That’s not true. Running costs for a nuclear plant is about 2/3rds that of coal:
Fuel costs are cheaper, which is kind of a no-brainer. Nuke has almost three times the operation expense, and almost twice the maintenance expense compared to coal, or fossil steam as they call it.
Anyway, except for clean (CCS) coal technology, coal is mostly off the table.
Your chart is interesting how it lumps solar and wind in with gas turbine and then implies solar and wind have three times the fuel costs of nuclear. Really? The sun? Wind?
Oops. The chart implies gas turbine, solar and wind have three times the fuel cost as coal, and almost 13 times the fuel cost of nuclear.
Doesn’t change my point though.
Red tape or not, they’re expensive.
Much of what’s holding back development is regulated energy prices. There’s no point building a nuclear power plant if the state forces you to sell the juice at below cost.
…It’s a chart of operating expense. Check the title on the page.
Does nuclear electricity fail to compete with fossil fuel energy if fossil fuels were requuired to adhere to similar “no harmful emissions” standards as nuclear? I’m supposing here that the whole global warming thing can be considered a consequence, or at least partly a consequence, of fossil fuel “emissions” if carbon dioxide is an emission. I don’t know the answer, I’m asking. But I have to suspect that nuclear becomes competitive somewhere along the debatably huge range of possibilities (starting at nothing and increasing to what some claim is an astronomical number) for just how much we have to do to mitigate fossil fuel emissions.
Damn straight! Stick it to nuclear power China!!
Sure, China is aggressively pursuing nuclear energy, and more power to them. They might be able to do it more cheaply than the US, being all communist and stuff. Yet even with their current aggressive policy towards nuclear energy, it’s predicted that Chinese nuke energy will only provide about 20% of China’s electricity needs by 2050.
Which is why they are so aggressively pursuing other alternative energy sources too.
Well no kidding, China is pursuing everything because they damn well need as much power as possible. Hell they’ve building over 500 coal plants in the next few years. But don’t mistake chasing every energy source as some sort of endorsement of the resource in question.
China doesn’t really care about staying clean and whereas you can put up shoddy coal plants, you can’t really put up a shoddy nuclear plant. Since the US is going to require competently built and maintained plants of both styles, the costs are essentially the same in terms of construction for anything that can be approved for construction, whereas China will go for the one where it’s okay if pipes burst and kill people so long as it doesn’t risk the whole region. China probably doesn’t have wide enough technical knowledge to be able to maintain hundreds or thousands of nuclear power plants, even if they were cheaper.
I think it’s safe to say that when it comes to global warming and carbon reduction, coal loses. I’m certainly not arguing coal vs. nuke. I was trying to point out one reason nuclear power more or less failed in the US. It was billed as unlimited and “too cheap to meter.” In reality, it wasn’t cheaper than coal or gas. That was then, this is now. Nuke will be cheaper than coal if we can’t use coal.
There was an off shore oil spill in 1969 in California that was smaller than the gulf spill. It did not destroy the off shore oil industry. It’s hard to believe that it is litigation from a bunch of hippies (go hippies!!!) is bankrupting the energy industry when the energy industry can outspend them 1000 to 1 without blinking and most of the judges are appointed by Republicans unless the law is so heavily in favor of the hippies that there is no hope of winning.
Without the socialization of the raising of the capital and socialization of the risk, like limiting liability such as in the gulf oil spill, and socializing the storage of the waste and privatizing all of the profits, nuclear designs have gone nowhere. Coal, wind and solar and oil are just lots cheaper and more competitive. Even with all of those subsidies, nuclear is still not an attractive risk for people to invest their time and money into. Except for Montgomery Burns.
OK, but that doesn’t really answer my question. At what point can we ‘not use coal’? Now? Tomorrow? When sea level rises to the point that my town is under water?
There’s a lot of ground between the “too cheap to meter” stary eyed fantasy of 1950 and today’s energy requirements. This isn’t about clean versus dirty coal, the question is what level of carbon mitigation (credits, sequestration, whatever) would make nuclear competitive? And the follow-up is, if we are not there yet, how long until we are?
Sorry, but it just depends who you ask. Some would say it’s already well past time we stopped using coal and oil. Others feel it will be cheaper to adapt to climate change than attempt to manipulate it. If you live in Florida, I’m afraid your house is probably going to end up under water no matter what we do about our energy.
As far as when nuclear will be competitive, I’d say it already is, in some situations and never will be, in other situations. If you live on a nuclear submarine, there’s no better way to get your power. If you live in a densely populated area without many natural energy resources like the east and southern US, it’s not so much “it’s competitive” so much as it’s the only game in town right now. The Great Plains, the west, and the southwest US will most likely find nuclear is a complete waste of money as the solar and wind industries continue to grow.
There are many countries that can’t support a nuclear program and furthermore, we don’t want certain of those countries to EVER develop nuclear anything technology. So, not competitive in those places.
You seemed to have misread the earlier chart of operating costs as being of fuel costs. You haven’t yet indicated that you’ve noticed this error, so I’m not sure whether you’re saying what you’re saying based on that information or if you’re continuing to assert that the operational costs of nuclear are double that of coal? (Which may well be so, but of all one cites given in this thread, the current data doesn’t support that contention.)
In terms of the op it has been and will likely continue to be cost that holds back nuclear more than any other reason, although the simple fact is also that they cannot be built fast enough even if “we” fronted all the money for the industry. Yes regulation (not all of it unneeded “red tape”) is part of that, but so is the limited numbers of foundries that make critical parts (and new foundries don’t get built overnight either).
Cost. Until the external costs (e.g. carbon) is paid for by the source producer coal is cheaper than anything else around. I’ve linked to this before and in another extant thread but it is pertinent here. This cite characterized the fact that coal does not have to pay for managing its waste the way nuclear does as an “implicit subsidy” and that these external costs are huge.
The only way nuclear competes on cost is with huge subsidies. It had subsidies for development and even as a fairly mature technology it still requires subsidies: loan guarantees, underwriting insurance against an accident.
Another analysis:
Note, the first source is from the nuclear industry, the second from an environmental action group, yet both are in agreement that nuclear can’t compete with coal without lots of money from the government.
The energy bill being proposed by Kerry and Lieberman has money for them. $54 billion in loans, covering their insurance, accelerated depreciation, manufacturing tax credits, investment tax credits … If it passes that may do it. It seems like a tax on carbon or at least strong cap and trade would be more straightforward, but politics is the art of the possible.
Can’t be built fast enough. The heavy forges needed to make the parts are a rate limiting step and there are only so many of them in the world; most current capacity is in Japan, China, and Russia and it is limited. Orders will take years to fill.
There is also a shortage of people qualified to run the plants. (This from The Economist, sorry if it ends up behind the wall.)
Like foundries, making more qualified workers will take time, and proof of sustained demand.
Red tape. The reality of endless lawsuits and blockage of every attempt to build the things. Cost overruns due to a stream of monkey wrenches thrown into the process to delay, side track and otherwise intentionally increase the time it takes to build a nuclear plant and the final cost of the plant, in a deliberate and calculated effort to price nuclear power out of the game and make it impossible to build the things from a ROI standpoint. It’s the same strategy that North Vietnam used to defeat the US in the Vietnam war, actually…you just keep chipping away, making it cost more until the other side just gives up and goes away.
Look at what the anti-nuke folks have managed to do at Yucca Mtn…billions spent and we STILL don’t have a waste repository. Billions. Spent. With. Nothing. To. Show. Is it any wonder that no one wants to front the capital that would be necessary to build a nuclear plant (a billion plus) when it might take extra years before you can even start getting anything back out of it, will probably take more money to pay for it than initially allocated, and might never even be built at all??
-XT
Yet the Finnish nuclear power plant project has managed to skyrocket into huge cost overruns with the only lawsuits coming from the plant builder.
Lawsuits are not the cause of these cost overruns and delays.
No I haven’t misread the chart. The chart is about operating expenses which include; operation, maintenance, and fuel costs. It’s broken down for you to see:
Operation:
Nuclear - 9.68
Fossil Steam - 3.65
Maintenance:
Nuclear - 6.2
Fossil Steam - 3.59
Fuel:
Nuclear - 5.29
Fossil Steam - 28.43
Totals:
Nuclear - 21.16
Fossil Steam - 35.67
Nuclear minus fuel cost: 15.87
Fossil Steam minus fuel cost: 7.24
You’re confusing total operating costs with operation costs.
No…I’m taking the total operating costs and calling it the operating costs because when one compares the cost of things, you always compare the total costs, not some arbitrary subsection of costs that strike your fancy at that particular moment in time.
When a person pays his electricity bill, he doesn’t care what percentage went into which slice of the pie. He just wants his electricity bill as low as it goes. His bill is the complete sum of 100% of the pie, and the power generation source that is most economical for him is the one with the cheapest total pie. Pointing out that a particular slice of coal power is smaller than nuclear is entirely extraneous. It’s not a salad bar. You don’t get to choose to take the cheap parts of coal and the cheap parts of nuclear and combine them together for a newer and mightier whole. You only have the two choices of the total cost of nuclear or the total cost of coal.