a potentially-going-bonkers-again USA is going big on solar and wind.
Your sources seem to be saying the opposite of what you're claiming. For instance the second one, through google translate, says:
> France's Energy Minister Eric Besson criticized Germany's exit from nuclear power. He is convinced that this will lead to Germany importing more electricity from France in the near future. As a result, the Grande Nation has to face the problem of a possible power shortage.
This is actually saying German imports from France will potentially cause an energy shortage, exacerbated by Germany's exit from nuclear generation. I'm not sure how this helps the point you're trying to make.
For all the talk of France's failures, it's carbon intensity of electricity is far smaller than Germany's [1]. This is the actual measuring stick of success: how much carbon is released for each watt-hour of electricity? France is way below Germany on this.
> And every time uranium fuel is shipped, you have massive protests from civilians, incurring a lot of side effects - acts of sabotage, blockades, expenses for police and judiciary system.
So if people protest solar and wind we should just cancel those projects, too? This seems like a non-sensical objection.
And lastly, it's strange to call nuclear a "dead" energy source when it's still generating more than wind and solar combined [2].
> This is actually saying German imports from France will potentially cause an energy shortage, exacerbated by Germany's exit from nuclear generation
Actually, both countries import and export energy from each other, we're importing from France outside the winter when we have shortfalls with renewables because our grid can't shift enough energy from North to South. The difference is that unlike France we don't go and pat ourselves on our shoulder for being oh so carbon friendly. That French claim to grandeur can only be made because everyone ignores that it depends on Germans and Brits.
> This is the actual measuring stick of success: how much carbon is released for each watt-hour of electricity? France is way below Germany on this.
Yeah, because we have a lot of old coal stinkers that drive up our g/kWh emission average - and because the followup emissions of nuclear plants (from construction and teardown of the plant as well as the operation of the nuclear waste storage and the mining, refining and transport of the fuel) have been underestimated [1]. The old figure used to be ~66 g/kWh whereas the actual upper bound is 180 g/kWh which is even more than natural gas (~117 kWh).
The elephant in the room is followup costs though - nuclear power has a lot of these, from insurance in the disaster case to the teardown and storage of the waste. If these costs that are currently effectively offloaded to the taxpayer would be accounted for, nuclear power would be at 90 ct/kWh, and that's the optimistic case.
> And lastly, it's strange to call nuclear a "dead" energy source when it's still generating more than wind and solar combined.
It's a technological dead end for short-term woes. The most modern EPR reactor design takes a decade to build apiece, and every other design no matter which base technology has been vaporware to date. Even if we were to commence construction for a dozen plants now, they would only become available in the 2030s!
We need solar and wind now, and actually smart grids where big consumers like heating systems and providers like electric cars can be coordinated centrally.
Thanks for putting time to write these comments, but I think your arguments and the source [1] you linked above are straw men.
Nobody claims that nuclear is a carbon free source of electricity generation. The IPCC[2] itself is calculating a carbon equivalent cost of 10 gC-eq/kWh, which is similar to renewables. This includes the complete chain from uranium mining to waste disposal. Eventually these will be electrified and CO2-free like everything else, which is not an argument for or against nuclear.
Furthermore, you are right in criticizing France for letting its nuclear infrastructure fall into disrepair due to recklessness and mismanagement. This should be fixed but is not inherent in the technology. Nuclear is expensive if done right.
You make a good point in that it takes a long time to build and certify new nuclear power plants. This is one more reason why we need to start building them now rather when we realize that we are still burning too much coal, gas and oil in 2030.
This is arguably a price we must pay for getting low-carbon base load electricity generation.
> This includes the complete chain from uranium mining to waste disposal.
Yes, but that's just the CO2 emissions and completely ignores the financial cost of tearing down the plants and maintain the waste site. The teardown for a nuclear site can easily reach dozens of billions of dollars, and the forever costs (literal translation of the German word Ewigkeitskosten) even more. Many countries have some sort of trust fund, but these are nowhere near enough to cover the costs (which is conveniently ignored by politicians because if they would do something about it, nuclear power would not be cost-efficient any more).
> You make a good point in that it takes a long time to build and certify new nuclear power plants. This is one more reason why we need to start building them now rather when we realize that we are still burning too much coal, gas and oil in 2030.
Why build nuclear plants at all and load our children with the debt of having to take care of even more nuclear waste than we already have? I mean, in the US you have enough deserts to bury that stuff until the sun explodes, and if some accident happens it will stay contained... but Europe is too geologically unstable and most importantly way too densely settled and Russia isn't a destination either, geopolitical tensions aside the permafrost is thawing and just dumping stuff into the Arctic Ocean should be out of the question.
Also, nuclear plants need nuclear fuel, which is difficult to mine, creates a lot of toxic waste and most importantly nearly three quarters of the world's production originate from one or another kind of dictatorship, kingdoms and other barely functioning governments [1]. What use is it to discontinue oil and gas from Russia and OPEC if all it does is tying us to the next bunch of dictators?
The base night load can be handled by geothermal, wind and water (dams, tidal energy) - the most important thing is to create solid trans-European power lines that can handle shifting energy all around the continent. For the daily peak load, add solar to the mix.
The reason why it still is a good idea to do this is climate change. The cost of not doing anything is much greater than the cost of building new nuclear plants. There are no technical problems with storing waste - it's entirely political. The technically most suitable storage sites in Germany were dismissed for state politics reasons. Instead they chose a technically unsuitable site - Gorleben - which then turned out to be surprisingly unsuitable.
Hinkley was bollocks because the strike price was that high. If we don't agree to stupid strike prices (ie £60 per mwh) then its not a disaster. Even at £60 profitability is inside 12 years.
Unless we start building generation capacity, then the wholesale price will go up as time goes on. Or as new renewable come on line, we'll get even more price fluctuations.
it doesn't take many of these to even out pricing.
Because of the way that the finance was structured. from my understanding it was because the government didn't want to shoulder any risk (or reward) from this.
Also that building multiple facilities at once will streamline regulations and building codes.
What killed the large nuclear reactors was the need for so many "one-off" design changes to accommodate safety regulations, which would vary by site. This means that economies of scale are lost when compared to gas power stations, because every nuclear reactor was essentially unique.
There were plenty of repeated design that started during the 1960s and 70s. Accordingly, costs were considerably lower, often in the range 1 to 2 billion USD per GW.
After this period, costs to build nuclear power plants skyrocketed. When the reasons behind these escalating costs were studied in depth, it was found to be due to the fact that plants lack standardization across the board, leading to ballooning engineering and labor costs as designs are reworked in site-specific ways:
> Overall, a common theme emerging from this analysis is the lack of anticipation in engineering models of the cost-increasing contributions of soft technology external to standard reactor hardware, in response to changing regulations and other factors such as variable project-specific conditions. Prospective modeling shows the potentially transformative effect of rethinking engineering design to adapt to these factors, for example through reduced commodity usage and the automation of some construction processes.
They spent 100 billion pounds on lateral flow tests alone. I enjoyed the free test kits as much as everyone else, but think of the infrastructure that could have paid for.
I thought it was £50bn and was the total allocated budget of NHS Test & Trace to include PCR testing and contract tracing, as well as LFT distribution etc. It has not been spent yet and with the current rolling back of testing the final cost should (hopefully) be well under that figure.
I still agree it's a gargantuan sum that could have been spent in many other important areas, but pandemic response is important too.
This indicates that cost per station could be significantly higher before 5 of them have been built. It's reasonable to believe that doggedly continuing to build more of them will bring costs down eventually, but if early units have high costs (or worse, if build progress falls behind schedule) then it could be difficult to maintain support for building more of them.