https://discussion.fool.com/vogtle-34-costs-topping-303-billion-…
Vogtle 3&4 is at $34 billion and not finished.
Jaak
Jaak, I don’t know much about this subject so I would like to ask…
What is the reason for the gigantic cost overruns?
Wendy
2 Likes
Jaak, I don’t know much about this subject so I would like to ask…
What is the reason for the gigantic cost overruns?
I’m not Jaak, but the cause of cost overruns in nuclear-power plants is, to a large extent, in two parts:
- Lawsuits demanding that already-approved stuff be rehashed in the name of protecting the environment (by delaying and hopefully preventing the least environmentally damaging source of baseline electricity we have, forcing more and longer use of more-damaging generation facilities).
- Retroactive changes in regulations demanding that things already designed - and perhaps even built - be redesigned and resubmitted for regulatory approval.
4 Likes
https://www.eenews.net/articles/plant-vogtle-hits-new-delays…
Broad areas that caused major delays including bankruptcy of Westinghouse Electric (designer of Vogtle), mismanagement by Southern Co, and failure to keep/have essential documents needed to get the plant(s) approved.
Lots more fun will happen, have no fear.
2 Likes
I’m not Jaak, but the cause of cost overruns in nuclear-power plants is, to a large extent, in two parts:
- Lawsuits demanding that already-approved stuff be rehashed in the name of protecting the environment (by delaying and hopefully preventing the least environmentally damaging source of baseline electricity we have, forcing more and longer use of more-damaging generation facilities).
- Retroactive changes in regulations demanding that things already designed - and perhaps even built - be redesigned and resubmitted for regulatory approval.
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You are totally wrong. Try again.
Jaak
2 Likes
The costs of nuclear power have an annual inflation rate of 6 to 7% regardless of anything else. As do other one offs.
The FED’s goal is for manufactured goods to have an inflation rate of 2%. That wont slow nuclear power’s rate of inflation at all.
NOTE for those who might have missed it, Elon Musk doing the math claims the wide area around a nuclear power plant where no one lives is enough space generally in the US to generate more energy using solar panels than the nuclear power plant would. Solar is deflationary.
1 Like
Jaak, I don’t know much about this subject so I would like to ask…
What is the reason for the gigantic cost overruns?
Wendy
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Science and technology proceeds when scientists and engineers apply themselves to innovation and reducing cost/schedules of the products they are developing. Environmental opposition does not hold back innovation and reducing cost/schedule. There are are basic laws of science and engineering that can not be overlooked in the development of new products.
For example, the Boeing MAX 737 was a great concept that failed because it did not consider all the safety aspects and software problems in a rush to get it to market.
The current new nuclear power plants like the AP1000 and the EPR are colossal failures because they are too big, too complex, too expensive and take too long to build.
This was already known when these nuclear plants were going through their first of a kind engineering and the NRC design certification process back in the time frame 2000-2006. Environmentalists did not cause the developers of these design to make them too big, too complex, too expensive and hard to build.
The NRC did not find any safety problems with these designs and issued the COL (construction & operating license) so that they could proceed (without any intervenor interruptions) based on the safety analysis performed by Westinghouse on the nuclear portion of the plant. But the NRC never evaluates or comments on the engineering and construction costs of building these gigantic power plants.
Westinghouse (owned by TEPCO) sells this new AP1000 to Georgia Power and partners as the Vogtle 3&4 power plant around 2007-2008 based on preliminary design documents for the nuclear portion of the plant. Westinghouse hires Shaw as the engineer and constructor. However, Shaw had very limited experience in engineering and constructing a nuclear power plant. Shaw quickly gets in trouble with engineering and construction. Shaw violates license commitments and Westinghouse has to redo safety analysis to get NRC to agree to new license commitments and Shaw has to perform rework on concrete and rebar. Shaw continues with engineering and construction at a snails pace because they do not understand nuclear plant design requirements and they make many more construction errors. It gets so bad that Shaw starts cutting corners to make up massive schedule delays and cost increases. NRC inspectors find falsification of quality assurance documents in the fabrication & welding of large piping modules by Shaw and their subcontractors. The NRC is livid and penalizes Georgia Power, Shaw and their subcontractors over this fraud.
Georgia Power and Westinghouse then get rid of Shaw and hire CB&I to take over engineering and construction. However, CB&I in a year or two realizes the mess they have taken on and declines to continue and bails out. Now Westinghouse owes over $3 billion to Georgia Power for all the screwups and delays caused by Shaw and CB&I. Now Westinghouse is also having same the same problems on the AP1000 nuclear plant being built in South Carolina. Finally, TEPCO does not want to own Westinghouse any longer and Westinghouse declares bankruptcy. The South Carolina AP1000 nuclear plant is cancelled by the South Carolina utilities with about $5 billion lost and 30% complete. TEPCO sells Westinghouse to a conglomerate. Westinghouse is now made as the engineering and constructor with Southern Company Nuclear taking over from Georgia Power. But Southern Company Nuclear and Westinghouse realize they need to hire Bechtel to do the detailed engineering and construction according to nuclear standards and commitments to NRC. Bechtel is tasked with cleaning up the years of mismanagement of engineering and construction on Vogtle 3&4. IT has taken Bechtel several years to cleanup the mess and progress the project to about 97% completion.
The cost and schedule have grown sky high because of all the turmoil in the first 5 years of the project, the size and complexity of the design, the up/downs of construction crews numbering as high as 10,000 at times.
I know that people really do not understand the massive engineering and construction effort involved with nuclear power plants. These giant nuclear plants will never be the future of nuclear power. There may be a few more built/completed. But the nuclear industry finally realizes they have priced themselves out of the market. They are now working a the next generation of smaller reactors.
Jaak
7 Likes
Jaak,
I need a little bit of insider knowledge from you. Does the second tweet I added to this two-tweet thread sound about right to you?
https://discussion.fool.com/ura-global-x-uranium-etf-35112221.as…
1 Like
Yes it sounds right on.
I’m not Jaak, but the cause of cost overruns in nuclear-power plants is, to a large extent, in two parts:
- Lawsuits demanding that already-approved stuff be rehashed in the name of protecting the environment (by delaying and hopefully preventing the least environmentally damaging source of baseline electricity we have, forcing more and longer use of more-damaging generation facilities).
- Retroactive changes in regulations demanding that things already designed - and perhaps even built - be redesigned and resubmitted for regulatory approval.
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Your statements above were partially true in the 1970s and 1980s. But those statements have nothing to do with the Vogtle 3&4 project or the Summer 2&3 project. In the 1990s, NRC revamped and streamlined the nuclear power plant licensing process to eliminate those past problems. NRC pre-licensed designs through the Design Certification process. With the Design Certificate for a Westinghouse or other nuclear plant became standardized for the nuclear portion of a nuclear power plant, and utilities were not able to make any change to the nuclear portion of the nuclear power plants without going through a rigorous safety analysis and engineering justification process.
The only retroactive safety changes to Design Certification by the NRC were limited to those that were absolutely required for safety. Not many changes have been made by the NRC.
Jaak
The costs of nuclear power have an annual inflation rate of 6 to 7% regardless of anything else.
For operating plants, an examination of the facts do not support such claims.
Total operating expenses for any power plant can be divided into Operation, Maintenance, and Fuel costs. O&M are usually fairly stable, but fuel costs can vary wildly, depending on the type of power plant.
Below are the Operation, Maintenance, Fuel and Total costs associated with nuclear power in the US for the years 2010 and 2020.
All costs in US Cents per kilowatt-hour (cents/kwh)
Operation Maintenance Fuel Total
2010: 1.050 0.680 0.668 2.398
2020: 1.005 0.578 0.610 2.192
Costs actually decreased between those years, as opposed to the “annual inflation rate of 6 to 7%” claimed by the previous poster.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html
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Regarding the reasons why the Vogtle nuclear projects have had cost overruns, it really comes down to the fact that no one in the US has built nuclear power plants in many years. New skills, and new systems of doing things, must be learned. The people who previously had the knowledge have either retired or are no longer in a position where their knowledge can be applied.
As I have posted before, the construction companies in China have built many nuclear plants in recent years. Those projects are now built quickly and efficiently, at costs which appear to be very reasonable. China continues to expand its nuclear power fleet.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/China-approves-c…
Headline: China approves construction of six new reactors
It should be noted that four of those six plants will be the Chinese version of the AP1000 plants currently being built at Vogtle. China also has its own indigenously designed and built nuclear plants, but they also recognize the advantages that the AP1000 design brings. That is why they are building more.
If the US could make a major commitment to building several new nuclear plants, the lessons learned in the first few would be applied to subsequent projects. Eventually, costs would come down. But, we will probably proceed down the path of unreliable and intermittent renewable sources of energy, which are inevitably backed up with fossil fuel power plants to provide the dispatchable electricity that the power grid requires. The atmospheric CO2 concentration will just keep going up, and nothing will be done to change that.
- Pete
2 Likes
waterfell writes:
As I have posted before, the construction companies in China have built many nuclear plants in recent years. Those projects are now built quickly and efficiently, at costs which appear to be very reasonable. China continues to expand its nuclear power fleet.
Headline: China approves construction of six new reactors
It should be noted that four of those six plants will be the Chinese version of the AP1000 plants currently being built at Vogtle. China also has its own indigenously designed and built nuclear plants, but they also recognize the advantages that the AP1000 design brings. That is why they are building more.
If the US could make a major commitment to building several new nuclear plants, the lessons learned in the first few would be applied to subsequent projects. Eventually, costs would come down. But, we will probably proceed down the path of unreliable and intermittent renewable sources of energy, which are inevitably backed up with fossil fuel power plants to provide the dispatchable electricity that the power grid requires. The atmospheric CO2 concentration will just keep going up, and nothing will be done to change that.
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waterfell makes these hand waving arguments for nuclear power plants (NPP) - but his arguments are not valid for the following reasons:
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The number of NPPs that China competing every year is too small by a factor of 10 to actually reduce CO2 emissions. Currently China is not reducing CO2 emissions, in fact China’s CO2 emissions have been rising every year since they started building NPP.
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The true cost and schedule of Chinese NPPs is not known. Theses numbers are kept secret by the Chinese government.
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Chinese NPPs are engineered, constructed and operated by companies owned by the Chinese government (Just like France which waterfell thinks is great). They do not worry about bank financing; interest payments on construction loans; and the employment of engineers, constructors and operators.
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US is not going to commit to build any more of these mega NPPs and it is silly to even suggest it based on the Vogtle 3&4 and Summer 2&3 fiascos.
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Renewables are not unreliable. Some renewables can operate 24/7. Other renewables are intermittent. Some renewables need fossil backup currently, but the plan is to use energy storage and grid improvements to provide reliability by supplying dispatchable electricity.
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Atmospheric concentrations keep going up because China, USA, India and Japan keep burning coal for electricity and driving ICE cars.
Instead of nuclear power plants the world needs to stop burning coal and driving ICE cars.
Jaak
3 Likes
Jaak,
Excellent post. Have your sole rec for reality. Others do not know reality when it hits them.
Instead investing in total disbelief. Amateur hour.
1 Like
The costs of nuclear power have an annual inflation rate of 6 to 7% regardless of anything else.
For operating plants, an examination of the facts do not support such claims.
Total operating expenses for any power plant can be divided into Operation, Maintenance, and Fuel costs. O&M are usually fairly stable, but fuel costs can vary wildly, depending on the type of power plant.
Below are the Operation, Maintenance, Fuel and Total costs associated with nuclear power in the US for the years 2010 and 2020.
All costs in US Cents per kilowatt-hour (cents/kwh)
Operation Maintenance Fuel Total
2010: 1.050 0.680 0.668 2.398
2020: 1.005 0.578 0.610 2.192
Costs actually decreased between those years, as opposed to the “annual inflation rate of 6 to 7%” claimed by the previous poster.
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waterfell again fails to look at all the costs of operating nuclear power plants (NPP). Why are the utilities in various parts of the country asking states to provide subsides for their old NPPS. Billions have been handed to utilities in many states. waterfell has no answer to why these old NPPs need the money.
https://dc.medill.northwestern.edu/blog/2019/12/07/nuclear-p…
Jaak
The costs of nuclear power have an annual inflation rate of 6 to 7% regardless of anything else.
The costs of nuclear power construction projects have an annual inflation rate of 6 to 7% regardless of anything else.
Sorry on waterfell on the one hand. I write very quickly. Not sorry on the other hand. Seeing as you have huge expertise in the field you should have know specifically what I was discussing. At least you have been presenting as knowledgeable about costs. The inflation of one off construction projects limits humanity. Probably for the better.
2 Likes