Nuclear and renewables together is where it is at. Anything less means more gas burned.
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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It is unfortunate how deep anti nuclear sentiment goes with many people. Modern and future reactors are so different from old designs
Even the old designs aren't that bad all things considered. Even including all exclusion zones, nuclear probably still uses the least amount of land per TWh per year...
Note on data:
spoiler
Based on real-world data, except for CSP which uses expected data of existing sites. Only electricity production and not direct use of biofuels. Dedicated biomass includes only woody biomass from willow, poplar, and spruce trees. Residue biomass refers to using a coal plant to burn extant biomass, requiring no feedstock land use but using more space than coal plants because biomass is less efficient. American nuclear power plants use more space than most countries because of less reactors per plant. Factors in nuclear exclusion zones (area divided by total historical power generation) even though partially inhabited. Includes fuel production as "indirect land use", part of "total land use". Excludes run-of-the-river hydroelectric projects. "Spacing" includes space in between wind turbines and fossil gas well pads even if empty of any infrastructure. Excludes land needed to mine materials or other upstream land use, land needed for energy transmission, and offshore area impacts and underground impacts.
Olkiluoto-3 Started construction in 2005, was supposed to be in service by 2009. It entered service this past year, somewhere around €7B over budget. It would have been more but for specific liability clauses in the contracts.
Flammanville-3 started construction in 2007, was supposed to be in service by 2012. Currently, they're predicting that it might come online in 2024. Initial estimate of €3,3B has bloated to €20B, for only a single 1660MW EPR.
Hinckley Point C is already £10B over budget and years late, currently estimate in-service date is 2027.
It's no different in North America, with V.C Summer 2&3 project being cancelled while under construction, when the budget bloated from $9B to $23B. Vogtle 3&4 went from $12B initially to $14B, then to somewhere around $30B.
Nuke supporters love the "Green" strawman. The reality is the utilities wouldn't touch one with a ten ft pole if they have any alternatives at all, and it's strictly due to the economics.
Sweden has a solid base of existing nukes and hydro. The buildout of wind/solar even geothermal would be far faster and cheaper than additional nukes.
This video explains why every single engineering project ever has gone over the initial budget.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOe_6vuaR_s
When you factor in that a nuclear project will face additional hurdles, you get an idea why every reactor build these days is over budget.
Because that initial budget was the back of the napkin calculation before any site surveys or permitting or anything else, because in order to get the permits for those site surveys and such, you need an initial budget.
The press then reports these napkin numbers as if they were the final budget.
As another note here, nuclear projects tend to face massive regulatory sabotage from people who are ideologically opposed for various reasons. (usually tracing back to money from fossil fuels). This drives up the cost considerably as well.
I've spent 25 years in thermal generation, including some work on nukes, and there are a lot of issues with that video.
Professional estimators are generally pretty accurate when it comes to thermal plants. A class D estimate would be ±20%, Class A ±5%. The problem arises when they have to spin unrealistic numbers in order to be competitive with other technologies. That's when you get things that are off by 200% of the estimate.
Speaking of which, over the history of the industry, the average nuclear reactor in the US is 207% of the initial estimate. That number has actually gotten worse going from 1st to 2nd to 3rd generation reactors, even though the reactors were simplified to reduce things like the number of pipe runs and control valves, etc, and the use of large pre-manufactured sub-assemblies. In order to become economic, reactor sizes have increased, which increases overall efficiency, the theory being an incremental increase in cost would be offset by the higher output. The trouble was, the increase in costs never ended up being anywhere close to 'incremental'.
Initial design costs and regulatory approval & fees typically should be in the range of 10-15% of capital costs. For the most part, that's about where they land in practice. The bulk of the costs and cost overruns remain in construction, construction-management, material, and project financing, especially now that interest rates are increasing.
The regulatory sabotage theory is BS. The French have been the largest nuclear industry proponents since their big construction boom in the 1970/80s. Yet their plants are just as likely to go over budget as anywhere else. The regulations are written based on accident/incidents in the past. They're there for a reason.
The regulatory sabotage is real.
Here's a link explaining it.
https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop
Do note that one of the major "safety" regulations, the one mandating a shutoff method to deal with a double ended guillotine break, is completely pointless, because a double ended guillotine break is actually impossible. Pipes don't break like that. The more reliable safety standard is Leak Before Break, and yet, nuclear designers are actually forbidden from designing around that scenario because it would often interfere with the imaginary guillotine break.
Then there are bans on multiplexing control wires. There are dozens of other random regulations that make nuclear plants slightly less safe, but extremely expensive.
That doesn't even touch on the permitting process. here's a quote;
the NRC does not benefit when power plants come online. Their budget does not increase proportional to gigawatts generated. Instead, the nuclear companies themselves pay the NRC for the time they spend reviewing applications, at something close to $300 an hour. This creates a perverse incentive: the more overhead, the more delays, the more revenue for the agency.
The result: the NRC approval process now takes several years and costs literally hundreds of millions of dollars.
On top of that Nuclear Power Plants mostly help big corporations. Solar at least helps home owners get cheap energy. In the end we should aim to help people and not corporations.
I think this is on balance good, but the swedish context makes it a bit problematic in some aspects.
The right has essentially weaponized some sort of perfect utopian image of nuclear as the answer to all questions on climate policy. The unstated gist of it is this: "Since we're doing nuclear, we don't need to take any other actions to mitigate climate change". This allows them to take short-sighted, populist positions on carbon taxation and other "green" reforms that cause more harm than their push for more nuclear mitigates.
So yeah, as I said, this in itself is good, but watch out for the results on non-nuclear environmental policy.
Nuclear Power has always been the answer but it requires strict adherence to regulations. It helps that spent fuel is recyclable and can be used over and over for decades. Only in the United States is it not recycled due to 70s Era regulations.
Spent nuclear fuel can be recycled to make new fuel and byproducts. More than 90% of its potential energy still remains in the fuel, even after five years of operation in a reactor. The United States does not currently recycle spent nuclear fuel but foreign countries, such as France, do. There are also some advanced reactor designs in development that could consume or run on spent nuclear fuel in the future.
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel
Most of Sweden's electricity comes from hydro and nuclear, but they'll need to increase electricity generation substantially in order to electrify the transportation sector. I'm not sure if they have any unexploited hydroelectric resources left.
I think that‘s great and hope my country will clear the way to build more nuclear power plants too
Sure, the radioactive waste is not great, but renewable energy sources are too unstable to provide the baseline of power consumption
Nuclear could provide that base power. Renewable sources in combination with pumped-storage hydroelectric facilities (or other ways to store power) would then be able to cover the fluctuations in demand
Eventually we hopefully figure out how to generate power using fusion, but for now I don‘t think we have other good options