Leon Hirth is a professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.
Shared by Leon Hirth on Twitter/X:
There is lots of optimism on Twitter when it comes to SMRs. Markets don’t share the enthusiasm. The one traded company that develops SMRs, NuScale Power, has lost 60% of its value within a year.
It’s worth noting that in the U.S., and everywhere else in the world, nuclear policy relies heavily on subsidies to be economically competitive. Starting next year, utilities operating nuclear facilities in the U.S. can qualify for a tax credit of $15 per megawatt-hour — a break that could be worth up to $30 billion for the industry as a whole. However, even these giveaways won’t reduce the projected costs of SMR-generated electricity to anywhere near the going prices of wind and solar power.
In the U.S., the only SMR developer with a design approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is NuScale, which plans to deploy six modules at one site in Idaho that will together generate less electricity than a smallish standard nuclear reactor. So far, however, NuScale has yet to lay a single brick. Its biggest win to date is securing $4 billion in federal tax subsidies. In January of this year, NuScale announced plans to sell electricity not at $58 per megawatt-hour, as originally pledged, but at $89 per megawatt-hour, citing higher than anticipated construction costs. The new projection is nearly twice the average global cost of utility-scale solar and onshore wind, according to calculations by BloombergNEF. And without the government subsidies, NuScale’s price tag would be that much higher.
In fact, there’s a fair chance that not a single NuScale SMR will ever be built: The company has said it will not begin construction until 80 percent of its expected generation capacity is subscribed, and currently buyers have signed up for less than a quarter of the plant’s capacity.
Gates’s TerraPower has an even longer way to go, although it too is cashing in on subsidies. The U.S. Department of Energy has pledged up to $2 billion in matching funds to construct a demonstration plant in Wyoming. Yet TerraPower recently announced it’s facing delays of at least two years because of difficulties securing uranium fuel from its lone supplier: Russia.
In 2020, China installed 72 GW of wind and 48 GW of solar.
In 2022, China installed 37 GW of wind and 87 GW of solar.
In just the first two months of 2023, they installed 20 GW of solar.
I used generating capacity factors to compare the 72 GW of wind and 48 GW of solar China installed in 2020, with nuclear on a level playing field. In other words adjusted for the intermittency of PV solar and wind.
And the numbers I used are more generous to nuclear.
The 72 GW of wind is equivalent to building 21 single reactor nuclear plants of typical 1 GW generating capacity IN ONE YEAR.
The 48 GW of solar is equivalent to building 8 such nuclear plants IN ONE YEAR.
Total equivalency of building 29 such nuclear plants IN ONE YEAR:
And for 2022, it’s almost the same, equivalency of 26 such nukes built in one year.
So much for the “solar and wind are pixie dust” trope.
I used 100% capacity factor for nuclear, which is actually 90-95%, 30% for wind, and 18% for PV solar
Feel free to correct anything here.
72GW of wind isn’t really equivalent to 21GW nuclear. If it was built with enough storage and transmission to get through an average wind lull, it would be closer, but you’d still have above-average length low-power periods, and they’re likely to get longer and more common. That’s been shown here several times by Dr Jennifer Francis, and in practice by the near month-long doldrum for European wind in 2021. ‘In 2020, wind energy accounted for 18 percent of the U.K.’s power in total. But the following year, things were much different, thanks to an ongoing wind drought. By September 2021, the U.K.’s energy usage was only made up of 2 percent wind energy.’ https://www.greenmatters.com/news/wind-drought#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20wind%20speeds%20were,society's%20ability%20to%20generate%20power.
In the US, wind turbines usually take a 30% Production Tax Credit, which covers the first ten years of output. Then they install new blades, and usually generators/hub, for another 10 year credit. Shortly after that they reach End Of Life. Reactors are, or should be, licenced to eighty years. They will now be getting zero emissions tax credits, but should also get capacity payments. Those have in the past been given to gas turbines, sometimes for keeping fuel oil on site for emergencies. The reactors have a far better record for staying on during crises than gas does – or anything else.
In his latest Substack piece, Robert Bryce is claiming that solar gets 200 times more in subsidies than nuclear. I’m sure there’s lots of ways both sides can fudge these numbers, but Bryce does show his calculations:
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/solar-energy-is-getting-200-times?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=630873&post_id=137282468&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=kv1q8&utm_medium=email
I wonder if the nuclear subsidies are to existing nuclear plants, while the solar subsidies are mostly for new capacity
And BTW, there is ZERO evidence that offshore wind killed any whales. Total BS.
I have about 8 articles saved, which clearly show that this is a cynical attempt by fossil fuels funded interests, to spread that lie.
Wind opponents spread myth about dead whales
“They claim the offshore wind is responsible for a spike in whale deaths. Experts don’t buy it, but interest groups backed by fossil fuel money are spreading false information.
Experts who have actually studied the issue note that the vessels exploring for wind developers are heavily regulated and must watch out for marine mammals as well as refrain from using sonar until the animals leave the vicinity. Also, they note that the sonar used by the wind industry is much less powerful than that used by vessels exploring for offshore oil and gas, which is known to harm and even kill marine mammals.
As of June 21st, 2023, partial or full necropsies — autopsies for animals —were performed on approximately half of the whales found dead at that point, which was roughly 9o whales according to NOAA Fisheries. The other whales were either too decomposed, not brought to land, or stranded on protected land and so could not be examined. They found that approximately 40% of the whales showed signs of ship strikes and/or fishing gear entanglement.
the volume of cargo transported by ships more than doubled, from four to nearly 10.7 billion tons, globally between 1990 and 2021.
Climate change linked to carbon pollution from fossil fuel use could also be a factor because warming waters are changing migrational patterns of humpbacks. And the whales’ favorite prey, menhaden, is much more abundant now in areas highly trafficked by commercial vessels, particularly along the coast of New Jersey and New York.
“There’s a really big distinction between the kind of survey work that’s done for oil and gas,” Carey said. “You have to use certain kinds of acoustic energy to penetrate the seafloor and determine what the rock structure is like for thousands of feet. An offshore wind farm only needs 200 or 300 feet to put in a foundation, and so the acoustic energy required to do that is far different.”
American Coalition for Ocean Protection, which is helping to fund anti-wind groups, is a project started by the Caesar Rodney Institute, a Delaware-based think tank whose funders include a fossil fuel trade group that has multiple oil executives on its board. Its director, David Stevenson, was on former President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency’s transition team.”
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/09/wind-opponents-spread-myth-about-dead-whales/
The most likely cause of the whale deaths is ship strikes. There has been a huge increase in shipping along the Atlantic coast that started with increased online sales during Covid pandemic, and shippers now trying to catch up from supply chain issues.
————
Behind Offshore Wind and Whales Disinformation /Support Offshore Oil Drilling
“Fast Company reported that anti-wind astroturf groups with innocent-sounding names like “Protect Our Coast New Jersey” and “The Save Right Whales Coalition” are linked to Big Oil through the Caesar Rodney Institute, while right-wing media outlets like Fox News, Breitbart, and The Western Journal continue to spread harmful disinformation blaming offshore wind for whale deaths.
Greenpeace oceans director John Hocevar told USA Today that this is “a cynical disinformation campaign” that is “not based in any kind of evidence.” Even NOAA had to come out and say that “there is no evidence to support speculation that noise resulting from wind development-related site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales.”
Last September, when organized denial actors announced their opposition to offshore wind, we figured it’d be pretty hard for anyone to take the claims seriously after that. Unfortunately, despite the obviousness of the bad faith campaign, the disinformation has rolled on.
Fortunately, mainstream outlets have been covering how the lie that offshore wind projects kill whales is part of a coordinated campaign to undermine the offshore wind industry. Fast Company reported that anti-wind astroturf groups with innocent-sounding names like “Protect Our Coast New Jersey” and “The Save Right Whales Coalition” are linked to Big Oil through the Caesar Rodney Institute, while right-wing media outlets like Fox News, Breitbart, and The Western Journal continue to spread harmful disinformation blaming offshore wind for whale deaths.
Greenpeace oceans director John Hocevar told USA Today that this is “a cynical disinformation campaign” that is “not based in any kind of evidence.”
Even NOAA had to come out and say that “there is no evidence to support speculation that noise resulting from wind development-related site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales.”
In case you had any remaining doubts about whether or not free market fundamentalists actually care about whales, we’re here to inform you that individuals working for CFACT, The Heartland Institute, and The Caesar Rodney Institute have ardently advocated for offshore oil and gas development, which actually threatens whales and other marine species.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/10/2157301/-Conservative-Think-Tanks-Behind-Offshore-Wind-and-Whales-Disinfo-Support-Offshore-Oil-Drilling
The oil and gas soundings have to extract more detail at depth (below the seabed), while the seabed mapping for mounting a wind turbine just needs cruder levels of information.
I respect the honest nuclear power plant advocates, but I’m sick of those who shit on early generation solar, wind and battery technology which has been performing admirably in the face of new-tech teething pains, echoing every bit of fossil fuel lobby propaganda they encounter regarding s/w/b.
‘An LNG-supplied, gas-fired power plant of 1,000MW requires 1.1 million tonnes per annum (mta) of LNG to function.’ That’s about 15 bulk LNG carriers. New England has been importing LNG from Trinidad, because the Jones Act prevents ships carrying goods between US ports unless they’re American built, owned and manned, and there isn’t enough pipeline capacity to bring gas from the much closer Marcellus Shale. So Seabrook and Millstone nuclear plants avoid the need for ~45 bulk carrier visits. If they were to be replaced by wind at 40% capacity, that would still be ~30 shiploads. Just now, those three reactors (3.2MW) are running at 89% of capacity. New England’s 1.2GW of wind produced nothing all day, and not much yesterday. The 2.2 GW of solar maxed out at 21% of capacity at midday, much of which was exported. The contribution from batteries was at most 20MW – 2% of one reactor, briefly. https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-NE-ISNE
“those three reactors (3.2MW) are running at 89% of capacity. New England’s 1.2GW of wind produced nothing all day, and not much yesterday. The 2.2 GW of solar maxed out at 21% of capacity at midday”
None of that contradicts the generating capacity factors I used
CP for nuclear is 78% to 98%
CP for PV is 24.4 %
CP for wind is 35%.
These are US figures.
Difference is all solar or all wind in an area stops at the same time – feast or famine. Reactors stop to refuel for a month, every 18-24 months – but one by one (to use the same work crews), and usually in spring or fall, when demand is low. W&S outages can be predicted, though less accurately than some proponents claim, but that’s a far cry from being controlled.
Sorry for the multiple comments, but this nonsense merits it
“landscape-blighting, bird-bat-and-whale-killing wind industry”
Blight? Fossil fuels are what create blight. Wind turbines only occupy 2.5% of the land in a wind farm, plus a little more for gravel access roads. Farmers grow crops and graze livestock all around the turbines. And they are gracefully shaped and in motion.
Bird kills?
Summary of predicted annual avian mortality per Erickson 2005:
Number of Birds Killed
Fossil fuels power plants 23.9 million
Buildings 550 million
Power lines 130 million
Cats* 100 million -not counting feral cats
Automobiles 80 million
Pesticides 67 million
Communications towers 4.5 million
Did you not hear about the wind turbine that fell over, spilling noxious wind for tens of miles and requiring evacuation of a local community? How about the solar panels that fell off a truck on the highway, requiring a hazmat team using very expensive push-brooms and dustpans to clean up the dangerous mess?
“…solar gets 200 times more in subsidies than nuclear….”
Good.
OTOH, it’s not like Robert Bryce doesn’t have a dog in this fight. Here is an article with graph that puts Mt Bryce’s fevered analysis into perspective:
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/subsidies-for-oil-gas-nuclear-vs-renewables
“…citing higher than anticipated construction costs.”
I know that construction costs have been going up faster than inflation, but how come other capital or power plant projects haven’t been suffering this badly?