Economics of Nuclear Reactor
2019 ж. 13 Мам.
580 564 Рет қаралды
What are the costs to construct, fuel and operate a nuclear power plant compared to a natural gas power plant. Compares capital cost and fuel costs and looks at how the cost over time should be analyzed. This is done in a visual manner. The time to construct the plant is shown to be a critical variable along with interest rates. The years when the investment is paid off, when the costs are equal and the variables which could change in value over time are all discussed. Electric production costs of all different types of fuels are compared.
"Very few governments look beyond the length of time where the officials are actually in power". Extremely sage comment.
A successful politician (in a democracy / democratic republic) does what will get them elected and keep them in power. They can't do otherwise and be successful.
@@travcollier that usually involves short term things that make people happy now
And thats why China is going nuclear, as they have a dictaitor
@Michael Kahr True, they don't learn. Republicans decry all regulation, right up until lack of regulation harms them personally, but then it's too late. Theirs is an "I got mine, screw everyone else" mentality. It's why you see them rail against Obamacare until they get sick, at which point they expect the government to step in and save them!
@Michael Kahr Democrats and Republicans representing various electorates is not a problem. The problem is that the extreme right wing is funded by corporations looking for more corporate welfare (so yes, anti-free market), and they convince working poor that they should vote against their own best interests. I've actually had working poor (minimum wage) people tell me that they don't want their taxes going to somebody else's health care. Informing them that they don't pay taxes doesn't go well, because they're in complete denial, having only watched Fox "News" for years.
And the moral still is: "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."
MadAtreides1 Yes, plant a tree that explodes and burns releasing 1300 nuclear isotopes into the air and water, threatening a global extinction level event. Doesn't the fruit of the poison tree taste good?
@@badpizzadays nuclear power plants are very safe nowadays. This isnt 50 years ago.
T C thank you for your thoughtful reply. I agree that advancement in technology and plant design has and will greatly improve the safety of nuclear power plants. Here are my concerns with the process of boiling water with Uranium and Plutonium (MOX) fuels. First, the mining process for Uranium 238 is very toxic, simply look up what was left behind on Navajo lands, large waste pits of highly radioactive waste. Secondly, processing U238 into U235 can be dangerous and toxic, look up gas diffusion leaks in Metropolis Illinois at the Honeywell gaseous diffusion plant. Thirdly, after processing the fuel used to generate power creates tritium that is legally discharged into the environment because it's impossible to remove after the reaction, several municipal source waters in Illinois have been contaminated with tritium that was deep well injected into the earth by local power plants. Fourth, after the fuel is utilized it is more radioactive than before the reaction, yet it is stored in open-air spent fuel pools. If for any reason the pumps that keep the storage pools cool fail, the fuel will evaporate the water and can burn, which releases nuclear contamination into the environment. These are four reasons that nuclear power is too dangerous for power generation purposes. Kindest regards,
@@badpizzadays This is all irrelevant to liquid thorium reactors, which can actually also use the waste of older generation reactors as fuel. They don't explode, they don't go into meltdown; it's literally impossible because the process is entirely different. Further, solar and wind also produce radioactive waste, and it's completely overlooked and just dumped into lakes. Anything that uses rare earth metals, like solar and wind, inherently create a radioactive byproduct. I'd rather take the option that produce _less_ waste while producing more energy: nuclear.
@@badpizzadays holy sh!t, that is quite the reply. I have no idea how to respond, I'm not a nuclear engineer, lol. Perhaps zedeks reply is good enough.
So this is why Mr Burns is so old and rich
No nuclear plants have made a profit yet
Ethan McCormick lol and what makes you think that?
@@kevcom000 the only ones that have were sold by a government for below the cost to build to a private company who made a profit on that, but none have completely covered costs from selling electricity. Not yet anyway
Ethan McCormick I don’t know where you got this information from but you have been sorely mislead as 30 mins on google and a calculator can easily prove. Detroit Edison (DTE) built and operated fermi 1 which became active in 1963 and as per Stanford University was built by DTE large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/fleming1/ Unfortunately as it was an experimental breeder reactor, and we where still pretty new at building breeder reactors at the time, it suffered a partial meltdown in 1966 making it inactive until after repairs they shut it down in 1972. Fermi 2, the current reactor, fully came online in 1988 with a production output of 1,202MWe which was built and currently owned by DTE. Now to find how much money it has made since it began operations in 1988 you only need to know 3 things: cost of electricity in 1988, cost of electricity today and how much energy it has output since it began operation and luckily it was a pretty easy search. So first for the total energy produced DTE, in the history section, states that Fermi 2 has produced more than 200 billion KWh of electricity since it came online newlook.dteenergy.com/wps/wcm/connect/dte-web/home/about-dte/common/fermi2/fermi2-power-plant Or if you don’t trust them I can also use a time calculator and it has been 280272 hours between January 23 1988 and today then by multiplying the power output of 1,202MWh by the total hours you get 336,886,944MWh of electricity assuming it has been running at 100% nonstop. Now we have to convert that to KWh as that is the rate electricity is charged at and since 1MW is a thousand KW you just multiply the number by 1,000 making it 336,886,944,000 KWh so I think we can trust their figure. Now we need to know the cost of electricity in 1988 vs the current cost today and at 9.47 cents in 1988 (adjusted for inflation) and 14.13 cents today all we have to do is round the numbers to .09 and .14 then average them out which comes to an average of 11.5 cents per KWh between now and 1988 .12 after rounding. Cost in 1988 real number is adjusted for inflation www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/showtext.php?t=ptb0810 Cost today www.electricitylocal.com/states/michigan/ All that’s left now is to multiply the average cost of electricity by the amount of power used which using their number of 200 billion comes to $24 billion or using my number of 100% output 100% of the time you get $40 billion and since the plant cost $6 billion I’m going to have to say that after DTE paid for and built the plant it has most definitely say that it has been profitable. Here’s the cost btw en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi_Nuclear_Generating_Station#Fermi_3
Oh and as for how long till it was paid off based on the $24 billion number they would make $750 million a year comes to 8 years and assuming that $40 billion number you get $1250 million a year so 4.8 years till it’s paid off
I am from Bangladesh and my country is building a 2400mw nuclear plant. A lot of people including the opposition party were against building it, but its good that the govt went with their plans. We are also planning a 2nd one. I hope all goes well
Good luck, Bangladesh deserves more nuclear power because i hear you're reliant on natural gas power which is super expensive. Greetings from India :)
Never trust the opposition
Tell us what is so “good” about it? I’ll wait.
This guy grossly underestimates the capital cost of a nuclear unit and overestimates capital cost of natural gas CC units. Problem 1. The numbers are more like 15 Billion per nuclear unit with 1200 mw output and half a billion for a CC that would output that much power.
@@BrianLTanner China and Russia are doing nuclear at 1.6-2.6B$/1000MW. South Korea managed 4.5B/1000MW in Barakah, an essentially FOAK project(all 4 units already completed, 3 operating, one in commissioning). And are now doing offers for 2.6B/1000MW. Gas isn't paying for any externalities either. With increased air quality and carbon tax requirements, gas won't look so good. And Unreliables aren't even worth mentioning.
So basically, once you have built a nuclear reactor, don't bloody shut it down unless it is at the end of its useful life! Looking at you, Germany!
I know what you mean. It's one thing not to put a new (mostly completed) reactor into operation, due to committing to its decommissioning costs; it's quite another to shutdown perfectly good reactors a decade early. While Germany did well with implementing renewable energy since then, they'd have been far better off replacing their coal plants first. Now they're just on par with where they were a decade ago.
My feeling exactly, they should shut down the coal plants first. Maybe I'm not completely up to date but I think they have around 50% coal in their electricity mix (and of course some of that other fossil fuel, natural gas from Putin), when they have stopped using that then they can start considering shutting down the nuclear plants.
@@BattleshipAgincourt Nah, Germany is worse off now that they've mindlessly pushed for unreliable renewables. Their CO2 emissions have gone up considerably because they had to build coal to provide baseline power, their energy prices have gone up considerably, and blackouts are now commonplace.
@@Willaev "blackouts are now commonplace" That's completely false.
@@Willaev blackouts are not a commonplace in germany. germany has a lot less blackouts than california. we just destroy our countryside for cheap power. coal power is even cheaper than nuclear power in the long run. the infrastructure is already in place.germans are just to afraid of nuclear power, since if somethink goes wrong is catastrophic and society is afraid of nuclear power. it is quite funny, since germany has everythink for it. the safest reactores, local mines with lots of uranium and the know how. but we choice to not use it, since society is scared of nuclear power. p.s. germany even had a thorium reactor ...
And the people who invested in a Post-It notes factory are laughing all the way to the bank.
Lmao
that's nothing compared to what 'Agile project management and Kanban' world has done to make the sticky note people rich
Actually 3M doesn't make much money on sticky notes. The main reason you can still buy them is because they're good for PR & company exposure.
3M sends him a Christmas card every year
Yeah a 3M employee invented them within the company im pretty sure
I was 14 minutes in before I realized this guy writes backwards. I was 15 minutes in before I realized he wrote normally and flipped the video horizontally.
Goddamn, I thought he was a genius at writing mirror 😂
Butt wondering about it in 10, so..
vertically
How long until you realized this is just a video of the mirror this guy is standing in front of
That minute must have been wild
What I really appreciate is how you’ve distilled a rather complex problem into simple terms that allows anyone to understand the economics behind long term decisions
I’m from a developing country in Asia It’s great that I can have access to content like this to learn new things. And I learned to speak English on own through the internet by the help of great human beings like yourself. Thanks!
Dream big, dude.
With motivation like that, you can do a lot of things that everyone says is "impossible". Dream big!
That's awesome!
Welcome to the accumulation of all human knowledge! Don't mind the trolls, they are just here to remind you to go outside on occasion.
@@icthuluQuite often, physical activity, like just walking 15min, will increase BDNF (brain fertilizer) and blood flow to the brain. Setting you up for brain growth, instead of brain shrinkage that is most common.
In short, build a nuclear plant, before you turn 25.
Or build thorium MRS...and become the god!
I’m 27, I’m fucked...
Serra Kagin in more ways than you know
The best time to build a nuclear reactor is 17 years ago. The second best time to build a nuclear reactor is today.
I work in the wholesale power industry and this is a very good explanation between the 2 for novice people. When he was referring to uncertainty in nuclear he’s referring to government getting in the way. We have nuclear in the mix and the life expectancy of the plant is actually 50 years and the debt is paid off so cheapest energy in the mix. Gas and coal plants are around 25 before decommissioning. Also if the government decides to ban fracking you can expect the fuel costs to at least double more likely triple as the average cost cost was $6 prior to fracking.
are we just going to ignore the fact he's writing backwards perfectly?
Right??
I'm trying to figure out if he is left-handed but wearing his watch on the right or if that is some sort of fancy optical illusion/edditing.
It’s probably a mirrored video.
I was about to say that's the most impressive thing about his presentation.
It’s because he’s left handed. I think they can do that automatically.
'The utilities cant charge for the plant until they actually provide electricity from it' Yeah ask my idiot state government of South Carolina about that. They passed a law allowing the utilities to charge to build a nuclear plant. The plant kept going over budget and was abandoned before completion.
People hate nuclear so much that they will do anything to hamper and destabilise it. Methinks there are far too many votes and special interests to keep the primacy of coal and oil continuing. It's really disgusting, and I hope we see a point in history where this blatant disregard for a safe, and very cheap energy source was spat on for purely ignorant and selfish reasons.
@@Novarcharesk I guess you missed all the hoopla over the Biden Administration’s anti-carbon Executive Orders? While there isn’t a specific ban or adverse action against coal YET, it’s only a matter of time. His stated goal of a carbon-free electrical grid by 2035 (14 years from now) cannot happen if coal is still mined and burned for power. He’ll, with current attitudes and regulations on the books, it’s nearly impossible to build power plants (or, dare I say it, gasoline refineries)! It’s also worth pointing out that the same enviro-crazies who are so against coal power plants are almost unanimous in their equal hatred of nuclear plants...AND...the same kinds of people (at least in California) won’t approve dams that could be hydroelectric generators.That leaves solar + wind + hydrothermal, but combined, those can’t meet our energy needs. Your skepticism about votes and companies trying to buy their security are understandable, but this Administration isn’t playing that game. And the so-called ‘green energy’ companies that *did* successfully lobby the previous Democrat in the White House (President Obama) were universally failures (Solyndra and dozens of others)... No energy company is innocent of trying to secure their future using all the tools available in our system, and neither party seems very innocent in terms of what they fight for and for whom and at what price. The reality is that as long as we are a society that needs energy to grow - and that’s unlikely to change, ever - we will need all existing forms of energy until we come up with something better. So, do those highly-anti-carbon people care that we won’t survive as a country without energy? I doubt it. Sometimes, I think they’d be happy going back to horses and buggies, but then the argument would be about horse flatulence and it’s effect on limited. And they forget that when we go there, they won’t have power for their iPads. There’s no reasoning with unreasonable people.
@@mracicot Those same people would probably also start horse activism and we'd go back to pulling our stuff around ourselves. Jokes aside, there's s many issues with the push for green energy. Like, I understand where they come from, and if they only wanted revolution in energy generation, we'd be in for tough times, but could make it. However, the very same lobby, at the very same time, is pushing for electric powered everything. Cars, planes, boats, trains, you name it. Biggest issue is with cars, especially in US - households would charge these mainly during night time, exactly the time, where renewables like solar and wind are least reliable for a stable supply. If it was down to a decision between the two, most of those folks would go for amenities > energy generation. But they keep denying the reality that we would need to face if that takes place.
Oof
In short, don't think short-term. Thank you for the Lesson Professor.
This prof is an exceptional teacher. I could listen to him lecture on the history of shoelaces and be interested.
and he's really good at writing backwards!
I'm impressed by his skill to write backwards so well
That’s kept me intrigued .... much more than the material! 🤣
I am perplexed as to why this is not the top comment, if not purely for the memes.
Maby he wrote normally and then just mirrored the video.... Seems easier than learning to write backwards 🤣
He writes on a mirror with camera behind him...
It's also super green as long as you are responsible with the waste.
Responsible would be to dig a certified hole and deposit the stuff down there, and not to park it in clear sky in a conrete container. Why is the WIPP not recertified also for non-military waste?
Definitely killed a crap less men than coal...
The waste will be reused as fuel in new Gen 4 reactors.
@@harambae117 Sure, but I don't want to live next to a pile of dry cask containers which slowly rot in sun and rain. Nuclear therapy is very beneficial to many cancer patients, but you have to be responsible with the waste from these therapeutic installations, else you kill people. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident
@@nick21614 What do you mean by waste? If you have 5% enrichment and burn 4%, then 100 tons of spent fuel elements mean you have 4 tons of waste, 1 ton of unburnt U-235 and 95 tons of U-238 ballast. How do you want to reuse the already split atoms? These highly radioactive isotopes will not go away, on the contrary if you burn the 95 tons of U-238 in a breeder reactor, you will add 95 tons of nuclear waste in the equation. A Gen-IV-reactor will not solve the wast problem, I may only help to solve the fuel supply by different fuels except U-235. But as operating costs including fuel costs are not an issue, why should anybody in the conservative energy industry invest in a new technology?
This is a very nice general overview. He does not get bogged down in excessive details or unrelated side topics.
Like decommissioning costs? Or cost overruns (Hinkley C ~23 BILLION POUNDS) ?
Exactly.
I was thinking of Hinckley but couldn't remember the name. Texas Utilities spent 12 billion dollars for 2.3 GW plant under construction for 14 years. Patted themselves on the back for it when it came online in 1992. Who believes that figure accounted for inflation over such a timespan? If you do, please contact me as I have a bridge in Brooklyn I need to sell at a fire sale price. The climate situation is so dire that only a World War II type effort can help. Gigawatt plants are too slow and expensive. ITER is a perfect example as I believe it won't come online until 2030 and what we end up with is a pilot plant. Modular mass produced units are the only way to go and thorium is probably the best solution.
This video doesnt consider a lot of costs. 1) employee wages 2) how much electricity the plant itself consumes 3) recurring costs for other consumable materials that arent fuel ( simple example: water ) 4) taxes??? Taxes are a HUGE cost ( if the owner is the country this doesnt apply ) And there are probably many more costs. Considering only employees cost, a nuclear power plant usually has around 500 employees ( on the low side ). Let's say that on average the salary of each one is 50k/year. That's 25 millions dollars, kinda stupid not to include it in the calculations.
"We've just surpassed making more money than the gas plant. It took a lot more risk." Accidentally drops one of the profit units.
He also forgot to add a debt unit. So he messed up twice and got the right total.
I’m not remotely in the engineering field and this was recommend on my homepage. And I watched the whole thing. No complaints here!!
It would be nice to know the economics with decommissioning costs included. Thanks for the great video.
There is a video for that by the same guy ... look it up.
@@agarcia658 And where's the video including the cost of storing the waste for thousands of years?
@@therealctoo4183 There isn't one because nuclear waste takes up significantly less space than other forms of power production per kWh. All of the nuclear waste produced could fit inside a medium-sized cave.
Yeah, storing waste isn’t very expensive compared to the other costs involved. And it would be even cheaper if Yucca Mountain hadn’t gotten NIMBY’d.
The Real c too it’s still a far better option then other forms of electricity production which produces any amount of toxic waste. A lot of forms of toxic waste does not break down over time. Nuclear waste will over a long period of time, but toxic waste will stay around til the end of the universe.
guess this video has to be mirrored or the guy can write letters mirrored
Left handed people who were forced to learn to write with the right hand are most of the time able to write letters mirrored. That was pretty common when that professor was younger, I assume.
If you look at the buttons on his suit coat you can tell the video is mirrored. Buttons are always on the right with men's clothing.
@sleepyhead well spotted ^^
@@tpolley5 good eyes i don't even see them.
We had to write from the back on status boards on Navy ships in the 70's. It does not take long to learn to do this.
This is a great video. A lot of people don't understand these basic principles, and they like to only talk about expenses in the most oversimplified forms, without realizing long term costs and production.
I'm surprised he didn't bring up how Nuclear power plants have less relative operational, maintenance and health (3 premature deaths/year with natural gas vs 1 every 17 years with nuclear) costs than natural gas plants, plus environmental benefits which may bring tax breaks
Lots of things can be said about nuclear, which is safe, including, for traditional nuclear Uranium / non-Thorium designs, the problem of Peak Uranium. See Is Nuclear Power Green? by Sabine Hossenfelder for a fair and balanced review.
@@raylopez99 Thank you for this resource! I'm currently writing a paper on nuclear energy and she cleared up so much confusion. I'm so grateful to you 🙏
@@raylopez99It's funny because that's the only point Sabine got wrong. Taking into account that U238 can be bred into fissile Pu, there are almost unlimited available resources of uranium and thorium (4x more abundant than U238) on Earth... she obviously got confused with the reserves (which are much smaller, because with such low consumption there is no need to open 1000 mines looking for it, a few are enough). And then it has been demonstrated that it is possible to extract the uranium which is in saltwater at costs of about 200 $/kg, which is still enough to make the power plants profitable, and would further extend the resources by a factor of about 1000 (at least, no one knows exactly gow much because it gets replenished by submarine ores who get dissolved, it's an equilibrium reaction)
@@raffaeledivora9517 Let Google be your guide my friend: "The concept of peak uranium refers to the point at which maximum uranium production has been reached worldwide, after which the rate will steadily decline.1 The WNA predicts a production peak of 85 kilotons/year around 2025, about 10 years later than in the present model, followed by a steep decline to about 70 kilotons/year in 2030. " Good starting point. In theory of course you can have infinite fissile materials with breeder reactors and the like, but as a practical matter existing designs depend on types of mined uranium which have a peak.
I watched this video before Real Engineering metioned it. Hope David lectures gets more views, he is a great professor.
The true tragedy of democracy is that once elected, the single most important thing is to get re-elected.
I'll take my freedom with coal over nuclear with slavery any day. However, I have been telling people that in the long run, a nuclear plant is the best way to generate the massive amounts of electricity needed to get the cost down so people might consider purchasing electric only vehicles. People also don't understand that the electricity infrastructure needs to be massively increased too. In the USA, it simply won't happen, and the country is gradually breaking apart culturally/politically. However, it might happen in two generations if the USA splits into more than one country where the countries may be able to get these projects rolling.
This is the tragedy of Western style democracy which is unfortunately what was exported all over the world
I retired from nuclear energy, and as a maintenance person, I thoroughly enjoy watching your presentations. Ive even learned alot more than what I already knew. Thank you
This was an excellent lecture. Thanks for going to all the trouble to explain this in a way people can understand.
"If something is cheaper people are gonna buy it" *Laughs in Apple*
bruh, he's talking about homogeneous goods, which is electricity in this case.
@@FeoRache bro I really didn't not know, thanks fam.
Well, your argument is shit! Lets consider this: virtual brand pear realeases their new phone called jphone, which is at least as cool than the new iphone (and lets be honest the biggest point on buying an iphone is the prestige and coolness this brand sublimes to you in certain circles of society), but with one tremendous difference: jphona costs half of what an iphone costs... Now what do you think will be the answer of the market....
@666NedFlanders ouphhh I think I gonna die now, due to your fatal comment...
@@semenovroman87 Apple products never had quality to begin with
As stated, it's more about the time between elections than government.
Either way it is really hard to buy into a 25 year project. Especially when technology is accelerating.
Well not for every country...
@@jackmiddleton2080 Not really. This is one place where the Chinese can make huge strides. American government is thinking in 4-8 year cycles....China thinks in MUCH longer cycles, allowing them to see the long run benefits more clearly and leverage them.
Cheaper power/more money can lead to faster advancements in tech. Imagine a few reactors powering a few huge particle accelerators. Those guys are definitely gonna win the anti matter fuel race, that and pretty much then control the world.
Hoppe was right.
Thank you for that stellar presentation and insight.
This is really well made. Easily understood and well explained
17:00 miscalculation on the side of the nuclear power plant. He added two and moved a profit bar to count for the third.
Year 19 error
Hes clearly accounting for hush money and lobbying cash
@@penguinking2515 Ah yes ofc, how could I have been such a dunce.
year 3 error compounded in year 13 ! in year 3 the profit on the Gas is +2 no more mortgage ! in year 13 Nuke pays off the mortgage and gets+1 IN YEAR 14 Nuke GOES TO +9 ! ! ! Gas is at +24 By year 17 Gas has made 30M in profit But Nuke goes to $33,000,000 in profit ! and it gets more lopsided to NUKE for every year after by+6 (though considering repair/replacement cost by year 9 you are rebuilding the Gas plant completely and the Nuke maintenance is minimal for the life of the unit. at a 20 year life of a CO-Gen plant the Nuke will have made $21million MORE profit !
@@briancreegan827 But you need to compare the one plant to five gas plants. Not one
Is no one going to address the fact that this dude gave this entire presentation _mirrored_ ? Look, he even writes from his right to his left.
I don't think he did. The presentation was probably filmed regularly and then just mirrored in post production. It's either that or he spent a whole lot of time preparing for this by learning to write mirrored :p
@@fredrikhylerstedt3487 I think he practiced and only goofed a few times during the presentation. You can actually see whatever he writes on the "5" for $5 Bn gets replaced by a black box.
Some additional major hints that it was mirrored in post: he is wearing a ring on his “right” hand, whereas American men typically wear their wedding band on their left hand. And his unbutton jacket has buttons on the “left” side, whereas men’s clothing typically has buttons on the right side.
No one does these things by writing backwards. They write normally and then the image if mirrored later.
oddly the numbers for capital cost and years to build were both post edited.. hard to tell if that was a mistake in writing it backwards or a different number. It almost appears that the capital cost was written as 6 billion even though he says 5 billion. edit: nvm he actually says 6 billion and its been overdubbed.
I like your lectures and your style! Many greetings from "old Germany" Holger.
Duke Energy here in Florida absolutely did start charging for their nuclear plant costs prior to construction. In fact: the construction never happened, and we are still being charged.
Funding of plants should be from company profits, not a separately billed item. Regulations that artificially limit profits should have a generic investment clause not restricting power companies to specific projects within the area of future power delivery.
@@johndododoe1411 You don't take into account the American system of public costs for private profits. Power should be nationalized.
It's corruption of lawmakers creating wromg incentives disguised as being business friendly.
I wish I’d watched this last week when I was decided which power-plant to buy for myself, I rushed into it....
So, In layman’s terms, the Nuclear Powerplant is more profitable long term, and the Gas Plant is more profitable short term.
If nothing goes wrong, then yes.
@@AximandTheCursed more people are killed in or by natural gas plants than nuclear by a LONG margin, only 2 large scale nuclear disasters EVER is a very good track record, and both of those were easily avoidable
@@MsArchitectschannel I am aware, as long as they stick to safety protocols, and don't cut corners, nuclear has got some really bad PR over the decades, which is a shame, it really could solve a lot of problems.
@@MsArchitectschannel If they were esily avoidable, why didn't the responsable people avoid them? Shit happens.
In principle yes: as companies prefer not to go bankrupt in the short run in order to have the chance to make a fortune in the long run, the often avoid this risk if there is no insurance policy either by the government or rate-payers in non-liberalised energy markets. What do you think happened with the already spend money in the VC Summer case?
EXCELLENT presentation Sir. Critical omission is the government regulatory burden on the time and cost of construction. Glad you mentioned the French example.
Very eye-opening and informative, thank you!
The cost approach is the more realistic one. The graphic of the presentation is very smart and easy to understand.
I realize that you could not possibly have put this information into your calculations. But Bechtel used to be the primary builder of nuclear power plants in the United States. It however was becoming quite obvious that Bechtel was using it to commit theft and large amount of graft. Brand new equipment would show up to the site, and disappear within a few hours at times. Sometimes being taken out into the desert and buried where it was subsequently found later. Here in my home state of Michigan, they had a constant habit of having a room ready to be finished painted. And for some reason overnight somebody would go in and slap a bunch of red paint and the room, and as soon as that happens that required to completely cut that room out and rebuild it again. They did that as many as 10 or 12 times. It is why we had one plant that was actually shut down 5 converted to a gas plant because they could not get this company to actually finish building the nuclear plant because they figured that they would never be able to build too many of them so they were going to steal as much money as they could.
This is very sad.
This is an amazing video! I watched the whole thing, very entertaining and educational
thanks, came here by the channel real engineering, nice video!
Loving all the people talking about how dangerous and expensive nuclear waste is as if climate change from conventional power isn't happening at all.
Notice how cold it is getting - time to freshen up on Solar Minimum and Grand Solar Minimum - climate is changing, just not due to C02. We will need coal back, as the return on energy investment is very good, hydro being the best. Wood stove in the home will be wise when there is no more Natural Gas for heat.
@@zombieshoot4318 You can totally believe in global warming and be against nuclear power. During hundreds of millennia, we had no nuclear power plant, and no human-caused global warming. History proved that you don't need nuclear power to prevent global warming. Also, global warming may be only the 2nd biggest problem of mankind. We are exterminating life on earth rapidly. Not because of global warming, but because of pollution and destruction of natural habitats. Global warming is a problem only if you're alive. But at this rate, there will not be a lot of life left at the end of the century. We need to preserve life. Otherwise, we don't care if we have +10°C in year 2100. So, why do we want nuclear power? To power what? Playstations, iPhones, KZhead videos? Those things, and many others, are destroying life currently. That's the terrorism. Exterminating a significant part of life on earth, for things that are mostly futile. Of course, electricity can have noble purposes. But do we need to build nuclear power plants all around the world for that?
@@brinckau Nuclear makes sense because it is more efficient and produces less waste. People can focus on reducing demand for electricity, making electricity more efficiently, and protecting ecosystems. This isn't a choose one type of situation.
@@YourArmsGone All the time, we hear questions like "Should we stop using nuclear power?". But we rarely, if ever, hear questions like "Should we stop playing video games?". Try to find one article on the Internet about this question. Not easy. But you can find plenty of articles about whether or not we should use nuclear power. So even though what you say is true in theory, it seems that in reality, people mostly focus on how electricity is made. They don't want to question our way of life. They want to be able to have exactly the same life, just with better power plants. That can not be achieved in a sustainable way, no matter how good our power plants are.
Nuclear energy is marginal, representing 2% of worldwide energy consumpted and save virtually 0 greenshouse gaz emissions. Uranium is non renewable either and we have less than 100 years of reserve
13:00 that is a lot of effort to explain two linear functions..
Yeah but it's a fantastic visual representation for those who would be bored by the math, who are also probably the people that are the least knowledgeable about this topic
@@almachizit3207 yeah, let's educate people who do not understand high school math and teach how a nuclear reactor works + the economics of its operation.
@@goethe528 lets educate people and let them be decision makers, we need all the knowledge to make the best decisions, and this presentation is informative for all. Keep them coming.
@@goethe528 Well, these are the people who still have the right to vote. Let's have them understand the "rhetoric" spewed by politicians when it comes to massive amounts of investments from their tax dollar!
@@almachizit3207, those two linear functions could be also represented visually quite well even with all the points at each year of operation if one wants. Moreover, this would be even better visually, because whole lifetime is accesible at one glance.
Thanks for a great and informative discussion prof!
Really cool way of illustrating the math involved. The mechanics of a strategy board game aren't to dissimilar to the way we figured this out here. Felt you were trying to optimize the strategy for such a board game!
Have you ever played the board game called Power Grid?
@@weenisw I have actually. Though I don't remember the relation to this video since I watched it so long ago!
Would be exciting to see an updated version. Maybe one that offers insight on SMRs too.
Are you me?
Can't really talk about that which doesn't yet actually exist as a product. Needs another 11 years
Only one small miscalculation the time to build a nuclear plant in the US is infinite because the US has become scared of nuclear.
There have been at least a couple of plants in the US that started construction but never finished. I'm looking up at you Washington.
@@RobertLugg There is sadly only one that is going forward, and that's Vogtle 3 and 4... sadly going to be 8 and 9 years respectively to complete construction (current estimates for both AP1000's puts them operational in May of 2021 and 2022 when they started construction in 2013). The murdering of the nuclear industry by anti-science whack jobs has really killed off the ability to build nuclear power plants... If we standardized the plant design today and began a massive build out of AP1000's (not my preferred choice, but it's available today), the price would fall dramatically per unit, as would the time to build because we'd be building experience in building the plants.
Yes, there is huge regulatory risk in nuclear right now. You can plan on a 5 billion dollar plant that takes 5 years and 4 years into construction there can be an entirely arbitrary regulatory change that sets you back 2 years and 2 billion dollars. This is NOT a problem with nuclear (and not even unique to nuclear) this is a general problem in US construction in most states, just the stakes are higher with a bigger project and nuclear has a much higher chance (like 100%) of multiple delays due to environmental lawsuits. It's really insane. I'm waiting for the Tom Styer's of the world to get on board with nuclear. If you believe in man-made global warming and you are not a huge nuclear advocate, you don't really believe.
@@RobertLugg Not to mention plants shut down before their useful service life is up.
My state uses mostly nuclear, its possible for others to join the wave:))
I love this video. Long time horizons are usually the way to create massive value.
Really like this Professor. Very clear presentation.
Wow, one of the better videos I have seen in years!
The costs of construction and fuel are not all the costs. Waste is also a liability. The volume of waste is small and the technical issues are easily resolved, but the political climate doesn't permit long-term disposal right now.
There is one deep storage already in operation: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant It uses a salt deposit, which is ductile like play doh and also conducts heat from waste easily.
There actually is a long term disposal site and they are designing it so people hundreds of years from now know now to go near it.
Pretending that storing, quarantining, and protecting nuclear waste in perpetuity is a negligible cost is obscene.
MSR would solve the waste problem. And the cost problem and the time to build problem. Too bad we were more interested in building bombs instead of making the world a better place 50 years ago when the technology was first demonstrated.
@@willwires8348 I wonder why modular small reactors should solve the waste problem? Does en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov produce no waste?
21:50 'Low gas prices' 2021: Ooft. Great videos, thank you for uploading.
Love this. Love to see an update, four years on. Interest rates have gone up, killing “green” AND nuclear. VOGTLE 3 is on line, and VOGTLE 4 is hot on its heels.
I have no idea why I'm watching this.
Same
Education is fun
@@3User and interesting.
I wanna buy a nuclear reactor for my backyard
So next time nuclear legislation is on the table, you'll be a slightly more informed voter!
Ok, gonna bring a comment from reddit here, with some critiques: "At ~2:15 natural gas capex is stated as $1/W. That was correct for 2015, but this was posted May 2019. The EIA's last number is for plants installed in 2017 and averaged 0.92. Their latest reports for 2021 entry (ie, plants building today, as opposed to 2015) is 0.79. So 20% down. Not good. The same sources also disagree with his CAPEX for nuclear. Although the EIA has notoriously underestimated nuclear overnights (just google it), even they say it is >$6. So 20% up. So right off the bat, the inputs are off by 4000 basis points. Fuel costs: no information on the calculation. What is the "latest rate" being used, and what is the total generation. Interest rates at 3%. Power plants are financed as unsecured debt, and the basic rate is currently about 6.5%. In the US, the USEPA has a stabilizing effect, but looking through what materials on Vogtle I could find I can't see a single aggregate rate, which would be useful. There is no discussion of OPEX other than fuel. So, simply using the EIA numbers for the CAPEX and changing the financing rate to 6%, the nuclear side is now more expensive than gas at all stages. So when you move onto the cash-flow analysis, the NPP remains underwater for all time. The "analysis" also fails to account for inflation, which means the stickies for future years should be smaller than the ones for year 1. So when he reaches year 18, for instance, the NPP would not have actually made more money than the GPP."
Fascinating and interesting ! 👍
What an awesome video, I really enjoyed it!
Nuclear would make sense for institutional investors (eg., endowments), pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, etc. Individual investors who need to see an exit in 18-24 months would never go into this. There is plenty of money in the world that would be available for such long-time horizon return, but it won't be from individual investors who would max out at 10 years for a fund to mature and pay out.
Sure they would. It would behave in many ways like a 25 year bond ... Since fossil fuel prices fluctuate nuclear power stocks would sell for more when fossil fuel is expensive and sell for less when fossil fuel is cheap. What you would be trading is the potential to make money ...
AGarcia, that makes sense, depending on the liquidity of the underlying financial instruments.
That’s what separates a millionaire from a billionaire
Not to mention, he continues to pay interest on what be premused a paid debt that wouldn't require it. Based on his analysis, nuclear should get 5 more units of profit and NG would get another unit. This would send those profit numbers skyrocketing and decrease the ROI. Although, that's all based on this very elaborate demo.
This is why government can help fix market failures. Government can invest into these projects to the benefit of the tax payer instead of individual investors.
4:21 "Utilities in the US are not allowed to charge for their electricity until the plant is operating." Lol, Georgia Power is with the new Vogtle units, which so far have cost around $25 billion. The state PSC approved it.
What an explanation!!! Great job
Best prof I’ve ever heard
It would be interesting to add all of the life cycle costs as well (maintenance and end of facility life costs). I think it would add a lot to the discussion.
Not really, maintenance vs capex is pennies on the dollar for these plants until they get towards the end of their service lives
I’d love to see solar and wind added to this comparison.
It is useless, because solar and wind can't cover the baseload... or well, they could, but the cost of the batteries that would be needed is prohibitive. Batteries would need to cost at least 5 times less for it to be even in the same price range (and this is in the copper plate model, i.e. where the energy can freely move and there is no need of transformers, inverters, etc. Factor those in and providing baseloads with solar or wind would cost about 10 times more than with gas (which is the reason nobody does it)
@@raffaeledivora9517 people are plugging EVs into their homes. The batteries aren’t prohibitively expensive because you can get an auto loan and use said batteries for transportation. Maybe batteries to provide legacy power station levels of energy is prohibitively expensive but units sized to keep a home running for a few days that serves the dual purpose of powering your car is not prohibitively expensive.
Very interesting. Excellent presentation.
Excellent lecture and excellent visual. I do think the decommissioning and storage of spent fuel and security would change the dynamic. Nuclear will still win but by a smaller margin. NICELY DONE!
Nat gas cost and volume is so high, that fuel price volatility and availability is a major risk.
with shale gas at its infancy, NG supply will be very reliable. US has NG supply will last them +200 years and all this gas was found at super low NG price.
@@mtube620 Shale isn't super low, but it's consistently fairly low. Unless there's heavy political pressure, in which case it could be heavily tax or completely banned
@@Septimus_ii the social leftist have no solution but love banning things and steal from producers of wealth
@@mtube620 'steal from the producers of wealth' The irony of hearing a capitalist say this, lol
capitalist steal from the stupid ones which sounds like you.
Great video! The only problem is that, in truth, no capital-intensive projects are riskier and more prone to cost overruns and delays than nuclear. Those 6 years and 5bi could easily become 15 years and 20bi. Not to mention all the political risks. In practice, all these risks and illiquidity would make investors demand higher returns (larger discount rates) for nuclear when compared to natural gas. Although you’d have a very positive “best-case scenario”, the downsides are huge and the risk-weighted return on the investment (Present Value ranges) ate often lower than on a “safer” natural gas fired TPP. However, investing in already-built nuclear plants can be incredible, as long as you manage to find one for a good price. Source: I work in finance directly with energy ans infrastructure investments and specialize in thermal power plants.
Amazing and very informative. Thank you
Thank you for an excellent presentation.
This is perhaps the best economic analysis at a simple level of this particular choice. But short term thinking is a real part of economics. Consider the recent disaster in Texas, driven by the failure of the Texas energy regulators at state level and managers at corporate level, to invest in winterization. This catastrophe cost massively more than the investment, including effects on the Texas semiconductor fabs being down and other results. It was predictable, but the investment was not made. Consider the California fire disasters caused by failure to trim trees and upgrade power lines by the electrical utilities. Again, predicted but not acted upon, because the utilities wanted to milk the profits and the state regulators would not force them. Both sets of recent catastrophes were related to climate change, which would put another big plus in the Nuclear column, if economic “externalities” were properly calculated.
The time cost analysis shown here hurt the purist mathematician in me.
Not showing how interest builds even though you pay some off hurt my soul. The cost of building nuclear is insane when you think about that.
Clear and easy to understand. The changing political/regulatory landscape is the greatest risk. Nuclear energy needs its own PR firm.
EnergyProf, Great channel I've learned so much by watching your videos!
lol I like how when he says there is a lot more risk, some of the profits fell down.
Not quite. Despite having a bad name, Nuclear power is actually really safe. For every nuclear disaster there was, you can probably find 5 for natural gas. 6 for oil and uncountable numbers for coal. Simply put, nuclear power is among the safest. Up there with renewable energy sources
@@snakevenom4954 I believe the "risk" he is discussing here is the economic risk which is why it was a bit ironic that one of the profit post-its fell off. Otherwise you are correct about the safety of the nuclear plants compared to other mainstream plants. I have found that the Cold War era left a lasting stigma on nuclear as a whole so nuclear disasters, such as the one in Fukushima, often get more publicity and attention. Hope you have a wonderful day.
@@guestguest4943 The main risk for nuclear is the government barging in during construction or the first ~18years when it's still going red. Majority of "issues" with nuclear, except perhaps the waste, are manmade.
@@snakevenom4954 the "risk" is the economic risk of the plant not actually getting built/getting shutdown by the government/outcompeted etc.
That's really interesting. I think that the costs and construction time can be greatly optimised with international cooperation. The implementation of more effective reactors wont be a downside either :)
Just being able to build a nuclear reactor in the 6 years he used for the "simulation" already assumes a lot of optimization over what's sadly happening with new reactor construction right now (10+ years is the normal case in Europe and USA)
Excellent explanation. Thank you for making this video.
Amazing video, as a student who is currently going through a dissertation on nuclear energy, i express my gratitude for a very informative video.
Welcome to intro, week 1. Next week we discuss why the externalities of energy production make the whole game a lose-lose no matter what you're using as fuel. That is, until you subsidize and pass the real costs onto everyone but investors.
Professor, may I ask what would be the costs of decommissioning? or this is assuming upgrades once the reactor fulfills its lifespan?
This professor has a video on decommissioning. kzhead.info/sun/i6iBc9SSgpt7doU/bejne.html
www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/decommissioning-nuclear-facilities.aspx Keep in mind that decomissioning has historically come in *two* orders of magnitude more expensive than projected *and* private industry won't even insure it. And the excess decommissioning costs is *always* involuntarily paid for by citizens not by clawbacks on corporate profits or executive salaries and pensions.
I'd also like to know the cost of decomissioning coal/oil plants. Two of those are in proccess right now near me and our nuclear plant is 5 yrs overdue to begin decomissioning.
Typically the cost of decommissioning is set aside in a trust that the company can't access at the time it's built. This is in case the place goes bankrupt and can't afford to decommission itself.
@@cringenuclearfan9391 My understanding is that companies that had nuclear plants were allowed a surcharge to decommission the plant. However that money was never set aside and the costs increased beyond what was set aside.
thunderfoot shared this and the first thing that came up in my mind was ''running the numbers'' I like that
Apart from everything else prof demonstrated superb skill of writing mirror image of each word and digit!!!
Is he mirror writing or did they mirror the video at the end?
@@thespecialwon4797 if you check then he is behind the glass board on which he is writing
cost of disposal also needs to be considered in the life cost.
Newer reactors will produce no dangerous waste. Non-issue.
Yes. It's not free to deposit endless cubic kilometers of fly ash from burning fossil fuels
The issue with nuclear is construction cost. 2 plants in Georgia have had so much cost overruns that it bankrupted Westinghouse. To date, these plants have had over $6B in overruns. So for the US, the risks of nuclear are just too high.
golden gem of a video
Love this explanation, and that the research papers are actually referenced here; a rare sight in the superficial youtube community. One question that arose with me was about the profits of the gas plants. Shouldn’t the profits also be compounded, as the positive return gained can be reinvested? This would further push the profitibality timeline of the nuclear reactors compared to the gas turbines. Anyone that can answer this question on why it is not done?
Nice explanation but you overlook decommissioning costs and the cost of safety case and through life asset management. The real case for nuclear over natural gas is surely it's contribution to a net zero carbon future rather than an economic one.
There is a lot of red tape in the US to build a nuclear power plant that pushes time to construct up a bunch as well, but pure building I would agree with about 4 to 7 years.
Bunch of fkn beurocrats Esspecially liberals , because if a nuclear power plant is actually up and running people will see it isnt so bad and then liberals wont be able to yell about the climate and how we need to change
william nebe This is the dumbest shit. Nuclear power is great for climate change. If you support nuclear power how are your views different from those who want to change our source of energy? That being said, liberals do have a tendency to fear monger about nuclear power.
@@leroture7750 pretty sure that is what he is saying, and I tend to agree. Ever since peak oil, global cooling, and nuclear winter turned out to be myths the liberal establishment has been frantically searching for new issues. It's been going on since Malthus threw out his own wild and easily disproved speculation, and now that they finally got lucky with global warming the political authoritarians are equally desperate to cash in on it. Nuclear power and intelligent use of GMOs would solve global warming the same way they would have solved so-called peak oil. That would mean no need for reduction of freedoms or concentration of power, so finding any excuse to prevent nuclear plants from going up is the name of the game.
@@chrisdelzell8467 These comments are peak right wing campaign nonsense. Nuclear power plants are high risk, high reward projects, and many of the risks are born entirely by government and citizens, mostly in the form of possible death or impossibility of getting damages payouts from bankrupt companies. Thus society needs to make strict requirements to protect itself.
This is a cool way to present
Fantastic work !! Thank you
I'd like to see this with solar or large-scale renewables in the mix!
Yeah, except wind, nuclear is the cleanest form of energy. Generating almost 4 times less carbon than solar.
Short term returns are favored versus long term higher gains. How many other systems are influencing the long term economic health of USA and the world?!?
Petr Beckmann could not have said it better. Very Good.
A Legendary video.
Cost of waste disposal and decommissioning?
The western world has not managed to build a recent nuclear reactor in under 10 years for less than $10 billion, which at that point sinks nuclear far into the hole it will never catch up before the expected life of the plant. I'd love to see us be able to do it, but we have proven time and again we can't, and it's an inordinate amount of risk that nobody wants to accept relative to gas or renewable options, which cut fuel costs to zero and don't have the insane capitalization requirements of nuclear energy. In the EU alone 3 plants have attempted to add a reactor (2 in the case of HPC), with dismal results: -Flamanville #3 (France, EPR 1600MWe) - Started in 2007, now estimated to finish in 2023 for 12.3bn EUR en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 -Olkiluoto #3 (Finland, EPR, 1600MWe) - Started 2005, estimated to finish in 2020 at 8.5bn EUR which may bankrupt the utility en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 -Hinckley Point C (UK, EPRx2 1600MWe each) started late 2018, expected to finish 2025 at a current estimate of £22.9bn www.bbc.com/news/business-49823305 And in the US (only counting under construction units, not completely cancelled projects like Bellafonte): -Plant Vogtle (GA, AP1000x2) - Started 2017, expected completion in 2022, at a cost exceeding $25bn for both units. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/09/georgias-vogtle-nuclear-reactors-face-an-uncertain-vote-in-coming-days/
A good post. He did say that the assumption was for China cost levels. The disturbing part of your analysis, to me, is that we will be dependent on natural gas (a fossil fuel) for the foreseeable future. Better than coal, but not really good enough from a CO2 perspective.
Great channel
I wish I had this professor in my physics class in college. I might be a physicist today rather than an engineer.