Nuclear cost estimate rises by as much as $4 billion (CPS Energy)

[bananas]

Nuclear cost estimates continue to explode, with no end in sight ... we told you so!

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/Nuclear_cost_estimate_rises.html

Web Posted: 10/28/2009 12:00 CDT
Nuclear cost estimate rises by as much as $4 billion
By Tracy Idell Hamilton and Anton Caputo
- Express-News

The estimated cost of two new nuclear reactors proposed by CPS Energy has gone up as much as $4 billion, prompting the City Council to postpone Thursday's vote on the project's financing until January.

CPS officials and Mayor Julián Castro, flanked by every council member except David Medina, held a hastily arranged news conference Tuesday afternoon announcing the delay.

CPS interim General Manager Steve Bartley said the utility's main contractor on the project, Toshiba Inc., informed officials that the cost of the reactors would be “substantially greater” than CPS' estimate of $13 billion, which includes financing.

<snip>

The potential $4 billion jump in cost for the expansion isn't the first for a project that was estimated at $5.4 billion, including financing, when NRG Energy — which is partnering with CPS — applied to the federal government in 2007 for a license to build the reactors.

<snip>

Opponents of the nuclear plan said Tuesday's news reinforced their position that nuclear is a bad choice for the city's future energy needs.

“It's what we've said all along,” said Leticia Vela, a member of anti-nuclear group Energía Mía. “For us, this is like, ‘we told you so.'”

[AtheistCrusader]

1. This is why I like the newer GE model reactors

like the ESBWR's, once the design is approved and in production. It's largely modular, and can be prebuilt for a known fee, allowing for little in the way of cost overruns. Need more capacity? Buy another. Etc.

The larger, monolithic reactors have much greater output, but are subject to greater risk in cost overruns, production delays, and are harder to expand down the road.

[bananas]

2. The ESBWR is a monolithic reactor, around 1600 MW output

The OP is about an AP-1000 which generates around 1100 MW.
The modular reactors don't exist, and they might never exist:

The demise of the pebble bed modular reactor
By Steve Thomas | 22 June 2009

Article Highlights
* After years of investment, South Africa has abandoned its plan to develop a fleet of electricity-generating pebble bed modular reactors (PBMR), once hyped as the future of nuclear power.
* Problems with the PBMR aren't new; a 2008 German report chronicles Germany's own problems developing the reactor since 1967.
* China, still developing PBMR-based power reactor designs, has taken a slow approach and it is unclear if they have run into problems as well.

In February, Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) Ltd., an eponymously named South African company announced a major change of strategy. After 10 years of development it said it was abandoning plans to build a full-size 165-megawatt-electric demonstration plant. Furthermore, PBMR Ltd. said it will try to redirect its future plans for the reactor from electricity generation toward thermal applications, such as coal gasification and water desalination. With government funding set to run out next year, the company will have to close if new funding is not found.

<snip>

In Germany, a 15-megawatt-electric prototype PBMR was designed, built, and operated from 1967 to 1988, followed by a 300-megawatt-electric demonstration Thorium High Temperature Reactor, which only operated from 1985 to 1988. A report explaining the delays and problems in the German pebble bed design became public in 2008 when the Jülich Center released a review of its previous pebble bed reactor work.1 It was Jülich's design, specifically the prototype pebble bed reactor, which South Africa had taken as the basis for its PBMR.

The prototype, known as the AVR (Arbeitsgemeinschaft VersuchsReaktor or Research Group Experimental Reactor) had been portrayed to the South African public as an unqualified success. The new Jülich report, however, presented a starkly different picture. In particular, it found that the AVR's fuel had reached dangerously high temperatures during operation. Although the exact temperature reached inside the reactor is unknown, melt strips placed within dummy fuel pebbles, which are designed to withstand heat of up to 1,400 degrees Celsius, melted, meaning the reactor was being operated beyond the design limits for the fuel. The report disagreed with a 1990 Association of German Engineers report on the AVR that stated that high temperatures within the reactor were solely the result of poor-quality fuel. Other factors, as yet unknown, were probably involved, the Jülich report concluded.

<snip>

Chinese nuclear decision-making is rather opaque to the West and if the problems identified in the Jülich report do cause the Chinese to think again about their plans for the pebble bed modular reactor, it is unlikely that there will be a public announcement comparable to that by PBMR Ltd. The project will just quietly slip out of Chinese plans. Even if this happens and the South African program is effectively ended as well, it is unlikely to be the last that is heard of the pebble bed design, since support in Germany is still strong in some quarters. But it seems unlikely those supporters will ever be able to convince anyone else to spend the large amounts of money necessary to try to bring the design to commercial fruition.


1. R. Moormann, "A Safety Re-evaluation of the AVR Pebble Bed Reactor Operation and Its Consequences for Future HTR Concepts," Forschungszentrum Jülich, 2008.

<snip>

[AtheistCrusader]

4. Hahaha a I'm dumb as a goat.

Sorry.

[madokie]

3. At this point in time we need to put our money in solar wind and sun

we've dithered around with nuclear long enough. Its not near as clean, co2 wise as we're lead to believe when you look at the big picture, there still is no viable process of dealing with the radioactive waste, some of which have half lives of thousands and thousands of years. The industry is not to be trusted even if you're standing right there and seeing whatever it is they're telling you with your own eyes you'll be wise to be leery. We're in a bind and nuclear power is not going to get us out of it, simple as that.

[Fledermaus]

5. I would rather see San Antonio expand its energy conservation program.

CPS is owned by the city. We have some of the lowest rates in the nation. The city charges 10 cents per kwh for wind energy. I received over $300 in rebates this year for new AC and washer & dryer. My eclectic bill is under $100 a month.

I'm going to upgrade my attic insulation and ductwork soon. I will get more rebates and my bill will go even lower.