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Engineers Plan The Most Expensive Object Ever Built (bbc.com)
HughPickens.com writes: Ed Davey has an interesting story at BBC about the proposed nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset, UK which at $35 billion will be the most expensive object ever put together on Earth. For that sum you could build a small forest of Burj Khalifas -- the world's tallest building, in Dubai, which each cost $1.5 billion. You could build almost six Large Hadron Colliders, built under the border between France and Switzerland to unlock the secrets of the universe, and at a cost a mere $5.8 billion. Or you could build five Oakland Bay Bridges in San Francisco, designed to withstand the strongest earthquake seismologists would expect within the next 1,500 years at a cost of $6.5 billion...
But what about historical buildings like the the pyramids. Although working out the cost of something built more than 4,500 years ago presents numerous challenges, in 2012 the Turner Construction Company estimated it could build the Great Pyramid of Giza for $5 billion. That includes about $730 million for stone and $58 million for 12 cranes. Labor is a minor cost as it is projected that a mere staff of 600 would be necessary. In contrast, it took 20,000 people to build the original pyramid with a total of 77.6 million days' labor. Using the current Egyptian minimum wage of $5.73 a day, that gives a labor cost of $445 million. But whatever the most expensive object on Earth is, up in the sky is something that eclipses all of these things. The International Space Station. Price tag: $110 billion.
But what about historical buildings like the the pyramids. Although working out the cost of something built more than 4,500 years ago presents numerous challenges, in 2012 the Turner Construction Company estimated it could build the Great Pyramid of Giza for $5 billion. That includes about $730 million for stone and $58 million for 12 cranes. Labor is a minor cost as it is projected that a mere staff of 600 would be necessary. In contrast, it took 20,000 people to build the original pyramid with a total of 77.6 million days' labor. Using the current Egyptian minimum wage of $5.73 a day, that gives a labor cost of $445 million. But whatever the most expensive object on Earth is, up in the sky is something that eclipses all of these things. The International Space Station. Price tag: $110 billion.
For that sum you could build a small forest of Burj Khalifas -- the world's tallest building, in Dubai, which each cost $1.5 billion.
At 23 trees that IS a very small forest.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
No mention of the great train project in California?
That will be a budget buster for sure. especially by the time all the bonds and loans are paid off......
And the Bay Bridge is falling apart!
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- as the summary states itself, the (long ago) planned International Space Station was much more expensive than this new power plant. And the ISS is more like "one object" than the new power plant is.
Imagine how much the mice had to pay Magreia to build the Earth.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
What a load of rubbish. Slashdot posters repeatedly inform me that nuclear is cheap and widely scalable while renewables are way too expensive.
They've also kindly let me know that the reason that nuclear power plants go so ridiculously over budget is because of NIMBYs, nothing to do with the cost of engineering, construction difficulties, etc.
"I know you have questions." "That would be why I just asked them."
Contract it to GE or Mitsubishi instead.
They've built these things before, and a hell of a lot more cheaply than that.
$35 billion for 3,2GW of power generation, even with a high capacity factor and (hopefully) low operating costs, and assuming no accidents, is still an utter absurdity. More than $10 per Wh installed? That's patently absurd. Approving that sort of thing is a mustachioed-gentleman-tying-damels-to-railroad-tracks level of criminality against the public.
"I know you have questions." "That would be why I just asked them."
At about $1 watt (about current prices), 35 billion could buy 35GW of power. The UK is currently using 31GW of power! Ok, lets say that this price is negociable....as this is HUGE amount of solar panels.... So, lets say we can get it down to $15 billion, spending the other $20 billion on power storage for when its not sunny. And we need to space to put it, but how many houses in the UK still havent got solar on their roofs? isn't this a better idea?
It took me exactly 30 seconds;
http://money.cnn.com/gallery/n...
A lot of that money has little to do with building a nuclear power plant, and much more with the cost of massive regulations and legal challenges, as well as paying off corporations, unions, and "non profits".
Of course, nuclear power economics is also different from other sources, in that most of the cost of nuclear power is in construction, not fuel or maintenance. When all is said and done, nuclear power is cost competitive even at current fossil fuel prices, and if people are serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear is pretty much the only option.
to demonstrate relative "expensiveness" this plant, by using current cost of production ( using current everyday technology and cheap labor, ) of a new pyramid is nonsense, given ancient cost of great pyramid (with then much scarce labor in then most advanced country with then most advanced technology )
absurdity of this approach can be demonstrated by comparing hypothetical selling prices(if they can be sold) of a newly constructed pyramid, with that of actual great pyramid.
it is the current valuation of the object that should matter not its construction cost when determining its "expensiveness".
Would you mind telling me anything important about the "object?" Like maybe what the fuck it's for? Is it fission or fusion? Production or research? Why does it cost so much? God damn.
The the pyramids? Are those where you put a layer of Soul Mining, and then a slightly smaller layer of Infected and so on?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
seems not to be what the author of this news piece actually intended. Mr. HughPickens.com, what did you really mean?
Try again. Even high end cost estimates from critics are under $100/Mwh, which equates to $0.0096/Wh, and is lower than many other sources.
>> up in the sky is something that eclipses all of these things. The International Space Station. Price tag: $110 billion.
If this thing would really cost 35 billion, there is no way in hell it would be built! It makes no sense at all.
For that amount of money, you could cover the entire Sahara desert in Solar cells. You could build loads of gas plants and wind farms which would generate massively more energy than one nuclear plant.
You could launch a bunch of cells into space and transmit the power back to earth for less money than that.
You could build a wall at the Mexico / USA border and cover it with solar cells for less money.
You could install gas bags on the ass of every cow on the planet to catch the methane gas to power a gas turbine plant than it would cost to build that thing.
It make NO damn sense.
Olympic Stadium?
Mostly random stuff.
I wonder why it's not mentioned. From Wikipedia, "the BAM's costs were estimated at $14 billion" at 1991 prices, and considering inflation, that would be 14*1.75 = $24.5 billions in today's prices. Other websites mention up to 2.35 ratio which will increase the cost to $33 billion.
It's pocket shrapnel compared to maintaining the US Banking edifice over the last few years.
USB, USB, USB!
How much electricity could be generated by a network of solar panels built for the same cost?
(Genuinely don't know the answer, but curious if it would be more or less than the electricity generated by this project.)
Reality has a liberal bias
He has an extra 'h' in his units.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Since we are actually comparing programs, ie power plant verses aircraft program. You Brits have got a lot to learn about wasting money. The F-35 is 1.5 trillion and climbing.[unlike the plane itself] We have the leadership in stupidity and God willing we aim to keep it.The program is so big that it will take a forest of money just to pay for it.
You need the 'h' to do a true cost comparison. Many people who know that intentionally avoid it though.
FYI, the plant's design life is 60 years, not 35, and based on nuclear power history it will likely last quite a bit longer than 60.
Judging from the headline, Apple's about to announce a new product.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's $10/W, not $10/Wh (which would be absurdly expensive, given that retail price for electricity is about 2% of that). At £24b, that works out at £81.3/W. 3.2GW means 3.2GWh every hour, or about 28TWh/year. It is still pretty expensive though.
For comparison, solar panels are typically about £1/W peak, but only deliver that output for the equivalent of an average of 6-8 hours a day, but that's not including the other costs associated with installation (alternator, mounting, labour, and so on). Electricity in the UK costs around 12p/kWh retail, or around £0.00012/Wh. That means that you can buy about 68kWh of electricity for the price of 1W installed capacity. Or, to put it another way, that 1W installed capacity has to run for just under 8 years to sell enough electricity to justify the cost (assuming no operating costs and that 100% of the retail price is profit). In practice, it's likely to be around 15 years, unless electricity prices go up (which they probably will). That's not too bad for a plant that's expected to last 40+ years and can provide around 10% of the UK's electricity consumption as base load for that time.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yes, but where did that 'h' come from in his calculation? Dividing $ by W does not give you $/Wh.
If you want $/Wh, you need to divide by the number of hours the plant is expected to operate.
What material shall we use for the roof of the plant's bike shed. At a tight budget of £350, this item ought to get our foremost attention today.
To the cost of the Opera houses of old let alone the pyramids if we did an apples to apples comparison based off current GDP of the society. I remember reading that new Opera houses don't sound as good because you can't get society to throw that much money at something so trivial anymore.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
We need to kick nuclear to the curb. The true cost of nuclear energy to society is infinite because we have no safe way to dispose of the waste these plants create for the length of time required, on the scale of thousands to millions of years.
Nuclear waste disposal is never included in cost estimates for nuclear energy, and as a result we have it just sitting around all over the United States. We can't even contain waste safely for a few decades. How do we have any hope to contain it for 100 years, or 1,000 years, or 10,000 years? The answer is we will never be able to do it.
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should be doing it. Adding more nuclear capacity just makes the waste problem worse. Who bears the brunt of the waste problem? It won't cause much harm in our lifetimes. Our descendants are the ones we're hurting.
If you want to read a more detailed technical analysis, feel free to search for my previous posts on the subject.
More than $10 per Wh installed?
I take it that you mean just Watt, not Watthour.
$10/W installed is a bit expensive indeed, considering that the installed cost of solar energy is now hovering around the $1/W.
After 2 near-extinction events (Chernobyl, Fukushima) one would have thought that people got wiser. But no, Nuclear is still 'preferred', even if it costs ten times the solar energy, which doesn't even require any fuel.
Those politicians that decided to build that reactor must be really stupid! Or maybe just corrupt...
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
How is the US going to force Mexico to pay for it?
By covering the wall in solar cells.
So we now have a ten years planing phase.
Then a ten years approval phase.
Then a price increase by a factor of 4 to 10.
Then someone who calculates that terms of current value of dollars it is only a price increase by a factor of 2 or 3.
And then the cheapest bidder wins the contract and we have a price increase by a factor of 20.
Why not buying the whole population of a small country, put up big mouse wheels and let them walk inside for power?
Oh, they would breath and produce CO2 ...
Oh, we only would need 10% of the population of countries like Austria or emirates. Erm, oki that was based on GDP ... that probably makes even less sense than planning a 35 billion construction project.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Good question, but if it's costing £26bn to build, I imagine that the operating costs will be a fairly small part of the total cost.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Title: Engineers Plan The Most Expensive Object Ever Built
!= to
The linked article "...the most expensive object on Earth"
and is in fact contradicted by its own summary:
" up in the sky is something that eclipses all of these things. The International Space Station. Price tag: $110 billion"
So it's self-evidently NOT the most expensive thing ever built.
-Styopa
You are wrong ... the h is only relevant for fuel costs
Without h you have production capacity, wich is construction cost.
H means "multiply by time per hour".
If your fridge needs one kW and runs an whole hour without stop you consumed 1kWh.
If you have a plant that produces 500W, you can not run the fridge.
If you have a plant that produces 2kW you can run the fridge but only use half the fuel as you shut/power it down to 1kW. If you run the plant 2 hours at 2kW you produce 4kWh of power. If you run it at 1kW for 2 hours, you obviously only produce 2kWh of power, and use half the fuel.
For construction costs the 'h' does not exist. It is for running costs, or in case of wind and solar, the lack thereof.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You don't need the h. You assume that everything will run. The only time it mattes is when you are talking about a plant that's there for purely peak capacity, like a natural-gas plant. You'd generally not run it at nominal power 100% of the time. If that were the case, you'd use coal.
Oh, yes, I just though of the real reason you brought that up, to "punish" anything that's not continuous, so you can make renewable energy look worse by comparison. Though, again, "h" is irrelevant, if one compares "average daily" W, rather than always citing "peak" W, as the renewable haters do.
Learn to love Alaska
Yeah, astonishing that people are ready to replace a car every 5 to 10 years (for no financial benefit) and a plane or ship or power plant runs 30, 50, or 100 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
... with the most expensive objects in the world. It was never completed or taken into service. It's now a them-park or something.
Maybe the UK should look at that project before blowing 35 Billion $ on something that might be very stupid? ... Just saying.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
After 2 near-extinction events (Chernobyl, Fukushima)
How were those near "extinction" level? Please explain the damage to someone on McMurdo and the length of time for those ill effects to get to them. Chernobyl was about worst-case, and didn't do great damage internationally.
Learn to love Alaska
Electical energy is measure in KWh. If you care about what is actually produced, not just the rating, then you need KWh. I care about what is actually produced from the plant, as should anybody doing a cost comparison.
No, you don't really understand the difference between capacity and production. If you care about production you MUST have the h.
A 1000 KW solar facility producing for 5 hours in a day generates less energy than a 1000 KW nuclear plant generating 24 hours in a day. The hours matter to those that matter.
Now, if you don't care about how much energy is produced and used, and only care about "how big it is", then you can stick with Watts.
Everything pales in comparison to large military contracts.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
We were able confirm the irrefutable truth:
If you put a big enough engine on it, you can make anything fly.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Ha, the the Bay Bridge... That's our next "Airport", and "Towering Inferno". The collapse sequence will be a blockbuster.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Do you have a faint idea what kickbacks it takes to get a new nuke plant approved?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Now, if you don't care about how much energy is produced and used, and only care about "how big it is", then you can stick with Watts.
Which is why that was the *only* measure ever used, until people like you started a coordinated campaign against renewable energy.
Learn to love Alaska
If you include R&D costs the F35 has at 1.508 trillion probably takes the prize.
You seem not to grasp the difference between kW and kWh.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
On British indebtedness.
You make no sense, I don't think you realize what you just said. I am just stating facts, not coordinating anything. There is a reason why credible comparisons of energy cost are done per MWh . If you are not comparing levelized cost per MWh, you are not comparing the cost of energy produced.
KW is a rate of energy production, like Mile per Hour (MPH) is a rate of distance travel. If you want to know how many miles you traveled, you need MPH times hours, and if you want to know how much energy you produce, you need to know KW times hours, of KWh. Its simple math.
Again, KW does not represent an amount of energy, KWH does. Its easy to look up how this works.
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...
https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/...
"it took 20,000 people to build the original pyramid with a total of 77.6 million days' labor. "
That would be MAN days.
kW is a rate of energy delivery or production. When talking installed capacity, it represents the highest rate that source can deliver energy, or what would be considered 100% output for that source at a given instant in time.
kWh represents actual energy produced, as it is energy delivery rate x time. KPH is a rate of distance traveled. Just like KPH times hours = distance traveled, KW x hours = energy produced.
I hope that helps you understand why cost comparisons only make sense using watt*hours. I do understand why you like to avoid discussing in those terms, as it is sometimes a harsh reality when talking cost.
I'm pretty sure that at the surface of the Earth the umbra of the International Space Station is too small to eclipse anything.
You call can stop arguing over this, it was a simple typo :P
"I know you have questions." "That would be why I just asked them."
No Gorgon ($55 billion) or Kashagan ($116 billion)? Oil megaprojects have already surpassed this
For those looking to actually crunch some basic numbers regarding the size of this project when compared to other renewable projects, here are some sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Highest output renewable option in existence - a 1.5gW onshore wind farm already 90% built for $2B (Alta Wind Energy Center).
Most expensive option in existence - a 3.2gW nuclear station being built for $35B.
Seems fairly clear cut - for $35B you could build something like 25gW of wind farms. So why are these alternatives - and others - not a smart financial option?
Even assuming failed efficiencies etc, renewable systems would have to operate at only 10% of expected efficiency to fall as low as the expected returns for this nuclear plan. What am I doing wrong here?
And then there is the nuclear waste, the costs of which will be born by the populace because the private corporations that own the nuclear power plant will be (made) bankrupt by the time those costs arise, far, far into the future... By then we will see that, again, profit has been privatised and the losses have been socialised.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
invasion and other foreign policy boondoggles that's nothing.
Get up!
Tesla is coming quite near a workable solution for the storage problem. So let's add a few dollars (/kWh) for dependable storage, then we have near 100% uptime, still at lower costs, and no fuel expense, and without nuclear waste.
The problem of transporting the electrical energy from the Sahara to England during the winter there is of a complexity which is still a fraction of our current practice's problematic transport of oil all over the world.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
It wouldn't cost that much. The tricky part would be staying out of international criminal court.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yes, plants are rated in KW, that is the max rate at which they can produce energy. Ratings don't reflect actual production, just the possible rate of production. That is why it is w=joules per second. You care about cost per joule, not cost per joule per second, when discussing the cost of energy.
I am not sure if you can comprehend this, but if I operate at 1 KW for 4 hours a day, I produce less energy than if I operate at 1KW for 22 hours a day. If my plant is rated at 1 kW, that is the highest rate at which it can produce.
If you do a little reading you'll see that energy cost comparisons between different types of generation are done in MWh. I guess you should tell the DOE that they don't know what they are doing.
How were those near "extinction" level?
Yes, you are right, it could have been worse...
For me that's still a reason not to opt for nuclear if there's another safer and cheaper and more socially and environmentally responsible solution.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Stop with the bespoken power plants.
Henry Ford Showed how to do it 100 years ago.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Chernobyl was about as bad as it's possible to get. If it had been actual worst-case, what would that case have looked like?
When people make them sound worse than they were, with vague wording, it sounds like voodoo, not science. What's the mechanism by which a reactor meltdown causes extinction? If you can't describe it, it must be FUD.
Learn to love Alaska
I never said renewable were bad. You fabricated that. Then later you were calling me a liar, but you never actually specified the lie you accuse me of. I guess it was just name calling.
You have your own little interpretation of the energy measurement that seems to suit your vision of the world. Sorry, but methods don't change just because you like one thing or another.
Energy costs never were, and never will be, in $/kW because kW is not energy. Is the cost of car usage discussed in $ per horsepower? No, because it doesn't make sense. You might compare two cars' power capacity in horsepower, just like two power plants in kW, and you can even compare them in $/HP, but that would be pretty useless because of all the other variables. Horsepower and kW are both the RATE of energy delivery or production, neither is energy.
The cost of energy is expressed in $/MWh, because a MWh defines a specific amount of energy. kW is capacity, not energy. The kW rating for a power plant is the highest energy production rate the plant can achieve, or the 100% rating. So, a 1 kW solar panel can deliver energy at a rate of up to 1 kW in full sunshine, which is its maximum capacity. A 1 MW gas plant can produce energy at a rate of up to 1 MW, a 50 MW wind turbine can generate energy at a rate of up to 50MW.
And, in order to calculate the cost of energy and compare different types, since there are a lot of different variables like O&M, capacity factor, fuel, capitalization, etc, you need to levelize the cost, which again can only be done over time. Google "levelized cost of energy", you will see MWh as the unit used. And, once again, that it because a MW is not energy, MWH is energy.
You do care about the cost of energy right? Or is there something else you are trying to talk about?
Just last week there was some guy trying to mislead everyone here with a "nuclear is cheap" lie. Where is he now?
If he really meant that nuclear is cost effective and just was not able to phrase it in any other way he'd better work on his English to get it to grade school level.
Two reactors in the same plant. Two units in the same plant. Two plants? No.
A lot of California is unpopulated desert so those density numbers are very misleading - laughably so. You should have a word with whoever misled you with such an argument and a laugh at yourself for falling for it.
What really matters is the population density in areas where you want to put a station or terminal. It may still be far too low, I do not know, but the numbers above are totally irrelevant and just make people using them look silly.
An amusing thing the kids today don't know is the nuclear safety regulations at the time of three mile island were more lax than for a fertilizer works - hence things like not having a clue what was really going on for a week due to inadequate monitoring equipment. A week of media hype due to little real information had a lasting impression on attitudes to nuclear power. The regulations then went the other way, to more restrictive than other industries and some pretty nasty industry lobbying to add extra barriers of entry to new players filled in the rest.
Westinghouse etc LIKE the regulations as they are and WROTE most of them FFS! It keeps the Germans, French, Chinese and all the rest out of the US nuclear industry.
Also there are not many built because there are not many orgs with a lot of money that want to build them - simple as that. China want them and are putting up the money so they are getting built in China.
After 2 near-extinction events (Chernobyl, Fukushima)
Near extinction events?
Are you fucking insane?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Yes, plants are listed at full capacity ratings in MW, but that does not tell us the cost of energy, so that is not used to compare the cost of energy. You CAN compare capacity, but that is of little use, on its own, when comparing different energy sources because of the exact variables you stated. And while plants are and will always have KW capacity ratings, the measure for comparing energy cost is, has been, and will always be $/MWh.
Which is why any credible reference for energy cost uses $/MWh.
http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/t...
https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.renewable-energy-ad...
I could provide many more examples. Maybe you should write to all these and tell them they don't know what they are doing. Note that some of these references are renewables organizations. Now, please provide one credible reference that uses $/MW to compare energy cost. (Not some article written by some ignorant yahoo). But instead, I expect you will just blabber on about how using $/MWh is some sort of anti-renewable conspiracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
California's rail project, the Hinkley plant, the great wall of China... They've got nothing compared to my basement remodel. I budgeted 2 weekends and $500, turned into 2 years and way more than $500. All because I'm terrible at accurately estimating projects.
What's the worst that can happen when you over-budget? You'll either be right, or pleasantly surprised when its under-budget.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
$110 billion....probably could have had a Moon Base for that much money...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Chernobyl wasn't 'as bad as it's possible to get it'. If the workers there would have said "Fuck you! Risking my life? I'm going home, now." then it would have been much worse.
Fukushima could have been a lot worse in terms of radioactive pollution landing everywhere around the globe. How much Becquerel could Fukushima have released if all stored fuel rods would have exploded?
This story makes me a bit worried, not you?
Oh, and this one also.
And also this one about the fuel pools is worrying me.
But no, it surely must all be FUD...
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Totally fucking insane are the private companies that choose to build 6 inherently unstable nuclear reactors on top of a fault line and above an aquafer.
Then for financial reasons they ignore some 7 or more warnings and recommendations about a protective wall just in case a tsunami would hit the coast, so the owners of the company will have more financial gain.
And then when things happen they lose control of the situation, the government has to step in, socialising the costs, and that same insanely dangerous company
1. still exists?
2. dares to press for a restart of the 48 other reactors across Japan?????
You tell me who is fucking insane here.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Here is all the facts you need to know in two quotes and a formula. Start with a quote from this article:
"proposed nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset, UK which at $35 billion will be the most expensive object ever put together on Earth"
and now from the Wiki:
"Hinkley Point C nuclear power station is a project to construct a 3,200 MWe nuclear power station"
And now it's time for our formula. In the power industry, we are very very interested in the CAPEX, expressed in terms of dollar-per-watt. In this case:
CAPEX = 35 billion / 3.2 billion = $11/W
Why is that everything you need to know? Well I lied, it's *almost* everything. The other bit is this:
Commercial PV: $1.50
Commercial wind: $1.40
Gas co-gen: $1.15
All numbers up-to-date within about 6 months, taken from real-world projects and summarized on page 11 here:
https://www.lazard.com/media/2390/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-analysis-90.pdf
And that's basically that. If you consider a modern wind turbine with a CF of 32%, and the Hinkley reactors with a CF of 90%, then you get relative LCoE's of:
Hinkley : 11 / 0.9 = 12.2
Wind: 1.40 / 0.32 = 4.38
Which means wind is about three times cheaper than nuclear. It's actually more than that because there's no fuel cost and OPEX is lower.
And that, dear reader, is why nuclear is dead.
> (3200 MW) * 0.9 * (8766 hours/year) * (35 years) * ($50 / MWh) = $44.16 billion revenue.
You have not considered the effects of inflation over that period, or more specifically, the discounted cashflows.
Using your numbers, we would expect to produce 3200 * 0.9 * 8766 * 50 = $1,262,304,000, or 1.26 billion a year. Note that that rate is not generally subject to inflation, it is a guaranteed rate signed as part of the PPA (aka LTPP) when the plant is built.
So now put those numbers into a DCFV calculator like this one:
http://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/financial/present-value-cash-flows-calculator.php
I used an interest rate of 6.5%, the current unsecured rate used here, selected 1 for the Number of Lines, compounding 4 times per period (quarterly) and entered 35 @ 1.26. Clicking calculate, we find that the total value of the stream for 35 years is 17.98 billion.
18 billion is smaller than 35 billion
So what would they have to charge per MWh to break even? Well if I change the input to 2.5 I get 35.67 billion. So in other words, the WHOLESALE rate I would have to charge is $2500 million / 3200 MW * 0.9 * 8766 hours/year = 9.9 cents.
9.9 cents WHOLESALE.
And we haven't even factored in fuel or OPEX. Done like dinner.
Jeebus on a moped! I used to sell generators. No one *ever* started out with a cost per hour. It was how many kW do you need and how much will that cost? We might then have moved into estimated cost per hour based on fuel used and expected lifespan of the equipment. In the end a power company will buy the power from your generator and you will sell it as a cost per watt/kW/mW per hour, but the very first thing you need to do is know how much power you need to produce to know what kind of plant you need to buy, and THEN you start working the kW/hr costs. Hydro might be cheap, but you won' be looking at it in a desert and solar is kind of pointless someplace it always rains.
> FYI, the plant's design life is 60 years, not 35,
Including planned refurbs. Refurbs have a long and very consistent history of costing more than the original plant.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/point-lepreau-costs-could-hit-3-3b-pmo-memo-says-1.1344861
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/darlington-nuclear-refurbishment-1.3395696
http://www.startribune.com/july-9-2014-xcel-management-blamed-for-cost-overruns-at-monticello-nuke-plant/266353511/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentilly_Nuclear_Generating_Station
The only exception I can find is Embalse, which is only under the original budget because the original construction was delayed 10 years.
Although the industry continues to claim that refurb costs are on the order of 1.2 cents/kWh, not one single such effort has come close to this number and more reactors are simply abandoned than refurbed.
In this particular case, I have exactly zero doubt that in 35 years a refurb will not be worth it. PPAs for PV are being signed at 5.5 cents, and current estimates are panels will last for 60 to 100 years with close to zero OPEX. Anyone building a reactor now is mental.
Of course you consider capacity when sizing the source, I never said you would not. In fact, for small portable generators the only thing people often care about is capacity, as cost of operation isn't so much of a concern.But even then you don't start with $/KW. You just start with the size of the plant. This was not a discussion about how you select and size a plant. It was a discussion on how to evaluate cost of energy. In fact, in your statement you never even used $/KW, which was my point, it is not very useful.
I can tell you for certain that any utility that has ever added a generating asset has evaluated the cost of energy that will be produced, in $/MWh, not $/KW.
If you haven't noticed, there are a LOT of people right here on slashdot that think $/KW reflects energy cost, not to mention PRs that take advantage of that confusion.
Anyhow, you seem to have backed up my point that the actual energy cost is evaluated in $/MWh, not $/KW, which is my only point.
I hope that helps you understand why cost comparisons only make sense using watt*hours.
Because you explained nicely why it is wrong (*facepalm*)
Cost per Wh is the cost of producing each single Wh depending on its fuel costs. So ... where is the sense in that if you compare a 1GW coal plant with a 1GW nuke plant and look at the construction costs? There is simply no relation! ...
The only thing you could do is estimate the lifetime of both plants and the lifetime power production and divide up the construction cost on that. In a sense of amortized costs
Perhaps you wanted to say that ... but your post was not very clear in that. And even then you are wrong as you still have to use fuel as well.
So usually you simply compare the construction costs based on GW (and "capacity factor") and calculate the running costs separately based on fuel and crew and maintenance.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yes, for this plant, there will be many refurbishments along the way, however the highest cost components such as the RPV will not be replaced. That cost is included in the lifetime O&M cost profile, so be careful not to double dip and add it again on the side. It is certainly an important factor to consider, and is included the levelized energy cost evaluations.
Historically, your doubts are proven wrong as refurbishment of existing nuclear has payed off greatly.
https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/...
Cost per Wh is the cost of producing each single Wh depending on its fuel costs.
No, fuel cost is just one component. You also include O&M, capitalization/amortization, expected capacity factor, and any other costs involved in owning and operating the facility,r based on the operating life. For renewables, the fuel cost is zero, so they have a big advantage in that line item. But they have high capitalization. Wind has high O&M. For gas, fuel is super cheap. Nuclear has higher insurance and waste assessment costs, but also very high capacity factor and reasonable fuel costs. They are all included to get the proper $/MWh for comparison. That is referred to the 'levelized cost of energy", and it is done in $/MWh. Any credible organization that does these comparisons uses this approach.
6 times the cost of Sizewell B. Why?
Exactly my point.
Hence kWh is useless for what you seek.
Perhaps you mean kWh produced over the lifetime of the plant? And that depends on so many factors that you hardly can calculate it. So: why do you want to compare numbers based on stuff you can not calculate correctly?
Example: 2 exact identical coal plants.
Plant A is used to load follow, idling at night at 10% of its load, ramping up till 9AM to full load, staying more or less at full load till 9PM, ramping down to 10% again towards 2:00AM.
Plant B is used for base load, running at 90%/95% load 24/7.
Both plants are exactly the same, use exactly the same fuel, have the same maintenance overhead etc.
So ... both plant sell their power at completely different prices.
No idea what the exact cost per kWh helps you to decide about one or both of the plants. Obviously the "costs" per kWh in plant A are much higher than in plant B, but to are the earnings you make. Obviously the costs for building the GW the plants provide are the same. Probably they have the same life expectation. Probably when plant B is in maintenance plant A will be providing base load instead of doing load following. Over a typical year plant B will produce a bit more than twice the power that A did. However A will have burned only half the fuel. And B will be "utilized" close to the max while A is underutilized. A "BA" would probably say: ditch A its "capacity factor" is only 45% ... we don't need such plants, and "oh my! Look at the costs per kWh produced!", another BA would point out: "yeah, but look at the earnings per kWh" and then another BA would say: "look if we run it at 100% and with those earnings at 45% we make twice the money!"
So, why you want to know kWh costs for plants and want kind of conclusion you want to draw from it: is beyond me. As long as you are not actively operating the plants in a fleet of plants, and have to chose which plant to ramp up/down, such metrics are useless.
If you are dispatching a fleet of such plants, then the cost factors of the plants get updated daily (or what ever period the egg heads think is best, perhaps a month)! So you can always issue commands to the cheapest plant at any point of time to ramp up, or to the most expensive one to ramp down.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Exactly my point. Hence kWh is useless for what you seek.
Tell all of these organizations that their approach is useless;
https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/...
http://energyinnovation.org/20...
http://www.renewable-energysou...
http://about.bnef.com/press-re...
https://www.google.com/url?sa=...
Or maybe you know more than them. Methinks you just want to avoid proper comparisons.
If you want to compare the cost of energy, use MWh. A MW is not energy. A MWh is energy. And finally, a nice easy to read statement from wikipedia;
In electrical power generation, the distinct ways of generating electricity incur significantly different costs. Calculations of these costs at the point of connection to a load or to the electricity grid can be made. The cost is typically given per kilowatt-hour or megawatt-hour. It includes the initial capital, discount rate, as well as the costs of continuous operation, fuel, and maintenance. This type of calculation assists policy makers, researchers and others to guide discussions and decision making.
The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is a measure of a power source which attempts to compare different methods of electricity generation on a comparable basis. It is an economic assessment of the average total cost to build and operate a power-generating asset over its lifetime divided by the total energy output of the asset over that lifetime. The LCOE can also be regarded as the minimum cost at which electricity must be sold in order to break-even over the lifetime of the project.
If you want to refute, provide a source instead of meandering rationalizations.
if the most modern nuclear reactor under construction is still using decades-old designs and still produces substantial nuclear waste, and there are much newer, cheaper, cleaner, safer designs that EXIST NOW that could be used...
then yeah. that seems like a pretty reasonable request to me! why are we not building them again?
At an estimated $10 billion each, we could make 3.5 missions to Mars. Of course the Iraq War, at $3 trillion, would have funded 300 manned Mars missions. Bush just pissed it up against the wall.
Only boring people are ever bored.
??? watt-hour, kilowatt-hour, megawatt-hour, gigawatt-hour - all this is moving decimal places around. Consumers buy electricity by the kilowatt-hour, so that is the best unit to explain generation costs in.
Its refreshing to here simple logic. THANK YOU.
Daming rivers is always cheap for power. There must be another big one hiding in those British hills somewhere...
If you want to compare the cost of energy, use MWh.
Yes, but you did not do that.
You compared the building costs of a plant that produces x GW power with "something else" and claimed you need to use energy instead of power.
And that is simply plain wrong ;D
But perhaps your first post I replied to in this thread was simply so badly worded that I did not got your angle.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You compared the building costs of a plant that produces x GW power with "something else" and claimed you need to use energy instead of power.
Don't be an idiot. My fist entry to this thread I said; "Even high end cost estimates from critics are under $100/Mwh, which equates to $0.0096/Wh, and is lower than many other sources." The ensuing discussion was entirely about cost of energy.
Just because I showed explicitly how wrong you were, you decided to twist reality and deflect. How pathetic.
My post was very short.
You have no excuse.
If it's all too hard try just reading the "Two units at one plant = two units at one site" bit.
Any more of this stupidity and I'm going to start rolling out the moonshine and banjo insults.
Perhaps you should check to which post I answered first?
Obviously no one disagrees, I'm the least one, that the cost of production of a single MW is most important. But that is not very relevant for the cost of the plant: and you and I were discussing about the cost of the plant: which you clearly wanted to be broke down on a MWh scale: which makes not much sense.
So, you are a bit pathetic imho :D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That discussion you are imagining never took place with me invovled. I had and still have only one point to make in this thread, and that is when comparing the cost of energy, you must use MWh.
Sorry, your claim was: to compare the cost of building a plant, you need to use MWh.
Hence our discussion started.
Obviously for comparing costs of energy you use kWh or MWh, what else would one use?
Perhaps we simply crosstalked each other.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Sorry, your claim was: to compare the cost of building a plant, you need to use MWh.
A complete fabrication by you. Point to where in this discussion I said that. If you can't, please apologize and then stop.
You did that in the very first post I answered to. :D
And my answer was pretty clear regarding that issue. So if we crosstalked each other you could have pointed it out at that point. But you did not but made strange posts about power versus energy so I assumed you where a wacko.
My appologize
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.