How about this, why don't SK, UK, French and US regulators get together and agree on a common set of regulations for reactor design. Then they can focus on the site specific regulations unique to each installation.
> How about this, why don't SK, UK, French and US regulators get together and agree on a common set of regulations for reactor design. Then they can focus on the site specific regulations unique to each installation.
How does that benefit the groups funding major candidates in the US? I don't know about the other countries but you can be confident that the amount of red tape involved in reactor construction in the US is not a bug but a feature to many of those responsible for it.
Nuclear power is generally stable and predictable which reduces potential peak prices, but it doesn't scale down well so having a lot of it during times of low load means off peak prices will fall. Expansion of nuclear power thus threatens the profit margins of a lot of powerful organizations.
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See also: Cars. It is not technically possible to produce a single light passenger vehicle that can be legally registered without modification anywhere in the world.
The US's Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and the UNECE Global Technical Regulations that apply in much of the rest of the world are incompatible in a few ways that mostly relate to lighting/reflectors and crash structures. As a result, every "world car" offered in all major markets in fact has at least two and usually three variants, typically UNECE LHD, UNECE RHD, and FMVSS LHD.
This wouldn't be particularly hard to solve by either updating one or the other to be compatible or by the US accepting UNECE LHD vehicles, but the existing automakers that sell around the world have no interest in making it easier for others to compete.
This remembers me, once international martian scientific sat fails, because on it half done by Americans, with Imperial measure units, and other half, by Europeans (most active usually France), with Metric measure units.
- On one important data transfer, from European module to American, somebody forgot convert units, and software decided to make full halt (to be honest, these things are extremely frequent, but mostly fixed after appear), and this time, unfortunately, this lead to mission loss.
But to be honest, civilian aviation is full of such issues, when appear some critical things, because people erroneous read measuring unit names.
For example, Gimli Glider case, when technicians erroneously read fuel amount in kilograms, but enter something other (their interface accepted centimeters, liters and kilograms and convert automatically), and as consequence, plane was carrying only 45% of it required fuel load.
Fortunately, all alive and plane got minimal damage, but this is not always.
The newest AP1000s in Georgia cost 34B (and counting) for 2.2GWe.
As usual, horrible ROI and massive cost overruns:
> During the construction of Vogtle's first two units, capital investment required jumped from an estimated $660 million to $8.87 billion.[7] ($18.3 billion in 2022 dollars[8])
> Two additional units utilizing Westinghouse AP1000 reactors were under construction since 2009, with Unit 3 being completed in July 2023.[9][10][11] This last report blames the latest increase in costs on the contractor not completing work as scheduled. Another complicating factor in the construction process is the bankruptcy of Westinghouse in 2017.[12] In 2018 costs were estimated to be about $25 billion.[13] By 2021 they were estimated to be over $28.5 billion.[14] In 2023 costs had increased to $34 billion, with work still to be completed on Vogtle 4.[15]
So why bother? Because base load? I mean damn, why not just toss in a couple Moss Landing type tesla Megapack installations instead?
At 2.2GW, even if u wanted to store power for 12h, thats 26GWh. Moss Landing is 2.8GWh and it cost $560 million. Ten of these is 5B, so an entire solar+megapack installation still ends up at half the cost of nuclear.
And you don’t need to store 12h of solar. And the rapid response of Megapacks is incredibly helpful for grid stability. And they can be spread out making the grid more resilient to natural disasters, attacks etc
Thankfully you can built 4GW of renewables for the price of 1GW of nuclear lol. Don’t need to store the energy, just build more generation capacity to offset lower winter production.
Still cheaper, and getting cheaper. Don’t ignore wind power too.
"Just build more" would work better if the production wasn't so unbalanced. 70% of the production is done during 6 months and it's 3% in December and January. Being mere 4 times cheaper than nuclear (in the short term) isn't nearly enough to counterbalance that. If it would be 20 times cheaper it would start to make more sense for a winter load.
> Still cheaper, and getting cheaper. Don’t ignore wind power too.
Wind is even worse than solar in this aspect, it can be down unpredictability and unlike solar, is closed to the maximum theoretical efficiency already anyways which means the only thing you can do is count on the economy of scale.
And before people tell me that it usually produces more in winter, yes it does, until it doesn't like the 3 weeks wind anomaly we had two years ago in the EU with close to no production.
I'm not predicting future tech of course, it's possible that "just build more" will work in the future, for now it doesn't though and from a large margin.
Wind is better if you actually build offshore, which for some reason is very underinvested. We should have 100s of GWs in offshore power in Europe now. The fact that UK does not have even 100GW is a shame.
To calculate the energy produced by a 1 GW solar power plant during a winter month in Germany, we need to consider a few factors:
1. *Solar Insolation*: The average solar energy received per day in winter.
2. *Day Length*: Winter days are shorter, so there's less daylight for solar panels to operate.
3. *Panel Efficiency*: The efficiency of the solar panels in converting sunlight to electricity.
4. *Weather Conditions*: Overcast days are common in winter, which can reduce solar panel output.
Let's make some assumptions for a rough estimate:
- *Solar Insolation*: In Germany, the winter solar insolation is roughly 1.5 kWh/m²/day.
- *Day Length*: We'll assume an average of 8 hours of effective daylight in winter.
- *Panel Efficiency*: Modern solar panels are about 15-20% efficient. Let's use 18%.
- *Weather Conditions*: We'll assume that overcast conditions reduce effective insolation by 25%.
Now, let's calculate:
1. The daily energy output (in kWh) = 1 GW * 8 hours * 18% efficiency * 75% weather factor.
2. Multiply this by the number of days in a month (30 days for simplicity).
A 1 GW solar power plant in Germany could produce approximately 32.4 million kWh (or 32.4 GWh) of energy during a typical 30-day winter month, considering the factors and assumptions outlined earlier.
Hit me up in 2040 when Poland’s first nuclear power plant finally opens a decade behind schedule snd costing the usual ~10x of the estimate.
You do so much assumptions yet they don't match reality _at all_.
>A 1 GW solar power plant in Germany could produce approximately 32.4 million kWh (or 32.4 GWh) of energy during a typical 30-day winter month, considering the factors and assumptions outlined earlier.
Okay, so this means on average 1GW of solar power should output ~1GWh of energy daily, right? So Germany's roughly 80GW of power would produce on average 80GWh of electricity? Well, let's look at _real_ data: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
In the last 30 days there was exactly one day with over 80GWh of solar power produced: 9th January. And it was just 81GWh. Yet there was multiple days where actual electricity produced barely went over 10GWh... or not even 10GWh, like 21 December with 7GWh produced. Three days ago, it was 14,5GWh.
Overall solar power production in Germany in December was 795GWh, below 1/3 of your estimate.
Depends on where you are, up here in Finland we have no solar in the winter when our power consumption peaks. Wind is unreliable and can be too low for over a week.
Wind energy is the fastest growing form of power in Finland.
Plenty of hydro too. Enough to push electricity prices below zero in may 2023.
Luckily youve also got a choice of nuclear reactors built by Russia or reactors where you get the privilege to fight with France over whose responsibility it is to pay for the billions of euros in cost overruns.
And every time some minor issue puts our biggest reactor offline the price of electricity spikes. Large nuclear reactors are huge single points of failure.
Large reactor not generating is a failure (so it does not happen often and steps are supposed to be taken to limit the risk). NREs not generating is normal behavior (it happens often because that's how it is).
A large fraction of the design changes are mandatory, without even considering the local regulator, due to the sheer geographical difference between sites.
Hinkley Point: tunnels (AFAIK: 9 km-long), a seawall...
Even climate is a factor.
There will always be a local regulator, and the push to adopt common requirements (even enforced by the pertinent UN agency, the IAEA) is limited by the need to double-check (keeping many distinct eyes on the subject in order), its own tropisms and also will/need to justify itself by avoiding to simply copy-paste.
All this will probably prove to be quite an ordeal for any "let's build thanks to components sent by a factory" approach (SMRs...).
> One major driver of Hinkley Point C’s costs is that EDF were effectively forced to build a first-of-its-kind reactor design by the Office for Nuclear Regulation. To win regulatory approval in the UK, EDF had to make roughly 7,000 design changes from the reactor design they use in France. Not only do the design changes mean that 25% more concrete and 35% more steel is needed during construction, but also that many lessons EDF have learnt the hard way in France can’t be easily applied in the UK.
This is absurd, and explains a lot.
In any case, a lot has been learned from Flamanville (where there were poor welds that introduced years of delays) and Olkiluoto. The next batch of EPRs, probably of the EPR2 design which implements those hard and costly lessons, should be drastically quicker and cheaper to build. We'll see how Penly progresses.
I haven't but I'm going to go on a limb and say that if a reactor design is fine for north France, southeastern Finland, south China... it's probably fine for south England.
Just build it in Northern France then and add capacity to the UK interconnector, versus building it in the UK. Ship the electrons if you can't ship the tech.
I love all the nuclear articles here, it’s great to see the scary nuke plants become more mainstream. However, wake me up when they’re financially viable. I don’t expect that’ll be until we’re really in dire straits with the climate.
> However, wake me up when they’re financially viable. I don’t expect that’ll be until we’re really in dire straits with the climate.
That's the thing though. Even absurdly expensive as they currently are, the damage they don't cause through the emissions they will save over their lifetime is probably worth it. And considering all the lessons EDF have learned on EPRs, it's highly probable that the next generation will be cheaper and faster to build.
One thing that really struck me recently was an article about the commencement of a massive solar and transmission project in the American Southwest. Total cost for the panels and the transmission lines to deliver the power was something like $11 billion for (I think) around 3 GW of nameplate capacity.
Assuming you could site a new nuclear plant somewhat closer to an interconnection point, it seems to me like even modern, over budget, uneconomical nuclear is not all that much more expensive than massive scale renewables. And the capacity factor can’t be beat.
If the west could build even a handful of additional plants after Flamanville, Vogtle and the handful of others, is there any reason to think that the next tranche of plants is just hopelessly uneconomical with renewables?
To me it seems like even if nuclear is twice as expensive than renewables plus transmission, that’s a reasonable price to pay for the base load generation capabilities and diversification of the overall energy mix.
Huh? The newest AP1000s in Georgia cost 34B (and counting) for 2237MWe. That’s like 4x the cost per GW in the numbers you quotes for the solar installation.
But wait, there’s more! horrible ROI and massive cost overruns:
> During the construction of Vogtle's first two units, capital investment required jumped from an estimated $660 million to $8.87 billion.[7] ($18.3 billion in 2022 dollars[8])
> Two additional units utilizing Westinghouse AP1000 reactors were under construction since 2009, with Unit 3 being completed in July 2023.[9][10][11] This last report blames the latest increase in costs on the contractor not completing work as scheduled. Another complicating factor in the construction process is the bankruptcy of Westinghouse in 2017.[12] In 2018 costs were estimated to be about $25 billion.[13] By 2021 they were estimated to be over $28.5 billion.[14] In 2023 costs had increased to $34 billion, with work still to be completed on Vogtle 4.[15]
So why bother? Because base load? I mean damn, why not just toss in a couple Moss Landing type tesla megapack installations instead?
At 2.2GW, even if u wanted to store power for 12h, thats 26GWh. Moss Landing is 2.8GWh and it cost $560 million.
There are two key points of contention I have with your argument, which you have posted multiple times verbatim.
1. The whole point is Nuclear does not have to cost this much, thus your comparisons are irrelevant. China’s build costs are substantially lower so it can be done.
2. For a not-insignificant percentage of the global population that can consider mega projects of this scale neither wind nor solar are reliable enough during peak energy season - the winter - to use even massive battery packs like you have described.
> To me it seems like even if nuclear is twice as expensive than renewables plus transmission, that’s a reasonable price to pay for the base load generation capabilities and diversification of the overall energy mix
And don't forget that a nuclear reactor can easily push 70+ years with some maintenance and refreshes, meanwhile solar panels and batteries are drastically less effective after ~15-20 years at most.
> even if nuclear is twice as expensive than renewables plus transmission, that’s a reasonable price to pay for the base load generation capabilities and diversification of the overall energy mix.
Who is going around investing in the overall energy mix, though? People with $10 billion to invest aren't thinking "how can I optimize the grid", they're thinking "how can I get the best return on my capital"; renewables offer substantially lower risk and quicker timelines than nuclear, so that's where the money seems likely to go. If we as a society want someone to build nuclear plants in the near term, for grid-stability reasons, we're probably going to have to subsidize the project.
The costs of a reliable grid and sufficiently dispatchable electricity are gonna get paid one way or another if the grid customers expect that level of service.
There are lots of ways those costs can be allocated - from user fees in deregulated markets or from ratepayers in vertically integrated systems, and probably a million permutations in between - but those costs are there and someone’s gonna pay them.
A long-life highly available nuke plant at 3x the cost of nameplate renewable production doesn’t seem like much more than an immaterial cost difference at the end of the day.
It is run by those people but cost matters in a capitalist society, so you have to consider it alongside the actual engineering numbers. If you want socialism for energy, we can have that, but I’ll tell you now that the government will spend way more to operate a nuclear plant than it’s going to be worth. Look at navy nuclear stuff, it’s so dang expensive.
> renewables offer substantially lower risk and quicker timelines than nuclear, so that's where the money seems likely to go.
You do the same as every other market, you make those companies pay for the externalities.
So they don't only pay for renewables but renewables + gas plants (and their environmental costs) + batteries + whatever else is necessary in a real grid.
And you'd charge the nuclear extra too because, despite what the people here who seem to hate renewables more than they like nuclear believe, the energy delivered by nuclear is not magic and needs to be matched to demand too.
Which is why we've built pumped hydro and implemented Time of Use pricing for many decades to help nuclear energy integrate well with the grid.
That's already what happens, that's why it's so expensive. You usually have an all included costs on one side and whatever minimum the private company could get away with legally on the other side.
The French gas plants got built to smooth out renewables, there's only a single gas plant built before 2010 and it wasn't even connected to the pipelines, it was a factory gas reuse.
I do think it was an environmental and diplomatic (as seen now in the Russian war) mistake.
China has a nuclear reactor design that they like a lot, Hualong One [1]. So much so that they already built 3 in China, 2 in Pakistan, have 11 under construction, and just approved (one month ago) 4 more. The domestic building costs are not that easy to obtain, because it's China. But the export version is more transparent, for the simple reason that they charged Pakistan for it. The 2 reactors they built for them cost $9.5 BN (together), and they deliver 2.1 GW of electricity, with a capacity factor above 95% [2].
Unilateral recognition on Tech is totally different beast from Pharma.
This is because different nature of issues.
In Pharma, main issue testing, which is basically very human-intensive task, at the moment machines are not involved. And mostly talking on drugs, we trying hard to achieve "invisible" drugs, which have extremely narrow appearance (as in space as in time), so ideally, drug make it's action extremely short time, after which no effects appear.
So, ideal drug, does not have any side effects at all.
In Tech, difference, it almost whole side effects.
1. Building starts with choose good place - using lot of sources to gather info, and sources see this and react.
2. Continued with negotiations, with interested parties (persons and entities), and on so large and sophisticated project, need to make some parties allies.
3. Building itself, involve lot of parties. Some parties making profits, other demand compensations.
4. All buildings have limited productive lifetime, after which appear decommission and in ideal case, annihilation of building and return land to some "first use" state, now most people consider wild nature state.
Imagine world, where you must negotiate with ALL people on your street usage of anti-flu drugs, including all possible side effects and all following effects, like attending of gym, etc :)
