>It's surprising to me that a massive project like a nuclear reactor costs 1/3 of the inflation-adjusted total construction cost per year in upkeep.
My statement was based on findings from a few of the plants on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_nuclear_po...
Assembling operating costs is tricky, you will have to do some work. I arrived at around 400M USD/year but there is a big span depending on the size of the plant and other things. I also didn't check most of the plants, so I could be way off when all of them are considered but I don't think so. The figure is in the ballpark for some of the EU plants as well.
I did not inflation-adjust the construction costs, since they are not affected by inflation. They were paid "back then", not now.
Construction costs are of course affected by interest on the loans, but that's a separate thing from both inflation and the construction costs, and it stops when the loan is paid. Makes sense?
You may feel this is unfair and that the construction costs should be inflation adjusted, but it actually doesn't matter because we have several examples of plants where construction was long-since paid still being closed.
Which means that even with construction costs being 0, plants close because they are too expensive. So why are we thinking construction costs are the key to making nuclear viable?
The best current plants from a running costs perspective are the ones that have several large reactors that produce lots of electricity with shared overhead in staffing etc.
Which makes the current chase for cheaper production by making many small reactors seem particularly misguided. It's not only solving the wrong problem but actually worsening the more important problem.
My statement was based on findings from a few of the plants on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_nuclear_po...
Assembling operating costs is tricky, you will have to do some work. I arrived at around 400M USD/year but there is a big span depending on the size of the plant and other things. I also didn't check most of the plants, so I could be way off when all of them are considered but I don't think so. The figure is in the ballpark for some of the EU plants as well.
I did not inflation-adjust the construction costs, since they are not affected by inflation. They were paid "back then", not now. Construction costs are of course affected by interest on the loans, but that's a separate thing from both inflation and the construction costs, and it stops when the loan is paid. Makes sense?
You may feel this is unfair and that the construction costs should be inflation adjusted, but it actually doesn't matter because we have several examples of plants where construction was long-since paid still being closed.
Which means that even with construction costs being 0, plants close because they are too expensive. So why are we thinking construction costs are the key to making nuclear viable?
The best current plants from a running costs perspective are the ones that have several large reactors that produce lots of electricity with shared overhead in staffing etc.
Which makes the current chase for cheaper production by making many small reactors seem particularly misguided. It's not only solving the wrong problem but actually worsening the more important problem.