Nuclear Power: Do you support it?

[sptrawler]

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...5-p55iwe.html?js-chunk-not-found-refresh=true
Australia’s clean energy investment agency is broadening its focus from renewable energy to drive growth in the hydrogen industry and improve the electricity network's ability to accommodate the growing volume of wind and solar power in the grid.

Announcing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation’s results for the past financial year, chief executive Ian Learmonth said the agency had made investment commitments of more than $1 billion into 23 clean energy investments, which leveraged a combined value of $4.2 billion of co-investment from private industry.
The $1 billion Grid Reliability Fund, which was announced last year by the Morrison government, comes as additional funding on top of the $10 billion allocated when the agency was established in 2012.

 

[rederob]

Small modular reactors are the answer to Australia’s energy gap and will drive prices down.

There is really no basis for that statement. Conversion of coal to CCGT would reduce prices significantly if supply constraints could be removed.
As @Smurf1976 points out, there is no operator in Australia even contemplating nuclear as an option.

 

[Muckman]

And as I pointed out as well you can’t contemplate an option when there is no option yet.
Imagine if AGL announced that they are purchasing 50 hitachi GE modular reactors, stock market would crash, everyone would go in a panic buy, Australia would go in a nuclear panic mode. All on a product that doesn’t exist yet. Not to mention the nuclear ban is still in place so for any company to even suggest to start in vestments in a nuclear industry in Australia would seem very suspicious. So it’s obvious no company is going to release any announcements to have any interest or investments for a nuclear reactor. Im hearing 2022 will be the time of the modular reactor.

 

[rederob]

And as I pointed out as well you can’t contemplate an option when there is no option yet.
Imagine if AGL announced that they are purchasing 50 hitachi GE modular reactors, stock market would crash, everyone would go in a panic buy, Australia would go in a nuclear panic mode. All on a product that doesn’t exist yet. Not to mention the nuclear ban is still in place so for any company to even suggest to start in vestments in a nuclear industry in Australia would seem very suspicious. So it’s obvious no company is going to release any announcements to have any interest or investments for a nuclear reactor. Im hearing 2022 will be the time of the modular reactor.

I don't believe in fairy tales like you do.

 

[Muckman]

I don't believe in fairy tales like you do.

Ever herd of project trinity lol?
The idea of even splitting of an atom was a fairy tale.
Or what about space flight? Or even landing a man on the moon?
That’s pretty small minded

 

[rederob]

Ever herd of project trinity lol?
The idea of even splitting of an atom was a fairy tale.
Or what about space flight? Or even landing a man on the moon?
That’s pretty small minded

You have posted a great deal of stuff we all can freely read.
Unfortunately there are no metrics to pin your ideas to. This covers what we need to see.
Instead, this gives an idea of the range of costs of SMRs based on what we presently know and can extrapolate.
On a best case basis SMRs would run at twice the cost of grid scale solar PV.

 

[Muckman]

I don’t know how you can say it’s going to cost so much when no one has a clue yet
But I do agree in the first article
There dose need to be a standard of manufacturing just like cars or buildings. It as for cost, I just can’t see how anyone can put a price on anything just yet.
Say for instance the UAE and the US order 1000 hitachi he reactors driving the price down rapidly and starting mass production and perfecting standardisation. Then prices will come down.
I’m not saying we go out and buy one right now. But give it a few years, companies like nuscale will have cheep alternatives for our decommissioned coal plants. That’s there business model.

 

[basilio]

You have posted a great deal of stuff we all can freely read.
Unfortunately there are no metrics to pin your ideas to. This covers what we need to see.
Instead, this gives an idea of the range of costs of SMRs based on what we presently know and can extrapolate.
On a best case basis SMRs would run at twice the cost of grid scale solar PV.

I checked out Redrobs references and they are very sobering and realistic analysis of the situation.
In a nutshell
1) The costs of developing SMR is still far too high in competitive terms in comparison to any current energy alternatives.

2) Nuclear Industry promotion of the SMR option in Australia is palpably dishonest. The figures promoted for final costs of any SMR represent the most unrealistic guesses of a very opaque industry.

Well worth a read.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032119307270 Economic of SMRs
https://reneweconomy.com.au/big-claims-and-corporate-spin-about-small-nuclear-reactor-costs-65726/

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

Ever herd of project trinity lol?
The idea of even splitting of an atom was a fairy tale.
Or what about space flight? Or even landing a man on the moon?
That’s pretty small minded

Rolls Royce will build SMRs:
"

MENU
READ LESS

Rethinking nuclear power
SMRs offer a truly innovative and effective solution to meeting global power needs.

Their modular design, coupled with the opportunity to produce the reactors centrally, means they bring a number of benefits to the world of low-carbon power that traditional nuclear power stations cannot offer.


View Benefits

A flexible solution to a global demand for power
Building on our global pedigree of more than half a century in the nuclear industry, Rolls-Royce is leading a consortium of companies in the UK’s largest-ever national engineering collaboration. The Rolls-Royce SMR Consortium brings together some of the most respected and innovative engineering organisations in the world. Rolls-Royce, ARUP, Laing O’Rourke, Nuvia and Wood Group all have a successful track record of delivering large-scale, complex engineering and infrastructure programmes.

Rolls-Royce already holds over 35 patents for elements of SMR technology and has decades of design, manufacture, delivery and operations experience. Using this already-proven technology and nuclear capability, we are developing a modular concept for nuclear technology that can be installed and commissioned quickly on site because it will be factory built and commissioned. Adoption of our modular approach will reduce cost and project risk by being faster to build. It will be a new way to generate electricity that will be available to the world.

With the first plant able to be up and running by 2030, the UK will remain at the forefront of nuclear power generation technology."

(https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/our-stories/innovation/2017/smr.aspx#application)

Personally I would like to see a Small Modular Molten Salt Reactor (SMMSR)

 

[Muckman]

They are definitely a company I have an interest in

 

[basilio]

I don’t know how you can say it’s going to cost so much when no one has a clue yet
But I do agree in the first article
There dose need to be a standard of manufacturing just like cars or buildings. It as for cost, I just can’t see how anyone can put a price on anything just yet.
Say for instance the UAE and the US order 1000 hitachi he reactors driving the price down rapidly and starting mass production and perfecting standardisation. Then prices will come down.
I’m not saying we go out and buy one right now. But give it a few years, companies like nuscale will have cheep alternatives for our decommissioned coal plants. That’s there business model.

It's well worth putting some time into the first paper Muckman. It should become very clear that the economies of scale of building many SMR's are still unlikely to see final costs reduced to any cost effective levels compared to current alternatives.

There are also engineering constraints on the processes which will put a high floor under the costs. In the best case scenario parts won't be mass produced in the tens of thousands but rather the hundreds.

And finally. The big one. The companies that intend to make these units don't get out of bed for less than $10m a day. The profit expectation, the executive cost bottom line are all written history. Thi industry is never cheap.

 

[basilio]

Tall Corporate stories from Nu Scale.

Corporate spin #2: NuScale Power

US company NuScale Power has put in a submission to the federal nuclear inquiry, estimating a first-of-a-kind cost for its SMR design of US$4.35 billion / gigawatt (GW) and an nth-of-a-kind cost of US$3.6 billion / GW.

NuScale doesn’t provide a $/MWh estimate in its submission, but the company has previously said it is targeting a cost of US$65/MWh for its first SMR plant. That is 2.4 lower than the US$155/MWh (A$225/MWh) estimate based on the NuScale design in a report by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff prepared for the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission.

NuScale’s cost estimates should be regarded as promotional and will continue to drop – unless and until the company actually builds an SMR. The estimated cost of power from NuScale’s non-existent SMRs fell from US$98-$108/MWh in 2015 to US$65/MWh by mid-2018. The company announced with some fanfare in 2018 that it had worked out how to make its SMRs almost 20% cheaper – by making them almost 20% bigger!

Lazard estimates costs of US$112-189/MWh for electricity from large nuclear plants. NuScale’s claim that its electricity will be 2-3 times cheaper than that from large nuclear plants is implausible. And even if NuScale achieved costs of US$65/MWh, that would still be higher than Lazard’s figures for wind power (US$29-56) and utility-scale solar (US$36-46).

Likewise, NuScale’s construction construction cost estimate of US$4.35 billion / GW is implausible. The latest cost estimate for the two AP1000 reactors under construction in the US state of Georgia (the only reactors under construction in the US) is US$12.3-13.6 billion / GW.

NuScale’s target is just one-third of that cost – despite the unavoidable diseconomies of scale and despite the fact that every independent assessment concludes that SMRs will be more expensive to build (per GW) than large reactors.

Further, the modular factory-line production techniques now being championed by NuScale were trialled with the AP1000 reactor project in South Carolina – a project that was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least US$9 billion.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/big-claims-and-corporate-spin-about-small-nuclear-reactor-costs-65726/

 

[basilio]

Worth checking out.
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE ROYAL COMMISSION FINAL REPORT

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS AND INITIAL BUSINESS CASE – ESTABLISHING A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT AND SYSTEMS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA

http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/app/uploads/2016/05/WSP-Parsons-Brinckerhoff-Report.pdf

 

[sptrawler]

Worth checking out.
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE ROYAL COMMISSION FINAL REPORT

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS AND INITIAL BUSINESS CASE – ESTABLISHING A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT AND SYSTEMS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA

http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/app/uploads/2016/05/WSP-Parsons-Brinckerhoff-Report.pdf

There are quite a few being built around the world, interesting article.

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

There are quite a few being built around the world, interesting article.

A 2019 UK government independent report for the Market and Technical Assessment of Micro Nuclear Reactors have found them to be feasible in the UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/market-and-technical-assessment-of-micro-nuclear-reactors

 

[SirRumpole]

And as I pointed out as well you can’t contemplate an option when there is no option yet.
Imagine if AGL announced that they are purchasing 50 hitachi GE modular reactors, stock market would crash, everyone would go in a panic buy, Australia would go in a nuclear panic mode. All on a product that doesn’t exist yet. Not to mention the nuclear ban is still in place so for any company to even suggest to start in vestments in a nuclear industry in Australia would seem very suspicious. So it’s obvious no company is going to release any announcements to have any interest or investments for a nuclear reactor. Im hearing 2022 will be the time of the modular reactor.

Nuclear reactors cannot currently be built in Australia under any Federal or State law, and I see no prospect of that changing any time soon.

N.R's built by private companies in Oz are a pipe dream, Labor and the Greens will block it, and you have to ask why any Coalition members would support it, looking for a cosy job on a Board perhaps ?

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

Nuclear reactors cannot currently be built in Australia under any Federal or State law, and I see no prospect of that changing any time soon.

N.R's built by private companies in Oz are a pipe dream, Labor and the Greens will block it, and you have to ask why any Coalition members would support it, looking for a cosy job on a Board perhaps ?

Thank you for highlighting the stupidity of the nuclear prohibition in Australia!

I am very sure that there have been many Labor and Greens politicians that have travelled to many European countries for their holidays; European countries that have nuclear power!

I recall Sarah Hanson-Young traveling to Switzerland for Davos, or for some other global function. If the Greens and Labor were so against nuclear energy, then why do they travel to countries that have it?

I thought we are all supposed to be scared of nuclear energy?

 

[Muckman]

I think with everything going on right now, if they passed the nuclear ban no one would even notice lol

 

[Muckman]

Putting hypotheticals aside, how does everyone see the Shidao Bay Nuclear Power Plant. Is it too soon to call it a success story?
16 billion dollars, construction time of 10 years not to mention the Fukushima incident had made huge delays.

Was this a big flop ?

 

[Smurf1976]

that is why lowering of battery storage costs to less than $100k/whr should be the turning point in economic analayis of renewable energy/ back up vs other options.

Agreed and all of these things should be seen as fluid in terms of relative costs.

Different materials, different countries where things are produced, different land requirements, different labour requirements and so on. Change any one input cost and it doesn't simply change the cost as such but it also changes relativities between the options.

Even using a very similar fuel that can be the case. For example, a comparison of Bayswater (NSW) with Loy Yang A (Victoria). Both are coal-fired plants brought into operation during the mid-1980's under government ownership and both are currently owned by AGL.

Bayswater has a capacity of 2640 MW versus 2210 MW at Loy Yang A. So not identical but very similar. Both stations comprise 4 generating units.

Bayswater burns black coal which has an export value and as such is worth the commodity price of the coal plus the cost of transporting it to the power station.

Loy Yang A uses low grade coal from a mine right next to the power station. The coal is well below export grade specifications, indeed it's about 58% water "as mined", and has zero value as a commodity as there's simply no market for coal like that. The cost of the coal is that of mining it plus royalties to the Victorian state government. Transport cost is trivial - it goes on a conveyor belt in the mine and that belt runs straight to the power station, no trains or trucks required.

Due to the coal moisture content, boilers at Loy Yang are physically more than twice the size of those at Bayswater per unit of output. So that's more steel used in construction, more labour, more cranes and so on to build it, etc. It's also more to maintain and, noting that all coal contains ash, clean.

The lower energy density of coal at Loy Yang also means everything else is scaled up simply to handle the greater volume of material. So larger conveyors, larger mills (which crush the coal) and so on. More materials to build all that stuff, more materials and labour to maintain it, even a warehouse storing spare parts needs to be larger.

So everything costs more at Loy Yang except that the coal is worthless, that's the one thing massively in its favour which offsets the other costs of more materials, labour, maintenance etc.

Change any one input cost there, so labour or steel or the commodity price of black coal and it changes not only the total cost but it also changes the relativity between the two stations. Two stations with a very similar output, built at the same time and with the same owner.

Now throw gas, hydro, wind and so on into the mix and it becomes far more complex. Change the cost of steel for example and there's a different amount of steel per unit of output in a gas turbine versus a wind farm.

Also cost changes may result in design changes. For example there's quite a few ways a dam can be built including methods which use practically no concrete. If cement becomes expensive, or the cost to transport it is expensive, then that of itself may prompt a radically different approach to design of the dam so as to enable the use of some cheaper material.

Even just using gas or oil as the fuel there's more than one way to go about it and different cost inputs for open cycle turbines, combined cycle or reciprocating engines. How the plant is intended to be used (base load versus peak) and the cost of those inputs (fuel, labour, equipment etc) will influence the decision as to the most economical plant type.

So it's all variable and with that in mind I'm cautious as to what's about to happen given the pandemic and overall circumstances. It wouldn't seem out of the question that we see significant shifts in exchange rates, material costs, equipment costs and labour in the aftermath of it all.

As one example, solar panels (largely imported from China) versus the locally sourced labour to install them or indeed anything. Given tensions with China, and mass unemployment, it wouldn't seem out of the question that there's a shift in the relative costs there and that then influences the non-solar options also.