Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

zeupater

GreatApe wrote: »

I dont know if a 50GW reactor build can be done in the UK at a good price but I know it can be done because the French managed to build out >60GW and they did so with a population at the time ~4/5ths of what the UK now. The proposal is only 60% of what the french achieved (on a per capita basis) and we now have more technology and productivity to draw from and cheaper cost of capital. Plus the UK builds could mostly be next to the sea while the french had to do many more costly inland versions that require cooling towers and operate slightly less efficiently

The French are not bankrupt they still have an economy more or less the same size as the UK so I doubt your idea that the UK could not achieve 60% of what the french achieved decades ago would hold true

And HPC is first of a kind because its a whole different workforce building it.
In the same way custom house builds are always more costly and delayed not because no one has ever built a house before in the UK but that the person having it built is a novice. The UK nuclear builders are novices but if we did have a 50 reactor build one would hope after say #10 they would have most the experience under their belts so #11 to #50 would be built a lot quicker and to a lower cost.

But I say once again nuclear is dead in the uk and probably everywhere else too so the road is a windy one not a nuclear one. I hope the windy road can indeed achieve as much as the 50GW of nuclear reactors could achieve in decarbing the grid and transport. The nukes could have produced 400-420TWh annually.

Lets hope the uk can build out the 100-120GW of wind and 100-120GW of solar plus all the grid upgrades plus all the thermal backup plus all the interconnectors plus all the battery storage that will be needed to produce a similar quantity of clean energy

Hi

So you're effectively still saying that the best solution would be to build 50+ reactors if the price was 'good' and have previously stated that in your opinion £5k/kW as a build cost would be an acceptable price for a 50+ reactor build, even though it's 33%(5/3.75) higher than EDF's original build estimate for HPC ...

So, according to your latest postulation, the French seem to be far better at keeping costs down, so please explain why EDF (on 25/07/2018) provided a project update on the 1.6GW EPR build at Flamanville (Note: that's not too far from the coast!) which included further delay and amended the full build cost estimate to 10.9billion euros, representing ~3x the original proposal, so around £6100/kW - well above your affordability threshold!

As for the analogy regarding custom build houses .. living in an architect designed unique custom build property, I totally disagree ... the issues aren't related to the customer or the builders being novices, they're normally due to initial misinterpretation - once highlighted the relevant drawings & specifications are corrected ... if there was ever a second incarnation of our house built the issues which resulted in delays & cost overruns on ours wouldn't be repeated and that would apply wherever it was built and to whoever would build it as experience & intellectual property are valuable and transferable assets. In the case of the HPC nuclear build, considering that the project is based on the 5th & 6th EPRs, there would be a reasonable expectation that EDF are already capable of bringing considerable experience, amended designs and fewer issues to the table to ensure that both the workforce & project are managed efficiently & effectively, resulting in build costs closer to original estimates ... however, is this the case .... ?



And now, to return the thread to newsworthy items ....

It looks like the Flamanville plant could be in-line for further delays and cost overrun as the French nuclear regulator raises more concerns ...

PARIS, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Faulty weldings at the nuclear plant that French utility EDF is building in Flamanville, Normandy, may require more repairs than originally estimated and EDF will have to review materials on the site, the ASN nuclear regulator said in a statement.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/edf-flamanville/update-1-edfs-flamanville-nuclear-plant-may-require-further-repairs-asn-idUKL8N1WJ1VF


With serious deadlines pending ... there may be trouble ahead!

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

It looks like the Flamanville plant could be in-line for further delays and cost overrun as the French nuclear regulator raises more concerns ...

HTH
Z

It's always funny to see France held up as evidence of nuclear being cost effective:

1. The US has more nuclear reactors and capacity, and is moving away from nuclear as it's un-economic. Last year cancelling 50% of new reactor builds (2 out of 4) because they would be un-economic on completion.

2. France is reducing its nuclear contribution of leccy generation due to economics - RE is cheaper.

3. Flamanville (EDF / French government reactor choice) is massively un-competitive on price, and is being brought on line with a known faulty reactor vessel lid, so as to meet contract deadlines within the HPC deal, otherwise the UK might be able to pull out of the deal. Once operational (and 'meeting' contract deadlines), it will be shutdown again for 1-2yrs for a new lid to be fitted!

Martyn1981

pile-o-stone wrote: »

I'm not sure if this has been posted before, but the development of these huge offshore turbines is fantastic.

"The offshore wind industry has already smashed cost-reduction goals over the past few years, but larger, more powerful turbines could go a long way toward making offshore wind even more competitive with fossil fuels.

The more electricity you can produce from each turbine, the fewer foundations you need to anchor to the sea floor, the fewer maintenance trips you have to make per kWh produced, and the more energy you produce from any given area of the ocean. All of these should help to ensure even lower prices in the future. Larger, taller turbines also tend to make better use of available wind resources—turning regions once thought unsuitable for wind into viable options for development."

You might be interested in an off-shore wind monitoring site. It shows/proves that last paragraph you quoted as we see ever higher capacity factors from off-shore wind as the newer and larger/taller WT's are more and more efficient as they tap into stronger and more consistent winds at greater heights.

The numbers I find interesting are the lifetime cf's and the 12 month rolling cf's, which show how fast that cf is rising (37.8% to 44.3%), suggesting 50% (or more) might be possible from a future fleet, and some farms are already achieving this.

Also, we can see that the wind farms generate approx 85% of the time each, and cumulatively about 100%, though of course generation at those 85 and 100 percentiles is very low.

UK offshore wind capacity factors

[BTW the site is managed by Andrew, who you might recognise as AZPS from the Navitron forum. He's also behind this monitoring site.]

pile-o-stone

The march of renewables continue in the USA:

"The US has reached a tipping point in its energy consumption, as renewable sources inched ahead of nuclear power."

"In March and April, the United States produced more of its energy from renewable sources than nuclear, the Energy and Information Administration (EIA) confirmed Thursday."

https://www.dw.com/en/wind-and-sun-turn-on-us-nuclear-energy/a-39602048

zeupater

Martyn1981 wrote: »

... 3. Flamanville (EDF / French government reactor choice) is massively un-competitive on price, and is being brought on line with a known faulty reactor vessel lid, so as to meet contract deadlines within the HPC deal, otherwise the UK might be able to pull out of the deal. Once operational (and 'meeting' contract deadlines), it will be shutdown again for 1-2yrs for a new lid to be fitted!

Hi

Hence, after considering the implications of the Reuters report, the post conclusion ... "With serious deadlines pending ... there may be trouble ahead!" ...

HTH
Z

michaels

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Hence, after considering the implications of the Reuters report, the post conclusion ... "With serious deadlines pending ... there may be trouble ahead!" ...

HTH
Z

As long as it is the 'turn it off and never turn it back on' kind of trouble and not the Fukushima type of trouble......

My previous understanding was that the extra deployment etc costs of offshore wind made it more expensive than onshore and that if onshore were politically acceptable it would be built in preference but I am wondering with the sizes and cf now being built whether offshore is not actually cheaper than onshore. Does anyone know?

GreatApe

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

So you're effectively still saying that the best solution would be to build 50+ reactors if the price was 'good' and have previously stated that in your opinion £5k/kW as a build cost would be an acceptable price for a 50+ reactor build, even though it's 33%(5/3.75) higher than EDF's original build estimate for HPC ...

We are not starting from scratch so no the best solution would not be to build 50GW of reactors in the UK because that would more or less mean we wasted the money on the 20GW of wind and 10GW or whatever it is now in PV that already exists as neither would be required in such a high nuclear scenario. Plus we do not know for sure if BEVs will be mass market one would hope so but it is not guaranteed at this point so even if we were starting from scratch it would not be prudent to commission more than 20GW until it was more clear BEVs will indeed become the dominate transport of the future once that was clear an additional 30GW could be commissioned

If the option was 50GW of nuclear vs 120GW wind, 120GW solar, 50GW backup CCGTs and the grid upgrades and storage to make all that work then I would still say the nuclear option would have to be at least 5-10% cheaper both to install and run than the wind mix to go for the nuclear instead.

But for the tenth time it is too late for the nuclear road we have already set off on the windy road we are not going to go back

So, according to your latest postulation, the French seem to be far better at keeping costs down, so please explain why EDF (on 25/07/2018) provided a project update on the 1.6GW EPR build at Flamanville (Note: that's not too far from the coast!) which included further delay and amended the full build cost estimate to 10.9billion euros, representing ~3x the original proposal, so around £6100/kW - well above your affordability threshold!

The French have lost their experience and are also building a new design with new teams. As I keep saying building homes is not a complex thing literally millions of homes are built each year yet you try to build a custom home its always over budget and takes much longer than imagined.

If anything the cost of £6,000/KW for their first of a kind in so long is an encouraging sign. That is not that massive a cost considering the plant is likely to generate for 60-100 years and operate at 90-95% CF. Consider that versus say the solar on your roof you would need 27GW of solar to match just HPC dual reacotrs. Sure £20 billion is a lot for HPC but how much would 27GW of solar PV cost today? £30 billion? And what about the grid issues in adding another 27GW of solar vs the absolutely non issue of adding the 3.3GW from HPC? Or try adding two HPCs absolutely no problem try adding an additional 54GW of solar and see what happens.

Plus with the nukes almost all of it will be domestic money spent, with the PV your sending half to a totalitarian regime half way across the world.

As for the analogy regarding custom build houses .. living in an architect designed unique custom build property, I totally disagree ... the issues aren't related to the customer or the builders being novices, they're normally due to initial misinterpretation - once highlighted the relevant drawings & specifications are corrected ... if there was ever a second incarnation of our house built the issues which resulted in delays & cost overruns on ours wouldn't be repeated and that would apply wherever it was built and to whoever would build it as experience & intellectual property are valuable and transferable assets.

So you claim yet a new build development near me is running at least 9 months late and over budget partly because of legal issues partly because of sewerage connection issues and who knows what else. Its a very simple design but as you can see !!!! happens in low build inexperienced builders.

In the case of the HPC nuclear build, considering that the project is based on the 5th & 6th EPRs, there would be a reasonable expectation that EDF are already capable of bringing considerable experience, amended designs and fewer issues to the table to ensure that both the workforce & project are managed efficiently & effectively, resulting in build costs closer to original estimates ... however, is this the case .... ?

£6000/KW is not a bad cost compared to say solar.
Build out 16GW at £6k/Kw = £96 billion.
How much would it cost to install the 144GW of PV to generate the same as the 16GW of nukes? Perhaps £150 billion? And how many more ££billions££ for the grid upgrades and mass storage such PV would require? Another £100 billion on top?

It looks like the Flamanville plant could be in-line for further delays and cost overrun as the French nuclear regulator raises more concerns ...

And you were claiming just a few breaths ago that this is the 6th one so they should be fully experienced! Clearly not the case these are still for all intents first of a kind

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

As long as it is the 'turn it off and never turn it back on' kind of trouble and not the Fukushima type of trouble......

My previous understanding was that the extra deployment etc costs of offshore wind made it more expensive than onshore and that if onshore were politically acceptable it would be built in preference but I am wondering with the sizes and cf now being built whether offshore is not actually cheaper than onshore. Does anyone know?

Offshore for the UK will be ultimately cheaper because transport and the whole system can be made more automated. Plus you have first of a kind costs like building the ships and platforms needed to install the offshore wind turbines but once the ship is built one assumes its good for 30+ years even the factories etc are sunk costs so if you have a turbine factory the first lot of factories would have to sell products at high prices to pay off the factory but subsiquant turbines can be priced lower. The higher CF also allows lower per unit costs for conversion/cables/grid connection points etc

In other nations onshore might be better because of the challenge of moving mass wind power hundreds of km onshore but in the UK we are an island so most the demand is close to the sea. But in Germany the cost of offshore wind is not just the cost of offshore wind but the cost to build the lines to move that power half way across the country.

I would assume if a nation or company picked one standard design perhaps in the 12MW range and placed a large constant order they could be done very cheap. Maybe producing 10 turbines a month for 30 years that would be a capacity of 43GW at 50% CF = 188 TWh. The same factory could be kept indefinitely but after the 30 years its output would be used just to replace the older turbines as they come to the end of their lives.

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

It's always funny to see France held up as evidence of nuclear being cost effective:

1. The US has more nuclear reactors and capacity, and is moving away from nuclear as it's un-economic. Last year cancelling 50% of new reactor builds (2 out of 4) because they would be un-economic on completion.

Yes new build nuclear is very expensive and slow plus the Americans do not need nuclear they have super cheap abundant nat gas and coal

2. France is reducing its nuclear contribution of leccy generation due to economics - RE is cheaper.

That is just nonsense propaganda. The marginal cost of nuclear in france is close to zero. Their wind and solar just displaces nuclear. They installed wind and solar just for politics not because it makes their grid one drop greener or any cheaper

3. Flamanville (EDF / French government reactor choice) is massively un-competitive on price, and is being brought on line with a known faulty reactor vessel lid, so as to meet contract deadlines within the HPC deal, otherwise the UK might be able to pull out of the deal. Once operational (and 'meeting' contract deadlines), it will be shutdown again for 1-2yrs for a new lid to be fitted!

There is too much politics now HPC will be built because which minister is going to lay off the 5,000 workers (or however many it is)?

But hopefully the rest will be abandoned

GreatApe

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a23120126/us-wind-turbines-are-getting-less-powerfuland-thats-a-good-thing/

'Curtailment' designed into the turbine from the outset. So long as overall cost is acceptable this is fine. the higher CFs will help integrate more into the grid