Its also a function of the capacity factor, a windmill or solar farm needs a cable taking its *peak* capacity to where its needed, and windmills are nowhere near urban centres. That cable is only used on average to 30% capacity with wind, and 10% with solar.
With a fossil station its built to run at full capacity all the time, and is sited reasonably near urban centres. Renewables waste copper and aluminium as well as cincrete.
Nope, The spinning mass is built in!
Exactly. Even if a gas power station runs 30% of the time it still needs to be manned and maintained. It just has to charge more to cover the lost income.
I see we are running a lot of wood, coal, hydro and carbon intensive OCGT tonight as wind and solar have completely collapsed.
Not thse days. Think of Battersea, Bankside and many other former town centre power stations. All the ones in the last few decades have been built well away from town centrea and National Grid move their utput to where it's needed.
The big coal builds in the 60s and 70s were in places like the Trent Valley, Yorkshire, Merseyside. Both Hartlepool and Heysham nukes are in (former) industrial centres. AFAIK most if not all of the CCGTs are sited to minimise transmission distances.
OTOH they are not *wasting* it, unlike the winmills which are producing a massive 1GW (3%) of demand as I type. Sometimes they produce 10GW, so we have a 10GW cable not doing much. And the tubines themselves, too. How much did that plant all cost? £20B, £30B, anyone know? And all it's doing is producing a misaerable 1GW. What a waste of society's resources.
People keep saying that, but the fact is such a thing does not yet exist at the scale required. Saying we need it doesn't make it a thing.
I need to win the lottery, but it ain't happening!
If energy storage (battery) technology had advanced as much as computing, data storage and networking technology, we would be flying supersonic passenger jets on a couple of D-cells by now. It hasn't. In fact, it hasn't really advanced that much at all. Yes, current batteries are rather better then older ones, but only by a multiplier, not by orders of magnitude. A lot of the improvements in battery life (e.g. in smartphones) comes from more efficient usage, rather than increased capacity. That doesn't help when real energy is required, for electric cars, domestic heating/cooking or industry.
Extraction from seawater has always been economic.Just more expensive than processing yellowcake.
From memory a 600MW reactor needs 50 tons of uranium a year, in which iyt will generate 600,000 x 24 x 365 units of electricity.
5,256,000,000
Uranium oxide (yellowcake) was about $27/lb last time I looked. So 50 tons is $27x2240x50 = $3,024,000
At a sane exchange rate - say $1.2= £1, that is £2.52 m on raw yellow cake a year.
So the cost of raw uranium is £2,520,000/5,256,000,000 = £0.000479452
or .04p per unit.
Uranium from seawater is estimated to be about ten times more expensive at £250 per lb. - so that would raise the electricity cost by .36p per unit assuming processing cost into fuel rods were similar.
Reprocessing existing rods is cheaper than that. I believe the raw cost of uranium or plutonium there, assuming the used rods are 'free' again my memory is rusty but I think its about 20% more expensive than raw yellowcake.
So we could progress from raw uranium, to reprocessed uranium, to seawater and still only raise electricity costs slightly.
For more information I think EDF reckon that a processed fuel rod represents about 15% of the cost of the electricity, so something like
0.6p a unit.
Raw uranium is not the problem. neither is really tie cost of making fuel rods. The bulk of the cost of nuclear comes from the money used to build it. 2/3rds of which is in jumping regulatory and planning hoops that could be legislated away.
Hinkley point, which was supposed to cost £9bn is now going to cost £21bn.
The amount of electricity it will produce is 3,000,000 x 24 x 365 =
26,280,000,000 units which at a notional 9p contract for difference represents an annual income of £2.3652 bn
But that is around 11.2% of capital cost, barely enough to repay the interest (notional 7.5%)....and the thing will only last for 60 years so that is another £350m a year in depreciation....
You can see at a stroke why the cost of uranium is almost completely irrelevant.
And why when interest rates went through the roof, nuclear build stopped, and why in these days of almost zero rates and putative high unemployment, throwing government money at reactors would make massive sense.
And why also, in terms of a commercial bind, a return of even 3.5% that was *guaranteed* not to be arbitrarily closed by a future government pandering to Greens, would not be a bad gilt edged investment for your pension fund. Or indeed for state pensions.
A brexited government would be in a perfect place post Covid, to invest mightily in new nuclear and rewrite te regulations - or use SMRS - to slash the build cost, and fund the state pension out of future electricity prices.
It is simply a way to meet regulations once per design, rather than once per reactor build. The case for SMRs is not technical.,it is purely regulatory. Because 2/3rds of reactor cost is in paperwork and meetings and box ticking, not in actually pouring concrete or welding steel.
The theory is that approved factory built reactors could be mass produced,. popped on the back of trucks and transported to site, craned into concrete containment vessels, and connected up to mass produced approved control panels and boilers, and turbines.
The inspected for installation compliance, and fired up.
Rubbish. ALL of the attraction of wind is that it has been made utterly risk-free by massive subsidy. And a total green light to drive a horse and cart through planning, environmental, health and safety regulations.
The North sea farm cost about the same as a nuclear power station would cost, without all the regulatory hoops - £3bn.
It has no added on decommissioning costs, is not required to pay for the cost of grid extensions or maintaining battery 'inertia; or gas plant backup, in readiness.
It is a gold plated government backed gilt edged license to print money.
Coal gas was produced on demand by - er - burning coal. It was never stored for months. A typical gasometer was a towns daytime supply, replenished overnight by burning more coal.
Uranium lasts for billions of years and is far more suited to the task of storing energy.
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