briwang2050
China's more recent nuclear construction was also cited. $150 billion for 300 TWh per year.
80% of the world's new nuclear reactors are being built in China, India, Russia and South Korea. Those are coming in at a price of $2000-3000 per KW. A gigawatt nuclear reactor at $2-3 billion each built in 4-6 years. A gigawatt nuclear reactor can generate 8 Terawatt hours per year.
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-a...
A fully amortized nuclear power plant generates power at about 2 cents per kwh. http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/info/pdf/Econ...
Germany, between 2006 and 2017, increased the cost of electricity for households by 50%. (per OECD)
http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf
French electricity costs are just 59% of German electricity prices. France produces one-tenth the carbon pollution from electricity compared to Germany.
About $650 million budget.
In 2016, They say it is on schedule and under budget. https://www.energysolutions.com/zion-nuclear-power-plant-dec...
They are doing less sorting. They just get a bigger cave and put the entire facility into it. There is room in the large cave for all US nuclear plants.
Uranium 238 is unused fuel.
Coal, oil, natural gas waste sit in the air you breath and in pools or dumps on land. Plus there is the CO2.
Solar and Wind use ten times the cement and steel to generate the same power as nuclear. Cement and steel generate pollution and CO2 in their production.
Germany would need 50% more nuclear energy than France to completely replace all other power generation. This would cost €600 billion if Germany could match France’s build from the 1980s. Costs and safety regulations have increased even though France’s nuclear power has operated without incident for over 30 years. 80 nuclear reactors would now cost €1600 billion euros for Germany. This would still be cheaper than the estimated costs for the solar and wind buildout that is underway.
Over the past five years alone, the Energiewende has cost Germany €32 billion ($36 billion) annually, and opposition to renewables is growing in the German countryside.
Der Spiegel cites a recent estimate that it would cost Germany “€3.4 trillion ($3.8 trillion),” or seven times more than it spent from 2000 to 2019, to increase solar and wind three to five-fold by 2050.
Between 2000 and 2019, Germany grew renewables from 7% to 35% of its electricity. And as much of Germany's renewable electricity comes from biomass, which scientists view as polluting and environmentally degrading, as from solar.
Germany gets 33% of its electricity from solar and wind.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/09/frances-nuclear-clean-...
Batteries by themselves not enough. Need inverters etc... You cannot get to the cost of the car by only adding up the cost of gasoline used over its lifetime.
China's and south Korea and Russia have nuclear build costs in the $2k-2.5K per KW range. They make 70% of the world's nuclear reactors.
You pay for electricity by the kilowatt-hour.
Flight crews get 3.1 milliseverts per year. About 50 days worth of Fukushima exposure.
Air pollution causes 7 million deaths per year. 4 million from outdoor air pollution. The hospitalization rate increases on the bad air days. The effect is immediate for many elderly and asthmatics. Air pollution levels in some cities in India, China and other parts of Asia is like forcing everyone (including babies and the elderly or asthmatics) to smoke 6+ cigarettes a day.
Being barely able to breath is very unpleasant and scary.
12,000 people died over 2 weeks in 1952 during the London Fog air pollution event. Atmospheric inversion trapped air pollution. People dropped dead with blue lips and their last few minutes to hours were spent gasping for breath.
144 people were killed in 1966. During the Aberfan disaster. Millions of tons of coal mine waste were left in piles on a mountain. A heavy rain caused the mine waste to slide down the mountain and into the town of Aberfan. It buried a school. 117 children dead.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/aberfan-coal-disaster-...
Multiple incidents where over 100 people get burned alive in oil tanker spills. 150+ in Pakistan in 2017. Poor people ran towards on oil tanker spill to scoop up oil from a leak. Then it caught fire and they were burned alive.
8 billion tons of coal is moved every year. 1000+ die mining it. Many die underground slowly when they are trapped in collapsed coal mines. 40% of freight trains and trucks move coal. So almost all freight train and truck accidents in certain areas are people being hit by a vehicle loaded with coal.
5 billion tons of oil per year.
Norway is big into oil and gas. $62 billion for the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
On 4 April 2011, radiation levels of 0.06 mSv/day were recorded in Fukushima city, 65 km northwest of the plant, about 60 times higher than normal but posing no health risk according to authorities.
Would you have ordered the evacuation of thousands of sick and elderly hospitalized people if they were all going to get an X-ray? a CT scan?
The amount of radiation from one adult chest x-ray (0.1 mSv). A chest CT delivers 7 mSv — 70 times as much.
0.4 mSv from a mammogram. https://www.health.harvard.edu/cancer/radiation-risk-from-me...
Radiation levels were about 2 chest x-rays every day.
6-16 mSv from CT scans.
It is irrelevant that the recent nuclear reactor projects in the USA and Europe are expensive. A weighted average of cost and completion times for global nuclear reactor construction would be dominated by the 90% of the nuclear reactors built by China, Russia, South Korea and India.
Do you based your analysis on the price cars based upon the price of a Rolls Royce? Do you price bridges based upon the cost of the Bay Bridge? Tunnels based upon the Big Dig? Rockets based upon the Space Launch System?
Also, nuclear got expensive because constantly increasing regulations and bureaucracy drove up costs in the USA. Reactors without accidents built in China and South Korea for 4 times less. Also, the systemic failure of large construction projects in the US. Skycrapers, bridges, subways and highway costs went up. High-speed rail in California versus China for costs and completions.
China generates as much electricity this year as USA and Europe combined. China will double again within 20 years. Natural gas will dominate US energy mix.
The solar and wind will not scale well beyond 10%. The US will need massive buildout of energy storage and massive energy grid modifications. This will run into the big project incompetence of the USA.