this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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[–] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 5 points 2 years ago (16 children)

Higher total lifetime cost per kwh than solar or land-based wind (and hydro, but that’s niche), even after factoring in capacitors for weather and time of day/year

No way. Batteries are expensive as hell. Solar+Battery is at best equal to nuclear in the current numbers. And probably worse overall... forget the actual damages as far as mining all the lithium and other rare metals.

The front-loaded TCO is the real issue with that one.

You're in the green after about 10-15 years with nuclear. So I'm not sure why you bring this point up repeatedly. https://youtu.be/cbeJIwF1pVY?t=600

TCO shouldn't matter to stop climate change.

And what’s left is space. Nuclear creates a lot of power in a small area. But wind and solar are both far more easily/efficiently integrated into the space we are already using.

There's plenty of decommissioned coal/gas/oil plants that are perfect sites for nuclear. Ironically it costs more to clean up the radioactivity left behind by these plants than the nuclear plant will release in it's whole lifetime.

[–] abraxas@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (14 children)

No way. Batteries are expensive as hell

Batteries+solar runs $77/MWH with current technology. Nuclear runs $175/MWH with current technology (both of these numbers are TCO, not just running costs) 1 and 2. Months back I did a fairly exhaustive analysis on reddit. Wish I'd kept a link of that, but I cut and ran. More importantly, a nuclear plant is usually "locked in" to current efficiency for 50 years or more, where solar farms and battery farms can be traded up. By end-of-life, that nuclear plant will still be a $175/MWH-TCO plant, but could be competing against solar+battery in the order of $50/MWH TCO as large scale battery tech is skyrocketing of late.

I ended up anti-nuclear from a position of knowledge and research, not a position of "omg it's nuclear". I started pro-nuclear until I did the math a LOT.

You’re in the green after about 10-15 years with nuclear. So I’m not sure why you bring this point up repeatedly

Per Nuclear Power Economics and Project Structuring, the capital cost accounts as 60% of the total cost of ownership. Yes it's in the green (capital-wise), by year 10-15. But 60% of Every penny that needs to be spent on a nuclear plant is spent before you hit the "on" button. Solar plants go green in 5 years, but more importantly, you amortize the cost (and continue to do so) over the life of the plant. The latter is always more feasible for a large scale project.

There’s plenty of decommissioned coal/gas/oil plants that are perfect sites for nuclear. Ironically it costs more to clean up the radioactivity left behind by these plants than the nuclear plant will release in it’s whole lifetime.

Compare that to solar roofs, solar parking shades, windmills that can often be installed in "spare lots", etc.

EDIT: And to be clear, I'm not even saying there may never be an appropriate use for a nuclear plant in going green. There's just very few of them. Going solar in a big city is a custom gig, but dropping a nuclear plant in its outskirts, not so much. Luckily for me in the US, there's a whole hell of a lot of unused or unusable land just begging for solar plants.

[–] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

According to the EIA.gov, nuclear is between 36 and $88 per megawatt hour for LCOE for advanced nuclear. Your numbers are way off.

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf

[–] abraxas@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Strange. I must be mis-reading your numbers, because the chart I'm reading on your link shows an LCOS/LCOE between $88 and $98... The numbers I was quoting was probably conventional nuclear, and that's a fair correction. I would really appreciate if you are able to address why my references disagreed with your reference, as I didn't come out with my numbers off-the-cuff. Is it conventional vs advanced nuclear, or is it a different measurement entirely?

Note also, however, that Advanced Nuclear still loses to Solar handily in every single chart presented in that document. In addition, none of that addresses the front-loaded cost of nuclear vs solar, which amounts to an entire order of magnitude.

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