camelot-forum.co.uk

"As of late 2022, the official estimate of the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) was £149 billion. Assuming Hinkley Site C was rolled into that number, that would be a cost of £6 billion per reactor, or more than many nuclear advocates claim new nuclear can be built for.

However, Stephen Thomas, a professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich and a regular analyst of the nuclear industry with a publication history on energy and nuclear programs with a global reach stretching back to 2004, has a slightly different expectation. He first published on the UK’s NDA in 2005 and has been tracking costs closely since, including with freedom of information requests to get accurate numbers.

His estimate in late 2022 was that the program was likely to cost £260 billion given the cost trends. That’s £10.4 billion per reactor, an order of magnitude higher than the industry average of three years ago".

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/19/uk ... mless-pit/

How much reliable energy they made tho.

Is it possible to calculate what the equivalent amount of GWh of generation from our nuclear fleet would have cost if it had been, let's say, entirely from the equivalent coal, or gas plants - not forgetting those sites also have construction and deconstruction costs (plus the cost of the unabated CO2 emissions)?

I've no doubt nuclear will still come out eye-wateringly expensive, but the alternatives aren't cost-free either - and back in the 60-00s we didn't yet have industrial scale zero carbon alternatives like GW-scale offshore wind

We do know the lifetime costs LCOE of the various leccy production. Currently estimate in 2016 by the Audit office for new nuclear generation sources in the 2020s are between £60 and £100 per megawatt hour (MWh) and then one compares that to RE at 1/2 that and built in a fraction of that time. BUT the LCOE for nuclear does not include decommissionig or insurance costs (just not available) which are born by the gov ie us the tax payers.

I just cannot believe how bad an investment in nuclear is these days. I used to believe nuclear was worth the extra cost but RE has reduced so much i no longer hold that view.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 4222023325

Highlights

•

The case for new nuclear in the UK's net-zero energy system is examined.
•

We consider four key sensitivity dimensions in a cost-optimising model.
•

New nuclear is only cost-effective under the most favourable conditions.
•

A nearly 100% renewable system with no new nuclear is least cost design.
•

It is increasingly difficult to justify current UK Government policy towards nuclear.

In the 60's we also had another state requirement for Nuclear power, but not the electric kind and the costs of that are significantly wrapped up in the civil nuclear power program. Add to that the costs of beating the coal miners in the 80's by all means possible (nuclear power plants run at max regardless of spent fuel receipt arrangements at Sellafield and it gets even more difficult to sort out.

They are expensive and the risk of contamination when one goes wrong is chilling.

The old reactors paid a service to the UK at a time when economics and political will was different, try as I might I cannot see them being sensible contributors to the current or future UK needs.

If we want to spend billions on long term generation then lets follow the Norwegian logic and develop the natural power sources that we are blessed with in the UK, Tidal, Hydro, and Wind. Yes the costs will be more for hydro and tidal but compared to the whole life cost of nuclear they are comparable if not actually favourable and their infrastructure will typically run on for around 120 + years with the occasional upgrades of MEICA equipment and maintenance of the civil and structural elements. The big bonus being the waste from such plants wont be with us for the next 200 to 10,000 years (depends on your isotope of choice)

Moxi

Ken wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 1:39 pm
I just cannot believe how bad an investment in nuclear is these days. I used to believe nuclear was worth the extra cost but RE has reduced so much i no longer hold that view.

Spot on Ken, exactly how I feel. Times change, and so does technology.

Compare 'expensive' nuclear to the actual costs of coal, and its a bargain, far less deaths, pollution, AGW etc.. Historical nuclear, around the World, has probably helped to reduce the impacts of AGW. Shame we didn't deploy more in the 80's/90's.

But my doubts started to creep in around 2012 when HPC was agreed, and only 3yrs later when the contract was signed and committed too, I no longer felt nuclear would be competitive against the future costs of RE and storage, when the nuclear would be commissioned.

I know it shouldn't all be about the money, and I would actually be happy to pay more for RE than nuclear. But with RE or should I say RE + (RE + storage)* appearing to beat nuclear, then it should be great news that we can economically avoid nuclear, given the potential (and real) risks/costs.

Of course the large majority of countries won't be using nuclear in their energy mix. But I assume (may be wrong) that the majority of the World's population, does live in countries with nuclear(?) Since it takes a certain level of wealth (and perhaps military aims/desires) to afford a nuclear program.

I don't know if the huge inflationary costs the world has seen recently, have been calculated into nuclear yet. But I'm again assuming, that if the offshore wind industry has seen massive inflationary uplifts, from steel, transport, labour etc, then presumably the same will apply to other large projects, especially nuclear. My thinking being, that when a nuclear reactor is commissioned, it can only then start to sell energy, and begin paying off the construction costs/investment. But that 10-15yrs of costs, will also incurr high compounding interest costs too (a longer time period than RE), perhaps exacerbating the problem/difference.

*To reflect that only some RE will incur storage, since much will be consumed in real time.

You can't directly compare electric generated from nuclear with wind though, as you do not build out wind with the storage required to make it dispatchable. Therefore the energy is not equivalent value.

Nuclear uses less concrete etc per GWh than wind.

Swwils wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 3:47 pm You can't directly compare electric generated from nuclear with wind though, as you do not build out wind with the storage required to make it dispatchable. Therefore the energy is not equivalent value.

Nuclear uses less concrete etc per GWh than wind.

You need to be carefull with that argument considering the amount of hydro storage that was built in the 1950s just to support nuclear because it is unable to demand follow. Just the same but different to wind being unable to demand follow.

In my lifetime i can remember projects where the R&D costs and building costs have become so large that they have been unable to repay from income and relying on gov or insolvency to get them out. eg Concorde, channel tunnel ,numerous bridges, HS2. At build cost of £30B i am putting HPC firmly in that basket even before decommissioning costs.

Ken wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 5:21 pm

Swwils wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 3:47 pm You can't directly compare electric generated from nuclear with wind though, as you do not build out wind with the storage required to make it dispatchable. Therefore the energy is not equivalent value.

Nuclear uses less concrete etc per GWh than wind.

You need to be carefull with that argument considering the amount of hydro storage that was built in the 1950s just to support nuclear because it is unable to demand follow. Just the same but different to wind being unable to demand follow.

Nuclear can load follow but often doesn't purely for economic reasons. The best example is France where they are regulated to refresh at certain planned periods so it's not fuel efficient to ramp down with demand, but considering 70%+ of the mix is nuclear some of their plants *must* be variable, usually bi phasic - this is the primary reason you don't see it more often. It's quite hilarious really as these capabilities cost the reactors about 1.2% of their load factor, usually to make up for other more variable generation and it hits the economics as they cannot make savings on fuel costs while not producing electricity like other sources. It's literally a design requirement to be manoeuvrable between 50%-100% 3-5% Pr/min.

German reactors did quite heavily load follow contributing to both primary and secondary frequency control just like these dedicated french plants.

Fair comment in the UK I mean we had.... Magnox.