Sweden's parliament on Tuesday (20 June) adopted a new energy target, giving the right-wing government the green light to push forward with plans to build new nuclear plants in a country that voted 40 years ago to phase out atomic power.
Even the old designs aren’t that bad all things considered. Even including all exclusion zones, nuclear probably still uses the least amount of land per TWh per year…
Note on data:
spoiler
Based on real-world data, except for CSP which uses expected data of existing sites. Only electricity production and not direct use of biofuels. Dedicated biomass includes only woody biomass from willow, poplar, and spruce trees. Residue biomass refers to using a coal plant to burn extant biomass, requiring no feedstock land use but using more space than coal plants because biomass is less efficient. American nuclear power plants use more space than most countries because of less reactors per plant. Factors in nuclear exclusion zones (area divided by total historical power generation) even though partially inhabited. Includes fuel production as “indirect land use”, part of “total land use”. Excludes run-of-the-river hydroelectric projects. “Spacing” includes space in between wind turbines and fossil gas well pads even if empty of any infrastructure. Excludes land needed to mine materials or other upstream land use, land needed for energy transmission, and offshore area impacts and underground impacts.
Olkiluoto-3 Started construction in 2005, was supposed to be in service by 2009. It entered service this past year, somewhere around €7B over budget. It would have been more but for specific liability clauses in the contracts.
Flammanville-3 started construction in 2007, was supposed to be in service by 2012. Currently, they’re predicting that it might come online in 2024. Initial estimate of €3,3B has bloated to €20B, for only a single 1660MW EPR.
Hinckley Point C is already £10B over budget and years late, currently estimate in-service date is 2027.
It’s no different in North America, with V.C Summer 2&3 project being cancelled while under construction, when the budget bloated from $9B to $23B. Vogtle 3&4 went from $12B initially to $14B, then to somewhere around $30B.
Nuke supporters love the “Green” strawman. The reality is the utilities wouldn’t touch one with a ten ft pole if they have any alternatives at all, and it’s strictly due to the economics.
Sweden has a solid base of existing nukes and hydro. The buildout of wind/solar even geothermal would be far faster and cheaper than additional nukes.
On top of that Nuclear Power Plants mostly help big corporations. Solar at least helps home owners get cheap energy. In the end we should aim to help people and not corporations.
When you factor in that a nuclear project will face additional hurdles, you get an idea why every reactor build these days is over budget.
Because that initial budget was the back of the napkin calculation before any site surveys or permitting or anything else, because in order to get the permits for those site surveys and such, you need an initial budget.
The press then reports these napkin numbers as if they were the final budget.
As another note here, nuclear projects tend to face massive regulatory sabotage from people who are ideologically opposed for various reasons. (usually tracing back to money from fossil fuels). This drives up the cost considerably as well.
I’ve spent 25 years in thermal generation, including some work on nukes, and there are a lot of issues with that video.
Professional estimators are generally pretty accurate when it comes to thermal plants. A class D estimate would be ±20%, Class A ±5%. The problem arises when they have to spin unrealistic numbers in order to be competitive with other technologies. That’s when you get things that are off by 200% of the estimate.
Speaking of which, over the history of the industry, the average nuclear reactor in the US is 207% of the initial estimate. That number has actually gotten worse going from 1st to 2nd to 3rd generation reactors, even though the reactors were simplified to reduce things like the number of pipe runs and control valves, etc, and the use of large pre-manufactured sub-assemblies. In order to become economic, reactor sizes have increased, which increases overall efficiency, the theory being an incremental increase in cost would be offset by the higher output. The trouble was, the increase in costs never ended up being anywhere close to ‘incremental’.
Initial design costs and regulatory approval & fees typically should be in the range of 10-15% of capital costs. For the most part, that’s about where they land in practice. The bulk of the costs and cost overruns remain in construction, construction-management, material, and project financing, especially now that interest rates are increasing.
The regulatory sabotage theory is BS. The French have been the largest nuclear industry proponents since their big construction boom in the 1970/80s. Yet their plants are just as likely to go over budget as anywhere else. The regulations are written based on accident/incidents in the past. They’re there for a reason.
Do note that one of the major “safety” regulations, the one mandating a shutoff method to deal with a double ended guillotine break, is completely pointless, because a double ended guillotine break is actually impossible. Pipes don’t break like that. The more reliable safety standard is Leak Before Break, and yet, nuclear designers are actually forbidden from designing around that scenario because it would often interfere with the imaginary guillotine break.
Then there are bans on multiplexing control wires. There are dozens of other random regulations that make nuclear plants slightly less safe, but extremely expensive.
That doesn’t even touch on the permitting process. here’s a quote;
the NRC does not benefit when power plants come online. Their budget does not increase proportional to gigawatts generated. Instead, the nuclear companies themselves pay the NRC for the time they spend reviewing applications, at something close to $300 an hour. This creates a perverse incentive: the more overhead, the more delays, the more revenue for the agency.
The result: the NRC approval process now takes several years and costs literally hundreds of millions of dollars.
It is unfortunate how deep anti nuclear sentiment goes with many people. Modern and future reactors are so different from old designs
Even the old designs aren’t that bad all things considered. Even including all exclusion zones, nuclear probably still uses the least amount of land per TWh per year…
Note on data:
spoiler
Based on real-world data, except for CSP which uses expected data of existing sites. Only electricity production and not direct use of biofuels. Dedicated biomass includes only woody biomass from willow, poplar, and spruce trees. Residue biomass refers to using a coal plant to burn extant biomass, requiring no feedstock land use but using more space than coal plants because biomass is less efficient. American nuclear power plants use more space than most countries because of less reactors per plant. Factors in nuclear exclusion zones (area divided by total historical power generation) even though partially inhabited. Includes fuel production as “indirect land use”, part of “total land use”. Excludes run-of-the-river hydroelectric projects. “Spacing” includes space in between wind turbines and fossil gas well pads even if empty of any infrastructure. Excludes land needed to mine materials or other upstream land use, land needed for energy transmission, and offshore area impacts and underground impacts.
Olkiluoto-3 Started construction in 2005, was supposed to be in service by 2009. It entered service this past year, somewhere around €7B over budget. It would have been more but for specific liability clauses in the contracts.
Flammanville-3 started construction in 2007, was supposed to be in service by 2012. Currently, they’re predicting that it might come online in 2024. Initial estimate of €3,3B has bloated to €20B, for only a single 1660MW EPR.
Hinckley Point C is already £10B over budget and years late, currently estimate in-service date is 2027.
It’s no different in North America, with V.C Summer 2&3 project being cancelled while under construction, when the budget bloated from $9B to $23B. Vogtle 3&4 went from $12B initially to $14B, then to somewhere around $30B.
Nuke supporters love the “Green” strawman. The reality is the utilities wouldn’t touch one with a ten ft pole if they have any alternatives at all, and it’s strictly due to the economics.
Sweden has a solid base of existing nukes and hydro. The buildout of wind/solar even geothermal would be far faster and cheaper than additional nukes.
On top of that Nuclear Power Plants mostly help big corporations. Solar at least helps home owners get cheap energy. In the end we should aim to help people and not corporations.
This video explains why every single engineering project ever has gone over the initial budget.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOe_6vuaR_s
When you factor in that a nuclear project will face additional hurdles, you get an idea why every reactor build these days is over budget.
Because that initial budget was the back of the napkin calculation before any site surveys or permitting or anything else, because in order to get the permits for those site surveys and such, you need an initial budget.
The press then reports these napkin numbers as if they were the final budget.
As another note here, nuclear projects tend to face massive regulatory sabotage from people who are ideologically opposed for various reasons. (usually tracing back to money from fossil fuels). This drives up the cost considerably as well.
I’ve spent 25 years in thermal generation, including some work on nukes, and there are a lot of issues with that video.
Professional estimators are generally pretty accurate when it comes to thermal plants. A class D estimate would be ±20%, Class A ±5%. The problem arises when they have to spin unrealistic numbers in order to be competitive with other technologies. That’s when you get things that are off by 200% of the estimate.
Speaking of which, over the history of the industry, the average nuclear reactor in the US is 207% of the initial estimate. That number has actually gotten worse going from 1st to 2nd to 3rd generation reactors, even though the reactors were simplified to reduce things like the number of pipe runs and control valves, etc, and the use of large pre-manufactured sub-assemblies. In order to become economic, reactor sizes have increased, which increases overall efficiency, the theory being an incremental increase in cost would be offset by the higher output. The trouble was, the increase in costs never ended up being anywhere close to ‘incremental’.
Initial design costs and regulatory approval & fees typically should be in the range of 10-15% of capital costs. For the most part, that’s about where they land in practice. The bulk of the costs and cost overruns remain in construction, construction-management, material, and project financing, especially now that interest rates are increasing.
The regulatory sabotage theory is BS. The French have been the largest nuclear industry proponents since their big construction boom in the 1970/80s. Yet their plants are just as likely to go over budget as anywhere else. The regulations are written based on accident/incidents in the past. They’re there for a reason.
The regulatory sabotage is real.
Here’s a link explaining it.
https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop
Do note that one of the major “safety” regulations, the one mandating a shutoff method to deal with a double ended guillotine break, is completely pointless, because a double ended guillotine break is actually impossible. Pipes don’t break like that. The more reliable safety standard is Leak Before Break, and yet, nuclear designers are actually forbidden from designing around that scenario because it would often interfere with the imaginary guillotine break.
Then there are bans on multiplexing control wires. There are dozens of other random regulations that make nuclear plants slightly less safe, but extremely expensive.
That doesn’t even touch on the permitting process. here’s a quote;