> It is possible to have 10% of production be nuclear without having every kilowatt of energy sell for what nuclear production costs.
I don't think you grasp the difference in costs here. Lazard (which uses US prices including tariffs etc.) find wind or solar + storage to be $50/MWh.
Now you want to add 10% of $190/MWh to the cost base. So instead of $50/MWh we end up with $65/MWh. And now we don't even include the backup needed if the nuclear plant is offline. You know, like when half the French fleet was offline.
By adding 10% nuclear you just forced the consumers to hike their energy bills by 30% and we assumed that nuclear power is 85% reliable, which does not compute when even taking a single reactor off line in a normal sized grid removes more than 15% of the output.
And all this assumes your communistic utopian grid where everyone pays into a single pot which then distributes the cost. Instead of the marginal pricing electricity grids we have in essentially the entire western world.
> And having stable base generation lowers some other costs (less storage required; less renewable overprovisioning required) and reduces some risks (that not enough storage can be built).
What you are saying is that you will lower costs in the $50 - 150/MWh range by forcing costs in the $190/MWh range.
That literally does not compute.
Those are US costs. Do you dare calculating the cost for the $52/MWh batteries with a 20 year lifespan that gets built in China? Or ~$70/MWh outside of China?
> It is possible to have 10% of production be nuclear without having every kilowatt of energy sell for what nuclear production costs. And having stable base generation lowers some other costs (less storage required; less renewable overprovisioning required) and reduces some risks (that not enough storage can be built).
Why should I charge my batteries with extremely expensive nuclear electricity when I am swimming in zero marginal cost renewable electricity?
Again, this does not compute. You are trying to force nuclear power to be the solution with ever more insane takes.
> * How much energy do you need to store for normal daily variation? If nuclear provides 10% of the energy overall, it's about 15% of the base load. On a typical day, you this means need to store 15% less to make it through the night.
And you still haven't answered why I would need your nuclear plant at night when wind power delivers, or storage.
> * How much energy do you need to store for longer term variations, like hot weeks without much sunshine or cold weeks without much wind (via technologies like power to gas, etc). This means providing for normal demand during 99th percentile events and for critical demand for 99.99th percentile events. Batteries can't help much with this, so it's to some extent a duplicated set of infrastructure (power to gas, gas turbines operated at very low duty cycle, etc).
So now you are again back to your peaking nuclear plant. But a nuclear base load literally does not solve those events. You completely skipped the California example: 15 GW baseload, 50 GW peak load.
There are countless studies on this. Nuclear power does not make the grid cheaper because it as well needs storage and peaking to manage a real grid load.
Maybe this quote from the abstract can help jog you along?
> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources.
The lowering of costs by adding baseload is tiny compared to what is needed to fulfill a real grid load.
> New-build LCOE for both nuclear and storage often falls in the same ballpark — around $100–200/MWh — but they mean very different things.
You seem to have fallen for misinformation? Or are spreading wildly out of date information because you can't accept reality? For US costs renewables and storage are down to for wind $44 - 123 per MWh and $50 - 131 for solar. For this case Lazard uses $122 - 313/MWh storage.
We have recently seen auctions conclude in China on $51.59/MWh batteries and outside of China ~$70/MWh. That leads to a naive cycle cost of 0.8 cents/kWh assuming a 20 year lifespan and 80% DoD. Add on financing it, O&M
> Storage LCOE doesn't include the cost of the energy being stored, so total delivered cost depends on the generation mix and timing.
Maybe you are getting it? Why should I store $190/MWh nuclear electricity in my battery? Why would that make sense?`
> On the flip side, nuclear has a fixed output profile
I think this is your issue. You think the grid has a constant demand profile over the days and seasons? It truly doesn't.
Maybe you should read about the history of our grids? Do you know why pumped hydro was invented? To manage the extremely high CAPEX and fixed output profile of nuclear power. They were unwilling to lower the output during low demand seasons and times of the day and instead built storage to manage it.
> Even if nuclear does prove more expensive per MWh than wind or solar + storage, having it supply 10% of total annual energy won’t significantly raise average rates. A higher LCOE on a small slice of the mix has limited impact on the weighted average, especially as it will reduce other system costs by cutting the need for overbuilding or long-duration storage.
We just found a 30% increase assuming extremely expensive US battery costs. But that is fine, everyone will love their bills massively increasing!
You also of course completely ignore the timespans it takes to build nuclear power. About 20 years from political noise to finished plant.
Please, do tell me what relevancy a new built nuclear plant will have in 2045?
> Now you want to add 10% of $190/MWh to the cost base. So instead of $50/MWh we end up with $65/MWh.
Yes-- that's how it works if we assume none of the benefits I'm talking about and assume that storage is free. (Of course, storage has an estimated incremental LCOE similar to the entire cost of nuclear, and a small amount of stable generation can mean much less storage).
> For this case Lazard uses $122 - 313/MWh storage.
There you go; for a small share of nuclear, you can just get the power later in the day for $100-250/MWh, versus paying $122-313/MWh. (And this is the intraday benefit, not counting the interday benefits).
The downside is that you need to amortize the capital cost for the nuclear even when you have a surplus of electricity. So you wouldn't want too much of it.
So it's really more like you pay nuclear's cost * 1.5 for the 2/3rds of the day when you would be tapping storage, and you get additional free power when renewables are producing. $100-250 times 1.5 is similar to 122-313 plus the cost of original renewable generation, but there are the mentioned ancillary benefits, too.
We need to roughly double grid size, and unfortunately a whole lot of the increment wants to be closer to 24/7 loads than current demand (industrial, heating, charging of vehicle batteries, etc-- and if we do any power2gas, that counts in a big way).
I think you've not heard the argument, so I'm bailing out.
> a small amount of stable generation can mean much less storage
Which does not pencil out in the studies made on the topic. Which you keep ignoring. Because nuclear power itself needs loads of flexibility to meet a grid load over the course of days and seasons.
> There you go; for a small share of nuclear, you can just get the power later in the day for $100-250/MWh, versus paying $122-313/MWh. (And this is the intraday benefit, not counting the interday benefits).
Ahh sorry. I love how you pounced on a figure you would know to be erroneous if you had knowledge on the topic. But you desperately want to paint renewables as impossible.
The $122-313 figure is of course per kWh when installed. Leading to cycle costs in the cents. Not tens of cents like "$122 - 313/MWh storage" would have you believe.
Which in China today is down to $52/kWh. I see you didn't dare calculating the cycle cost for those batteries. I suppose because you that would invalidate your nuclear cultism.
> 24/7 loads than current demand (industrial, heating, charging of vehicle batteries, etc).
You truly don't comprehend how the grid works? Charging EVs is a 24/7 load when you need to paint nuclear power as the solution?
The people with EVs and hourly contracts are literally the ones watching the electricity prices like the weather and timing their charging to perfect.
It is by definition the perfect load to match a renewable grid.
And you still ignore the timescales involved. I suppose you don't have an answer.
Again: Do tell me what relevancy a new built nuclear plant will have when it comes online in 2045?
Will we just keep polluting for decades while waiting on this nuclear plant? Is that what you propose?
Cycle costs aren't a fair metric unless/until we know what refurbishment really costs.
Given that we amortize other bits of electrical infrastructure over 30-40 years, amortizing a new bit over 20 years when A) it has a wear component inside, and B) we don't have 40 years of experience with it seems fair.
> Will we just keep polluting for decades while waiting on this nuclear plant? Is that what you propose?
Right now our intercept involves us polluting for decades beyond that nuclear power showing up. I propose doing more of everything low-carbon, including more nuclear.
> I love how you pounced on a figure
I said $100-200 13 hours ago. You said a different, similar number, so I used your number.
> The people with EVs and hourly contracts are literally the ones watching the electricity prices like the weather and timing their charging to perfect.
Most charging happens overnight. Lots of transport loads will be forced to charge overnight, too. Yes, they have some flexibility to dispatch load, but not enough to substantially hold up a truck for cheaper electricity or shift the time in the day when it is driving.
My big issue talking to you: you're engaging in a lot of hyperbole, don't really seem to be responding to my arguments, and you're continually being abrasive:
> I suppose you don't have an answer.
> when you need to paint
> Ahh sorry. I love how you
> But you desperately want
> if you had knowledge on the topic.
I don't think I'm talking to you like that (if I am, please point it out so that I can stop). If your objective is to just chase me away by making discussion unpleasant, you're having some success.
Why should we care what refurbishment costs? We know the installation cost. We know the cycle life as per the chosen depth of discharge. We also know the cost of capital.
What we are seeing today is many renewable projects built 20 years ago nearing the of their expected economic life as per their financing are seeing life extensions. They keep producing a valuable product and their loans are paid off making it pure profit.
Renewables don't stop working after 20 years. Just like old nuclear plants don't stop working after 20 years.
Nuclear powers problem is that it takes 20 years to get built. Then it needs to pay off its loans, and recent plants have hade insanely expensive 40 year PPAs attached to them.
Meaning for a project started today we will be paying for the boondoggle until 2085.
Why do you want to make us poorer by wasting money?
> Right now our intercept involves us polluting for decades beyond that nuclear power showing up. I propose doing more of everything low-carbon, including more nuclear.
Why waste money on the option costing 5-10x as much per kWh decarbonized if you truly care about decarbonization?
> Most charging happens overnight. Lots of transport loads will be forced to charge overnight, too. Yes, they have some flexibility to dispatch load, but not enough to substantially hold up a truck for cheaper electricity or shift the time in the day when it is driving.
Until you know, charging wherever you can stop essentially becomes standard? Or just let your home battery charge the car from your daytime rooftop solar?
With battery costs coming down to $50-100/kWh adding a sizeable battery to a house is a trivial cost. We are starting to enter an economic reality where the work done by professional installers is more expensive than the battery itself.
BEV transport and public transport is generally modeled as an inflexible load. But all in all their demand is quite small compared to the rest of society.
In California storage has already brought down fossil gas usage by 43%. But you say we should instead have kept the fossil gas, invested in nuclear power and waited until the 2040s.
It literally does not make sense to waste money on a dead-end technology like nuclear power.
> Why should we care what refurbishment costs? We know the installation cost. We know the cycle life as per the chosen depth of discharge.
Because if we're making an argument purely based on the cost of a cycle on a battery, that's not reasonable. New batteries do not appear in the system for the cost of buying them. Old batteries do not disappear, perfectly recycled for free.
> Renewables don't stop working after 20 years.
I wasn't talking about renewables. Maybe we can extend renewable amortization times as we gain experience.
Amortization is an imperfect tool, but a crucial one to know what stuff really costs. Amortizing batteries over 20 years seems reasonable (many people advocate for 10).
> Nuclear powers problem is that it takes 20 years to get built.
Yes, and if we'd listened to me 25 years ago when I was making this same argument, we'd have more zero-carbon electricity on the grid today. ;) "It'll show up too late" is an argument that's false until it's true.
> Why do you want to make us poorer by wasting money?
OK, and now we have reached another of the kind of comments that I find problematic, so I've stopped reading here.
> Because if we're making an argument purely based on the cost of a cycle on a battery, that's not reasonable. New batteries do not appear in the system for the cost of buying them. Old batteries do not disappear, perfectly recycled for free.
So lets include the costs for decommissioning nuclear plants, dealing with the waste and that the public is on the hook for essentially the entire accident insurance?
> Yes, and if we'd listened to me 25 years ago when I was making this same argument, we'd have more zero-carbon electricity on the grid today. ;)
You seem to not be caught up with what happened 25 years ago? Or are projecting because you can't accept reality?
There was a massive push to build nuclear power alongside a tiny one to build renewables.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 was a massive handout to the nuclear industry. That is the act that spawned Vogtle, Virgil C. Summer and another 15 now cancelled reactors.
In the meantime Vogtle required handout after handout to get pushed over the finish line and we all know how Virgil C. Summer went. The ratepayers saddled with hiked bills for decades to pay for the boondoggle.
You seem to be living in some completely made up reality were we didn't subsidize the absolute shit out of nuclear power? Because that is what we did.
Everyone is against nuclear power and if only everyone hade listen to you had given even more subsidies 20 years ago it would have gotten built! We need trillions in subsidies!
> OK, and now we have reached another of the kind of comments that I find problematic, so I've stopped reading here.
Love the dodge. If you don't read it doesn't exist. Due to the well known costs of nuclear power what you propose will make us poorer for generations.
What you say is that it is fine to add multiples to our electricity costs because you can't let go of a dead-end technology.
> So lets include the costs for decommissioning nuclear plants, dealing with the waste and that the public is on the hook for essentially the entire accident insurance?
Yes. All nuclear power plants pay into trust funds for decommissioning and waste disposal, and that's included in the LCOE.
And re: history: yes, deciding to build nuclear power and then chickening out is even worse than not building nuclear power. I agree.
> Pure insanity.
Are you really upset and that's why you're lashing out? Or is this just your normal way to treat another human you're discussing something with?
Because I would be happy to discuss more with you if you can restrain yourself from doing this. But otherwise, these just lead me to nope out quickly.
Again you are wrong. Why do you make stuff up when you are in over your head?
The $190/MWh figure for Vogtle does not include decommissioning, waste disposal or the 99% subsidized accident insurance.
I love how you call it "chickening out" when what happened was that despite the absolutely massive handouts they couldn't work out a business case. But just keep throwing trillions at an industry experiencing negative learning by doing and hope for another outcome.
I love how you resorted to inventing new costs for storage when even you realized you couldn't dodge reality anymore.
Thank you for confirming that storage is undeniable here and that new built nuclear power is a completely unreasonable proposition in 2025.
"Reflects the average of the high and low LCOE marginal cost of operating fully depreciated gas peaking, gas combined cycle, coal and nuclear facilities, inclusive of decommissioning costs for nuclear facilities. Analysis assumes that the
salvage value for a decommissioned gas or coal asset is equivalent to its decommissioning and site restoration costs. Inputs are derived from a benchmark of operating gas, coal and nuclear assets across the U.S. Capacity factors, fuel,
variable and fixed operating expenses are based on upper- and lower-quartile estimates derived from Lazard’s research"
Reactors in the US are required to prefund decommissioning and to pay into a government-run waste disposal program. They also pay for the first $450M of accident insurance and pay into a secondary $12B liability pool.
No US accident has ever tapped the secondary liability pool.
These are all ordinary operating costs.
> I love how you resorted to inventing new costs for storage when even you realized you couldn't dodge reality anymore.
Again loaded language. No, I'm saying using the amortized as-built capital costs-- like Lazard does-- to figure LCOE is reasonable. There's reasons it's pessimistic (we may have some useful life left in batteries; we may be able to keep using components and infrastructure even if we replace batteries). There's reasons it's optimistic (e.g. battery recycling and disposal costs; possible obsolescence or changes in patterns of need; etc). In the end, until we have experience we have to use something in the ballpark, and as-built costs amortized over design life is reasonable.
Ah sorry. The previous versions of Lazard didn't include that. Final waste storage nor accident insurance are included though.
> (4) Unless otherwise indicated, the analysis herein does not reflect decommissioning costs, ongoing maintenance-related capital expenditures or the potential economic impacts of federal loan guarantees or other subsidies.
Even when including the entire fleet the pool is nothing compared to the $200B cleanup bill for Fukushima, last updated in 2016, with recent estimates going up to trillions.
Lets just phase out the Price-Anderson act and force the nuclear companies to buy insurance for a Fukushima scale accident from commercial insurers?
But the nuclear industry is just handout after handout and it still costs a horrifying $190/MWh to build and doesn't deliver until the mid 2040s.
> No US accident has ever tapped the secondary liability pool.
No Japanese accident ever tapped the "secondary liability pool" until Fukushima. No Soviet accident ever tapped the "secondary liability pool" until Chernobyl.
Sounds like you just want to bury your head in the sand and pretend that nuclear accidents can't happen.
Just slice every industry into a tiny enough sliver and pretend it is not affected. Just like people complaining that we can't do anything about our emissions "because China".
It was not noted. Therefore not included in those previous figures.
Still no final storage in sight. 0.1 cents per kWh sounds like it is wildly underfunded.
In Sweden, which has started to build its final waste storage, the cost is 1 cent per kWh for the existing fleet to have all its waste stored.
1 cent per kWh is massive when your competition in renewables comes in at 3-5 cents per kWh for their total all in costs.
I also love how you completely skipped over the accident insurance. Why don't you want to privatize the nuclear accident insurance? Because you know that the entire industry would shut down over night or run without insurance?
> It was not noted. Therefore not included in those previous figures.
I understand your comment now. I thought the quote was intended to support what you were saying previously, not to illustrate the previous version of the report that you relied upon.
> 0.1 cents per kWh sounds like it is wildly underfunded.
We need a big final waste storage facility for the US no matter what, and the commercial waste doesn't make it too much bigger. A cent per kilowatt-hour is plausible for the marginal cost of storing more waste.
> I also love...
I'm choosing to talk about one thing at a time.
I notice that you're trying to talk a little more respectfully and I appreciate it-- but phrasing like this still grates a little bit. You don't need to address me (and indeed, I don't need to address you other than asking you to be nice)-- just address the facts.
> I also love how you completely skipped over the accident insurance. Why don't you want to privatize the nuclear accident insurance? Because you know that the entire industry would shut down over night or run without insurance?
The federal government is the insurer of last resort in basically any industry that can create outsized losses (water projects/hydroelectric, aviation, hazmat, etc.) And bounds that risk in a couple of ways: first requiring insurance and risk pools in those industries, and second by regulating those industries to reduce the chance of an accident. I think we could have a safer industry with a lower LCOE with some regulatory requirements lowered and with insurance requirements raised, but this is the operating point that our society has chosen.
Or you know. We can just build renewables and storage without any of that risk? Where regular bog-standard commercial insurance is good enough to cover the risk.
We want to phase out oil both for the carbon emissions, and because how nasty it is to deal with in terms of spills. You do know that the oil industry is one of few other industries that also has liability caps due to the potential damage?
Why are you so hellbent on wasting risk and money on a dead-end technology that does not provide anything valuable to a modern grid?
You still haven't answered:
Why should South Australia build a nuclear plant?
They have a grid swinging between a weekly average of 65-85% renewables in the midst of winter with almost every day hitting at least a portion of 100% renewable electricity in the mix.
That is where all grids globally are headed, and will be long before a single new built nuclear reactor project started today would come online in the 2040s.
If you can't answer that question for South Australia then you agree that nuclear power is entirely unfit to be built today.
> literally the ones watching the electricity prices like the weather and timing their charging to perfect.
A critic will read that and think "most people won't do that." Except it's really easy. You just tell the car "make sure you're charged by 7AM", and the car will do the right thing.
I hope you got something out of your excellent comments since you're talking to somebody who isn't listening, and the story is long past off the front page.
> You just tell the car "make sure you're charged by 7AM", and the car will do the right thing.
If we end up with a surplus of nighttime electricity, sure.
But if my car needs to be charged sometime from 8PM to 6AM, it's going to be some mix of nuclear, storage, and wind that goes in, and one cannot reasonably build enough wind to cover more than doubled nighttime use.
> I hope you got something out of your excellent comments since you're talking to somebody who isn't listening,
I'm listening, and I don't understand why my counter-commenter has to call names and call people out like that -- or why you do.
> But if my car needs to be charged sometime from 8PM to 6AM
If your car truly needs to be charged too 100% before 6AM because you are going on a road trip then you of course are willing to pay a tiny bit extra for the more expensive electricity at that time?
For all the other ones. If don't know how many nines after 99%. I they start their day with 60% or 80% or 100% does not matter in the slightest for their daily commute.
That is the entire point. Pay extra only when you need it to get reliability. With wasting money on new built nuclear power we would be making an entire generation poorer because you assume everyone wants to go on daytrips every single day.
I don't think you grasp the difference in costs here. Lazard (which uses US prices including tariffs etc.) find wind or solar + storage to be $50/MWh.
Now you want to add 10% of $190/MWh to the cost base. So instead of $50/MWh we end up with $65/MWh. And now we don't even include the backup needed if the nuclear plant is offline. You know, like when half the French fleet was offline.
By adding 10% nuclear you just forced the consumers to hike their energy bills by 30% and we assumed that nuclear power is 85% reliable, which does not compute when even taking a single reactor off line in a normal sized grid removes more than 15% of the output.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr...
And all this assumes your communistic utopian grid where everyone pays into a single pot which then distributes the cost. Instead of the marginal pricing electricity grids we have in essentially the entire western world.
> And having stable base generation lowers some other costs (less storage required; less renewable overprovisioning required) and reduces some risks (that not enough storage can be built).
What you are saying is that you will lower costs in the $50 - 150/MWh range by forcing costs in the $190/MWh range.
That literally does not compute.
Those are US costs. Do you dare calculating the cost for the $52/MWh batteries with a 20 year lifespan that gets built in China? Or ~$70/MWh outside of China?
https://reneweconomy.com.au/watershed-moment-big-battery-sto...
> It is possible to have 10% of production be nuclear without having every kilowatt of energy sell for what nuclear production costs. And having stable base generation lowers some other costs (less storage required; less renewable overprovisioning required) and reduces some risks (that not enough storage can be built).
Why should I charge my batteries with extremely expensive nuclear electricity when I am swimming in zero marginal cost renewable electricity?
Again, this does not compute. You are trying to force nuclear power to be the solution with ever more insane takes.
> * How much energy do you need to store for normal daily variation? If nuclear provides 10% of the energy overall, it's about 15% of the base load. On a typical day, you this means need to store 15% less to make it through the night.
And you still haven't answered why I would need your nuclear plant at night when wind power delivers, or storage.
> * How much energy do you need to store for longer term variations, like hot weeks without much sunshine or cold weeks without much wind (via technologies like power to gas, etc). This means providing for normal demand during 99th percentile events and for critical demand for 99.99th percentile events. Batteries can't help much with this, so it's to some extent a duplicated set of infrastructure (power to gas, gas turbines operated at very low duty cycle, etc).
So now you are again back to your peaking nuclear plant. But a nuclear base load literally does not solve those events. You completely skipped the California example: 15 GW baseload, 50 GW peak load.
There are countless studies on this. Nuclear power does not make the grid cheaper because it as well needs storage and peaking to manage a real grid load.
Here's a study that doesn't even use batteries:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...
Maybe this quote from the abstract can help jog you along?
> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources.
The lowering of costs by adding baseload is tiny compared to what is needed to fulfill a real grid load.
> New-build LCOE for both nuclear and storage often falls in the same ballpark — around $100–200/MWh — but they mean very different things.
You seem to have fallen for misinformation? Or are spreading wildly out of date information because you can't accept reality? For US costs renewables and storage are down to for wind $44 - 123 per MWh and $50 - 131 for solar. For this case Lazard uses $122 - 313/MWh storage.
We have recently seen auctions conclude in China on $51.59/MWh batteries and outside of China ~$70/MWh. That leads to a naive cycle cost of 0.8 cents/kWh assuming a 20 year lifespan and 80% DoD. Add on financing it, O&M
> Storage LCOE doesn't include the cost of the energy being stored, so total delivered cost depends on the generation mix and timing.
Maybe you are getting it? Why should I store $190/MWh nuclear electricity in my battery? Why would that make sense?`
> On the flip side, nuclear has a fixed output profile
I think this is your issue. You think the grid has a constant demand profile over the days and seasons? It truly doesn't.
Maybe you should read about the history of our grids? Do you know why pumped hydro was invented? To manage the extremely high CAPEX and fixed output profile of nuclear power. They were unwilling to lower the output during low demand seasons and times of the day and instead built storage to manage it.
> Even if nuclear does prove more expensive per MWh than wind or solar + storage, having it supply 10% of total annual energy won’t significantly raise average rates. A higher LCOE on a small slice of the mix has limited impact on the weighted average, especially as it will reduce other system costs by cutting the need for overbuilding or long-duration storage.
We just found a 30% increase assuming extremely expensive US battery costs. But that is fine, everyone will love their bills massively increasing!
You also of course completely ignore the timespans it takes to build nuclear power. About 20 years from political noise to finished plant.
Please, do tell me what relevancy a new built nuclear plant will have in 2045?