Nuclear Power Is Expensive Because We Make It Expensive

Energy & Infrastructure
1

“Nuclear power cost too much!!!” …

In America, thanks to our bureaucracy, we make nuclear power too expensive to build which prevents our nation from fostering a healthy nuclear power industry and developing more advanced reactors.

We should study how other countries like South Korea, India, Japan, and France have all been able to accomplish the same thing yet in a cheaper fashion.

And guess what? Most of our current nuclear reactors in the US are still Gen 2.
Meanwhile, China has become the first country to have already built a Gen 4 reactor…

What is a big difference between Gen 2 & Gen 4 you might ask?
Safety.

Pushing for Solar and Wind + Batteries is absolutely ridiculous in terms of land management:

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/infrasound-wind-turbines-could-be-huge-threat-entire-biodiversity-doctor

Pushing for Solar and Wind + Batteries is also absolutely ridiculous in terms of resource management

Before you comment, “But! The LCOE is lower for solar and wind!”
Know this, LCOE is ‘designed’ to ignore infrastructure you need to build to compensate for unpredictable lack of availability.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says that nuclear had an average capacity factor of 93.1% in 2023. In other words, on average, nuclear reactors in the U.S. ran at full installed power capacity throughout 93.1% of the year.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_b

In practice, solar does 𝒏𝒐𝒕 operate anywhere remotely close to 100% efficiency due to a wide range of factors (e.g., at night, cloud cover, being covered by snow or ice, or being destroyed by hail or windstorms).

According to the EIA, solar PV has by far the 𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒔𝒕 capacity factor, at 23.3% in 2023.

Taking this into consideration, a 100-MW solar array operating with a 23.3% capacity factor would be able to produce ~0.20 TWh of electricity during the course of a year, enough to power just over 18,500 homes, some 738,500 fewer homes, all the while occupying 1,000× as much land.

In California, rooftop solar has shifted electricity costs so that poor Californians are paying an estimated $6.5 billion more electricity.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/10/16/rooftop-solar-emissions-climate-change/

Back to nuclear power:
For those thinking about the amount of concrete and steel that would be needed for nuclear power plants, we can look to innovative ways to reduce their supply chain carbon footprints, an example for concrete is Carbon Cure Technologies
https://www.carboncure.com/

Another example but for steel is hydnumsteel

In conclusion, we could have advanced nuclear reactors.
We just chose not to.

1 Like
2
4

I think that when people talk about expense they usually focus on fixed start up costs (Capital Expenditure- CapEx) and often ignore the variable cost (Operating Expense - OpEx). A good example of OpEx would be fuel.

The attraction of wind and solar is that the OpEx is low even though the CapEx is high. Some think that the “free fuel” cost makes the intermittent availability tolerable.

I think your focus on nuclear power is on the CapEx and the biggest issue that needs to be solved to make it an unbeatable solution is the OpEx. Regrettably there came a time when a decision was made to pursue a solid fuel rod approach and to use U-235 as the main fuel. There were several reasons for this. Significant investment had already been made in U-235 for military reactors. The enriched U-235 would contain 95% U-238 which could be “bred” into Pu-239 and chemically extracted for atomic weapons…“free weapons material” was very attractive to the military. But this condemned us to a technology that required expensive enrichment processes and customized fuel rod technologies. Today, the nuclear industry makes all its money on making fuel.

There was an alternative invented called molten salt reactors. One of these reactors actually operated at Oak Ridge from 1965 to 1969. It was a liquid fuel reactor which did not require an expensive fuel. It was a Thorium-232 to U-233 (not 235) breeder. You can get a lot of material on this at “energyfromthorium dot com” and “flibe dot com”. As you can mine Thorium 232 directly with no enrichment and turn it into a solid flouride to be melted into the reactor fuel supply it can be added as needed and the reactor can operate 100% of the time.

To over simplify… the Uranium 233 chicken hatches the Thorium egg that grows up to be a U-233 chicken. i.e. Thorium + neutron → protactinium (decays) → U-233. It would burn up 100% of the fuel and not leave leftover unburnt fuel like today’s reactors. There are many advantages to this type of reactor…cannot meltdown, operates at normal pressures, does not use water, traps wastes in fuel mixture, can have wastes removed by “kidney function” continuously, etc. It operates at much higher temperatures and has much higher conversion efficiencies and OpEx fuel costs would be very low.

I suggest taking a look at the technology as it might be a better long term approach for advanced reactor design.

2 Likes
6

As a previous nuclear chemistry tech. The NRC is out of control. Corporations are $$$ driven. Putting a unit on line just to shut it back down so the cost is shifted to the consumer. “Gas & go” did near nothing in maintenance but the NRC approved this. When the industry was family owned it was much safer and less regulated. More regulations demand corporation. I dont know how to correct any of this.

7

We should consider Thorium as an abundant fuel that can completely solve our base load energy demand. Molten Salt cooled Thorium based SMRs are promising.

Here’s some good work being done by Copenhagen Atomics in this space:

1 Like