This is bad news. NuScale’s Utah project will be delayed by three years at their customer’s request. Josh Siegel reports at the Washington Examiner:
This month, NuScale Power, an Oregon-based nuclear company, learned its first customer needed to push back the timeline for when it plans to operate the first reactor from 2026 to 2029. The entire plant of 12 individual 60-megawatt reactors won’t be completed until 2030, a slip from an expected 2027 time frame.
Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, a group of small community-owned utilities in six Western states, cited a rise in expected costs for the NuScale reactors. The group is counting on the nuclear power to provide around-the-clock, zero-carbon electricity to replace a coal plant it plans to close, but its members say they won’t need the new cleaner electricity source until later than expected.
“The setbacks are not fatal,†said Erik Olson, a climate and energy analyst at the Breakthrough Institute. “But if this project falls through, that would be an enormous blow to the promised next wave of nuclear power.â€
The only practical approach for genuinely carbon-free energy production is using nuclear baseload generation and IMO small nuclear sidesteps most of the problems in nuclear power generation.
“Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems … cited a rise in expected costs for the NuScale reactors.”
The economy of scale factor for industrial operations is about 0.7. So, going from 60 MW up to the normal 1100 MW, one would expect a total cost rise of (1100/60)^0.7 or 7.66. But the total power increase is 1100/60 or 18.33. The unit cost per kwh of the full size unit is only 7.66/18.33 = 0.42 times that of the small unit.
Now the technologies are different, but a priori one expects the kwh unit cost of the big plant to be less than that of the small plant. So why was Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems surprised? They need to hire some engineers.
I assumed that was relative to the original estimate rather than relative to a largescale plant.
We are not serious about solving the issue.
No, we’re waiting for Hanoi Jane to pass.
There’s been lots of interest in thorium reactors, but apparently nobody actually seems to be building any. Some existing reactors could be modified to use thorium rods. The US didn’t go the thorium route because thorium could not used to produce plutonium for bombs.
People are weird about tech stuff. They either assume that of course we can do it or they assume it cant be done. I think that just because we can do something in theory doesnt mean it will be easy. Once you actually work on a project is when you find all of the problems. The people actually working on this issue are running into issues which we shouldn’t find surprising. They probably get solved sooner if more effort is out into it but the power company isn’t feeling that need.
Steve