Nuclear Energy Now More Expensive Than Solar

js_sebastian writes "According to an article on the New York Times, a historical cross-over has occurred because of the declining costs of solar vs. the increasing costs of nuclear energy: solar, hardly the cheapest of renewable technologies, is now cheaper than nuclear, at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, the NY Times reports that financial markets will not finance the construction of nuclear power plants unless the risk of default (which is historically as high as 50 percent for the nuclear industry) is externalized to someone else through federal loan guarantees or ratepayer funding. The bottom line seems to be that nuclear is simply not competitive, and the push from the US government to subsidize it seems to be forcing the wrong choice on the market."

Comments

Conditions Apply

[Anonymous Coward]

Except during nights.

Re:Conditions Apply

[A beautiful mind]

Ok. Let's factor in the cost of transporting the energy or storing it to provide night time load handling capability and look at the costs again.

To be honest I don't buy the "nuclear is expensive" thing. It's expensive the way you're doing it. Learn from the French.

In Japan and France, construction costs and delays are significantly diminished because of streamlined government licensing and certification procedures. In France, one model of reactor was type-certified, using a safety engineering process similar to the process used to certify aircraft models for safety. That is, rather than licensing individual reactors, the regulatory agency certified a particular design and its construction process to produce safe reactors. U.S. law permits type-licensing of reactors, a process which is being used on the AP1000 and the ESBWR.

Re:Conditions Apply

[ShadowRangerRIT]

To be fair, France benefits from a much more centralized population. The U.S. can't just build enormous nuke plants and send power by wire across the country without serious losses on the line. France is small enough that it can send power to a larger number of people with shorter lines, and moreover, they benefit from economies of scale, because they aren't just powering France, they're selling the power to neighboring countries (presumably at a profit).

They also engage in fuel reprocessing, which the U.S. does not, and that makes a huge difference in the economic factors. The U.S. policy is due to a fear of plutonium being stolen from reprocessing facilities for use by terrorists or rogue states, combined with a need to "set an example" to other countries; if we reprocess fuel, then they'll claim they should be allowed to as well, but reprocessing fuel is an easy way to produce bomb grade fissionable material. I don't know if I agree with the U.S. policy (wasting tons upon tons of usable reactor fuel to set an example seems pointless when no one follows the example, and you end up with political quagmires like what to do with all the waste), but the costs in the U.S. are definitely higher.

USD per watt and watts per sqm

[psone]

Nuclear power offers the advantage of massive energy production on a small area of land, giving it a high W/skm rate. The ideal solution probably lies in the intelligent combination of several powering solutions depending on the zone type, energy demand and area coverage...

Re:USD per watt and watts per sqm

[zippthorne]

Yeah, Our current policy (Carrrterrrrrrrrrrrr!) is like buying a value meal at a fast food place, eating one fry, calling the rest "waste" and complaining about how expensive it is.

Comprehensive rebuttal

[Mugs]

Utter bunk. See http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/07/gullible-reporting-by-new-york-times-on.html

Overregulation

[Coolhand2120]

I'm sure that the amount of regulation in plant creation, "green" subsidies for solar and "politically correct" as opposed to "environmentally correct" disposal of waste serves to distort the true price of these sources.

Besides, anyone who has played sim city knows that nuclear is much cheaper.

And the largest solar power plant currently is...

[AbbeyRoad]

Check out:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_thermal_power_stations

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations

Now considering that one nuclear power station usually generates 1 to 5 GIGAwatts, and these generate in the order of TENS OF MEGAwatts, it is inconceivable to me how anyone can compare Solar to Nuclear.

"Study" includes subsidies

[LordFolken]

It factors in the subsidies for solar energy. Compares an absolute discount price of solar to the average of nuclear power, ignores the fact that nuclear energy is a constant supplier etc.

In short: sensational and bogus.

I think the rebuke mentioned earlier should be read as well: http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/07/gullible-reporting-by-new-york-times-on.html

Re:Except places where the sun don't shine ... muc

[Hognoxious]

If you're transmitting it from a place where it's summer to a place where it's winter, or from a place where it's noon to a place where it's midnight, you're going suffer pretty bad losses in those long long cables.

Unless you've invented a practical, economic room-temperature superconductor. In which case, send us a postcard from Stockholm. Sign it "smug asshole" - we'll know who it is.

Re:I wonder....

[rufty_tufty]

It's dead easy to kill fusion:
Explain to the Luddites about neutrinos. A fusion plant produces massive quantities of them that are free to radiate into the environment and no attempt is made to shield them. Not only that but there have been studies that show that neutrinos can transmute matter and therefore are a possible cause of cancer. No studies have been conducted about the effects of neutrinos on young children's development and so far all subjects exposed to neutrinos have later died or showed effects of cell degradation.

Re:And the largest solar power plant currently is.

[sunspot42]

Now considering that one nuclear power station usually generates 1 to 5 GIGAwatts, and these generate in the order of TENS OF MEGAwatts

The Mojave plant already produces over 300 megawatts, the plant in Spain produces 100 megawats, and there are plans for solar plants of half a gigawatt to about a gigawatt. The Topaz Solar Farm in central California is supposed to produce 550 megawatts, and cost around a billion, which is steep but pretty comparable to the skyrocketing price of nuclear power. It's a PV installation. Of course solar only works during the day, but that's when demand is by far at its peak (especially in central and southern California) and customers pay the highest prices.

Why does the plant capacity make a difference, anyhow? Cost seems like a much bigger issue than capacity. If you can build and operate ten 100 megawatt solar plants for the cost of building, operating and decommissioning one 1 gigawatt nuke plant (and insuring it for liability, and dealing with its waste), why not go with solar?

I think real advantage solar offers over nuclear though comes from photovoltaics, which are also just starting to become practical, especially in warm sunny climates where peak summertime power rates spike. I think subsidizing the deployment of rooftop panels atop homes and businesses in places like California and Texas is going to be a more cost effective strategy than sinking tens of billions into nuke plants, and it'll help to advance a technology that could conceivably lead us to near total energy independence.

It also gets a chunk of power generation out of the hands of the enormous energy conglomerates and into the hands of the people, which'll make it much more difficult for the powers that be to play games with the price of electricity on the spot market, a la Enron. And moving power generation much closer to the source of demand could ultimately reduce the overall peak summertime load on our power grids (at least here in America), not to mention the drastic cut in transmission losses.

Re:USD per W + W per sqm for alkaline batteries

[Joce640k]

Why do people insist on using 1950s reactors as the basis of safety/cost measurements?
Modern reactors can be a lot cheaper/simpler and have very little decommissioning costs (the plant outside the core doesn't become radioactive over time).

Re:Coal

[Aceticon]

Fossil fuels are the cheapest way to produce energy as long as they do not have to pay for negative externalities.

The byproducts of burning fossil fuels for electricity are just dumped in the air and as long those that are doing the burning do not have to pay for the negative consequences of those byproducts they can "produced" electricity for a lower cost.

Here's an example for your understanding:
- Imagine I came up with a process to get gold from seawater. Running the process would cost me $50 for every gram of gold produced. However this process would have the downside that for every gram of gold extracted it produce 1 cubic kilometer of highly toxic water and cleaning that would cost $1000.

If I have to pay for the negative externalities of the process ($1000 per gram of gold produced to clean-up the 1 cubic kilometer of toxic water produced as a side-effect) then my process is only competitive for gold prices above $1050 per gram.

However, if I can get away with just dumping the toxic water somewhere for free, then at $50 per gram of gold my process is highly competitive with getting gold the old-fashioned way (mining).

Generation of electrity from fossil fuels is currently at the point where they get away with dumping some of the toxic products created as a side effect of their process directly to the air without paying for it. Like my example above, their process is profitable because they don't have to pay for dumping toxic substances into the environment.

FRAUD ALERT!

[Futurepower(R)]

Fraud Alert! My guess is that this story is a public relations piece by people who are trying to sell solar energy. Is a Slashdot editor paid to run P.R.?

Read the comment by "BillWoods" posted on "Tue, 2010-07-27 14:19" to the story linked in this Slashdot story. Quote: "Using the same amortization factor that they use for solar, the most expensive nuclear project on their list would produce power for a capital cost of about 11 cents/kW-h, well below even the subsidized cost of solar."

The previous comment, by "Marcel F. Williams", posted on "Tue, 2010-07-27 12:51" says, "The capital cost of nuclear reactors are going to fall dramatically once the US and other countries start to mass produce and ship centrally manufactured modular nuclear reactors. Its going to be extremely difficult for any other clean energy systems to economically compete against small nuclear reactors during the rest of this century for producing electricity and carbon neutral synfuels."

Wow! That was easy! Indicating the falsehood of the Slashdot story only required copying the comments in the linked story.

Re:FRAUD ALERT!

[HiddenCamper]

I work at a nuclear plant, and the "at cost" of selling our power is between 3.5 and 5.5 cents per kwh on average over a year based on whether or not we are shut down for refueling that year. This is at-cost, not for profit. nuclear would only cost 16 cents per kwh if the plant was awfully mismanaged with terrible performance.

Re:I wonder....

[rufty_tufty]

Nope I meant neutrinos, I know full well the sun produces trillions of them, I know that they are harmless.
I also know that CERN is harmless because cosmic radiation produces far higher energy collisions in the atmosphere every second, but some people still fear it.
I know that my local nuke plant produces gamma radiation that you cannot 100% shield against, yet people object to them because they "emit deadly radiation".
I carry a tritium keyring that has a half life and lights up my pocket with it's radioactive decay.
I use a mobile phone and don't worry about the fact that you can't prove that it doesn't do me harm.

So what I was trying to do was parody those who would pray on the fact that you can't prove a negative and other bits of lack of joined up thinking to sell their particular political cause. Still you can't please everyone...

Batteries?

[msauve]

So, you've never heard of pumped storage, or any other forms of grid energy storage, eh?