Vogtle Nuclear Plant 3-4 Costs More than Double

Subtitle: Costs Keep Rising - at $29 Billion Thus Far

The twin-reactor Vogtle nuclear plant under construction in Georgia is a frequent topic here on SLB (see articles here, here, here, here, and here )   Over the years, the plant's cost to construct (final cost estimate) has progressed from $14 billion to $17 then $21 billion.   Today's news article from Reuters (see link)  has the latest estimate at $29 billion - and the plant is still far from completion.    The Reuters article from 6/15/2017, "Group says Georgia nuclear plant costs rise to $29 billion,"  references a watchdog group Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.  

Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant - red dirt is new construction
photo - Wiki Commons by Charles C. Watson Jr.

That's for 2200 MW output; the $29 billion is more than double the initial estimate of $14 billion.

Note the pattern the nuclear industry uses over and over:  lowball the initial estimate to obtain approval to build.  Blame the contractor, designer, suppliers, and regulators for cost overruns.  Beg the PUC for money to finish the plant.  Charge the customers for all the costs.


Repeat.

The Vogtle plant uses the infamous Westinghouse design known as the AP-1000, a pressurized-water reactor design that is supposedly cheaper, safer, and much faster to build than previous designs.   Westinghouse, as is well-known, recently filed for bankruptcy due to huge losses in the nuclear plant business.    This design was one of the ones certified by the US NRC that is "off-the-shelf," that is, NOT a unique design that requires lengthy study to obtain NRC certification.  There are four such AP-1000 reactors under construction in the US, two at Vogtle as already stated, and two more at the Summer plant in South Carolina.  A few others with slight modifications were built, or are under construction in China. 

Nuclear cheerleaders are quite fond of stating that modern nuclear plants are built for $4000 per kW of electrical output.  The present estimate of $29 billion and 2200 MW yields a cost per kW of $13,180.  

It is also notable that the AP-1000 is supposed to be built in modules, so that multiple areas can be built on simultaneously.  Then, the finished modules are simply fitted into place.   That construction technique actually was used in the construction of Liberty Ships in World War 2, and it did shorten the construction time for the ships.    It obviously is not working for the nuclear plants. 

The sad saga of the Vogtle nuclear plant continues.   With three years remaining before startup, there is plenty of time for more problems to occur, more delays, more costs, and even then who knows if the plant will be certified as safe to start up and operate.  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California
copyright (c) 2017 by Roger Sowell - all rights reserved

Topics and general links:

Nuclear Power Plants.......here
Climate Change................here  and here
Fresh Water......................here
Engineering......................here  and here
Free Speech.................... here

Renewable Energy...........here   

NRC and DOE to Hold Third Advanced Reactor Workshop

Subtitle: With BWR and PWR Failures; Now Vendors Grasping Desperately

From the NRC news site for April, 2017, this item 17-016 (see link) is excerpted below   

"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Energy are continuing their joint
workshop series on innovative reactor technologies, April 25-26, in Bethesda, Md.
“We are encouraging interested parties to continue discussing the most efficient and effective path forward to safely develop and deploy advanced reactors in the United States,” said Vonna Ordaz, acting director of the NRC’s Office of New Reactors. “We expect to discuss topics such as modeling and testing innovative technologies, as well as how vendors might approach getting their designs approved for U.S. use.”

"The NRC defines advanced reactors as those technologies using something other than water to cool the reactor core. The NRC is currently discussing one such advanced design with a vendor considering applying for design certification. The NRC remains available for early-stage discussion with other potential advanced reactor vendors." -- end excerpt

Sowell Comments

The NRC reviews and approves nuclear reactor designs only on the issue of safety; it does not concern itself with costs to design, to construct, to operate, to refuel, to repair, to perform maintenance, nor to decommission.  These advanced reactors, as NRC defines them, would include reactors that use things such as molten salts, liquid sodium, helium, and supercritical CO2 as the primary coolant.  

What is most interesting is the question: "Why even consider advanced reactors when existing nuclear power plant designs are supposedly the safest, most reliable, and cheapest form of electricity on the planet?"  That question is, of course, posed in jest by me but the claims are stated loudly and often by the nuclear proponents.   The facts are quite the opposite, as shown in the 30-article series on SLB "Truth About Nuclear Power."  (TANP)  see link

Just on the construction cost basis, nuclear power plants that use the PWR (pressurized water reactor) technology such as Westinghouse AP-1000 cost 9 to 10 times as much for the same output, compared to natural gas-fired CCGT (combined cycle gas turbine) plants. 

Operating costs on a $/MWh basis are also higher or about the same for PWR plants, when compared to the CCGT plants.  

Load-following is quite easy and very safe for CCGT plants, but a PWR nuclear reactor has great difficulty in adjusting load.  Operating at reduced rates to follow the load requires the nuclear plant to increase the sales price of electricity to obtain a constant revenue stream.  PWR plants are already too costly to operate, as evidenced by the many shutdowns in the US. Increased operating costs to load-follow make a bad situation even worse.  

Given all the above, and those points to not include any safety nor decommissioning costs, perhaps it is no wonder that nuclear designers are back at the drawing board, scratching out new designs in an attempt to overcome the failures of BWR and PWR reactors. 

Two of the new technologies are discussed in the TANP series, with thorium -powered molten salts, and gas-cooled high-temperature reactors in Articles 28 and 29, respectively. 

Perhaps this time, some creative nuclear designer will find a way to make nuclear power safe, cheap, and reliable.   It is instructive to remember that if all power plants were nuclear-powered, the changing loads on the grid require that the plants run at approximately 50 to 60 percent on an annual average basis.   Minimum loads occur at night in the Spring and Fall seasons, and typically reach approximately one-third to one-fourth of maximum or peak load.   Peak load typically occurs in mid-afternoon on a late Summer day.    However, some grids have peak loads in the Winter as heating demands are greatest.    These issues are discussed in some detail in Article 2 of TANP (see link)  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California
copyright (c) 2017 by Roger Sowell - all rights reserved

Topics and general links:

Nuclear Power Plants.......here
Climate Change................here  and here
Fresh Water......................here
Engineering......................here  and here
Free Speech.................... here

Renewable Energy...........here 

NuScale Small Modular Reactor Begins Safety Certification

The nuclear cheerleaders should be cheering like mad over this one:  see link.  That's a welcome thing in their world, given the recent disastrous news of Westinghouse Electric filing for bankruptcy earlier this week.  see link to SLB article 

NRC To Begin Full Certification Review of NuScale Small Modular Reactor

“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has docketed for review NuScale Power LLC’s
application to certify the company’s small modular reactor design for use in the United States.

“The company submitted its application Jan. 12 for the design, in which the reactor building holds 12 co-located pressurized-water reactor modules for a total output of 600 MWe. NuScale is the first company to submit a small modular reactor (SMR) design for certification. SMR designs seek to meet NRC safety requirements through smaller reactor cores and passive safety features. The NRC, after completing its acceptance review, has concluded NuScale’s application is complete enough for a full design certification review. The staff soon will provide a review schedule.

“The NRC’s certification process determines whether a reactor design meets U.S. safety
requirements. Companies can then reference a certified design when applying for a Combined License to build and operate a reactor in the United States. The NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards provides input on design certification reviews. If issued, certifications are valid for 15 years.

“The NRC has most recently certified Westinghouse’s AP1000 and GE-Hitachi’s Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor designs.”

Sowell Commentary

The certification process evaluates only the safety aspects and has zero concern over economics, costs to construct, time to construct, costs to operate, reliability or onstream factor, costs to decommission, etc. SMRs have zero chance of producing economically attractive electricity.  An earlier article on SLB see link discussed the economics of SMRs, and concluded they must have very short construction times to have any advantage over conventional, large (1000 MWe or greater) plants.  

Excerpts from that earlier SLB article include:

"The analysis for two 600 MW plants shows construction must be finished within 5.5 years to break even with the costs to build a 1200 MW plant.  Similarly, for SMRs of 300 MW, where four plants would be required to produce 1200 MW of power, and 200 MW, where six plants would be required.  The results are as follows.  The 300 MW plants must be constructed in 4 years to have zero savings, with any savings produced only if construction time is 2 or 3 years.  The 200 MW plants must be constructed in 2.1 years to have zero savings over the cathedral design.    It seems highly unlikely that small, modular plants can be built on such short timescales."  (end excerpt)

The NuScale design purports to have twelve, 50 MWe reactors in the same containment building to produce 600 MW electricity.  From the NRC documents filed by NuScale, 

"A NuScale Power Module (NPM). . . is a collection of systems, sub-systems, and components that together constitute a modularized, movable, nuclear steam supply system (NSSS). The NPM is composed of a reactor core, a pressurizer, and two steam generators integrated within a reactor pressure vessel (RPV) and housed in a compact steel containment vessel.

"The NuScale advanced small modular reactor plant design is scalable, such that from one (1) to twelve (12) NPMs operate within a single Reactor Building."

So, the question is, can this design result in lower construction costs and operating costs compared to, e.g. AP-1000?   There are orders of magnitude more equipment.  For 1100 MW output, the AP-1000 has one reactor, while the NuScale has 22.  Similarly, the AP-1000 has 2 steam generators, and NuScale has 44.  The amount of piping to connect all that equipment is magnitudes greater for NuScale.  That means many more welds, pipe supports, which greatly increases costs. 

As is the usual case with nuclear, it will be years and years before anyone knows the answers based on an actual, operating plant.  The design certification review will require some years.  Finding a suitable utility to invest will require more time, then fabrication and construction will require more years.  

Only then will we truly know how much SMR-produced electricity costs.   My bet is it will be twice or three times the cost of renewable-based electricity with grid-following storage technology. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California

copyright (c) 2017 by Roger Sowell - all rights reserved

Topics and general links:

Nuclear Power Plants.......here
Climate Change................here  and here
Fresh Water......................here
Engineering......................here  and here
Free Speech.................... here

Renewable Energy...........here  

Modular Nuclear Reactor Vendors Cut Funding

Modular reactor developer scales back 

B& W cuts development, funding by 90 percent due to lack of customers and lack of investors.  (Imagine that...)  "Babcock & Wilcox will slash its spending on the mPower

Westinghouse SMR
(small modular reactor) Concept
source: NRC

small modular reactor project, having failed to find customers or investors."  

"With the DoE arrangement now one year old, B&W hoped to have secured a number of utility customers for the small reactor as well as investors keen to take a majority share in its development. Spokesperson Aimee Mills told World Nuclear News that B&W had been unsuccessful in these aims, "There was interest from customers and interest from investors, but none have signed on the dotted line." "

Also, from the same article:   "In February this year (2014) Westinghouse announced it would scale back its development of its 225 MWe small modular reactor design, having lost out in the DoE competition."  see link from World Nuclear News, 4/14/14 

As posted earlier on SLB, small, modular nuclear reactors have little chance (zero, actually) of competing in the market due to the adverse effects of economy of scale (it's more expensive to make smaller plants) that outweigh any benefits from modularized construction.  see link to earlier SLB article. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California