[T]he report’s executive summary certainly gets to the heart of their findings.
“The rhetoric from small modular reactor (SMR) advocates is loud and persistent: This time will be different because the cost overruns and schedule delays that have plagued large reactor construction projects will not be repeated with the new designs,” says the report. “But the few SMRs that have been built (or have been started) paint a different picture – one that looks startlingly similar to the past. Significant construction delays are still the norm and costs have continued to climb.”
When costs are level per kilowatt over lifetime Nuclear is cheaper thanks to economies of scale, it’s only more expensive when plants are restricted by local authorities in how much they can produce in a given cycle so that other power generators in the energy sector can fill their contracts. When these artificial caps are removed and the plant is allowed to operate as intended and no kneecapped to allow coal and oil plants to operate at their peak effeciency rates, nuclear drops below .10USD. And thats using outdated equipment and maintaining the absurdly high safety standards saddled upon them despite being the safest form of power production bar none.
Citation needed.
Vogtle added 2000 megawatts of capacity for $35 billion over the past 15 years. That’s an up-front capital cost of $17,500 per watt. Even spread over a 75 year expected lifespan, we’re talking about $233 per watt per year, of capital costs alone.
Maintenance and operation (and oh, by the way, nuclear is one of the most labor intensive forms of energy generation, so you’ll have to look at 75 years of wage increases too) and interest and decommissioning will add to that.
So factoring everything in, estimates are that it will work out to be about $170/MWh, or $0.17 per kwh for generation (before accounting for transmission and reinvestment and profit for the for-profit operators). That’s just not cost competitive with anything else on the market.
Economies of scale is basically the opposite of the problem that 21st century nuclear has encountered, which is why the current push is to smaller reactors, not bigger.
There’s a place for extending nuclear power plant lifespans as long as they’ll go. There’s less of a place for building new nuclear.
Wholesale or retail cost? Either way, that’s not especially cheap compared to renewables.
Nuclear may be cost competitive with putting solar panels in space at this point. Granted, that’s back of the envelope costs for a hypothetical space based solar system compared to nuclear plants that already exist. But the fact that they’re close is not a good sign for nuclear.
Plants will take 10 years to build, at least. If every permit was signed today, there wouldn’t be a single GW of this new nuclear going on the grid until 2034. We’re aiming for major reduction in CO2 by 2030. Oh, and the huge amount of concrete needed would create a massive spike in CO2 by itself. Timeline issues alone kill nuclear before it starts.
Edit: fixing autocorrect’s corrections