If the USA had invested the same tax dollars in Nuclear energy technology the last 15 years like it did into wind and solar we could probably be on par with China's cost to develop Nuclear power. Plus we would actually have renewable carbon free power that provides a 24 hour per day base load. Now that substantial influencers like Bill Gates have admitted CO2 isn't going to doom the planet the USA and the rest of the world can hopefully get back to logical power production...
The German govt coalition parties are fighting to the death to keep the AfD out because once they take over people will need to face serious penalties for what has been done to that country.
If you look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP1400 you’ll see that the Chinese design is based on one from Westinghouse; I’d not be so insular as to reject it just because it’s not one you’ve heard of.
That’s down to who builds it, not the design per se. I’d be as happy to see either of the Chinese or S Korean reactor designs (both derived from the Westinghouse AP1000) built in Europe as the French EPR, provided the construction — and more important the quality control thereof — was to European standards.
To be fair, China did not steal the AP1000 design, Westinghouse sold it to them as part of an agreement to build four AP1000 units. Westinghouse did this so that Chinese firms could build and further develop the reactors themselves for the benefit of both parties. Westinghouse wanted the AP1000 to be built outside the US because the US had stopped building nuclear and they needed the rest of the world to see how good the plant could be.
The Chinese lack of transparency regarding nuclear safety statistics is unsettling, but it’s likely people in the western nuclear industry believe their plants meet IAEA standards. The US NRC is working with IAEA to streamline the two standards now. When it comes to nuclear energy, I would agree China legitimately negotiated for technological transfer of Westinghouse’s design, and they struggled with the first builds too. But they’re good iterators and are so far ahead of the US in nuclear deployment now it’s jaw dropping. By the early 2030s they’ll shoot by the US in total nuclear energy generated per year.
Wyoming is currently undergoing a renaissance in both uranium exploration/ production and nuclear powerplant siting. Bill Gates’ Kemmerer project is leading the way with the first next-gen reactor in WY.
Kudos to the EBBteam for the great service they've been providing.
The following is a comment I provided on Tom Shepstones substact today on nuclear costs and highlighting ISO-NE study showing how a little nuclear displaces 8 times the MW of wind/solar/storage.
Energy Security and Freedom
The ISO-NE recently published 2024 Economic Study reveals how costly the wind/solar/storage system is:
1. At 10,000 /kW nuclear cost, 5200 MW of nuclear is cheaper than 44,456 MW of w/s/s in a system of 120,000 MW of w/s/s by 2050. The shocker is that the nuclear capacity factor is only 21%, not the normal 93%. This says that nuclear at 4+ times its normal cost displaces 44,456 MW of w/s/s.
2. At 7,000/kW nuclear cost, 9291 MW of nuclear is cheaper than 74,323 MW of w/s/s.
Mr. Williams of Southern Nuclear at the recent Resources for the Future webinar said the last Vogtle AP 1000 unit cost $11,000/kw, the next one $10,000/ kW and after 6 units they expect to be at 6-7,000/kW. So the numbers are achievable.
The low nuclear capacity factor in the ISO study also implies that the intermittent wind and solar POISONS THE WELL and forces the nuclear to be load following something that most nuclear can't do due to Xenon.
The study also handicaps nuclear. Wind and solar are given a power purchase agreement PPA which allows allows them to bid negatively during curtailment times. Nuclear does not have a PPA in the study, so it cannot bid negatively; hence, the 21% capacity factor. If nuclear had a PPA, it would likely drive much of the solar and the present lower priced controversial wind into bankruptcy.
Of course the most affordable solution is to not electrify especially heating which is a variable low load factor spike that is extremely expensive to serve no matter what the generation type is.
That is what the low cost scenario that Tom Shepstone highlighted in his previous post on this study. It also built 5000 MW of gas generation
Great article - as always. Thanks for putting in the work, Mitch and Isaac.
For the US to be competitive in nuclear power we have to streamline the death by a thousand paper cuts that the regulators out on this industry. Then, we have to repeat a few winning designs to have a chance to get great at what we do.
Regarding LCOE comparisons, I think you should not compare values for a technology with a 90+% capacity factor (nuclear) with sub-par technologies that work only a third or a quarter of the time. You have calculated what wind and solar cost when you bring them to 90% capacity factor with overbuilding and battery backup - that’s the apples-to-apples comparison. Incorporating dispatchability makes even Vogtle competitive with solar and wind🤓
Thanks for reading and for your feedback. At this point we trust our readers to understand the difference between the LCOE of dispatchable and nondispatchable resources.
We have done the full system cost calculation several times for these comparisons and we’re working through our own levelized firming cost metric to compare and contrast with the numbers produced by Lazard. We felt that deserved its own post and not just a casual introduction in a piece on nuclear.
Two things killed American nuclear—fracking and people moving south as AC changes peak demand time. Now that Trump is jacking up natural gas prices by exporting LNG to China along with crypto nuclear could possibly work. Personally I think we should use nuclear to move water from Louisiana west to Texas and Arizona but that would take Trump convincing Louisianans to part with their fresh water.
My plan is use 2 GW of Grand Gulf nuclear to move water AND serve as emergency backup to move water from Atchafalaya Basin to not one but two Colorado Rivers! So a pipeline to Buchanan Lake and then on to Navajo Dam. The pipeline would cost $10 billion at least but you save money by certifying Grand Gulf for another 20 years. I agree $3 billion is nothing in this day and age when we flushed $5 trillion down the toilet in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Comparing the cost of dispatchable generation with the cost of intermittent generation is a fools errand.
What is the current US cost of dispatchable wind and solar with the same capacity factor as GW scale nuclear? Is dispatchability at that capacity factor even achievable with current storage technology?
Hi Ed and thanks for being a subscriber! I agree and I’m going to borrow my reply to Leen for a response to your comment.
At this point we trust our readers to understand the difference between the LCOE of dispatchable and nondispatchable resources.
We have done the full system cost calculation several times for these comparisons and we’re working through our own levelized firming cost metric to compare and contrast with the numbers produced by Lazard. We felt that deserved its own post and not just a casual introduction in a piece on nuclear.
Nevermind dispatchable, even just reliable base load. But this fool's errand is exactly what is required for foolish times. I appreciate the data driven analysis to help change more minds.
There is great promise in small modular reactor designs…that can be built without the massive cost overruns that have plagued traditional designs. X-Energy and Nuscale are 2 of the several companies working in this space.
Projections show generating cost of SMRs to be far higher than traditional large reactors. In other words, lower cost to entry, but much higher unit cost for the electricity produced.
Of course, we won't know for certain until some actually get built.
Russia claims its dual KLT-40 reactor based FNPP (Floating Nuclear Power plant), supplying 300MWth, 100MWe costs of $260M. That's $2.6B/GWe, with a substantial additional thermal output for desalination, district heating and/or industrial process heat.
They should be able to sell power to Developing nations for 3-5 cents/kwh. They won't be able to beat that cost, even with hydro. And we could buy them if we would give up on the "We got to destroy Russia so we can create a World Totalitarian neo-Feudal Oligarchy run by the Central Bank Mafia" obsession.
"...They are pressurized water reactors (PWR) fueled by either 30–40% or 90% [note 1] enriched uranium-235 fuel to produce 135 to 171 MW of thermal power. [2] The KLT-40S variant is used in the Russian floating nuclear power station Akademik Lomonosov.
"...Rosenergoatom said the pilot FNPP was costing Rosenergoatom RUR 21.5 billion, and it expects the second one to be about RUR 18 billion x US$0.012 per RUR.
Absolutely Agreed: "If we’re going to subsidize anything, it might as well be energy sources that can reliably serve the grid, actually lower costs in the future, and repair the damage done from decades of favoring unreliable energy sources"
I wouldn't be so opposed to subsidies for new startups of power plants for FF+N (fossil fuels + nuclear) if the government kick-start was only in the form of a backstop guarantee, or partial guarantee, for loans to the FF+N starts, ...
Or if there were short term subsidies, say one or two years, with a definite end date, just to help get things started. Renewables have been stupidly and incredibly subsidized for 30 years, with no end in sight, until the new administration finally started cutting them back.
The cost efficency of Chinese nuclear plants shows why uranium demand is accelerting globally. If they can scale this, we're lookin at a massive shift in fuel supply chains for baseload power.
Looks like they got big plans to expand their successful thorium molten salt reactors. Including using them to power container ships. They've already did online breeding & reprocessing of Th-232 into fissile U-233.
No problem, I'd do it without a seconds hesitation. Wouldn't want to live next to one of those noisy, ugly bird killing wind turbines though, or a big ugly solar industrial plant, or a coal power plant.
I wonder why we're not hearing from the Trump Energy Department about making it easier to at least build small modular nuclear plants, particularly in the PJM grid area (PA, NJ, MD, VA), where the grid is practically maxed out and a couple of hundred new data centers are online to be constructed over the next few years?
Someone is going to have to clean out the cubicles of the NRC and the EPA with a water cannon for that to happen. I would say it’s easier to scrap both agencies and start over, but congress can’t even get out of their own way.
It will take direct presidential attention and flamethrowing to make this happen.
Agree that the NRC should be completely scrapped. Their regulations reference over 5 million documents, while the UAE nuclear regulator, where four reactors were very successfully built recently, only references 63.
It’s likely that the cost differential between China and the west is all about regulations.
Western countries have been regulating nuclear to death for 50 years.
Nuclear needs no subsidies, it is the clear path.
It just needs to have the knee of the regulatory state removed from its neck, the exact opposite of wind and solar that get a free pass on any amount of damage they cause.
Level the regulatory playing field and nuclear will wipe the floor with wind and solar.
Great article - nice work
If the USA had invested the same tax dollars in Nuclear energy technology the last 15 years like it did into wind and solar we could probably be on par with China's cost to develop Nuclear power. Plus we would actually have renewable carbon free power that provides a 24 hour per day base load. Now that substantial influencers like Bill Gates have admitted CO2 isn't going to doom the planet the USA and the rest of the world can hopefully get back to logical power production...
For what we've squandered on wind/solar/boondoggles we could probably have doubled our nuclear generating capacity.
Germany, could certainly convert 100% of their electricity to nuclear for what they've wasted.
The German govt coalition parties are fighting to the death to keep the AfD out because once they take over people will need to face serious penalties for what has been done to that country.
Insanity.
👍 article as always!
I think I will stick with a made in USA reactor vs. Chinese or Russian.
If you look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP1400 you’ll see that the Chinese design is based on one from Westinghouse; I’d not be so insular as to reject it just because it’s not one you’ve heard of.
Thank you for the reply David, but yes, Chinese copies I prefer to pass on due to trust in quality control.
Best,
TC
That’s down to who builds it, not the design per se. I’d be as happy to see either of the Chinese or S Korean reactor designs (both derived from the Westinghouse AP1000) built in Europe as the French EPR, provided the construction — and more important the quality control thereof — was to European standards.
I understand that Chinese coal fired power plants are built without pipe flanges, built for 5 years and tear down. Nuclear plants deserve better
I strive to buy USA and European products because I trust the quality.
China has stolen plenty of designs in every imaginable industry, and the end product is typically inferior IMHO.
To be fair, China did not steal the AP1000 design, Westinghouse sold it to them as part of an agreement to build four AP1000 units. Westinghouse did this so that Chinese firms could build and further develop the reactors themselves for the benefit of both parties. Westinghouse wanted the AP1000 to be built outside the US because the US had stopped building nuclear and they needed the rest of the world to see how good the plant could be.
The Chinese lack of transparency regarding nuclear safety statistics is unsettling, but it’s likely people in the western nuclear industry believe their plants meet IAEA standards. The US NRC is working with IAEA to streamline the two standards now. When it comes to nuclear energy, I would agree China legitimately negotiated for technological transfer of Westinghouse’s design, and they struggled with the first builds too. But they’re good iterators and are so far ahead of the US in nuclear deployment now it’s jaw dropping. By the early 2030s they’ll shoot by the US in total nuclear energy generated per year.
Wyoming is currently undergoing a renaissance in both uranium exploration/ production and nuclear powerplant siting. Bill Gates’ Kemmerer project is leading the way with the first next-gen reactor in WY.
…scathing comment…shakes fist That will have to do for now. Otherwise, well done! Incredibly important topic.
Kudos to the EBBteam for the great service they've been providing.
The following is a comment I provided on Tom Shepstones substact today on nuclear costs and highlighting ISO-NE study showing how a little nuclear displaces 8 times the MW of wind/solar/storage.
Energy Security and Freedom
The ISO-NE recently published 2024 Economic Study reveals how costly the wind/solar/storage system is:
1. At 10,000 /kW nuclear cost, 5200 MW of nuclear is cheaper than 44,456 MW of w/s/s in a system of 120,000 MW of w/s/s by 2050. The shocker is that the nuclear capacity factor is only 21%, not the normal 93%. This says that nuclear at 4+ times its normal cost displaces 44,456 MW of w/s/s.
2. At 7,000/kW nuclear cost, 9291 MW of nuclear is cheaper than 74,323 MW of w/s/s.
Mr. Williams of Southern Nuclear at the recent Resources for the Future webinar said the last Vogtle AP 1000 unit cost $11,000/kw, the next one $10,000/ kW and after 6 units they expect to be at 6-7,000/kW. So the numbers are achievable.
The low nuclear capacity factor in the ISO study also implies that the intermittent wind and solar POISONS THE WELL and forces the nuclear to be load following something that most nuclear can't do due to Xenon.
The study also handicaps nuclear. Wind and solar are given a power purchase agreement PPA which allows allows them to bid negatively during curtailment times. Nuclear does not have a PPA in the study, so it cannot bid negatively; hence, the 21% capacity factor. If nuclear had a PPA, it would likely drive much of the solar and the present lower priced controversial wind into bankruptcy.
Of course the most affordable solution is to not electrify especially heating which is a variable low load factor spike that is extremely expensive to serve no matter what the generation type is.
That is what the low cost scenario that Tom Shepstone highlighted in his previous post on this study. It also built 5000 MW of gas generation
Great article - as always. Thanks for putting in the work, Mitch and Isaac.
For the US to be competitive in nuclear power we have to streamline the death by a thousand paper cuts that the regulators out on this industry. Then, we have to repeat a few winning designs to have a chance to get great at what we do.
Regarding LCOE comparisons, I think you should not compare values for a technology with a 90+% capacity factor (nuclear) with sub-par technologies that work only a third or a quarter of the time. You have calculated what wind and solar cost when you bring them to 90% capacity factor with overbuilding and battery backup - that’s the apples-to-apples comparison. Incorporating dispatchability makes even Vogtle competitive with solar and wind🤓
Hi Leen,
Thanks for reading and for your feedback. At this point we trust our readers to understand the difference between the LCOE of dispatchable and nondispatchable resources.
We have done the full system cost calculation several times for these comparisons and we’re working through our own levelized firming cost metric to compare and contrast with the numbers produced by Lazard. We felt that deserved its own post and not just a casual introduction in a piece on nuclear.
Two things killed American nuclear—fracking and people moving south as AC changes peak demand time. Now that Trump is jacking up natural gas prices by exporting LNG to China along with crypto nuclear could possibly work. Personally I think we should use nuclear to move water from Louisiana west to Texas and Arizona but that would take Trump convincing Louisianans to part with their fresh water.
I prefer an aquaduct from the Missouri River near Kansas City to Central Texas. About 600 miles with a 300 ft. elevation drop.
At $5M per mile that would cost a piddling $3B. Of course $5M per mile may be way too low.
But any move to build a new aquaduct would get my support, as little as that is worth.
My plan is use 2 GW of Grand Gulf nuclear to move water AND serve as emergency backup to move water from Atchafalaya Basin to not one but two Colorado Rivers! So a pipeline to Buchanan Lake and then on to Navajo Dam. The pipeline would cost $10 billion at least but you save money by certifying Grand Gulf for another 20 years. I agree $3 billion is nothing in this day and age when we flushed $5 trillion down the toilet in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Comparing the cost of dispatchable generation with the cost of intermittent generation is a fools errand.
What is the current US cost of dispatchable wind and solar with the same capacity factor as GW scale nuclear? Is dispatchability at that capacity factor even achievable with current storage technology?
"Enquiring minds want to know."
Hi Ed and thanks for being a subscriber! I agree and I’m going to borrow my reply to Leen for a response to your comment.
At this point we trust our readers to understand the difference between the LCOE of dispatchable and nondispatchable resources.
We have done the full system cost calculation several times for these comparisons and we’re working through our own levelized firming cost metric to compare and contrast with the numbers produced by Lazard. We felt that deserved its own post and not just a casual introduction in a piece on nuclear.
Storage drives renewable grid costs. The numbers are staggering.
https://edreid.substack.com/p/all-electric-storage
Nevermind dispatchable, even just reliable base load. But this fool's errand is exactly what is required for foolish times. I appreciate the data driven analysis to help change more minds.
👊 to 300!
There is great promise in small modular reactor designs…that can be built without the massive cost overruns that have plagued traditional designs. X-Energy and Nuscale are 2 of the several companies working in this space.
Projections show generating cost of SMRs to be far higher than traditional large reactors. In other words, lower cost to entry, but much higher unit cost for the electricity produced.
Of course, we won't know for certain until some actually get built.
Russia claims its dual KLT-40 reactor based FNPP (Floating Nuclear Power plant), supplying 300MWth, 100MWe costs of $260M. That's $2.6B/GWe, with a substantial additional thermal output for desalination, district heating and/or industrial process heat.
They should be able to sell power to Developing nations for 3-5 cents/kwh. They won't be able to beat that cost, even with hydro. And we could buy them if we would give up on the "We got to destroy Russia so we can create a World Totalitarian neo-Feudal Oligarchy run by the Central Bank Mafia" obsession.
https://world-nuclear.org/Information-Library/Country-Profiles/Countries-O-S/Russia-Nuclear-Power
"...They are pressurized water reactors (PWR) fueled by either 30–40% or 90% [note 1] enriched uranium-235 fuel to produce 135 to 171 MW of thermal power. [2] The KLT-40S variant is used in the Russian floating nuclear power station Akademik Lomonosov.
KLT-40 reactor - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KLT-40_reactor..."
"...Rosenergoatom said the pilot FNPP was costing Rosenergoatom RUR 21.5 billion, and it expects the second one to be about RUR 18 billion x US$0.012 per RUR.
Source? I don’t think this that is accurate.
Absolutely Agreed: "If we’re going to subsidize anything, it might as well be energy sources that can reliably serve the grid, actually lower costs in the future, and repair the damage done from decades of favoring unreliable energy sources"
I wouldn't be so opposed to subsidies for new startups of power plants for FF+N (fossil fuels + nuclear) if the government kick-start was only in the form of a backstop guarantee, or partial guarantee, for loans to the FF+N starts, ...
Or if there were short term subsidies, say one or two years, with a definite end date, just to help get things started. Renewables have been stupidly and incredibly subsidized for 30 years, with no end in sight, until the new administration finally started cutting them back.
Nice article and congratulations on two years! Hopefully this is just the start!
The cost efficency of Chinese nuclear plants shows why uranium demand is accelerting globally. If they can scale this, we're lookin at a massive shift in fuel supply chains for baseload power.
Looks like they got big plans to expand their successful thorium molten salt reactors. Including using them to power container ships. They've already did online breeding & reprocessing of Th-232 into fissile U-233.
So everybody who wants to live next to a Chinese budget built nuke raise your hand.
No problem, I'd do it without a seconds hesitation. Wouldn't want to live next to one of those noisy, ugly bird killing wind turbines though, or a big ugly solar industrial plant, or a coal power plant.
I wonder why we're not hearing from the Trump Energy Department about making it easier to at least build small modular nuclear plants, particularly in the PJM grid area (PA, NJ, MD, VA), where the grid is practically maxed out and a couple of hundred new data centers are online to be constructed over the next few years?
Someone is going to have to clean out the cubicles of the NRC and the EPA with a water cannon for that to happen. I would say it’s easier to scrap both agencies and start over, but congress can’t even get out of their own way.
It will take direct presidential attention and flamethrowing to make this happen.
Agree that the NRC should be completely scrapped. Their regulations reference over 5 million documents, while the UAE nuclear regulator, where four reactors were very successfully built recently, only references 63.
https://hargraves.substack.com/p/drowning-in-nrc-documents
Whatever happened to the Westinghouse AP 1000? I thought that was gonna be a standardised design.
It’s likely that the cost differential between China and the west is all about regulations.
Western countries have been regulating nuclear to death for 50 years.
Nuclear needs no subsidies, it is the clear path.
It just needs to have the knee of the regulatory state removed from its neck, the exact opposite of wind and solar that get a free pass on any amount of damage they cause.
Level the regulatory playing field and nuclear will wipe the floor with wind and solar.
Just takes will.