Jagadeesh

The nuclear power is something which is a general observation, not limited to the nuclear field alone.
The point is that power is the rate of energy flow, whether production or absorption (use). In short power is general concept can be produced by any means. But the Nuclear energy is the radioactive waves emitted while slitting the atom and energy measured in Joules, so it has the same units as mechanical or electrical energy
Nuclear power is the fourth-largest source of electricity in India after thermal, hydro and renewable sources of electricity. As of 2008, India has 17 nuclear power plants in operation generating 4,120 MW while 6 other are under construction and are expected to generate an additional 3,160 MW. India has 6 nuclear plants in operation. They are Kaiga in the state of Karnataka which has two reactors that produce 220 MW each. Kakrapar in the state of Gujarat, Kalpakkam in the Tamil Nadu , and Narora in Uttar Pradesh that all has two reactors each that produce 220 MW. Rawatbhata in Rajastan has 1 reactor producing 100 MW, one producing 200 MW and 2 producing 220 MW for a total capacity of 740 MW. Tarapur is the largest nuclear generating station in India regarding total maximum capacity and it is located in the state of Maharastra, it has two reactors producing 160 MW and two producing 540 MW for a total capacity of 1400 MW. All of these reactors are of the CANDU design. India also is in the process of constructing four new plants in Kaiga, Rawatbhata, Kundakulm, and Kalpakkam
Nuclear Fissionary
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Comparing Energy Costs of Nuclear, Coal, Gas, Wind and Solar
By Jason Morgan | Published April 2, 2010
The only financially valid way to compare the costs of different sources of energy production is to calculate the per kilowatt-hour (kWh) cost. This methodology controls for variable factors such as capacity factor and useful life.
Calculating the Per Kilowatt-Hour Cost of Energy Construction Cost per kWh + Production Costs per kWh + Decommissioning Costs per kWh (nuclear only) = Total Cost per kWh
The main cost components of energy are construction costs and production costs. Total cost per kWh can be calculated by taking the per kWh cost of construction plus the per kWh cost of production. For nuclear energy you must also add the per kWh decommissioning cost to the production and construction costs to get total per kWh cost.
Calculating the Per Kilowatt-Hour Construction Cost of a Project
Many energy production plants are very expensive to build. In order to understand how expensive a particular plant is relative to other energy plants, you must calculate the per kWh cost of construction. This can be done using the following equation.
Total Construction Cost
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[(MW rating x 1,000) x Useful Life x (Capacity Factor x 8,760)]
The MW rating is multiplied by 1,000 to convert to kW and capacity factor by 8,760 to convert to number of hours of energy produced in a year.
Per Kilowatt-Hour Production Costs
Normally you will not need to calculate the per kWh production costs for a given type of energy source because these estimates are readily available from a wide
variety of resources. Each plant is unique and may have a slightly different per kWh production cost. Since the amount of energy produced at any plant is very large, deviations in production cost are not generally large enough to change the per kWh production cost for an individual plant beyond the hundredths or thousandths of a penny. To the right is a list of the per kWh production costs used to develop the total cost per kWh estimates in this article. Coal, Gas and Nuclear estimates are 2008 data from NEI.
Nuclear: $0.019 Coal: $0.027 Natural Gas: $0.081 Wind:$0.030 Hydroelectric: $0.009 Solar: No estimate found
Decommissioning Cost per kWh for Nuclear Power Plants
Nuclear energy is unique in that it must pay for future decommissioning of the facility. Decommissioning costs vary from year to year depending on changes in return on investment from the fund, but a general guideline is $0.0015 per kWh. This cost per kWh yields a $500 million decommissioning fund assuming a 4% return on investment over 40 years (useful life).
Comparing Per Kilowatt-Hour Cost Estimates for Multiple Types of Energy Production
Most Cost Effective Form of Energy Production
Hydroelectric is the most cost effective at $0.03 per kWh. Hydroelectric production is naturally limited by the number of feasible geographic locations and the huge environmental infringement caused by the construction of a dam. Nuclear and coal are tied at $0.04 per kWh. This comes as a bit of a surprise because coal is typically regarded as the cheapest form of energy production. Another surprise is that wind power ($0.08 per kWh) came in slightly cheaper than natural gas ($0.10 per kWh). Solar power was by far the most expensive at $0.22 per kWhand that only represents construction costs because I could not find reliable data on production costs. Also, there is a higher degree of uncertainty in cost with wind and solar energy due to poor and varying data regarding the useful life of the facilities and their capacity factors. For this analysis the average of the data points are used in the calculations.
Three coal plant projects were used ranging from 300 to 960 MW. The construction costs of these coal plants ranged from $1.2 to $4 billion, which are less in total dollars than new nuclear ranging from $5 to $9 billion. However, due to nuclears higher capacity factor and larger MW rating, the per kWh construction cost of the coal plants ($0.016 to $0.019) is similar to new nuclear plants ($0.014 to $0.024).
Extrapolation of Results
2008 US Electricity Generation by Source & Weighted Average Cost per kWh
Energy Source
% of Total
Cost per kWh
Weighted Avg Cost
Nuclear
19.7%
$0.04
$0.008
Hydro
6.1%
$0.03
$0.002
Coal
48.7%
$0.04
$0.022
Natural Gas
21.4%
$0.10
$0.022
Petroleum
1.1%
$0.10
$0.001
Other Renewables
3.0%
$0.15
$0.005
100%
$0.059
Taking these results further I calculated a weighted average energy cost per kWh for the US of $0.059. If we were to double the amount of nuclear energy by replacing existing coal capacity, the weighted average energy cost per kWh would be $0.058, a cost reduction of 1.7%. Tripling nuclear would yield $0.057, or a 3.5% cost reduction. This does not take into account the intangible costs we would save by reducing coal emissions by about 40% (80% if nuclear was tripled). There would also be 40% less coal required (80% if nuclear was tripled), thereby reducing the impact of coal mining on the environment.
Projected US Electricity Generation by Source & Weighted Average Cost per kWh by Doubling Nuclear Energy
Energy Source
% of Total
Cost per kWh
Weighted Avg Cost
Nuclear
39.4%
$0.04
$0.015
Hydro
6.1%
$0.03
$0.002
Coal
29.0%
$0.04
$0.013
Natural Gas
21.4%
$0.10
$0.022
Petroleum
1.1%
$0.10
$0.001
Other Renewables
3.0%
$0.15
$0.005
100%
$0.058 [change of -1.7%]
Unfortunately, the only way to reduce the per kWh energy cost in the US further is by replacing peak production currently supplied by petroleum and natural gas plants. These plants satisfy peak demand because they can be fired up and powered down quickly. As with most things in life, there is a high cost associated with this convenience. Since nuclear energy is typically a baseload generation source, there are not many ways to reduce peak demand usage of natural gas with nuclear energy capacity.
The detailed calculations, assumptions, and project-specific information supporting this analysis are all contained in the Excel Workbook that can be downloaded by clicking on the icon.
Image Credit
Stack courtesy of Flickr user chefranden published under the CC license.
This entry was posted in Nuclear Economy and tagged coal, construction cost, cost per kwh, decommissioning cost, natural gas energy, nuclear, operating cost, production cost, solar energy, wind energy. Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
Further Reading Introduction to the Costs of Nuclear Energy Production Construction Costs of New Nuclear Energy Plants Operating Costs of a Nuclear Power Plant Nuclear Waste Disposal and Plant Decommissioning Costs Financing Costs in New Nuclear Power Plant Construction
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982
Nuclear Fission for Dummies: Beta Radiation
About the Author
Jason Morgan A corporate finance and accounting professional who has great personal interest in the future of the world's energy crisis. Jason is looking forward to utilizing his financial and economic data analysis skills to shed light on nuclear energy. Find and follow Jason on Twitter.
179 Comments
Industry observer
Posted April 2, 2010 at 10:22 pm | Permalink
Jason:
I took a quick look at your spreadsheet you have the 2 new Vogtle nuclear units at 4,600 MW (this seems to be the total capacity of both new units together). The AP1000 units are about 1,100 MWe each, so the two new units will only be about 2,200 MW.
In the other direction, you have nuclear life as 40 years, yet all Gen III units are designed for 60 year life. Even the old Gen II units are getting 60 years and the new ones may have a useful life of 100 years or more.
Reply
Jason Morgan
I am sorry, you are quite right. I will be replacing the spreadsheet with an updated one shortly correcting Vogtle 3 & 4s MW rating to 2,300. The result is still the same, just not by such a wide margin. The average of the three potential construction cost scenarios ($5, $7 and $9 billion per unit) results in a total cost of $0.039 per kWh. This is still maintaining the 40 year useful life.
I understand the actual operation of a Gen III reactor may be 60, 80 or even 100 years, but so can the theoretical lives of new coal and hydro plants. They also received a 40 year useful life in their calculations, so at least it is all consistent and relative to one another. Here is the thing: as a company you do not want to put yourself in a position where you are spreading the cost of an asset over 80 or 100 years. So perhaps my 40 years is better called a depreciable life rather than useful life, but it is more conservative than using a longer life. By using 60, 80 or 100 year lives you get an average total cost of nuclear of $0.033, $0.030, $0.028 respectively even more cost effective than I originally thought.
Therefore, adjusting for both the mistake I made on the MW rating of Vogtles two new units and extending the useful life estimates, we wind up back at an average total cost for new nuclear of $0.030 per kWh.
Jack Gamble
Posted April 5, 2010 at 7:22 am | Permalink
You make a good point IO, a Gen III+ unit will most likely run as long as 60 or 80 years just like the existing reactors in the US. The original 40 year lifespan of existing plants was chosen because of financial models not because of useful life of the plant.
manoj pandey
Posted November 17, 2011 at 2:21 am | Permalink
A really great work sir. Truly it helped alot to me in my project thesis. Thank you very much. Thanks alot. To get so much information at a single place was awesome.
uvdiv
This doesnt work. For one, the Georgia nuclear project is not 4,600 MW(e) but 2,300 MW(e): Vogtle 3 & 4 are two planned AP-1000 reactors, of 1,150 MWe each. For another, there is no discount rate for future cash flows the costs are not calculated as net present value costs. This has a very large effect for capitalintensive projects like nuclear and wind: all of the costs are today, and most of the benefits decades into the future.
Reply
Jason Morgan
It does work. You heard about NPV and the time value of money from a seminar somewhere and now you know enough to make you dangerous, but not enough to really understand the concepts you are discussing.
First of all, Net Present Value is a method for determining the true value of a project in todays dollars by discounting future cash flows using an interest rate factor. Thats it.
The COST of the time value of money (financing costs for borrowing the capital to complete the project) is included in the construction costs. Your argument for the time value of money has no relevance to this discussion because no rates of return or profitability metrics were considered.
James
What are the economics of the Super Phoenix? I hear that Megatons to Megawatts project is ending soon.
Reply
David Lewis
Various points:
Rod Adams had Dr. Dale Klein, Commissioner, US NRC on his Atomic Show podcast #151 and they discussed how long nuke plants could be expected to last.
Klein noted there is a lot of experience in the US renewing the 40 year original licenses to extend them out to 60 years. Klein briefly discussed the life after 60 plans the NRC is considering to extend the operational life out to 80 years. Later on in the podcast Klein discussed how to look at new nuke plants and used the words 100 years when he talked about if you are thinking about building one of these , i.e. how long you could expect it to be around.
I wonder who would agree with your comparison that shows new nukes would produce electricity for 3 cents kWhr. The operators of the Columbia Generating Station in Washington state say they produce today for 3.5 cents kWhr. That plant is 27 years old and is almost fully paid for.
How can anyone claim they could reasonably expect to build a new nuke plant today, in the US, and produce power for less than that, i.e. your calculated 3 cents kWh?
One study I tend to refer to on nuclear plant cost is the 2009 update to the MIT The Future of Nuclear Power study. The levelized cost estimates for various baseload technologies in that study were obtained from a separate study done by Du and Parsons, and these show new coal at 6.2 cents kWh, new gas at 6.5 cents kWh, and new nukes at 8.4 cents kWh. Apply a carbon tax of $25/tCO2 and you get new coal at 8.3 cents kWh and new gas at 7.4 cents kWh. Du and Parsons stated that their figure for new nukes included a risk premium on capital that applies to new nuclear construction loans in the US which adds considerably to the cost. I.e., if this risk premium were removed, new nuclear power would cost 6.6 cents kWh.
The risk premium applies because no other industry faces the prospect of political and hence regulatory instability caused by anti nuclear protestors or a sudden change in public opinion caused by a nuclear accident anywhere in the world, which was seen most famously when after Chernobyl the Shoreham plant in NY state was completed at a cost of $6 billion, then thrown away without generating a single commercial kilowatt because politicians lost their nerve after seeing 200,000 protestors show up all demanding the plant not be allowed to operate.
The advantage I see in using the MIT study, and the Du and Parsons study it defers to on cost, other than the fact that it is top quality, is that the MIT study has been legitimized in debate by Amory Lovins and Al Gore among others. These anti nukes love to cherry pick statements from the MIT study such as the one Gore picked for his anti nuclear chapter in Our Choice nuclear power faces stagnation and decline, or as Lovins does when he states that MIT found that new nuclear power is not competitive. Gore even certifies the authors of the MIT report by calling them the experts on nuclear in Our Choice.
So, in plain English, what the MIT report says is that if a modest carbon price is applied to the emissions of fossil fuel generating plants, new nuclear power plants are the baseload electricity generators of choice just on the basis of cost. And if the political climate changed in favor of nuclear power as could be expected as it dawns on more people that the wastes of fossil fuels are the horror that many were duped into believing the wastes from nuclear power were, the risk premium on capital would be eliminated which would make nuclear even more competitive.
When summing up what MIT says in this way I then point to the fact that Al Gore calls MIT the experts on nuclear, and add that Amory Lovins defers to this MIT report when in a heated debate he needs an impeccable, independent, non Amory Lovins sympathetic source for definitive cost information.
The MIT report: http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/pdf/nuclearpower-update2009.pdf The Du and Parsons study: http://web.mit.edu/ceepr/www/publications/workingpapers/2009-004.pdf
The Du and Parsons report has an interesting section starting on page 3 describing how to look at published figures such as when Reuters said 2 South Texas reactors
generating a total of 2700 MWe would cost $6 $7 billion, or $2200 to $2600 kW capacity, and the South Petersburg Times published saying a total of 2200 MWe for FPL was planned to cost $12 to $18 billion, or $5500 to $8200 per kW capacity. Anti nukes love to cite the FPL figures as they condemn nuclear as too expensive, and some, such as Joe Romm, point to the different figures and claim there is a tremendous cost escalation going on or that no one can know what is going on except that anyone buying a new nuke will be taken to the cleaners. The apparent huge difference is explained. Each report was based on figures produced by different although traditional and valid methods of evaluating the cost of a new nuke, and when the figures were levelized the cost of each plant was seen to be very similar.
When Andasol 1, a solar thermal plant with 7 hours of salt storage was completed in Spain, the head of the team that designed it stated, for publication, that the electricity it produces would cost 27 Euro cents kW, which was 36 US cents kW the day I looked it up, and this was for a plant that cost $19,963 per available kW. http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/largest-solar-thermal-storage-plant-tostart-up
This is the type of thing the anti nukes claim will replace fossil fuels and nuclear for baseload power. Its a joke.
Reply
Jason Morgan
David I dont mean to be arrogant or crass, but I dont particularly care who agrees with my numbers. The MIT study you cite and link to has VERY limited information regarding their cost estimates. They basically throw up a number with very little to support it in terms of references or calculations both of which I display to support my work.
My estimates come from numbers and calculations that are fully disclosed in this article and the attached Excel document. Even using $9 billion, the high range for construction costs of a new 1,150 MW Gen III reactor, over 40 years (we know the actual life will be 60 or longer, meaning the actual cost will be even less because it is spread over a longer life) the cost is $0.044 per kWh this is equivalent to coal.
I honestly dont know where everyone else is getting their numbers because I have yet to find someone who puts their research and calculations front and center. Ive done that and come up with my answers lets see if someone can challenge them with some credible, valid points. Because UVDIV up there with his incomplete understanding of the time value of money hasnt debunked the calculations, even if he thinks he did.
Jason Morgan
This is an update that the errors pertaining to using 4,600 MW for the new Vogtle units have been corrected to use 2,300 MW. I have updated the Excel workbook attached, the text of the article, and the graph image (which has changed so slightly that visually there will not be much difference) will be updated by this evening.
Reply
David Lewis
I wish there was a standard methodology for these studies.
The MIT study doesnt contain the detail, because the Du and Parsons study does. The MIT study defers to the Du and Parsons study, as I stated originally. The detail in the Du and Parsons study seems exhaustive to me. The main thing is they evaluate a number of different technologies, i.e. new nukes, new gas, and new coal, then they claim to levelize, i.e. account for the same array of costs in the same way, so that a cost comparison between the technologies that is realistic can be made. So I believe it is accurate to say that MIT put its name on an authoritative study that includes all the details anyone would want who wished to challenge what they are saying, that says that new nuclear power is competitive with coal if a modest carbon tax is put on CO2 emissions, and would also be competitive with new coal if the risk premium on capital loans for nukes were to be reduced after a few successful new builds.
It is no wonder then, given this, that utilities are considering new nukes, now that a price on carbon is looming. When a price on carbon was not in the cards at all, say a few years ago, there was no interest in new nukes. Now if you are correct, and new nuclear power plants could be built for that much less than coal all along, why was there no interest in new builds?
It doesnt matter to me if you dont care who disagrees with you. I still would ask, who else is saying that new nuclear power can be built that would produce electricity for 3 cents kWhr?
The point I care about is doing something about the solar advocates who are getting away with quoting MIT on the cost of new nuclear. They are saying MIT says new nukes are prohibitively expensive, then they flog their solar dream. They are advocating solar power that costs in excess of 20 or even 30 cents kWhr. It is getting politically ridiculous, as for instance in the UK where the government is proposing the expenditure of billions on solar subsidies and the opposition, instead of saying this is money down a rat hole compared with spending on equally low carbon nuclear, is calling for even more billions to be spent on solar, fueled by the
dupes of the solar dreamers who have been duped into actually believing nuclear is far more expensive. Or in California, where the 1/3 subsidy of solar plants costing in excess of $15,000 per installed available kW would exceed the entire cost of a nuke, i.e. the taxpayers would be further ahead if they paid for the entire cost of building a nuclear plant and gave it away to the nearest utility company the net cost per available kWhr to the ratepayers and taxpayers would be less.
Jason Morgan
@ David I also looked at the Du and Parsons study and they reach a different conclusion on the per kWh costs, but the absolute construction costs are in the same range. They cite the South Texas project at $6 to $7 billion (not including financing costs or costs to upgrade transmission, etc) and the FPL project for two units that would cost between $12 and $18 billion all-in (including financing and transmission upgrades, et). If you look at the highest range they provided for construction costs ($18 billion), that translates to $9 billion per unit, which is the same cost figure I used in my analysis as the high range for nuclear that yields a total cost of $0.044 per kWh.
The major difference between the MIT Du and Parsons study and mine is that they INCLUDE transmission costs and I EXCLUDE them. I was looking solely at the cost of generation, not transmission. The difference between the two figures is not as great as you might think at first glance.
Reply
Jason Morgan
And you will notice that the MIT study also did not take a NPV or discounted cash flows analysis approach for their workjust saying @ UVDIV.
Bob Adsett
Time to get real = construction costs + production costs + decommissioning + long-term waste storage costs (for how many 1000s of years) lets stop this nonsense now, we cannot discount this into the future for our children to inherit. Saying sorry just doesnt cut it.
Reply
Jason Morgan
Bob, if you knew anything factual about the costs of nuclear energy you would realize that the cost of waste disposal is included in the production costs of nuclear energy. It is the ONLY source of energy that pays for the waste it produces and it is still cost effective.
Fission byproducts are waste to some and fuel to others. Spent fuel can be reprocessed due to the high content of fissile material left and turned back into fuel. Waste need not be a problem for our children and their children. Also, utility companies have paid billions of dollars to the government in order to provide a spent fuel solution only to have the government not fulfill its end of the bargain.
Jack Gamble
Tell you what Bob, you can give it to mebut itll cost you all $34.4 billion already set aside by utilities(see Jays point above). Then in another 50 years my kids will sell it back to your kids so they can recover the 99% of the energy that remains inside a once-burnt nuclear fuel rod. Ill be rich, my kids will be rich, and your descendents will mock your shortsightedness.
David
@ Jason,
Since nuclear energy is typically a baseload generation source, there are not many ways to reduce peak demand usage of natural gas with nuclear energy capacity.
This is accurate if we are using the current designs. But I understand that France load follows with their Nukes currently, so even a LWR (Light Water Reactor) can follow the change in electrical demand (Load follow). But even better, investment in completing the designs for LFTR (Liquid Floride Thorium Reactor) would give us a load following nuclear option. In fact, replacing Natural Gas with LFTRs seems the best commercial opportunity for doubling our Nuclear capacity. This would reduce the cost of power by almost 26% using the same production costs as the current nuclear power production.
Reply
Ulrich Decher
These cost comparisons are useful, but they arent the whole story. Wind and solar power sources are neither base-load nor peaking capacity. They are only fuel savers. In order to place them on an equal footing with the other sources, one needs to also consider the cost of electricity storage so it can be released when needed.
The plots give the impression that we could replace our conventional sources with wind and solar. (It may cost more, but so what). This is not possible without also considering the cost of storage (which is huge), not to mention the land use environmental impact.
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Jason Morgan
Youve got good points. My intent was not to tell the whole story, but rather the story of how much all these energy sources really cost to generate electricity over their lifetimes.
Maybe some people would get the impression that you could replace current energy sources with solar or wind, but those people obviously cant see, read, count, or think solar construction costs alone are five to eight times as expensive as the total cost of coal or nuclearlets just hope those people dont vote or else we are doomed to an idiocracy.
Frank Jablonski
Nuclear is the only entity for which decommissioning costs are built in, but that does not mean that other forms of energy do not have costs associated with decommissioning. Like the air quality impacts from burning coal, such costs are excluded from the calculation. I dont know how to value these costs, but I expect it would be possible to do so, if you could gather the data, although it is not likely to be readily obtainable. In any case, the soil quality, and corresponding remedial measures, for a coal fired power plant is likely to be very interesting after 60 80 years of leaching from piled up coal. Similarly, the the scraped-to-nothing wasteland that underlies a solar thermal plant is apparently contemplated to be left as is at the end of the plants useful life. Apparently this is something deemed an acceptable side effect of protecting the environment through alternatives to nuclear energy.
Keep up the good work.
Reply
Ulrich Decher
Im not sure that we are doomed, but I certainly think the word needs to get out that wind and solar arent a solution. These intermittent sources cant meet our peak load requirements and therefore, unless we are willing to live in a life of rotating blackouts, we should not rely on these sources.
The fact that these sources cant replace conventional ones, is not obvious to the public when you read the advertisements of the clean energy providers. For example the ad of one of the providers in Connecticut states: You can think of the power grid like a giant bathtub being filled with electricity form many different sources. No you cant. There is no bathtub full of electricity anywhere on the grid. It implies electricity storage. There is no appreciable electricity storage on the grid. The analogy in entirely wrong. It leads the public to conclude that the wind faucet can replace all the other faucets filling up the tub. They cannot do that. When the wind is blowing you can reduce the flow in the other faucets, but you still need the full capacity of all the other faucets to meet the peak load.
The Clean electricity providers arent the only ones promoting the wrong solution. If you look at the ads or brochures of other companies, many of them having nothing to do with electricity production, how many of them have pictures of windmills? The answer is lots of them, they all want to show that they are promoters of a clean environment. Windmills have become a symbol of a clean environment. It will take a lot of education to show that they are not.
Reply
Greg
Posted March 26, 2011 at 5:31 pm | Permalink
The faucet analogy isnt as bad as you make it out to be. You can put any unit into the bathtub, and youre choosing energy, which you know to be wrong (unless storage is available). You should put wattage into the bathtub, and then the analogy is perfectly viable. Individual plants feed the grid, and end users draw that power off the grid. In other words, power from different plants is pooled (note that this doesnt imply storage in any way). This is surely what the advertisement meant, and what you chose to misinterpret. Of course, its imprecise, because electricity could mean kW or kWh, but the average viewer doesnt understand those terms.
As to the intermittency of wind power, you should note that wind turbines (over land, at least) normally generate their maximum power during the day, i.e. during peak load times. That means that they do reduce the capacity needed from other sources. If youre interested in reducing CO2 emissions, then every kWh generated by a clean source is a kWh not generated by coal, natural gas or some other polluting source. And given that most analyses Ive seen put the levelized cost of onshore wind energy around that of nuclear and natural gas, Id say that wind energy makes very good economic sense.
I expect that the cost of photovoltaics and concentrating solar power will come down substantially as the technologies improve and are scaled, but they are, currently, uncompetitive. This isnt a purely economic decision though, and it may become a fact of life that energy will be more expensive in the future if we want to avert serious warming. In that case, we should focus on improving the energy efficiency of our economy. Given all these considerations, I dont see how you can be so dismissive of clean energy.
Jared
Posted May 12, 2011 at 12:28 pm | Permalink
Good analogy but why rule out wind and solar completely. Even if they just cut back the inventory need for power it is still a great technology. I may be taking you wrong or maybe you work in the oil business and receiving records profits. If everybody just had a small portion of solar PV and solar hot water it would be a great change. Give solar some well deserved credit.
Jack Gamble
Jared, the anyone who disagrees with me is an industry shill argument is a tired excuse for legitimate discourse.
You would do well to notice which companies are financing the wind and solar advertising campaigns on television: BP, ExxonMobile, Shell, and Chevron. These are not renewable companies, they are fossil fuel conglomerates and I seriously doubt their goal is to make their own product unnecessary.
keith
Posted January 1, 2012 at 12:19 pm | Permalink
to all: I see no insurance cost here, i.e. the cost of insuring the production and operation of these types of power. For instance, what is the cost of the nuclear disaster of Fukushima: land unusable for many many years, health costs to people damaged during the disaster, i.e. Lets put it this way, if the corporation/government had to truly pay insurance for the true cost of a disaster, like contamination of a area for centuries, what would it be? How would you calculate it? I guess since this is difficult, they are left out of most studies, but my guess is that nuclear power easily would be too expensive.
Rob mark
Jason, do your calculations of production costs account for utilization rates? i.e. If Wind has a 40% utilization and coal/nukes have 90%, is this reflected or are you just looking at what the flat per kWh cost is?
Reply
Jason Morgan
Yes, it is referred to as capacity factor in this article and can be found in the equation for calculating the construction cost per kWh.
Howard Agnew
Posted May 12, 2010 at 5:14 am | Permalink
Its only an idiocracy to you to consider solar or wind as viable if you place no value at all on environmental damage. Solar and wind plants have, yes, some environmental impact but very negligible compared with any of the alternatives. Nuclear, hydro, coal, natural gas each have much more significant and longerlasting environmental impacts. For the purposes of your comparisons, what $ value do you assign to account for the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuel plants and their very serious implications for the global climate? How about the permanent toxic waste spread over hundreds of miles (and perhaps farther) at the sites of nuclear reactors such as Hanford? Or how much value do you assign to the fully uncompensated deaths from leukemia found statistically significant within 50 miles of nuclear reactors that never had more than a low level of release found by scientific studies conducted by the National Cancer Institute and the Radiation and Public Health Project?
When you ignore the cost to the environment and in lives, despite several scientific studies, and deem anyone concerned about them as being unable to see, read, count, or think, it does not speak much for the credibility of your work.
Reply
Jason Morgan
Your assertions are untrue. Solar and wind have significant environmental impact when you look at the sprawl created by constructing solar and wind systems large enough to replace base load nuclear or coal.
If you truly were aware of factual information regarding the topic you are challenging me on, then you would know that nuclear produces emissions-free energy with minimal amounts of waste (and the disposal is fully-funded by utilities). It involves the least amount of refueling and fuel in general. A coal plant has 300 train loads of coal arrive per year, that is about once every 29 hours. Also, the sheer volume of coal versus the volume of Uranium means that nuclear has FAR less environmental impact in terms of mining and distribution expense and emissions.
Solar is anywhere from 4 to 8 times as expense as nuclear. This means that if we were to replace those sources with renewables, your electric bill would quadruple. Given that the US economy almost collapsed under the weight of gasoline prices that doubled in the 2006-2008 time frame, I venture to guess that the average person in the US cannot afford to have their electric bill quadruple.
There are a whole host of other reasons nuclear is superior to wind and solar, not that those sources shouldnt be utilized, but they are quite simply not viable solutions to the majority of baseload energy demand. Therefore, we need to look at other sources of clean energy, aka nuclear, that CAN satisfy baseload demand, is affordable, and is not nearly as harmful to the environment as other sources currently employed. Nuclear is no more environmentally unfriendly that solar and wind, bottom line. They impact the environment differently, but the extent to which they impact it is the same.
The cancer study you cite is erroneous and supported by anti-nuclear groups. Not all scientific studies are really scientific, and they dont always represent the facts. Plenty of discussion on other posts on this site that address that issue.
To sum up: I place a high value on our environment, which is precisely why I am PRO nuclear. Anyone who is a realist, understands the various environmental, financial, engineering, and operational factors of different sources of energy production, can come to no other conclusion than nuclear is by far the best option.
BTW I now know how politicians feel when they make a questionable comment that is then misunderstood by not only the intended recipient, but then quoted out of context by others. The idiocracy comment specifically addressed the idea that someone could look at the cost comparison graph which shows solar and wind to be enormously expensive, and draw the conclusion based on that cost information that we can replace coal and nuclear with renewables.
But since your mind was already made up before you came to this site, I refer you to the only pertinent article on this site for you.
Jack Gamble
Why dont you do a little experiment Howard. Stand 1 mile from any operating nuclear power plant in the world with a radiation dosimeter for a week.
Then stand in the middle of, lets say, the Amazon rain forest for a week.
Then stand 1 mile from a coal power plant for a week.
Then leave the dosimeter in the US Capitol Building for 1 week.
Youll find that the Capital Building far exceeds the radiation dose of the nuclear plant as will the coal plant. Youll also find that the radiation levels in the Amazon and near the nuclear plant are all but the same.
Then talk to me about Leukemia.
The mess at Hanford is not from the power plant, its from the thousands of nuclear weapons that were built there during the cold war, several decades before they started producing electricity there in 1984. Your evidence is very misleading. After all, the local High School mascot is the Hanford Bombers.
Nice try, but Im afraid youre going to have to do much better than that here. Our readers are far more intelligent than you take them for.
Spencer Wilcox
Posted September 9, 2010 at 1:18 am | Permalink
Thank you very much for doing this work and posting your findings. It is very helpful stuff. I also checked out wikipedias entry on the subject and wondered if you can shed any insight or thoughts on why your findings differ from those cited on wikipedia. I know you probably dont have their data, but any thoughts on why there are such broad discrepancies?
Those sources included the Energy Information Administrations 2010 outlook, University of Chicago, MIT, and four or five British, Canadian and European groups.
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Sceptical Sam
Excellent article. Thanks.
In your analysis of solar did you factor in the need to account for Photo Voltaic (PV) unit degradation over time?
Based on the work of Alsema, E, Fraile, D, Frishknecht, R, Fthenakis, V, Held, M, Kim, H, Plz, W, Raugei, M, and de Wild Scholten, M. Methodology Guidelines on Life Cycle Assessment of Photovoltaic Electricity. (International Energy Agency (IEA), Switzerland, 2009), the efficiency of a PV system declines in a linear manner to be 80 per cent of the initial efficiency at the end of a 30 year period (as cited in (1)).
Factoring this in will change the algorithm substantively. A re-calculation based on this and the other input on this thread would be very telling.
(1). Page 11 at: https://www.tai.org.au/file.php?file=/media_releases/PB%2021%20SHCP %20final.pdf
Sceptical Sam
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Gavin Wilkinson
What you miss is that coal and natural gas are finite resources. We can argue about how long they will last but one thing is for sure: they will run out.
Instead of committing our children to another crisis, lets solve the problem once and for all by shifting to an infinite source:solar. The price on new 500+ megawatt solar plants mass produced should come in 10-12 cents per kwh.
Your cost estimate for nuclear does not include the insurance bill for accidents. Calculate the cost of destroying a large city with fallout a la Chernobyl. While safety has improved, to pretend there is no risk is unreasonable.
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Jack Gamble
Fossil fuels are finite, absolutely, but then again so is the silicon needed to make PV panels and sunshine is in fact finite as it shines for 1/2 the day at best, in all actuality, sunlight is a 20% available resource when you factor in equipment failures, cloudy days, night, and degrading performance over time.
A 500 MW plant will require tens of square miles of land and at any given time, can only produce 100 MW. Solar power does not cost 10-12 cents/kWh, especially when you consider the cost of the natural gas turbine that you need to back it up 80% of the time and dont forget to factor in the 50% subsidy rate that comes out of yours and my tax bill.
As to the cost of an accident, nothing is without accidents. Even rooftop solar panels cause falls that kill people, albeit this is a stretch, much like nuclear accidents is a stretch. A Chernobyl type accident is 100% impossible in a US light water reactor for a number of reasons, namely negative void coefficient, no graphite, and a reinforced containment structure that Chernobyl didnt have. As for the insurance bill, each nuclear power plant in the US is on the hook for $100,000,000 in the event of an accident x 104 operating plants. That is considerably more insurance than, say a oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico or a gas pipeline running under your house.
GB
Posted February 22, 2011 at 4:01 am | Permalink
JackGamble wrote: Fossil fuels are finite, absolutely, but then again so is the silicon needed to make PV panels and sunshine is in fact finite as it shines for 1/2 the day at best
Did you write this in jest? First of all, sunlight is a renewable resource. Secondly, theres no comparison between the amount of fossil fuels in the earth and the amount of Silicon in the earth. You could cover the earth in solar panels and not run out of Silicon. Wait the earth is already covered in Silicon
BJ
@ Jack Gamble You write A 500 MW plant will require tens of square miles of land and at any given time, can only produce 1 MW A report referred to elsewhere in the comments (http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/25722/) cites the space requirements of a 675 MW CSP plant as 320 acres that about half a square mile. What would the comparable space requirement figure be for a nuclear plant if the exclusion and safety zones are factored in ?
Brian Mays
BJ Its not a 675 MW CSP plant; its a solar-thermal electric hybridized power plant. The hybridized means that its part solar plant and part fossil-fuel plant, undoubtedly burning natural gas. The 675 MW is the aggregate nominal power, meaning that it is the sum of the contributions of the solar part and the natural gas part.
The article doesnt indicate how much is solar and how much is natural gas. Considering, however, that SEGS, a solar-thermal plant that is the largest installation of solar plants of any kind in the world, requires over 1600 acres for an installed capacity of only 354 MW (and average output of only 75 MWe), I suspect that the solar part of these hybridized plants is very small indeed.
Essentially, this is just a natural gas plant with some solar power window dressing that the owners have installed to garner good PR and to gain access to generous subsidies from the federal government and the state of California.
BJ
@ Brian May yes perhaps a better comparison would be the Blythe plant (See http://www.energy.ca.gov/sitingcases/solar_millennium_blythe/index.html ) which is a solar only project with 1000MW nominal output that will cover 7030 acres (2845 ha) in total. This source ( http://www.ans.org/pi/brochures/pdfs/power.pdf ) suggests 1000MW Nuclear plants require about 1-4 km2 (100 400 Ha) thus a ratio for nuclear/solar roughly in a range of 1:7 to 1:28 but i do not know if these figures (in the case of nuclear) include exclusion zones where no human habitation is allowed and for example space required for uranium enrichment and spent fuel storage.
Brian Mays
BJ For comparison sake, please let me point out that the largest nuclear plant in the US occupies about 4000 acres of desert and has a nominal output of 3875 MW, almost four times what your solar project expects. The main difference, however, is that this plant had a 90% capacity factor for 2010, whereas the solar plant will be lucky to hit 25%. Such is the nature of physics.
The nuclear plant nearest to where I live has a capacity of 1790 MW on a mere 1075 acre site. There are no exclusion zones where no human habitation is allowed. On the contrary, the land near the reactor is quite valuable and contains many vacation homes that were built on the artificial lake that the plant owner constructed back in the 1970s to use as a natural heat sink for the reactors.
The site currently houses two reactors, but it was designed to house four reactors. The utility has plans to build at least one more reactor on the same 1075 acres, which should not be a problem.
By the way, Brian May is the guitarist for Queen. That is not me.
Jack Gamble
@BJ
That was a typo. Given a 20% capacity factor, as is customary to solar PV, a 500 MW solar plant would produce 100 MW at any given time, not 1 MW as I said. Sorry for the confusion.
Will
Posted May 15, 2012 at 12:17 am | Permalink
As for the insurance bill, each nuclear power plant in the US is on the hook for $100,000,000 in the event of an accident x 104 operating plants. That is considerably more insurance than, say a oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico or a gas pipeline running under your house-Jack Gamble. $100m seems like a light penalty for a serious nuclear accident. BP has already spent $11.2 billion on the deepwater horizon spill which is more than the $10.4 billion nuclear plant owners would be on the hook for if every single plant in the US suffered a meltdown. I understand that BP paid far more than it was liable for, but maybe we should make these companies liable for any damage they cause. Capping liability at such a small number artificially lowers the cost of nuclear energy much like subsidies do for renewable energy. Would an insurance company even be willing to offer coverage? Unless the premiums were astronomical, a single serious accident would ruin them (Fukushima cleanup will cost around $250 billion or more than the $104 billion in assets of Travelers, the largest insurance company in the US). I completely accept that a Chernobyl type accident cant happen in the US since among other things we dont build reactors without containment domes. Fukushima, on the other hand raises worrying questions about what can happen to a nuclear reactor in the aftermath of a natural disaster. If the government didnt cover most of the damages from an accident, what would happen to the cost of nuclear energy? (this is actually a question. I assume it would go up but I have no idea how much.) Sorry if this repeats anyones post.
Brian Mays
Would an insurance company even be willing to offer coverage?
In fact, yes. There are about 21 large insurance companies that insure nuclear plants in the US. Dont worry about the job being too large for any one insurance company to handle. Nuclear plants are insured by a joint underwriting association.
Bob Aceti
Posted February 5, 2011 at 10:28 pm | Permalink
Renewable energy are not base loads and not intended to compete with nuclear on the same metrics. The challenge with nuclear is that they are so good at generating power that it is challenging to curtail that power when the load is reduced below the nuclear generators lower operating capacity. In a perfect world generation = load. In an imperfect world we introduce storage to mange supply to service distributed demand or introduce a combination of renewable energy with optimized base load generators. I think that most of you will agree that engineering technology will tend to improve the cost/kWh metrics related to solar PV power. It is unwise to not consider nuclear as a base load supply generator. Likewise, it would be foolish to stop or reduce engineering development of solar PV technology simply because it currently is materially more costly per kW and kWh (CAPX & OPEX) than nuclear or coal.
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Bob Aceti
Quoted content from EPR: Reactor in Crisis POWER Magazine blog:
In his report The EPR in Crisis Thomas says the Areva design, begun in 1995 to add more passive safety factors to the basic Electricite de France Generation III PWR, has not been able to deliver on promises of a new, safer reactor that is dramatically less capital-intensive than past machines. In 2001, French nuclear officials claimed the EPR could be built for $1320/KW, but the costs of the two EPR units now under construction in Finland and France are well behind schedule and running more than triple the cost estimate, at $4800/KW in 2009 for the Finnish reactor. In his report, Thomas says, It seems unlikely that all the problems that have contributed to the delays and cost-overruns have been solved; the final cost could be significantly higher.
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Brian Mays
Wow, Bob! Talk about a double standard!
After half a century of constant development, solar gets a pass because of the unsubstantiated assertion that engineering technology will tend to improve the cost/kWh metrics related to solar PV power. Meanwhile, nuclear is criticized for first-of-a-kind engineering and construction costs of a brand new unit built in a country that has not brought a new reactor online in over three decades. Whats wrong, Bob? Have you forgotten that engineering technology will tend to improve?
Bob, you have provided a splendid example of nuclear exceptionalism the irrational belief that only nuclear power has to be perfect each and every time.
After 56 years, solar still cant compete, which is why your company makes money off of government handouts in the form of feed in tariffs. Its really a sophisticated
form of begging, if you think about it. By the standards that you hold nuclear to, you should have been out of business long ago.
Jack Gamble
@Bob,
Renewable advocates attacking nuclear on cost is incredibly dishonest. Even with cost overruns associated with new technology, nuclear is still WAY cheaper than renewables, its not even close.
When the cost of solar, sans subsidies, gets under 200% of nuclear on a kWh basis, we can talk about cost. Until then, every time you cite cost, you are simply demonstrating an unethical double standard that threatens your business proft and thus discredits you.
Jack Gamble
You cant engineer the sun to stay overhead longer, no matter how hard you try. Therefor solar generators will never be able to benefit from reliability which provides nuclear operators with a premium (the grid pays for reliability).
The unreliability of solar power (20% capacity factor) means the price of your power will always be 5X what you advertise.
keith
Posted January 2, 2012 at 8:11 am | Permalink
Brian,
I think for me the problem is if nuclear isnt perfect, really bad things happen(Japan). The fact that nuclear is so complicated to implement isnt plus, its a negative. One thing is for sure, when a solar plan or wind farm is put into motion, you can be pretty sure it can be completed, as long as the funding is there. The bond market is definitely showing this, lately by shying away from nuclear projects.
MB
I believe in the no silver bullet strategy. Pursue many options, not just the one that appears cheapest per kWH, and not just the ones that appear to deliver clean, free energy from the sun forever.
Cost of solar PV continues to come down, and if we pull the market out from under it, China will own this important industry (theyre already well on their way). With a mix of electricity sources feeding the grid, arguments like the sun only shines or wind only blows X hours per day really are specious. Solar happens to produce when demand is high.
Negative externalities should factor into costs environmental costs of resource extraction and pollution from emissions; defense costs; etc.
Lastly, almost every article of this type focuses only on the supply side of the equation. There are great technologies to reduce electricity demand. Net-zero or near-zero energy buildings. LED lighting. Solar hot water heaters. Smarter management of demand. We could make great strides in these areas, with great benefits to society in terms of lower overall energy costs, yet we focus on supply, especially nuclear and coal because they appear cheap. This is a mistake.
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Greg Molyneux
@MB, with regards to your no silver bullet proposal for a diverse product mix, does nuclear energy factor into your thinking should it prove to be worth its total cost?
Cesare
I think you all should look at the movie, rather than watching single frames of the film. Solar and wind construction costs are decreasing at a dramatic rate, while nuclear can only rise, because uranium is a finite resource. The only real problem with solar and wind was overlooked in this article, and that is storage. This will be solved only when well have an hydrogen based society, where excess capacity is stored as hydrogen, produced by electrolysis, and consumed later when demand exceeds production. We will also need a much smarter electricity grid but, hell, what are computers for if not for that?
Finally, I will spare you a discussion on what is happening in these days in Fukushima Japan, because we all have a TV set and can see for ourselves but you know, sh*t happens, and pretty often as of lately.
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Jack Gamble
Cesare,
If you are going to move to solar with storage, then you need to build enough capacity so that when the sun is shining you have enough capacity for the power you need now, and the power you need when the sun is not.
Unfortunately, storage systems always means losses, and right now solar operates at 20% capacity factors, which means your going to need 500% of demand in capacity * whatever loss factor your storage system incurs.
Im sorry, but youll never make solar cheap enough such that we can build 500 and X% of what we need at any given time. Also, the actual cost of solar hasnt gone down all that much, its the state and federal subsidies increasing that has caused solar prices to drop. Now that the deficit hawks are running Congress, you shouldnt bank on those subsidies for much longer.
Also remember that right now solar power provides about 1/10th of 1% of our electric needs in the US even with a near 50% subsidy rate. I doubt well be able to scale that up some 5,000% anytime soon.
As for Uranium being a finite resource, U-238 and Throium are plentiful enough where fuel costs would be essentially negligible were breeder or LFTR reactors commercialized, which is right now about 20 years out. We have more than enough Uranium 235 and Plutonium to last until then plus a few hundred years. Plus there are plenty of bombs left that can be turned into fuel along with the 15,000 warheads weve already destroyed.
BJ
Agree its about the movie arguing about the present economic benefits of nuclear power as a clean energy source seems to be yesterdays debate it is not the answer the world is looking for. Politicians will continue to build nuclear power stations on fault lines if it remains the only (punted) cheap clean technology available even in California and Japan. Logically the fault line areas are the places that should drive the search for new affordable clean technologies that can survive the very big earthquakes that will and must come, that also makes economic sense
and fundamentally addresses issues of diminishing resources and global warming. And logically society must subsidise the development costs of sensible new technologies like it once did with nuclear power. It is also seems a bit of an insular debate about solar energy the default view (often stated) appears to be that because the sun only shines for 6 hours a day constant supply to meet demand is an impossible gap to address with known technologies but if one takes a global view the sun is always shining somewhere. Daytime consumption requirements are roughly double night-time requirements if you generate and export your night-time requirements while the sun is shining you can import it again during night-time from sunlit partners who does the same. Such a shift will change the whole debate about excess capacities that must be created to make the new technologies fly and immediately challenge the often quoted affordability debate.
baobrien
@BJ Because its totally possible to move power 1/4 across the world without loosing most of it to power line resistance using anything less than superconductors.
BJ
@baobrien well they are already planning to cover 13 timezones with the IPS/UPS super grid (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_grid) it would therefore already
be possible to cover 24 time zones with these super grids if you build them to the east and the west. And this is not the only form of long distance energy transfer available but you also have to factor in that we have to dramatically alter our energy consumption patterns you are either on the bus or off the bus.
Joan Bouck
My planet too. How many billions more does everyone need to make if it means turning the planet into a poisonous and radioactive byproducts dumpsite full of unstable chemicals that have half lives of 25,000 years (plutonium-239) and 700 million years (Uraniou-235)? There is no respect for life in this industry, just greed.
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Jack Gamble
Are you talking about the coal industry? They dump more radioisotopes into the atmosphere than the the Fukushima reactors every day.
Your planet was fissioning Uranium 2 billion years ago when your ancestors were still a puddle of single celled organisms. So try not to be so sanctimonious.
Rob Mackey
To Mr. Gamble: Coal plants are not spewing Plutonium into the environment, but Fukushima certainly did. MOX is too dangerous but the nuclear industry used it anyway. Given the wreckless use of improper engineering for the site (which is known for tidal waves and huge quakes,) the ability of the industry to say trust us has been dimished by orders of magnitude.
Brian Mays
To Mr. Mackey: Believe it or not, much of Japan was already contaminated with trace amounts of plutonium from the aftermath of atomic weapons explosions decades ago. Any additional plutonium resulting from the accident at Fukushima is truly negligible.
None of this has anything to do with MOX fuel, however.
naksuthin
After the recent nuclear disaster in Japan, I predict the cost of building a nuclear plant is going to skyrocket as regulators demand stricter tolerances and more backups and safeguards. In addition there will be public demands for spent nuclear fuel rods to be stored more safelybut more expensively than they are currently.
So in the long run we will see nuclear energy spike upwards in the production area.
Construction costs for Solar and Wind, on the other hand will come down due to economies of scale and technological innovations and should more popular because they are relatively non polluting and safe.
As the cost differences narrow, nuclear power will become harder and harder to justifyespecially since the government will have to continue to subsidies the industry and provide loan guarantees in order for new nuclear plants to be built.
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Jason Morgan
There is little doubt that the nuclear industry and regulatory agencies will learn and enhance safety protocols and systems as a result of the Japan earthquake and tsunami. Yes, this will increase production costs but look first at the base numbers we are dealing with. The upgrades in safety equipment and processes will result in a
nominal increase to production costs, most likely in the fractions of a penny per kWh because of the enormous generation capacity inherent to the nuclear plants operating today.
Your point about cost of storing spent fuel is moot. All utilities operating nuclear power plants in the US today have already paid substantial sums of money (to the tune of $34 billion) to store the spent fuel, but to date the US government has failed to fulfill its end of the bargain by using those billions of reserve dollars to actually build the geological repository that was promised. So, NO, we will not see an increase in cost for spent fuel storage its already being paid for today but not being addressed because the US governments budget is in such a mess that they borrow funds from all sorts of projects to pay for unrealistic entitlement program payments.
Im not so sure that the long-awaited technological innovations and economies of scale will truly bring down the cost of solar in the long term. My reasoning is based on the material inputs to PV rare earth metals mined almost exclusively in China. China manipulates markets, prices, and currency exchange rates, so it is difficult to predict future commodity prices under those conditions.
Unless technological innovations includes switching out the fundamental fabrication inputs of PV cells to something other than rare earth metals, then I fear that all of the it will be cheaper to build in the future talk is misguided. Im not saying improved technology wont bring down prices, they undoubtedly will, but without significant changes to the raw materials the price can only come down so far, and not nearly enough to compete with the current baseload technologies employed. Again, strictly an economic perspective.
Jack Gamble
Posted March 30, 2011 at 7:35 am | Permalink
A couple of things,
First, next generation reactors like the AP1000 are already designed with passive cooling systems that use natural forces like gravity to cool the reactor and spent fuel even with an extended period without power, as was the case in Japan. These reactors also include a tertiary containment layer called a shield wall that would add yet another layer of containment to contain a radiation release. So I dont think youll see much impact on the cost of new plants from Fukushima. Of course the older plant will be required to analyze and take action based on the Fukushima events, so I would partially agree with you in that at least some increase in cost for the older plants will come from this (mostly associated with he diesel generators and Hydrogen mitigation.
As far as increase in spent fuel costs, after 9/11 US plants were required to adopt NRC Section B.5.B which deals with, among other things, protecting the spent fuel pools in the event of large fires, explosions, and massive systems loss. These are very similar to the events that affected the fuel pools at Fukushima, and were the Japanese to have taken these measures, its likely the fuel pools at Units 3 and 4 would have fared better.
As far as the mythological government subsidies for nuclear go, Im all ears. Last I checked it was the nuclear industry that has paid tens of billions to the government for spent fuel services which it has not received. As for loan guarantees, renewables are getting those as well, the only difference being nuclear plants are charged a fee of several hundred million dollars for those guarantees while renewables get them for free.
Next economies of scale do nothing for the burden of transmission costs for renewables (you need power lines going to every panel and every turbine) nor the intermittency of those sources. Any cost savings from technology improvements will likely be offset by subsidies that are about to dry up for wind and solar, which means the cost of these sources will stagnate at best in the next decade.
anonymous scientist
The analysis is incomplete, inaccurate, and possibly grossly incorrect, unless it includes costs associated with the consequences of the energy technology. For example, coal plants have an impact on human health and climate change both with real costs, and hydroelectric plants have an impact on diversity and tillable land behind and down stream from the damn. The costs born by the operator and reflected in customers bills are not the whole story.
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Jack Gamble
I would at least partially agree with you on that. However, those arent exactly quantifiable attributes, although I would be interested in reading a such a study if it were done. Theyre also not factors considered by investors, rate payers, or utilities and as such have been excluded from this research.
Brian Mays
Jack and anonymous The European Union, for the past 20 years, has tried to quantify these external costs. The results of their efforts, the ExternE project, is possibly the most comprehensive study ever undertaken to examine these issues. You might want to take a look.
Note that nuclear fares pretty well in the ExternE conclusions. It does at least as well as the more popular renewable energy sources e.g., wind and solar.
Jack Gamble
Ill add that nuclear power is the ONLY power source that takes responsibility for decomissioning and byproducts. Each nuclear plant in the US has several hundred million dollars sitting in a decomissioning fund and to date the US nuclear industry has paid the government $34 billion under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (despite the governments failure to meet its own obligations under this law).
Coal, Gas, Oil, Hydro, Wind, and Solar are not required to pay for their decomissioning or waste products.
Jason Morgan
@ Brian Mays great resource on ExternE. I was previously unaware of this analysis but it is an excellent reference material. My intent with this particular post was to discuss generation costs, but I agree with anonymous that it doesnt tell the whole story. When viewed with generation costs plus ExternE results taking into account externalities, the case for nuclear just gets stronger. You guys always elevate the discussion with great info, thanks.
Question for anyone: I didnt address distribution costs in this post because I had assumed that the cost of grid infrastructure should be equally burdened across all generation sources, and therefore it was irrelevant to the analysis. Without giving affect to external costs as I am not able to produce an analysis of that sophistication in my spare time (thankfully ExternE was able), am I wrong in my assumption that when trying to compare different energy sources from a purely economic perspective, only the generation cost, not the distribution costs, are worth looking at?
In retrospect, there are many different ways to approach the cost analysis for energy. To be sure, the best way would be to include external costs. Are there things I would change with this post today? Yes. Are those changes something I can make with the information and time available to me? Maybe, but its not looking good.
John H
Actually, if the facts were reported honestly, the Fukushima incident would be held up as proof that the design was sound and in fact over-engineered. The plant was built to withstand a 7.6 magnitude quake, and in fact survived a 9.0 magnitude quake. What caused the crisis was the tsunami wiping out the backup generators needed to keep the coolant pumps running.
Nuclear seems to be the only form of power generation in which every conceivable cost has to be added in up front and accounted for. Few people ask where the metals and plastics that go into wind turbines or solar panels come from, and most people gloss over the mining and drilling for coal, oil and natural gas until theres a cave-in or explosion. And I suspect most people dont know that a coal plant actually generates more radioactive waste than its nuclear equivalent.
Accidents occur in every industry. Yet even though nuclear power plants have one of the lowest rates of injuries or deaths, they are somehow considered unsafe. And lets not forget that we can measure the average age of nuclear plants in the US in decades since the most recent one to begin operating was in 1996. At some point the same people who argue these plants are so unsafe (despite their safety records) will start arguing that theyre too old to continue operating safely.
But who ever said the anti-nuke groups have to make sense?
A single uranium fuel pellet the size of a fingertip contains as much energy as 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, 1,780 pounds of coal or 149 gallons of oil. nei.org
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ZOLDI, KAROLY
Regarding John Hs comment; the Fukushima incident would be held up as proof that the design was sound and in fact over-engineered.
1. Please refer to the following links :
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news/2011/110424FukushimaEventStatus-112e_page14.pdf
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news/2011/110424FukushimaEventStatus-112e_page56.pdf
2. I would also add, that when it comes those people, who are not designers of reactors, or are not nuclear scientists, I foresee some difficulties when trying to convince them to SEPARATE reactor design from NPP design, including locating electrical switch rooms in reactor basements, when putting NPPs at sea level, (and directly on the seashore) not to mention about the so called protection wall against tsunami, which, when you look at any of the photos on the internet, look much more like those wave-breakers one can see at any sea-port, to protect the ships inside the port, rather than a really serious, reinforced and TALL wall against tsunamis
3. I do believe that non-expert, regular people will merge all this together when thinking about the safety / desirability of nuclear plants, rather than separately and expertly evaluating the resiliency of the PV, the CV or the torus or SFP ..
4. I might even risk stating that despite the worldwide known Japanese politeness, at least a few of the TENS OF THOUSANDS of evacuees from Fukushima, now sleeping on cardboard boxes in temporary shelters might even have a few words possibly OUTSIDE all boundaries of politeness.
5. Finally, must also add: hats off to Mr. Jason Morgan for his remarkable work, and the participants of this highly enlightening and extremely useful thread of conversation !
Brian
Posted September 7, 2011 at 10:37 pm | Permalink
I thought that I once read that a single tablespoon of plutonium, if it were possible to become airborne, would be toxic enough to kill every living organism on the planet. For the ave. Joe sixpack, wasnt Three Mile Island a non-accident, yet can you tell me if the insurance liability was born by the utility, or by the government? If these AP1000 reactors are so reliable, why then do the private investors require government financial guarantees, and limited liability exposure protection from the Price-Anderson Act? There seems to be a Dr. Strangeglove infactuation with nuclear technology, when we would all be better off if our collective genious were directed toward simpler, safe, renewable, carbon neutral power production. MIT did a nice study on geothermal, the Danish seem to be on the right track with offshore wind power stored with an electric car infrastructure, and when will somebody figure out how to tap into the enormous potential of our oceans, through tides, currents, and two parts hydrogen.
Brian Mays
I thought that I once read that a single tablespoon of plutonium, if it were possible to become airborne, would be toxic enough to kill every living organism on the planet.
Then you thought wrong.
Actually, it was that fool of a joke Ralph Nadir, who said, one pound of plutonium would be enough to kill everyone on earth. The scenario he had in mind didnt just require the plutonium to become airborne; rather, his idea was that the plutonium would be ground into fine dust and somehow breathed in by everyone on earth (snorted like cocaine, I suppose). After this, Nader claimed that it would eventually give everyone lung cancer.
Nadirs claim was so ridiculously ludicrous that it was mocked by the late Petr Beckmann, who famously responded, So would tomorrows production of hatpins kill everyone on earth if carefully placed in each individual heart.
If youre going to go around quoting old nuclear fables, Brian, then please at least have the decency to quote them correctly. Youre just making yourself look like a lazy fool.
wasnt Three Mile Island a non-accident, yet can you tell me if the insurance liability was born by the utility, or by the government?
Of course I can, because Im not an idiot who uses ignorance as a rhetorical tool. All of the liability costs of the Three Mile Island accident were paid by the insurance purchased by the plant owner, GPU. Keep in mind that, by law, this insurance was no-fault insurance that is, the plant owner could not claim that it was not at fault.
All of the successful claims were paid by the so-called primary insurance, i.e., the insurance paid for directly by the licensee (GPU). It is important to note that the amount of liability for the worst nuclear accident in US history didnt even approach the secondary level of insurance, a pooled arrangement that is funded by all of the nuclear plant operators jointly.
The government paid nothing for the Three Mile Island accident. Even the follow-up health studies that continue to this day were paid for by industry. All of these studies, except one, were funded by the plant owner, but directed by the US courts (i.e., the owner had no influence over the direction of the studies whatsoever). The
one exception that I can think of is a study that was funded by lawyers involved in a (failed) class-action lawsuit against the owners of the plant.
There seems to be a Three-Stooges infatuation in the anti-nuclear crowd with making stupid statements. They apparently prefer to speak from ignorance and pine about so-called simpler, safe, renewable, carbon neutral power production. There is no collective genius (or even spell-checkers apparently) in this crowd.
The pice de rsistance is that they continue to cite Denmark as their example of carbon neutral power production, when the statistics tell the opposite story. Their wind turbines make for nice pictures, but Denmark gets 81% of its total primary energy from fossil fuels (mostly oil, but also coal and natural gas). Compare that to nuclear-heavy France, which gets only 50% of its primary energy from fossil fuels, and Denmarks Scandinavian neighbor Sweden, which is blessed to have both nuclear energy any hydroelectric dams and which has reduced fossil fuel consumption to only 34% of its energy.
In terms of being carbon neutral, the three countries have the following CO2 emissions (in tonnes per capita):
Sweden 5.0
France 5.7
Denmark 8.8
Denmark is not doing so well in the carbon neutral power production business.
On the economic side, Denmark has some of the highest retail prices of electricity in Europe. There is no way someone would want to operate an electric vehicle in that country unless they were so rich as not to care. Certainly, nobody is going to pay expensive Danish prices for electricity to charge up their expensive car only to have
the batteries discharge again because the mostly worthless wind turbines have stopped spinning. Thats a pipe dream.
Brian
Dear Mr. Mayplease explain, from your exalted throne of superior ego projection, posing as an intellctual, how socializing the liability of nuclear power production and construction with taxpayer money is justifiable. If the industry cant satisfy the investment requirements of Wall St. on its own, why should the government be expected to pick up the tab. Also, this lowly, ignorant skeptic, lacks the capacity to understand how the nuke industry gets a pass, on solving the waste stream resolution prerequisite to development, in the first place! Why should any reactor be issued building permits without first providing for the safe, long term management of its toxic waste?
Brian Mays
If the industry cant satisfy the investment requirements of Wall St. on its own
Brian I guess you must have been living in a cave for the past three years. In case you havent noticed, the US government has been bailing out Wall Street since
2008. Why should anyone trust the judgment of Wall Street today? Youre just using this as an impotent talking point.
Why should any reactor be issued building permits without first providing for the safe, long term management of its toxic waste?
Well, its because of something called the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which was passed almost 30 years ago. Why should people wanting to build reactors be punished by the government, when they are prohibited by federal law from taking ownership of their own used fuel and deciding what to do with it themselves? Meanwhile, the owners of existing plants pay over $750 million each year into a fund that is supposed to provide such management.
Do you have a car? How much do you pay to manage the toxic waste that spills out of your tailpipe each time you drive it? Why should you be issued a license and title without having to clean up your toxic waste?
In any case, you almost have your wish: there are several states in the US that have moratoriums new nuclear reactors until such a solution has been implemented. These are states with very poor energy policy, in my opinion. They usually are either states with waning industrial sectors or states that are heavily dependent on fossil-fuels and overlook the pollution that they cause.
The Obama administration is working hard to see that the $7 billion that has already been spent on long-term disposal is wasted. If you have a problem with the lack of long term management, then please take it up with President Obama and Senator Reid. Meanwhile, all of this material is being safely managed on-site.
Brendan Walsh
Hello, i was doing research on why we should continue to have nuclear power as our #1 energy source of the future, despite Japan, 3 mile island, Chernobyl ect.
i was wondering if anyone had a reliable link or info on fast breeding or consuming reactors and how they decrease nuclear waste, nuclear waste was the one topic i was having trouble finding a reliable and credible source for.
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John H
I dont know if it will give you the answers youre looking for, but this Scientific American article provides some overview of the benefits and challenges of reprocessing spent fuel rods.
craig anderson
You are totally ingoring the energy demand curve. Are current needs are for peak power, sure nuclear cranks out a lot of power 24/7. but we dont need more power 24/7. We need more power about 5% of the time, that is when solar works, and it costs nothing when it is not needed.
You also need to account for when the payback begins, 12 months for solar, I can not even guess what nuclear is but 20 years would be a good start. By that time I am guessing fuel cells would be better.
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Jack Gamble
Craig,
You need to back up your claim that solar payback period is 12 months. From everything Ive read, you seem to be off by anywhere from 14 to 34 YEARS, and that takes into account a 50% subsidy rate.
So are you saying we dont need peak power on a cloudy day? What about when the solar panels are covered with snow or during winter days when the sun only shines for 9 hours? Those PVs dont make very much power during those conditions. Also, we seem to be burning quite a bit of coal and oil right now. Are you satisfied with those? If we want to stop burning coal and make electric cars a reality, then we are going to need to roll out massive amounts of base load power. That means a massive expansion of nuclear capacity.
Also, you might cast your gaze as far as China and India. Theyre going to need some additional base load power as some 2 billion people continue to industrialize.
Just think, if 300 million Americans use 1/4 of the worlds energy right now, what will our world look like if another 2 BILLION Chinese and Indians start consuming as much energy as we do using coal and oil? Thats not a world I care to live in.
Brian Mays
Craig,
You are totally ignoring that solar is an entirely opportunistic power source its available only when weather conditions permit, and even then it generates its peak power only during a small portion of the day. You are pretending that its dispatchable power. That is, youre claiming that its available to fill in that 5% of the time that you mention.
Thats simply not true in the real world.
Your figures for payback are highly dubious as well. Youre not even trying to hide that youre simply making up the figures that you claim.
Andrew Becker
Thank you for an excellent resource and discussion. I am a strong supporter of any power source that can be PROVED to be both economical and environmentally safe and for this reason I support both nuclear and solar energy.
In a number of posts a solar conversion factor of 20% has been quoted and I would like to remind anyone with an open mind that there are a number of places that have solar conversion factors of closer to 40%. I live in South Africa and there are areas of desert and semi-desert land which experience almost 330 days of direct sunlight per year. That is cloud free, 12 hour (average) sunlight days with solar radiation of about 500w-700w/m^2. In areas such as this it becomes far more economically viable to produce large scale solar furnaces (I discount photovoltaics because of their cost and lifespan). These furnaces can be designed, like nuclear plants, to have 40+ year lifespans and they have fairly low running costs since they require no fuel only maintenance.
Another point to note regarding solar furnaces is that modern large scale units use liquid salts as a heat capture fluid and these supply sufficient thermal balast that the plants can continue producing power for up to 20 hours after the sun has been obscured/gone down. In an area as described above that means near as damnit 24/7 power generation.
Lastly, it requires a fairly competent group of people to safely operate a nuclear power plant and I would sleep better at night knowing that unstable democracies in Africa were using solar rather than nuclear power.
Nuclear should be utilised to the fullest extent in places where it is economical and safe. It is an exceptionally good power source, however other clean potential power sources should not be discounted as under certain circumstances their benifits do make them competitive with nuclear. Like most engineering problems this is not a one size fits all situation.
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atomikrabbit
Andrew Concentrated solar with molten-salt-thermal storage may be useful in a few uninhabited areas with very high insolation, but the environmental damage to the large amount of habitat taken up by the installation for the relatively few megawatts produced is problematic (energy sprawl).
Also, these are thermal plants and require significant amounts of water for steam condensation and cleaning of the mirrors not entirely compatible with arid locations.
From Wikipedia: a 250 MW CSP station would have cost $6001000 million to build. That works out to 12 to 18 cents per kilowatt-hour. To put this in perspective, Arizona Public Service (APS), Arizonas largest utility company, purchases power from the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station at a cost of 1.65 cents per kilowatthour.
Also, even if it could get a theoretical 40% efficiency factor, the average gross solar output for all nine plants at SEGS [Solar Energy Generating Systems, in the Mojave desert] is around 75 MWe a capacity factor of 21%. The US nuclear fleet capacity factor is about 92%.
However, your concern about unstable African regimes having access to nuclear materials is understandable. Run transmission lines to them from stable countries operating Gen IV passively safe SMRs.
Jason Morgan
@ Andrew Im sorry if I give the impression that I am against development of renewable energy sources. That is not the case. Renewables should continue to be developed and implemented where and when they make sense. Siting is of utmost importance to renewables in order to make their unique attributes function in the best way possible.
Until I started researching energy I had no idea why we were not getting more on board with renewable energies. Some of the things I discovered through my journey were concepts like baseload and peak energy sources, capacity factors, energy sprawl, etc. Ultimately my main rationale for supporting nuclear energy is that it is currently the only viable, emission-free alternative to coal for baseload energy generation in the US ready for deployment today. If we truly want to be serious about reducing our greenhouse gas emissions then we need to start replacing existing coal baseload generation capacity with nuclear, while slicing up the rest of the energy pie with a greater portion of renewables.
As a part of this broader point, the fact that nuclear energy is a cheap baseload alternative to coal will actually facilitate the inclusion of renewables because it averages down the total cost of energy generation allowing for the more costly renewables to be included at greater proportions without damaging consumers and business bank accounts.
Andrew Becker
I dont think that running a power line 4000 miles from Dubai to Zimbabwe is really an option. Besides the fact that any cost saving you get from the nuclear power will be offset by the ridiculous cost of the copper lines themselves and the losses associated in such long distance transmission is the fact that in Africa, unlike Europe or America, the lines will be stolen for the copper.
Additionally I refer you to http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/25722/. I havnt had the time to substantiate the article and will stand corrected if it proves innaccurate, however it highlights the fact that producing power using concentrated solar can drop below $0.1 per kWh at which point it becomes a viable alternative (in certain areas) to nuclear and more importantly to coal, petroleum and natural gas.
I just want to reaffirm the fact that I have absolutely no problem with nuclear power, in fact I am very much pro-nuclear under certain conditions and would certainly defend it against wind and solar (both CSP and photovoltaic) in all first world countries. I just dont see it as the perfect solution to the entire worlds power requirements at this time and I dont like to see people discouraging development in the areas of renewable generation any more than I like to see people discouraging the quest to achieve fusion power generation, however unlikely it seems now.
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Rahul
I have been working in the Solar Industry for the past 2 years. I will refrain from commenting on nuclear technology, but i would like to point out the errors in certain facts which have been, either intentionally, or unintentionally, been written about Solar Energy.
1. Solar can never, and was never meant to completely replace conventional energy. 2. Solar works during peak demand, hence, Solar can act to supplement peak loads. 3. Whoever wrote that the prices of Solar are not actually coming down, really has no idea about Solar Energy. The avg. retail price of a Solar PV module in 2008 was close to 3.5$/W. You can buy the same modules today for less than 2$/W. With thin film technology, you can buy the modules at around 1$/W. Jut to put things in perspective, you can put up a plant in less than 2.5$/W with modules of 1$/W. Recently a firm has quoted 2.42$/W for a 50MW Solar plant based on thin film technology being built in India. 4. On the use of land, someone commented that Solar uses a lot of land. Very true. That is why the bigger plants are being built in deserts or areas which have very little commercial or no agricultural values. 5. It is expected that Solar will reach grid parity by 2022, and will be able to compete with coal by 2030. The subsidies, which add some cents to your electricity bills, are necessary to encourage scale, so that such targets can be achieved. Everyone knows that subsidies are not a sustainable solution, hence, the push towards mass deployment of these technologies so that they can be competitive with conventional fuels. 6. One of the biggest advantages of Solar, which no one has discussed, is decentralized power. Compare the cost of setting up a new thermal power plant to power a every small village in a country, factor in the T&D losses and you will see the advantage of decentralized solar power. 7. Solar is already competitive with generators which run on diesel to produce electricity. I tend to agree with the no silver bullet thinking, but Solar energy will play a part in the energy mix of the future.
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Cathy
Posted November 11, 2011 at 8:53 pm | Permalink
Do you know where i can find any data that compares the all in cost of both traditional and alternative forms of energy? Something that takes into account construction costs.(the 2.5$/W that you allude to). Thank you.
Greg
Posted June 9, 2011 at 4:50 pm | Permalink
We should ask Russia, and now Japan the cost of their cheap nuclear power costs them. We were VERY lucky at Three Mile Island
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Periasamy
Posted July 15, 2011 at 2:22 am | Permalink
The cost of Chernobyl is 43 lives + 4000 expected early deaths The cost of Fukushima & TMI is NIL.
What about the cost of Coal burning power ?
In the same period of 60 years of Nuclear Energy about 441,000 people have died in coal mine accidents. Even now about 10,000 people die in coal mine accidents every year.
How do you account for this cost ?
I appeal to all anti nuke people not to spread their perceived risk of nuclear energy, based on your peersonal fear psychosis ( like fear for darkness, fear for ghost, fear for water, etc) on the innocent general public. By doing so you are making the planet unliveable for your children.
Jeff marion
solar is $.1188/ kWh using a Mk2 Production 25kW Suncatcher tm system
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Ted Selker
How do we get the numbers people post to converge?
The Wikipedia page has very different numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nuke,_coal,_gas_generating_costs.png
A casual browse shows numbers that are different by factors of 2 at many places.
References for costs would be very helpful too. With complex governmental policies, what is included and not included in costs and variations of costs from cradle to grave?
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Sankaravelayudhan Na
Posted July 26, 2011 at 9:14 pm | Permalink
A solar array produces much more energy during the summer months while the wind turbine tended to produce better during the winter months when there is less sunshine but more wintry winds. Now, it is important to remember that no two places on earth are likely to have the same results garnered by these researchers. The cost of solar is Rs12.50 ,Natural gas plant Rs 7, ,Wind Energy Rs 4,coal Rs 3 per hwhr.with the Nuclear as Rs 2 perkwhr.Coal based thermal power stations are presently the mainstay of power development and this is likely to be so in the immediate future also, considering the present status of the projects and various constraints in development of hydro and nuclear power. Nuclear power stations requires a protection against Tsunami and earth quake effects .Solar power seems to costly until a better photovoltaic technology is implemented. This also requires
additional instllation of photo voltaic panels after three years. Wind energy seems to be flexible one for want of continuous wind force
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Jack Gamble
I dont think Fossil Fuels should be given a free pass on tsunami and earthquake safety. Remember that there was an oil refinery in Japan hit by the tsunami that burned for days after the quake and actually did kill people. There was also a dam in Japan that failed after the quake and swept away thousands of homes and also killed people. The nuclear didnt kill anyone, so why would you say nuclear needs the tsunami defenses and not the other sources?
Shane C.
Posted August 14, 2011 at 10:15 pm | Permalink
Your figures do not include the most important costs. The environmental impact and cost of these facilities. The nuclear figure should figure in the cost of decommissioning and the impact of burying the radioactive components. Nor does the coal take into account the price of its environmental impact. Of course there is no way to put a price on these types of costs, but hopefully there will be soon.
Each day more energy reached the earth from the sun than the entire world consumes in a year, this includes all electrical production and fuel used in our cars and machines on the entire earth. I know technology needs to improve and become cheaper for solar to become competitive solely on price. I just hope the world moves in the right direction.
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Brian Mays
The nuclear figure should figure in the cost of decommissioning and the impact of burying the radioactive components.
Thanks, Shane, for demonstrating that you dont know how to read a graph. The decommissioning component would be the little yellow part of the bar graph in the article.
Each day more energy reached the earth from the sun than the entire world consumes in a year, this includes all electrical production and fuel used in our cars and machines on the entire earth.
This is an irrelevant statistic, because almost all of this energy is required to keep the Earth warm, as it radiates its thermal energy out to space, and to provide energy for photosynthesis in Earths flora upon which we all depend for food.
Jack Gamble
Shane, each operating plant pays $0.001 per kWh for decomissioning AND into the nuclear waste fund. Each of the 104 operating US reactors has several hundred million dollar set aside for decomissioning and to date those reactors have paid the federal govt in excess of $34 billion for used nuclear fuel.
But in theory, I agree with you, those costs are a good idea.
Shane C.
No need for demeaning comments Brian. When I think of decommissioning I think of the cost of, which will occur between 10,000 10,000,000 years from the sealing of the repositories. ExternE-Pol Externalities of Energy (The report you linked in another comment) years or more of storage of spent fuel rods. It doesnt sound like a very sustainable model. What Im saying, Brian, is that the true costs, fungible costs, arent considered in this graph. My comments was merely an attempt to point out the lack of additional costs I believe arent taken into account in this article. We tend to only take into account the inward costs such as materials, production and liability and we neglect the outward costs, the cost incurred by society.
Im not saying nuclear is good or bad for society. Im saying the impact of these energy sources are not calculated into their prices and I hope we can develop technologies that will reduce our impact on our environment for future generations.
Brian Mays
Shane Please spare me the hurt posturing. Ive dealt with plenty of students who, like you, show up with a chip on their shoulder, wanting to lecture me on something, but having their facts mostly wrong. Another common characteristic is that they often speak in sloppy, ambiguous terms, mostly because they know that they dont have anything solid to back them up.
Sorry, but Ive had to deal with this nonsense too many times to have any patience with it today. Thus, please forgive me if my critiques of your comments are a bit harsh. If you want to earn my respect, then please show up with less attitude and more solid data and facts. Thanks.
Instead, you have now shown up three months later with yet more incorrect information (and people wonder what I mean when I talk about intellectual laziness sigh).
For example, ExternEs take on high-level nuclear waste is that any externalities (or associated damages) will be small. Personally, Id argue that such externalities are negligibly small, but in any case, the ExternE analysis does not consider this to be a big problem. Please try reading the FAQ sometime.
Furthermore, your claims of up to 10 million years are utterly ridiculous to anyone who is familiar with the nature of this waste and the evolution of this material over time. It is well known and widely accepted that the contents of the spent fuel
rods will decay away to material with a radiotoxicity that is less than that of the natural uranium ore from which it was originally produced in much less than 1 million years (its more like 200 thousand years). That is, by then, the stuff is less hazardous than the stuff that was originally mined from the earth; however, this is an extremely low standard by which to judge any hazard. It is essentially harmless well before then.
If youre worried about 10 million years from now, then youre off by only a couple of orders of magnitude.
Believe it or not, people who are much smarter than you have put a great deal of thought into these issues obviously, more than you have. Regardless of what you think, the results of their work are included in the cost analysis that is presented here.
Shane C.
Posted December 5, 2011 at 4:32 am | Permalink
Yes, Brian you are right. All that matters is the cost analysis.
Wehrner Kohn
When I compare the price of producing energy by centralised generation versus what I pay at the demand point when i look at my utility bill, there is a huge gap. When I install a roof top solar, I compete with the price at demand point from the utility company, which is in our case the municipality. Every time the energy production cost increases, the utility price increase is a multiplier of the production cost and the gap widens. If the cost of solar key components keep on heading down, the crossover cannot be far for roof top solar in high radiation countries especially if they need to replenish ailing capacity and transmission lines. If we dont look at base load and purely look at reducing our peak load, Solar PV and Solar Thermal IS ALREADY a cost efficient contributor in reducing our dependence on fossil fuel and reducing the green house gasses for a number of places in the world.
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NAYAN MEHTA, CMD
Posted August 29, 2011 at 5:49 am | Permalink
EXCELENT ACADEMIC WORK. KEEP IT UP. NAYAN MEHTA. CMD. RAVI SOLAR ENERGY LIMITED, GUJARAT, INDIA
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Brian
If nuclear generated power is so terrific, especially breeder technology and the French reliance on a nuclear economy, why then is Germany about to turn the other way and dismantle its reactors, to be replaced with a number of safe, sustainable alternatives? What will Japanese power production look like in another fifty years? And what about the elephant in the room, the fact that there is no realistic solution to the long term, ie. couple of thousand years, disposal of the radioactive waste stream. Where can people run when either an enemy or terrorist attacks a facility? Had Bin Laden attacked the spent fuel pool of a nuclear facility outside of New York, Chicago, or LA etc., the consequences would have been profound. Until the industry can solve the waste disposal requirement, zero building permits should be issued, and in the absence of a solution, the generation of waste deemed unethical, illegal, and demanding complete shutdown.
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Brian Mays
Had Bin Laden attacked the spent fuel pool of a nuclear facility outside of New York, Chicago, or LA etc., the consequences would have been profound.
Had bin Laden decided to attack a well-protected nuclear facility instead of completely unprotected office buildings, then perhaps nearly 3000 people who lost their lives on that day might still be alive.
There is a reason why his terrorists decided to skip the nuclear plants and attack the targets that they did, but hey if you are shameless enough to exploit a tragic loss of life in an attempt to make a point through aimless speculation
Well, thats pretty common for people like you, isnt it? I, for one, am fairly disgusted.
Brian
Tell that to Gov. Cuomothe Indian Pt. waste storage vulnerability, as well as the many other facilities across the country, has been revealed in the press recently, in light of the disaster at Fukushima. The lack of protection to the public from an attack on a waste storage pool, by an enemy at war, or by terrorists, should make you fairly disgusted. Why do you insist on writing such personal attacks on me when I ask simple questions? Not all of us are as well versed on this subject as yourself, oh magnificent one!
Brian Mays
Brian So thats your technical expert? A politician?!
OK now you have become nothing but a joke.
Why do you insist on writing such personal attacks on me when I ask simple questions?
Personal attacks? That accusation is highly amusing coming from someone who has compared everyone he disagrees with to Dr. Strangeglove [sic].
If I call you an idiot , its because you cant even get the simple things correct. Spelling would be nice, as would getting my name correct when you reply to me, idiot.
Brian
Your audience can see through your verbal attacks and digressions, to the insecure, anal person that you are. Nuclear power production, with all of its problems, is far more complicated than electricity generation needs to be. There are safer, simpler ways to achieve the power of our industries and communities without leaving a legacy to our inheritors of toxic poison and financial burden.You chose not to explain the decision of the very technologically capable Germans to dismantle their nuclear program. You failed to defend the Price-Anderson Act. You avoided discussing the future of the Japanese nuclear expirience. You didnt want to even begin to try to defend the present vulnerability of the spent fuel storage across this country to earthquakes, terrorist attacks, or an enemy at war. You avoided answering why the nuclear industry gets a pass on provisioning for long term remediation. You dodged discussing the reason that the nuclear industry requires that the taxpayers subsidize the cost overuns of the contruction of any new reactors, and are left holding the bag should any liability exposure exceed the limits afforded in the Price-Anderson Act. I am not an engineer, but a just another concerned citizen. I am not a joke, nor an idiot. By the nature and tone of your responces to my questions, your readers will decide for themslves the merit of your argument, and the measure of your character.
Brian Mays
Your audience can see through your verbal attacks and digressions, to the insecure, anal person that you are.
Brian You have managed to be insulted and insulting in the same sentence. Impressive! Perhaps I underestimated the silliness that you are capable of.
Now, put away the crocodile tears. Nobody is buying it.
I am not an engineer,
Thats for sure. Trust me, you dont have to tell me that.
but a just another concerned citizen.
And a rather ill-informed one at that.
You are an anonymous, abrasive fool, who wandered in from the Internet full of attitude, abusive rhetoric, and worn-out, debunked talking points that you probably gleaned off of a Greenpeace website. Not only was the misinformation that you
dragged here of poor quality, but you failed even to get your nuclear myths correct. I have little respect for someone when I have to correct his own lies. I have even less respect for someone who is too lazy or incompetent to get even my name correct when he is responding to me.
Meanwhile, I have provided useful information in our exchange. You have provided none. Instead, like most pathetic, anti-nuke weenies that I have encountered over the years, you have decided to sit and sulk with your fingers in your ears making hollow accusations that I did not answer your questions or address your points, when it should be obvious that to anyone who reads these comments that I most certainly did.
Apparently, you think that I should be nice to you because you are a fool. Your only recourse is to make this about my character, which is a clear indication the paucity of your arguments. Well, sorry to disappoint you; Im not here to be your friend.
Brian
You still havent answered my questions. Why?
Brian Mays
You still havent answered my questions.
Brian The hell I didnt.
Just because you didnt like the answers doesnt mean that you should keep pestering us. Now, please go away you annoying fool.
Bobby
Jason thank you for doing this interesting and thought-provoking work. I am a young Britisher researching the relative costs of nuclear, solar, wind and fossil fuels for a fledgling environmental activism group. The informed and (largely) polite discussion on this page is admirable and a welcome change from most online debates; the argument you present seems well-researched and is definitely persuasive.
However, before completely buying into what youre saying, I was wondering how you account for the difference in cost projections between your sources at the Nuclear Energy Institute and the sources used by multiple other bodies? Whilst common sense and most studies supports your thesis that nuclear power makes more sense than hydro and solar, the claim that nuclear actually has a lower Levelised Electricity Cost jars with all the other reports I have encountered.
I freely admit I am no expert, and if I have made an error in understanding I am profoundly sorry, but I cant help but notice that the 2004 University of Chicago
report, the 2004 Canadian Research Institute report, the 2006 British Department of Trade and Industry report, the 2008 European Commission report, the 2008 British House of Lords report, the 2009 MIT study and the EIAs 2010 report all claim the Levelised Electricity Cost of Nuclear is more than that of coal or gas.
(The 2004 British Royal Academy of Engineering report does, however, come much closer to your result, though gas is displayed as a marginally cheaper option).
Ill admit now that I have little scientific training, and first encountered this studies on Wikipedia (oh, the shame!) It may be that there is a clear and understandable reason why your study is right and they are wrong; whatever your reply, I remain convinced that the externality effects of fossil fuel consumption and the continued impracticality of renewables makes nuclear the obvious answer. It is just that I have never seen an argument for nuclear making such direction economic sense before and, whilst I am eager to use it to further nuclear power in the UK, I am determined to make sure that it is reliable.
Congratulations again on a interesting and mature article; I look forward to reading your explanation!
Bobby
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Brian Mays
Bobby Ill let Jasons speak for his own calculations. I havent studied them enough in detail to comment.
However, I would like to point out that the numbers from the Nuclear Energy Institute are for production costs. That is, they include the price of the fuel and the cost of operation and maintenance, but they do not include the price of the plant itself. Thus, nuclear plants make for great baseload power they are run flat out because their marginal costs are so low. The same is true for hydroelectric plants. Nobody disputes this.
If you were comparing the NEI numbers to levelized costs estimated by other organizations, then you are sure to see a discrepancy. The latter estimates include the price of the plant, which makes the cost of nuclear and renewables a bit higher.
Jason Morgan
Hi Bobby, I remember researching for this article and becoming extremely frustrated with the inconsistencies in research reports on this topic. The more I read the more confusing it became. What I found is that many of these reports are not apples to apples comparisons between one another. While one would include levelized generation costs, another would include that plus transmission costs (which I do not include in this article because I considered the distribution infrastructure to be a different topic based on our grid design here in the US). Some would include escalation costs to account for a construction project running over budget, being delayed, and the resulting increase in financing costs. I became so frustrated I decided to apply my own logic and method of calculation because the academic types were making it too confusing and varying their analyses in a way that made comparing their results very difficult.
The approach I took was to look at actual plant projects that had already been built or were in the works. These details can all be found in the Excel file attached to the
post that can be downloaded by clicking on the icon at the bottom. In my construction costs component I used fully-loaded costs that would include financing and overruns for conservatism.
Brians explanation for Natural Gas plants is excellent. I was reading through your comment and was prepared to respond to that question until I saw Brians answer, which is the same thought process I was going to reply with but with much more expertise than mine would have included. Essentially there is just too much volatility in gas prices to compare that type of plants production costs across a time period of several years. Since Gas plants production costs are such a high proportion of their total cost it makes pinning down a cost figure for that energy generation source impossible it is and always will be a moving target.
In the end the main factors for why nuclear came out where it did in my analysis are (1) high capacity factor, (2) long useful life, and (3) low production costs that vary little due to the relatively minute amount of fuel needed. My calculations also are based on kWh, which you will be hard pressed to find another study that uses this measure. They all seem to like to use MW, but this is dubious because it only accounts for the potential energy production at any given time not the actual amount of usable energy produced over time. You will never see your electric bill presented in KW or MW because they are a meaningless measurement to a consumer. So I attempted to break that barrier and produce a result that a consumer can compare with their energy bill. As your energy bill includes transmission infrastructure and taxes the bill will always be higher than the generation costs which I address here. But I have been able to reasonably back into my energy bill from two very different states in the US by using these figures. This gave me confidence that I was, at the very least, on the right track and directionally correct.
The US has an addiction to coal energy because we have more coal than we know what to do with. Burning coal is cheap and does not create the same regulatory or activist headaches that nuclear seems to, thus its broader deployment. If you are a business owner and your goal is to produce cheap energy with as little hoopjumping as possible, you will build a coal or natural gas plant. But its politics that drives that decision, not financial analysis as many people who are against nuclear seem to think. The reality is that it is just easier to build anything other than a nuclear plant because of politics and activists. But the amount of coal used is incredible, and if coal plants were ever forced to pay for cleaning up their mess like nuclear plants you can be sure coal would no longer be inexpensive. Also, coal
mining is a massive undertaking and very damaging to the environment. This is often ignored by proponents of coal.
I suppose my response is now dangerously close to being a whole post in itself so I will wrap it up with this: good luck in your research and thanks for being a great participant in this discussion.
Bobby
Brian thanks for pointing that out, that helps clear quite a lot up.
However, for the purposes of the graph, arent production costs included as the green segment of the bars? In which case, the graph seems to be the levelised cost even if (as you rightly point out) the NEI just supplied the production cost figures
In which case, I dont suppose you could account for the discrepancy in construction cost figures? Where was the construction cost data sourced? (this may be easier for Jason to answer than Brian)
Hoping I havent totally missed Brians point,
Bobby
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Brian Mays
Bobby Youre right that the graph above appears to be levelized costs; however, the green part of the bar is the construction costs (i.e., the cost of building the facility), not the production costs. The green bar is the part that the NEI figures leave out, because the NEI table focuses only on production costs.
I havent looked over Jasons calculations in sufficient detail to feel comfortable speculating on why he obtains the results that he does. So Ill leave it to him to explain what he has done.
I do know, however, that studies typically have found that the levelized costs for coal are slightly less than for nuclear, unless some sort of expensive pollutioncontrol equipment or a government-imposed cost for emitting carbon-dioxide is included in the calculations.
Natural gas is also typically less expensive than nuclear, but this is highly sensitive to the assumptions used for the price of natural gas. Historically, there are two things to note about the price of natural gas in the US over the past 15 years: (1) it has been highly volatile (i.e., huge fluctuations up and down), and (2) it has been steadily increasing until the recent economic downturn.
The recent low natural gas prices certainly have resulted from less demand for gas due to less demand for electricity because of the recent recession. (In a deregulated market, plants that burn natural gas and oil are at the high-end of the dispatch curve i.e., they are the first to be shut off when the demand for electricity drops.) Many people, particularly the natural gas companies, have claimed that this reduction in price has resulted from recent breakthroughs in extracting new gas sources in the form of shale gas.
Im not sure that Im convinced that this is a lasting trend, however. I think that its reasonable to speculate that the natural gas companies are taking advantage of the reduced demand to drive the price of natural gas artificially low, through additional, almost-careless drilling, so as to influence the decisions that will be made by utilities and the government decide what type of new power plants to build. Certainly, a low price of natural gas in the late-nineties led to a huge build-out of new natural gas plants. There were no nuclear plants and almost no new coal plants built in this time-period, and while power plants last for decades, the existing coal and nuclear plants are getting old and will be shut down before too long. Having gotten the US hooked on natural gas, these companies can just sit back and wait for the price of the fuel to return to its natural level and enjoy the immense profits that will result.
Hydroelectric is almost always considered less expensive than nuclear (as it appears in this article), but the vast majority of hydroelectricity in the US comes from facilities that were built generations ago. Its potential for growth is very limited.
All of the rest are almost always considered more expensive than nuclear. Recently, there has been some hype on the Internet about the cost of solar power (particularly photovoltaic panels on ones roof) approaching the cost of nuclear power, but dont be fooled! Always these estimates include various tax breaks and other subsidies (often at both the federal and state level) to artificially reduce the cost of the equipment, which as the graph above shows is the main cost of the electricity. Thus, while the subsidized solar user who decided to put panels on his roof might enjoy somewhat cheap electricity, it comes at a cost to the tax-payer, which is not reflected in these calculations, making them highly disingenuous.
OK. This was far longer than I had anticipated when I sat down to write it. I hope that it gives you something to think about.
Jason Morgan
In my verbose response to your other comment I forgot to mention that the Excel file includes many links to the reference sources I used for all of the data including the construction costs component.
I did have to make some assumptions in the renewables area because data simply escaped me in my research. In those instances I am fairly certain that I disclosed I was making an assumption and often used a High-Medium-Low approach to create a spectrum of results for sensitivity analysis purposes.
Bobby
Jason/Brian thank you both, youve been really helpful!
I just have the one more question. Jason, having downloaded your excellent Excel document and taking a quick glance at your figures, I was wondering about the reliability of the samples you drew your data from. Three nuclear and three coal power stations must be a mere fraction of the total operating; whilst it would be unfeasible to use data from every operating station, I was wondering what process you employed to ensure that these stations were representative?
Understand this is in no way a slur on your academic study or on your honesty its just I struggle to understand how else the discrepancy between your conclusions and those of so many others could have resulted. Did you find these stations suitably represented the rest in terms of construction and production costs; were they the best predictors of the costs of new builds; or was data for most of the other stations hard to come by? I was also wondering if you could point me in the way of the sources of the NEIs production cost figures
Once again, many many thanks for your articles and patience in answering me. Your arguments on the low cost of gas have shocked me into wanting to explore that area further, whilst this article has firmly convinced me of the unwisdom of pursuing renewable fuel answers at the expense of nuclear.
Thanks again,
Bobby
Brian Mays
Bobby The NEI website indicates that they get their data from a company called Ventyx, who collects data on the energy sector and sells it to analysts.
Keep in mind that the assumptions used for calculations such as this go a long way into determining the final result. For example, the numbers used for capacity factor will determine how much power the plant generates over its lifetime. For a capitalintensive technology, such as nuclear, this makes a big difference in the final value for the levelized cost of electricity.
Jason used a capacity factor above 90% for nuclear, which reflects the performance of the US nuclear fleet over the past decade or so. Other studies choose to use a historical capacity factor for nuclear, taking the average capacity factor of nuclear plants in the US over their entire life. This tends to bring the capacity factor down to the low- to mid-eighties, since nuclear plants tended to perform poorly back in the 1970s and 1980s.
When the first second generation nuclear plants (the ones operating today) were built, the technology was still very new, so unforeseen technical problems tended to keep the plants shut down longer than they are today. In addition, utilities back then thought that nuclear plants would be operated like coal plants. A coal plant typically would run for a while and then shut down to give the boiler a rest and to do some maintenance and cleanup. Burning coal is a nasty process, which creates lots of solid waste in the form of ash, which must be taken care of. Thus, most coal plants run with a capacity factor of around 70% or 80%, and its almost unheard of for a coal plant to run with a capacity factor of over 90%.
Eventually, however, the owners of these nuclear plants who were smart realized that they were wasting valuable capital by keeping the reactors shut down any longer than necessary. (For example, it costs the owner of a typical US nuclear plant about $1 million each day that a reactor is off-line to pay for the power to replace the output of the plant.) Thus, a new attitude developed in the industry and a substantial amount of money and effort was spent to reduce the time off-line to as little as possible. These days, through extensive training and proactive maintenance strategies, the time required to perform refueling and maintenance and the time spent in unplanned outages have been reduced substantially. The capacity factor statistic reflects this.
Its simply unrealistic to assume that new nuclear reactors would repeat the history of the last generation of plants, because the industry now has a better understanding of the technology and better methods for operating and maintaining it.
Nevertheless, many studies dont take this into account. For example, if I recall correctly, the MIT study assumed an 85% capacity factor for all thermal technologies: nuclear, coal, and natural gas. That 85% is a little low for nuclear reactors and is a little high for coal. It is very optimistic for a natural gas plant when the cost of natural gas is high; although, for a base-load combined-cycle gas-turbine plant this might be reasonable. Most importantly, however, this means that the MIT study has failed to account for any advantages provided by having a more reliable technology. By using the same figure for everyone, reliability has been left out of the equation.
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Bobby
Brian many thanks. Ill follow up my queries at Ventyx, though cross-referencing with the 2010 EIA report suggests that their data is considered accurate across the board.
In this case (and in light of your explanation on capacity factors) it would seem that the difference largely comes down to capacity factors: the reports I have printed out in front of me at the moment all seem to put Coal capacity factors at c. 85% and Nuclear at c. 90%, which (from what youre asserting) is a bit optimistic for coal and a bit pessimistic for nuclear, giving the problems youve explained.
Basically, what Im saying is that youve successfully satisfied me about these figures. Im going to try and ask around to get a wider opinion on capacity factors before committing my group to the nuclear cause, but for the moment at least, you have a convert.
Thank you for this brilliant piece of research, your knowledgeable answers and your patience with my queries. I hope you have every success in pushing nuclear over in the States I reckon you have a much tougher battle than we do in Britain, where we at least have about half the population on board at the moment.
Yours,
Bobby
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Jason Morgan
Hi Bobby, To answer your question regarding the data sample I used what I could find, which wasnt very much. Since no new nuclear plants have been built in many years here in the US, and no Gen III plants ever, it was difficult to come by reliable sources. So I took what was available. I tried my best to come up with the best data I could and grind the numbers in the most logical way I knew how. My frustrations are similar to yours, but I made a decision to move forward with what I had and this was the result.
Brians point regarding capacity factors is extremely important as those numbers impact the outcome of this analysis in a very big way.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh
Posted October 18, 2011 at 10:30 am | Permalink
Excellent post. Very interesting analysis on generation of power by various sources.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
Wind Energy Expert E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com
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mikeb
jason, just like the generation of nuclear proponents before you, my late father included whom toured the world assisting in design and construction of many plants, you have vastly underestimated the cost of handling waste for ____ years. when discussing this with him in the early 70s he always used the argument that this would be a moot point by the end of the century. (now I would ask him which century?) You need to start working on getting the cost down on the renewables and get off the dinosaur. You and I may not livelong enough to pay the price but its time that we take a longer look past the next quarterly reporting. We the taxpayer can no longer support the subsidy for this illogical industry Energy production is your industry so its up to you to fix it.
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Jason Morgan
Hi Mike, I disagree with you. The cost estimates for handling long term storage of nuclear waste have been developed and re-developed many times over decades. I think weve hammered that topic enough and the figures obtained and used to fund the Nuclear Waste Fund are pretty clear at this point. Could they be underestimated? Maybe, but not vastly as you claim. Long term geological repositories are large upfront capital costs with minimal operating costs going forward.
Additionally, you are ignoring the fact that recycling spent nuclear fuel is a technologically available option which the US chooses to turn its back on. That process does indeed cost money, but it also has a revenue stream associated with selling the reprocessed fuel and it can dramatically lower the volume of waste slated for long term geological storage.
This is not my industry. I work in a completely different field and merely lend my analytical mind to this site because I am interested in the topic. I am pronuclear because of research and logic. You can argue my research is bad and my logic flawed, but I can make the same arguments equally convincing regarding renewables proponents.
Last point: the nuclear industry is far from subsidized. I have gone back and forth with many people on this issue and it comes down to whether or not you believe that guaranteeing loans for fiscally prosperous projects actually constitutes a subsidy. Not one nuclear loan guarantee has ever needed to be repaid by the government. In effect, the government has actually profited from extending the guarantees because they collected fees and never had to pay back any of the loans. Please feel free to refer to my article on loan guarantees on this site under the Economy page it will give you a better understanding of that which you are labeling a subsidy with little to base your claim.
Marie
I would very much like to see some information about petroleum power plants! I understand the means of production, efficiency, and cost can be closely compared to natural gas, coal, and other fossil fuels. BUT, although very little electricity is produced by oil, it is an important topic! Im doing research for a project and I cant find much about the cost of a petroleum power plant. Anyone?
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Jason Morgan
Hi Marie, I had similar troubles when writing this article. Good luck to you! If you happen to find something can you swing back and drop a comment about it? Id love to see what you came up with.
B.T.
hey i am wondering what would the cost be to remove or decommission or even fix a hydroelectric dam for there are many that are in a dangerous state and need to be ether fix and upgraded or just removed
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Scott Brooks
Im blown away by Brian Mays and Jack Gamble expert responses. To them and Jason Morgan I would like to submit this question.
Have you ever heard of the Integral Fast Reactor or Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor? http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html
It was supposedly in a working prototype stage when the Clinton administration shut it down. It could have solved the so called waste problem and the alleged fuel limitations as well since it was a breeder. And despite all the hype about its cooling medium it was super safe.
Cheers
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Brian Mays
Scott Yes, I have. The IFR program was highly innovative, and it was a shame that it was shut down in 1994, largely as the result of an effort that was lead by Senator John Kerry. The technologies that it used had already been demonstrated at lab scale, and the next step would have been a demonstration plant. Some of the people who worked on the project are still sore about what happened.
Nevertheless, the reactor concept lives on in General Electrics PRISM reactor. GE had done a large amount of the early R&D on the metallic fuel that the IFR uses, and they continued to do R&D on the IFR concept (in the form of their PRISM design) after the program was shut down in 1994 although with substantially reduced budgets, of course.
GE included its PRISM reactor as part of a proposal submitted by a consortium of companies to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) program, which was initiated by the Bush administration in 2006. Unfortunately, within a couple years, Congress decided to reduce funding for this project to the point that it could not accomplish much of anything. It was finally killed by the Obama administration in 2009, and the initiative remains only in the form of the Department of Energys Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, which is focused exclusively on R&D.
Scott Brooks
Brian Mays
Yah, its a crying shame the anti-nukes slammed that one. I hope it could be resurrected one day but with the massive debt that increasingly hangs over the economy I fear the US may be headed toward a 2nd world status, possibly third if the Obomer administration can continue it ludicrous green/renewable mandates.
I think if Bush would have done the Reagan thing and let the natural bankruptcy events run it course, American industry would have come out stronger. The bailouts should have just gone to every needy American to float them through the crisis during that period. But politicians are good at scare-mongering these days.
Oh well, perhaps the compact reactors or maybe something like the Traveling Wave reactor will be fruitful.
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Scott Brooks
Can any one on this site or readers provide a link to an unbiased assessment of the pros and cons of a home solar energy PV system in depth? the sites I have uncovered in my search engine are like car dealer promoting their products. ie:
Our Kidhardly Rolls gets great gas mileage. Unsaid: It rolls down one hill but can hardly roll up the next, hence the name.
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Vinod Kumar B.
A quite intriguing discussion, despite the jousting! But for the nuclear waste conundrum and the creation of nuclear tombs basically forever, nuclear power might have been the ultimate solution for our need for electricity. If the cold logic of profit is kept aside and the actual well-being of humanity is the main consideration, wouldnt micro-generated solar power be the choice, especially in the tropics?
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baobrien
With solars low capacity factor, I dont think micro-generation would be able to handle a fraction of our worlds energy needs. In addition to that, the majority of the waste can be re-used in newer types of reactors.
Vinod Kumar B.
Thanks for your response, baobrien! But have such reactors been commissioned yet?
David
No they have not yet been commissioned. This is more a factor of the NRC requiring that any new reactor come to them with a buyer already. Thus the catch 22. A buyer will not purchase a reactor until the NRC approves it and the NRC will not approve until a buyer purchases one. NScale, MPower, Hyperion (Now called Gen 4), Flibe (LFTR), the Toshbia 4S are all waiting in line. These are not even the IFR which is covered in an earlier post.
So, the reason these have not been commissioned has nothing to do with technology but a lot to do with politics and regulation.
Jake Beauchesne
Posted December 1, 2011 at 2:22 pm | Permalink
I thought it was very good. But then again I am 13 and I understood less than half of what was written. What little I did comprehend was really helpful for my 8th grade science project. Thanks Jason!
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Scott Brooks
Im getting more light on this Solar too cheap to meter fiasco.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/30/technology/solar_power/?source=cnn_bin
Solar Power Bankruptcies Loom as Prices Collapse
As the subsidies are drying up and theres such a glut in the market companies are lowering their prices just to get rid of the overstock. The current job recession has put a big dent in sales and demands. Then there was over speculation on the hype like during the dot-com period when everybody and there basement hacker where dreaming up way to market something on the booming internet.
And heres one honest assessment:
Mr_Miyagi, 12/01/2011 01:12 PM
{I just installed a small PV system with 8 (US-made) 225 W panels. The installer charged a little more than $8 a watt for the system. I will save $60-70 per month on my electric bill. Federal and state tax credits are paying 2/3rds of the cost of my system. After tax, I end up paying net only about $3 per watt, which, you will note,
is still much higher than the prices cited in the article. Clearly, taxpayers are subsidizing installers as well as panel manufacturers. I therefore thank all of you readers and fellow taxpayers for paying most of the cost of my new system.
For those of you thinking about installing a photovoltaic system, consider this: a typical panel for which you may be charged well over $600 (after tax) generates barely enough electricity to power 2 incandescent light bulbs, and does so for only about 4 hours a day. The efficiency of these system is pitifully low. The basic technology needs to improve a lot. Until then, you may be able to achieve the same savings without paying the up-front investment costs by shutting off lights that arent being used. Or maybe not spending so much time in front of a computer surfing the Web!}
So solar, like wind, is like energy medicare. Its presented as free energy negating the infrastructure cost and real world performance. As the closet engineer said, It worked so well on the slide rule and board, and then they had to build it exactly as I designed it Idiots!
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pulkit
Hi, can anyone help me with a financial modelling excel sheet for a nuclear power plant. (where the sheet is unprotected). I desperately need it for some project work!! Thanks!
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Student Mr. B
I appreciate your time and input, and the information that helps normal people understand these costs. Can I ask you to help me understand a little more, breaking it down to hourly and daily production/cost? For example: without considering infrastructure and maintenance cost, what would a generating system that produces 325 kwh per hour cost? Or 7,800 kwh per day? Or 2,847,000 annually? All based on a generation unit that produces 325 kwh per hour that costs $3,000,000. Thank you!
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Paul
The total lifetime of solar plants in your excel is bogus. The 20 years time is the manufacturers guarantee time and thats why its advertised by clueless media guys. The proper way to calculate solar panel lifetime production is to calculate (from 0 to n) (average yearly production of a new panel)0.993^t dt where n is years of usage 1. Im not going to calculate this for your 2008 data as solar panel prices per watt peak dropped 3x since that time. The reasonable lifetime is atleast 60 years. Solar panels degrade about 0.2-0.8% annualy.
solarbuzz dot com /facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices look at minimal prices now. They are wholesale, obviously
In november a German company announced a 17.4% thin-film panels which would put production costs at about 40eurocents/Wp since the price is per m^2 of material. They claim industrial production methods.
solarbuzz dot com /industry-news/solibro-raises-thin-film-efficiency-174
You should really re-do your solar calculations in 2011 prices. Or atleast new solar farms with Wp prices from year ago. Inverter prices/W continuous are about half what they were in 2008, panels Wp about 1/3 I expect lower cost than natural gas and wind now.
About production costs. I dont have any online source of this information but its really close to zero. I visited a small 2MW solar farm and its completely autonomous. No one is on the site, there are no buildings except a small metal cabin with inverters and a computer. Nobody even goes to the site (unless to show it to people), they connected a few cameras to internet and thats how they occasionaly check if everything is still there The old common panels (a few years ago) had to be cleaned quite often but the new ones are coated in almost 100% transparent hydrophobic coating. They dont need cleaning, occasional rain and wind is enough. This may depend on the climate though
I think my comment is classified as spam with normal links because it doesnt appear and theres no message about pending moderation or something like that
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Brian Mays
Paul With solar power companies in the US and Germany going bankrupt just about every month (BP Solar is the latest casualty), do you really expect the price of solar panels to remain this low indefinitely?
At this point, solar panels are just like any other commodity. There is currently a glut on the market, caused by artificial market conditions resulting from government subsidies by countries like Spain. When Spain pulled the plug on its subsidies a couple of years ago (because it realized that it could not afford them), the bottom fell out of the solar market.
Now, the Chinese manufacturers have realized a golden opportunity. They are dumping their excess inventory of solar panels, probably below cost, but its impossible to know given the lack of transparency of business in China. So far, the strategy appears to be working. The Western companies are dropping like flies. The shrewd Chinese are using this situation to drive their competition out of business.
What do you think will happen to prices once the glut is expended and the Chinese firms remain as the only producers of solar panels left in the international market?
Scott Brooks
Solar panel prices for panels have gone down because there is a glut due to the economic recession/downturn here and in Europe. The lack of manpower shows how little jobs green actually creates while gobbling up taxpayer money.
The panels may last longer but the supporting equipment does not. And it still doesnt supply power but for 6~8 max which varies with the angle of the such during the day and seasonally, on cloudless days. Without the subsidy and RPS it couldnt stand on its own. Its good for augmenting hydropower but not fossil power when you figure in equipment and running costs.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/03/the-dark-future-of-solar-electricity/
Nuclear still remains the best option. Solar PV on any level is good only for remote and small electronic power.
Scott Brooks
with the angle of the such during the day
Woops, change such to sun and it will make more sense.
Addendum:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/solar/will-the-real-pv-price-pleasestand-up
Will the Real PV Price Please Stand Up?
http://www.masterresource.org/2010/10/free-market-solar-opportunity/#more12491
Free-Market Solar: The Real Opportunity
http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/30/technology/solar_power/?source=cnn_bin
Solar Power Bankruptcies Loom as Prices Collapse
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Scott Brooks
Heres two good posts on a major force behind the renewable debacle:
http://www.globalwarming.org/author/marita-noon/
Has China Had a Change of Heart or Just a Change of Strategy?
and
Saving the Climate Change Circus
You will discover it more about leveling the international economic field then sustainability. Take away the subsidies and poof, its gone. And on the other hand the eco wackos that support this nonsense I label as green necks!
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Irv
Most of you folks are completely so far out in left field it is not funny! I have not seen the only true cheap renewable energy program promoted. Is that because this source will blow all the others out of the water with cheap start up cost, opreating cost and end user cost being cheap. What is going on with all the environmentaist. I know. If you look at the the word environmental, the last six letters tell it all. Get on the true green energy source and keep pushing it until it is supplying al the elecrical needs of the US. No folks it is not coal, gas, biomas, nuclear, solar, wind, tidal etc. Do the research and you will find ther is only one true, real green energy source.
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Scott Brooks
Irv:
Thanks for your absolutely intellectually, ambiguous enlightenment. I will go straight into the internet void and seek it out. Such genius!
keith
Jack Gamble, can you address the above comments made BEFORE Fukushima, which according to wiki is a light water reactor: A Chernobyl type accident is 100% impossible in a US light water reactor for a number of reasons, namely negative void coefficient, no graphite, and a reinforced containment structure that Chernobyl didnt have.
Still agree with this? l
Also: As for the insurance bill, each nuclear power plant in the US is on the hook for $100,000,000 in the event of an accident x 104 operating plants. That is considerably more insurance than, say a oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico or a gas pipeline running under your house.
Do you think 100 mill is a appropriate coverage for disasters like Fukushima?
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baobrien
The event at Fukishima is not nearly as bad as what happened at Chernobyl, nor is it even remotely technically similar.
baobrien
In the Chernobyl reactor, the entire fissioning core exploded because of a massive steam buildup. In the Fukishima, the containment structure on one of the reactors cracked and a small amount of radioactive coolant got out, and in a few others, the fuel melted due to decay heat, but stayed in the reactors.
Paul Mills
To: Brian May,
I have enjoyed reading all of the posts, and appreciated the original report and analysis.
I currently teach Physics and Mathematics, my father-in-law was a Nuclear Physicist at Los Alamos, and was considered one of the worlds experts on nuclear power. I believe that Nuclear power has the best safety record, and the best environmental record of any power source available for the base supply of electricity. The mass hysteria caused by those opposed to the nuclear industry makes as much sense as believing that mormons have horns (yes, some people still believe that).
My step-son is majoring in Nuclear Engineering at Texas A&M, and doing well. If possible Brian, I would like to know if you teach, and which subjectsyou have some very well thought out and detailed responses posted here. Keep up the good work.
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Brian Mays
Paul Thank you for the kind words. Positive feedback (and also constructive criticism, of course) is always appreciated.
To answer your inquiry, no I dont teach full-time. Most of my teaching experience comes from when I was a graduate student; it was what I did to pay the rent during
the years when I wasnt on fellowship. Back then, I taught a wide variety of subjects in Physics and Engineering at the undergraduate level.
Since then, I occasionally moonlight as an adjunct professor for one of the liberal arts colleges in my home town, teaching a course or two in Physics. My day job, however, is working as a nuclear engineer, where I try to work on the most interesting projects that I can find. Through the generous support of my employer, I have also been fortunate enough to mentor several high-school students from the local magnet school for science and technology.
Texas A&M has a large Nuclear Engineering program that has been quite successful. I wish your step-son good luck in achieving his personal goals, whatever they might be. If he is doing well at Texas A&M, then I think that he is off to a good start.
Jaak Saame
Jason,
I looked at the anaysis you provided. I found the analysis in the excel spreadsheet to be faulty when it comes to natural gas fired power plants. The following are my problems with the analysis:
1. It only looks at only one small (47 MW) natural gas peaking power plant and compares it to two large nuclear power plants (2300 MW). The analysis should have used a large 500+ MW modern combined cycle natural gas fired power plant. Here are a couple of examples:
http://www.powermag.com/gas/GE-Develops-FlexEfficiency-50-fo
http://www.energy.siemens.com.cn/CN/downloadCenter/Documents
2. It uses a very low capacity factor of 11.4% for the natural gas peaking power plant while using a very high capacity factor of 91.8% for nuclear power plant. Nuclear plants rarely reach 91.8% capacity factor a more realistic number would be 90%. Combined cycle natural power plants can be run at the same 90% capacity factor.
3. It uses natural gas prices based on 2008 data. New data for 2010 and 2011 would show the prices at least 50% lower. There is a glut of natural gas in the US.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9SA5A503.htm
4. The estimated construction cost of a combined cycle natural gas fired power plant is not provided.
The GE Energy 510-MW FlexEfficiency 50 is designed to fit in a space as small as 10 acres and can be constructed in 24 months. A nuclear power plant takes much more space and takes more than 5 years to construct.
In all the cost studies I have seen natural gas fired power plants are the winners in levelized cost. This appears to be what the utility companies are also finding to be true, as that is what they are building and planning to build along with wind power.
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David
@ Jaak,
Thank you for your analysis and pointing out that the current costs for a combined cycle plant are lower than for a current Nuclear power plant. However, your analysis does not consider the market effect of rising gas prices on the price of electricty. For the Utility which gets to pass on fuel costs rising costs do not affect their capital decisions, but for a consumer using natural gas for electric production will mean that the current glut will be quickly mopped up and prices WILL RISE.
Natural Gas = High Price Electricity in the Future Nuclear = Low Priced Electricity in the Future.
Jaak Saame
@ David
You do not provide any reference for your projections. The following refutes your projections:
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) released a draft of its Annual Energy Outlook, forecasting US energy trends out to 2035.
Coal drops by 6% (from 45% to 39%) Coal drops 17 gigawatts Natural gas rises by 3% (from 24% to 27%) Natural gas adds 103 gigawatts Renewables rise 6% (from 10% to 16%) Renewables add 43 gigawatts Nuclear drops 2% from (20% to 18%) Nuclear adds 11 gigawatts
The reduction in use of coal fired power generation is due to increasing costs and environmental laws. Natural gas is projected to remain low cost for 20 to 50 years or more. The increase in use of natural gas for power generation is due to low capital cost, environmental laws and high efficiency. Little in the way of new nuclear is predicted because of high capital costs which kills nuclear power it is not cost effective in US.
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/executive_summary.cfm http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/early_elecgen.cfm
Jaak Saame
baobrien writes on January 3, 2012:
In the Fukishima, the containment structure on one of the reactors cracked and a small amount of radioactive coolant got out, and in a few others, the fuel melted due to decay heat, but stayed in the reactors.
I wonder why a nuclear expert Brian Mays did not correct the above false statements made by baobrien.
The statements by baobrien are totally wrong. Reactor coolant was being released to the environment from all three of the reactors with fuel melting. Most of it drained into the sea. Where does he think the reactor water went when the fuel was uncovered to the environment of course (via steam release and water draining into the turbine buildings). Where does he think the reactor cooling water went when they were pumping tons of sea water into the reactors to the environment of course (via steam release and water draining into the turbine buildings).
It is amazing to me that baobrien thinks that the radionuclides got out of the reactors and spread over a large area of Fukushima by magic. The volatile radioactive materials were vented along with steam and the rest released by reactor coolant water draining into basements and tunnels through cracks and broken pipes.
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Rob Mackey
I dont have a problem with nuclear power on the whole, as long as the materials are handled safely. It is a baseload provider with no immediate environmental release, but it does leave a concentrated footprint of materials that must be dealt with later. Nuclear does provide power and lots of it.
I have bigger problems with your graphs on the costs of popular renewables wind and solar. These figures seem overly optimistic. The problem is that most of the
data on actual impacts and even production is held as proprietary. It is not available for peer review.
And wind and solar are not comparable as apples to apples unless youve accounted for the grid capacity factors. Actual plant capacity is generally acceptable for conventional fuel plants (including nuke),because those are much closer to grid capacity. The problem with wind and solar is that they produce unpredictably and sporadically. Their usefulness on the grid is very low compared to controlled sources.
The companies who benefit from subsidies to install these machines or arrays also rate capacity by grouping all the sporadic instances of power production in order to claim a certain plant produced so many kilowatt hours this month. The problem is that measurement fails to account for whether that power was produced during a period when it was needed, or was produced off-demand when it did little more than annoy the grid operator responsible for dumping it.
Power production must closely match demand or you burn things up and waste resources. Wind and solar both hide the fact that much of their energy production is off-demand and wasted yet they want to count those kwhs as being of the same value as on-demand production. Please dont aide them in this charade.
For a glimpse of this fact, you can view the German E-on Netz report from about 2005, where E-on operates large wind facilities in Germany. Their own report showed the wind machines had a capacity of about 20 percent or 25. (Again, that is counting all kwhs as useful.) But then they spill the beans by reporting their grid capacity was about 8 percent! At that rate the wind operations are nul and void for meaningful grid use. Solar is no different really.
To scale up these renewables you need something else. That something is storage capacity on mass scale, and that is not on a near or medium term horizon. By medium I mean 10 years and that is long enough that the current capacity being deployed in the field now will be terribly out of date.
So, if you are worried about dirty environmental problems in the here and now, you want coal to take a back seat to nuclear (both baseloads). Gas then becomes the clean peak dispatchable and mid-range fuel of choice.
Renewables currently being deployed do not work and scaling them up is not the answer to why they dont work. The storage capacity cart is before the horse here.
Also due to the unreliability of the renewables mentioned here, the entire generating profile for any given area must be kept spinning even when these renewables happen to come on line. So there is large inefficiency in creating an entire duplicate generating capacity that requires the old one to keep running or face a black out.
It is analagous to buying an expensive bike to ride to work, then riding it about 5 days a month but requiring a bus to shadow you every time because you get lots of flat tires. The bus wont burn quite as much fuel as if you were on it, but the amount saved is negligable.
A better answer might be to continue to use nuclear and gas while putting most of our development efforts into storage. Once mass scale storage is achieved it makes renewables a whole different story.
The only renewable you didnt mention here is the one that actually does work. It is geothermal and if you spent the money now wasted on wind machines into deploying geothermal in residential applications, we could save enough electricity to seriously chop peak demand. The biggest savings come during the summer when demand drives the annual peak, and when geothermal aggressively cuts that peak.
In addition, electric demand fell for the first time since WWII when the economy crashed in 2008. A continuation of offshoring jobs will reduce factory consumption of electric energy in the next 5 years and should be considered when proposing new generating facilities.
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Captbilly
I studied in the department of applied physics and nuclear engineering at Columbia University back in the 70s, so I have no knee jerk opposition to nuclear power, but you are leaving out some important considerations in your work. The proliferation aspect of nuclear reactors cannot be overstated. Virtually every nuclear reactor in the world today presents a nuclear weapons proliferation potential. Some reactors use fuels that could readily be diverted to a nuclear bomb while all present a dirty bomb potential diversion. With each new reactor, and the associated necessary movements and storage of nuclear materials, that proliferation potential increases. As an ex USAF B-52 pilot I am perhaps a bit more focused on nuclear proliferation than the nuclear industry is, but after that first serious terrorist attack using a nuclear weapon, or even just a dirty bomb, what do you suppose is going to happen to the costs of running nuclear reactors? And dont anyone pretend that the will exists in the nuclear industry to keep suck a diversion of material from occurring. Many studies have been done by respected nuclear scientists that show an appalling lack of real security (or sometimes even in record keeping ability) at nuclear facilities even in the most stable countries on earth. One can well imagine how dangerous the proliferation threat is/will be in much less stable countries.
My other issue is with the comparison of nuclear to solar. There seems to be a predisposition in the industry to think that the only important use for solar energy is in the conversion of solar to electricity. In you look over energy use patterns in the US it turns out that the majority of energy used in US homes and commercial structures is used for heat and cooling. Inexpensive solar thermal collectors can be used to convert solar energy to heat at a tiny fraction of the cost of producing electricity (using PV or solar thermal power plants). This energy can be easily stored (in the form of hot water, etc.) for perhaps 1% of the cost of the least expensive electricity storage device method on the drawing board today. The heat produced by these inexpensive solar collectors can then be used for heat, hot water, A/C and refrigeration (using simple, no moving parts, absorption chillers). In this way a typical home or commercial structure could provide about 60-80% of its total energy by simply putting solar thermal collectors on the roof. The environmental
impact is very near zero, since no toxic materials are used and no land, that isnt already covered by a structure, is built up.
I have run the calculation and have found that in large scale production such a system could produce energy (not electricity) at a cost of perhaps a couple of cents a KWH. And by the way, this cost of energy was calculated in nearly the least favorable part of the US (Northeast, cold climate low solar insolation levels). In more favorable areas (southwest, California, etc.) the cost is even less. It is even possible to use some of the heat, that would otherwise not be used during times of sun but little heat or A/C requirement, to produce electricity at efficiency similar to that of PV (cost per KWH would be much lower than PV since only a heat engine needs to be added, and the energy used would otherwise be dumped). I am not sure why we seem to be totally focused on electrical power production when electricity is actually a relatively small portion of the energy used in most countries (keeping in mind that many homes and commercial structures do presently use electricity to run heaters and A/C units, but this is a very inefficient use of electricity).
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jon
Your data for wind is far off. Im not sure where youre getting this information from but the DOE puts wind wholesale price at 3.3 to 5.3 cents per kWhr. If you add in the 2.2 cent PTC that they usually get then that puts it at around 5 to 6 cents per kWhr. Coal on the other hand youre leaving out the subsidies they get which puts the cost of coal at 15 to 17 cents per kWhr. Youre also leaving out the subsidies given to nuclear, including the massive insurance program funded by the government which I have no interests in even beginning to calculate. Your data on solar is probably right since its an absolute nightmare, but Im sure its hard to calculate those numbersnot that it matters because solar just isnt feasible in 99% of cases.
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Brian Mays
Your data for wind is far off. Im not sure where youre getting this information from but the DOE puts wind wholesale price at 3.3 to 5.3 cents per kWhr.
jon You should try reading an article before you criticize it. Its pretty clear that you are referring to the production costs only, without understanding what you are talking about. Several points:
(1) Jasons figure for winds production costs is 3 cents per kWh (see above), which pretty much agrees with the figures that you have given.
(2) Jasons source for this information is wind-energy-the-facts.org, which is a website that was implemented by a consortium led by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA). This is hardly a source that is biased against wind.
(3) DOE does not put the cost of wind generation so low. In fact, the DOEs Annual Energy Outlook 2011 projects that winds levelized electricity costs in 2020 (after the price has come down a bit) will be about 10 cents per kWh (in 2009 dollars). Thus, if anything, Jasons figures are a little optimistic compared to what the DOE thinks.
Coal on the other hand youre leaving out the subsidies they get which puts the cost of coal at 15 to 17 cents per kWhr.
The subsidies that coal has received is nothing compared to what renewables have received if evaluated per unit of energy or electricity that the technologies generate. One of the more interesting studies to analyze this was summarized in 2006 in a periodical of the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Engineering. It concludes the following about federal incentives:
Considerable disparity exists between the level of incentives received by different energy sources and their current contribution to the U.S. energy mix. Although oil has received roughly its proportionate share of energy subsidies, nuclear energy, natural gas, and coal may have been undersubsidized, and renewable energy, especially solar, may have received a disproportionately large share of federal energy incentives.
In other words, the subsidies that renewables receive and have received are higher (per kWh) than coal, so the cost estimate that you give for coal is highly dubious.
Youre also leaving out the subsidies given to nuclear, including the massive insurance program funded by the government which I have no interests in even beginning to calculate.
Of course you have no interest in even calculating it, because you have no idea of what youre talking about. Several points:
(1) Liability insurance for nuclear facilities is paid for entirely by the facility owners. The insurance is not paid for by the government.
(2) This insurance is underwritten completely by the private insurance industry through the American Nuclear Insurers association, which is a consortium of some of the largest insurance companies in the United States.
(3) The only role that the US government takes in this is to
(a) require the owners of nuclear facilities to purchase the maximum amount of insurance that is available on the market;
(b) dictate that this insurance is a no-fault insurance, which means that the owner of the facility cant argue in court that an accident wasnt its fault; and
(c) set a liability cap, only after a pooling arrangement had been set up so that every license owner is partially responsible for the liability of any nuclear facility in the event of a large accident, not just his own.
Even the limited liability offered by US legislation is not absolute, since Congress can still go after the plant owners if the damages are severe enough. This is written into the current law on nuclear liability.
This model, rather than being a subsidy is a significant cost for the nuclear industry, and one that the industry willingly bears because it is predictable. It has been so successful that it has become the international standard for setting up liability for nuclear facilities, and it has become the standard model for setting up liability for other industries that involve potential low-probability/high-consequence risks. For example, vaccine manufactures are regulated according to this same liability model, which was developed for the nuclear industry.
John K
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/nrc-approves-two-new-georgiaplants-is-nuclear-back1/
Well, now two new Nukes cost $14 billion. Wonder what they will have cost by the time theyre pushed through?
Your graphs should add 1) information about impact various fuel sources have on the environment (and the resulting levelized cost of electricity), 2) what actual costs look like in worst case scenarios e.g. Fukushima, Upper Big Branch, or the latest photon spill 3) how nuclear costs are traditionally substantially higher than the first, second and third best guess provided by industry schills.
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keith
Your right the two events are different: from the web Page Ten Thousand Things: Michio Kaku on Fukushimas status (excuse no link) quoting professor kaku: Realize that at Chernobyl, 25 years ago, we only had one reactor and only 25 percent of the core vaporized and was
sent into the air. Here we have three reactors with 100 percent core melt, various stages of melting through the containment structure and if it were to start again it could be much worse than Chernobyl, many times worse than Chernobyl.
However both were raised to a level 7, at least at one time.
The question remands: does anyone think 100 million is adequate for insurance?
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Brian Mays
No, the real question is, where did you come up with a figure of $100 million?
In the US, owners of nuclear power plants are required, by law, to purchase $375 million in private insurance for offsite liability coverage for each reactor that is licensed. In the event of an accident, over $11 billion of liability coverage is available through a pooling arrangement of owner-funded private insurance.
Perhaps your problem is that you rely on crackpots like Michio Kaku for your information. The guy might have published a few interesting papers on String Theory years ago, but he is bat-sh crazy when it comes to anything outside of his narrow field of specially. His comments on energy are particularly disturbing and misinformed. Anyone else would be totally embarrassed by the stupid and rather
elementary mistakes that he makes when trying to talk about this subject. I can only suppose that his ego is so large that he shamelessly doesnt care.
Scott Brooks
It quite ludicrous that someone would worry about weapons from domestic nuclear plants when just about every major country in the world now has access to nuclear. It takes a lot of expensive enrichment to convert nuclear fuel to bomb grade material and you dont have to go to the US to get it. If you go to 4th Gen reactors then it would be even harder to do anything with the fuel or spent fuel.
Worry about Russia, China and Iran, etc instead.
Jon doesnt seem to be able to read where Morgan got his info from:
Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook DOE/EIA
Where on DOE did Jon get his info from?
Perhaps he should expand on his reading library in addition to what Catbilly has posted:
http://blog.heartland.org/2011/09/renewable-energy-subsidies-are-a-waste-ofmoney/
Renewable Energy Subsidies Are a Waste of Money: Parts 1 and 2
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Scott Brooks
Woops, I meant reference to Rob Mackey post not Catbilly.
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Colin Megson
You couldnt wish for better headlines to promote the benefits of living in an Idiocracy: http://lftrsuk.blogspot.com/2011/09/wind-farms-paid-to-produce-no.html
It has been said that there is no silver bullet to solve the worlds energy problems, but there is: http://lftrsuk.blogspot.com/p/benefits-of-lftrs.html
As the article says: you can run by a LFTR and know its not going to be half the price of conventional nuclear so just how good will the cost of generating electricity from LFTRs look?
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Ken Christian
Jason, nice article. It is almost a year since you posted this research.
I have a couple of questions. Does solar in this article mean photo-voltaic (PV) only? Have you considered other solar energy power generation systems? Is there new data availible on production costs? Germany has installed an enormous amount of solar PV systems; I would expect there to be more PV data available now.
Since 2011 the cost of solar PV has dropped while commodities have become more expensive. Do you have an updated graph of the costs as of today.
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private citizen
Your figures dont mention the insurance cost of nuclear plants. Why?
Oh thats right, the current plants are too dangerous to fully insuretaxpayer takes the $trillion or so a Fukushima-like accident would cause in the shorts. And the hundreds of thousands with cancer will just take it in the thyroid or wherever.
Actually a $trillion might be too conservative. Had the wind blown the other direction at Fukushima, Tokyo would be uninhabitable. As it is the accident has likely ruined the 3rd largest economy in the world. And unfortunately, its far from over.
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David
Private Citizen,
try reading a bit more of the comments to this article. If the costs are high for the Fukushima incident where 15,000 people died from water and none from Radiation. You can thank the people who regulate radiation levels to levels lower than background radiation in many parts of the world. Tokyo would NOT have been uninhabitable if the wind had blown toward it. A very small amount of material was actually released and all of it is gone now except for the Cesium. The more widely spread radiation is the less impact it has. A very small distance from the source makes a big difference in the dose received.
By the way, since you are making un-substantiated claims I am replying in like manner. Check out this graph. http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/03/19/radiation-chart/
matthew
how much is sold a year
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Matt
Dear Jason,
You wrote:
>> Maybe some people would get the impression that you
could replace current energy sources with solar or wind <<
Please, please, please put an asterisk on your graph stating wind and solar cannot replace current energy sources.
And send the same note on to President Obama. I think he thinks wind and solar can replace all other sources of energy.
Matt
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kt
Youre not sold on wind and solar. Some yet to be implemented newer turbine designs are silent, cheaper and more efficient and its my belief well see a large increase in personally and community owned turbines. As for solar, yes the sun is off at night and during cloudy periods, but have you heard of solar power satellites? I only became aware of the idea recently and its an amazing concept though expensive to implement initially (they can run at full capacity 24/7, capturing energy that would be lost to the universe). That being said, I am an advocate for nuclear power because its so efficient compared with fossil fuels, and long term storage of radioactive materials is cheaper than global warming, not to mention the solid and liquid waste, and the disturbing impacts on environment and human health related to mining, mountain topping etc. Nuclear does have some of the same problems as far as waste goes,
but in the end it is way more efficient and comparing waste to energy output, nuclear is the way to go. In the end though, I think the shift to high efficiency renewable energy designs is the way to go, with nuclear helping to phase out fossil fuels along the way. Thanks for the great info, it really helped me out!
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Josh
This repot was written in 2010 and was quite complete for its time. It is impressive and very fact oriented. It is nice to have all of this information in one place. I have been doing some basic research on a new technology that utilizes tidal movements to produce electricity. Specifically, I have been lookin into the Rotech Tidal Turbine. Lunar Energy claims that their goal to produce electricity for 5 cents per kilowatt hour is realistic, however, they do not give a timeline. I would be interested to see if this actually pans out. If this is true, it would be a significant improvement, financially, over wind and solar, the only other electricity production methods with no fuel costs.
I dont have the time or the resources to do a thorough investigation the way you did, but it would be nice to get legitimate data on this new technology. I am getting some conflicting numbers from different sources and it is hard to tell who is telling the truth.
From what I have read, these tidal turbines theoretically have almost no environmental impact. Notice the use of the word theoretical. Only time will tell if this technology is actually as viable, economical, and low-impact as Lunar Energy claims.
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Matt
You talk about the intangible costs of coal, what about the intangible cost of nuclear when and if a Fukishema happens in the US? So called global warming and strip mining verses the effects of a release of radioactive material into the surrounding environment. I dont think many are coming down with lukemia as a result of coal burning. Than again according to the geniuses at EPA, coal flyash is radioactive. If you live near a coal plant you may recieve a whopping 18 millirems in a year radiation. Oh No!!! Nuclear definitely needs to be a part of the mix. But the political games being played to push coal aside are very immoral. I believe the Natural Gas industry is the main push behind this assault on coal, but know for a fact some of the nuke people are a big part of this too. Why cant free markets determine the winners and losers, instead of Ivy League losers who only graduated as a result of affirmative action policies at these schools(no one in particular, umm.EPA administrator?)
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C. Smith
Hi!
I have certainly found the information in your research very interesting. I was surprised to see that wind overall was cheaper than natural gas!
I stumbled onto this site while looking for info on emissions of coal in comparison to natural gas, other than CO2. I understand coal is much more dirty than gas, but how so, and by how much? I havent found anything so far.
I really like the idea of solar, but I think the current systems of subsidies is only giving it a bad name. Even at its current cost, it does have its place but not at the expense of the taxpayer. Perhaps if building permits for mansions and very large single family residences required a certain amount of power be generated on site from solar, some of the excess load on the grid could be lessened. The benefit would then be to the taxpayer and electric bill payer, as it might lessen the need to build a new power plant down the line. Otherwise, when a excessively large house uses a disproportionate amount of electricity, the burden is unfairly shared with the general public.
I do understand that solar has a long way to go before it will ever be cost effective to the average person, but one other benefit I havent seen mentioned here, is that when an individual installs a system on their roof, it means less square footage used in an off site power source. I think there is also the cool factor I think some people like the idea of being able to generate their own power, much like a person might like to have a very fast car (bragging rights). It may not initially be practical, but the R&D going into supplying that customer eventually trickles down into mass produced versions.
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AJ
Posted June 4, 2012 at 6:36 am | Permalink
I believe geothermal energy should have been include. Nearing 3.5 to 5 cents per hour and with the abilty able to tap this resource in more areas, this is one environmental, renwable resource that should be utilized more than it is now.
Bob Aceti
Nuclear power is heavly subsidized and only nuclear die-hards refuse to accept the facts.
The discount rate has a material impact on the calculation results. You can cheery pick the discount rate that suits your argument but that doesnt make it right.
Renewable energy power plants are insurable, cost competitive and less risky than development of new nuclear reactors:
http://alturl.com/tzzs2 http://alturl.com/f4n3h http://alturl.com/oms8c
References on taxpayer subsidization of Ontario nuclear:
Until recent, AECL was owned by the government of Canada. AECL received $815 Million in fiscal March 31, 2010-11 (Pg. 17) from the taxpayers of Canada. AECLs
accumulated deficit as at March 31, 2011, was $3,784,799 (Pg. 37)[AECL's 2011 Annual Report] http://alturl.com/8tanm
The Globe and Mail (June 29-11) reported on the sale of AECL http://alturl.com/dooc4 [SNC takes charge of Canadas nuclear future]:
After 60 years of operation and $21-billion invested, Ottawa is unloading Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.s Candu business for a mere $15-million and future royalties.
CBCs investigative report [June 29-2011, Weston: Taxpayers' AECL losses won't end with sale] on other subsidized costs current/future:
http://alturl.com/o44jd
According to AECLs latest annual report, taxpayers have poured more than $225 million into development of the ACR-1000 just in the past two years
AECLs refurbishment of the Point Lepreau reactor in New Brunswick is so behind schedule and over budget that the provincial government is now demanding more than $2 billion in compensation.
Making matters worse, AECLs commercial partner in that snafu ["AECL has spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars at Chalk River building two new isotope reactors that dont work and likely never will."], MDS Nordion, is now suing the federal agency for $1.6 billion in damages.
Finally, there is the small matter of six decades of nuclear waste at Chalk River, a mess the federal government has now started to clean up. That shouldnt cost taxpayers more than an estimated $3 billion.
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notinto nuke
Posted June 21, 2012 at 12:21 pm | Permalink
I find it interesting that evaluations of Nuclear power never seem to factor in storage costs for waste over thousands of years. Those costs may be incalculable and stuck to the taxpayer but they are very real nonetheless and would drive the kWh cost of nukes up manifold.
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David Manukjan
Hi Jason Morgan and others, I used some of your information and methodology in thesis: http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/honorscollege_theses/111/
I would be honored if you read it! I would be even more honored if you read it and gave me your opinion!
I found the price per kWh of various energy sources but also included externality costs in my findings. I also evaluate the feasibility of using these energy sources and talk about the Obama energy plan.
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Gene Johnson
Im just throwing in my 2 cents, although I see this is a highly technical discussion. I was gratified to see this comparison, but it didnt sell me on nuclear. I see that I have been wrong on the cost of nuclear (I thought it was much more expensive to produce because of upfront & production costs), it is much lower than I have figured in my limited experience. However. With the advent of accidents like 3 mile island, chernoble, and now fukashima, the long term risk far outweights the slight benefits on cost of nuclear as compared to coal. I know what you are thinking. Coal is a dirty business. However, coal is cheap, and we still have the new technology to make it a much cleaner business than ever (if it werent being taxed out of existence). If we used our resources to improve our coal energy generation, I think we would be ahead of the game, since we wouldnt have to worry about the long term risk of nuclear accidents. And there have been enough for our generation already. I believe a combination of coal, wind, solar AND TIDAL power (which no one talks about and is 24/7) would be significant and no country should need to risk the use of nuclear power. The only real reason we need it is to provide the raw materials for our weapons of mass destruction. A big attraction to nuclear power is it is 24/7. Tidal energy is also 24/7. It would provide steady, consistent energy production, akin to hydroelectric, which is one of the lowest in the comparison. If citizens were allowed to invest into the green energy field with one or two 1 megawatt machines (wind, solar or tidal) and allowed to join in at the micro level, we would get an influx of new energy companies this country has never seen before. People want to be investors, but right now can only take part through huge investment groups that may or may not have ownership in the actual new energy companies. None have shown they can make it in this economic climate. I know it is all tied together, and Ive gotten off track.
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David
Long term risks? Just exactly what are those long term risks?
1. Death by radiation? So far Fukushima = 0 3 Mile Island = 0 Chernoble = 56. Hum 2. Death by cancer from exposure to Radiation? = very very very unlikely except in the case of Chernoble where we have something close to a few hundred estimated. Though there were 4000 extra thyroid cancers recorded the number of early deaths from these is very small. hum 3. Loosing property in the vicinity of a NPP in case there is an accident? Now that is a risk. Mainly because the danger levels for radiation are set at below background levels. So as soon as there is an accident Surprise Surprise Surprise radiation is detected! In every case where there has been an evacuation the health effects of leaving home were greater than any estimated health effected from the existing radiation.
skeptic
Thank you for the analysis. I wonder how it would come out today.
My main criticism is the nuclear power and coal costs are two low and natural gas is too high.
For nuclear, the operation cost seems low as well as cost of construction. Locally in Austin, we rejected participation in the STP expansion because in the original phase, construction costs kept going up. No one believed the construction cost estimates. NRG found Tepco as a partner, but after the disaster this was not viable. Regulation is going to raise the cost of building these things, as they have in the past. Regulations in operating them will also go up, and maintenance at Chrystal Beach and San Onfre seem to indicate it is not easy to predict maintenance/upgrade.
For natural gas, I would use a new combined cycle fast cycling plant. This has the benefit of being able to turn off when demand is not there. Its hard to project future natural gas prices, but these risks seem small compared to risks of regulatory problems with nuclear.
For new coal, we seem to be moving to IGCC, the EPA may stop approving other plants. The days of unregulated pollution are over.
Wind, solar, and nuclear really need grid upgrades, and these costs should be added. NPV analysis is likely better than levelized. This way you can include regulatory risk. When this analysis is done, it is easy to see why natural gas and wind are the main power sources added to the grid. There is room for a little more nuclear power, but it does seem like a much more risky investment than natural gas or wind.
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Craig Hicks
Dear Sir I didnt see any costs listed for long term safe storage of nuclear waste. I didnt see any costs listed for nuclear accident liability insurance. Is this because you assume taxpayers will pay for damages, so insurance is not required? (E.g., the recent accident in Fukushima, Japan). Best Regards CH (Tokyo, Japan)
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David
Hi Craig,
This is because the costs for long term storage of waste and the insurance costs are a part of the operational expenses for every NPP. They are built into the cost of Electricity by law and have been for decades. This is why when Yucca Mountain was rejected by the NRC (games by the chairman appointed by Harry Reid) there were several companies that went to court for a refund of their money.
xssnbubblehead
The EIA publishes a report annually which shows their estimates of the Levelized Cost. Its in their Annual Energy Outlook. http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/2016levelized_costs_aeo2011.pdf. They dont show the detail of their calculations and for intermittent sources (such as solar and wind) they havent included the true cost of adding that generation (such as building a quick reacting aeroderivative gas turbine plant to regulate output from the wind farm and keeping some of those units running continuously). That information is probably best obtained from co-ops or utilities that have added that type of generation.
Unfortunately, new nuclear plants will only be built in states that allow the utility to include the costs of building the plant in their rate structure some time well BEFORE the facility sends a single MWh over the fence as the financial risks to the utility are just too great. Whether or not it turns out to have been a good investment for them (and the ratepayers in that area) wont really be known for decades. But, its safe to assume that fossil fuel costs will always go up over the long term even if they cant be accurately predicted further out than about 5 years. Although natural gas is cheap now it will go up once the LNG import terminals that are now sitting idle get permitted to export (the owners need to do something with those billion dollar assets).
Certainly there is always potential for release of radioactivity that cannot be ignored. Who would have ever thought the Japenese would have this type of accident? The Russians, OK, but never the Japanese. At least that was my thinking previously. But, the potential for release should not be irrationally feared either. The passive safety systems in Westinghouses new AP1000 design would have prevented overheating of the fuel (although it can be debated if 3 days is adequate given the type of accident that occurred in Japan). Nuclear plants in the US are being required to add a secondary independant source of backup generation which reduces the risk even further.
Im sure if you study the actual deaths caused by nuclear power youll find them to be lower than those caused by fossil fuels. The real difference is that the risk of death from the use of fossil fuels for power production (except for emissions which is very difficult to quantify) is almost exclusively limited to those working in the industry (occupational risk). Nuclear power does have a risk (albiet very small) to the general public, certainly more so to those who live in the immediate vicinity of a plant).
I like to tell people unfamiliar with nuclear power that it allows us to contain all of the pollution that would have come from a fossil plant, but we must contain that pollution for thousands of years. That does have a cost, but I beleive those costs are factored in to the EIAs estimates and can be more accurately predicted than the future costs of fossil fuels (any new major discovery will affect future prices).
On a different subject, I like the idea of electric cars such as the Chevy Volt (even if the economics are not justifiable yet) as their energy source will have been produced domestically.
Reply
32 Trackbacks 1. By Greenmail doe je zo: Greenpeace versus Essent | Dagelijkse Standaard on October 12, 2010 at 9:16 am
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In India the annual consumption of electricity is 634 million kilo watts. The total production of the electricity in India per anum is 837million kilo watts, which are already produced by using other kinds of power plants. Therefore, now no one can reasonably argue that nuclear is the solution for the shortage of electricity in India.

Jagadeesh

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The nuclear power is something which is a general observation, not limited to the nuclear field alone.

Comparing Energy Costs of Nuclear, Coal, Gas, Wind and Solar

By Jason Morgan | Published April 2, 2010

Calculating the Per Kilowatt-Hour Construction Cost of a Project

Total Construction Cost

[(MW rating x 1,000) x Useful Life x (Capacity Factor x 8,760)]

Per Kilowatt-Hour Production Costs

Decommissioning Cost per kWh for Nuclear Power Plants

Most Cost Effective Form of Energy Production

Cost per kWh

Weighted Avg Cost

Cost per kWh

Weighted Avg Cost

$0.058 [change of -1.7%]

Stack courtesy of Flickr user chefranden published under the CC license.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982

Nuclear Fission for Dummies: Beta Radiation

About the Author

Posted April 2, 2010 at 10:22 pm | Permalink

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The MIT report: http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/pdf/nuclearpower-update2009.pdf The Du and Parsons study: http://web.mit.edu/ceepr/www/publications/workingpapers/2009-004.pdf

Posted April 5, 2010 at 12:20 pm | Permalink

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Posted April 6, 2010 at 12:38 am | Permalink

I wish there was a standard methodology for these studies.

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Keep up the good work.

Posted April 9, 2010 at 8:48 am | Permalink

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Then stand 1 mile from a coal power plant for a week.

Then leave the dosimeter in the US Capitol Building for 1 week.

Then talk to me about Leukemia.

Posted September 9, 2010 at 1:18 am | Permalink

Posted November 17, 2010 at 10:16 am | Permalink

Excellent article. Thanks.

(1). Page 11 at: https://www.tai.org.au/file.php?file=/media_releases/PB%2021%20SHCP %20final.pdf

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