Nuclear – conservatively, about 0.1 lb of concrete per MWh
Data is for Hinkley Point from
https://www.concreteconstruction.net/how-to/materials/construction-of-nuclear-power-stations_o
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-power-plant-aging-reactor-replacement-/

Wnd turbine – about 20lb of concrete per MWh
Data is from
https://www.freeingenergy.com/math/wind-turbine-weight-pound-mwh-gwh-m148/

G’day Rob,

Thanks.

Yes – I have read the article. I am trying to understand the numbers behind the figures.
For example.
What are the cost assumptions for nuclear, coal, gas, wind, solar, hydro, pumped hydro? Capex $/MW and Opex.
What are the fuel cost assumptions for nuclear, coal and gas? $/GJ Thermal conversion efficiencies?
How did you decided to apportion the costs between transmission and distribution?

Can you put these in the article?

Cheers,
Matt

Fair point – have you read the description of how the model works in the article?
I’m more than happy to discuss it with you.

Graeme – I sent the article to Ross Gittens at your suggestion.
Regarding used nuclear fuel
Opponents of nuclear energy put up emotional roadblocks and are not disposed to accepting “technical” solutions regardless of their merit. Most do not compare the relative risks of climate change vs the infinitesimally small risks associated with used fuel storage.
Even if their concerns on storage were fully addressed, another barricade would be erected.
So to the technical – the South Australia Royal Commission identified the use of storage in deep geological deposits to be the best approach – 500m down in granite with no water permeation – its not going anywhere for ever.
Many of us think this is a great waste and don’t classify the first pass of fuel rods through thermal spectrum reactors such as PWR’s to be waste at all. In our perception it needs careful above ground storage until fast spectrum reactors re-use this material and get another 80 times more energy out of it. Along the way the isotopes with long half lives such as plutonium, neptunium, americium, curium et al are burned and all we end up with are shorter lived fission products which give us a 300 year issue rather than 240,000 year one.

Anyone can produce a secret model with carefully manipulated assumptions that purports to show that coal is better, or gas, or renewables. Put the data in the public domain and demonstrated that this is really the case.

Cheers,
Matt

Thanks Jim and we are not blind to the hurdles but currently the NEM has failed comprehensively to provide Australia with either low cost or low carbon electricity.
There are very good precedents for the design and implementation of a reactor program – the UAE being the most recent and the Kepco International Nuclear Graduate School in South Korea could certainly help massively with training.
I see little virtue in designing a reactor – rather we use an existing design and an existing supply chain with the first reactors being built on a turnkey basis. Regarding President Moon – South Korea has 500 people per square kilometre (we have 3) and every bit of accessible land is currently used so good luck with renewables and gas is a strategic risk both price and availability wise. The air in Seoul is appalling. I suggest we keep watching the South Korean energy industry – there are very good reasons why it uses nuclear energy.
Regarding the AP1000 – this reactor is a Westinghouse design that is not being built in South Korea. They built the OPR1000 and now the APR1400
From my perspective, high prices, failing industry and climate change are converging as the great drivers for a nuclear rethink

Graham,
Thank you for your questions
1. Robert Barr described his Energy Model to our group and out of that discussion the “System Levelised Cost of Electricity” was born. The model uses the NEM energy demand curve for 2017 at 17,520 half hourly points. It then matches the available generating plant to these points by ranking them in terms of marginal cost to create a merit order despatch. In this way the model is able to determine the actual capacity factors and load contribution of each generator and storage device throughout the year. Knowing their capacity factors and energy contribution to the NEM and their capital and operating costs enables the model to derive the individual cost proportion of each generator to the total system. By summating these cost the model comes up with the system levelised cost. In Appendix 1, Case 1, Figure 7 you will see an output table from the model that provides a result which arrives at the SLCOE.
2. The model uses a PWR from South Korea as the basis of the nuclear cost. We targeted those reactors which are currently available and could be built immediately if we had the will.
3. The model assumes nuclear behaves as a baseload generator. We have not used a ramp rate. The daily peaking load above base load is handled in the nuclear energy dominated scenarios by open cycle gas, solar PV, hydro and pumped storage.
4. The nuclear scenarios do use renewables in the form of solar PV and hydropower. We excluded wind due to its volatility.
5. The cost for nuclear was derived from the currently constructed reactors in South Korea at Shin Kori and built with an established supply chain and very experienced project management with experience in recent projects. They also use a significant levels of public investment
The UK Hinkley C project has a strike price of £92.50/MWh and care needs to be taken in adopting a currency conversion to establish an Australian equivalence. The UK reactor is an EPR built in Europe using a supply chain that is being reconstructed following a long idle period in nuclear construction and using private funding. Future UK projects will have a much higher level of public funding or guarantee.
6. Waste was not included for any generating types. It’s a complex issue that involves how much to allocate for decommissioning wind, solar, gas, coal or nuclear plants. How much to allocate for rare earth metal mines, coal mines, uranium mines etc. How much to allocate for materials recycling etc? It really involves a full comparative life cycle analysis of all technologies.
7. Despatchability is handled within the model using a merit order based in lowest marginal cost. No demand management has been included nor are the other market operations devices. It is a cost and not a price model.
8. Transmission costs are derived using the same cost rate for compact systems for all the model runs . Additional costs ore allocated where the generation is located over more dispersed regions.
9. The high values of generation for renewables occur due to low use of standby gas generators with capacity factors of around 12% and substantial spillage. For example, in the 90% RE case, 27.4 percent of the RE is actually spilled and this has a major impact on plant utilisation. This effect then flows through into transmission and system services.

Peter Morgan said:
“I don’t see the environmental costs considered as offsets to the cost of nuclear, and if they could be incorporated, the nuclear proposition would become even more attractive.”

True. Here is one estimate.

If each technology was required to pay insurance or compensation for the annual cost of deaths caused by that technology, the amounts they would have to pay, in USA, per MWh are:

Technology $/MWh
Coal 141
Natural gas 38
Hydro 13
Solar 4
Nuclear 1

Inputs used for the estimate:

1. Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) in USA = $9.4 million (2015, https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/VSL2015_0.pdf )

2. Fatalities per TWh (Source Forbes http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html )

Coal electricity, world avg. = 60 (50% of electricity)
Coal electricity, China = 90
Coal, U.S. = 15 (44% U.S. electricity)
Natural Gas = 4 (20% global electricity)
Solar (rooftop) = 0.44 (0.2% global electricity)
Wind = 0.15 (1.6% global electricity)
Hydro, world avg. = 1.4 (15% global electricity)
Nuclear, world avg. = 0.09 (12% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush)

3. USA Electricity generation per technology in 2014 (source EIA), TWh https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_1

Coal = 1,581,710
Natural gas = 1,126,609
Nuclear = 797,166
Hydro = 259,367
Solar = 17,691
Other renewables = 261,522