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ThorCon electric power cost:
Lower capital cost and lower fuel cost than coal.
Competitive with pipelined natural gas.
Lower electricity cost than shipped LNG (liquified natural gas).
Cheaper than solar and wind including natural gas backup.
Cheaper electricity than storage-buffered wind and solar sources. //
Batteries have been proposed to replace CO2-emitting natural gas generators. Storing intermittent electric energy for later dispatch adds expensive storage buffering costs. A 2018 Science article by Steven Davis and 32 other renowned scientists analyzed storage costs. Using low-cost, mass-market, lithium-ion batteries for daily buffering raises electricity costs from 3.5 cents/kWh to 14 cents/kWh. For weekly buffering the cost grows to 50 cents/kWh. Even if future battery costs are halved, that cost will be 29 cents/kWh. Even free intermittent electricity would not significantly reduce storage-buffered, dispatchable electricity costs. ThorCon generated electricity is cheaper than storage-buffered wind and solar electricity. //
ThorCon power should-cost about half as much as coal where coal is cheap. But the did-cost depends on how we regulate nuclear power. The bottom line is simple: will we build nuclear power plants the way the U.S. Navy builds ships or the way the Koreans build ships? If it’s the former, then nuclear will never beat coal regardless of the technology. If it’s the latter, then ThorCon is easily cheaper than coal.
“This is the lowest solar-photovoltaic price in the United States,” said James Barner, the agency’s manager for strategic initiatives, “and it is the largest and lowest-cost solar and high-capacity battery-storage project in the U.S. and we believe in the world today. So this is, I believe, truly revolutionary in the industry.” //
It’s half the estimated cost of power from a new natural gas plant. //
The Eland Project will not rid Los Angeles of natural gas, however. The city will still depend on gas and hydro to supply its overnight power. But the batteries in this 400-megawatt project will take a bite out of the fossil share of LA’s power pie. //
The plant will be developed by 8minute Solar Energy on 2,653 acres of privately-owned land in the Barren Ridge renewable corridor in Kern County. //
Seven years ago the first major projects were brought forward to this board. They’re in service now, they’re the ones that are referred to in or near Nevada. And they were between $90 and $100 a megawatt hour or 9 and 10 cents a kilowatt hour. Now we’re seeing solar projects under 2 cents a kilowatt hour.
In 2017, Germany generated 37 percent of its electricity from non-carbon sources.[1] In pursuing the Energiewende, Germany will have invested $580 billion in renewable energy and storage by 2025.
If Germany had invested in nuclear instead, it could have built 46 1.6 GW EPR reactors at the $12.5 billion per reactor cost of the U.K.’s Hinkley Point C. German companies assisted with the design of the EPR and the reactor was explicitly planned to meet the strictest European regulations.
In this scenario, EP assumes that a Germany pursuing nuclear power would maintain the same level of nuclear generation as it produced annually before implementing its nuclear phase-out in 2011, about 133 TWh per year.
With 46 EPRs operating at 90 percent capacity factor, Germany could first eliminate all coal, gas, and biomass electricity, then make up for today’s 150 terawatt-hours per year of wind and solar from its renewables investment, all while exporting 100 terawatt-hours of electricity to its neighbors (double 2017’s actual exports). Finally, with the remaining 133 terawatt-hours, Germany could decarbonize its entire light vehicle fleet including all 45 million of its passenger vehicles.[2]
Had California and Germany invested $680 billion into new nuclear power plants instead of renewables like solar and wind farms, the two would already be generating 100% or more of their electricity from clean (low-emissions) energy sources, according to a new analysis by Environmental Progress.
The analysis comes the day before California plays host to a “Global Climate Action Summit,” which makes no mention of nuclear, despite it being the largest source of clean energy in the U.S. and Europe.
Here are the two main findings from EP's analysis:
Had Germany spent $580 billion on nuclear instead of renewables, and the fossil plant upgrades and grid expansions they require, it would have had enough energy to both replace all fossil fuels and biomass in its electricity sector and replace all of the petroleum it uses for cars and light trucks.
Had California spent an estimated $100 billion on nuclear instead of on wind and solar, it would have had enough energy to replace all fossil fuels in its in-state electricity mix.As a result of their renewables-only policies, California and Germany are climate laggards compared to nuclear-heavy places like France, whose electricity is 12 times less carbon intensive than Germany’s, and 4 times less carbon intensive than California’s.
Thanks to its deployment of nuclear power, the Canadian province of Ontario’s electricity is nearly 90% cleaner than California’s, according to a recent analysis by Scott Luft, an energy analyst who tracks decarbonization and the power sector.
California’s power sector emissions are over twice as high today as they would have been had the state kept open and built planned nuclear plants.
California’s political establishment pushed hard to close San Onofre nuclear plant in 2013 — triggering an on-going federal criminal investigation — and later to close Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which generates 15% of all in-state clean electricity, by 2025.
Had those plants been constructed and stayed open, 73% of power produced in California would be from clean (very low-carbon) energy sources as opposed to just 34%. Of that clean power, 48% would have been from nuclear rather than 9%.In 2016, renewables received 94 times more in U.S. federal subsidies than nuclear and 46 times more than fossil fuels per unit of energy generated. Meanwhile, a growing number of analysts are admitting that an electricity grid that relies on nuclear power has no need for solar and wind. More troubling, adding solar and wind to a nuclear-heavy grid would require burning more fossil fuels, usually natural gas, as back-up power
http://www.webcitation.org/768wQ5b7i ///
An Annapolis graduate, Commander E. E. Kintner was project officer for the STR Project, responsible directly to Admiral Rickover for the two crucial years which he has described in his article. Since 1955 Commander Kintner has been nuclear power superintendent at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California, which recently delivered the first nuclear submarine to be built on the West Coast.
The highly dramatic and historic news that the submarine Nautilus had completed a passage under the roof of the world from the Pacific to the Atlantic excited the imagination of men everywhere. An equally dramatic and historic event, which proved that the Nautilus voyage could eventually be made, occurred five years earlier.
The Submarine Thermal Reactor plant (STR Mark I), the test version of the Nautilus machinery, commenced operating on May 31, 1953, in the desert of the Snake River plain, fifty-five miles west of Idaho Falls, Idaho. Its successful operation on that date, the first generation of any significant quantity of controlled atomic power, was the culmination of one of the largest, most daring, and most aggressive scientific ventures in history. No less than the polar voyage of the Nautilus, the design and operation of its prototype machinery required facing the hitherto unknown with physical courage, technical skill, and forceful and energetic leadership.