New Generation of Nuclear Power Plants More Expensive than Expected

What is sad is that the government subsidized nuclear research and development for decades before it broke even and was profitable, yet the same investment (or at least investment on that scale) has not been made for renewables. Don't let anyone argue that renewable energy is not profitable because it has to be subsidized; oil and nuclear and even coal development received subsidies, and fusion research in particular has sunk billions and is still "50 years away".

China's demand for basic resources is the main reason the cost is so high. The price of steel has risen so steeply that I have heard it is no longer cost effective even to build wind farms in the UK.
If the Chinese would be building wind farms instead of continuing to use coal then that wouldn't matter as much.

Sadly, I don't think this comes as a great surprise to anybody; and of course we still haven't finished paying for the clean-up of the last lot we were suckered into buying.
Would that our governments were as clean and far sighted as those in NZ...

Why does it matter if they cost more now? There are companies who are willing to pay for them.

The argument that nuclear costs a lot to setup and maintain never made much sense to me. If some private company wants to pay for it, let them. Sure that money eventually comes from individuals and businesses on their power bill, but I would much rather pay an extra $15/month over the course of 30 years for co2 free power rather than wait 15 years for some technology that may or may not actually work out.

By the time thorium plants become production ready we'll still have plenty of need for them with old nuclear plants hitting their max age. Building more conventional nuclear right now won't change that.

It is time to be practical.

Renewables have been subsidized here in the US.

They've gotten a small portion compared to what fossil/nuclear has enjoyed, but they have gotten a hand up.

The wind energy producers say that they need about two more years of subsidies in order to stand on their own. It takes time to build the plants /infrastructure and get manufacturing volume up to the point where the sales of electricity from wind can pay the entire bill.

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I think new nuclear is looking at a massive, and possibly fatal problem. New solar, thermal and PV is coming on line fast and the prices are dropping very rapidly. It takes only 2-3 years to create a solar farm. Ten, at least to build new nuclear.

In the ten years that it would take to build a new nuclear plant we could see hugh amounts of solar, just pumping away during peak electricity price hours. Solar is likely to eat up the high-return portion of the market.

I haven't seen the numbers, but I doubt that nuclear could ever be profitable if it had to wholesale all its power at off peak rates.

Earlier this year Florida Power and Light released their estimate for building a couple of new nuclear plants at Turkey Point. Cost? $5,780 to $8,071 per kW.

Thin-film solar is shipping at between $1.00 and $1.50 a watt, Add on a couple of bucks per watt for installation, etc. and you're at $3,000 per kW with prices expected to keep falling.

Sungri is projecting solar at $0.05 per kWhr wholesale in the near future. They have operating prototype solar concentrators and the data from those prototypes are allowing them to calculate the cost.

Solar is just going to eat new nuclear's lunch. And afternoon tea.
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Jordan Mendelson

What are you talking about? You think that you only end up paying for it on your hydro bill? read up a little mate!

You pay for it through your taxes. Your Hyrdo Bill. Your Health.

It's NOT private companies that are dumping billions into this energy development - its the Government.

Just this year, Canada dropped $300 MILLION into AECL (Atomic Energy Canada). That's your money. Thats my money. And well.. AECL is only worth about $600 million.. Can you imagine ANY other company getting half their worth in a freebie? Yeah right!

"Since its founding in 1952, AECL has received over $20 billion dollars in subsidies from the federal government and it continues to receive at least $ 100 million a year."

Also, no matter what anyone says. Nukes ARE NOT Carbon neutral. The construction process and continual refinement process for Uranium are hugely carbon intensive. Of course you also have to build a long term storage infrastructure too... which doesn't yet exist.

Investing in expensive nuclear plants should not be an energy priority for the US. We must find true renewable sources that are more effective, efficient and safer than uranium-powered nuclear.

Never mind the fact that the NRC is in bed with the nuclear industry and hasn't provided meaningful oversight of plants in decades, which means there are massive health and safety gaps at plants across the country.

Yea, that means we'll be building lots more COAL plants everywhere!

Wind power is a great supplement, but can not be relied upon as a base load generator. Solar PV may be a great peak load generator, but that's it. Solar thermal is the only renewable technology that can provide dependable base load generation. And it won't do me much good in New York.

We need nuclear if we are going to reduce CO2 emissions and still have a dependable electricity supply. The contest for the next decade at least is between coal and nuclear as base load generators, with solar thermal, solar PV and wind slowly growing in importance.

For those complaining about the CO2 emissions of nuclear power, they are actually lower than those for solar PV due to the power required for PV manufacturing.

Actually some solar PV plants are fully powered by... solar PV.

We should have learned our lesson regarding short term thinking by now. The long term problems with nuclear (safety, waste, decommissioning) should push the needle way into the Bad Idea range for most, yet here we are. We haven't solved the problems with extant nuke plants yet, still there's a formidable push to bring new units online.
Somebody called that the definition of insane; I'm stuck between insanity and inanity. The only time being stupid does you any good at all is when it teaches you how to stop being stupid, otherwise it's a complete waste of time.
It's also interesting to see some posts going back and forth like alternatives are an option to be weighed against this or that. They're not. They are virtually essential to survival, and ultimately the end game for all generation if we make it through this period in out history. That said, all delays on the road to get there are heeba hawbing* at best and misanthropic at worst.
There are viable points on constancy regarding alternatives such as wind, photovoltaic and thermovoltaic. Stating the obvious need for the sun to make solar work isn't a deterrent to me, it's a consideration in my system design and configuration.
Some new generation technologies don't suffer this shortcoming, though. It will be a combination of the two (plus lifestyle change) that will provide the power we need in the way that we use it.

* heeba hawbing - Pointless conversation on a particular topic, usually involving babbling and prattling on about problems and obstacles rather than opportunities and solutions. Generally done by the pessimist, the defeatist or the evasive industry mollycoddler.

Who's the man that worked in Congress to successfully end the construction of new nuclear power plants in the US, the man who is running for President right now? Not Obama, not McCain - Mike Gravel!

http://www.gravel2008.us

"Actually some solar PV plants are fully powered by... solar PV."

I find that hard to believe. Take a look at the panel size on some of the recent large installations (such as Google) and then see the stats at the relatively low percentage of power they provide for an office.

Maybe for the solar panel assembly, but for the silicon ingot production? probably not. For the wafer fabrication? possibly, but doubtful.

What Waste Issues? What danger?

WASTE:
If we ran things like virtuallty every other nuclear nation, we would reprocess our waste, leaving us with waste which barely qualifies as radioactive, and only remains in that realm for about a century (current us interim storage is holding about 50 years worth right now.), and about 90 percent of our fuel back. Also, If we put money into borehole storage as opposed to massive facilities like Yukka, we could put the waste back in the ground, far below the anything we would ever have to worry about, and glassify it into a non-water soluble form which will just sit there, forever, unable to damage anything.

DANGER:
Chernobyl cannot happen with modern reactors. the Chernobyl reactors, which were Soviet RBMK models, were designed in such a way as to be prone to such chain reactions (due to a positive void coefficient) in order to let them swap fuel rods on the fly and use the waste for nuclear weapons. Water and Helium based reactors, the only kind in use today or in the future, do not have this problem, and as they heat up beyond the safe point,t eh reactoin slows and stops. I'll take a nuclear reactor in my backyard any day.

RENEWABLES:
Love them. Do not get me wrong. Renewables are amazing and advances in them are making green living possible for millions. However, we cannot run a grid on solar and Wind,w e need a relyable base load. Even if we could run the grid TODAY on renewbales, if we replaced every car on the road with an electric variant, which i think we would all like, the grid would need to grow to SEVEN TIMES it's current capacity to support it. Nuclear is a carbon free way to cover those bases which renewables alone cannot. they say $12 billion a plant, I say "keep em coming"

What are you talking about? Electricity made from Nuclear cost around 6 cent per KWH, Coat comes in at 5 cent per KWH, Wind comes close to 16 cent KWH, while solar is out there at 34 cent per KWH.

Ruff: I agree with you on nuclear. Many of the issues and dangers have been thoroughly overblown by fearmongering and bad reporting. BY any reasonable (and numerical) analysis, nuclear comes out way ahead of any fossil fuels in terms of health and environmental impact. I'll take one in my backyard, too.

Two problems though. One, that "seven times" number for grid capacity has been debunked, well, a lot more than seven times. We need a better grid, and a higher-capacity one, but 7 times is just absurd.

Also, you should qualify the statement that we "cannot" run a grid on intermittent sources. Even today it is perfectly possible to accomodate a miz of renewables at pretty high penetration rates, by some estimates over 50%. As renewables (and batteries, hydrogen and synthetic fuel production, and other energy storage media) get cheaper and better, that number will continue to increase.

Ruff: I agree with you on nuclear. Many of the issues and dangers have been thoroughly overblown by fearmongering and bad reporting. BY any reasonable (and numerical) analysis, nuclear comes out way ahead of any fossil fuels in terms of health and environmental impact. I'll take one in my backyard, too.

Two problems though. One, that "seven times" number for grid capacity has been debunked, well, a lot more than seven times. We need a better grid, and a higher-capacity one, but 7 times is just absurd.

Also, you should qualify the statement that we "cannot" run a grid on intermittent sources. Even today it is perfectly possible to accomodate a miz of renewables at pretty high penetration rates, by some estimates over 50%. As renewables (and batteries, hydrogen and synthetic fuel production, and other energy storage media) get cheaper and better, that number will continue to increase.