A penny per kwh. In the 50s they promised us that nuclear energy would produce electricity “too cheap to meter.” Guess we’ll see.
Canadian CANDU reactors can produce power at the busbars for very close to one cent per kWh. Their fuel costs are in the fractions of a cent per kWh. With life extensions to 60 or 80 years with midlife pressure tube replacements they do go sub one cent per kWh at the busbars. Nuclear power is cheap it is the distribution, wholesale,retail marketing that turns one cent into 15 or more. Texas has four nukes they are PWR plants they also have sub one cent per kWh fuel costs and 1.6 cent O&M plus capex recovery costs for just over two cents to the busbars. The distribution operator puts a 5.9 cent distribution fee per kWh having generated zero kWh themselves. Then the retail power provider who job is to buy wholesale power and market it up to retail sales puts another 5 to 8 cents then the state says they we want sales taxes and so does the city and county too. By the time those electrons get to your plug it’s ten times the production busbar price.
If the USA was serous about energy independence for the long term as in centuries we would build out nukes in the hundreds of 4 to 8 reactor pad sites. Those would crank out 1.5 cent at the busbars all day every day for 80 years plus. Sit right next to them synthetic fuel plants that take water salty or fresh it.doesn’t matter which and turn it into hydrogen gas then feed that hot hydrogen directly to oil refinery sized catalyst reactors where you add in nitrogen from the air to make ammonia NH3. Large diesels run very well on ammonia with zero particulate emissions and zero NOx or SOx with SCR cats behind them. If you are using salt water from the ocean it’s loaded with CO2 gas 150 times as much as air. The electrolysis process yields H2 gas and all the CO2 as well with no energy penalty since the gibbs energy is lower for CO2 vs H2 you get the carbon for “free” the Navy is using this very process to make jetfuel from seawater. They will have on the new nukes carriers the ability to make jetfuel at sea using reactor power. The Navy has already flown jets on this synthetic fuel it’s denser than normal jet fuel as a bonus more MJ per liter is always good for aircraft. Nukes to synfuels is the long-term answer for resource depletion with a ever expanding human population numbers. No need to give up high density liquid fuels just make them from thin air and seawater using cheap high capacity factor nuclear power.
A penny per kwh. In the 50s they promised us that nuclear energy would produce electricity “too cheap to meter.” Guess we’ll see.
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It was a heady time for nuclear power in the 50’s and 60’s. Yeah that promise died with three mile island.
I was like everyone else here. Fusion is the power that will come in 20 years and always will be. But recent developments have changed my mind.