[HN Gopher] $60/MWh for advanced nuclear electricity is achievab...
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$60/MWh for advanced nuclear electricity is achievable: GE Hitachi
Executive
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 77 points
Date : 2023-04-03 20:42 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.utilitydive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.utilitydive.com)
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Every time I read about SMRs the idea sounds fantastic. But,
| until a company actually starts building SMRs it is just a grift.
| The first company to actually build a usable SMR will have
| customers lined up at the door. No need to advertise to the
| public how neat your plans for SMRs are. Save that for investors.
| Just start building and testing. This technology is like landing
| and reusing rockets. It will completely change the calculus for
| choosing fission.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| You need to be able to build them for a reasonable price.
|
| NuScale can build them.
|
| The line is almost no one.
|
| It needs to be a lot cheaper.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| They are building one in China
|
| https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsmilestone-for-chinas-ac...
|
| https://nucleus.iaea.org/sites/INPRO/df13/Presentations/011_...
|
| Like Nuscale's reactor is is a PWR with the steam generators
| built into the pressure vessel.
|
| Site preparation is underway in Ontario for a BWRX-300
|
| https://www.ans.org/news/article-4697/contract-for-darlingto...
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Also in the article: "Utility-scale solar-plus-storage costs are
| about $45/MWh; wind power costs are $30/MWh; and stand-alone
| utility-scale solar costs are at $32/MWh"
|
| Wikipedia has higher numbers, but still comparable. And
| "technology proponent says technology can achieve X" is a really
| bad selling point if another technology _already delivers X_ ,
| especially if the new technology is going to face social hurdles.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| i don't know if i believe the $45/MWh figure for solar+storage
| just yet. Maybe someday, maybe not far in the future, but grid
| scale storage isn't scaled out that far in 2023 so far as i
| know.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The independent review of costs for nuscale they link is brutal:
|
| https://ieefa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/NuScales-Small-...
|
| > As currently structured, those project risks will be borne by
| the buying entities (participants), not NuScale or Fluor, its
| lead investor. In other words, potential participants need to
| understand that they would be responsible for footing the bill
| for construction delays and cost overruns, as well as being bound
| by the terms of an expensive, decades-long power purchase
| contract.
|
| > These compelling risks, coupled with the availability of
| cheaper and readily available renewable and storage resources,
| further weaken the rationale for the NuScale SMR.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| > nuke generation is cheap if you push all the risks for
| construction cost overruns onto someone else.
|
| I am a big fan of nuke as the generation source that is mostly
| environmentally benign right now today full stop. It's well
| known, though, that the main problem with nuke is that it's
| very expensive to build because we're quite worried about the
| safety so we have a lot of process and regulatory approval
| built into the design and construction. That extra process and
| regulatory approval is quite expensive.
|
| Of _course_ it 's a lot cheaper if you just disregard those
| things.
| adventured wrote:
| We should disregard the cost and aggressively subsidize a
| massive expansion of nuclear power, guaranteeing the price
| for consumers (matching something reasonable re the market).
|
| Some might proclaim that's not fair competitively. I have no
| interest in being fair about the matter, I don't want my
| government to be either.
| pydry wrote:
| > nuke generation is cheap if you push all the risks for
| construction cost overruns onto someone else.
|
| This is what France tried to do with the reactor they built
| for Finland. There was a budget hole of a few billion and an
| argument/lawsuit over who would pay for it.
|
| Nuclear costs are a hot potato.
| Kuinox wrote:
| The EPR design is bloated because germany wanted to
| sabotage the project and achieved to increase the cost
| through additional security no other nuclear plant ever
| needed.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| There are certainly a lot of excuses for why nuclear is so
| expensive. As far as I can tell they are all just that,
| excuses. Korea is by far the largest producer of nuclear
| power plants today. They have the scale that people claim is
| necessary to reduce cost. They have the pro nuclear
| regulatory environment that would never be politically
| possible in the states. Nuclear still costs them more than
| solar and wind.
| adastra22 wrote:
| He seems to be complaining that NuScale keeps increasing the
| energy output of its modules. Am I reading that right?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Nuscale is moving the goalposts - they started off with lots
| of modules with small power output on each and slowly
| approached few modules with lots of power each. A few more
| iterations and they will be indistinguishable from a regular
| nuke plant.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Yes, out of context that is the least damning of the many
| issues raised.
|
| But if you claim you can reduce costs by building something
| you call a small modular reactor, and it keeps getting less
| small and less modular, questions do arise as to whether the
| initial costs will similarly become more like traditional
| fission.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| For perspective, the current average residential price for
| electricity in the United States is about $0.168/kWh, or
| $168/MWh.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/AverageEnergyPrices...
|
| Since I've been muzzled again, let me respond to those below
| here.
|
| Yeah, that's what "residential cost" means.
|
| And?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| That's the price the consumer pays.
|
| The $60/MWh quoted above is the price the utility would buy
| electricity.
|
| Much different prices.
| loeg wrote:
| That's the price consumers pay, but not the cost of the
| utility's supply.
| zizee wrote:
| "A small modular reactor should last a minimum of 60 years.
| Probably more, up to 100, frankly, if maintained properly. Wind
| and solar, after about 20 years you have to replace everything."
|
| I'm a big fan of the SMR concept, but this line about having to
| throw everything away for solar after 20 years is just wrong.
| bullfightonmars wrote:
| It's also irrelevant. Cost of maintenance and service lifetime
| are built into the price/MWh.
| asynchronous wrote:
| Windmill technician IS the largest growing job in the US this
| year
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| That does seem exaggerated, though people throw around 25yr as
| a standard lifetime for PV[1] (with an approx. degradation of
| 1% output per year). 20-25yr for a wind turbine also looks
| believable (pretty good given that's not solid state like the
| PV).
|
| 1: https://energy.mit.edu/news/study-even-short-lived-solar-
| pan...
| jeffbee wrote:
| There are panels in NREL's PV Lifetime Project that are on
| pace to have 80% rated output after 200 years.
| https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81172.pdf
|
| PV "lifetime" is overblown fossil industry propaganda. It
| does not factor into any economic decision.
| crote wrote:
| PV is now being sold with a 25-year _warranty_ - it 'll still
| have at least 80% capacity after that time.
|
| As the article rightly points out, it often just makes more
| economic sense to replace them earlier due to improvements in
| panel technology. There isn't really a _technical_ reason to
| replace them.
| hathawsh wrote:
| If nuclear technology improves in efficiency as much as solar
| has, we'll want to replace the SMRs also in 20 years. Check out
| this amazing graph [1] of solar efficiency improvements from
| 1976 to the present. I wonder which kind of cells are on
| typical roofs.
|
| 1. https://www.nrel.gov/pv/cell-efficiency.html - high
| resolution at https://www.nrel.gov/pv/assets/pdfs/best-
| research-cell-effic...
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Can you elaborate? Is there a solar farm in prod right now
| older than 20 years that you know of? Im all for solar, and
| honestly didn't consider this angle..
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The main reason why solar farms are replaced before 20 years
| are up is because modern panels are much more efficient than
| they were 20 years ago. By replacing the panels you can get
| 2-4x as much power in the same footprint and using the same
| infrastructure.
| tormeh wrote:
| Wouldn't it be more cost-effective to put up the new panels
| somewhere else? Are panel costs such a negligible part of
| solar farm costs that expending doesn't make sense?
| adaml_623 wrote:
| So you don't _have_ to replace everything. But there's a
| compelling economic argument in upgrading the components in
| the Solar array as better ones become available.
|
| I guess you don't need permits for upgrading to newer
| components.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| There's a panel in Germany that was in use for 36 years:
| https://www.presse.uni-
| oldenburg.de/einblicke/54/files/asset...
|
| Efficiency went from 8.55% to 8.2%
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Well, maybe 30 years rather than 20, but they do degrade.
|
| See: https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2022/aging-gracefully-
| how...
|
| "A major question in the solar energy industry is exactly how
| much we should expect solar modules to degrade each year...and
| when they will eventually degrade so much that they no longer
| produce adequate power...For modules built today, it is
| probably 30 years."
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| That stat is when they think it'll drop below 80% of original
| production, not when it needs scrapped.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I wonder if those guys have ever met the people from the
| other side of the NREL office who are running the PV Lifetime
| project. They have commercial, non-research panels in the
| field that are aging much less than 0.5% per year.
| johnea wrote:
| Well sure, once you dump the construction and clean up costs on
| we-the-idiot-herd it makes a really convincing economic
| argument...
| adastra22 wrote:
| Same goes for solar and wind...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Please. There are no insurance issues, no proliferation
| issues, no clean up issues. Everything fails gracefully.
| Nuclear, outside of edge cases, is a scam compared to battery
| firmed renewables.
| adastra22 wrote:
| https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-14/californi
| a...
|
| https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2022/04/05/feds-
| wan...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-
| turb...
|
| There are unaccounted for external costs in renewables,
| which are not accounted for in those numbers. Nuclear is
| the only energy source with all-in, full-lifecycle
| accounting.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You're being disingenuous. Those are old links, and state
| of the art is that solar panels and wind turbines can be
| almost fully recyclable. And nuclear waste in the US is
| still kept in "temporary" storage cooling ponds
| indefinitely.
|
| (Veolia and Siemens are the biggest players in this
| space, but there are many others who have established end
| of life supply chains for these products)
| zizee wrote:
| The links you shared about solar panels don't paint a
| hugely worrying picture. The vast majority of materials
| in panels are inert, and newer panels are using less and
| less toxic materials like lead.
|
| And all the talk about panels and wind turbine blades
| ending up in landfills sounds alarming, but these "big"
| numbers they spout need to be put in context. I'm betting
| it is just a tiny percentage on the total landfill
| generated by society, and the costs mentioned in those
| linked articles don't seem "unaccounted for", they seem
| pretty reasonable at a few dollars per panel.
| arghandugh wrote:
| ...that is borne by Not The Entities Operating It. Which
| is a real problem when we're talking about, at best, 300%
| premiums over the competing power suppliers. And at
| worst: $12-digit cleanups.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Are you talking about nuclear? The external costs are
| paid by the operator. They have to setup a fund to handle
| decommissioning and cleanup before even beginning
| operation, and the costs of that are worked into the
| total-cost-per-MWh numbers.
| wahern wrote:
| The major difference is that nuclear waste ends up in rich
| countries' backyards, whereas heavy metals from construction
| and disposal of solar panels contaminate communities
| thousands of miles away. Out of sight, out of mind.
| ntonozzi wrote:
| Nuclear waste from power plants is not a legitimate issue:
| https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/the-boring-
| truth-a..., https://zionlights.substack.com/p/everything-i-
| believed-abou....
| jeffbee wrote:
| Neither is waste from PV panels.
| nicoburns wrote:
| My understanding is that the heavy metals are almost
| entirely from thin film cadmium telluride panels. Not from
| the much more common silicon based panels which are made of
| silicon, glass and aluminum for the frame. About as safe
| materials as one could hope for. The regular panels do
| sometimes contain a little lead, but this is small amounts
| for solder which could quite easily be replaced by lead
| free solder.
| todd8 wrote:
| Interesting, much cheaper than solar.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| The article states the opposite?
|
| "Utility-scale solar-plus-storage costs are about $45/MWh; wind
| power costs are $30/MWh; and stand-alone utility-scale solar
| costs are at $32/MWh, according to the Institute for Energy
| Economics and Financial Analysis."
| RC_ITR wrote:
| >a levelized cost
|
| _The LCOE "represents the average revenue per unit of
| electricity generated that would be required to recover the
| costs of building and operating a generating plant during an
| assumed financial life and duty cycle", and is calculated as
| the ratio between all the discounted costs over the lifetime
| of an electricity generating plant divided by a discounted
| sum of the actual energy amounts delivered. Inputs to LCOE
| are chosen by the estimator. They can include the cost of
| capital, decommissioning, fuel costs, fixed and variable
| operations and maintenance costs, financing costs, and an
| assumed utilization rate_
|
| I think solar should be a major part of any future energy
| generation regime, but I've also never seen an LCOE for solar
| that I actually believe. They also ignore the timing mismatch
| between generation and consumption (batteries help there, but
| even then, it's still a challenge to maintain an on-demand
| grid with solar).
| adastra22 wrote:
| Nuclear is fundamentally cheaper than nearly any other energy
| source. However our laws are backwards: regulators are required
| to increase safety standards for nuclear so long as it is
| cheaper, until the costs are brought up to par with other
| energy sources. As a result, nuclear is orders of magnitude
| safer than anything else, and burdens costs that other energy
| sources don't have to account for, yet it is perpetually no
| cheaper than coal or natural gas. It's blatant regulatory
| capture by fossil fuel in the name of "environmentalism."
| pydry wrote:
| It isnt the law making it expensive. It's capital costs.
|
| It would be even _more_ expensive if it didnt get a free ride
| on insurance - through disaster liability caps set at ~0.05%
| of the costs of one Fukushima.
| adastra22 wrote:
| But the point is those capital costs are so high _because_
| nuclear is required to meet a threshold of safety far, far
| in excess of any other energy source. There are instances
| of nuclear plants having to shield radiation to be _lower_
| than background levels. Which beyond being absolutely
| pointless, it adds weight, which adds concrete, which adds
| capital costs and CO2 emissions.
| pydry wrote:
| The only reason it exists at all is because it gets a
| free ride on insurance through the catastrophe liability
| cap.
|
| IMHO it's a bit premature to talk about deregulating it
| without first making sure it shoulders full liability for
| the damage it would cause by neglecting _important_
| safety.
| rainsford wrote:
| > However our laws are backwards: regulators are required to
| increase safety standards for nuclear so long as it is
| cheaper, until the costs are brought up to par with other
| energy sources.
|
| Any citation for that? It's a convenient villain to blame,
| but absent any proof regulators are deliberately trying to
| make nuclear less competitive, it seems much more plausible
| that regulations are driven by concern over accidents. If a
| wind turbine fails it doesn't make the entire region
| uninhabitable for decades.
| joseph_grobbles wrote:
| [dead]
| nicoburns wrote:
| > As a result, nuclear is orders of magnitude safer than
| anything else
|
| How exactly is nuclear safer than solar or wind? Solar panels
| in particular are about as dangerous as an inert rock.
| crote wrote:
| Very few people die in nuclear accidents, but quite a lot
| of construction workers end up falling off roofs while
| installing solar panels.
| crote wrote:
| Nuclear _has_ to be orders of magnitude safer because nuclear
| incidents have a way bigger economic impact. A gas plant or
| solar farm blowing up will be in the hundreds of millions of
| $, but Fukushima is counting in the hundreds of _billions_ of
| $.
|
| The nuclear industry has a history of creating plants which
| are "totally safe, really, you can trust me!" and ending up
| with really expensive accidents. If they can't get their shit
| together and get basically unlimited insurance for whatever
| accident might still happen, the government has to enforce
| safety rules for them so the taxpayers don't end up having to
| pay for their whoopsies over and over again.
| 35208654 wrote:
| Really expensive accidents that cost money and very few
| lives. Meanwhile, coal had gotten a pass on hundreds of
| years of added costs to healthcare and loss of life
| expectancy.
| deepsun wrote:
| There's no conspiracy here -- the nuclear safety is just so
| darn expensive, and for rational reasons.
|
| It is safer, yes, but only once a lot of resources is spent
| on safety. So nuclear power generation is very inexpensive
| and expensive at the same time, depending on amount of effort
| put into its safety (with modern scientific knowledge on
| fission, I'd say like 90% of a reactor cost is ensuring its
| safety).
|
| I honestly hoped that NuScale production could reduce some
| significant fraction of that safety costs by "commoditizing"
| the production. Kinda like airplanes are very safe in a big
| part because their production and maintenance processes are
| streamlined and actively practiced ("economy of scale").
| jltsiren wrote:
| The real issue is the risk profile. When you build a new
| reactor, it's almost certainly going to be safe. But there is
| a small risk of a catastrophic outcome, where most of the
| damage is local or at most regional.
|
| Normally this would be the kind of a situation where
| insurance is the right solution. But because the potential
| magnitude of the catastrophe is too great, the insurance
| sector is incapable of handling it. No one is willing to
| provide a sufficient insurance policy on a commercial basis.
|
| Because the assets of the company operating the reactor are
| also insufficient in the worst case, that leaves the
| government as the ultimate insurer. And as with any insurer,
| they require you to take various steps to mitigate the risks.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| I don't know what your comparison is. Here solar is about half
| that. I even managed to install solar on my roof for about
| 35EUR/MWh.
| 4wsn wrote:
| I assume you mean with subsidies and grants.
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