This is basically a summary of a news article which you should read.
Plus a few other references. If this summary contravenes copyright, please let me know….
Age
Ted O’Brien, the shadow energy minister, has said the nuclear plants built here will last for between 80 and 100 years.
This is clearly likely to be guesswork as there are no 100 year old plants anywhere in the world…. Nuclear power plants did not exist in 1924.
The mean age of the 416 active nuclear reactors is about 32 years. The average age of the 29 reactors that have shut over the past five years, is less than 43.
16 reactors have been operating for 51 or more years. Mycle Schneider, an independent analyst who coordinates the annual world nuclear industry status report says “There is zero experience of a 60-year-old operating reactor, zero. It never happened. Leave alone 80 years or beyond” (The world’s oldest, Switzerland’s Beznau, has clocked up 55 years with periods of outages.)
CSIRO’s report looked at a 30 to 40 year life for a large nuclear plant as there was “little evidence presented that private financing would be comfortable” with the risk for any longer.
As plants age, maintenance costs are likely to increase (physical entropy or wear), as they have in France. Apparently the US has avoided this problem, although with declining investment over the last decade the average reactor age has increased from 32 to 42 years. So we need to find out how that was done.
What is the state of the global nuclear industry?
Five nuclear reactors opened last year and five were shut down
Over the last 20 years 102 reactors opened and 104 shut down
China has added 49 during that period and closed none. Nuclear energy provides about 5% of China’s electricity, which seems to be slightly more than the Coalition is going for in Australia
Last year, China added 1GW of nuclear energy but more than 200GW of solar.
In the world, solar passed nuclear for total energy production in 2022 while wind overtook it a decade ago.
Schneider says “In industrial terms, nuclear power is irrelevant in the overall global market for electricity generating technology.”
Data from an annual statistical review by the Energy Institute implies there is no global wave of nuclear energy investment or construction. Global generation peaked in 2006, dipped after Fukushima and has stayed about the same since 2000. However, renewables, starting from almost zero in 2000, have now risen to generate 50% more than nuclear.
SMR’s
Bill Gates’ company has been trying to build commercial SMR’s for 18 years and not succeeded yet.
The CSIRO Gencost report noted that the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems SMR, was cancelled last November. In 2020 its estimated cost of of $18,200/kiloWatt, was more than double that of large-scale plants at $8,655/kW (in 2023 dollars). But by “late 2022 UAMPS updated their capital cost to $28,580/kW” the CSIRO said. “The UAMPS estimate implies nuclear SMR has been hit by a 57% cost increase which is much larger than the average 20% observed in other technologies.”
Nuscale, the only company to have received design approval from US regulators for an SMR, were building SMRs for US Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory. NuScale announced at the start of 2023 that the target cost of power for this project had increased by 53% since 2021 to US$89/ MWh. they had, in one account failed to attract customers at these prices.
Big Economies and Nuclear
The Coalition says that Australia is the only one of the top 20 economies that doesn’t have or isn’t getting nuclear energy. However, Germany has abandoned nukes as is well known, and Germany is also using less coal power than it has in decades. Italy shut down reactors after 1990. Saudi Arabia has been considering developing nuclear for about 15 years but, still has not embarked on it, and has set a goal of 50% of electricity coming from solar by 2030.
It may be that only five reactors have been finished this century. Construction has taken more than twice as long as forecast, with the cost being between two and six times the initial estimates.
Who is still building large reactors?
The 35 construction starts since 2019 were either in China, or were Russian-built in various nations. It is unlikely the Coalition will go to China or Russia for builders.
France?
Nuclear provides almost two-thirds (62%) of France’s electricity. However, the French company EDF has €54.5bn debt and hasn’t finished a plant since 2007.
EDF is building Hinkley Point C in the UK, which has suffered from cost blowouts and delays. The current estimate is that it may not start until 2031 and may cost $90bn to complete. High electricity prices have been promised to keep it solvent.
In 2014, the Government aimed to reduce nuclear’s share of electricity generation to 50% by 2025. This target was delayed in 2019 to 2035, before being abandoned in 2023. Apparently 1 reactor is currently under construction. The amount of energy produced in 2022-3 declined due to necessary repairs [1] and in 2016 all the reactors were offline due to a long-term coverup of manufacturing faults. By the end of April 2022 it was reported that 28 of France’s 56 nuclear reactors were offline
US?
The 4.5GW Vogtle plant reached full capacity in April, making it the US’s largest nuclear power station. Its first two units exceeded $US35bn, with the state of Georgia’s Public Service Commission saying cost increases and delays have “completely eliminated any benefit on a lifecycle costs basis”.
The Virgil C Summer plant in South Carolina was cancelled in 2017 after more than A$13bn had been spent as it became too expensive to justify.
Finland
Finland’s Olkiluoto 3, came online last year, 21 years after it was announced and 13 years after it was expected to be operational.
That leaves us with
Korea?
The Korean company Kepco built the 5.6GW Barakah plant in the United Arab Emirates. As Schneider’s report notes, the UAE “did not agree” to the disclosure of cost, delays or impairment losses. so we have no knowledge of the problems, cost overruns etc…..
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