^ it wasn't three mile island

it's... complicated.

11/25/2007 2:03:37 PM

Quote :

"public perception, huge initial investment ($billions bucks for one plant), previous regulations (however, those have been changed to make it easier), etc"

Particularly the fact that financing a plant can get very costly given the capital costs, especially if there are delays. (Every day it's being financed without generating power is a day interest is accumulating on capital costs). This is why regulatory delays are so severe with nuclear plants - huge capital costs and timescales that take up to 5 years for one plant to be constructed, coupled with specific regulations to the nuclear industry. Then add to it the insecurity of getting to actually operate your plant once it's actually finished, and it's like, why go to the risk?

(Compare to the perverse incentives of say, building another coal-fired plant, which while it still encounters NIMBYism, does not face nearly the number of hurdles to get built as a nuclear plant.)

11/25/2007 5:30:45 PM

^ all true, but coal costs money; nuclear power plants once operating are rediculously profitable.

11/26/2007 1:18:58 AM

Quote :

"Particularly the fact that financing a plant can get very costly given the capital costs, especially if there are delays. (Every day it's being financed without generating power is a day interest is accumulating on capital costs). This is why regulatory delays are so severe with nuclear plants - huge capital costs and timescales that take up to 5 years for one plant to be constructed, coupled with specific regulations to the nuclear industry. Then add to it the insecurity of getting to actually operate your plant once it's actually finished, and it's like, why go to the risk?"

the days of building a plant to 98% complete and then trying to get approval from the NRC are over

once there are a few plants through the new system, there is going to be a boom, a huge boom

11/26/2007 1:21:54 AM

After TMI, nobody is going to start building a plant before they are certain to get a license. Utilities across the countries have sites where a nuclear plant was going to go before TMI happened- places where they build the foundation and even had the pressure vessel on site. After TMI, all of these projects were cancelled. In many cases the utilities burried multi-million dollar pressure vessels since it was easier than moving them to be scrapped.

That being said, if you wanted to order a pressure vessel any time soon you'll have to wait several years. The only plants capable of producing the nuclear reactor pressure vessels have been booked (by utilities and companies like GE and AREVA) for the next several years. Although they won't be building 90+% of the plant before getting a license, it's obvious these companies intend to build them since they've booked the production facilities for that explicit purpose.

Quote :

"all true, but coal costs money; nuclear power plants once operating are rediculously profitable."

Yeah when you figure out cost per kilowatt hour for nuclear and coal plants you get fairly close to the same final value right now, but for nuke's fuel represents around 10% of that figure whereas for coal plants it's closer to 90%. This means that coal power cost is extremely sensitive to increases in coal prices while nuclear power is mostly o&m+financing.

If you manage to reduce the up-front costs of a nuclear plant, either by better design or subsidies, it becomes an insanely attractive investment for a utility. Also, with the possibility of fuel reprocessing and using MOX fuel assemblies, nuclear power has the potential to very effectively insulate itself from price fluctuations of any single fissile fuel

[Edited on November 26, 2007 at 1:54 AM. Reason : ]

11/26/2007 1:42:19 AM

Quote :

"Yeah when you figure out cost per kilowatt hour for nuclear and coal plants you get fairly close to the same final value right now, but for nuke's fuel represents around 10% of that figure whereas for coal plants it's closer to 90%. This means that coal power cost is extremely sensitive to increases in coal prices while nuclear power is mostly o&m+financing."

I would be surprised, though, if price sensitivity on coal would be the make-or-break factor between the two, despite its high influence on the cost of power. Namely because of the natural abundance of coal, particularly here - I've heard estimates that the U.S. alone has at least 300 years worth of coal deposits.

More likely influencing the marginal price difference, I think, will be the cost of CO2 emissions compliance - carbon taxes, cap and trade - whatever comes down the pike that raises the cost of emissions. This will have a rather large impact on coal-fired plants (as well as oil-fired, and to a lesser degree, natural-gas fired), whereas it would have a negligible impact on the operation of nuclear plants.

Basically, as it was said above - yes, nuclear plants are basically a mint to operate once they're online, especially with the efficiencies squeezed out of the fuel these days. And with newer reactors (like the ESBWR, etc.), it'll get even better. But the big factor in the cost per kW/h is the capital costs of building the plant - which better regulation will hopefully have an impact on...

11/26/2007 10:47:44 AM

^ Considering they're relatively even right now in terms of cost per kilowatt hour, yes price sensitivity due to coal costs could effect it. A few cents per kilowatt hour increase in cost due to coal price increases represents billions of dollars to a company considering that coal power and nuclear are both BASE LOAD and always on.

11/26/2007 9:48:08 PM

I guess I should clarify. I'm not disagreeing with your contention that there is price sensitivity in power production to the price of coal - my contention is that I would be surprised if the price of coal was all that variable, given its abundance. Assuming the price of the raw input coal is stable, I would expect other factors, such as the future cost of emissions, to play a greater role, unless we were to see instability in the actual price of coal.

11/26/2007 10:01:00 PM

Snapshot, but as you can see coal prices can vary dramatically. Here's a graph over a similar time period:



As you can see, during this time it is possible that a company obtaining coal from a particular region could see dramatic swings in costs.

[Edited on November 27, 2007 at 10:57 PM. Reason : ]

11/27/2007 10:51:02 PM

Touche, salesman.

11/27/2007 11:03:21 PM

To be fair, I wasn't sure it fluctuated anywhere near that much until I looked it up just now. I think this site can give you some insight:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/coalnews/coalmar.html

Demand is increasing every year while production remains mostly flat. I would guess that that's just the fact most mines worth operating are currently up and running near capacity and that new mines/new capacity takes a fairly long time to hit the market.

I was really expecting a few percent fluctuations- still millions of dollars per percent for a large utility. Fluctuations like these have me convinced that utilities would jump at the opportunity to open new nuclear plants with some government investment and a quicker licensing process.

[Edited on November 27, 2007 at 11:08 PM. Reason : ]

11/27/2007 11:05:48 PM

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/17/europe/food.php

Quote :

"To make matters worse, high oil prices have doubled shipping costs in the past year, putting enormous stress on poor nations that need to import food as well as the humanitarian agencies that provide it."

Quote :

""You can debate why this is all happening, but what's most important to us is that it's a long-term trend, reversing decades of decreasing food prices," Sheeran said."

im not being an alarmist, but this is the effect of the peak oil, when oil prices start to climb then the need for an alternative fuel or alternative lifestyle becomes a necessity

12/18/2007 6:47:40 PM

I question whether or not it's too late to start looking for alternative fuels. Too late in the sense that we're in for some economically hard times, that is. We've seen the signs for at least a couple of decades now, we've known that something eventually has to be done, and only now does anything barely get started. We as a society have shot ourselves in the foot by becoming so dependent upon cheap energy and having the arrogance to believe that it would always be there.

12/18/2007 7:06:24 PM

Found this tonight, I'm not going to comment one way or the other on it, just thought it was an interesting read. Food for thought, and what have you:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/marketsmag/mm_0308_story1.html#

2/11/2008 7:18:59 PM

The Economist had an article claiming that a company is soon developing extreme capacitors that can store 50% as much as a lithium ion battery given the same volume. If these were used in electric cars instead of batteries they would not go as far, but would be 98% efficient (compared to 85% for batteries) and could be recharged in less than a minute.

2/11/2008 11:56:34 PM

Plenty of companies are working on super-capacitors, also known as ultra-capacitors. They are extremely efficient and have rapid recharge times. The problem is their abysmal energy density. Nobody wants a car that has to be recharged every 30 miles.

They work well in niche applications, such as diesel electric buses which need high-power discharges and rapid recharges due to their mass and frequent starts and stops.

2/12/2008 12:05:44 AM