For additional context, one of the reason for the delay and cost increase was the absurdly complex design due to French and German companies trying to collaborate on a new design as Germany was turning anti-nuclear, which culminated with Germany deciding to stop nuclear energy after the Fukushima Daiichi event.
Another big reason is the knowledge loss due to almost one generation without any reactor built in between.
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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Now do Georgia's Vogtle reactors 3 and 4, which came in at 34 billion for 2 x 1200mw plants, 21 billion over the original 14 billion estimate, and took over 14 years to build, 8 years behind schedule.
Im glad these powerplants finally got built. They will help, but nuclear is just not reasonable anymore. Its a slow, expensive tech, especially when we are making such leaps and bonds with solar/battery.
Even if wind and solar make huge progress, they will likely never be as efficient regarding raw materials efficiency and land use. Land use is the main contributor to biodiversity loss.
I don't think peremptory opinions about technologies are going to help. We should use what ever technology is the most reasonable and sustainable for each specific location.
Total land used for all power to be supplied by solar would be a hilariously tiny percentage of land, so this just reads like a solar version of "its killing birds" to me.
Agrivoltaics also side steps this non issue, as interlacing solar panels into farm land increases yields for many crops while making efficent use of space that's already spoiled any biodiversity. Can you do that with a nuclear reactor?
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Something to note about this chart is that ground-mount silicon solar PV isn't considered for sharing land use with activities such as farming in comparison to how onshore wind is (i.e. agrivoltaics).
NREL in the US estimates that there are currently ~10.1 GW of agrivoltaics projects spread across ~62,400 acres (or ~7 m^2 / MW).
Even this being said, I think brownfield or existing structures for new PV is the way of the future for solar PV. There is so much real estate that could be used and has the potential to offset grid demand growth while providing greater reliability for consumers. You'll need the big players to help with industrial loads, but even then, the growth of Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) has the potential to balance loads at the same scale as the big players for the prosumer market.
Edit: I'll also make mention of floatovoltaics, or the installation of solar PV on bodies of water, either natural or artificial. This is a burgeoning side of the industry, but this is another area that could present net zero or even negative land use per unit of energy.
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It's slow expensive tech because we don't invest in it.
Every technology is slow and expensive when you have nearly an entire generational gap in knowledge and experience.
You'll know that I'm not saying solar and wind are not cheaper, they all exist in a different capacity and fill in the gaps they best fit.
A technology will also continue to be slow and expensive when you have rich and powerful entrenched and ossified business interests (the fossil fuel companies) who BENEFIT from said technology being slow and expensive, and doing everything in their power to KEEP it slow and expensive, up to and INCLUDING fraud, graft, bribery, and blackmail.
We have invested decades and billions into reactor tech. The DOE just announced another 900 million for SMR, on top of previous billion dollar grants. So far, every SMR company has failed to make any progress. The DOE even certified one for use and it still can't get it done.
Meanwhile, solar/battery research is getting funding from tons of sources, government and corporate, and exploding forward in every direction. Solar arrays are being deployed all over the world at insane rates, propelled mostly by just how inexpensive, safe, effective and easy it is to deploy. Its because of solar/battery that we may even hit some of the 2030 "pie in the sky" climates goals that were set across the world.
Its pretty clear which of the two techs we should be spending time on.
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with Germany deciding to stop nuclear energy after the Fukushima Daiichi event.
Hey, you don't know where the next tsunami will happen. Have to be proactive.
The real irony being that all Japanese reactors shut down due to the quake as designed, and the tsunami wouldn't have been a factor had money not been saved by shortcutting backup generator protection from flooding in a FLOOD ZONE.
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At least this one is on the coast so it can still run when the rivers dry up.
But holy shitsnacks 3½ times slower than planned and 4 times more expensive. No wonder no new nuclear power plants have been built in a generation when the ones coming online now were all delayed by a generation.
Some anti nuclear groups do everything they can to slow down nuclear builds, putting as many road blocks in the way as possible. Then when it's slow they say: see, building nuclear plants is slow!
Did the anti nuclear people inflate the cost fourfold, too?
Yes, impeding something is ultimately an increase in cost. That's how it works.
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4 times budget sounds more than it is. You have to underbid to actually get contracts for construction and then it also depends on what was actually missing in the specification.
Big projects are never on budget because the budget is just an arbitrary number of lowballing the best case estimate
Also any project that takes longer than the initial estimate will be overbudget, not only because you are paying local workers for longer (fairly good for the economy) but simply because inflation has happened more since the project started.
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As others have mentioned, it isn't for a practical reason. Nuclear is not that difficult to build. Look at China. Certain groups (funded by dirty energy companies) have pushed an idea that nuclear isn't safe and had more and more bureaucracy and regulations pushed onto it. Sure, some is needed, as it's also needed for other sources. Nuclear has been strategically handicapped though because they know it'd destroy their business if it's able to compete on a level playing field.
The most unimaginably, but historically stupid thing was "green" activists protesting against nuclear power and for coal and gas.
And yes, nuclear power is very efficient. What makes it most efficient is the ability to very quickly regulate output, the improved logistics, and smaller reliance on beheading, culture-erasing, genocidal, revisionist savages getting everywhere.
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That said, now that solar and wind are cheaper, conservative politicians are finally pushing for nuclear, because 17 more years of building at 4 times the budget means more fossil fuels in the meantime compared with spending those government funds on solar and wind.
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No wonder no new nuclear power plants have been built in a generation when the ones coming online now were all delayed by a generation.
I encourage you to take a look at any infrastructure project.
Going over budget and past deadlines is normal.
The hope of these new small modular reactors is they can cut the time down.
Less land, mass manufactured in a factory and shipped to location.
That should help with estimated costs being closer to real costs.
Even if they're still expensive, being able to better plan and predict things is huge.
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It doesn't help when all the senior employees from last time you built a reactor have retired and anyone who hasn't retired was pretty junior the last time around. For projects where you have to get everything right the first time, so can't just try things to see what works, it's devastating to stop doing them if you ever might need to start again.
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Olkiluoto unit 3 took 18 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant?wprov=sfti1
It’s the same French EPR tech and the whole project was plagued with mistakes because the French wanted to cut corners and just get it built as fast as possible.
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Good. Germany made a huge mistake for themselves and for all of Europe in shutting down their nuclear plants.
Except they were basically beyond design life.
And every new plant comes decades late and 4x the original budget.
But they planned on replacing it with natural gas. Not to mention that it was supposed to be Russian gas. Sweden pays for the shitty decisions in Berlin.
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Seems like a waste investing so much in the U-235 cycle. Aren't the thorium and U-238 cycles better? Like, more compact footprint, simpler design, more scalable, doesn't need to be located near a large body of water etc.
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