Costs soar for new nuclear power plants

Strict safety guidelines cause construction delays at nuclear plants in Finland and Taiwan

Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 1:07 PM on 06 Sep 2007

Read more about: energy | nuclear power | Finland | Taiwan | United Kingdom

Bloomberg has a very long article on the troubles plaguing Finland's Olkiluoto-3, "the first nuclear plant ordered in Western Europe since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster."

The plant has been delayed two years thanks to "flawed welds for the reactor's steel liner, unusable water-coolant pipes and suspect concrete in the foundation." It is also more than 25 percent over its 3 billion euro ($4 billion) budget. The article notes:

If Finland's experience is any guide, the "nuclear renaissance" touted by the global atomic power industry as an economically viable alternative to coal and natural gas may not offer much progress from a generation ago, when schedule and budgetary overruns for new reactors cost investors billions of dollars.

The U.K.'s Sizewell-B plant, which took nearly 15 years from the application to build it to completion, opened in 1995 and cost about 2.5 billion pounds ($5.1 billion), up from a 1987 estimate of 1.7 billion pounds.

Nuclear power's costs balloon partly because plants must be built to more exacting safety standards and stand up to more stringent oversight, leading to lost time and extra expense.

Indeed, the oversight is needed because so many plants have safety-related construction problems:

Areva's Finland EPR isn't the only nuclear project to run into delays. The June commercial startup of China's Tianwan project came more than two years later than planned. The Chinese regulator halted construction for almost a year on the first of two Russian-designed reactors while it examined welds in the steel liner for the reactor core, says Jacques Repussard, who follows global developments as head of France's radiation protection agency.

In Taiwan, the Lungmen reactor project has fallen five years behind schedule. Difficulties include welds that failed inspections in 2002 and had to be redone, S.H. Liao, project manager for Taiwan Power Co., said in an e-mail. He also said the rising cost of steel, concrete and other commodities has gutted subcontractors' profits, causing them to stop work to renegotiate fixed-price contracts.

Rushing headlong into massive construction of nuclear power plants would be unwise. While nuclear may be part of the solution to global warming, it is probably going to be only a limited part, especially in this country.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

For story: Costs soar for new nuclear power plants
14 Comments | Post a Comment

Great expectations of grand executions

Joseph Romm wrote in the original post: While nuclear may be part of the solution to global warming, it is probably going to be only a limited part, especially in this country.

There is a "solution to global warming" that is being, or is going to be, implemented? To what are you referring?

by Nucbuddy at 2:07 PM on 06 Sep 2007

Rather silly article about old time events

Talking about constriction of nuclear plants 20 year sago is rather absurd - back then there were so many obstacles involved, it's a wonder any ever got built at all. One may also recall how poor windmill technology was back then. Even today, wind power construction makes nuclear power station construction look cheap. There were many reasons for high costs in year spast, and the largest portion of all were delays due to
governmental reg changes that were foolishly installed after design beut before completion.
The other large cost inflator was the fact that back then there was a rather foolish tendency to reinvent the nuclear power plant at each new
installation. Nowadays, there is far more standardization and the same basic design's cost can be amortized over many plants. This can easily cut the price a plant by more than 70%.
The actual costs of buying a reactor are relatively controlled and predictable. The TXU
recently ordered two reactors fromMitsubishi at a cost of between $1.2 and $1.4 million per kilowatt, which is easily 8 times cheaper than the cost of a wind power, and of course, produces controllable and reliable electricity,
completely unlike the low quality, low valued wind produced power. Anyone who tries to argue that nuclear is somehow intrisically difficult and prone to cost overruns is making a completely invalid argument. Nuclear plants technology is far more proven and reliable than either wind or wave or any of the other non-dispatchable alternative energies, and far more potent. Just those two reactors from Mitsubishi will produce
almost as much power as all 7500 wind turbines in the US and do so when needed. Wind in Texas, for example, produced power at an insignificant 2% during peak demand periods during 2006. The implications here are clearly that wind, right now many times more costly than nuclear, is actually far more expensive than first thought, since all wind capacity MUST be duplicated by dispatchable power than can meet peak demand.
I read where China will be building upwards of 400 nuclear power plants in the years ahead. If the US fails to build nuclear, it will be the most polluting country of the civilized world. France obtains 75% of her power from nuclear.
I think the US has the technical wherewithall to match France. To claim that nuclear is somehow
intrinsically expensive is a gigantic lie. And then there's the gas-pebble-bed reactors down the road. When those are commercially available,m only a fool (or Don Quixote) will be out errecting windmills, one of the most heavilly subsidized (and useless) energy sources we have.

by theBike45 at 2:57 PM on 06 Sep 2007

Yeap

But bid low, or else you'll lose the contract.

-David Ahlport

by GreyFlcn at 3:08 PM on 06 Sep 2007

re: theBike45

it is silly, almost childish, to talk about the "costs" of nuclear power in terms of billions of dollars and say nothing about the radioactive waste that has literally nowhere to go, and not enough of those billions of dollars to try and create, if you can do so, places that would be "suitable" to dump it, meaning something to the point of: we're not really sure that this will be safe 50 or 100 years from now, but we don't have anything better at the moment than big underground places...i guess it won't get into the groundwater, right?

For what it's worth, if you have a major problem with a wind turbine installation, or a major failure, or even if all of the components spontaneously melted and oozed into the ground, you'd still be nowhere remotely near a minor problem or minor failure of a nuclear plant.

by rcphillips at 3:16 PM on 06 Sep 2007

Spent-fuel disposition vs. the present subject

Rcphillips wrote: it is silly, almost childish, to talk about the "costs" of nuclear power in terms of billions of dollars and say nothing about the radioactive waste

The subject of Joseph Romm's post was up-front capital cost. Spent-fuel disposition is not part of up-front capital cost, unless dry-storage facilities are included in the initial construction works -- they never have-been included in the past, and even if they were, the added costs would be negligible.

by Nucbuddy at 3:40 PM on 06 Sep 2007
[ Parent ]

Truthfulness I suspect was inadvertent

if you have a major problem with a wind turbine installation, or a major failure, or even if all of the components spontaneously melted and oozed into the ground, you'd still be nowhere remotely near a minor problem or minor failure of a nuclear plant.

That's actually true. Minor problems often occur at nuclear power stations, e.g. at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa during the recent earthquake, and no-one is ever hurt; a major failure occurred here just 12 days ago, and are, of course, unremarked by the "renewable-energy enthusiasts" here, perhaps excusably if they are in fact natural gas enthusiasts. But in that case the worker who died, died for a deceitful charade.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes --
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html

by GRLCowan at 4:28 PM on 06 Sep 2007

Uncle Nuke

I'm gigawatts of unbested power;
My breath is pure and sweet.
I'm there for you at any hour,
I wouldn't dream of trapping heat.

There's no time for wind and solar,
we're facing an emergency!
They're fickle as the weather,
and need a subsidy.

I'm the one that you can trust;
leave your children in my care.
Let the coal plants go to rust,
and spread my power everywhere!

So go dig up my unstable ore,
and divert the river's flow;
deep within my reactor core,
to keep my temper low.

Pour your taxes in concrete walls
and high barbed-wire fences;
until the cost of insurance falls.
Don't blame me for those expenses.

Build for me a secret tomb
to await my long decay.
Post the sign of death and doom;
make all that's living keep away.

My power remains a mystery
to all but a chosen few.
Unless you have the right degree,
just believe my words are true.

No need to fear my radiation,
soon to spread across the nation.
I'll keep the gene pool from stagnation
with a bit of random mutation.

You'll never see me coming,
or know when I'm around;
unless you hear me humming
or the siren's warning sound.

Your safety I can simulate,
I'll create a federal agency,
and they'll pretend to regulate
to keep me from complacency.

Trust your Uncle Nuke, I say.
Put your faith in science;
never doubt that I'm the way
to energy self-reliance.

But if you find you're losing hair
and often need to puke,
you'd best kneel down, and say a prayer
to trusted Uncle Nuke.

a liberal in redsville

by birdboy at 5:05 PM on 06 Sep 2007

Why did they say 4 years?

I just skimmed the article, and it turns out that the company said/promised 4 years, which is the time probably needed for construction when the company and government have experience. In the US, the first few nuclear plants are expected to take 6 - 7 years to build. Now it turns out that the Finnish plant will take 6 years, and be 2 years behind schedule.

Do you really think that we can keep atmospheric levels of GHG below 450 ppm without incredibly expanding nuclear power? Do you think that we can do that even with expanding nuclear power?

A Musing Environment

Karen Street

by Karen Street at 6:04 PM on 06 Sep 2007

Can do it with ...

I think there will be big scaleups in nuclear unit size. Also, we may get publically funded central CO2 capture. This is different from CCS at coal plants in that one does not built CO2 emitters at the same time as one builds the sequesterer; rather, one sequesters CO2 emissions from elsewhere.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes --
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html

by GRLCowan at 6:49 PM on 06 Sep 2007

well, then every utility will be building nuclear

If nuclear is as cheap all that, 8 times cheaper than wind, everybody will be putting them in. But there isn't a huge push for these things from what I've seen. Maybe it will happen, but as I've heard it said, "paper holds still." That is, it's all just big talk now.

Truely, I wish it would solve global warming, but it does feel like you are overselling.

One of the reasons France has Nuclear power plants is they have very strong unions who put these things up, socialism and all. Kind of funny that people who might rail against socialism want France's nuclear policy, but wouldn't want Frances single paying health care plan.

I talked to somebody in the utilities in Minnesota who said a recent study showed they can have wind up to 25 percent of total supply before they have supply problems. That does seem like a high percent. I didn't read the report, or know if it's true, but it's not as unworkable as you make it out to be.

you're obviously an advocate for nuclear and maybe it will work out.

by trock at 7:50 PM on 06 Sep 2007
[ Parent ]

Trock,

You wrote, "If nuclear is as cheap all that, 8 times cheaper than wind, everybody will be putting them in."

Your stated conclusion does not seem to follow from your stated premise. How did you come to your stated conclusion?

by Nucbuddy at 9:05 PM on 06 Sep 2007

replying to thebike45

"Your stated conclusion does not seem to follow from . . . " what the hell. I was just commenting on what what thebike45 had written, that the new nuclear power plants that were going to be built in Texas was going to be 8 times cheaper than wind. I'm skeptical.

by trock at 6:56 AM on 07 Sep 2007
[ Parent ]

Wind vs. nuclear - uneven playing field

Trock,

Wind powerplants are used as tax write-offs. No one can use a nuclear powerplant as a tax write-off, because there are no tax write-offs avalailable for nuclear powerplants. Additionally, those tax write-offs are artificially inflated by fraudulently-high estimations of wind powerplant generation capacity -- which instances of fraud would be more difficult to execute in the stricter regulatory environment that surrpunds nuclear powerplants.

One of the many other exclusive subsidies that wind powerplants receive is a lifetime 2-cent/kWh (and automatically rising with inflation) generation subsidy. The subsidy-distorted economics tend to work in favor of wind powerplants, and against nuclear powerplants.

It is also easier to execute a wind powerplant venture because the regulatory environment surrounding wind power is so much laxer than that surrounding nuclear power.

It does not solely matter that nuclear powerplants only cost 1/8th what wind powerplants cost. There are other factors involved in the decisions that utilities and investors make.

by Nucbuddy at 11:54 AM on 07 Sep 2007

Nuclear explosion soon in the United States

Joseph Romm wrote in the original post: While nuclear may be part of the solution to global warming, it is probably going to be only a limited part, especially in this country.

What makes you say that?
ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5imdFxeQBkMYCZEzkiu0Nts0n-MRA

Flood of New Nuclear Reactors Expected
By DUNCAN MANSFIELD - 1 day ago
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) -- Federal regulators, girding for explosive growth in the nuclear power industry, say they are weeks away from an anticipated flood of license applications for new reactors not seen since the 1970s.
[...]
The independent regulatory agency expects to receive new fast-tracked combined construction and operating license applications for as many as 29 reactors at 20 sites, most in the South, over the next three years.
The first could come as early as Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year.
"We have never had to do this many reviews at one time in parallel with an office that has only existed for less than 12 months," Borchardt said Thursday at the NRC's reactor training center in Chattanooga.
"Nobody thinks this is going to be easy."
Borchardt has hired more than 400 inspectors, engineers and examiners to handle the load.
[...]
to keep reactors on the fast track, most will incorporate modular construction with large parts -- the reactor vessel, for instance -- made in other locations, such as Japan. Some large components already are being ordered, Borchardt said.
Using standardized design and modular construction "allows General Electric to (be able) to claim that they can construct from first concrete to reactor critical -- an entire power plant -- in approximately 36 months," NRC reactor technology instructor Richard DeVercelly said.
That's about how long it took to build two new reactors in Japan that use an advanced boiling-water design that the NRC has certified for U.S. power companies, he said.
By comparison, TVA took five years alone to rebuild and restart its oldest reactor at the Browns Ferry station in Alabama, which returned to service this year.
"It is pretty clear that the plants will be built more rapidly (and) are going to make extensive use of modular construction," Borchardt said. "One of the great lessons from the 1960s and 1970s is that you do a much better job if you can design them before you start building them. (That's true) whether you are building a house or anything else."

by Nucbuddy at 1:04 PM on 08 Sep 2007

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