France adds a new 1600 MW Nuclear Reactor The project took 17 years to complete and cost €12.8 billion - equivalent to €8 million per MW. For context, 1 MW of installed nuclear power is roughly equal to 6 MW of solar PV or 2.5 MW of wind. The current cost to build a 6 MW solar PV plant in Ukraine is around €2.5 million, and I have a plan to commission one in just six months after main investments. The entire development process took approximately 1.5 years. The key difference between nuclear and renewable power plants is the generation profile. While nuclear is not the most flexible source for dispatchable energy, it performs better than solar PV or wind in this regard. However, pairing solar PV with flexible generation sources and BESS is essential to address this limitation. Another difference lies in grid requirements. For the connection of every 1 MW of nuclear power, you would need to connect 6 MW of solar PV to generate equivalent energy. This presents a challenge for the grid owners, but nuclear power - being a concentrated source - requires new massive transmission infrastructure. In contrast, renewable energy is distributed and can often utilize existing grids to produce power closer to where it’s consumed. The €5.5 million saved per MW with solar PV is more than sufficient to fund grid upgrades, flexible power generation, or BESS projects.And all of this can be completed within 2-3 years, even considering the slow European bureaucracy. Lastly, in the event of disasters or missile attacks, distributed power sources are far more resilient than concentrated ones like nuclear plants. For example incident with Fucushima shuttered down 4696 MW which is comparable with 28 GW of installed solar PV capacity. Much better to have such power distributed than concentrated. This case clearly confirms that renewable sources could replace nuclear power generation just because it is already cheaper (and will be even more cheap soon). What do you think - can renewables fully replace old nuclear technology? UPD: after hundreds of comments I will share my opinion. Yes, renewables can and mostly will replace old nuclear technology and will replace nuclear generation as a basic one, but not today or tomorrow. Existing NPP's will continue working till the end of their lifetimes (in countries with reasonable management). However, new nuclear technology has to take a niche in flexible generation instead of currently used fossil fuels. Not basic. A new generation of NPP can provide not bad regulation abilities and combined with BESS it could solve all balancing problems for the renewables mix. Balancing the market always has higher prices and it will allow to NPP be profitable even with 2-3-4-? times more expensive LCOE in comparison with renewables in the next decades. #NuclearEnergy #SolarPower #RenewableEnergy #EnergyTransition #BESS
I am the biggest advocate for PV and invested last decade of my career to advancing this tech in emerging markets. However these ridiculous comparisons to nuclear have to stop. The technologies have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Nuclear is extremely cheap and extremely reliable if operated like in France or Finland. Olkiluoto 3 was the first reactor commissioned in Europe for decades. Yes, it took too long and it cost too much to build. However it’s two older sisters OL1 and OL2 have been cornerstones of Finland’s prosperity. Each have generated for over 40 years a combined 14TWh of power. The total cost including construction and maintenance has been €6bn. Add any amount for fuel, safety, insurance, waste processing etc and you come to €14bn. This is €2/MWh. Two euro but not per kWh as fossil lobby has us believe. It’s 2 *cents* per kWh. OL3 might have cost ten times more, but larger size means it’s still lower cost of 1 cent per kWh. Day or night, winter or summer. It’s not possible or advisable to build nukes everywhere. But for cost, climate and prosperity it’s still the solution.
1MW of nuclear id roughly equal to 6MW or 2.5MW of wind. 🤣🤣🤣🤦🤦🤦 Kirill Trokhin you must be joking right? Or do you not know how the grid works? What you are describing might be true ...if power had to be adjusted 1 time per year...not every fraction of a second. Truly you have not understood that fossil fuels are what causes climate change and therefore is what we need to eliminate. It is actually one of the major causes for the terrible war in Ukraine. It's a terrible thing to try and promote your business and try to discredit nuclear power whereas fossil fuels should be your target. But clearly that's not what your financial interests are and therefore you propagate stupid technical falsehoods on LinkedIn. It's shameful, just like the brown results here below, which are the results of your ideology. What a shame...
1. I have 41 solar panels and 30 kw backup batteries. They are to equalize my electrical power use with electric company. 2. I have heat pumps with natural gas for heat. 3. If no power I have backup natural gas generator. 4. If no natural gas or power I would heat my home with backup wood furnace with two speed fan powered from the 30 kw batteries. 5. Power would only be for heat, fridge, may be one TV and DVD player and water pump from a well. 6. Small Modular Reactors are more affordable than large nuclear plants. 7. Solar is a bare minimum for survival where as nuclear is 24/7 weather independent.
“Too often we see the debate stuck in putting renewables and nuclear against each other, when in fact we should be making sure we efficiently drive the use of fossil fuels down as quickly as possible. In this challenge we need all sustainable tools: wind, solar and nuclear. The new policy programme by the Greens in Finland is a great example of this kind of new thinking.” Atte Harjanne MP https://allianceforscience.org/blog/2022/05/finland-green-party-nuclear/
You are comparing willows to oaks, it makes no sense 🙄 - do the full planetary boundary and economic calculations over 80+ years, and we can talk. Otherwise you are just making (unconsciously?) manipulative claims 🤔
It seems to me that a lot of Photovoltaic projects are presented as if they didn't have: a limited life span, a decreasing capacity every year, were self cleaning and require no maintenance, never break (throw a missile at them or at a nuclear plant, see end result), Do not require backup (natural gas, batteries which are also great at being destroyed by missiles) Do not generate balancing costs to the DSO, and as if they don't come with layers of camouflaged subsidies. I don't think it's a very fair approach to present the full cost of a project.
Quante BESS servirebbero per bilanciare, ad esempio, il periodo di assenza di vento e scarso sole di queste settimane? E se si prolunga di altri 15gg? Tutti al buio ? Mi pare che lei nelle sue considerazioni non calcoli il backup termico, comunque necessario. Tralasciando poi le questioni di geopolitica visto che le rinnovabili sono a completo appannaggio della Cina.
The view from one side only is extremism... There are probably pros and cons for any side. You said 'For context, 1 MW of installed nuclear power is roughly equal to 6 MW of solar PV or 2.5 MW of wind'... So , I deduct that 1600 MW roughly equal to 6 x 1600MW = 9600MW of solar and 2.5 x 1600MW = 4000 MW of wind. Think about the area on Earth to install such facility and the costs of interconnections adding the costs of maintenance for such enormous areas...and one more thing if sun is not up or wind does not blow BESS can't sustain it for long. In theory it is incredible nice. The price of actual green PV or wind are subsidized by state so the actual price you say does not reflect any reality. Even the price of electricity show quite well this fact... Regarding the rocket attacks there is no grid which withstands for long as with max ten rockets the whole grid of any country can be down forever ... and I hope we do not introduce in design of the grids the potential war. There is a war because someone needs a war to stress Europe. In a world I see the wars shall not happen. I don't doubt the Ukrainian need of war , not my business...
Kirill Trokhin have you calculated the size of the battery you will need installed to allow the solar park to simulate the 365 day baseload output provided by a nuclear power plant? I think solar is great and have it on my roof but in my experience the issues with solar reliability and seasonality mean that the battery would have to be enormous. On an industrial project here in NL I have indicative pricing of 1,2m€ for a 2MWh battery. I’m not sure yet what installation/connection costs will be but I guess at least another 100k€ for a battery of that size. Perhaps there are some economies of scale but I don’t see how you could possibly install a BESS that would make the solar generated electricity dispatchable and be competitive with nuclear on the investment costs. The other issue is life of the installation +/- 30 years max for PV with BESS whereas a nuclear power plant should be able to comfortably to 60 years. There may be other arguments for a distributed energy system as you call a PV park (I’m not sure if it really qualifies for that title though) but I don’t think the investment one stacks up.
Managing Consultant at Wigginton International Consulting
1dThe 17 years it took to build Flamanville 3 was not the normal amount of time it takes to build a nuclear power plant (just look at the time it took to build the KEPCO designed 4 reactor plant at Barrakah in UAE). Flamanville 3 took so long as the design, the EPR, was originally conceived as a joint project between Areva of France and Siemens of Germany. However when Germany in their infinite wisdom decided to phase out Nuclear power, Siemens withdrew from the design and therefore Areva (now Framatome) had to go it alone and encountered a number of difficulties (mainly from the German parts of the design and poor quality control in their supply chain). If a design is complete and proven, a Nuclear Plant can be built in a much shorter time frame.