> Nuclear is outrageously expensive, though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on that.
Nuclear plants are expensive the way GE and Bechtel build them not inherently so. At some point I got to look at the Diablo Canyon cost-to-build breakdown and about 2/3ds of the cost were litigation, licensing, and specialized site and construction prep. Finding people who could do the kinds of welds they needed, build structures in the right way, inspect, inspect, inspect, and litigate dozens of lawsuits asserting on form of harm or another. It was pretty amazing.
This particular company can build the reactor in their factory. All their specialists are in one place, you can have permanent inspection equipment with costs amortized over all the reactors you build, and the safety systems this reactor design purports to have means no additional site prep (no backup generators, no double containment vessels, no borosilicon sandpits under the reactor to slag into glass while "catching" a meltdown.
If I were to guess, while the pitch is all about safety, this design screams that it is all about cost. When you factor in that the design in modular, so making a 100MW power station with 20 of these gets advantages of scale that multiplies the cost advantage.
When I read this I see those cost savings and recognize this could be both cheaper than renewables and way more reliable. A solid base load solution to kill the last of the coal plants.
My guess is that the pitch of safety is to the public (experts already know it is safe enough and that insurance more than covers expenses). And that modularity/size is a pitch to investors over cost.
From my understanding, small reactors haven't been popular in the past because they still have the same insurance premiums as large reactors. If I'm wrong, or this changes, then that's a big reduction in cost alongside the aspects you mentioned.
If this team convinces the insurance folks that their design really is safer, and so their premiums should be low enough to make small reactors competitive, it could be a huge breakthrough.
Nuclear has had 70+ years and untold zillions in government research money and subsidies poured into it[1] - if the same level of investment over time had gone into renewables, imagine where they'd be now.
[1] worldwide - germany, uk, canada, france, russia etc in addition to the us - everyone did build their experimental gas/molten salt/fuel recycling/pebble bed etc reactor research programs and reactors. not to mention all the free experiments and r&d experience from the military applications.
First of, I think you underestimate how much money have gone into developing wind and solar through subsidies.
More importantly, the way solar and wind has been funded has secured competition for lower prices and allowed parallel exploration of multiple technologies. On the other hand, nuclear has been funded like old-school space exploration: heavy on management, low on technical vision, and often with a reward system that favors inefficiency.
In the case of space-exploration, companies like spaceX has come along and shown how innovation can completely change the cost: just compare the crew dragon with the SLS-circus. I believe there is ample space for the same to happen in nuclear power.
And still, storing energy is not solved and renewables are not reliable. Nuclear vs renewable is apples to oranges. Look at California for an example what happens with your system (or course we ha to look at this like a system and not individual power plants).
Germany alone spends ~$1.2 trn (that would be ~4.8trn on a population adjusted basis for the USA) on the Energiewende, and Germany is far away from being 100% renewables.
The EU now plans to invest another trillion € till 2030. A lot of money is poured into renewables.
That's $1400 per capita per year since it passed in 2010, lower than many utility bills, so it would be surprising if it was able to have already transitioned the entire nation's electricity that quickly.
And Germany has the most expensive electricity on the planet (for a firstworld nation and adjusted to cost of living). Funding is drying up because renewable subsidies make power unaffordable and thus politically unviable. Germany should be a big warning to everyone claiming renewables would be cheap or cheaper, the market here is gravely distorted by subsidies and yet, people point to Germany as an example...
Reference? I know there was some push back on their "walk away safe" claim (something that these guys have a better story for) but I had not seen anywhere that Nuscale would not be able to build their reactors in a factory.
They are building in the factory. I heard there is some assembly on site, but it’s just bolting on valves and other appurtenances. There are no large pressure vessel welds in the field. That is what saves costs.
"In answer to a question I posed to Nuscale at the town hall we have learned that the plan to save costs by fabricating the modules at a remote factory and shipping them to the Idaho site has been abandoned. The artful response to my question said that Nuscale engaged with approximately 40 … pressure vessel fabricators worldwide and … determined that Nuscale will use existing factories … in lieu of building its own factory.
The major module subcomponents will be manufactured at multiple manufacturer locations and shipped to a single location for assembly prior to installing into the facility.” This signifies the failure of one of the major cost-saving features of the Nuscale project, which was to forestall this exact scenario."
Nuclear fuel is several orders of magnitude more energy dense than coal. A "coal power plant using different fuel" would produce energy so cheap it couldn't be metered.
No, he's right. Nuclear plants are still just conventional thermal power plants. They "burn" stuff to generate heat and use the heat to drive a turbine. They can't be cheaper because burning coal doesn't have ultra high demands on how the boiler is designed. Meanwhile nuclear reactors can be arbitrarily complex.
That isn't my understanding, would love to learn more about how you come to that conclusion. (Ideally based on an idea like the one in the article vs just your run of the mill designed in 1950 power plant :-))
Are they changing any relevant part of the power generator compared to a 1950 plant? Are they at a minimum heating the steam into a higher temperature than what a modern coal plant do? (Are they using water? Because coal works on the limits of what you can do with water already.)
This article seems to have no detail at all, but all the information there seems to be about the reactor. Guess what, you won't build a nuclear reactor that is cheaper than a coal furnace, thus if you don't change anything on the power generator, you can't get cheaper than coal.
Lots actually, the way it is fueled, completely different (as in you don't re-fuel it you replace it) so all of the re-fueling infrastructure is not needed. They replace water (low pressure or high pressure) with helium which gives them two benefits, one it carries more heat and two it doesn't become a high explosive[1] when exposed to extreme temperature. Another benefit of helium is that if it leaks from the system, it carries no fission byproducts(like Cesium) in solution and has no radioactive isotopes with half lives of more than a second. 6-Helium has a half life of .8 seconds and emits a beta particle.
Most nuclear plants operate at lower steam temperatures than coal, because thermal efficiency isn't so critical and lower temperatures are less wear on the pipes and turbines.
WRT cost: Nuclear plants could be cheaper. Because, for instance, coal plants require scrubbers to meet particulate emissions rules, which are very expensive to install and operate. And coal is expensive: mining, transporation, cleaning.
> Nuclear is outrageously expensive, though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on that.
Nuclear plants are expensive the way GE and Bechtel build them not inherently so. At some point I got to look at the Diablo Canyon cost-to-build breakdown and about 2/3ds of the cost were litigation, licensing, and specialized site and construction prep. Finding people who could do the kinds of welds they needed, build structures in the right way, inspect, inspect, inspect, and litigate dozens of lawsuits asserting on form of harm or another. It was pretty amazing.
This particular company can build the reactor in their factory. All their specialists are in one place, you can have permanent inspection equipment with costs amortized over all the reactors you build, and the safety systems this reactor design purports to have means no additional site prep (no backup generators, no double containment vessels, no borosilicon sandpits under the reactor to slag into glass while "catching" a meltdown.
If I were to guess, while the pitch is all about safety, this design screams that it is all about cost. When you factor in that the design in modular, so making a 100MW power station with 20 of these gets advantages of scale that multiplies the cost advantage.
When I read this I see those cost savings and recognize this could be both cheaper than renewables and way more reliable. A solid base load solution to kill the last of the coal plants.