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.
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.