Does nuclear power have a negative learning curve?

[kristopher]

Does nuclear power have a negative learning curve?
By Joe Romm on Apr 6, 2011 at 4:05 pm

‘Forgetting by doing’? Real escalation in reactor investment costs

We’ve known for a while that the cost of new nuclear power plants in this county have been soaring (see Nuclear power: The price is not right and Exclusive analysis: The staggering cost of new nuclear power).
Before 2007, price estimates of $4000/kw for new U.S. nukes were common, but by October 2007 Moody’s Investors Service report, “New Nuclear Generation in the United States,” concluded, “Moody’s believes the all-in cost of a nuclear generating facility could come in at between $5,000 – $6,000/kw.” That same month, Florida Power and Light, “a leader in nuclear power generation,” presented its detailed cost estimate for new nukes to the Florida Public Service Commission. It concluded that two units totaling 2,200 megawatts would cost from $5,500 to $8,100 per kilowatt “” $12 billion to $18 billion total! In 2008, Progress Energy informed state regulators that the twin 1,100-megawatt plants it intended to build in Florida would cost $14 billion, which “triples estimates the utility offered little more than a year ago.” That would be more than $6,400 a kilowatt. (And that didn’t even count the 200-mile $3 billion transmission system utility needs, which would bring the price up to a staggering $7,700 a kilowatt).



<snip>

Why did the costs escalate? Why was there “negative learning.” He offers this theory:

… with increasing application (“doing”), the complexity of the technology inevitably increases leading to inherent cost escalation trends that limit or reverse “learning” (cost reduction) possibilities. In other words, technology scale-up can lead to an inevitable increase in systems complexity (in the case of nuclear, full fuel cycle management, load-following operation mode, and increasing safety standards as operation experience [and unanticipated problems] are accumulating) that translates into real-cost escalation, or “negative learning” in the terminology of learning/ experience curve models. The result may be a much wider cost variation across different technologies than so far anticipated.

<snip>

In fact, the cost of new nuclear power plant have continued to escalate in the United States, France, and other countries since 2000:

- French nuclear giant “Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as 6 billion euros, or $8 billion, double the price offered to the Finns.” (5/09)
- Toshiba tells San Antonio its new twin $13 billion nukes will cost $4 billion more. The city balks. (10/09)
- Nuclear Bombshell: $26 Billion cost “” $10,800 per kilowatt! “” killed Ontario nuclear bid (7/09)

Indeed the Toronto Star “” published these stunning details in Canada’s largest daily newspaper about Areva’s Ontario bid:

- AECL’s $26 billion bid was based on the construction of two 1,200-megawatt Advanced Candu Reactors, working out to $10,800 per kilowatt of power capacity….

More at: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/04/06/207833/does-nuclear-power-have-a-negative-learning-curve/




See also:

Four Must-See Charts Show Why Renewable Energy Is Disruptive – In A Good Way
By Ryan Koronowski on May 6, 2013

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/05/06/1966071/four-must-see-charts-show-why-renewable-energy-is-disruptive-in-a-good-way/

[bananas]

1. Almost didn't see that second article. nt

[kristopher]

6. I probably should have made it a separate post. nt

[bananas]

2. Researcher finds Moore's Law and Wright's Law best predict how tech improves

"62 different industry sectors; these ranged from commodities such as aluminum, manganese and beer to more advanced products like computers, communications systems, solar cells, aircraft and cars."

"It could be useful in things like climate-change mitigation," Trancik says, "where you want to know what you'll get out of your investment."

http://phys.org/news/2013-03-law-wright-tech.html

Researcher finds Moore's Law and Wright's Law best predict how tech improves
Mar 06, 2013 by David L. Chandler

Researchers at MIT and the Santa Fe Institute have found that some widely used formulas for predicting how rapidly technology will advance—notably, Moore's Law and Wright's Law—offer superior approximations of the pace of technological progress. The new research is the first to directly compare the different approaches in a quantitative way, using an extensive database of past performance from many different industries.

<snip>

The analysis indicates that Moore's Law is one of two formulas that best match actual technological progress over past decades. The top performer, called Wright's Law, was first formulated in 1936: It holds that progress increases with experience—specifically, that each percent increase in cumulative production in a given industry results in a fixed percentage improvement in production efficiency.

To carry out the analysis, the researchers amassed an extensive set of data on actual costs and production levels over time for 62 different industry sectors; these ranged from commodities such as aluminum, manganese and beer to more advanced products like computers, communications systems, solar cells, aircraft and cars.

<snip>

Knowing which models work best in forecasting technological change can be very important for business leaders and policymakers. "It could be useful in things like climate-change mitigation," Trancik says, "where you want to know what you'll get out of your investment."

<snip>

[kristopher]

3. It is essential that we channel our resources into the most effective solutions.

Time and money are critical challenges that must be kept in mind when analyzing the available options. Most proposed solutions that are designed to appeal to the middle of the road are not adequate because they squander both.

Good article, thanks for sharing it.

[FogerRox]

4. I can't imagine a new Fission Nuke costing less than 12 billion.

Claiming 4 billion is just unrealistic.

[kristopher]

5. Wildly unrealistic, but it's progress believe it or not.

In first link of the OP they list some stories from '09 about the costs of nuclear hitting as high as $10,800 kw. At that time wt was still insisting that the 2003 prediction by MIT's nuclear fan club was accurate and that the correct number to consider nuclear at was $1500/kw. The last time I recall hearing a number from wt it was $2500.

So you can see, $4000 is progress.

[NNadir]

7. Only for dumb guys who only hear what they want to hear.

Joe Romm certainly qualifies on that score.

No matter how many people dangerous fossil fuels kill - more than World War II every one or two decades - Romm and his ilk like to pretend that nuclear energy is dangerous, even though there is not one anti-nuke who can show that in a half a century of nuclear operations, the death toll for all operations is trivial when compared to all other significant forms of energy.

It is not the case for people who actually understand nuclear technology - who do not discuss it from a position of fear and ignorance - have negative learning, since they by definition are not repeating stale. garbage rhetoric over and over and over and over and over.

The level of creativity in nuclear engineering is at its highest ever, but regrettably, as fear and ignorance have won the day, it's too little too late.

Romm's about as mindless an anti-nuke as there is, and I always find it amusing that when he was running the climate office, offering the useless, toxic and incredibly expensive "solar and wind" will save us meme, the rate of the atmospheric collapse set a record.

Of course, this dogmatic, rote view of the world has regrettably persisted with the result that 2012 approached Romm's disaster year, and 2013 is sure to exceed it if one reviews the latest week-to-week Mauna Loa data.

Lately, of course, in the scientific literature, it does seem that anti-nuke mysticism is being called out for what it is. I really enjoyed the delicious way that Jim Hansen took apart the stupid and misleading record of professional anti-nukes Mark V. Jacobsen, Sovacool and the rest in this Month's <em>Environmental Science and Technology</em>.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es402211m?prevSearch=%255BContrib%253A%2BHansen%255D&searchHistoryKey=

In it he noted that German fear and ignorance concerning nuclear energy had, predictably, helped to further destroy the atmosphere, and pretty much pointed out that Jacobsen simply makes shit up.

It was considerably more aggressive than the time that Nobel Laureate Burton Richter gently tried to advise Jacobsen to stop raving irrelevantly about the world's largest, safest, and reliable form of energy, nuclear energy:

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2012/EE/C2EE22658H

If you read between the lines, Richter is, in fact, calling Jacobsen an idiot, but he's doing so too nicely in my view.

[kristopher]

8. Does nuclear power have a negative learning curve? Unarguably yes.

All your confused rambling changes nothing, wt.

[NNadir]

9. Um, um, um... Let me guess, posting a picture rather than commenting on Hansen's paper...

Last edited Thu Jun 20, 2013, 07:56 PM - Edit history (1)

...is your idea of an antidote to confused rambling.

I merely note, using links to the primary scientific literature, that one of the world's preeminent climate scientists and a Nobel Laureate have published papers indicating that the fear and ignorance about nuclear energy kills people, and you post a graphic that you apparently neither understand nor deign to interpret (and I'm quite sure that any interepretation by an anti-nuke, given their low scientific levels) would be amusing.

I guess you have zero to say about Hansen's remarks at the end of his response to Jacobsen's and Sovacool's "comment" - I doubt that you have or can read his paper, to wit:

Much as Sovacool et al. would prefer to live in a world in which near-term mitigation targets can be fully realized without nuclear, in the real world the urgency and scale of the climate crisis require that we retain and expand all nonfossil electricity sources, especially those that can directly displace base load coal plants. The propagation of biased and misleading arguments against nuclear power by Sovacool et al. and others does a great disservice to the all-important goal of avoiding dangerous anthropogenic climate change.

The bold is mine.

A great disservice indeed, that biases and misleading crap that anti-nukes have been handing out for decades of fear, ignorance and wishful thinking.

The planetary atmosphere is collapsing. Hansen knows it. I know it. The scientific community knows it, and still we're listening to this horseshit. I can see that Hansen's pissed. So I am I. This didn't have to be this way, but it is.

By the way, how many people, exactly, died from radiation at Fukushima in your mind? How does it compare to the 9,000 people who according to the World Health Organization, will die today from air pollution?

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/

How many people do you think died from the coal and oil burned by fear mongers to run their computers while they spent time cheering for and hoping for such deaths?

May 2013 set an all time record for year to year fossil fuel waste accumulations in the atmosphere for any May ever recorded. Congratulations. Heckuva job.

You must be very, very, very, very, very, very proud.

[kristopher]

10. Your appeal to authority is noted and rejected.

My rejection of nuclear power is based on a full understanding of the relationships resulting from the economics and technical capabilities of the various generating options.
WT, your quote from Hansen included this "Much as Sovacool et al. would prefer to live in a world in which near-term mitigation targets can be fully realized without nuclear, in the real world the urgency and scale of the climate crisis require that we retain and expand all nonfossil electricity sources, especially those that can directly displace base load coal plants."

When Hansen says this he is revealing a simplistic and, I would say shallow, understanding of the components we have to work with to solve the problem. We've been using nuclear power for 50 years now and it hasn't displaced coal plants at all. The reason is that they do not compete with each other, they complement and support each other. They work together to drive energy consumption and concentrate the power arising from control of our energy resources into the hands of an economic (and with nuclear, technical) elite. This elite works through political influence to preserve their domain against competition from the democratic structure embodied in distributed renewable generation. In simple terms - the centralized coal/nuclear system is a techno-economic entity that preserves itself. You can't change it by making it stronger.

Hansen is wrong. His view reflects a legitimate impatience, but he is attacking the wrong target. We've had the capability for decades to phase out coal and nuclear, but their owners established a playing field where the economics of centralized generation were what dictated the sources of generation that might be able to compete (of course nuclear was the exception since they had no trouble encouraging government support for that).

So renewables struggled for decades to reduce cost with virtually no government support. Now that both solar and wind are rapidly increasing the range of markets where they are cost competitive with centralized power, we see a rush by the owners of the centralized system to change the rules and create new barriers to the spread of small /d/ democratic renewable power.

By forcing the public to accept nuclear power in spite of its ever worsening economic performance Hansen is endorsing the least economically efficient route to decarbonization.

By forcing the public to accept nuclear power which is incredibly slow to bring online, Hansen is endorsing a course that squanders the very time he is so aware of the need to maximize.

By forcing the public to accept nuclear power Hansen is removing growth potential from the developing renewable market that CAN shut down the centralized fossil/nuclear based system; effectively preserving that which he is intent on destroying.

Hansen is wrong.