In reply to VolkerP:
I haven't seen any costs of the nuclear solution being mentioned besides the initial investment.
1. what about cost of fuel supply? except IFR that feeds on depleted uranium and nuclear waste, there will be fuel costs. Uranium is running out in the next decades.
For each 250 tons of mined Uranium, without any reprocessing (once through) only one ton is fissioned, about 24 tons is U-238/U-235/Pu/Am/Cu in spent nuclear fuel plus another 224 tons of depleted uranium. Even with maximum reprocessing just another ton of uranium gets fissioned.
So for each 25 tons of nuclear fuel for LWR/BWR reactors, 24 tons is available for IFR usage, and another 224 tons depleted uranium is made.
Plus per the usual, you need to watch your anti nuclear biased sources. We are arguably running out of known cheap uranium reserves. Extracting Uranium from seawater for usage would provide the world for 10000 to 100000 years worth of Uranium supplies (depending on nuclear uranium penetration), using Thorium instead would provide the same supplies using cheap, known, land mines, so adding both together plus yet unmapped Thorium reserves would add up to over a quarter of a million years. Plus if Uranium demand goes up, investment on prospection for more cheap/intermediate uranium sources go up and new reserves will be found.
Since IFR reactors are 100 times more efficient in using Uranium, even a 10 fold increase in Uranium costs wouldn't be a problem.
2. what about cost of running a nuclear power plant for 60 years? 10% downtime is mentioned, I assume for yearly maintenance. What are the figures? What were the cost of retrofits.
Please go read honest nuclear material, not the hatchet job anti nuclear text books. New light water nuclear powerplants have less than 3% downtime, and only planned ones. Greenpeace focus only on the worst 5% nuclear power plants in the world. They don't even try to report on the median cases.
IFR power plants have the tremendous advantage of not needing all of the complex steam related safety systems, plus it operates at close to ambient pressure. So most of the complex maintenance LWR/BWR costs just aren't there. IFR plants are normally built with two reactors for each turbine, which essentially means 0% downtime (at least one reactor is operating at all times).
There are very few IFR nuclear power plants operating, if the world starts building those by the dozens, economies of scale would bring down costs.
3. what are the costs of decomissioning a nuclear power plant?
Depends on your assumptions of what radiation levels need to come down to.
Most nuclear safety codes consider radiation levels found around the clock in Denver-CO or Swiss Alps to be unsafe. That's the vast majority of the decommissioning cost.
Until your kind of irrational anti nuclear types continues to dominate the nuclear debate nuclear power will be unnecessarily expensive.
Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island actually are proving and have proved that nuclear cancer risks (from chronic low doses of radiation) are at least an order of magnitude lower than predicted. After the Iodine has decayed (a few months) the real risk is ingestion of nuclear radioactivity sources, catching cancer from low intensity Alpha, Beta, Gamma radiation sources outside your body have shown to be just as low as the equivalent doses from sun radiation, cosmic rays and radon (that we are exposed to everywhere in the world).
People are living in the Chernobyl area for years. They claim no cancers. There is strong evidence that those levels of radiation strengthen the body's anti radiation safety equipment, leading to lower cancer rates instead of higher (in radiation doses found right now in the closer villages to Chernobyl).
4. what are the costs of storing nuclear waste?
IFR reduces nuclear waste half lives from thousands of years to 30 years max. And most (like 75%) of the waste has less than 5 year half lives. Rule of thumb, 10 half lives its stable.
So IFR fission products reduces waste half lives from thousands of years down to 50 years for 75% of the waste and about 300 years for the remaining.
After each half live, half of the heat/radiation is gone, so for 30 year half lives, after 60 years 75% of the heat is gone.
So using IFR power plants reduces the spent nuclear fuel storage costs greatly.
1 - At first the nuclear spent fuel from low efficiency water cooled / gas cooled nukes go to the IFR plants, in this stage a single ton of spent nuclear fuel provides over a billion USD worth of electricity
2 - IFR plants fission the plutonium, Americium, Curium and Berkelium which are considered the really bad nuclear waste, IFR reactors keep fissioning that nasty stuff until its all gone
3 - When it's all said and done (let's say 40 years later), since mined uranium produced 100x more electricity from already mined uranium, it means a reduction of nuclear waste per TWh of electricity produced of at least 100 fold.
Volker you need to actually learn honest data about nuclear, not the hatchet job manipulations made by green peace and the like. Where are the radiation deaths from Fukushima ? Where are the cancer cases ? The anti nuclear types need to prove their claims or shut up, instead of just raising fear, uncertainty and doubt and using that as some kind of hard science argument.
One might need to make assumptions (esp. 3. and 4., where current experiences are painful), but not sweep these under the rug. These costs must be included in a model pitting solar against nuclear.
There's no sweeping it under the rug Volker. France produces electricity in very large scales, where are the cancer cases, where are the deaths ?
If people without a nuclear degree were forbidden from even expressing an opinion, this whole debate would have been settled pro nuclear decades ago.
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The figure of 90% capacity factor on nuclear is about right:
Nuclear Energy Institute - U.S. Nuclear Power Plants
True for the average of existing nuclear power plant fleet.
Of the aprox 400 nukes operating over 300 are Gen II designs. They were designed/construction started before the nuclear industry got serious about costs, capacity factors, maintenance costs.
If you look at the stats for post Chernobyl reactors the story is radically different.
Plus the current fleet is 90+% water cooled, solid fuel reactors, that are known to be expensive to build and moderately expensive to maintain.
If you look at those stats for 20 year or less operating reactors the stats are better than 5% downtime. With a few Gen II reactors operating in that range also.
