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The Economics of Nuclear Power aka as Reds under the Bed
Comments
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After the last nuclear power plant was built in the UK maybe we should have kept the British engineers in an office somewhere just in case their skills were going to be needed in the future.
To save cost they could share the building with the tin miners, lamplighters, and muffin men.
Cryogenics would probably be more cost effective.Left is never right but I always am.0 -
The only way I can see the Chinese or anyone else successfully exporting nukes on a large scale is to build ship based reactors. The new american carrier has 2 x 300MWe units and there is a lot of experience in naval reactors
The Chinese should build 300MWe submarine based drone reactors with 50 year fuel. Tow it to the customer and let it sit there for 50 years generating power and then take it back for refuling or decommissioning.
If that could be achieved at a competitive price point there could be demand for 5,000 ideally at a price point of $4/watt or less.0 -
The only way I can see the Chinese or anyone else successfully exporting nukes on a large scale is to build ship based reactors. The new american carrier has 2 x 300MWe units and there is a lot of experience in naval reactors
The Chinese should build 300MWe submarine based drone reactors with 50 year fuel. Tow it to the customer and let it sit there for 50 years generating power and then take it back for refuling or decommissioning.
If that could be achieved at a competitive price point there could be demand for 5,000 ideally at a price point of $4/watt or less.
That also has the advantage that if the buyer defaulted the Chinese could simply repossess!0 -
That also has the advantage that if the buyer defaulted the Chinese could simply repossess!
pay when its connected up or even Pay As You Go. No finance risk
no land costs. £500m for the land for the new uk build
Russians building their new nuke subs for less than $1B have 190MW reactors =little over $5/watt but thats a war machine. make it two reactor sub for the same price minus the war gear and it goes down to $2.5/watt which would make it them cheaper than coal
also few people know land nukes have a lot of staff, sizewel is 750 full time most of them must be security as the reactors themselves run constantly for about 18 months then refuel for a couple of weeks before another 18 months. Sub nukes might be viable with closer to 30 staff which is about the levels of staffing at CCGTs
naval reactors have been proven for many decades now and have been built in larger numbers than conventional land nukes and china is only just starting its nuclear navy expansion so they will build a lot of naval nukes and maybe they could take it to the commercial level........... but probably not.....depends how big their coal reserves really are or how cheap wind mills get0 -
The Chinese should build 300MWe submarine based drone reactors with 50 year fuel. Tow it to the customer and let it sit there for 50 years generating power and then take it back for refuling or decommissioning..
Good idea, provided you're not one of the 24% of countries that have no coast0 -
Good idea, provided you're not one of the 24% of countries that have no coast
It doesn't need to solve everyones problems.
If it could generate substantial amounts of power for the worlds 10 most populated countries it would cover 4.5 billion people.
If just the top 3 countries went nuclear that would be future demand for upto 25,000 TWh which is about what the whole world uses now. Electrify transport and heating and it would be at least double that.
Thats 2500 conventional reactors or perhaps 10,000-20,000 smaller naval reactors.0 -
If you can get it there ;-)
The astute class nuclear subs of the UK are 7,000 tons and have two reactors plus all the war gear. The actual reactor is designed to be very compact (even in nuke power stations the reactors are only about the size of a bus). If an article in wired is correct the reactor part of the astute sub is about the size of a large shed
So a power station only sub, rather than a war machine, could perhaps be substantially smaller and weigh less than the 7,000 ton 100 meter long 10 meter wide astute class subs0
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