Regulated Asset Base system will transfer nuclear’s financial risks to the UK public, rather than the nuclear companies
Some energy experts, however, are sceptical that the promised tidal wave of investment will ever materialise
Cran-McGreehin says one danger of the RABmodel is that it transfers risk to bill-payers rather than the companies building the station.
| City institutions have been taking a keen interest in the Tideway’s progress. Investors are intrigued by the novel way the £4.2 billion project was financed. The method has been seized on by the government to kick-start a £100 billion-plus splurge on new nuclear power stations, a move that could create a giant new market in infrastructure investment. The not-so-magic ingredient is asking customers to pay more up front and to guarantee payments in the future. Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, said the plan would have a “small effect” on bills but did not say by how much they would go up. Industry experts think each large new station — and the plan envisages as many as eight — would add between £6-£10 to the average household bill. The buffer of cash raised from customers can be used to hammer out problems with power plant designs, and can be eaten into if construction proves troublesome. The project company is also allowed to continue to charge customers once the station is working, with the amount based on the value of the project. The whole arrangement is monitored by an independent regulator, hence its name: regulated asset base (RAB) financing. As a condition of the licence, investors in the project company are on the hook for a pre-agreed level of cost overruns. The Department for Business claims the reduction in interest payments could save consumers £30 billion over the life of a new power station. “In essence it is reducing the cost of capital by cutting back the construction risk to investors,” Richard Goodfellow, head of infrastructure, projects and energy at the City law firm Addleshaw Goddard, said. Some energy experts, however, are sceptical that the promised tidal wave of investment will ever materialise. “There is no cheap or easy way to do new nuclear,” Simon Cran-McGreehin, head of analysis at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), said. “I fear the government’s big ambitions will prove a distraction that won’t ultimately lead to much.” Since Johnson threw his weight behind the RAB route, the government has quickly put in place some necessary stepping stones. Four days after the nuclear summit at Downing Street, the Department for Business quietly published the criteria that projects would have to meet. Ministers are hoping that big British pension funds will buy the bonds and have helped to clear the way with reforms to the EU’s Solvency II regime, which at present limits the type of investments that insurers can hold. Goddard sees groups with a record of investing in infrastructure projects — Canadian pension funds, for example — as the biggest players. “I would expect the bulk of the investment — perhaps two-thirds — to come from the big global infrastructure funds that are already big investors in UK assets,” he said. “There are some investors who will be put off — either because of the size of the projects, the timescales, or just because it is nuclear.” After Sizewell, the pipeline of projects is unclear. Ministers are keen to push ahead with the on-again, off-again scheme for a new station at Wylfa on Anglesey. Hitachi, the Japanese industrial group, was to have built two new reactors there, but the project has now been taken up by the US engineering giant Bechtel. Senior sources at EDF say it is also casting a covetous eye over Wylfa as the possible site for another Hinkley Point design. There have also been discussions on a new plant at Moorside, close to the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria. RAB financing could also be adopted for a new type of small reactor. Rolls-Royce, which builds the power plants for nuclear submarines, has submitted a design to Britain’s nuclear regulators, while two US providers, Last Energy and TerraPower, are also weighing options in the UK. Cran-McGreehin says one danger of the RABmodel is that it transfers risk to bill-payers rather than the companies building the station. His bigger query, however, is whether there is too much concentration on nuclear. “Governments do from time to time get very excited about nuclear, then cool off,” he said. “I am not convinced allthis will actually come to pass, and in the meantime it risks taking thefocus away from investment in renewable energy.” Times 14th May 2022 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-nuclear-push-could-be-sweet-music-for-city-7gj7s5s38 |
Kwasi Kwarteng: Nuclear push may increase energy bills, minister admits.
Kwasi Kwarteng: Nuclear push may increase energy bills, minister admits.
THE TORY Energy Secretary has admitted the Government’s nuclear plans may
increase household energy bills. Kwasi Kwarteng conceded the Tory push for
new nuclear power plants could see energy bills go up despite the
Government’s failure to introduce immediate measures to tackle the cost
of living crisis.
The National 13th May 2022
Energy saving and renewables to create many more jobs than nuclear could.
Dave Elliott: Renewable energy has the potential to create twice as many
jobs as nuclear, and three times as many jobs per million pounds invested
compared to gas or coal power, while investment in energy efficiency can
create five times as many.
So says a new UK Energy Research Centre study of
Green Job Creation, based on a new review of the literature. It’s an
update to their earlier 2014 low carbon energy & employment study. That was
a bit more cautious about making final pronouncements, since, it said, it
was difficult to assess net economy-wide impacts over time. For example,
though some sectors might benefit more than others, if there was full
employment, new investment was unlikely to create extra jobs net of any
losses. A bit sniffily it said ‘the proper domain for the debate about
the long-term role of renewable energy and energy efficiency is the wider
framework of energy and environmental policy, not a narrow analysis of
green job impacts.’
In reality, we can’t just chase for the optimal
number of green jobs. The choice of technology will be made mostly on the
basis of a range of other issues- although, as UKERC says, job quality is
also important if we want to move to a socially and environmentally
sustainable future, a point I have developed in a recent study. We need
good, sustainable jobs as part of a global ‘just transition’.
Renew Extra 14th May 2022
https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2022/05/renewables-energy-saving-create-most.html
The dangerous business of dismantling America’s aging nuclear plants
The NRC has given Holtec permission to pare back safety and security requirements at its plants, including security personnel, cybersecurity, emergency planning, terrorist attack drills and accident insurance, according to documents on the agency’s website.
“The NRC has not figured out a permanent solution” to nuclear waste………. “They are using Holtec as a Band-Aid.”
Accidents at New Jersey’s Oyster Creek power plant have spurred calls for stricter oversight of the burgeoning nuclear decommissioning industry Washington Post, By Douglas MacMillan PORKED RIVER, N.J. — The new owner took over the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in 2019, promising to dismantle one of the nation’s oldest nuclear plants at minimal cost and in record time. Then came a series of worrisome accidents.
The new owner took over the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in 2019, promising to dismantle one of the nation’s oldest nuclear plants at minimal cost and in record time. Then came a series of worrisome accidents.
One worker was struck by a 100-ton metal reactor dome. Another was splashed with radioactive water, according to internal incident reports and regulatory inspection reports reviewed by The Washington Post. Another worker drove an excavator into an electrical wire on his first day on the job, knocking out power to 31,000 homes and businesses on the New Jersey coast, according to a police report and the local power company.
All three incidents occurred on the watch of Holtec International, a nuclear equipment manufacturer based in Jupiter, Fla. Though the company until recently had little experience shutting down nuclear plants, Holtec has emerged as a leader in nuclear cleanup, a burgeoning field riding an expected wave of closures as licenses expire for the nation’s aging nuclear fleet.
Over the past three years, Holtec has purchased three plants in three states and expects to finalize a fourth this summer. The company is seeking to profitably dismantle them by replacing hundreds of veteran plant workers with smaller, less-costly crews of contractors and eliminating emergency planning measures, documents and interviews show. While no one has been seriously injured at Oyster Creek, the missteps are spurring calls for stronger government oversight of the entire cleanup industry.
In the nearly three years Holtec has owned Oyster Creek, regulators have documented at least nine violations of federal rules, including the contaminated water mishap, falsified weapons inspection reports and other unspecified security lapses. That’s at least as many as were found over the preceding 10 years at the plant, when it was owned by Exelon, one of the nation’s largest utility companies, according to The Post’s review of regulatory records.,…………………
Holtec is pioneering an experimental new business model. During the lifetime of America’s 133 nuclear reactors, ratepayers paid small fees on their monthly energy bills to fill decommissioning trust funds, intended to cover the eventual cost of deconstructing the plants. Trust funds for the country’s 94 operating and 14 nonoperating nuclear reactors now total about $86 billion, according to Callan, a San Francisco-based investment consulting firm.
After a reactor is dismantled and its site cleared, some of these trust funds must return any money left over to ratepayers. But others permit cleanup companies to keep any surplus as profit — creating incentives to cut costs at sites that house some of the most dangerous materials on the planet.
Even after reactors are shut down, long metal rods containing radioactive pellets — known as spent fuel — are stored steps away, in cooling pools and steel-and-concrete casks. Nuclear safety experts say that an industrial accident or a terrorist attack at any of these sites could result in a radiological release with severe impacts to workers and nearby residents, as well as to the environment.
(Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the independent federal agency tasked with overseeing safety at nuclear sites, conducts regular inspections during the decommissioning process. But state and local officials say the NRC has failed to safeguard the public from risks at shut-down plants, deferring too readily to companies like Holtec.
“The NRC is not doing their job,” said Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who has pushed the agency to adopt stricter regulations around plant decommissioning. “We need a guaranteed system that prioritizes communities and safety, and we don’t have that right now.”
The NRC’s leadership is divided over the role regulators should play. The agency was created in 1974, as the first generation of commercial reactors was going online, and its rules were mainly designed to safeguard the operation of active plants and nuclear-material sites. As reactors shut down, the NRC began reducing inspections and exempting plants from safety and security rules.
Last November, the NRC approved a new rule that would automatically qualify shut-down plants for looser safety and security restrictions.
Continue readingCOST OVERRUNS AT GEORGIA NUCLEAR REACTORS OFFER CAUTIONARY TALE
STATEMENT: COST OVERRUNS AT GEORGIA NUCLEAR REACTORS OFFER CAUTIONARY TALE https://uspirg.org/news/usf/statement-cost-overruns-georgia-nuclear-reactors-offer-cautionary-tale
Ratepayer funds would be better spent advancing efficiency, renewable energy
For immediate release
WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 2022 ATLANTA – THE ONLY NUCLEAR REACTORS UNDER CONSTRUCTION IN THE UNITED STATES ARE NOW PROJECTED TO COST MORE THAN $30 BILLION — AND THE PRICE TAG FOR PLANT VOGTLE NEAR AUGUSTA, GEORGIA, DOESN’T EVEN INCLUDE $3.68 BILLION THAT THE PROJECT’S ORIGINAL CONTRACTOR PAID TO THE OWNERS AFTER GOING BANKRUPT.
The $34 billion total is $20 billion more than the original cost estimate of $14 billion. The two reactors under construction are now more than five years behind schedule. Contractor delays, rework projects, the inability to complete tasks on time and the bankruptcy of reactor designer Westinghouse Electric Co. LLC have more than doubled the project’s costs.
Customers of Georgia Power, which owns 46% of the project, are already paying a fee that not only covers a portion of Vogtle’s financing costs, but also feeds the utility company’s profits on the project. The average residential Georgia Power customer will have paid more than $850 in such fees before the project ever delivers power to customers.
In response to the Plant Vogtle debacle, experts from Environment Georgia Research & Policy Center, U.S. PIRG Education Fund and Environment America Research & Policy Center released the following statements:
Environment Georgia Research & Policy Center’s State Director Jennette Gayer said:
“This exercise in futility is playing out and costing our neighbors big bucks while Georgia doesn’t even need nuclear power. Georgia has been the seventh-fastest growing state for solar power since 2011. Imagine where we would be now if we’d spent the $30 billion we’ve poured into Plant Vogtle into saving energy and getting more of it from truly clean sources. Even a decade ago, it was clear that nuclear power was too slow and too expensive to be our best response to the climate crisis, and that’s even more true today. “
U.S.PIRG Education Fund’s Consumer Watchdog Teresa Murray said:
“The cost overruns and delays at Plant Vogtle should be a cautionary tale to the rest of the country when it comes to building new nuclear reactors. If a project at my house cost more than double the budget and was a half-decade behind schedule, I’d never want to go through that again. Georgia ratepayers have already dished out hundreds of dollars for this misguided project, and electrons aren’t even flowing. Evidence shows that there are cheaper, cleaner and safer ways to keep the lights on than building new nuclear plants.”
Environment America Research & Policy Center’s Senior Director of the Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy Johanna Neumann said:
“Harnessing America’s renewable energy sources is more efficient and affordable than ever. Investing in energy efficiency remains the cheapest and fastest way to meet our energy needs, and America has vast untapped solar and wind potential. It’s time to stop throwing good money after bad. Regulators and policy makers should put in place goals and drive action toward powering our future with 100% renewable energy.”
Talen Energy subsidiary files for bankruptcy, company still plans nuclear data center, Company says
Cumulus nuclear data center project unaffected by ‘restructuring’ May 11, 2022 By Dan Swinhoe
Talen Energy, which is developing a data center campus at one of its nuclear power stations, has seen one of its subsidiaries file for bankruptcy.
This week Talen Energy Supply (TES), a unit of Talen Energy Corp (TEC) that holds several of its power plants, filed for Chapter 11 protection………………..
The company is aiming to reduce its $4.5 billion debt pile and bring in $1.65 billion in new equity from bondholders. TES has secured $1.76 billion of debtor-in-possession financing (the “DIP Facilities”) led by Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and RBC Capital Markets. The DIP Facilities are comprised of a $1 billion term loan, a $300 million revolving credit facility, and a $458 million letter of credit facility. The $1 billion term loan is being provided by an investor group of leading financial institutions.
The company said the process would “advance carbon-free data center growth initiatives, and maximize value to stakeholders.” https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/talen-energy-subsidiary-files-for-bankruptcy-company-still-plans-nuclear-data-center/
Westinghouse Electric’s parent company wants to put the nuclear company on the market
ANYA LITVAK, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1 May 22,
Brookfield Business Partners is looking to sell all of its interest in Cranberry-based nuclear icon Westinghouse Electric Company, four years after buying it out of bankruptcy.
The reason? Westinghouse has been so profitable, Brookfield has accomplished everything it wanted to, company executives told analysts last week. It’s time to move on, they said.
Brookfield Business Partners, an arm of the Canadian firm Brookfield Asset Management, owns a 44% interest in Westinghouse. The remaining 56% is owned by private equity funds that are managed by Brookfield.
If Westinghouse is such a profit machine, why not keep it and grow it in-house? That’s what one analyst wondered.
…………………….. Brookfield now wants to sell its entire interest in Westinghouse.
…………… “Today, Westinghouse is the only alternative to the Russian companies to supply fuel to Russian reactors outside of Russia,” Westinghouse’s CEO Patrick Fragman said. “And we are already in intense discussions to provide fuel to several operators of those Russian reactors in Eastern Europe, including in the EU.”
………………. Mr. Fragman also talked up the company’s eVinci microreactor, which he dubbed a “nuclear battery.”
French nuclear output down 20.2% in April
French nuclear output down 20.2% in April, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/french-nuclear-output-down-202-april-2022-05-11/PARIS, May 11 (Reuters) Reporting by Gus Trompiz, editing by Sybille de La Hamaide and Jane Merriman – Nuclear power generation at EDF’s (EDF.PA) French reactors in April fell by 20.2% year on year to 21.7 terawatt hours (TWh), the energy company said on Wednesday.
Total nuclear generation in France since the start of the year was 113.4 TWh, down 10.3% compared with 126.4 TWh for January-April 2021, EDF said on its website, citing reduced availability of the nuclear fleet that was mainly due to the discovery of stress corrosion at some sites
In Britain, EDF said its nuclear production last month rose 11.8% compared with April 2021 to 3.8 TWh, while cumulative output since the start of 2022 was up 9.4% versus the same period last year at 15.2 TWh.
$6 Billion to Keep Uncompetitive Nuclear Plants Alive
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act includes $6 billion to create a credit program to extend the life of existing nuclear power plants, the largest source of carbon-free energy in the nation. The first deadline to bid for credits is May 19.
Planetizen, May 11, 2022, By Irvin Dawid
“While the Infrastructure Bill is wide-reaching, it includes a number of nuclear energy-related provisions, including support for keeping nuclear power plants facing economic hardship operating and funding for the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program,” write Amy Roma & Stephanie Fishman for the law firm, Hogan Lovells, on November 15, 2021, the day President Joe Biden signed the bill.
An example of a projected funded through that demonstration program is TerraPower’s (a Bill Gates’ startup) Natrium reactor that will replace a coal plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming (see AP article, Jan. 18, and the Planetizen post when it received the funding from the Energy Department last November shortly after the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act became law.
Civil Nuclear Credit Program
In February, the Energy Department established a $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit Program to tackle the first issue – extending the life of existing nuclear plants, particularly those that are facing imminent closure largely for economic reasons, by “allowing owners or operators of commercial U.S. reactors to apply for certification and competitively bid on credits to help support their continued operations,” according to their press release on Feb. 11………………………..
Let the Bidding Begin
Two months later, the Energy Department announced that it was seeking applications for the new program.
“The guidance published today directs owners or operators of nuclear power reactors that are expected to shut down due to economic circumstances on how to apply for funding to avoid premature closure,” states their press release on April 19.
The credit program “aims to give a financial lifeline to plants facing imminent shutdown for economic reasons,” writes Evan Halper for The Washington Post (source article) on April 19.
The first round of credits are set aside for plants that have already announced plans to close. There are at least two such operations in the United States: Diablo Canyon in California and Palisades in [Covert] Michigan.
But the nation still has a sizable nuclear fleet, with 55 plants in 28 states. Most of them have at least two reactors. Many of them have fallen under financial hardship as the prices of renewable energy and natural gas dropped in recent years.
The Office of Nuclear Energy has set May 19 as the deadline for applications
for the first cycle of civil nuclear credit awards……………………………. https://www.planetizen.com/news/2022/05/117103-6-billion-keep-uncompetitive-nuclear-plants-alive
US nuclear power: Status, prospects, and climate implications
that final abdication can’t rescue nuclear power, which stumbles33 even in countries with impotent regulators and suppressed public participation. In the end, physics and human fallibility win. History teaches that lax regulation ultimately causes confidence-shattering mishaps, so gutting safety rules is simply a deferred-assisted-suicide pact.
Science Direct, Amory B.Lovins, Stanford University, USA The Electricity Journal, Volume 35, Issue 4, May 2022,
Abstract
Nuclear power is being intensively promoted and increasingly subsidized in both old and potential new forms. Yet it is simultaneously suffering a global slow-motion commercial collapse due to intrinsically poor economics. This summary in a US context documents both trends, emphasizing the absence of an operational need and of a business or climate case.
In 2020, the world added1 5.521 GW (billion watts) of nuclear generating capacity—just above the 5.491 GW2 of lithium-ion batteries added to power grids. The average reactor was then 29 years old—39 in the United States, whose fleet is the world’s largest—so it’s not surprising that in 2020, maintenance or upgrade costs, safety concerns, and often simple operational uncompetitiveness caused owners worldwide to close 5.165 GW. The net nuclear capacity addition was thus the difference, 0.356 GW. Yet in the same year, the world added3 278.3 GW of renewables (or 257 GW without hydropower)—782× as much. Adjusted for relative US 2020 average capacity factors4, renewables’ net additions in 2020 thus raised the world’s annual carbon-free electricity supply by ~232× as much as nuclear power’s net additions did. That is, nuclear net growth increased the world’s carbon-free power supply in all of 2020 only as much as renewable power growth did every ~38 hours. Renewables also receive5 ~10–20 times more financial capital—mostly voluntary private investments—while nuclear investments used mainly tax revenues or capital conscripted from customers. These ratios look set to continue or strengthen6. Indeed, in 2021, world nuclear capacity fell by 1.57 or 2.48 GW—the seventh annual drop in 13 years9—while renewables were expected to add ~290 GW10.
In a normal industry, such market performance, let alone dismal economics (below), might dampen enthusiasm. Yet the nuclear industry’s immense lobbying and marketing power continues to yield at least tens of billions of dollars in annual public subsidies, still rapidly rising.
This reflects broad bipartisan support among US and many overseas political leaders (strong nuclear advocates lead seven of the ten nations with the biggest economies)—often contrary to their citizens’ preferences and, as we’ll see, to the goal of stabilizing the Earth’s climate. To explore this seeming paradox, here is my frank personal impression of nuclear power’s status, competitive landscape, operational status, prospects, and climate implications in the United States.
1. Status
When nuclear power emerged, from the mid-1950s through the 1960s, US utilities—vertically integrated, three-fourths private, technically and culturally conservative—didn’t want it. Yet powerful Federal actors offered heavily subsidized fuel and let them own it, largely relieved them of accident liability, and ultimately tempted and coerced them into a vast nuclear building spree, under implicit threat of displacing them with Federal nuclear utilities11………………….
As construction costs and durations relentlessly rose12, regulators and customers were assured their initial pain would usher in decades of low-cost generation. This too proved false. Some plants failed early, others’ operating costs rose, and decades later, owners are demanding huge new subsidies to keep running. After these scarifying experiences, capital markets are disinclined to invest in nuclear newbuild in the US or elsewhere. Contrary to a widely cultivated myth, the successive accidents (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi) widely blamed for this rejection all occurred after the business case and investor confidence had collapsed13……
………………….The US supply chain to sustain the 93 existing reactors persists, more or less, but of the four original US reactor vendors, all have merged (GE with Hitachi), exited, or failed, most recently Westinghouse19—bought by Toshiba, bankrupted20 by its new US projects, then restructured by a Canadian private-equity partnership (which recently considered selling it21) to maintain the plants it once built. Export markets have proven elusive: as Siemens’ power engineering CEO foresaw in 199122, “The countries that can still afford our nuclear plants won’t need the electricity, and the countries that will need the electricity won’t be able to afford the reactors.” Yet strong government promotion persists…………… Market appetite for big new reactors is anemic overseas and zero at home—and only for as many smaller units as taxpayers will largely or wholly pay for……………….
US public acceptance of nuclear power fluctuates, and depends strongly on how, by whom, and to whom the question is put. Nuclear advocates reported an even split in the 2019 Gallup Poll25 after long and intensive publicity campaigns, though renewables attract far larger and more consistent support…………………..
After decades of intense political pressure, industry capture26 of US nuclear safety and security regulation appears complete, with rules and processes arranged to the operators’ liking. The skill and integrity of some US Nuclear Regulatory Commission technical experts are commendable, but on major matters, their role is only to advise, not decide. ……………… new “reforms” are taking a singularly dangerous turn: as I summarized elsewhere29,
SMRs’ [Small Modular Reactors’] novel safety30 and proliferation31 issues threaten threadbare schedules and budgets, so promoters are attacking bedrock safety regulations. . NRC’s proposed Part 5332 would perfect long-evolving regulatory capture—shifting its expert staff’s end-to-end process from specific prescriptive standards, rigorous quality control, and verified technical performance to unsupported claims, proprietary data, and political appointees’ subjective risk estimates.
Continue readingDiseconomics and other factors mean that small nuclear reactors are duds
Such awkward realities won’t stop determined lobbyists and legislators from showering tax funds on SMR developers, seen as the industry’s last hope of revival (at least for now). With little private capital at stake, taxpayers bearing most of the cost, and customers bearing the cost-overrun and performance risks190 (as they did in the similarly structured WPPSS nuclear fiasco four decades ago), some SMRs may get built. I expect they’ll fail for the same fundamental reasons as their predecessors, then be quickly forgotten as marketers substitute the next shiny object.
A lifetime of such disappointments has not yet induced sobriety. As long as the industry can fund potent lobbying that leverages orders of magnitude more federal funding, the party will carry on.
US nuclear power: Status, prospects, and climate implications, Science Direct, Amory B.Lovins, Stanford University, USA The Electricity Journal, Volume 35, Issue 4, May 2022,
”…………………………………………………….. Advanced” or “Small Modular Reactors,” SMRs174, seek to revive and improve concepts generally tried and rejected decades ago due to economic175, technical176, safety177, or proliferation178 flaws179. BNEF estimates that early SMRs might generate at ~10× current solar prices, falling by severalfold after tens of GW were built, but not by enough to come anywhere near competing. Despite strong Federal support, proposed projects are challenged to find enough customers180 and markets181. Developers and nations are also pursuing >50 diverse designs—a repeatedly reproven failure condition.
SMRs’ basic economics are worse than meets the eye, because their goalposts keep receding. Reactors are built big because, for physics reasons, they don’t scale down well. Small reactors, say their more thoughtful advocates, will produce electricity initially about twice as costly as today’s big ones, which in turn, as noted earlier, are ~3–13× costlier per MWh than modern renewables (let alone efficiency). But those renewables will get another ~2× cheaper (say BNEF and NREL) by the time SMRs could be tested and start to scale toward the mass production that’s supposed to cut their costs. High volume cannot possibly cut SMRs’ costs by 2 × (3 to 13) × 2-fold, or ~12× to ~52×.
Indeed, SMRs couldn’t compete even if the steam they produce to turn the turbine were free. Why not? In big light-water reactors, ~78–87% of the prohibitive capital cost buys non-nuclear components like the turbine, generator, heat sink, switchyard, and controls. Thus even if the nuclear island were free and a shared non-nuclear remainder were still at GW scale so it didn’t cost more per unit182, the whole SMR complex would still be manyfold out of the money.
SMRs are also too late. Despite streamlined (if not premature) licensing and many billions in Federal funding commitments, the first SMR module delivery isn’t expected until 2029. That’s in the same smaller-LWR project that just lost over half its subscribed sales as customers considered cost, timing, and risk183, and may lose the rest if they read a soberly scathing 2022 critique184. That analysis found that the vendor claims very low financial and performance risks but opaquely imposes them all on the customers. The first “advanced” reactors (a sodium-cooled fast reactor and a high-temperature gas reactor), ambitiously skipping over prototypes, are hoped by some advocates to start up in 2027–28. DOE in 2017 rosily assessed that if such initial projects succeeded, a first commercial demonstrator would then take another 6–8 years’ construction and 5 years’ operation before commercial orders, implying commercial generation at earliest in the late 2030s, more plausibly in the 2040s. But the US Administration plans to decarbonize the grid with renewables by 2035, preëmpting SMRs’ climate mission185.
An additional challenge would be siting new SMRs or clusters of them (which cuts cost but means that a problem with one SMR can affect, or block access to, others at the same site, as was predicted and experienced at Fukushima Daiichi). It looks harder to secure numerous sites and offtake agreements than a few. It would take roughly 50 SMR orders to justify building a factory to start capturing economies of production scale, and hundreds or thousands of SMRs to start seeing meaningful, though inadequate, cost reductions. A study assuming high electricity demand and cheap SMRs estimated a US need for just 350 SMRs by 2050186; some advocates expect far more. It’s hard to imagine how dozens of States and hundreds of localities could quickly approve those sites, especially given internal NRC dissension on basic SMR safety187 and the obvious financial risks188.
No credible path could deploy enough SMR capacity to replace inevitably retiring reactors timely and produce significant additional output by then—but efficiency and renewables could readily do that and more, based on their deployment rates and price behaviors observed in the US and global marketplace. For example189, through 2020, CAISO (wholesale power manager for a seventh of the US economy) reported 120 GW of renewables and storage in its interconnection queue, plus 158 GW in the non-ISO West; just solar-paired-with-storage projects in CAISO rose to over 71 GW by 5 Jan 2022, with the paired solar totaling nearly 64 GW—all three orders of magnitude more than the first 77-MW NuScale module hoped to enter service many years later.
Such awkward realities won’t stop determined lobbyists and legislators from showering tax funds on SMR developers, seen as the industry’s last hope of revival (at least for now). With little private capital at stake, taxpayers bearing most of the cost, and customers bearing the cost-overrun and performance risks190 (as they did in the similarly structured WPPSS nuclear fiasco four decades ago), some SMRs may get built. I expect they’ll fail for the same fundamental reasons as their predecessors, then be quickly forgotten as marketers substitute the next shiny object.
A lifetime of such disappointments has not yet induced sobriety. As long as the industry can fund potent lobbying that leverages orders of magnitude more federal funding, the party will carry on. But where does its seemingly perpetual disappointment leave the Earth’s imperiled climate?…………………………. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040619022000483
Fear in Europe, of nuclear war causes soaring demand for nuclear bunkers
 | |||
Demand for Nuclear Bunkers Soars as Russia-Ukraine War Fuels Fear in Europe.
NewsWeek, BY NATALIE COLAROSSI 4/30/22 Companies across Europe are reporting a sharp rise in demand for bomb shelters and bunkers as citizens fear Russia may soon use nuclear weapons in the ongoing war with Ukraine.
Residents in Germany, Switzerland, France and the U.K. have increasingly been seeking information about building and buying protective shelters amid fears that the war could spread further into Europe, several companies recently told The Telegraph. Russia has repeatedly warned the West not to interfere in its invasion of Ukraine, and has alluded to the possibility of using nuclear weapons if tensions further escalate.
Following two months of bloody fighting in Ukraine, Europeans—and even some Americans—are fearful that Russian President Vladimir Putin could soon target other nations with deadly weapons…………………………….. https://www.newsweek.com/demand-nuclear-bunkers-soars-russia-ukraine-war-fuels-fear-europe-1702467
Poor outlook for Joe Biden’s $6 billion effort to keep old nuclear reactors going
Biden’s $6B nuclear plan hits ’24th hour’ roadblock
By Peter Behr, Hannah Northey | 04/28/2022 The Biden administration’s $6 billion effort to keep struggling nuclear plants operating is facing a barrier in Michigan and California.
A top energy executive yesterday confirmed that one of the first plants poised to qualify for financial support under the Energy Department’s newly unveiled lifeline — Michigan’s Palisades plant — remains on schedule to close May 31, throwing the Midwestern state’s climate goals into question.
Leo Denault, CEO of Entergy Corp., owner of the Palisades plant, told security analysts yesterday that a buyer who succeeded in acquiring the generator would also bear refueling costs and other expenses.
“We will work with any qualified party,” he said. But he added, “I do want to be very clear. Entergy is exiting the merchant nuclear business. The plant will have to stop operating in May. We’ll be out of fuel.”………………….
Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the Diablo Canyon owner, has also said the DOE offer does not change its intention to close the California facility. Diablo Canyon’s reactors 1 and 2 have planned closing dates of November 2024 and August 2025, respectively……….
A spokesperson for DOE said yesterday they were unable to speak about the unique challenges and closure decisions facing various nuclear plants, nor could they provide a precise number of struggling plants potentially eligible for financial assistance…………………………… https://www.eenews.net/articles/bidens-6b-nuclear-plan-hits-24th-hour-roadblock/
Effort to stop banks financing nuclear weapons industry
PNC shareholders defeat proposal on nuclear weapons lending for second time
PATRICIA SABATINI, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 27 Apr 22,
Like the threat of nuclear war, the “Stop Banking the Bomb” campaign aimed at getting banks to stop financing companies involved in the nuclear weapons industry refuses to go away.
For the second year in a row, a proposal backed by a group opposed to such financing was defeated at PNC Financial Services Group’s annual shareholders meeting Wednesday.
Presented by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood in New York, the proposal asked that Pittsburgh-based PNC issue a report on the risks associated with lending to companies involved in making nuclear weapons.
The campaign has been targeting the bank for several years, demonstrating outside of PNC offices and shareholder meetings.
“PNC faces significant legal, financial and reputational risks if it continues to be linked to the nuclear weapons industry,” according to the proposal.
In addition, it said, the bank has a moral responsibility to address “adverse human rights impacts that it may cause, contribute to, or be directly linked to its business.”
PNC’s board recommended voting against the proposal, saying a review of the bank’s lending business concluded it did not pose a “material credit, legal or reputational risk to PNC,” and was properly vetted for potential environmental and human rights risks……………………
The proposal was defeated by a majority of shareholders. The exact vote count was not immediately available. ………………. https://www.post-gazette.com/business/pittsburgh-company-news/2022/04/27/pnc-financial-services-group-shareholders-nuclear-weapons-lending-banking-bomb/stories/202204270137
Nuclear weapons manufacturers see stock prices rise
Nuclear weapons manufacturers see stock prices rise amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
CNBC, MON, APR 25 2022 Charlotte Morabito @IN/CHARLOTTEMORABITO/ @MORABITOCM Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many defense stocks have skyrocketed. Defense companies secure billions of dollars every year from government contracts to maintain and construct nuclear weapons.A March 2022 analyst note from Citi predicts that the “defense [sector] is likely to be increasingly seen as a necessity that facilitates ESG as an enterprise, as well as maintaining peace, stability and other social goods.”
Many of these companies like Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are publicly traded, which means they have millions of shareholders and investors.
“We’ve seen even the biggest defense contractors in the world will change their business with pressure from the investment community,” said Susi Snyder, financial sector coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. “And that pressure comes from everyday investors.”
The Congressional Budget Office projects that the U.S. government could spend $634 billion between 2021 and 2030 on nuclear forces. This is a $140 billion increase from the previous estimate of $494 billion between 2019 and 2028.
…………. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/25/nuclear-weapons-makers-russian-ukraine-war.html
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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