Perhaps it would be interesting to specify the list of countries (beyond the USA and South Korea) that, in terms of construction of nuclear plants, are reliable in terms of the standards and certifications they apply in the process.
Definitely agree with a lot of this, but it strikes me as being quite generous towards the nuclear industry as a whole.
The gas industry has hardly been without policy or regulatory headwinds over the past decades, but has successfully developed and implemented major new verticals while still building out the core business.
If regulation is their major challenges, where are the investments in PA, advocacy, comms, marketing etc to address that?
My old colleagues at CATF used to kick around ideas for a nuclear power version of Airbus: collectivize the order book so you can actually start to see these efficiency gains from multiple projects.
The UK nuclear-regulatory-task-force posted a briefing on August 5th. One of its roles is to "explore better international alignment so reactor designs approved abroad could be green lit quicker, minimising expensive changes"
Flamanville is offline again. So the cost you listed is not even final. Nuclear power is just not worth it, and the odds of a "Dunkelflaute" all over Europe a minimal.
Significant wind scarcity lasting for several weeks occurs across Europe every one or two decades. If Europe was to rely on renewables without adequate multi-day TWh storage or Gas backup then the outcome will be severe electricity shortages or worse blackouts. Blackouts kill people, 11 died in the Iberian blackout which lasted less than a day. There is no experience anywhere of TWh milt-day storage, China has TWh storage but at best it can only run on full capacity for about 18 hours. Most of European gas including the U.K. is imported. It seems to me that if Europe/UK want long term energy security then they will have to choose between unproven First of a kind multi-day TWh storage or get its act together with regards to Nuclear.
Here's an interesting article trying to model full system costs (probably biased towards nuclear, but still interesting):
> Our modeling found the additional costs of battery storage, referred to as “load balancing” in our report, and overbuilding and curtailment resulted in wind costing $272 per megawatt-hour (MWh) and solar costing $471 per MWh.
> We modeled the cost of the APR-1400, a South Korean reactor, and found the cost of serving load was $69 per MWh. Small modular reactors (SMRs), based on EIA cost estimates, were modeled to generate electricity for $213 per MWh if used as peaking resources and $120 per MWh if used in a baseload capacity
That “overbuilding cost” assumes a scenario in which 100% of the electricity comes from solar or wind, which is a scenario that not a single serious person I know in the renewable sector ever supports; that assumption increases the per MWh cost as each additional MW of overcapacity is installed (as the marginal curtailment increases with each additional MW). This makes the per MWh cost reach levels with no economical sense and that, obviously, will never be seen. A more appropriate comparison would be the cost of the whole system with and without renewables. Also, while the solar and wind cases are estimated as if the system would have to rely only on those energy sources, these cases are compared against existing nuclear plants; would it be the case that the system had to rely only on nuclear generation, new plants would be needed, but somehow the authors don’t include those costs in the nuclear case.
True, I was looking at the previous graph. Still higher than wind and solar when you take overbuding/curtailment out of the equation, which is not considered in the APR-1400 case.
Perhaps it would be interesting to specify the list of countries (beyond the USA and South Korea) that, in terms of construction of nuclear plants, are reliable in terms of the standards and certifications they apply in the process.
Definitely agree with a lot of this, but it strikes me as being quite generous towards the nuclear industry as a whole.
The gas industry has hardly been without policy or regulatory headwinds over the past decades, but has successfully developed and implemented major new verticals while still building out the core business.
If regulation is their major challenges, where are the investments in PA, advocacy, comms, marketing etc to address that?
My old colleagues at CATF used to kick around ideas for a nuclear power version of Airbus: collectivize the order book so you can actually start to see these efficiency gains from multiple projects.
The UK nuclear-regulatory-task-force posted a briefing on August 5th. One of its roles is to "explore better international alignment so reactor designs approved abroad could be green lit quicker, minimising expensive changes"
See: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nuclear-regulatory-taskforce/nuclear-regulatory-taskforce-role-and-membership
Flamanville is offline again. So the cost you listed is not even final. Nuclear power is just not worth it, and the odds of a "Dunkelflaute" all over Europe a minimal.
Significant wind scarcity lasting for several weeks occurs across Europe every one or two decades. If Europe was to rely on renewables without adequate multi-day TWh storage or Gas backup then the outcome will be severe electricity shortages or worse blackouts. Blackouts kill people, 11 died in the Iberian blackout which lasted less than a day. There is no experience anywhere of TWh milt-day storage, China has TWh storage but at best it can only run on full capacity for about 18 hours. Most of European gas including the U.K. is imported. It seems to me that if Europe/UK want long term energy security then they will have to choose between unproven First of a kind multi-day TWh storage or get its act together with regards to Nuclear.
Here's an interesting article trying to model full system costs (probably biased towards nuclear, but still interesting):
> Our modeling found the additional costs of battery storage, referred to as “load balancing” in our report, and overbuilding and curtailment resulted in wind costing $272 per megawatt-hour (MWh) and solar costing $471 per MWh.
> We modeled the cost of the APR-1400, a South Korean reactor, and found the cost of serving load was $69 per MWh. Small modular reactors (SMRs), based on EIA cost estimates, were modeled to generate electricity for $213 per MWh if used as peaking resources and $120 per MWh if used in a baseload capacity
That “overbuilding cost” assumes a scenario in which 100% of the electricity comes from solar or wind, which is a scenario that not a single serious person I know in the renewable sector ever supports; that assumption increases the per MWh cost as each additional MW of overcapacity is installed (as the marginal curtailment increases with each additional MW). This makes the per MWh cost reach levels with no economical sense and that, obviously, will never be seen. A more appropriate comparison would be the cost of the whole system with and without renewables. Also, while the solar and wind cases are estimated as if the system would have to rely only on those energy sources, these cases are compared against existing nuclear plants; would it be the case that the system had to rely only on nuclear generation, new plants would be needed, but somehow the authors don’t include those costs in the nuclear case.
The $69/MWh for nuclear includes capital costs
True, I was looking at the previous graph. Still higher than wind and solar when you take overbuding/curtailment out of the equation, which is not considered in the APR-1400 case.
From https://energybadboys.substack.com/p/why-nuclear-is-cheaper-than-wind