> someone lost an incredible amount of money on this project.
All roads lead to Ratepayers (electrical customers).
> Georgia Power’s residential customers are projected to pay more than $926 apiece as part of an ongoing finance charge and elected public service commissioners have approved a rate increase. Residential customers will pay $4 more per month as soon as the third unit begins generating power. That could hit bills in August, two months after residential customers saw a $16-a-month increase to pay for higher fuel costs.
> The high construction costs have wiped out any future benefit from low nuclear fuel costs in the future, experts have repeatedly testified before commissioners.
> “The cost increases and schedule delays have completely eliminated any benefit on a life-cycle cost basis,” Tom Newsome, director of utility finance for the commission, testified Thursday in a Georgia Public Service Commission hearing examining spending.
> The utility will face a fight from longtime opponents of the plant, many of whom note that power generated from solar and wind would be cheaper. They say letting Georgia Power make ratepayers pay for mistakes will unfairly bolster the utility’s profits.
> “While capital-intensive and expensive projects may benefit Georgia Power’s shareholders who have enjoyed record profits throughout Vogtle’s beleaguered construction, they are not the least-cost option for Georgians who are feeling the sting of repeated bill increases,” Southern Environmental Law Center staff attorney Bob Sherrier said in a statement.
This will likely be the last commercial nuclear generator ever reaching criticality for the first time on US soil. Consider the current interest rate environment and the appetite for backstopping a multi decade construction project.
And that's why I left the nuclear industry. Nuclear power is the safest form of power production we've ever produced (more people are killed per MWh installing and repairing wind turbines than in the nuclear industry) but it has never been anywhere near cost effective and no nuclear project has ever been completed anywhere near on-schedule. Every time I hear someone talk about how the world needs tons of new nuclear plants and solar and wind can't possibly meet the demand quickly enough, that person seems to imagine that none of the next wave of nuclear plants magically will not have any of the problems that every previous nuclear plant had. Meanwhile solar and wind are beating estimates year after year. I still love nuclear physics (and I am excited about several up-and-coming fusion projects) but I just don't believe in the nuclear (fission) power industry anymore.
The sad part is, this is a solvable problem. If the nation really wanted to build a large number of safe, effective nuclear power plant, we could, and probably in a time frame of months, not years. But entrenched interest from natural gas and coal producers combined with anti-nuclear sentiment practically guarantee that will never happen.
Nuclear power is held to too high of a standard to really be a viable source of power, especially in a democracy.
> If the nation really wanted to build a large number of safe, effective nuclear power plant, we could, and probably in a time frame of months, not years. But entrenched interest from natural gas and coal producers combined with anti-nuclear sentiment practically guarantee that will never happen.
meanwhile the Chinese have 22 power stations under construction and 70 planned
It's not corruption; people in power don't want nuclear, and so the industry is regulated into its current quagmire. No other industry faces moving goalposts like nuclear does.
The USA can move mountains if it really wants to. But as it stands, the country is doing everything it can to keep that mountain right where it is.
>people in power don't want nuclear, and so the industry is regulated into its current quagmire. No other industry faces moving goalposts like nuclear does.
I think it's the other way around. We only have nuclear today because people in power wanted it for strategic reasons. Getting lots of energy now and paying for it later seemed like a good idea at the time, so the goalposts were artificially placed to make it look financially viable. "We'll figure out the waste thing later, let's go!"
Politicians are tempted by the same thing today. Voters worry about electricity prices, so give them power today and let their grandchildren pay for it!
France dictated the price of nuclear to a point that bankrupted the operator, even though the same operator basically neglected maintenance to a point where the plants have to be taken offline for - I kid you not - rust.
The problem is that now we are the people having to pay, and nuclear has the unfortunate property that you have no choice but to pay, no matter how wrong the estimates have turned out to be you can't just abandon the project.
Any other power plant can simply be abandoned if it turns out it was a bad idea, and the costs will stop.
Nuclear is very specific tech. I don't think there's a whole bunch of companies out there sitting on their hands just waiting for a bunch of contracts to show up.
Interesting to hear an inside perspective! While they definitely aren't cheap, do you feel they're not worth the price, given the urgency and rapidly rising costs of climate change? It seems like they'd be competitive with, or even cheaper than, fossil fuel plants if we priced in their externalities, and nuclear can shore up the areas where renewables have difficult to solve gaps. Any thoughts?
It’s hard to see projects that take ~14 years to produce the first kWh urgent solutions to anything.
Spend the same money starting in the same year and the first solar project makes enough money to fund a second which then also comes online before your nuclear power plant is ready.
Which doesn’t make nuclear useless, but it’s really disappointing if you’re in the industry.
I feel like the root of the pro/against nuclear debate comes down to your outlook on storage :) I'm skeptical that storage can meet our needs (would love to be wrong! haven't seen a convincing analysis, yet), so I think we need a reliable form of continuous power. The only option currently on the table for that is nuclear, so, I boost nuclear. I dislike the nuclear nay-saying, because it further delays an already slow process. When (IMO) the optimistic plan for storage doesn't pan out, we're really going to regret not having started building those nukes ~14 years ago... so why not hedge our bets and get 'em started right now? In the grand scheme of climate change costs, they are absolutely dirt cheap.
What exactly do you find unconvincing? Just comparing grid storage needs vs EV’s suggests battery production capacity isn’t going to be an issue so it simplifies to cost across say 20+ years.
There’s a lot of very simplistic analysis that makes things seem vastly worse but you don’t need crazy assumptions for things to look reasonable. Basically the more sources of energy you can add to the mix the cheaper things become as you only include them when you save money. Thus if you ignore Wind in an estimate adding wind can only lower costs, ditto for nuclear, geothermal, etc.
Hydro is reliable and better than continuous power because it’s flexible enough you can fill in gaps based on what you forecast production will be across the next week. US only gets 6.2% of its power from hydro so the rest of the world actually looks better than these numbers.
How much Solar to build is part of a complex optimization problem, simplify it 2c/kWh of capacity but 1/2 of all solar power is wasted over a year ~= 4c/kWh. Further, let’s assume 1/2 of all solar is used directly with the rest available to charge daily batteries again pessimistic with that kind of oversupply and HVDC lines etc but whatever. 50% - 5% (hydro) = 45% of total demand from batteries. (Wind drops this by a lot.)
Projecting LCOE for batteries and Battery degradation is closely correlated with use so 120$/MWh is again high long term.
Now our worst case is something like 4c/kWh (solar/hydro) + 12c/kWh (batteries) * 45% = 9.4c/kWh for 24/7/365 power with zero fossil fuels and zero nuclear. On the surface that might seem terrible or awesome depending on what your local rates look like, but this was a very pessimistic estimate.
Our pro nuclear investor needs to be pessimistic in the other direction. Remember demand is shifted to cheaper nighttime rates, if daytime electricity is cheaper then nighttime use drops further. Baseline numbers of say 4c/kWh production + 80$/MWh batteries * 30% = 6.4c/kWh 24/7/365. If you’re considering building nuclear and projecting 60+ years out those kind of numbers represent a real threat without any dramatic breakthroughs.
PS: You can plug your own assumptions in here, but remember people are trying to minimize costs and we already have existing infrastructure that isn’t being replaced that quickly. I doubt we’ll average under 20% natural gas within 20 years due to flexibility, which dramatically reduces the need for batteries and excess solar. That sounds bad, but mix in significant EV adoption and it still becomes a vast reduction in CO2 emissions, while even lower costs discourage Nuclear.
Most of the estimates I've seen for storage requirements for current electricity usage are not optimistic[1]. When you add in the huge amount of energy used for heating, which is currently not electric, it gets even worse.
I'd like to see an analysis of how much generation and storage is required to handle Minnesota's natural gas usage[2], with a reasonable guarantee that power will not be lost for more than an hour or two during the entire yearly six month cold weather span. Are those generation & storage estimates reasonable? How much will they cost, how reliable are they, how much room will they take, how many natural resources will they consume? Keep in mind Minnesota will not be able to bogart the entire battery manufacturing capacity of the globe, and remember that this analysis is in addition to the amount required to meet current electricity usage needs. Then, extrapolate that analysis to all other cold weather areas, such as other northern US states and most of Canada. Is renewable+storage really feasible to meet that need?
I've never seen this analysis done, and what I've seen from other analyses makes me think it's not feasible without depending on unproven future tech. But I'd love to be wrong!
[2] Approximately 500 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year. Note also that the usage is not evenly distributed through the year, we use a lot more in February than we do in July. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/NG_CONS_SUM_DCU_SMN_A.htm
The person you are quoting in [1] is a chronic bad faith actor. Examine his arguments with great skepticism. The argument he is making there is obviously wrong -- he's implying (without justification) that battery production cannot be greatly expanded, and ignores non-battery storage.
I don't agree with that characterization, but regardless, that was just a handy link. There's plenty of well-justified skepticism regarding storage out there. Either way, I'd love to see the analysis I suggested. If it's that clear-cut, surely it's not too hard for someone better informed than me to put together the numbers.
I think if you really dig into the arguments he is making, you will spot the evasions and non sequiturs, and conclude he's not arguing in good faith.
There is so much peer reviewed work saying the opposite of what he claims that you should default to skeptical about him. It's the same way one should treat a creationist.
It's because of the urgency that nuclear is not the solution. You need more than a dozen of years to build one. By that time it will be too late for the climate.
>>Nuclear power is the safest form of power production we've ever produced.
This is a common claim but it abuses statistics. By looking only at the one metric (deaths) it ignores the enormous enterprise required to keep nuclear as safe as it has been. No other power source needs anything like it.
It also ignores the statistical value of lives. From a policy point of view, a life saved is worth about $9 M in the US. The putative lives saved by nuclear (vs. renewables) cost much more than this. If one accepts that this was worthwhile, it also implies the NRC is not regulating nuclear sufficiently, since additional improvements (like filter containment venting systems) would pay off in expected lives saved.
It's nice to have a captive customer base. Georgia Power serves more than a million additional people now than it did when this thing broke ground. And somehow all the pre-existing customers, plus the million+ new residents, all have to pay $4 extra for the power generated here. This, in addition to the fees they pay for electricity.
Vogtle isn't going to be a good sales pitch for expanding nuclear.
It's no wonder Georgia Power doesn't provide a calculator to let people know how Vogtle coming online affects the per-unit cost to consumers.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/us-power-regulator-we... (US moves to link more wind and solar projects to electric grid) ("Today there is more than 2,000 gigawatts of renewable power waiting to be connected to the grid -- nearly double the amount of current U.S. generation capacity, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Acting (FERC) Chairman Willie Phillips said at a press conference following the unanimous vote.")
Low carbon power from Vogtle is welcome, because it's here and what is done is done, but there is no point in throwing good money after bad on commercial fission.
I would add to the list of externalities if we do not build more nuclear power plants: CHAOS
chaos that will ensue when we will reach peak oil/gas/coal, as we extract and consume faster than earth produce them. When the price to extract oil/gas/coal would be too high, chaos will result of our economies addiction to fossil fuel.
The sooner we use alternatives the better.
Housing: So, yes, it is annoying to have new house built with only electricity (i.e. without a gas line) but unless energy becomes super abundant and cheap so we can create gas (out of CO2 and water), electricity is the best bet long run.
Transportation: Same, the sooner we can electrify transportation the better starting with trucks and trains. Boats and planes might get the last drop of oil.
Industry: Should get incentives to move to electricity.
And all electricity should be eventually non-fossil (nuclear + solar + wind + hydro).
All roads lead to Ratepayers (electrical customers).
> Georgia Power’s residential customers are projected to pay more than $926 apiece as part of an ongoing finance charge and elected public service commissioners have approved a rate increase. Residential customers will pay $4 more per month as soon as the third unit begins generating power. That could hit bills in August, two months after residential customers saw a $16-a-month increase to pay for higher fuel costs.
> The high construction costs have wiped out any future benefit from low nuclear fuel costs in the future, experts have repeatedly testified before commissioners.
> “The cost increases and schedule delays have completely eliminated any benefit on a life-cycle cost basis,” Tom Newsome, director of utility finance for the commission, testified Thursday in a Georgia Public Service Commission hearing examining spending.
> The utility will face a fight from longtime opponents of the plant, many of whom note that power generated from solar and wind would be cheaper. They say letting Georgia Power make ratepayers pay for mistakes will unfairly bolster the utility’s profits.
> “While capital-intensive and expensive projects may benefit Georgia Power’s shareholders who have enjoyed record profits throughout Vogtle’s beleaguered construction, they are not the least-cost option for Georgians who are feeling the sting of repeated bill increases,” Southern Environmental Law Center staff attorney Bob Sherrier said in a statement.
This will likely be the last commercial nuclear generator ever reaching criticality for the first time on US soil. Consider the current interest rate environment and the appetite for backstopping a multi decade construction project.
https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april... [pdf, start at page 4]