Costs of new nuclear power plants are still the realm of speculation.
A new study appearing in the April 1 issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology notes, however, that the country's history of unexpected cost overruns when building nuclear plants should sound a cautionary note for power companies that nuclear power may not be financially attractive.
We will only find out the real costs of new nuclear power plants in the United States when new plants get built here. Costs in countries which have more regulated electric markets can provide at best rough equivalents. Plus, international (and even regional) differences in labor costs and materials costs make international comparisons even more difficult.
One of the study co-authors says even costs for existing US nuclear plants are hard for researchers to get access to.
"For energy security and carbon emission concerns, nuclear power is very much back on the national and international agenda," said study co-author Dan Kammen, UC Berkeley professor of energy and resources and of public policy. "To evaluate nuclear power's future, it is critical that we understand what the costs and the risks of this technology have been. To this point, it has been very difficult to obtain an accurate set of costs from the U. S. fleet of nuclear power plants."
The study, conducted by a research team from Georgetown University, Stanford University and UC Berkeley, analyzes the costs of electricity from existing U.S. nuclear reactors and discusses the possibility for cost "surprises" in new energy technologies, including next-generation nuclear power.
What they found was a range of electricity costs, from 3 cents per kilowatt hour to nearly 14 cents per kilowatt hour, with the higher costs attributed to such problems as poor plant operation or unanticipated security costs.
At 3 cents per kwh nuclear would beat coal even before coal gets saddled with future tougher emissions restrictions. But we aren't going to know whether nuclear with the latest reactor designs can be that cheap until a few of those designs get built.
If the public becomes less tolerant of emissions from coal plants then expect to see more announcements of plans to build more nukes. For the record: I expect that as living standards rise and as research fleshes out the health costs of fossil fuels emissions the public will become less tolerant of coal plant emissions. As that happens the economics of nuclear power will become more attractive to electric utilities.
By Randall Parker at 2007 April 06 01:33 PM Energy Nuclear | TrackBackSome US gov't bills that are being considered to help clean up coal and another to help get more nuclear.
Senator Carpers (Clean Air Planning Act of 2006)
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2007/04/support-clean-air-bills-to-save.html
Also the 2007 Cap and Trade bill
http://feinstein.senate.gov/07releases/r-elec-sector-intro.htm
Also, california AB719 to lift the ban on nuclear power plants
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2007/04/california-considering-bill-to-lift.html
Isn't CO2 a natural product of nature? Animals and humans exhale CO2. In which case, how can it be classified as a pollutant?
The issue is not when you produce a little more CO2 but when you add 6 billion tons a year and effect climate and the environment (make plants produce more pollen etc... which gives me and millions of others more allergies) then you have a pollutant.
Just like if we were breathing air with over 15% concentration of CO2 we would die even if it was natural.
Just cause something is "natural" it does not mean we could not have too much of it. Too much water we can drown. Too much oxygen and things can spontaneously catch fire. etc...
Kurt9 and Brian Wang:
Fossil fuel such as coal or petroleum is mined from underground, and hence burning fossil fuel would add that much NEW carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. When plants and animals (including people) exhale, they are merely re-cycling the carbon that they took from the surface of the earth, not from underground.
But separately, the cost of electricity has different implications for different uses: If you use electricity from nuclear power to charge pure electric car batteries, then even 15 cents per kilowatt is more economical than burning gasoline. For instance, if you take one gallon of gasoline in a power plant instead of coal to spin a turbine to make electricity and then charge a pure electric car battery with this electricity, then the efficiency you get would be more than 100 miles per gallon. There are already sport utility vehicles that can go 250 miles per charge, but these are still very expensive. By 2010 the prices of electric vehicles will decline because of the mass produced batteries, and the range of these batteries will almost certainly be increased to 400 miles per charge. Thus if we had 250 million pure electric cars in the United States (which can happen by 2020), then it would take 200 new nuclear plants to charge these cars, which is equivalent to increasing the present electrical capacity by 20 %. The latter calculations about how many nuclear reactors would be needed to charge 250 million cars, was based on the fact that the average nuclear plant has a capacity of 1000 Megawatts, and for 250 million cars, 200,000 Megawatts would be enough. ( 1 Joule = 1kg x 1 meter, and 1 Watt = 1 Joule x 1 second.) Therefore, if we switch to pure electric cars by 2020, then building 200 nuclear plants in the United States for pure electric cars would totally eliminate to import oil, and if we start building 15 reactors per year immediately in the United States, then we will end up with 200 new reactors by 2020. The cost of building 20 reactors per year is nothing for the United States, if we compare this to all the waste we have, especially the $650 billion annual foreign trade deficit. It costs about $1 billion to $2 billion to build a reactor in average. Spending $40 billion per year to build 20 reactors every year, is very possible.
I am pro-nuclear. theoretically affordable is different from feasible business and technology wise.
Optimistically it will take until 2009 to get the first new nuclear plant licensed in the USA. There will be about 27 applications for new plants from now until 2009. It will take 4-7 years to build each plant. We could up-power the existing plants by 50% over the next 13 years. Again optimistically. Some older plants will get shut down. We would be quite lucky to have a net +50 plants for 2020 and a total +140MW including up-powering. There is training needed for people to build and work in those plants. I see that being overcome but it can constrain things until 2015-2020. But strong government support and more research could enable mass produceable nuclear plants that take only 3 years to make for 2020-2030 and they could be liquid fluoride thorium versions. We could also replace the coal plants where they are leaving the boiler part of the coal plant and re-using the sites and their rail access and grid connections. This would save money and time.
For electric cars. The US is only buying about 14 million cars and trucks of all kinds each year (65 million worldwide). Right now we have a few thousand electric cars and there are some plans for a few plants so that worldwide by 2015 we might be making 500,000/year worldwide. Plus we could be making 5 million hybrids per year. It takes time to get the new car plants and the supply chain geared up for those plants. Having 15 million all electric cars on american streets by 2020 would be very optimistic. Plus 50 million hybrids again optimistically. There will still be about 400 million fossil fuel vehicles around. The best impact would be to get all of the taxis which are driven 10 times more than normal cars converted over to electric.
Brian Wang,
I agree about the time lags to get the next few plants licensed and built. But suppose that new plants come online by 2016 or 2017 and the utility industry discovers they are cheaper than coal electric. We could see the end of coal electric construction and a huge ramp-up of nuclear so that all capacity increase after that point is non-fossil fuels. I'm expecting natural gas to become too expensive.
As new nukes come online older coal plants could get shifted to use for peak demand and pay higher emissions taxes to prevent them from being used much for baseload. Also, older coal plants could get used as backups for when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.
What do you think the prospects are for up-powering existing nuclear plants?
I do not see training as a problem because the operators for each plant could get trained while the plant is getting constructed. We'll have recorded lectures for most subjects by then. The electric industry could put training lectures and tests on the internet and hire anyone who can pass the tests.
I do not see ramp-up time for car plants as a problem. When the batteries become cheap enough then the auto industry will shift over to all hybrids in 3 or 4 years.
Production capacity is never more than a short term problem. Costs are key. If technologies are developed can reduce costs below other choices then capitalists will figure out how to ramp up production.
It is sad that the infinite cost and price of nuclear power programmes is not realised at all. This even though excellent discussions and articles exist on the non-utilitarian nature of artificial nuclear power. See energy audit of nuclear power programmes: They are net consumers of fossils. When compared to forests, they are forever debtors. See
http://nuclearnecromany.blogspot.com/
.As far as the irreversible harm to living beings now and for those to come, nuclear power is just not acceptable. Its such an immature technology: See the harm nuclear fuel mining, radioactive emissions and radioactive wastes are causing: Radioactive Holocausts: read http://nucleargulfstreamconnect.blogspot.com/
.Economics as if the state of health is concerned is what matters not just absence of disease.
No radioactive emissions allowed. Never.
Regarding "Study See Range Of Possible Nuclear Power Costs" (2007-04-06), there is absolutely no need for nuclear power in the US because there is a simple mature technology that can deliver huge amounts of clean energy without any of the headaches of nuclear power.
I refer to 'concentrating solar power' (CSP), the simple but effective technique of concentrating sunlight using mirrors to create heat, and then using the heat to raise steam and drive turbines and generators, just like a conventional power station. It is possible to store solar heat in melted salts so that electricity generation may continue at night or on cloudy days. This technology has been generating electricity successfully in California since 1985 and half a million Californians currently get their electricity from this source. CSP plants are now being planned or built in many parts of the world.
CSP works best in hot deserts and, of course, these are not always nearby! But it is feasible and economic to transmit solar electricity over very long distances using highly-efficient 'HVDC' transmission lines. With transmission losses at about 3% per 1000 km, solar electricity may be transmitted to anywhere in the US and Canada too. A recent report from the American Solar Energy Society says that CSP plants in the south western states of the US "could provide nearly 7,000 GW of capacity, or ***about seven times the current total US electric capacity***" (emphasis added).
In the 'TRANS-CSP' report commissioned by the German government, it is estimated that CSP electricity, imported from North Africa and the Middle East, could become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe, including the cost of transmission. A large-scale HVDC transmission grid has also been proposed by Airtricity as a means of optimising the use of wind power throughout Europe.
Further information about CSP may be found at www.trec-uk.org.uk and www.trecers.net . Copies of the TRANS-CSP report may be downloaded from www.trec-uk.org.uk/reports.htm . The many problems associated with nuclear power are summarised at www.mng.org.uk/green_house/no_nukes.htm .
Applications for power up-rates are amendments to the operators license.
They take about 12-18 months.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/power-uprates.html
The type of up-rate (making donut shaped fuel and changing the water with nanoparticles for safer operation at higher temperatures) has not been approved yet.
According to Pavel Hejzlar and Mujid Kazimi, the MIT scientists who made the discovery, the new fuel design should be available commercially within 10 year.
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=20260
btw: the regular reactor licensing process
http://www.nei.org/documents/New_Nuclear_Plant_Roadmap.pdf
Brian Wang,
So around the year 2017 the price of nuclear power will take a big drop. Cool.
We can expect other technological advances to lower the cost of nuclear power as well. Ditto for technological advances that'll lower the costs of wind and solar and geothermal. Throw in better battery technology and we can move away from fossil fuels for transportation and for electric generation.
Regarding your report "Study See Range Of Possible Nuclear Power Costs" (2007-04-06), there is absolutely no need for nuclear power in the US (and many other parts of the world) because there is a simple mature technology that can deliver huge amounts of clean energy without any of the headaches of nuclear power.
I refer to 'concentrating solar power' (CSP), the simple but effective technique of concentrating sunlight using mirrors to create heat, and then using the heat to raise steam and drive turbines and generators, just like a conventional power station. It is possible to store solar heat in melted salts so that electricity generation may continue at night or on cloudy days. This technology has been generating electricity successfully in California since 1985 and currently provides power for about 100,000 Californian homes. CSP plants are now being planned or built in many parts of the world.
CSP works best in hot deserts and, of course, these are not always nearby! But it is feasible and economic to transmit solar electricity over very long distances using highly-efficient 'HVDC' transmission lines. With transmission losses at about 3% per 1000 km, solar electricity may be transmitted to most of the US and much of Canada too. A recent report from the American Solar Energy Society says that CSP plants in the south western states of the US "could provide nearly 7,000 GW of capacity, or ***about seven times the current total US electric capacity***" (emphasis added).
In the 'TRANS-CSP' report commissioned by the German government, it is estimated that CSP electricity, imported from North Africa and the Middle East, could become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe, including the cost of transmission. A large-scale HVDC transmission grid has also been proposed by Airtricity as a means of optimising the use of wind power throughout Europe.
Further information about CSP may be found at www.trecers.net and www.trec-uk.org.uk . Copies of the TRANS-CSP report may be downloaded from www.trec-uk.org.uk/reports.htm . The many problems associated with nuclear power are summarised at www.mng.org.uk/green_house/no_nukes.htm .