decommissioning of nuclear

[Ken]

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.

I am glad that FRENCH nuclear can dial down supply (but not UK ones) I think you will find that wind can dial down to zero in a fraction of the time and at minimal expense. For wind the difficulty is to sometimes dial up (no wind) and for nuclear to dial down (for lack of demand ) so in fact both requiring storage for different reasons.

[Ken]

Lets not forget that EDF failed to be able to run their nuclear plants and gave them to the French Gov. which i think paid for them in the first place.


https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... s-contract

"The power station is expected to cost billpayers £30bn over the lengthy of the 35-year CfD contract, adding £10-£15 to the average household energy bill."

Thats on top of £30B to build it ie £60B

IF they had a capacity factor of 100% and the CfD price was £150 MWh then the income is.

£150 x 3200 MW x 24hr x 365days = £ 4.2B/yr = £147B over the 35yrs of the CfD contract.

IE for HPC to be viable it would have to have a profit margin of 50% net - pigs cannot fly.

What a truly dreadful deal and the Gov wants to build more!

[Mart]

Hi Ken, I think the £30bn subsidy is quite an old figure, but revised up from the original £6bn(ish).

Hard to work out the subsidy today, but assuming leccy prices fall back down, but due to inflation, not as low as they were in 2015, or even 2021, so £70/MWh average(?)

HPC is now at £128/MWh, so the subsidy element in today's money would be approx:

3,200MW x 92% capacity factor x £58 (£128-£70) x 24hrs x 365days x 35yrs = £52bn (£2,000 per household?)

I've been calculating a rough £50bn figure for years now, but typically with lower average spot prices, and a lower CfD, as inflation has really pumped the numbers up recently.


The million (sorry) billion dollar question now, is how much will SZC cost? It was expected to be cheaper than HPC, and without it HPC's CfD deal goes up £3 to £92.50 (2012 baseline) so the £128 becomes ~£132, and the subsidy total ~£56bn. But with the greater than average inflationary impact on construction (as seen with off-shore wind), maybe SZC will need as much support (or more?) than HPC now.

[Ken]

Hi Ken, I think the £30bn subsidy is quite an old figure, but revised up from the original £6bn(ish).

Hard to work out the subsidy today, but assuming leccy prices fall back down, but due to inflation, not as low as they were in 2015, or even 2021, so £70/MWh average(?)

HPC is now at £128/MWh, so the subsidy element in today's money would be approx:

3,200MW x 92% capacity factor x £58 (£128-£70) x 24hrs x 365days x 35yrs = £52bn (£2,000 per household?)

I've been calculating a rough £50bn figure for years now, but typically with lower average spot prices, and a lower CfD, as inflation has really pumped the numbers up recently.


The million (sorry) billion dollar question now, is how much will SZC cost? It was expected to be cheaper than HPC, and without it HPC's CfD deal goes up £3 to £92.50 (2012 baseline) so the £128 becomes ~£132, and the subsidy total ~£56bn. But with the greater than average inflationary impact on construction (as seen with off-shore wind), maybe SZC will need as much support (or more?) than HPC now.

You are right the subsidy will be more as you say and probably more than your est by the time it starts production. And this is all without insurance at least. Madness to consider building yet another one.

[Mart]

Hi Ken, I think the £30bn subsidy is quite an old figure, but revised up from the original £6bn(ish).

Hard to work out the subsidy today, but assuming leccy prices fall back down, but due to inflation, not as low as they were in 2015, or even 2021, so £70/MWh average(?)

HPC is now at £128/MWh, so the subsidy element in today's money would be approx:

3,200MW x 92% capacity factor x £58 (£128-£70) x 24hrs x 365days x 35yrs = £52bn (£2,000 per household?)

I've been calculating a rough £50bn figure for years now, but typically with lower average spot prices, and a lower CfD, as inflation has really pumped the numbers up recently.


The million (sorry) billion dollar question now, is how much will SZC cost? It was expected to be cheaper than HPC, and without it HPC's CfD deal goes up £3 to £92.50 (2012 baseline) so the £128 becomes ~£132, and the subsidy total ~£56bn. But with the greater than average inflationary impact on construction (as seen with off-shore wind), maybe SZC will need as much support (or more?) than HPC now.

You are right the subsidy will be more as you say and probably more than your est by the time it starts production. And this is all without insurance at least. Madness to consider building yet another one.

Exactly.

Hope you don't think I was being pedantic, the £30bn figure is the main one reported as the NAO suggested it in 2017, up from the earlier estimates of £6bn.

Increases in forecast top-up payments
2.22 The expected value of top-up payments through the HPC CfD, due to differences
between wholesale electricity prices and the strike price, has increased since the
Department began negotiating the deal. In July 2016 we reported that the forecast
top-up payments had increased from £6 billion in October 2013 to £30 billion in
March 2016.26

My calcs, although similar have been published in the news over the years, reflect how time has moved on, and also inflation. So I think there have been some 'proper' reports of higher figures since, but maybe not as official as the 2017 £30bn figure.

If you want some background, then the NAO report from 2017 is good, as it shows the revision in estimated wholesale leccy prices page 39. The leccy price was revised down significantly from 2012 to 2016, which then impacts the HPC subsidy, as it will be even higher above the average wholesale rate, thereby attracting a greater CfD top-up. This was a further reduction from just a year earlier in the 2016 report, see page 40, but beware subtle changes as the 2016 report is in 2012 monies, whilst the 2017 uses a 2016 monies comparison.

They explain the downgrade to reflect the falling price of gas and renewable energy. I appreciate that gas is more expensive today, but that's due to political issues and reduced supply (not production) due to the boycott of Russian gas. I'd even go further and suggest Europe's efforts to move off gas have now accelerated, so the price may fall back and further, as demand continues to fall this decade - regardless of the situation in Ukraine.

Obviously things now (since 2017) are extremely messy. Off-shore wind costs have fallen massively, as have world PV costs, faster than expected. But we also have the recent above average inflationary impacts now on construction projects due to the gas price 'crisis'. So prices in 2023 monies will be very different, but hopefully, as mentioned before, there may be a longer term benefit as we shift faster than planned from gas, reducing its price.

I'd assume that in the later years of this decade, we will see a return to the NAO estimates of wholesale prices, as things settle down. But crucially I mean in those 2016 prices, which will still be relevant, but the inflationary uplift will be very high.



Just for fun, I thought I'd play with that £50bn subsidy, and looking at current Tesla Megapack prices, I can see that for an installed cost of $1.3bn you can get 1,000 units installed in California. So let's go $'s to £'s for a UK price (no idea if that's fair/reasonable, but just for fun).

So £1.3bn buys you 1,000 Megapacks, or 979MW/3,916MWh.

£50bn/£1.3bn = 38.46. Multiply that against those 1,000 packs, gives us:

37.65GW/150.61GWh of storage.

That's a vast amount of storage, and perhaps more importantly, curtailment avoidance, and intraday balancing. All for the subsidy cost of a single nuclear powerstation (albeit a big one at 3.2GW).

Important I stress that this is the subsidy cost, not the whole cost. If we had RE generating at £70/MWh (as per my example) then you would still have the equivalent of that 3.2GW of generation, you wouldn't 'lose' it. But the subsidy saving would perhaps be equal to also getting 38GW/151GWh of storage on top.

The numbers are simply mind-bending. It's literally impossible to overstress the cost of new nuclear now.

[Mart]

Quick post, I promise.

Yes, insurance will come from the state. No company can ever insure a large nuclear reactor now.

The cost of decommissioning is included in the CfD price (but not storage I believe(?)). However this is itself a little dodgy. HPC's owners will be required to put aside an amount of money, not enough to pay for decommissioning outright, but enough with financial growth over the lifetime of HPC, to be enough. If decommissioning costs turn out to be higher than the parties expected, then the UK Gov (us) will cover the shortfall.

[Ken]

Agree with both your postings but i do have reservations about comparing production to storage. I think we should compare production to production.

As you say gas prices are only going one way,down. UK and EU storage gas storage is full and there is more of it now. Less gas is being consumed in Europe (but more coal in Germany!)

Did you guys see the ch 4 programs last night (and tonight) on climate change and Chris Packham. I suppose there comes a time when some people just cannot sit around and do nothing. Until recently i thought we were getting somewhere but with the cave in to the ICE brigade, FF licenences and more nuclear i can see a time coming.

[Adokforme]

Agree with both your postings but i do have reservations about comparing production to storage. I think we should compare production to production.

As you say gas prices are only going one way,down. UK and EU storage gas storage is full and there is more of it now. Less gas is being consumed in Europe (but more coal in Germany!)

Did you guys see the ch 4 programs last night (and tonight) on climate change and Chris Packham. I suppose there comes a time when some people just cannot sit around and do nothing. Until recently i thought we were getting somewhere but with the cave in to the ICE brigade, FF licenences and more nuclear i can see a time coming.

I saw it too Ken, quite an eye opener and what lengths the presenters had to go to in order to get a response from those in positions of authority or lobbying. It would certainly be a wake up call to anyone else who tuned in, apart from climate change deniers, who also appeared to make up a good proportion of those interviewed!
Don't usually tune into to 4 but the topic was too important not too even if it did leave us in a rather depressed state. Even so I've recorded the rest of the series in case I forget to tune in.

[openspaceman]

Did you guys see the ch 4 programs last night (and tonight) on climate change and Chris Packham.

No but much as I dislike watching him, his style grates and his tone whingeing, I will search out an offline version (TV hasn't been switched on for several months now, it was bad for my digestion :-) .

[Mart]

Agree with both your postings but i do have reservations about comparing production to storage. I think we should compare production to production.

As you say gas prices are only going one way,down. UK and EU storage gas storage is full and there is more of it now. Less gas is being consumed in Europe (but more coal in Germany!)

Did you guys see the ch 4 programs last night (and tonight) on climate change and Chris Packham. I suppose there comes a time when some people just cannot sit around and do nothing. Until recently i thought we were getting somewhere but with the cave in to the ICE brigade, FF licenences and more nuclear i can see a time coming.

Sorry Ken, I went a bit deep into the weeds there.

Basically I was trying to compare production to production, if an RE option could generate at around £70/MWh. So you get the same amount of production pa, though of course not as predictable as nuclear, but you then get that insanely large battery, 37.65GW/150.61GWh, for free ...... so to speak.


But, I'll put my hands up and admit that at the moment it's very hard to see where RE (and FF/nuclear) prices are going, till European gas prices and inflation, return to normality. Hopefully the basis of the calculation is valid, even if all the numbers (nuclear cost, average wholesale price and RE generation cost) need to be revised up due to inflation, as the net difference (saving) would still be roughly the same ..... hopefully.