Comment by Kon5ole
15 hours ago
>That includes paying principal and interest on the construction loans, right?
One would think! But no, all US plants except Vogtle and Watts are paid off long ago.
Now, why did you just throw that out there without checking? Are you not interested in knowing the truth, you just want to argue for nuclear no matter what the facts say?
If so, let me assure you that neither one of us will enjoy a continued discourse on the topic.
Just have to say though - that the Swedish reactors were closed because electricity was cheap is the point. Sweden basically stated that even when paid off, nuclear can't survive if electricity is cheap. But surely we, the taxpayers and businesses and industries, want it to be cheap?
> Now, why did you just throw that out there without checking?
Because it can't possibly be (and isn't) an accurate claim for the recent plants with modern construction costs. Whereas if you're comparing the 1970s construction costs to the modern day operating costs to imply that the operating costs are high, that's obviously not a useful comparison to begin with.
> But surely we, the taxpayers and businesses and industries, want it to be cheap?
We might want it to be free, but we also want some other things, like "doesn't burn carbon" and "can reliably heat your house on a cloudy winter night". And then the question is, what's the most economical way to get those things?
>Whereas if you're comparing the 1970s construction costs to the modern day operating costs to imply that the operating costs are high, that's obviously not a useful comparison to begin with.
If we learn that even if we make new nuclear as cheap as old nuclear, it's is still not cheap enough, surely it is a very useful comparison?
It's not useful if the goal is to defend nuclear at all costs, I'll give you that, but that's not a worthy goal.
>And then the question is, what's the most economical way to get those things?
Absolutely, and that's why finding out the real, actual truth of the costs is very important.
If you add the true cost to society from things like Sellafield, Asse II, the interest-free loans, the army personnel and national labs handling waste, the decades of countermeasures for Chernobyl in dozens of countries and so on - if you add upp all that, perhaps generating e-fuel is actually cheaper than nuclear?
If not already, the Chinese have taught us that once you get the wheels rolling, prices decimate pretty rapidly. They made solar and batteries viable, maybe we could do e-fuels?
Synthetic fuel, batteries everywhere, pumped storage, geothermal, gravity, pressurized air, heated salt - maybe all of those are actually cheaper than nuclear, if we really add up ALL the costs of nuclear?
Yes, and this is true already without adding all societal costs up, which is why there is not much investement in nuclear.
Also one correction: It was Germany that get the wheels rolling regarding renewables, although China then took over.
> If we learn that even if we make new nuclear as cheap as old nuclear, it's is still not cheap enough, surely it is a very useful comparison?
Only that's not what you're showing at all, because then you're comparing the existing operating costs to a construction cost that was very low. I mean we don't have to try to measure this in hotdogs per football field, the operating cost of US nuclear plants is a published number:
https://www.nei.org/getContentAsset/47fa8caa-9b0d-4029-932c-...
US nuclear plant 2025 operating costs (20.82/MWh) + fuel costs (5.95/MWh) together 26.77/MWh, i.e. 0.02677/kWh. Where would this measure as too high?
> If not already, the Chinese have taught us that once you get the wheels rolling, prices decimate pretty rapidly. They made solar and batteries viable, maybe we could do e-fuels?
They made solar viable during the day and batteries viable during the price spike at the early evening misalignment between demand and solar output. That's actually very useful, but it doesn't get you "how do you reliably power heat pumps to heat your house at night in winter". Proposing e-fuels is basically saying we should use a battery with higher conversion losses. That's inherently going to be complicated and expensive. On top of that it doesn't get you out of solar output being much lower in the winter.
> if we really add up ALL the costs of nuclear?
This is the traditional isolated demand for rigor. Add up all the cost for one thing, don't do it for any of the others.
Solar panels are semiconductors, so if you want to count things like Sellafield or Asse II (neither of which is in the US) against nuclear, don't you then have to count all the Superfund sites left behind from semiconductor manufacturing in Silicon Valley against solar?
And do we even need to enumerate the fossil fuel industries? They're the ones whose pictures are in the dictionary when you look up externalized costs and pollution.
If you want to account for all the costs then account for all the costs.
> Now, why did you just throw that out there without checking? Are you not interested in knowing the truth, you just want to argue for nuclear no matter what the facts say?
I'm genuinely interested, can you share the numbers you're referencing? It's surprising to me that a massive project like a nuclear reactor costs 1/3 of the inflation-adjusted total construction cost per year in upkeep. I'm not saying you're wrong, just the easy way to prove your point would be to provide some numbers.
Not OP but Lazard has published the marginal cost of existing, paid off nuclear at 29 per MWh. Someone in this discussion who sounds pro-nuclear shared almost the exact same number.
Lazard suggests the low end for new nuclear in the US is 131 per MWH (over a 60-80 year life at 97% capacity factor).
So, assuming that old nuclear cost the same amount as new nuclear that's about 23%. If you assume nuclear is more expensive today, which everyone appears to agree on, then you easily get to 1/3rd of the cost being the marginal cost of running nuclear when the original build is paid off (more if a substantial refit is needed, see France).