Nuclear takes too long?

Industry Discussions Nuclear Power
41

“Cost effective” is a relative term. Cost effective compared to what?

I will stipulate that a nuclear plant has better economics the more megawatt-hours it produces. This is because the operating and maintenance costs are fixed, no matter if the plant is on-line or not. Fuel cost is relatively small for nuclear, so it doesn’t figure into the total operating costs as much as a fossil plant, for instance. Most of the total operating expense for fossil power is in the fuel.

I disagree with the previous statement that “Nuclear is far too expensive for load following.” The average total operating cost for fossil steam in the US is 4.1 cents/kwh. Total operating cost for nuclear is 2.3 cents/kwh. Fossil plants have higher expenses, but are routinely used for load following. Again, this goes back to the relative cost of fuel for fossil. But even if nuclear was used for a moderate amount of load following, the costs would be less than fossil is right now. If nuclear went from the current 91% capacity factor, to a load-following 70% CF, I figure the operating expenses would go from the current 2.3 cents/kwh to 3.0 cents. That is still less than the current fossil fuel costs of 4.1 cents/kwh.

If you want to talk about LCOE, then yes, a nuclear plant with a CF of 70% has a higher LCOE than the same plant operating with a 90% CF. But it isn’t a huge increase, as your “Nuclear is far too expensive” claim implies. I ran some numbers on my own LCOE spreadsheet I created some time ago. It seems to be about a one-to-one relationship on a percentage basis. For every X% decrease in CF, the LCOE tends to go up by about the same percentage. That makes some sense.

_ Pete

42

100% lower, huh? Do you have some documentation that supports this?

_ Pete

43

(https://www.lazard.com/media/kcfconhf/lazards-lcoeplus_vf.pdf)
Solar utility PV - $40 to $98
Wind onshore - $37 to $99
Nuclear - $175 to $255

Yes nuclear costs100% more than solar and wind.

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44
  1. Hydro is not fully developed in US and in the world. The World Hydropower Outlook, a flagship annual publication by IHA, tracks and directs the progress of hydropower development globally against net zero pathways. Drawing upon exclusive new development insights from IHA’s global database, it provides in-depth analysis of hydropower’s evolving role in the energy transition.
    As electricity demand grows and power systems become increasingly dependent on variable renewables, hydropower is moving to the centre of energy security strategies worldwide. The report highlights how flexible hydropower and pumped storage are becoming essential for grid stability, resilience and long-duration energy storage, whilst examining the policy, financing and infrastructure challenges that continue to shape global deployment.
    World Hydropower Outlook 2026: Global Capacity & Data 2026 World Hydropower Outlook

Already a significant source of renewable energy in the United States, the Hydropower Vision report found that the nation’s hydropower capacity could sustainably grow from 101 gigawatts (GW) to almost 150 GW by 2050. That would significantly increase the nation’s clean energy generation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 5.6 billion metric tons—resulting in billions of dollars of economic savings, health benefits, and job growth.

  1. Pumped hydro is storage of energy. It is not fully developed in US or world. Excess solar and wind energy can and is used to pump water back up behind dams. See the above links for more info pump hydro expansion.

  2. Biomass/Bioenergy is still developing in the US and world. Bioenergy and Biomass Statistics: When I say renewable energy, solar and wind usually get all the attention. But if you dig into it, you’ll see that these bioenergy and biomass statistics tell a very different story. Biomass from crops, forests, and even waste still provides a big share of the world’s energy, and the market around it is only getting bigger.

This isn’t just about burning wood like in the old days. Today, bioenergy means billion-dollar industries, thousands of power plants, and huge potential for the future. At the same time, there are challenges like deforestation and the health risks of traditional biomass use. That’s why in this article, I’ll walk you through the real picture of bioenergy and biomass statistics from its roots, so you can see how important it still is in the global energy story. Let’s get into it.

  • Bioenergy is one of the oldest energy sources, with humans burning wood and organic matter for thousands of years. Today, it’s modernized into biogas, biofuels, and biomass power.
  • Global bioenergy consumption in 2023 was about 39.5 exajoules, nearly 9% of the world’s 445 EJ energy use.
  • Modern bioenergy makes up around 55% of the renewable energy supply worldwide.
  • The U.S. in 2023 consumed 4,978 trillion BTU of biomass energy, nearly 5% of its primary energy. Biofuels led the mix with 53%, wood 39%, and waste/manure 8%.
  • The global bioenergy market in 2024 ranges between $145 billion and $296 billion, depending on the source, with CAGR forecasts of 7 to 8% into 2029 to 2033.
  • Biomass electricity alone is valued at $55.4 billion in 2024, expected to grow to $72.8 billion by 2029.
  • Bioenergy investment is expected to rise 13% in 2025, reaching $16 billion.
  • The UK’s Drax biomass plant burns 7 million tonnes of pellets annually, generating 4% of national electricity, but has received £7 billion in subsidies.
  • Indonesia and South Korea are linked to deforestation issues, with 60% of deforested Indonesian biomass exports going to South Korea.
  • Biomass supply potential in 41 countries is currently 1.32 billion dry tonnes, projected to hit 2.13 billion by 2030, a 60% growth.
  • There are nearly 5,000 biomass power plants worldwide today, producing 83.8 GW of capacity. Forecasts suggest almost 6,000 plants and 96.8 GW by 2033.
  • Biomass electricity production is expected at 21 billion kWh in 2025, dipping slightly to 20.7 billion kWh in 2026.
  • Health impacts remain serious, as nearly 2 billion people still rely on traditional biomass cooking, causing about 3 million premature deaths yearly.
  • Sustainability challenges include deforestation, land-use change, and emissions from transporting biomass over long distances.
  1. Geothermal is still developing in US and the world. It is cost effective. I buy geothermal electricity from Sonoma Clean Power/PG&E.
    IEA The Future of Geothermal Energy Report 2024
    IEA released a report on The Future of Geothermal Energy in December 2024. Substantial potential awaits to be released across the globe through next generation geothermal technologies. The report can be download through this URL Link.

Geothermal power has been around for more than a century, but new approaches are unlocking greater potential for the technology. Most geothermal power plants today are located near the boundary between two tectonic plates, where you don’t have to drill as deep to find usable heat that can be pumped to the surface to turn a turbine and generate electricity.https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/the-next-generation-of-electricity-is-almost-here?WT.mc_id=20260302300000_Fervo_Electricity_TGN-Pbing&msclkid=a9bcadedb5001bdb3246c7ba9b35f297

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/geothermal-power-by-country/

  1. Hydrogen Geologic hydrogen. Hydrogen shows great promise as an energy source, and the discovery of geologic hydrogen is one of the biggest energy surprises of the past decade. Although it’s the earliest stage technology on this list, I’m excited about its potential. Geologic hydrogen is a zero-emission power source that is continuously generated underground by the Earth itself. Bourakébougou, a village in Mali, is powered by the small hydrogen field it sits on top of, and researchers have found deposits in the U.S., France, and other places.

This is an unusual technology to talk about because it’s hard to predict a timeline. It could take decades before geologic hydrogen becomes commercially viable at scale—or a company like Koloma or Mantle8 could find a massive deposit tomorrow, and then we’re off to the races. Once we find one really good source, it’ll be much easier to find the second because we’ll know exactly what we’re looking for.

If I could hop in a time machine and see what the future looks like a few decades from now, I would expect to see at least one of these technologies generating a significant chunk of the world’s power. It’s amazing to see so much progress being made in so many different areas, because it means that we’ll have options for how we generate affordable, reliable, clean electricity at the scale the future demands.

https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/the-next-generation-of-electricity-is-almost-here?WT.mc_id=20260302300000_Fervo_Electricity_TGN-Pbing&msclkid=a9bcadedb5001bdb3246c7ba9b35f297

45

China-based Weichai Power’s WP15 hydrogen direct-injection engine has qualified under the China VI vehicle emission standard after completing testing at the CATARC Automotive Test Center.

The 14.6-liter heavy-duty engine delivers 600 horsepower and 2,800 N·m of torque while hitting a peak brake thermal efficiency of 46.8%. This evaluation makes it the first heavy-duty hydrogen internal combustion engine globally to meet these specific regulatory benchmarks.

During the evaluation, engineers ran the system through a full operating cycle to assess structural stability and exhaust output. “Testing covered a full range of operation conditions, including cold start, low‑speed idling, high‑speed full‑load, and transient variable load changes, verifying the engine’s emission performance, reliability and stability in real‑world applications,” said the company in a press release.

Deviating from traditional setups

The engine deviates from traditional port-fuel injection setups by utilizing a dedicated hydrogen direct-injection, spark-ignited configuration. Injecting gaseous hydrogen directly into the combustion chamber prevents the pre-ignition and backfiring vulnerabilities common to port-injected hydrogen systems.

“Designed for zero‑carbon heavy‑duty transportation, the WP15 adopts a hydrogen direct-injection, spark‑ignited architecture and delivers industry-leading performance,” added the press release.

46

Cost effective compared to the alternative.

You are arguing against yourself. I’ll circle back to that in a minute. First, let’s do a reality check. There are 96 operating nuclear reactors in the US. 95 times when owners, operators, regulators and financers–people with real knowledge and skin in the game–got together and and planned these reactors, they decided they didn’t want or need load following. If it is cost effective as you claim, why did they come to that conclusion?

But one time they did. The Columbia Generation Station in Hanford WA, is capable of load following. And you can see why. It is located in an area with enormous hydro resources, which fluctuate seasonally and by year. So you can see why they would a power source to balance it. And now the area has abundant wind power too. But they don’t use it for load following. It operates at 95% capacity, just like a regular nuclear power plant.

So are they missing something or are you missing something? I mean, they have this ability but just aren’t using it for some reason. Are they just dumb? Are they stupid? Are you just better at spreadsheets than they are? Or maybe they know something.

You actually gave part of the answer up above. Nuclear has low operational costs. If you are going to use a source intermittently, it makes more financial sense to throttle a source with higher operational costs. You don’t need a spreadsheet for that, that’s just simple arithmetic.

But the other part of the answer is capital costs. The capital costs remain the same regardless of how much you use something. So if you have a source with high capital costs–like a nuclear power plant–you want to run it 24/7 because interest keeps compounding. Again, no spreadsheet needed.

In France they do use nuclear power for load following, but the goal was to have a primarily nuclear system. In order to achieve that goal, they had to use nuclear for load following. It was a requirement. That’s never been the goal in the United States. If it made any financial sense in the US, nuclear would be used for load following. But it doesn’t, so it isn’t. That’s reality.

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47

That is not what you wrote. You wrote that wind and solar are 100% lower than large nuclear. Words matter. Mathematics matters.

BTW, you forgot to include the cost of the fossil fuel generation that needs to back up the wind turbines and solar panels on a daily basis, because the capacity factors for those intermittent sources are so poor. This is why it is a mistake to simply compare the LCOEs of the intermittent renewables with dispatchable, reliable generation. Don’t take my word for it, read what the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research says about it.

The standard life-cycle cost metric utilized is the “levelized cost” per MWh supplied. This paper demonstrates that this metric is inappropriate for comparing intermittent generating technologies like wind and solar with dispatchable generating technologies like nuclear, gas combined cycle, and coal. Levelized cost comparisons are a misleading metric for comparing intermittent and dispatchable generating technologies because they fail to take into account differences in the production profiles of intermittent and dispatchable generating technologies and the associated large variations in the market value of the electricity they supply.

_ Pete

48

Your concern is already being addressed. Energy storage is already backing up wind turbines and solar PV panels to a degree in many states and countries. That is why new wind and solar developments are both being paired with energy storage, and existing wind and solar facilities are adding energy storage.

49

Re Hydro. Notice the Mississippi River has a whole series of locks and dams but only one hydro project. At Keokuk IA, owned by Ameren, built abt 1911.

People say elevations don’t justify more hydro projects but still you have many tons of water moving every day. It should be possible to capture that energy w the right equipment.

Ditto Hudson River, Ohio River, and maybe many more.

We have few if any projects to capture tidal energy. Much potential there in Chesapeake Bay, Seattle, San Francisco and probably many more.

We have many opportunities.

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50

Apparently, Valar Atomics attached a thermoelectric generator to their reactor, and produced a small amount of electricity. Enough to power a computer. Technically, this is electricity generation, but its probably not how Valar will actually use its production reactors. Thermoelectric generators have poor efficiency, but do have certain applications. The Mars rovers, for instance, use radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) to power the vehicles on the Red planet.

From the link:

The demo itself was almost domestic. On stage at the San Rafael Energy Lab outside Orangeville, a Valar team member plugged an Nvidia Spark desktop unit, running the company’s Blackwell architecture, into a circuit fed from the reactor hall.

Inside that hall sits Ward 250, a TRISO-fueled high-temperature gas reactor cooled with pressurized helium instead of water. The hot helium feeds a thermoelectric generator, and usable current comes out the other end.

Valar says the reactor was running at 37% of its intended output during the show, which founder and CEO Isaiah Taylor put at roughly 100 kilowatts of thermal energy. The current, Taylor told the crowd in remarks carried by Tom’s Hardware, was at that moment “powering Nvidia’s Blackwell chip, which is currently serving this website.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This sounds like it was more of a parlor trick, than the demonstration of a real power plant. But, hey, it seems to have worked, so I’ll give them that.

If the numbers in the article are accurate, they were running the reactor at 37 kw thermal. Thermoelectric generators are around 3 to 5% efficient, so they might have been able to generate a kilowatt or so of power. However, that assumes all of the reactor heat was being utilized by the generator, which seems unlikely, so the usable power was probably something less than a kilowatt.

_ Pete

51

I am not missing anything. I already stipulated that nuclear power plants are more economic the more they are run. This means they are more cost effective running baseload generation.

You wrote that “Nuclear is far too expensive for load following”. I disagree. This doesn’t mean that nuclear plants are more cost effective when run for load following. It just means the numbers aren’t as bad as you imply.

_ Pete

52

You chart is for operational costs. You’re still missing the capital costs, which are huge. Saying it is far too expensive is understating it, if anything.

The LCOE for a nuclear plant in the US breaks down approximately like this:
Capital costs: 75%, O&M: 20%, fuel: 5% According to Lazard, the LCOE US nuclear is $180/MWh. That means capital costs are 75% of that, or $135.

Now, let’s say we are going to use our nuclear plant for load following, so the capacity goes from 100% (close enough) to 50% (most US utitity systems run between 40-60% capacity, so I’ll split the difference) But the capital costs remain the same, therefore the cost per MWh doubles, to $270. Fuel remains the same per MWh at $9, but O&M doubles, from $36 ($180 x 20%) to $72.

Adding them all up, we get $270 + $9 + $72 = $351/MWh.

Compare with the LCOE of combined cycle natural gas, at $61/MWh.

So I’m pretty comfortable saying nuclear is far too expensive for load following in the US.

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53

Will modular small nuclear reactors reduce the capital cost?

54

You are only looking at the Lazard numbers you want to see.

Page 29 of the latest Lazard LCOE pdf shows the Levelized Cost of Energy for US Nuclear at between $26 and $36 per MWh, with an average of $31/MWh.

How can this be? Page 29 shows the LCOE cost of selected existing conventional generation. In other words, these are the plants that are already built and operating. Most of the US nuclear plants are old enough, so that the capital costs were paid off long ago.

$31 compares pretty well with the $61 cost of combined cycle natural gas that you cite. There is no law that says only brand new, recently built plants can be used for load following. Again, I fully recognize that here in the US, the nuclear plants are best used for base load. But I don’t buy your argument that all nuclear plants will cost $351/MWh or whatever if operated in load following.

I know you tried to keep things simple by reducing the capacity factor from 100% to 50% for load following, but that assumption is not very realistic. For starters, the average capacity factor for US nuclear plants is more like 92%. Also, France’s nukes usually operate around 70% capacity factor, not 50%. France does have a lot of nuclear capacity, but they also have some hydro and gas generation that can do the majority of the grid management. Therefore, instead of going from 100% to 50%, it is more realistic to go from 92% to 70%, or a 22% reduction, not 50%. That will affect your numbers.

I could go on about how Lazard is notorious for skewing the numbers to make nuclear look bad, but I better stop here.

_ Pete

55

You are mixing up conventional generation and marginal generation.

On page 12
Levelized Cost of Energy Comparison—New-Build Renewable Generation vs. Marginal Cost of Conventional Generation

The marginal cost of existing conventional generation is lower than the new-build LCOE of most generation technologies and the marginal cost of existing renewable generation is near-zero; this gap between marginal cost and new-build LCOE underscores the near-term economic case for optimizing existing generation while new-build costs across all technologies face sustained pressure.

On page 4
Renewables Remain Lowest Cost New-Build Generation; All Generation Faces Increasing Cost Pressure: Unsubsidized renewable energy remains the most cost competitive form of new-build generation on an LCOE basis. Wind, solar and storage are expected to continue to account for the majority of near-term U.S. capacity additions given their relatively short deployment timeline. However, this year’s analysis shows wind and solar LCOEs have continued to rise—reflecting higher capital costs, sustained interest rates, tariff pass-through and supply chain repricing—though they remain below conventional new-build alternatives. Renewables therefore maintain their relative cost advantage despite facing the same cost pressures affecting the rest of the generation stack. Continuous upward revisions to demand projections have driven a sharp increase in announced new-build gas generation despite a 15-year high LCOE and historically long development lead times. New gas combined cycle plants (“CCGT”) offer the lowest-cost dispatchable power in high-demand and low-cost-gas environments; however, gas turbine supply is constrained, extending development timelines well beyond historical norms. As anticipated, CCGT capital costs and LCOE increased in this year’s study, but they have not yet reached the levels of recently observed quotes, suggesting higher-cost projects may still be in the planning and development phases.

Increasing Competitiveness of Existing Generation: The relative economics of existing generation have improved as rising new-build costs across all technologies, together with execution challenges tied to supply chains, inflation, tariffs, permitting and macroeconomic uncertainty, have made replacement capacity more expensive and difficult to deliver. As load growth increases the need for power, existing assets are being dispatched more frequently, spreading fixed costs over greater output and improving unit economics. However, the marginal cost of operating conventional generation remains sensitive to fuel prices, particularly natural gas and coal, which increased year over year in this year’s analysis and can fluctuate based on weather, geopolitical events and broader commodity market conditions. This year’s report introduces illustrative nuclear restart costs, reflecting increased market interest in nuclear restart opportunities where existing sites, interconnections and infrastructure can be leveraged to restore baseload capacity with potentially lower capital intensity and shorter timelines than greenfield.

56

I have long wondered about this. I watch the plumes of water rocketing from the bottom of dams and think “there’s a lot of energy there if somebody bothered”. And the enormous amounts of water flowing down the various rivers all over the place in this country, the tidal flows every 12 hours on the coast lines - it would seem there is a ton of “uncaptured” energy sitting at our disposal which, for whatever reason, we don’t bother with.

I’m sure there’s some logic behind it, but when I think of all the natural power just flowing away it boggles… I mean think about it: a hydroelectric turbine in a river produces no waste to dispose of, produces no emissions, is reliable for 24/7 power, and doesn’t bother anyone, presuming it’s sited well. I don’t get it.

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