
Hinkley Point C nuclear plant to run £2.9bn over budget - kieranmaine
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49823305
======
Brakenshire
> Last week, prices for new wind power delivered by 2025 were set at prices as
> low as £40 per megawatt hour. By comparison, power from Hinkley Point C is
> expected to cost £92.50 per megawatt hour

And I don’t think that £92.50 price includes these cost overruns. £92.50/MWh
is the price the government was willing to guarantee, but which left the
developer responsible for cost overruns. But for the next generation plants
the developers want the government to take on the risk.

The £40/MWh offshore wind bids are less than the cost just to run existing gas
plants, mainly the fuel cost, which means you’re actually saving money by
adding wind alongside a gas generator. Such a system will make it difficult to
get above a certain percentage of renewables because of the need for gas
backup, but maybe we should be spending money on developing new storage
technology to facilitate wind and solar with predictable falling costs, rather
than on deploying nuclear where the costs seem to be consistently high.

~~~
cm2187
Does the price for wind power include the cost of storing that power for when
it is actually required including the losses in the process?

~~~
Brakenshire
No, the cost of a combined gas-wind system would be something like £60/MWh, so
that’s what you should be comparing to the nuclear cost, not the £40/MWh
directly.

You need to think of wind as a combined wind and gas system, you use wind when
it's available because it has a very low marginal cost, and then use gas when
it isn't. Luckily capital costs for building gas plants are low, and marginal
costs for buying the fuel are high. That means it isn't expensive to build
plants as backup, which are only going to be used part of the time. You can
use the fuel savings to pay for the capital cost of building the wind farms,
and end up without significant extra expenditure, or even saving money. The
same can also apply to solar.

It's more difficult if the backup is coal, though, there the balance is more
towards capital cost, not marginal cost, so there is a much less leeway to
defray fuel costs using renewables.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
As we're building out so much offshore wind now, I have to wonder how much
Dinorwig style pumped storage the cost of Hinkley C could have got us.
Dinorwig was 10TWh for £400m in 1984, and had "only" taken ten years to build.
No clue at all what that might cost now as it'll undoubtedly be far beyond
simple inflation.

If we're serious about climate, we have to reduce use of gas too.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
There aren’t many places in the UK suitable for pumped storage, I seem to
remember Dinorwig was one of only two suitable sites identified.

------
DrScientist
Hinkley has long interesting history [1] - only 3 years ago the company
building it (EDF) weren't sure about whether they should go ahead.

While it seems odd that over 50 years ago we could build them quickly, I
suspect one of the main drivers of cost is the need to make them bomb proof
_sic_ from a safety point of view.

With the sums involved, you'd have to say wouldn't the money be better spent
in research on alternatives? Either renewable/energy storage systems, or more
money for nuclear fusion rather than 20 million here and there[2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station)
[2] [https://www.power-technology.com/news/uk-
pledges-20m-nuclear...](https://www.power-technology.com/news/uk-
pledges-20m-nuclear-fusion-technologies-2018-budget/)

~~~
redwood
Fair but the UK has a lot of dirty baseload power to replace too.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-24823641](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-24823641)
Coal is being replaced by natural gas as with everywhere but a ways to go.

~~~
DrScientist
What's the point of a stop-gap that's too late?

Yes the UK has a supply/demand issue - and nuclear is great for base load from
a grid point of view - however given the delays will Hinkley actually be
relevant by the time it's operational?

Perhaps better to spend money on reduction of demand, other generation
mechanisms and modernizing the grid to support more distributed generation and
storage?

One of the under discussed points about fission is the fuel is not renewable -
it's dug out of the ground from potentially politically unstable sources.

~~~
credit_guy
> What's the point of a stop-gap that's too late?

The point: we should not be aiming for net-zero energy, we should be aiming
for net-zero energy, and a ten or a hundred fold increase in generation.

~~~
DrScientist
What do we need a 10-100 fold increase in generation for? Have you got a
reference?

I can see the move from gas to electricity for domestic heating and the move
from fossil fuels to electric transport.

Even if you ignore the offset against continuing de-industrialization and
increasing efficiency, it's surely not going to be that level?

~~~
credit_guy
> What do we need a 10-100 fold increase in generation for? Have you got a
> reference?

"The US consumes 25% of the world's energy with a share of global GDP at 22%
and a share of the world population at 4.6%" [1]

This means the US consumes 5.4 more energy per capita than the average human
on Earth. If you hope for a world where the non-US population reaches the same
life standard as the US, you need to increase the energy production by this
factor.

Now, in the US, only 38% of the energy consumption is electricity generation
[2]. The rest is tranportation, industrial, residential and commercial
sectors. Making the huge assumption that you can replace every BTU in these
other sectors with one BTU of electricity, you would need to increase the
electricity production by another factor of 2.6. More realistically, any
replacement of a non-electricity BTU with some electric energy will have an
efficiency well below 100%, let's say 30%. You then need a factor of 6.4.

So far we get to a total factor of 5.4 x 6.4 = 35. Quite close to the
(logarithmic) mid-point between 10 and 100, wouldn't you say?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#By_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#By_country)

[2] [https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-
facts/](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/)

~~~
DrScientist
>If you hope for a world where the non-US population reaches the same life
standard as the US, you need to increase the energy production by this factor.

I think this is a mistake - the US is energy wasteful compared to places like
Europe which has a similar standard of living.

There is a strong emphasis on energy efficiency in Europe, plus higher density
living meaning more efficient transport etc.

In the [1] wiki page you quoted it shows that the US is ~2 fold worse at
energy efficiency than leading European countries and the trend in Europe is
to be increasingly efficient.

If you build in energy efficiency during the development of countries, in
theory the savings could be even greater.

In terms of US quality of life, it's not just energy consumption that drives
it, it's available natural resources and the hegemony of the dollar in world
markets.

ie there are large contributions from other factors to US GDP that you can't
match by increasing energy use - ie the real underlying US productivity per
energy unit is even worse that it appears.

In summary the US is a bit of an outlier not a benchmark.

Finally - obviously the original story is in the context of UK supply - not
world - so there was some misunderstanding on what your numbers applied to.

------
growlist
I can't help thinking we'd be better off with lots of smaller projects. At
least then the possibility for mega-overruns is limited. And I'm not sure the
economies of scale argument holds water when the supposed savings almost
always seem to miraculously evaporate to be replaced by cost overruns and
extra profits for the contractors.

~~~
petee
Arguably, lots of smaller projects means lots more contractors, duplicated
work and parts -- every location needs a buffer zone, fencing, security,
printer cartridges, and coffee, to name a few mundane costs

I also wonder how that would affect the chances of an accident - instead of
inspecting one cooling system, you're checking 20, and with 19 more parts to
potentially fail

~~~
hobofan
> I also wonder how that would affect the chances of an accident - instead of
> inspecting one cooling system, you're checking 20, and with 19 more parts to
> potentially fail

But each of those failures would be pretty unspectacular with little to no
impact on the environment or the stability of the power grid. Which in turn
allows you to use lower cost (automated) failure detection systems.

------
Knufen
I Will try to formulate my argument very carefully. There is quite a lot of
discussion about the price of nuclear. And tho it might be more expensive than
wind and solar it also extremely environmentally clean when done right (waste
is honestly not that big of a problem). So it is great option for giving
relatively cheap energy but more importantly it gives us a very stable
baseload which a lot of people underestimate.

------
sunkenvicar
Hinkley and Vogtle are the first Gen 3 reactors. It would be surprising if
construction was fast and easy.

When we build more reactors our processes will improve. Just like Korea,
Japan, and France.

------
ekingr
Just to put it in perspective, the same model of EPR (European Pressurized
Reactor) being build at Flamanville in France is 10 years late (x3 vs 5 years
initial estimate) and €8bn over budget (x3.5 vs €3bn initial budget). The
Finnish one is also massively struggling.

Fortunately the Chinese ones in Taishan were delivered quite on time & budget
this year.

It's sad to see all these issues with execution, doing a bad press for nuclear
- while we really need more of it to decarbonize our electricity (at least in
the mid-term).

~~~
gridlockd
My theory is that companies in the west don't have much of an incentive to
actually build plants to completion, so they don't.

In this political climate, it is unlikely that another reactor will ever be
commissioned, operating a plant is an ongoing risk that can be avoided by
never even going online.

Might as well keep the paychecks for everyone coming for a while, then sail
smoothly into inevitable bankruptcy.

~~~
Brakenshire
“In this political climate, it is unlikely that another reactor will ever be
commissioned”

That’s nonsense, the UK is right in the middle of commissioning 5-10 new
nuclear reactors, if Areva/EDF could demonstrate an ability to build these
plants on budget there’s a huge market opportunity.

~~~
gridlockd
> That’s nonsense, the UK is right in the middle of commissioning 5-10 new
> nuclear reactors, ...

I'm not talking about the reactors that already have been or will be
commissioned soon. I'm talking about the situation in 10 years when these
reactors are supposed to be finished.

Let's see what the situation is like _today_ :

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_nuclear_power_station...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_nuclear_power_stations_in_the_United_Kingdom)

Hinkley B - under construction, way over budget already

Oldbury and Wylfa Newydd - shelved

Moorside - failed

Bradwell B - Chinese venture

That leaves Sizewell C, to be completed in 2031.

That's just a _not_ a good trend for western companies.

> ...if Areva/EDF could demonstrate an ability to build these plants on budget
> there’s a huge market opportunity.

If private companies need to be dragged in with tons of incentives just to get
involved, that doesn't sound like a great opportunity at all.

------
nickik
If you build nuclear power-plants as bespoke one time builds, they will never
be cost competitive.

This is the problem with the approche taken in the Western world for nuclear.
A few were built a long time ago, then the industry mostly went in decline and
then in the modern day a few individual projects were greenlit.

Nuclear was always only cost effective when you build many of them. As in the
early expention of US nuclear, or in France.

Nuclear in an effect produce to much power, a country like Switzerland (where
I am from) would only need to build one every 10-20 years for all the
electicity needs and that will never be cost effective.

Even worse, each country historically has its own designs that they want to
push. Today you could probebly be cost competitve if you let China or South
Korea bill some reactors, but that will not happen in the West. France,
Britain, US, Russia, Germany all want or wanted their own reactors.

The nuclear industry will not be saved by these mega projects, but if its
safed at all, it will be newer reactors that can be build smaller. The pure
size, complexity and regulatory requirments, plus the interest rate absolutly
kill anybody that is trying to build a Gen III reactor.

I love nuclear and had envoirmental movement focused on pushed for them we
would have had a viable solution for climate change back then. We see this in
France, they had green power for almost as long as the debate existed and
provided a clear model that somehow nobody else adopted rather talking about
wind and solar for decades.

Wind and Solar are still very questionable while nuclear was ready 30 years
ago. Now it is slowly changing but we lost lots of time.

------
Merrill
There appear to be 48 nuclear plants under construction. Most are in Eastern
Europe and Asia. In North America and Western Europe the main activity is life
extension and uprate projects. [https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-
library/current-an...](https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-
library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx)

------
woodandsteel
It seems to me much of the problem is that the nuclear energy industry was
build up in the old days of fossil fuel electric utilities, and so is modeled
to fit into that. It just isn't structured right for the new world of global
climate change, renewable energy, and electricity storage.

Maybe one of the new nuclear technologies that is being worked on will turn
out to be a help in the new world. But I am not going to wait.

------
epistasis
Hey, not too bad, at least for nuclear.

If you look back at the history of nuclear construction, at least in the US,
late and massively over budget is the norm. Late and over budget are closely
tied together, of course, as it's all about project management and that's not
trivial at this scale. This sort of typical overrun is why US utilities
stopped building more nuclear in the 80s.

~~~
kryogen1c
> This sort of typical overrun is why US utilities stopped building more
> nuclear in the 80s.

Thats some revisionist history to fit the current zeitgeist, right there.

What stopped nuclear construction in the United States was the complete
overreaction to Three Mile Island and the disaster at Chernobyl

~~~
pfdietz
Nuclear had started running off the rails as early as 1968. TMI was just the
cherry on top of the financial crap sundae.

[http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2016/02/16/nuclear-plant-cost-
esca...](http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2016/02/16/nuclear-plant-cost-escalation-a-
look-back-and-ahead/)

The major regulatory hit that that first wave of US nuclear plants took wasn't
specific to nuclear: the Calvert Cliffs decision held that the National
Environmental Policy Act applied broadly, including to the regulatory process
of the AEC.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvert_Cliffs_Coordinating_Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvert_Cliffs_Coordinating_Committee,_Inc._v._Atomic_Energy_Commission)

~~~
kryogen1c
Boy do i appear to be wrong. This was not my underatanding at all.

As you and siblings pointed out, nuclear seems to have been frought with
problems for a long time.

Wikipedia, if it is to be believed, paints an even more dire picture than you
say:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States)

I find this so counterintuitive having safely operated naval nuclear reactors.
More research is needed from me!

~~~
manfredo
Your comment above was not entirely wrong. The majority of nuclear energy's
costs are overhead costs of plant construction. If a plant is not operated for
its intended service life, $/MWH will skyrocket. Opposition to nuclear power
(which existed prior to Three Mile Island, and increased thereafter) caused
plants to be closed prematurely. This drove up the effective cost of nuclear
energy, fueling the push for more closures on the basis of higher costs, and
so on.

Curiously, these sorts of high nuclear costs are not experienced by every
country. France's electricity (70-80% nuclear) is a fraction of the cost of
Germany's electricity production, while simultaneously emitting less carbon.
Countries like South Korea, and Japan (until they cancelled nuclear plants
following the tsunami) had cost effective nuclear industries. Cost overruns
happened, but not as large as compared to the US. The main explanations for
this that I have encountered is that US nuclear plants have tended to be one-
off projects, whereas other countries implemented serialized production of a
handful of designs. Building 10 instances of the same plant is easier than
building 10 different plants.

~~~
pfdietz
Germany decided, as an act of global charity, to buy renewables when they were
much more expensive (they were the top global market for PV ten years ago,
when PV was far more expensive than it is now), to drive them down their
learning curves. This was spectacularly successful, but they are still paying
for that. It says nothing about what someone else would have to pay NOW to
install the same renewable capacity.

At the same time, France has tried to get its nuclear industry going again
with new reactors, to disastrous result.

So if you want to build energy infrastructure in 1980, sure, go ahead and
choose nuclear over renewables. If you want to do it now, that choice would be
crazy.

~~~
manfredo
It was not spectacularly successful. Germany continues to pollute more than
France, with roughly 65% of its electricity generation coming from fossil
fuels [1]. In France, nuclear power generates 72% of electricity and fossil
fuels account for 9% [2]. And yet, Germans pay twice the rate of France for
electricity. It is the worst of both worlds: higher costs and higher carbon
emissions.

> So if you want to build energy infrastructure in 1980, sure, go ahead and
> choose nuclear over renewables. If you want to do it now, that choice would
> be crazy.

Did technology magically get worse from 1980? Did the French somehow forget
how to build power plants? Nuclear energy projects were cheap during the 1980s
because France built a large number of a handful of plant designs. Modern
plants are usually one-off projects with a single digit number of plants built
of a given design. Building a dozen of the same reactors, turbines, etc. is
much cheaper than building one. Political opposition has meant that only small
allocations of funds have been dedicated towards nuclear power, so serialized
production has not been done recently.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France)

~~~
pfdietz
It was spectacularly successful in driving down the cost of PV.

> Did technology magically get worse from 1980?

Nothing magic about what happened. Did you expect the relative rankings of
technologies to remain fixed and unchanging across the decades?

Nuclear is now a clear loser technology, far more expensive than renewables.
Why would anyone want to invest now in the loser technology? What weird
psychological phenomenon is driving this fixation?

~~~
manfredo
The only measures in which intermittent sources beat nuclear is nameplate
capacity. Net generation is a fraction of that for intermittent sources. The
capacity factor (as in, what percentage of it's nameplate capacity is actually
generates in real world use cases) of intermittent sources is low,1/4 and 1/3
for solar and wind. For nuclear it's over 90% [1].

People keep saying that intermittent sources are winners and that nuclear is a
losing technology. Real world experience says otherwise. The only way
intermittent sources are feasible is with cheap high capacity energy storage,
which has never been built. In fact, Germany has had to build _more_ fossil
fuel plants following the closure of nuclear facilities. If we want to replace
all electricity generation with carbon free sources nuclear is the only known
way to do that (besides geography-dependent sources like hydroelectricity and
geothermal power). If there's some psychological fixation at hand here, it's
the aversion to nuclear power and draw to intermittent sources despite the
unsolved fundamental limitations of the latter.

1\. [https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-
capacity](https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity)

~~~
pfdietz
Not sure what you mean by "nameplate capacity there", but renewables beat
nuclear in at least three ways:

The first is Levelized Cost of Energy (total cost, divided by total energy
generated.) For solar and wind this is current 3-4x better than new nuclear
construction. This is an enormous difference.

The second is time to market. Renewables can be brought online much faster
than a nuclear plant. This (along with staged introduction) allows renewables
to track actual demand rather than needing to be able to predict future
demand. Failure to do that was the cause of much utility pain in the first
nuclear era, including the bankruptcy of the WPPSS ("Whoops"). Demand for
electricity suddenly stopped growing. The same dynamic occurred more recently
as the "nuclear renaissance" collided with suddenly cheap natural gas.

The final metric by which renewables are destroying nuclear is rate of
improvement. Renewables have shown strong and consistent experience effects.
Solar improves in cost by ~20% for each doubling of cumulative installed
capacity. Nuclear, on the other hand, has not consistently shown any
experience effects. This is likely related to the fundamental complexity of
large, integrated nuclear systems, vs. the improvement trends seen in design
and manufacture of small, highly replicated systems (a phenomenon well known
in Silicon Valley).

~~~
manfredo
Nameplate capacity is the generated capacity without accounting for
intermittency in power generation. The reality is, plants do not generate
their full capacity for the entirety of their operation.

> The second is time to market. Renewables can be brought online much faster
> than a nuclear plant. This (along with staged introduction) allows
> renewables to track actual demand rather than needing to be able to predict
> future demand. Failure to do that was the cause of much utility pain in the
> first nuclear era, including the bankruptcy of the WPPSS ("Whoops"). Demand
> for electricity suddenly stopped growing. The same dynamic occurred more
> recently as the "nuclear renaissance" collided with suddenly cheap natural
> gas.

You're hand-waving away the fact that intermittent sources are exactly that:
intermittent. And what happens when the demand for energy occurs when the
renewable supply of energy is not available? Germany and California both
encountered the same problem, and they both used the same solution: use fossil
fuels. That is why Germany's carbon emissions have remained flat for the last
decade [1] despite renewable power generation doubling in the same period of
time[2]. It doesn't matter how much energy wind and solar produces if you need
to revert to hydrocarbons in the evening.

The levels of energy storage necessary to run an electrical entirely on
renewable energy remain the stuff of science fiction. Batteries are possible,
but using those would cause the price of electric vehicles to increase
considerably and ensure that hydrocarbons remain the primary fuel for cars.
California uses hydroelectric storage, but the efficiency is extremely low
(over 70% energy lost).

By comparison, nuclear plants provide continuous output throughout the day.
You paint this as a negative, when it's really not. If excess power is
generated, then use that excess power to sequester carbon. Too much energy is
an easy problem to solve, too little energy is not.

> The final metric by which renewables are destroying nuclear is rate of
> improvement. Renewables have shown strong and consistent experience effects.
> Solar improves in cost by ~20% for each doubling of cumulative installed
> capacity. Nuclear, on the other hand, has not consistently shown any
> experience effects. This is likely related to the fundamental complexity of
> large, integrated nuclear systems, vs. the improvement trends seen in design
> and manufacture of small, highly replicated systems (a phenomenon well known
> in Silicon Valley).

This is exactly that I explained in my comment above. Most nuclear power in
the United States has been one-off projects to the public's unwillingness to
see widespread adoption. By comparison, countries that used serialized plant
designs (most famously, France) saw much cheaper nuclear power construction.
Yes, replicated designs are much cheaper to build than unique designs. That is
why nuclear power was so cost-effective in France while so much more expensive
in the United States.

The reality is that there are only two proven methods of powering nations with
carbon-free energy: Geographically dependent solutions like hydroelectric
power and geothermal power. And nuclear power.

1\. [https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/11/09/germany-is-
missi...](https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/11/09/germany-is-missing-its-
emissions-targets)

2\.
[https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/128...](https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/1280-width/images/2019/09/articles/body/20190921_euc761.png)

~~~
pfdietz
No, I'm not handwaving, I'm demonstrating that your claim that renewables only
advantage is "nameplate capacity" (which is nonsensical on its face; nameplate
capacity of either source can be as high as you want; did you mean cost per
nameplate capacity?) was wrong, by giving three other metrics by which
renewables are superior.

Intermittency has a cost, but the enormous levelized cost advantage of
renewables is already dooming nuclear. There's a reason no merchant nuclear
plants are being built -- it would be economically ludicrous to do so. I'll
believe what the selfish investors who want to make money are doing before I
believe what you think they should be doing.

~~~
manfredo
If you don't know what a term means, try searching for the definition:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nameplate_capacity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nameplate_capacity)

First of all, your claim that countries aren't building new nuclear plants is
factually incorrect. China, Korea, and other countries are continuing to build
nuclear plants. What you really mean to say is that few Western countries are
building nuclear plants, and that's primarily due to an unwillingness to build
nuclear plants at any significant scale. Nuclear loses not because it is
uncompetitive with solar and wind, but because it is uncompetitive with fossil
fuels and because of irrational nuclear phobia that leads to intense
opposition to nuclear power construction.

The levelized cost of intermittent sources may be low for the first 20-30% of
electricity generation. But every country hits a wall around that figure,
because there isn't any cost effective storage solution. If the levelized
costs were altered to include energy storage costs to deliver power when power
is in demand, intermittent sources would have terrible costs for providing
power outside of its peak production time. This is why Germany, California,
and every other countries that tries to use solar and wind energy ends up
building the same amount of capacity with natural gas plants to fulfill peak
demand. Politicians sell the dream of intermittent energy production, then
turn around and build gas plants when they realize it's a fantasy.

~~~
pfdietz
Yes, that's what I knew nameplace capacity was. And by that definition, your
claim was absurd. Solar doesn't have a higher nameplate capacity, it has
higher nameplate capacity per dollar. Your units weren't even right.

The intermittency argument you are giving is quite flawed. Solar and wind can
go far past 20-30% and still be cheaper than new nuclear. If they are not
going higher now it's because of sunk costs in existing generating capacity,
the slow growth of demand, and the slow turnover of existing generating
capacity.

~~~
manfredo
> The intermittency argument you are giving is quite flawed. Solar and wind
> can go far past 20-30% and still be cheaper than new nuclear.

I'll believe it when I see it. History so far has demonstrated otherwise. In
the meantime, the French are laughing at all of us as they enjoy their cheap,
carbon free energy with enough surplus to export 3 billion euros of it.

~~~
pfdietz
History has demonstrated no such thing.

The French are also not laughing, since their attempts to build new nuclear
plants have gone disastrously wrong. Their nuclear construction industry is in
a shambles, losing billions, and had to be bailed out by the government.

~~~
manfredo
And yet, they're still paying well below average energy costs, and emitting a
fraction of the carbon as other countries.

~~~
pfdietz
We don't actually know what their old nuclear plants cost to build. That
information has been conveniently lost, and in any case was mixed up with
their military nuclear program.

But that's all water under the bridge. Their attempts NOW to build nuclear
capacity have demonstrated that they cannot build nukes competitively. The
facts on the ground trump what you think should be true.

------
garagemc2
I wonder why large projects are never fully costed? Is it because the real
cost would remove any initial appetite for the project?

~~~
toinetoine
The larger the project the more possible variables there are that can affect
it. It's impossible to predict all of them.

------
segfaultbuserr
I was pro-nuclear because I believe these systems are technically safe and
sound, we need nuclear to reduce the dependence of fossil fuels, we need
nuclear to balance the unstable power output from solar and wind, also that
the Generation III+ reactors are promising, we need to widely deploy them and
continue to advance the technology.

Today, I still believe the technology, but I doubt about its practicality,
both financially and politically.

1\. If we do a cost-benefit analysis, we must realize that the political
resistance of the nuclear power plant _is_ parts of its cost, it doesn't
matter whether the anti-nuclear politicians or activists are correct or not,
in either way, it simply adds to the cost of the project. Sometimes the cost
is serious - the complete halt of the project is not out of the possibilities,
and it means _billions_ of tax dollars are wasted on useless projects.

2\. Also, the strong pressure and paranoia on its safety, both from the
public, and from the engineers, is sometimes responsible for the escalating
costs of the projects, as more and more safety upgrades are implemented over
time. I'm not saying that safety is not important, but it means there are
hidden costs. And because safety is paramount, you can't just ignore them,

e.g. a safety risk is discovered in incident X, to avoid similar problems, all
the XYZ reactors must be upgraded!

e.g. the nuclear reactor Y has an minor anomaly Z, it's believed that the
issue is not a big deal, but for safety, the reactors are switched off until
the reason is determined! _(6 months later)_ Engineers have determined the
issue is a completely normal phenomenon within the design! _(3 months later)_
The executive/legislative body finally allowed the reactors to be restarted...

Just think about how much economic damage is done in this process... Worse,
any such problems, even it was the direct result of being safety-minded, will
be attacked by the anti-nuclear activists and politicians, further
contributing to problem No.1, make the cost even greater.

3\. In addition, a nuclear power plant requires highly competent personnels,
companies and regulatory agencies to run and monitor. Mismanagement due to
incompetency can make its safety risks much higher than the projected risks.
It's not a big problem if it's operated with a good record of safety in some
countries with a government that has a relatively good public image, but in
other countries it's a big problem. I've once asked a networking engineer from
Taiwan about the nuclear protests over the Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant, he
said he was against the project, not because he doesn't believe the technology
(which is the most common reason in the anti-nuclear movement), but that he
has no confidence that the miserable government is competent enough to operate
it.

4\. Furthermore, the political resistance of deep underground nuclear waste
disposal repository is even higher. One should realize that currently there
are already thousands buckets of nuclear waste waiting for proper disposal,
and without a deep underground repository, by doing nothing, the risks for the
environment is much more higher. Unfortunately, as long as the political
resistance exists, it adds a huge cost to everything nuclear. Not to mention
the environmental risks of continue producing more nuclear waste without a
repository.

5\. Finally, even in China - one of the biggest supporters of nuclear power -
the ambitious construction projects are slowing down due to reason No.1 and
No.2, despite that the political resistance is not a big problem in its
authoritarian political system. Competition of cheap solar and wind is another
reason.

> China’s losing its taste for nuclear power. That’s bad news.

> [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-
> its-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-taste-
> for-nuclear-power-thats-bad-news/)

I'm really uncertain about everything now. What is your opinion regarding my
observations?

~~~
brazzy
> Mismanagement due to incompetency can make its safety risks much higher than
> the projected risks. I've once asked a networking engineer from Taiwan about
> the nuclear protests over the Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant, he said he was
> against the project, not because he doesn't believe the technology, but that
> he has no confidence that the government is competent enough to operate it.

This is IMO a factor that is talked about far too little. It doesn't matter
how safe the technology is in theory, in practice it will be run by people who
are fallible, and often incompetent and/or greedy.

IMO the latter is an even bigger concern. If you can make a buck by cutting
corners and flouting security protocols, someone somewhere _will_ do it.

~~~
tempguy9999
It's talked about too little because the nuke industry won't, and the guy on
the street just wants power as cheap as possible and screw the implications;
they don't want to think about it so they won't.

To me this political/managerial drawback is the only drawback to nuclear
power; the sole and single downside. But it's a killer because of human
nature.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
Actually I see issue 1, 2, 4 as more relevant issues on the practicality of
nuclear power. But as you want more about human issues, a classic work is
_Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies_ by Charles Perrow. The
book shows that any complex system is likely to fail due to its inherent
complexity, and due to the external social organization. Worth reading.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents)

~~~
tempguy9999
Excellent, will check it out, thank! Actually just looked at the wiki page,
that's enough for me to order it today.

In return may I offer this absolutely bitchin' tome Safeware by Nancy Leveson
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Safeware-System-Safety-
Computers-19...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Safeware-System-Safety-
Computers-19/dp/0201119722/) which I can't recommend enough. It's aimed at a
lower level than your book AFAICT (lower level = less about interconnectedness
of large systems) but it's a must read.

------
hanoz
2.9 billion. Not great... not terrible.

------
redwood
The costs of nuclear power have never appropriately included the costs of
disposal and handling of wastes which will become a permanent long-running tax
on all of society for thousands of years.

It's similar to how the fossil fuels based externalities are also never
included in the true cost.

~~~
xavieralexandre
> The costs of nuclear power have never appropriately included the costs of
> disposal and handling of wastes

Of course, they do:

\- Hinkley Point: [http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP-Hinkley-Point-C-
contrac...](http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP-Hinkley-Point-C-contract-
terms-08101401.html)

\- France [French]:
[http://www.sfen.org/sites/default/files/public/atoms/files/n...](http://www.sfen.org/sites/default/files/public/atoms/files/note_-
_les_couts_de_production_du_parc_nucleaire_francais_-_ppe_-_sfen.pdf)

\- Switzerland [French]: [http://www.swissnuclear.ch/fr/couts-_content---1--
1050.html](http://www.swissnuclear.ch/fr/couts-_content---1--1050.html)

