Tidal is looking very good, it seems that the major technological problems might be solved. I would expect some manufacturers to start offering ready-to-deploy turbines in the next couple of years.

I really like the idea of tidal because it is so ‘out of sight’ and won’t have the same NIMBY problems of wind and solar. Looking forward to the day when turbines start getting dropped into the Gulf Stream and feeding 24/365 power into the Southeast.

Cuba and Mexico could make gangbuster levels of power out of the Florida Straights. That’s some concentrated flow.

Wave, it doesn’t seem like anyone has really cracked this nut yet.

Capital expenses are capital expenses. Subsidies might offset some capex in determining market price, but subsidies are not included in LCOE calculations.

Nuclear used to be cheaper but the world has changed. With the rise of China and other developing countries the cost of construction is greatly higher than it was 40 years ago when we were building reactors. Additionally, safety requirements have increased which drives up construction costs.

When you look at the price of nuclear and think it cheap you’re overlooking some very important facts. Those plants were paid off long ago, the current price of electricity reflects operating costs, not recovery of capital and loan servicing. Also not included in those costs are all the nuclear plants which never opened or were closed well before they had paid for themselves. Taxpayers ate those losses.

There’s nothing that the government can do to make nuclear cheap. I suppose it could give the nuclear industry free money to build reactors but that just means that we would pay via our taxes rather than our utility bills. That makes no sense to me.

Nuclear is cheap in no other countries. It might appear cheaper in China because China is building nuclear using taxpayer money. That does not make it cheap, it only makes it appear cheap.

Check the price of the new Finland plant under construction. Check the quote that Turkey got for some new reactors.

You seem to have a problem understanding that we could build a 100% renewable energy grid. Clearly we have the technology to generate all the electricity with a blend of wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, etc. If that isn’t clear to you I can give you multiple studies which show it to be true.
The missing link is cheap storage. Or perhaps it isn’t missing. We’ve got plenty of places to build pump-up hydro if we don’t come up with and even cheaper storage technology in the next few years. I think we’re going to see cheap large scale battery storage very soon. If not, then pump-up is our storage solution.

“Bob, you are totally dodging my argument repeatedly.
….
My argument is: among clean energy options nuclear is the most economical given the right political climate when all things are accounted for.”

In no way have I dodged your argument. I’ve shown you, using your estimated cost for new nuclear, that nuclear is too expensive to consider.

It’s too expensive if we pay no attention to CO2 releases and use natural gas. It’s too expensive if we use clean, renewable generation sources.

I don’t know what you mean by “the right political climate”. Does that mean that we would build nuclear reactors with tax payers money and use our military to suppress opposition to putting them where the nuclear industry chooses?

Are you calling for a police state in which the government goes into the electricity business and forces citizens to pay exorbitant prices for electricity?

From the EIA page I gave you –

“Levelized cost = total costs (including annualized capital and yearly operating) divided by total energy service production (in miles travelled or energy generated).”

You’ll notice that there are no subsidies included in that formula.

Right now the cheapest way to generate low greenhouse gas emission electricity is a blend of wind, solar and pump-up hydro. Nuclear can’t compete with wind at 5 cents, solar at 10 cents and pump-up at 5 cents or less. The blended cost is under 10 cents.

Utilities are already installing battery storage rather than creating new pump-up so I expect they have decided that battery technology is going to be the cheapest way to store. It may not be cheaper than new pump-up right now, but batteries seem to be on route to a cheaper price than pump-up in the next couple of years.

I don’t think you’re a dolt. But I do think you’ve got a single idea fixed in your mind and you aren’t letting yourself consider the facts available.
Take two pieces of paper.

On the top of one write “Nuclear”. Under that write:

“15+ cents per kWh”
“few sites with adequate cooling water and cooperative population” “unsolved hazardous waste disposal problem”
“decade plus to bring on line”
“limited containment dome forging capacity”
“lack of trained and experienced engineers and construction experts”

On the top of the other write “Wind, Solar, Geothermal, Tidal, Hydro” Under that write:

“5 to 10 cents per kWh”
“More than adequate sites”
“No hazardous waste issues”
“Very quick to bring on line, especially solar”
“No manufacturing bottlenecks. Current manufacturing capacity exceeds demand”
“New installation technicians can be trained in days (solar) to a few months (wind)”

Then see what else you can add to those lists. I used to think that nuclear was the option we should choose, but over time I watched the cost of renewables fall and the problems with nuclear remain unsolved.

I think they favor NG over nuclear first because it is massively cheaper. Five cents vs. fifteen plus cents.

Second, because NG is immensely quicker to bring on line. They can get a new gas plant up and going quickly which allows them to shut down dirty coal plants and avoid fines.

Third, because NG plants are immensely easier to permit and site. There just aren’t many places that have adequate cooling water and where the locals will allow a nuclear plant to be built.

Fourth, because NG plants are dispatchable. Utilities can do math. They can see that wind and end-user solar will cost them even less than NG and because NG is dispatchable and most of the cost if fuel, they can turn off those plants when they can get cheaper power somewhere else.

I also suspect utility companies see cheap storage coming. If one of the several promising large scale storage technologies materializes it will be cheaper to store wind than to burn gas. And much, much cheaper than running a nuclear plant 24/365. In a few years those NG plants will be paid off and cheap to keep on hand for deep backup.

—

Me? I’d take nuclear over severe climate change in a heartbeat. If that was the only choice.

But since nuclear is expensive, slow to build, hard to site, at least somewhat dangerous and creates hazardous waste I’ll go with renewables.

http://en.openei.org/apps/TCDB/

LCOE does not include Fit, etc.

The PG&E 10.4 cents probably does reflect subsidies. But if you look at the EIA projection for PV solar you’ll see that they expect the median price of solar to be at a dime five years from now. That’s years before a nuclear plant could be brought on line, so my argument holds.

Backup generation costs do not have to be considered. Remember I included natural gas as the fill-in for when wind and solar are not producing. I could have included existing hydro which is largely dispatchable and even cheaper.

We do not know that nuclear could be cheap. You, yourself said that 12 cents is probably unrealistically low. Is there some yet-to-be discovered really cheap way to make electricity from uranium or thorium? Perhaps. But we’ve got to make our decisions based on the known knowns.

Until/unless the general public gets much more alarmed about climate change the generation we build will be determined by cost and not by greenhouse emission. That means, quite simply, that natural gas will keep nuclear out of play.

Haven’t I posted this for you before?

“*Nuclear power is no longer an economically viable source of new energy in the United States, the freshly-retired CEO of Exelon,
America’s largest producer of nuclear power, said in Chicago Thursday.* *And it won’t become economically viable, he said, for the forseeable future.

“Let me state unequivocably that I’ve never met a nuclear plant I didn’t like,” said John Rowe, who retired17 days ago as chairman and CEO of
Exelon Corporation, which operates 22 nuclear power plants, more than any other utility in the United States.

“Having said that, let me also state unequivocably that new ones don’t make any sense right now.

Speaking to about 5o people at the University of Chicago‘s Harris School of Public Policy, Rowe presented a series of slides comparing the economic viability of various energy portfolios, including the “King Coal” scenario favored by Republicans, the “Big Wind” scenario favored by Democrats, and a “Playing Favorites” scenario that shuffles and selects from various energy sources.

All were trumped by a portfolio that relies heavily on America’s sudden abundance of natural gas, which has flooded the market since the boom inhydraulic
fracturing of shale gas. Natural gas futures dropped to a 10-year low today—$2.15 for 1,000 cubic feet—on abundant supply, the Associated Press reported .

“I’m the nuclear guy,” Rowe said. “And you won’t get better results with nuclear. It just isn’t economic, and it’s not economic within a foreseeable time frame.””
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/ *

Georgia is allowing Southern Company to seize money from its customers and use that money to help pay the cost of building a couple of new reactors.
And when/if those reactors are finished the socialist State of Georgia will permit Southern Company to cram the cost of that expensive electricity down their customers state.

The citizens of the State of Georgia are not free to purchase their electricity on the free market.

*Nuclear power is no longer an economically viable source of new energy in the United States, the freshly-retired CEO of Exelon,
America’s largest producer of nuclear power, said in Chicago Thursday. And it won’t become economically viable, he said, for the forseeable future.

“Let me state unequivocably that I’ve never met a nuclear plant I didn’t like,” said John Rowe, who retired17 days ago as chairman and CEO of
Exelon Corporation, which operates 22 nuclear power plants, more than any other utility in the United States.

“Having said that, let me also state unequivocably that new ones don’t make any sense right now.

Speaking to about 5o people at the University of Chicago‘s Harris School of Public Policy, Rowe presented a series of slides comparing the economic viability of various energy portfolios, including the “King Coal” scenario favored by Republicans, the “Big Wind” scenario favored by Democrats, and a “Playing Favorites” scenario that shuffles and selects from various energy sources.

All were trumped by a portfolio that relies heavily on America’s sudden abundance of natural gas, which has flooded the market since the boom inhydraulic
fracturing of shale gas. Natural gas futures dropped to a 10-year low today—$2.15 for 1,000 cubic feet—on abundant supply, the Associated Press reported .

“I’m the nuclear guy,” Rowe said. “And you won’t get better results with nuclear. It just isn’t economic, and it’s not economic within a foreseeable time frame.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/ *

(Spelling mistakes are theirs.)

As they say, he was not forthcoming.

I use $0.15+ as my number and I expect the plus adds another nickel based on the Turkey reactors bid. Of course, post Fukushima costs have likely gone up more.

But, what the heck, let’s be overly fair with nukes and use 12 cents. Let’s see if someone could make a living running a new nuclear plant if they had to sell their power at 12 cents per kWh in order to keep from going bankrupt.

We need to assume that we’re talking free market conditions. Not “socialized” power like China or the state of Georgia. Merit order pricing. OK?

Nuclear has to sell roughly 8,000 hours per year at an average of 12 cents per kWh. That’s the break even point. Give them 10% of the time off for refueling/maintenance/repairs.

Now, PG&E recently signed a contract to purchase solar for $0.104/kWh. That tells us that solar is ready to dive under 10 cents. Merit order, get enough solar on line and the price paid for power drops to no more than 10 cents. Nuclear can’t shut off either its output or loan payments, so it has to sell at a loss in order to push solar off.

Even in not-so-sunny parts of the country the Sun provides over 1,500 hours per year. In sunny SoCal the sun provides over 2,000 hours. That’s 1,500 to 2,000 hours per year that nuclear has to absorb a loss which means that nuclear has to sell at “12+ cents” the other hours in order to avoid bankruptcy.

OK, now there’s wind. The wind blows more than 50% of the time, over 4,000 hours, and the median price of wind-electricity is now $0.05/kWh. That’s a big “OMG” for nuclear. All those hours at which the reactor has to sell under 5 cents in order to force wind to curtail.

So now we’re down to perhaps 3,000 hours (likely less) in which wind and solar are not forcing nuclear to sell at a loss. Nuclear has to crank its 12 cent price to 20(?) cents to stay alive.

Natural gas generation costs 6 cents per kWh.

Understand why new nuclear is priced off the table?

—

(No subsidies were included in any of these prices.)