Nuclear Power Plants Maintain Lowest Production Cost for Baseload Electricity

Nuclear Energy Institute ^ | 9/3/03 | Nuclear Energy Institute

[vikzilla]

Well, you're free to check with NEI and argue the numbers with them. This is the information we have, most likely gleaned from the FERC and other sources. Rage against the machine if you want, but the numbers are there and probably won't pay much mind.

I really don't need to check your sources. I can assure you these numbers are laughable.

I passed a copy of this to our management for their response. Thinking maybe I was missing something. Nope, they all burst out laughing within the first two sentences.

Rage against the machine if you want

That's not my goal. I have no problem with nuclear power. I used to work at one. I'm just saying it does nobody any good to proceed from an incorrect position.

As an example, the nuclear facility I worked at had 75 security officers and 15 support personnel in the security dept. (90) The Coal fired plant I'm at now has 1 contract employee performing that function. 20 chemist vs. 2 chemist. Dozens of rad. protection vs. none. Engineers everywhere vs 5.

Common sense tells me this is industry propoganda at its best.

[chimera]

But you didn't clarify as I asked. Did your cost figures include amortization or not? That will make a difference, and make comparisons on an equal bsis nearly impossible.

Your management is free to laugh clown, laugh, all they want, but it doesn't provide any more information, and, in the end, comparison of O&M costs excluding the capital cost component is a valid analysis. Consider the case wherein you've got fully amortized generating assets on a grid and are faced with questions of load dispatching. Where do you load in your units? Well, you can do it on a cost basis, and that's fine, but there may be other considerations, such as time-to-outage, or even pollution dispatching.

If you're on the planning side, where do you want to expend your company's resources if refurbishment/upgrades are scheduled? Probably in the lower-cost, higher capacity factor assets. Finally, if you're considering realigning the generation mix, do you put time and effort into maybe relicensing a nuclear unit and retiring a fossil-fueled plant, or vice-versa? Again, an analysis of the O&M costs on a comparison basis can be helpful.

Exclusion of non-amortized capital costs, while at first glance seeming like an accounting gimmick (or "propaganda", as some might say), in fact has a very sound rationale behind it. And that is, it excludes outliers which can skew the results in a misleading way. For example, near where I live there was a hotel under construction that was abandoned before it was completed (some kind of "wetlands" nonsense or something, brought up after the fact). The developer had already spent millions on site preparation and initial construction. It was all lost. They essentially got 0 sq. ft. of rentable space for millions of dollars spent. Does that mean that the cost of hotel space in this area is infinite (million of $/0 sq. ft.), based on this one anecdotal case? Of course not. So you're better off excluding that from your overall analysis.

Likewise, for some of the later-generation plants that were brought in with high capital costs because of delayed construction times, their costs per unit output, if those costs are included, will be higher. Conversely, some of the older plants, like those purchased under turnkey agreements with the NSSS vendors, came in at very low capital cost. Too much variation to get a clear picture.

[William Tell]

chimera said: "1. Yes, costs for waste disposal are included. Producers pay a millage levied by the DOE on electricity produced by nuclear generators to fund the Yucca Mountain project (and other programs) in its entirety."

Do you have numbers for how much waste has been and will be created as well as the timing and capacity of the Yucca Mountain project?

Also, do the operation costs include all of the costs of producing the fuel from its natural constituents? What is the long term prospect for fuel availability? I vaguely recall that plutonium production in breeder reactors was a key element of a practical long-term nuclear energy solution. Is this not so?

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people are like myself, once supportive of nuclear energy but very greatly disappointed by unmet expectations.

[chimera]

Do you have numbers for how much waste has been and will be created as well as the timing and capacity of the Yucca Mountain project?

I have the SNF inventory through 11/1994 as being about 30,044 metric tons. DOE has done projections of what might be expected through 2042 but it depends on the scenario you choose, whether there is a new plant order, for example, or lifetime extensions of existing units. The number I recall seeing as a best-guess estimate is 86,699 metric tons of SNF by 2042.

The NWPA has limited Yucca Mountainin design specifications to an initial limit of 77,000 metric tons. That is not a technical limit, but one imposed by early political planning when it was thought that two repositories, one east of the Mississippi and one west, would be built. Since Congress has reneged on the eastern site, there has been some further design tuning to allow for expansion of the Yucca Mountain capacity, up to about 140,00 metric tons. Timing on that is a matter of political will, not technological capability.

Also, do the operation costs include all of the costs of producing the fuel from its natural constituents?

The cost of fuel at the bundle captures all of those costs. Fuel vendors sell by the bundle and they wouldn't make very much money if they didn't recover all the costs.

What is the long term prospect for fuel availability?

Current LWR technology combined with the current practice of dumping so-called spent fuel results in short-term supply concerns about 70 years out. If anything, that points out the need for revival of commercial reprocessing, if for no other reason than to recover unfissioned uranium. If you capture plutonium in the process you're even further ahead of the game. Reprocessing extends the fuel supply out by several centuries, even assuming a reasonable rate of growth in demand.

I vaguely recall that plutonium production in breeder reactors was a key element of a practical long-term nuclear energy solution. Is this not so?

For very long term, yes. Breeder technology extends the available fuel supply out to tens of thousands of years at current use rates. You're converting relatively abundant 238U into a fissile form (239Pu) which can be used in thermal reactors, so you're looking at a combination of breeders (electricty and fuel producers) and burners (239Pu-fueled thermal reactors).

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people are like myself, once supportive of nuclear energy but very greatly disappointed by unmet expectations.

I've had my share of disappointments, too, even after working in the field for going on 25 years now (as well as doing other things). But it is not disappointment born of failures of technology or those who develop and manage it, but in the inability of our political systems and social institutions to adapt to and understand the potential of a beneficial and benign technology. I mean, you've got people out there who think nonsense, things like how there is supposedly "no safe level" of radiation exposure, or of how injestion of a microgram of plutonium is an automatic death sentence, and of how it is possible to meter at the point of use the amount of electricity you get from, say, a windmill, and distinguish it from that from a nuclear plant.