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==Nuclear is too expensive==
==Nuclear is too expensive==
'''Quotes''' from Amory Lovins,
This discussion has been moved to the [[Cost of nuclear power/Debate Guide|Debate Guide]] page.
[https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/why-nuclear-power-is-bad-for-your-wallet-and-the-climate Bloomberg, 17 Dec 2021]:<br>
"Nuclear power is ... now stagnant. In 2020, its global capacity additions minus retirements totaled only 0.4 GW (billion watts). Renewables in contrast added 278.3 GW ...  Game over."<br>
"New plants cost 3–8x or 5–13x more per kWh than unsubsidized new solar or windpower,"<br>
"'Small Modular' or 'Advanced' reactors can’t change the outcome. Their smaller units cost less but output falls even more ... Mass production can’t bridge that huge cost gap - nor could SMRs scale before renewables have decarbonized the US grid."<br>
"Even free reactors couldn’t compete: their non-nuclear parts cost too much."<br>
"SMRs’ novel safety and proliferation issues threaten threadbare schedules and budgets, so promoters are attacking '''bedrock safety regulations'''. NRC’s proposed Part 53 would perfect long-evolving '''regulatory capture''', shifting its expert staff’s end-to-end process from specific prescriptive standards, rigorous quality control, and verified technical performance to unsupported claims, proprietary data, and political appointees’ subjective risk estimates."<br>
"Germany replaced both nuclear and coal generation with efficiency and renewables: in 2010–20, generation from lignite fell 37%, hard coal 64%, oil 52%, and nuclear 54%; gas power rose 3%; GDP rose 11% (17% pre-pandemic); power-sector CO2 fell 41%, meeting its target a year early with five percentage points to spare."<br>


'''Replies:'''<br>
==Use of the word "currently", and similar words,, is no good ==
These critiques apply to the old [[Pressurized Water Reactor]] designs. Newer designs avoid the high pressures that require massive containment structures and expensive safety systems. See for example this [https://thorconpower.com/economics cost estimate] of a plant using molten salt reactors. Reactor designers are also frustrated with what they believe to be unnecessary costs, not "bedrock safety regulations". See for example the [https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/a-30-million-dollar-pipe-brace 30 million dollar pipe brace].
Articles should not reference present tense in citing things like costs in the marketplace.  Instead, please use month and year, with phrasing such as: "In June 2024, uranium was trading at $110." [[User:Pat Palmer|Pat Palmer]] ([[User talk:Pat Palmer|talk]]) 05:04, 6 June 2024 (CDT)
: Good catch. I'll get the correct date, fix this article, and pay attention to this problem in the future. [[User:David MacQuigg|David MacQuigg]] ([[User talk:David MacQuigg|talk]]) 08:56, 6 June 2024 (CDT)
: Yesterday I uploaded a new version of Figure 2, but the article still has the old version. [[User:David MacQuigg|David MacQuigg]] ([[User talk:David MacQuigg|talk]]) 10:08, 7 June 2024 (CDT)


Here is a point by point rebuttal of Lovins' comments, from Dr. Al Scott - [https://www.facebook.com/groups/therationalview The Rational View]
== Yellowcake Uranium ==
Hi David - Did a quick readthrough of this article.  Somewhere it said Uranium was sold as Yellowcake?  I don't have a clue what that really means.  In the whole section about the cost of reactor fuels, I am unable to understand things.  What does it mean to say something only uses 5%?  What has to happen to Yellowcake uranium to prepare it for use in each kind of reactor?  I realize this is a very complex, tough topic--and I feel we aren't there yet in terms of explaining it to smart lay readers.  Also, the figure about comparative costs of building reactors in the different countries talks about "the regulatory environment"; that could use some explaining, and a specific example would be helpful, such as "In the U.S., (such and so has to happen), but in (other countries such as ? which are not regulated by ?, they can just (blah blah)."  Even though it may be costly, I assume regulation is more of a good thing that a bad thing--but, I'm not sure. [[User:Pat Palmer|Pat Palmer]] ([[User talk:Pat Palmer|talk]]) 13:10, 7 June 2024 (CDT)
: Hi Pat - I fixed the "yellowcake" by adding a link to Wikipedia and removing the chemical formula U3O8. I've also added a footnote explaining how I got the 0.5% for the overall fuel efficiency of Light Water Reactors. As for the cost of unnecessary regulation, this is a major topic of debate, and we probably should make it a separate article. Jack Devanney is the expert on this. Regulation of any dangerous industry is a necessary thing, but the complaint is that nuclear regulation has been abused by anti-nukers to put it out of business. Let's put this on our ToDo list. Meanwhile, we can let Figure 1 speak for itself. [[User:David MacQuigg|David MacQuigg]] ([[User talk:David MacQuigg|talk]]) 18:54, 8 June 2024 (CDT)
: We can also add links to Devanney's articles on our Debate page under the heading == Nuclear is too expensive ==. He has a collection of Substack articles on [https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/site-directory Cost of Nuclear Power]. One of them - [https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/how-can-nrc-style-regulation-be-so ''How Can NRC-Style Regulation be so Expensive''] is right on point. [[User:David MacQuigg|David MacQuigg]] ([[User talk:David MacQuigg|talk]]) 10:17, 9 June 2024 (CDT)


*"Nuclear power is ... now stagnant. In 2020, its global capacity additions minus retirements totaled only 0.4 GW (billion watts). Renewables in contrast added 278.3 GW ... Game over."
==Hidden costs of wind and solar==
 
It seems to me that I do not know whether the solar cost estimates include anything about waste disposal after the life of panels; my understanding is that, 1) it takes a significant amount of energy to manufacture the panels (and mining of various materials, which like fossil fuels may be finite), and 2) the panels, when disposed of in a land fill, may contain heavy metals that could later leach into the environment, and materials that are not biodegradable.  Similarly, is the cost of maintaining windmills (which, after all, include lots of moving parts) being factored in?  Also, is it acceptable that the windmills kill off birds which may already be environmentally endangered? I am asking the hard questions here. Maybe they could lead to some footnotes. And BTW, although the syntax is a bit funky, I've learned to add actual "Notes" at the bottom, as opposed to "References", and can show you how if that should prove useful. Thanks for working on this! [[User:Pat Palmer|Pat Palmer]] ([[User talk:Pat Palmer|talk]]) 13:10, 7 June 2024 (CDT)
This logical fallacy I shall name as argumentum ad momentum. One need only look at recent polling data to find that public opinion has changed in favour of nuclear energy.
: My best source on total lifecycle costs is Dr. Hesthammer's website. I believe he is including all mining and manufacturing costs, but possibly not disposal costs. I haven't looked into this, but my common sense is that worries about landfills are overblown. Solar panels are mostly aluminum and glass and thin slices of silicon, doped with miniscule amounts of hazardous elements, nothing compared to what is going into our landfills now. On the windmills, I would be surprised if he didn't include an obvious cost like maintenance. I'm not sure about the birds. I've been told that cats kill far more birds than windmills, but then someone countered with - windmills kill eagles. I've heard they also kill whales, but that may be paranoia. I'm happy to separate the Notes from the References, if you think there is some advantage. [[User:David MacQuigg|David MacQuigg]] ([[User talk:David MacQuigg|talk]])
 
`
*"New plants cost 3–8x or 5–13x more per kWh than unsubsidized new solar or windpower,"
 
This is cherry picking to some extent. Certainly recent first of a kind builds in the US and UK have been very expensive, with Fukushima-motivated regulations updates requiring costly design charges mid-build. The median overnight pre-Fukushima cost of New Nuclear globally was around $2000/kW (Lovering et al 2016), or about 25% of what [Lazard’s LCOE] quotes.
 
“The 2020 edition of “Projected Costs of Generating Electricity”, released every five years by the International Energy Agency (IAE) and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) under the oversight of the Expert Group on Electricity Generating Costs (EGC Expert Group), examines data from 243 plants across 24 countries…The “Projected Costs” report, in an effort to complement the LCOE metric, for the first time introduces a more system specific cost comparison, value-adjusted LCOE (VALCOE), which modifies LCOE of a particular technology in a specific electricity system according to its contribution to enabling all aspects of securely operating the system…
LCOE, [on which Lovins based his claim], neglects the system contribution of different technologies, which depend on variability, dispatchability, response time, cost structure and place in the merit order, but also on system configuration and flexibility resources.” (Reuters 2021, ‘New Nuclear, LTO among cheapest low carbon options, report shows’). 
 
Most studies that investigate the full system cost of electricity sources conclude that new Nuclear is the cheapest low carbon option at the grid level.
[https://sobieski.org.pl/en/nuclear-power-for-poland Nuclear power for Poland, 2020.]
 
Possible role of Nuclear in the [https://open.overheid.nl/documenten/ronl-f29c1eb8-af04-4e8c-bc95-812be06991be/pdf Dutch energy mix in the future, 2020.]
)
 
*"'Small Modular' or 'Advanced' reactors can’t change the outcome. Their smaller units cost less but output falls even more ... Mass production can’t bridge that huge cost gap - nor could SMRs scale before renewables have decarbonized the US grid."
 
This is pure speculation. It is clear that Germany’s 15 year Energiewende experiment, including the world’s largest investment in renewable energy, has failed to decrease that country’s carbon intensity below 300 gCO2/KWh. Suggesting that renewables alone are capable of decarbonizing a major grid is not supported by evidence. Fortunately there is evidence from both Frame and Ontario that a nuclear-based grid can consistently achieve <100gCO2/KWh, and for less investment (The Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World, MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) 2018)
 
*"Even free reactors couldn’t compete: their non-nuclear parts cost too much."
 
This is nonsense. One need only notice that renewables need to significantly overproduce energy if they are only on 30% of the time, in order to charge whatever storage medium is hypothesized to cover the gaps. During this period, when energy sources are all over producing, electricity prices often go negative. In effect a renewables-only grid canabalizes its returns for investors.
 
*"SMRs’ novel safety and proliferation issues threaten threadbare schedules and budgets, so promoters are attacking bedrock safety regulations. NRC’s proposed Part 53 would perfect long-evolving regulatory capture, shifting its expert staff’s end-to-end process from specific prescriptive standards, rigorous quality control, and verified technical performance to unsupported claims, proprietary data, and political appointees’ subjective risk estimates."
 
We need to level the regulatory playing field to rationally decarbonize. Nuclear is the only energy source that is held to these demanding safety requirements, and society has reaped the benefits. Unfortunately, this asymmetric regulatory burden based on the ALARA principle, has also increased the cost of Nuclear relative to all other power sources. If we could apply NRC-like standards to all energy sources we wouldn’t have to worry about train derailments and particulate emissions killing millions every year, and we would likely not be faced with a climate crisis.
 
*"Germany replaced both nuclear and coal generation with efficiency and renewables: in 2010–20, generation from lignite fell 37%, hard coal 64%, oil 52%, and nuclear 54%; gas power rose 3%; GDP rose 11% (17% pre-pandemic); power-sector CO2 fell 41%, meeting its target a year early with five percentage points to spare."
 
Since that pandemic-induced low, Germanys CO2 intensity has climbed substantially to around 400 gCO2/KWh (electricitymap.org) with no likelihood of approaching the success that France has achieved since the 1980’s using nuclear (<100 gCO2/KWh). Due to shortages of Russian gas, and the reliability problems of renewable energy, Germany has been restarting coal plants. The direct impact of Germany’s choice to sideline its low carbon nuclear fleet is expected to be over 20,000 avoidable premature deaths from increased coal burning until their hypothesized and seemingly overly optimistic 2035 phaseout (Kharecha & Sato 2019, Implications of energy and CO2 emission changes in Japan and Germany after the Fukushima accident, Energy Policy)

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Nuclear is too expensive

This discussion has been moved to the Debate Guide page.

Use of the word "currently", and similar words,, is no good

Articles should not reference present tense in citing things like costs in the marketplace. Instead, please use month and year, with phrasing such as: "In June 2024, uranium was trading at $110." Pat Palmer (talk) 05:04, 6 June 2024 (CDT)

Good catch. I'll get the correct date, fix this article, and pay attention to this problem in the future. David MacQuigg (talk) 08:56, 6 June 2024 (CDT)
Yesterday I uploaded a new version of Figure 2, but the article still has the old version. David MacQuigg (talk) 10:08, 7 June 2024 (CDT)

Yellowcake Uranium

Hi David - Did a quick readthrough of this article. Somewhere it said Uranium was sold as Yellowcake? I don't have a clue what that really means. In the whole section about the cost of reactor fuels, I am unable to understand things. What does it mean to say something only uses 5%? What has to happen to Yellowcake uranium to prepare it for use in each kind of reactor? I realize this is a very complex, tough topic--and I feel we aren't there yet in terms of explaining it to smart lay readers. Also, the figure about comparative costs of building reactors in the different countries talks about "the regulatory environment"; that could use some explaining, and a specific example would be helpful, such as "In the U.S., (such and so has to happen), but in (other countries such as ? which are not regulated by ?, they can just (blah blah)." Even though it may be costly, I assume regulation is more of a good thing that a bad thing--but, I'm not sure. Pat Palmer (talk) 13:10, 7 June 2024 (CDT)

Hi Pat - I fixed the "yellowcake" by adding a link to Wikipedia and removing the chemical formula U3O8. I've also added a footnote explaining how I got the 0.5% for the overall fuel efficiency of Light Water Reactors. As for the cost of unnecessary regulation, this is a major topic of debate, and we probably should make it a separate article. Jack Devanney is the expert on this. Regulation of any dangerous industry is a necessary thing, but the complaint is that nuclear regulation has been abused by anti-nukers to put it out of business. Let's put this on our ToDo list. Meanwhile, we can let Figure 1 speak for itself. David MacQuigg (talk) 18:54, 8 June 2024 (CDT)
We can also add links to Devanney's articles on our Debate page under the heading == Nuclear is too expensive ==. He has a collection of Substack articles on Cost of Nuclear Power. One of them - How Can NRC-Style Regulation be so Expensive is right on point. David MacQuigg (talk) 10:17, 9 June 2024 (CDT)

Hidden costs of wind and solar

It seems to me that I do not know whether the solar cost estimates include anything about waste disposal after the life of panels; my understanding is that, 1) it takes a significant amount of energy to manufacture the panels (and mining of various materials, which like fossil fuels may be finite), and 2) the panels, when disposed of in a land fill, may contain heavy metals that could later leach into the environment, and materials that are not biodegradable. Similarly, is the cost of maintaining windmills (which, after all, include lots of moving parts) being factored in? Also, is it acceptable that the windmills kill off birds which may already be environmentally endangered? I am asking the hard questions here. Maybe they could lead to some footnotes. And BTW, although the syntax is a bit funky, I've learned to add actual "Notes" at the bottom, as opposed to "References", and can show you how if that should prove useful. Thanks for working on this! Pat Palmer (talk) 13:10, 7 June 2024 (CDT)

My best source on total lifecycle costs is Dr. Hesthammer's website. I believe he is including all mining and manufacturing costs, but possibly not disposal costs. I haven't looked into this, but my common sense is that worries about landfills are overblown. Solar panels are mostly aluminum and glass and thin slices of silicon, doped with miniscule amounts of hazardous elements, nothing compared to what is going into our landfills now. On the windmills, I would be surprised if he didn't include an obvious cost like maintenance. I'm not sure about the birds. I've been told that cats kill far more birds than windmills, but then someone countered with - windmills kill eagles. I've heard they also kill whales, but that may be paranoia. I'm happy to separate the Notes from the References, if you think there is some advantage. David MacQuigg (talk)

`

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