Insane Cost of Nuclear Power even if it were Genuine!

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Insane Cost of Nuclear Power even if it were Genuine!

Postby rerevisionist » 04 Dec 2011 15:26

ADDED 6 July 2013 by Rerevisionist. From the TORONTO STAR, Canada
Cancellation of Ontario gas plants pales in comparison to nuclear repair costs
Canada's experience on nuclear plant repairs shows that it always costs much more and takes longer than originally budgeted.

Tara Walton / Star file photo


The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has given the go-ahead for repairs to the Darlington nuclear station east of Toronto. Ontario's energy ministry estimated in 2010 that the repair bill would be $6 billion to $10 billion but it could go even higher.
By: Jose Etcheverry Published on Thu May 09 2013

Concerned about the costs of the cancelled Ontario gas plants? Prepare to be shocked.

On March 16, the Toronto Star reported that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission had decided to give the go-ahead for repairs to the Darlington nuclear station 70 kilometres east of Toronto.

How much that job will really cost is anyone's guess but Ontario's energy ministry estimated in 2010 that the repair bill would be $6 billion to $10 billion.

Before discussing that estimate, it is imperative first to recall Darlington's original 1993 cost, as that key historical fact is remembered today by only a very select few.

The bill for the Darlington nuclear plant rose from the original estimate of $3.95 billion to a final cost of $14.4 billion. Despite the cost, Darlington - like every nuclear plant built in Canada - failed to perform as planned and now demands costly repairs.

Now, let's look at the other repair estimates versus their actual cost. To date, three provinces have built nuclear plants: New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec.

New Brunswick's sole nuclear plant, Point Lepreau, was operational in 1983 and repairs were started in 2008. The original estimate for those repairs was $750 million. However, the final bill reached $2.4 billion and the job took three years longer than forecast.

Ontario's oldest nuclear plant, Pickering, was operational in 1971 and repairs started in 2000. The original repair estimate was $1.3 billion but the actual bill reached $2.6 billion, took five years and yielded only a partial repair.

Ontario's largest nuclear plant, Bruce, was built in stages between 1970 and 1987 and repairs were started in 2005. The estimate for the repairs was $2.75 billion but it ended up costing $4.8 billion by the time the final bill was presented in 2012.

Quebec's only nuclear plant, Gentilly, provides a good cautionary tale. Built in stages between 1966 and 1983, it needed to be fixed in 2012, but the Quebec government recently decided that it was not going to repeat the mistakes of its neighbours and instead pulled the plug on that repair job and shut the plant down.

Quebec's decision to stop nuclear reflected similar initiatives in other nuclear nations such as Belgium, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland.

The accumulated Canadian experience on nuclear plant repairs shows that it always costs much more and takes longer than originally budgeted, and suggests that it would make a lot of sense for Ontarians to consider all our options before committing our children and grandchildren's funds.

So back to the Darlington repair job: should the Ontario government, which is deep in austerity deliberations, commit itself to a bill that could range anywhere from $6 billion to $10 billion and that, based on experience, could end up two to three times higher than expected?

Here is where the real shock starts. The Ontario government is allowing Ontario Power Generation to spend $1 billion so SNC-Lavalin Group and Alstom Power & Transport can develop a plan simply to estimate what it will take to repair Darlington.

Instead of saddling the public with high nuclear bills, the people and the government of Ontario should pause and consider what other civic tasks could be achieved with our money.

Here is a brief list of safer investments to create local jobs: Ontario community wind power at 11 cents per kilowatt-hour; local solar power (made in Ontario) for 35 cents per kWh; a network of combined heat and power plants (with district energy) for about 15 cents per kWh. Those solutions can deliver safer and cheaper energy and can be combined with infrastructure investment so our province can access more reliable hydropower from Manitoba and Quebec.

In a democracy, decisions that will hurt or benefit everyone need to be debated. An honest and open discussion about what to do with nuclear is long overdue in Ontario.

Jose Etcheverry is co-chair of the Sustainable Energy Initiative and an associate professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. [NB: York in Canada]



I noticed this in engforum.pravda.ru and have copied it over. The 'big fraud' is the equivalent of the 'big lie' - the bigger the lie, the less likely people are to challenge it. If you're going to defraud people, who not do it on an insanely colossal scale?

Image
Nuclear projects face financial obstacles
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 2, 2010; A01

Hopes for a nuclear revival, fanned by fears of global warming and a changing political climate in Washington, are running into new obstacles over a key element -- money.

A new approach for easing the cost of new multibillion-dollar reactors, which can take years to complete, has provoked a backlash from big-business customers unwilling to go along.

Financing has always been one of the biggest obstacles to a renaissance of nuclear power.

The plants are expensive, and construction tends to run late and over budget.

The projected cost for a pair of proposed Georgia plants would be $14 billion; the Obama administration last month pledged to provide them with $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees.

So utilities have turned to state legislators and regulators to help contain capital costs. In states such as Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, utilities have won permission to charge customers for some of the cost of new reactors while construction is still in progress -- a financing technique that would save utilities a couple of billion dollars for each reactor.

Previously, utilities had to wait until power plants were in operation before raising rates, as they still do in most states.
"We tell people it's like paying off the interest on your credit card as you go along, rather than letting it compound," said Suzanne Grant, a spokeswoman for Progress Energy.

But businesses and other electricity users in those states aren't buying that argument.

Instead, they are saying utilities are pawning off much of the projects' liabilities on customers because bank lenders and investors will not take the risks.

"It's a terrible idea," said Jim Clarkson, a consultant with Resource Supply Management, a Georgia firm that advises companies on how to reduce electricity use. "We've had decades of subsidies for nuclear plants and all sorts of preferential treatment. They still require loan guarantees because the smart money won't touch them."

"Nuclear power is very important," says John W. McWhirter, who represents the Florida Industrial Power Users Group. "We just wish consumers could be protected."

The reaction of big businesses, as well as other consumers, has turned states that were bastions of support for nuclear power into hazardous territory.

And it could thwart the Obama administration's efforts to jump-start nuclear reactor construction by handing out chunks of the $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees Congress authorized in 2005.

Turning to the states
Thirty to 40 years ago, expensive nuclear plants drove some utilities into bankruptcy. That has made banks gun-shy about lending and investors wary about buying bonds. Moreover, the new plants are so expensive that a single unit could equal a quarter to 100 percent of the market capitalization of an entire utility company, potentially damaging the utility's credit rating.

That's why utilities turned to the states, lobbying in recent years for the ability to charge customers while construction is in progress.

"Without this legislation, we would not be considering building new nuclear generation in Florida," Grant said.
The savings for the utilities are huge because they have to borrow less money. Southern Co. said the law passed in 2000 will help its Georgia Power subsidiary shave nearly $2 billion off the cost of the two new nuclear reactors at its Vogtle site -- and Georgia Power owns only 45 percent of the project.

Last month, Southern received "conditional" approval for $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees from the Obama administration on that project. (While still under negotiation, the terms of the federal loan guarantees would probably save Southern an additional $15 million to $20 million a year, a company spokesman said.)

In Florida, Progress Energy and FPL have won approval from state regulators to pass along about $360 million in costs associated with new nuclear power units northeast of St. Petersburg. Progress Energy says it has already collected $196.6 million from customers, a third of its total expenditures so far.

But the Florida utilities have not yet obtained permits they need from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, so while some site preparation has taken place, construction hasn't even started.

The utilities' gains are the consumers' losses -- and businesses such as the Georgia Industrial Group and the Georgia Textile Manufacturing Association have joined consumer and environmental groups in combating the state laws and higher rates.

In Florida, PCS Phosphate, which has a fertilizer plant that uses about 1 percent of Progress Energy's output, told the Public Service Commission that new rate increases "will substantially affect" the company "by directly increasing the cost of power."
"Certainly coming on top of the recession, it is badly timed," said James W. "Jay" Brew, attorney for PCS Phosphate, a unit of Potash Corp. "It's asking a lot of current customers to fund that large a capital expense up front."

Worth the wait?
Progress Energy says that over time, companies such as PCS Phosphate will be better off. "It lowers the overall costs of a nuclear power plant to customers by several billion dollars," the company said in a statement. "Paying these costs in advance significantly lowers the long-term financing costs. The overall cost of the plant decreases, minimizing the price customers pay over its operating lifetime."

But the ratepayers disagree. They say that if the plants are delayed, ratepayers will absorb the expense. When the Florida utilities said the increasingly hostile atmosphere might prompt them to abandon the nuclear plants, the consumers said that only proved their point: Consumers could pay millions for a project that might never reach fruition.

"If a project cannot attract private investment, it's a turkey and we shouldn't be wasting taxpayer money or forcing the users of electricity to pay for something the stakeholders and lenders won't risk their money on," Clarkson said.

In addition, the consumers argue, many residential customers might move to another state, or even die, in the six to 10 years it will take for new plants to come on line, and they might never see the benefits. Others will have to stick around another 15 years before the savings compensate for higher rates now, Brew said.

FPL Vice Chairman Moray P. Dewhurst said intergenerational fairness is always an issue for power plants. "Look at the wonderful deal that retirees are getting now from nuclear plants built years ago and which are paid for," he said.
Financing questions have also challenged nuclear plans in other states. In Missouri, a backlash from ratepayers helped defeat a similar proposal to allow higher electricity rates during nuclear plant construction.

In South Carolina, the state Supreme Court on Thursday will consider an appeal by Friends of the Earth of a decision by the state Public Service Commission allowing South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) to begin collecting higher rates to cover costs associated with a two-reactor project.

In Texas, rising cost projections for a pair of new reactors threatened the credit rating of San Antonio's city-owned utility, which owned 40 percent of the project, and raised the specter of tax increases.

San Antonio fired the head of its municipal utility and filed a $32 billion lawsuit against its partners, NRG Energy and Toshiba, alleging they concealed cost information. On Feb. 23, the partners agreed to shrink the San Antonio utility's stake in the project to just under 8 percent.

There is one state that has presented new obstacles to nuclear power for reasons having nothing to do with economics.
Last month, the Vermont state Senate voted against extending the operating license for Vermont Yankee, the state's sole nuclear power plant, after the discovery of radioactive tritium in test wells raised fears about plant safety. (Tritium raises cancer risks.) Vermont, unlike most states, must approve any extension of the plant's license, which will expire in 2012.
Most plants must get approval only from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
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Re: Insane Cost of Nuclear Power even if it were Genuine!

Postby rerevisionist » 04 Dec 2011 15:41

Here's another from the same website... Part of the trick is clearly to institutionalise cost-overruns, by underestimating at the start. The report quoted below is online in full, probably at several sites, including http://nuwinfo.se/files/cooper200906economics_of_nuclear_reactors.pdf

The Economics of Nuclear Reactors, a report released on June 18, 2009 by economist Dr. Mark Cooper (Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School.)

The Cooper report finds that it would cost $1.9 trillion to $4.1 trillion more over the life of 100 new nuclear reactors than it would to generate the same electricity from a combination of more energy efficiency and renewables.
..from the pdf-book..

THE ECONOMICS OF NUCLEAR REACTORS: RENAISSANCE OR RELAPSE?
MARK COOPER - SENIOR FELLOW FOR ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, VERMONT LAW SCHOOL

Within the past year, estimates of the cost of nuclear power from a new generation of reactors have ranged from a low of 8.4 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) to a high of 30 cents. This paper tackles the debate over the cost of building new nuclear reactors, with the key findings as follows:

• The initial cost projections put out early in today’s so-called “nuclear renaissance” were about one-third of what one would have expected, based on the nuclear reactors completed in the 1990s.

• The most recent cost projections for new nuclear reactors are, on average, over four times as high as the initial “nuclear renaissance” projections.

• There are numerous options available to meet the need for electricity in a carbon-constrained environment that are superior to building nuclear reactors. Indeed, nuclear reactors are the worst option from the point of view of the consumer and society.

• The low carbon sources that are less costly than nuclear include efficiency, cogeneration, biomass, geothermal, wind, solar thermal and natural gas. Solar photovoltaics that are presently more costly than nuclear reactors are projected to decline dramatically in price in the next decade. Fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage, which are not presently available, are projected to be somewhat more costly than nuclear reactors.

• Numerous studies by Wall Street and independent energy analysts estimate efficiency and renewable costs at an average of 6 cents per kilowatt hour, while the cost of electricity from nuclear reactors is estimated in the range of 12 to 20 cents per kWh.

• The additional cost of building 100 new nuclear reactors, instead of pursuing a least cost efficiency-renewable strategy, would be in the range of $1.9-$4.4 trillion over the life the reactors.

Whether the burden falls on ratepayers (in electricity bills) or taxpayers (in large subsidies), incurring excess costs of that magnitude would be a substantial burden on the national economy and add immensely to the cost of electricity and the cost of reducing carbon emissions
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Re: Insane Cost of Nuclear Power even if it were Genuine!

Postby FirstClassSkeptic » 05 Dec 2011 22:22

I have this simplistic view that if it was making energy, it wouldn't need public subsidies. Same with wind power. Energy is vital in an industrial society, and expensive.

They claim it's just so expensive to go through the procedure to approve a nuclear plant. Well, I doubt that it is any harder for a nuclear plant than for a coal plant, in the USA anyway. China doesn't have any qualms about the environment, and you can see what they are building. Mostly coal plants, isn't it?
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Re: Insane Cost of Nuclear Power even if it were Genuine!

Postby FirstClassSkeptic » 07 Dec 2011 23:41

Could we go down the middle of the road, and say that nuclear power might work, but not as well as claimed?

Here's what I was thinking today: There's natural radiation. Or so, I might accept that as a start. In natural decay there is some radiation. But in nature, things are usually diluted. If we gobbed enough of the natural decaying stuff together in one place, we might get some heat out of it.

This decay would be natural, spontaneous, and without any chain reaction. Still, it generates enough heat to boil water. But not enough heat to superheat steam. In other words; it's lower grade than heat from burning coal.

OK, now, let me add some supposes and guesses. Let suppose that these fissionable materials aren't really so rare as the officials let on. I would guess that all uranium mines, and plutonium mines, would have tight security. So the public could be fooled easily into thinking this stuff is rare.

If you get a lot of this stuff together, you can get heat. Not a chain reaction. No explosion. No 'critical mass'. The more and more fissionable stuff you get together, the more heat you have, just because you have more stuff.

Now, how do you hide the fact that it takes lots of this stuff to get appreciable amounts of energy? Answer: By claiming it has dangerous radiation that must be shielded, with lots and lots of lead and concrete. Thus lots of size and mass to your 'reactor' .

Like the question I asked a while back, about the train in Germany: Why did they need a train to haul 36 tons, or whatever they said it was, when a few dump trucks could have done the job? The answer might be that there was really a lot more uranium, or whatever, than they care to admit.

Also, this explains why nuclear energy must be subsidized. The amount of diesel fuel and other energy sources used in the mining and preparation and transport of the fissionable material contain more energy than what you get back out of the reactor. That is; more energy goes into the system than what comes out. Thus there is no financial profit. If you could really get net energy out, you would make a profit. My simplistic view. Moonenquirer was hitting on this a few months back, however, he was believing in a moderated, chain reaction, which I am saying, isn't necessarily taking place.
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Re: Insane Cost of Nuclear Power even if it were Genuine!

Postby BNSF9647 » 24 Jan 2012 01:17

rerevisionist wrote:I noticed this in engforum.pravda.ru and have copied it over. The 'big fraud' is the equivalent of the 'big lie' - the bigger the lie, the less likely people are to challenge it. If you're going to defraud people, who not do it on an insanely colossal scale?

Image
Nuclear projects face financial obstacles
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 2, 2010; A01

Hopes for a nuclear revival, fanned by fears of global warming and a changing political climate in Washington, are running into new obstacles over a key element -- money.

(Rest of the repeat posting snipped ... it's a bit long...)


Privatize the gain socialize the loss.
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