The outlook for nuclear power is bright on the world stage. Global demand for clean nuclear energy is higher than we have ever seen. The U.S. and 20 allied nations pledged to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050 at COP28, and a multinational survey reaffirmed last year — the world wants new nuclear.
In Washington, D.C., bipartisan support for nuclear energy has never been greater. Propelled by the House passing the ADVANCE Act 393-13 this month and momentum for passage in the Senate, Congress deserves some credit this year for working to help speed up the deployment of next-generation reactors, fueling hope for an American future powered by clean energy.
This support is promising, but masks a concerning trend. While the U.S. leads the world in the development of innovative nuclear technologies, the U.S. has fallen behind China and Russia. As of May 2024, Russia and China collectively have 29 commercial reactors under construction. The U.S. has zero.
The prospect of reinvigorating production in the U.S. is exciting, but we have to think bigger to realize the promise of the next generation of nuclear energy — and now is the moment to capitalize. So, how do we get it done?
Private companies need to secure the necessary investments and build the infrastructure required for their technologies. Interest in next-generation reactors is already high and is only expected to grow, so we need new sources of funding to meet the moment. Throughout the history of nuclear innovation, first movers have been critical to attaining the “proof of concept,” and new reactors are no different. Once the potential of these technologies is realized, the order book for energy users can follow, and more capital will be available to developers.
Due to the need for more reliable energy, the nuclear industry is seeing significant interest from both traditional and non-traditional customers. Utilities continue to consider adding nuclear energy capacity, and data centers and industrial customers are also considering new nuclear. For example, the partnership between X-energy and Dow in Seadrift, Texas, demonstrates the diverse applications of nuclear energy, as the proposed reactor will replace retiring systems to produce clean energy for the chemical facility. With nuclear power, industrial companies can continue to utilize reliable and affordable energy for their operations, cleanly. The project came to fruition with the support of the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP), a prime example of how federal government and private industry partnerships can make advanced nuclear technology a reality. In addition to X-energy, the DOE is partnering with TerraPower, which just submitted its construction permit to the NRC, to build its first reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
To meet demand and compete in the market, the industry must build an order book to encourage commercial investment in new nuclear projects. Expanding to global customers bolsters the U.S. market and encourages international trade, but we cannot export technology we are not building here. With a diverse and more robust customer base, companies can attract significant investments while achieving cost reductions.
However, it is important to make sure that U.S. companies can compete on the global stage to counter the growing influence of Russia and China. Updates to civil nuclear export regulations, developing an export strategy and increasing access to financing from entities like the U.S. Export-Import Bank and International Development Finance Corporation will be critical. Partnering with allied nations and supporting the development of technical expertise in countries that are interested in building these new designs will be needed as well.
Building a robust order book and increasing commitments from both domestic and international customers can help build momentum to commercialize next-generation facilities. The U.S. can finish what it started: ensuring the deployment of new nuclear projects will provide clean, reliable and affordable energy globally.
Niko McMurray is the Managing Director of International and Nuclear Policy at ClearPath.
Dr. David Gattie is an Associate Professor at the University of Georgia’s College of Engineering, a Senior Fellow at UGA’s Center for International Trade & Security and a member of the Nuclear Matters Advocacy Council.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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The issue with nuclear power is insurance and the permitting process, both of which are rigged against the industry.
China and Russia make good political bogey men, but the UK (Rolls Royce for SMR) and South Korea (full size (1.4 GW) reactors) are our real competitors. Rolls builds small reactors for naval vessels while South Korea is building 1.4 GW reactors in the Middle East and is bidding to supply them to Poland, Romania, and Czechia.
I don’t see us (UK) as competitors. Sure there is money to be made, but the name of the game is whatever works, as soon as possible. And share the work around. Rolls Royce would probably have to open a production facility in the USA and partner with many US companies in order to meet US regulatory requirements.
The major issues are all political and regulatory. If governments want the tech, they need to stop penalizing it.
The real competitors are Russia and China and South Korea.
All others are somewhere in left field
Nuclear Plants by Russia
According to the IAEA, during the first half of 2023, a total of 407 nuclear reactors are in operation at power plants across the world, with a total capacity at about 370,000 MW
Nuclear was 2546 TWh, or 9.2%, of world electricity production in 2022
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/batteries-in-new-england
Rosatom, a Russian Company, is building more nuclear reactors than any other country in the world, according to data from the Power Reactor Information System of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA.
The data show, a total of 58 large-scale nuclear power reactors are currently under construction worldwide, of which 23 are being built by Russia.
.
In Egypt, 4 reactors, each 1,200 MW = 4,800 MW for $30 billion, or about $6,250/kW,
The cost of the nuclear power plant is $28.75 billion.
As per a bilateral agreement, signed in 2015, approximately 85% of it is financed by Russia, and to be paid for by Egypt under a 22-year loan with an interest rate of 3%.
That cost is at least 40% less than US/UK/EU
.
In Turkey, 4 reactors, each 1,200 MW = 4,800 MW for $20 billion, or about $4,200/kW, entirely financed by Russia. The plant will be owned and operated by Rosatom
.
In India, 6 VVER-1000 reactors, each 1,000 MW = 6,000 MW at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant.
Capital cost about $15 billion. Units 1, 2, 3 and 4 are in operation, units 5 and 6 are being constructed
In Bangladesh: 2 VVER-1200 reactors = 2400 MW at the Rooppur Power Station
Capital cost $12.65 billion is 90% funded by a loan from the Russian government. The two units generating 2400 MW are planned to be operational in 2024 and 2025. Rosatom will operate the units for the first year before handing over to Bangladeshi operators. Russia will supply the nuclear fuel and take back and reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooppur_Nuclear_Power_Plant
.
Rosatom, created in 2007 by combining several Russian companies, usually provides full service during the entire project life, such as training, new fuel bundles, refueling, waste processing and waste storage in Russia, etc., because the various countries likely do not have the required systems and infrastructures
Remember, these nuclear plants reliably produce steady electricity, at reasonable cost/kWh, and have near-zero CO2 emissions
They have about 0.90 capacity factors, and last 60 to 80 years
Nuclear does not need counteracting plants. They can be designed as load-following, as some are in France
.
Wind: Offshore wind systems produce variable, unreliable power, at very high cost/kWh, and are far from CO2-free, on a mine-to-hazardous landfill basis.
They have lifetime capacity factors, on average, of about 0.40; about 0.45 in very windy places
They last about 20 to 25 years in a salt water environment
They require: 1) a fleet of quick-reacting power plants to counteract the up/down wind outputs, on a less-than-minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, 2) major expansion/reinforcement of electric grids to connect the wind systems to load centers, 3) a lot of land and sea area, 4) curtailment payments, i.e., pay owners for what they could have produced
Major Competitors: Rosatom’s direct competitors, according to PRIS data, are three Chinese companies: CNNC, CSPI and CGN.
They are building 22 reactors, but it should be noted, they are being built primarily inside China, and the Chinese partners are building five of them together with Rosatom.
American and European companies are lagging behind Rosatom, by a wide margin,” Alexander Uvarov, a director at the Atom-info Center and editor-in-chief at the atominfo.ru website, told TASS.
Update to the IEA figures. According to the World Nuclear Association (May 2024) there are 440 operable nuclear reactors worldwide and 61 under construction in China, India, Turkey, Egypt, Russia, UK, South Korea, Japan, Bangladesh and Ukraine.
So far this year 4 new reactors have been connected to their grids and there have been 10 construction starts in 2023/24 – 7 in China, 2 in Egypt and 1 in Russia.
Thank you.
I will update my write up
The most important issues are:
(1) Our failure to develop cookie cutter designs. To paraphrase a recent writer on the subject, we need to start thinking of nuclear power plants as airplanes and not airports.
(2) Our failure to develop a final resting place for the waste. The DOE has supposedly been working on this, but I have yet to see an update on the initiative started at the beginning of current administration. It must be done, if only for our current waste. But when this is finally implemented, the incremental cost/risk of storing more will be low enough to build out US nuclear energy 2.0.
https://www.energy.gov/ne/spent-fuel-and-waste-disposition
Of course we are also behind for the decades long pause, post 3 Mile Island. Yes, nuc has an unmatched overall safety record, versus other modes of electric power production. But the outliers are viscerally frightening. Only new, fail safe designs will eventually quell those fears.
Back in the 1990s ex Australian prime Minister Bob Hawke was promoting the idea of Central Australian desert areas being developed as the world’s repository for spent nuclear fuel.
Geo stable, secure, monitored remote.
What’s the holdup? With 5000 m^3 of waste being “temporarily” stored, looks like you’re still in the same jackpot as us.
The DOE needs to sweeten the pot on their RFQ for a good site. I.e., no eminent domain BS.
“Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part”.
Ah, the Pangea Project. BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels Ltd) were very interested in that at the time. BNFL was renamed as Great British Nuclear by the Government in 2008. (and yes the nuclear bit is in bold)
The problem with “waste storage” is due to Jimmy Carter demanding “once through” fuel cycles to “set a good example” to allegedly deter proliferation. Most of the fission products that poison fuel are short lived, and the French successfully reprocess their fuel.
Most of the problems with nuclear are the result of Carter’s damnfool or malevolent policies.
The French have decided that they need deep geo disposal, even with reprocessing.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-waste/storage-and-disposal-of-radioactive-waste#Deepdisposal
https://international.andra.fr/
Blaming our nuclear engineer president based on nearly 50 year old info and the world situation at the time doesn’t really help us much.
Ever driven through West Texas or Nevada? Whole lot of nothing. Waste disposal is an artificial issue.
. . . as long as one is not concerned over making a large area of land uninhabitable by humans and roaming animals for, oh, the 10 to 100 thousand years it takes for the worst radionuclides in fission reactor waste to decay to safe levels.
Do you know any physics? Very radioactive and long lived are oxymorons.
A little bit . . . danger from radioactive substances must be considered as cumulative dosage absorbed.
Radionuclides with short-half lives are dangerous because they emit high levels of radiation that are integrated over a relatively short time interval, say weeks to tens of years.
Radionuclides with long-half lives are dangerous because they emit lower levels of radiation that are integrated over a much longer time interval, say thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.
Also, those radionuclides that emit gamma radiation as they decay are the most serious concern because they are not as easily shielded as those radionuclides that emit alpha and beta radiation during decay. Daughter (decay) products in a given initial long half-life radionuclide’s decay chain to eventual stable isotopes can include the appearance of gamma radiation-emitting isotopes.
You are assuming Jimmy Carter’s sillyass ban on reprocessing as a premise. Plutonium and uranium are not “waste”.
You are also into LNT as an article of faith.
I saId nothing about NLT, so your armchair psychoanalysis is worth exactly what I paid to get it.
You are the one that brings up the subject of NLT without stating, for all to see, what you believe to be a safe dose of ionizing radiation over a defined time interval.
Published “safe” cumulative radiation doses are all over the place: OSHA recommends that workers’ whole-body exposure not exceed 50 millisieverts (mSv) per year . . . the ICRP recommends a limit of 20 mSv per year for workers . . . The International Atomic Energy Agency recommends limiting public exposure to 1 mSv per year.
Your assumption of LNT was obvious. LNT and the “Precautionary Principle” are the border science basis of a lot of green rejection of science.
Personally, I believe that in most cases where it is applied, the “Precautionary Principle” is misguided.
The “Precautionary Principle” emphasizes taking protective action(s) before there is complete scientific proof of a risk . . . and there is no such a thing as complete scientific proof of anything.
There . . . no need for you to assume otherwise.
Regarding your first sentence, If science teaches anything it is that NOTHING is obvious.
The evidence is in, low levels of radiation are beneficial.
Hmmm . . . of course you provide no citation for such “evidence” . . . be it from scientists or charlatans.
You may want to look up the history of radium being sold as a “tonic” in the early 20th century.
If it’s buried deep underground how will that affect the surface?
In another vein, how are the deserts of the US habitable by humans in the first place??
And anyway, the best method for handling ‘nuclear waste’ from conventional reactors is to burn it up in future thorium molten salt reactors and get some useful energy out it, instead of wasting it burying it down a hole ⛳
No, it takes weeks to months for most.
“As of May 2023, the United States has over 85,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants stored at 75 sites across the country. This amount is increasing by about 2,000 metric tons each year . . . The waste is extremely dangerous to humans and takes thousands of years to decay.“
— Google “Generative AI” overview
(my bold emphasis added)
So, I guess that phase “weeks to months for most” needs to taken with more than a grain of salt. 🙂
And almost 100% of the long lived stuff would be considered fuel if you anti-nuclear nut jobs would get out of the way.
Obviously you do not understand the scientific concepts of:
— the gradual “poisoning” of nuclear reactor U-235/U-238 fuel rods by the buildup of decay products that absorb neutrons
— the fact that most of the poisoning decay products are not fissile
Decay products of U-235 include Th-231, Pa-231, actinium-227 (Ac-227), Th-227,Ra-223,Rn-219, Po-215, Pb-211, Bi-211 and thallium-207 (Tl-207). None of these are considered to be “nuclear fuel”.
No, those are the BEST radionuclides. The worst ones decay in seconds
High Level Waste (HLW) is vitrified in borosilicate glass which will remain stable for thousands of years. This is used in France, UK, Japan, Russia and US.
Or the radwaste can be mixed with additives to produce a slurry, dried to a powder, sealed in cans and heat and pressure treated to lock in the radionuclides and powder mixture which fuse together as Synroc
That’s all interesting, but the current situation is:
“As of May 2023, the United States has over 85,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants stored at 75 sites across the country. This amount is increasing by about 2,000 metric tons each year . . . The waste is extremely dangerous to humans and takes thousands of years to decay.“
— Google “Generative AI” overview
(my bold emphasis added)
Again, you and the idiot programmers at Google are assuming Jimmy Carter’s ban on reprocessing.
Please do inform Alphabet Inc. (Google’s owner) of your conclusion . . . I’m sure they will give it all the attention that it deserves.
The same programming team that produced a program that resulted in images of a black female pope? Or Asian and Black Nazis? Those guys?
The vast majority of so called waste, has low levels of radioactivity.
Only a tiny percentage is highly radioactive.
BTW, the more radioactive it is, the shorter it’s half life.
Please define “low” . . . and then explain why there is any need at all to store nuclear waste at 75 sites across the US.
LNT, and scientific illiteracy in general.
I agree . . . as is evident by some postings here.
Yes I have. But it is populated, and both those who came earlier and later don’t want Yucca Mountain. They don’t need a reason. The DOE needs to make it appealing enough to earn the interest of the locals, there or elsewhere.
While you have a point, it’s pretty a accurate take on Carter.
You are correct that nothing Carter did regarding nuclear power and nuclear waste can’t be undone. It’s time to move on, policy-wise.
I have no investigation of my own to bolster any opinion but I’ve read detailed claims that Carter as a nuclear engineer was a political fiction. At best he was trained in nuclear power plant maintenance on navy ships/submarines, without any previous relevant education or training. Perhaps his naval title included the word engineer but it was not based on anything approaching a real engineering degree.
The real major problem in the US, and any other country that accepted its nuclear power rules, is the lie of the zero linear threshold for ionizing radiation, adopted by the NRC, in clear contradiction to hundreds of real studies, to bolster its regulatory powers, and the various consequences that flow from the lie. This has added billions of $ to the building and maintenance of every nuclear plant in the US and is the basis of most public fears. It seems to me that there can not be any real progress until this lie is removed from all legal considerations. Of course the same could be said of much of the destructive EPA nonsense.
some information on this
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-two-lies-that-killed-nuclear
I don’t think it (LNT) was cynical in its implementation. Back in the day all we knew was what a lethal dose was. We had no idea if it would be lethal spread out over a long time, or how the curve of lethality with dose worked.
They just drew a straight line, made some assumptions and said to the nuclear industry ‘can you meet that?’ and they said YUP, so what was simply an arbitrary limit became a ‘you will die if exposed to one rad more ‘ scare story for the greens and fossil industry and of course Russia to beat nuclear power with.
And regulations never get less with a bureaucratic government.
Renewable energy is secondhand nuclear energy from the most dangerous reactor we are exposed to that kills 50,000 people a year from skin cancer…
…worry about that,not Chernobyl…
I do recall people with a nice tan coming into a facility for a chest x-ray, concerned about the radiation. Pure brainwashing.
LNT was defended from two sides. One, we know so little, we must make conservative assumptions. Two, as we know LNT is well founded, we do not have to test it. At the same time.
There were no degrees awarded in nuclear engineering at the time. However since, “..he was trained in nuclear power plant maintenance on navy ships/submarines, without any previous relevant education or training”, (save for his BS degree, class rank of 60/821) and after being handpicked by Admiral Rickover, he effectively worked as a nuclear engineer at a level as intense as any others in the field.
As for the rest, I’ve already said that nuc safety is economically achievable. However, not a fan of removing it from “all legal considerations”.
At least, he was a STEM person, not just another forked-tongued lawyer
Dems like to consider Carter a qualified nuclear engineer, but as always that’s another lie. Training for a few months, to help operate a nuclear sub, and primarily training as an instructor to teach nuclear plant operating personnel, is hardly “work as a nuclear engineer”.
Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in 1946 and served in several capacities before moving to a nuclear submarine startup program… from 3 November 1952 to 1 March 1953, he served on temporary duty with the Naval Reactors Branch, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Washington, D.C., to assist “in the design and development of nuclear propulsion plants for naval vessels.”
Timeline 4 months in the nuclear reactor branch of AEC, obviously essentially in an early stage of receiving training. Carter was never a qualified nuclear engineer; he was a very junior nuclear engineer trainee dropout.
From 1 March to 8 October 1953, Carter was preparing to become the engineering officer for USS Seawolf (SSN-575), Timeline 7 months training to serve on a nuclear submarine.
However, after his father died in July 1953 Carter resigned from the Navy and returned to Georgia to manage his family peanut farm interests
“…to assist “in the design and development of nuclear propulsion plants for naval vessels.””
Provide me with an example of what at the time that was more intense nuclear engineering. Disses so far have reluctantly included the words “maintenance, design, development”, for the job he was handpicked by Rickover to do. I don’t think the word “engineer” means what you think it means…
We were supposed to store nuclear waste in deep granite mines in New Hamshire, I believe. But a Republican Governor and a Republican administration killed that.
Next came Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a very geologically unsuitable site. With Harry Reid running the Senate, that project was killed.
A national nuclear waste disposal solution has been on hold ever since. Currently waste is kept onsite at the reactors.
It’s not really a lot of ‘waste’ – all that is generated over the reactors’ lifetime can actually be stored on-site, in the cooling pools at the reactor plant.
You are correct, it is not a lot of waste when compared to coal ash. However, many operating reactors in the U.S. have exceeded their spent fuel pool capacity (or soon will) and are offloading it to dry storage casks on the plant site.
Not according to the IAEA.
https://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/publications/pdf/lts-rw_web.pdf
Among technical experts, the generally accepted method for disposing of
radioactive waste is to contain the waste and isolate it from the environment generally accessible to humans. Isolation of the types of waste discussed in this report is considered to be best achieved through its emplacement at significant depths underground, that is, by ‘geological disposal’.
No need to store the waste, reprocess it.
That’s a 100% political problem.
AGAIN, you won’t get rid of it all.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/05/28/building-the-global-nuclear-energy-order-book/#comment-3917466
That’s a promise I hope we keep.
I trust the EPA will be able to stop it.
Since they don’t want to, who cares?
https://archive.epa.gov/epa/cleanpowerplan/fact-sheet-clean-power-plan-opportunities-nuclear-power.html
tripling is far, far too little to matter much against wind and solar madness.
Well renewables are just profitable froth on the energy industry. If governments wanted to stop them a stroke of a pen will do it Overwhelmingly the world runs on fossil. Renewables are merely profit.
And triple by 2050 is simply a business as usual scenario. If governments start to panic because fossil and renewable prices are spiraling out of control, things could move a lot faster than that.
What is the US $ cost of a new reactor of the 1.4 GW size in UK US Korea, China France Australia.
the difficulties are n anserwing this question indicate the serious mess that administrates the industry and slows decision making. Clean it of imposters and proceed.
Geoff S
Clear it of major lies, then proceed
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-two-lies-that-killed-nuclear
One major news thread today is the exponential growth of the electricity needs of data centers, particularly for AI. Usually unspoken in that thread is that a data center works non-stop: if the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining the data center doesn’t care. Using co-located advanced nuclear facilities is the most reliable and efficient strategy by far to supply the growing data center power needs. Gas and coal electricity generation is much harder to co-locate, requiring massive amounts of new power transmission that is impossible in today’s NIMBY world.
The biggest hurdle to this strategy is the irrational fear of any nuclear reactors. We need to slay the bogeymen like linear no-threshold (LNT) cancer risks and long-ago, easily-preventable, over-hyped accidents like Three Mile Island. Everyone needs to stop ignoring the simple fact that we know how to make and use safe reactors today. I know fear sells, especially in Washington, but our economic future requires we go nuclear and stop the madness of
renewablesun-reliables.Partly true. A data center needs a reliable power, just like an aluminum production plant does. However, a power interruption in an aluminum plant may cost millions. A data center can be shut down on a short notice – please supply details.
Really? An AI datacenter shutdown while millions of customers suddenly can’t run their businesses? That could cost billions and the customers won’t be back.
Customer don’t access a data canter. They access the “cloud” of thousands of data centers.
If the grid goes down, there won’t BE any “customers” attempting to access their “data.”
First things first. Build enough reliable (read: NOT wind or solar) electric generation so that the grid is reliable and can consistently meet all demand, including Automated Idiocy.
data centers are important, peon are not.
think about the damage to certain bureaucracies and you will understand why it is extremely unlikely to happen.
“we have to think bigger to realize the promise of the next generation of nuclear energy — and now is the moment to capitalize. So, how do we get it done?”
Think smarter:
1) The Canadian Candu was early up off the blocks in the late 1950s.
2) The Candu uses unenriched yellowcake and heavy water. Normally U²³⁸ is not fissionable, but synergistically participates in the reaction thru capture of excess neutrons. The low cost of preparing the charge results in a fuel cost of less than US 2½ cents/kWhr
3) The reactor does not need to be shut down for refueling!
4) The reactor has a planned 40 year life with an upgrade fitted after 25yrs
5) They are modular design, a unit costing CDN350 million with never a cost overrun! The world’s largest plant for many decades was the Bruce Point, Ontario installation made up of 7 modules added over the years.
6) A nuclear accident at a Candu plant is when an operator spills a cup of coffee. These plants are so safe that they are built right in the suburbs of Toronto (Pickering, Ontario).
All the talk today is about modular units. We Canucks never had any other kind! Get a design permitted and turn them out like loaves of bread. Oh, and the first breeder reactor was turned on at Chalk River in 1957 and shut down in the late 90s.
Check ANEEL fuel with thorium for improved efficiency of CANDU reactors.
Never a cost overrun? You seemed to have forgotten Darlington on your list. Though that project was overseen by Ontario Hydro instead of being run directly by AECL (my first employer out of MAC!😁).
The CANDU is a good concept, eliminating the enrichment phase, and could use thorium as well, but heavy water is not free, though one could sell the tritium generated for $30K/gram the last time I heard.
But really, the high temperature – high efficiency, ambient pressure and continuous integrated reprocessing molten salt thorium reactor is the best, safest and safest-bet design type.
The Chinese have a brand new working pilot plant, and India is planning to make use of all the thorium they are blessed with, and the West sticks with bygone, overly complicated designs.
Politics is important, peon are not, except for occasional talking points.
From the above article:
“The U.S. and 20 allied nations pledged to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050 at COP28 . . . “
Well, there are the dreamers . . . and then there are realists.
In 2022, global electricity generation was about 29,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) with nuclear power plants contributing around 10% of this.
Therefore, tripling current electrical power capacity from nuclear reactors will mean adding about 5,800 TWh capacity, and at an assumed capacity factor of 93% that will be equivalent to adding 650 power plants rated at 1,100 MWe each.
“The construction cost estimates for new nuclear power plants are very uncertain and have
increased significantly in recent years. Companies that are planning new nuclear units are
currently indicating that the total costs (including escalation and financing costs) will be in
the range of $5,500/kW to $8,100/kW or between $6 billion and $9 billion for each 1,100
MW plant.”
— https://www.synapse-energy.com/sites/default/files/SynapsePaper.2008-07.0.Nuclear-Plant-Construction-Costs.A0022_0.pdf
(note: that report dates back to 2008, so those stated costs would be optimistic for today)
So, for the projected 650 new plants needed worldwide by 2050, the estimated total cost could easily be in the range of $4 TRILLION to $6 TRILLION USD . . . where’s that money coming from?
Then too, there is this: on a global average, it takes about 7 years to site, construct and bring on-line a given nuclear reactor power plant. These things cannot be mass produced.
Multiply the numbers accordingly if you want to dream of this nuclear energy generation capacity being added by SMRs rated for, oh, say 200 MWe output each . . . about 1/6 that of an 1,100 MWe large scale nuclear power plant.
And then there is the associated nuclear waste stream to deal with . . . what’s to be dreamt up for that???
Where’s the money come from to pay for the increased capacity we need, regardless of how it’s generated?
That was basically a rhetorical question.
Nevertheless, of course, the “money” comes from taxpayers and consumers of a given plant’s electricity output (paying off the construction loans and associated interest, don’t you know). Just like it does for all major infrastructure in the US (one example for taxpayers at the Federal level is the infamously misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022”).
The major difference here being the forced timeline . . . having to come up with that $4–6 TRILLION IN just the next 25 years or so.
BOHICA.
We’ve pissed away trillions on worse-than-useless wind power over the last two decades, which hasn’t increased the amount of reliable generation capacity one iota, and have nothing to show for it but a grid that is more complex, less reliable, and more expensive.
At least trillions spent on Nuclear power would expand 24/7 electric generation.
Current estimates are at least $10,000/installed kW, and 10 years, from start of engineering to commissioning, because of high interest rates, high inflation, high materials and energy prices, and excessive government rules and regulations.
Where is the money coming from?
Ever heard of printing financial paper and selling it on the world markets at high interest rates?
Dick Chaney, a presidential advisor, said, “debt does not matter”.
With such idiots as advisors, it is no wonder out national debt is $34 TRILLION, increasing at at least $2 TRILLION per year
VOTE THE BUMS OUT IN NOVEMBER
More good news. While it is important to build better and more efficient generators I wish there was more emphasis on gathering all the best features of current generators and putting together a power plant that is bullet proof, safe, efficient to run and build, economical, produce little waste and would automatically shut down or go to some sort of safe mode. Then start knocking these things out like automobiles.
Nuclear expert Mycle Schneider on the COP28 pledge to triple nuclear energy production: ‘Trumpism enters energy policy’
https://thebulletin.org/2023/12/nuclear-expert-mycle-schneider-on-the-cop28-pledge-to-triple-nuclear-energy-production-trumpism-enters-energy-policy/
story tip
” . . . aimed at helping the nuclear power industry combat . . . competition from cheaper plants powered by natural gas, wind and solar.”
Sure, pull out all the stops to restrict competition from source of electricity that are cheaper than nuclear-based. What’s not to like about that?
/sarc
In other words: damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!
Well natural gas is cheaper. Wind and solar are not, if you want power generation 24/7 (you do), which means you should be adding the cost of sufficient gas power to provide 100% backup TO the wind and solar, plus the cost of necessary grid enhancements, to get the real cost of wind and solar.
Which will undoubtedly make nuclear cheaper than wind + gas or solar + gas or wind + solar + gas.
Uhhh . . . nuclear power plants in the US have an average capacity factor of 93%. What provides the backup power when a nuclear power plant is off line, say for maintenance or re-fueling . . . and how is such necessary backup capability different (other than magnitude) than the necessary backup for wind and solar?
Well it is ten times more reliable, can be variable follow load, and requires far less back up from other or like steady state producers.
Until something better comes along (maybe fusion?), nuclear is the solution to our long0-term electrical supply for base electrical. We are looking at brown- and black-outs without it. Massive data centers (AI( will have to build their own generating plants or shut-down — people in the cities will get first dibs on electricity.
I’ve seen this lack-of-supply system ply out written-small in the Third World. When supply drops below need, the major cities stay lit up while the countryside and small cities and towns get blacked out on rotation. When things get worse, the capital city stays lit up in the business and upper-end residential areas, while poor suburbs lose out. Finally, only buildings with their own back-up generators (and subterranean water reservoirs) keep the lights on and the water flowing.
It’s a little difficult to post pro nuclear on Quora. This posting was labeled spam and deleted:
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