A single plant will cost upwards of $10 billion and take 10 years to build. The time factor is the issue. Any utility that wants to build one of these plants will only be able to do so when it presents a capital plant to the market that the market will want to bid on.
The crucial point here is that building a plant ties up capital that some third party is willing to put at risk until the plant can pay off. That cannot occur until well after completion. If we embark on a program to build dozens, if not over a hundred new plants, each will end up almost sequestering billions of dollars from the pool of private capital. These plans will have to be attractive to attract funding and that will bid up the cost of capital for other activities such as biotech, manufacturing, and indeed all other business capital spending.
Why should an investor tie up his money in a project with a 10 year payoff rather than one that has a 3 year payoff? Only because the return must be higher. An make no mistake about the risk premium: a project in its 9th year could be stopped by a single successful environmental lawsuit.
Building 100 new nuclear plants will require raising almost $1 Trillion in capital in the open market. Our entire GDP is what, maybe $13 Trillion? Lest anyone suggest that government provide financing, even government money doesn’t grow on trees. Money is fungible and there is no way to avoid the substantial distortions such funding will induce.
More like $1.5 - $2 Billion and 5-6 years. A coal fired plant the same size cost around $1 billion and takes 4-5 years to build. Coal or nuclear are to only real options for large baseload power plants.
Actually I don't think it sounds all that great.
but people should think things entirely through instead of being so casual about nuclear power....
My point too. The energy has to come from someplace. The likelihood of getting even 2 or 3 nucs approved and financed in the next few years is about zilch. Ga Power's Plant Vogel (PWR) was one of the last to go on line, and it cost in excess of $10 billion and ran over time due to the constantly changing nuclear regulations.
Aluminum is just an energy carrier. You could run a car on Calcium carbide and water too. BFD in this case the calcium carbide is the energy carrier.
Actually it is more like $200 B. Also, that capital is rasied and expended over the life of the construction of the plant, so it is more like $20B per year out of a $13 T per year economy. That is a lot of money, still, but not beyond the pale.
Furthermore, long term nuclear power is profitable because, though the capital cost is high, the operating costs (especially fuel) are low. The principal issue is the haphazard regulatory environment, which puts the capital investment at risk, though the government is putting in place a system of loan guarantees to overcome this problem.