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Nuclear vs Solar cost!

longview

longview

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I was reading about how many acres of land it would take to generate a Gwh of energy per year (2.8),
and was thinking how this would compare to Nuclear power?
So Several new Nuclear plants are in the works, and are expected to cost between 4 and 9 Billion dollars per 1100 MW.
If the plant operated at full capacity for a year it would produce 9,636. Gwh per year.
The cost of solar panels is stated as about $.5 Million per acre, and it would take
26,980 acres to produce the same amount of power as the Nuclear plant.
This means the cost for the same amount of solar panels would be $13,490 Billion.
The story may not end there! Solar home installers get a 30 % tax credit so if that 26,980 acres of panels
were across many rooftops, the homeowner cost would be $9.4 Billion, with the balance coming from the taxpayers.
Of course it may be beneficial to look at it from the other perspective,
The Government, through the tax credit program, added a widely distributed additional 9,636 Gwh,
to the power grid for only $4,047 Billion dollars!
The impacts go beyond that though, because the roughly 600,000 households, now have an extra
$100 a month to add to the economy, or $720,000,000. per year.
 
I'd rather invest in solar than Nuclear. There are costs you're not taking into consideration which includes storage and maintenance costs. Those costs under Nuclear are far far higher.
 
reinoe said:
I'd rather invest in solar than Nuclear. There are costs you're not taking into consideration which includes storage and maintenance costs. Those costs under Nuclear are far far higher.
Click to expand...
I think they both have a place, but think we need to try a get as many solar rooftops out there as we can.
Increasing the number of solar rooftops will reduce the estimated 1300 additional nuclear plants necessary
to replace the energy we get from fossil fuels.
I thought it would be a good idea to start a conversation and present data.
Here were the sources I used,
https://www.energymanagertoday.com/...wh-of-solar-energy-per-year-says-nrel-094185/
Solar Farm Cost Per Acre | Budgeting for Solar Farms
I thought the $500,000 seemed high, but the retail cost of solar panels to cover an acre was $386,000,
so the number is likely very real.
 
longview said:
I was reading about how many acres of land it would take to generate a Gwh of energy per year (2.8),
and was thinking how this would compare to Nuclear power?
So Several new Nuclear plants are in the works, and are expected to cost between 4 and 9 Billion dollars per 1100 MW.
If the plant operated at full capacity for a year it would produce 9,636. Gwh per year.
The cost of solar panels is stated as about $.5 Million per acre, and it would take
26,980 acres to produce the same amount of power as the Nuclear plant.
This means the cost for the same amount of solar panels would be $13,490 Billion.
The story may not end there! Solar home installers get a 30 % tax credit so if that 26,980 acres of panels
were across many rooftops, the homeowner cost would be $9.4 Billion, with the balance coming from the taxpayers.
Of course it may be beneficial to look at it from the other perspective,
The Government, through the tax credit program, added a widely distributed additional 9,636 Gwh,
to the power grid for only $4,047 Billion dollars!
The impacts go beyond that though, because the roughly 600,000 households, now have an extra
$100 a month to add to the economy, or $720,000,000. per year.
Click to expand...

Sounds great and send each homeowner/user of the Nuke power his proportional share of high level and low level Nuclear waste. They can keep it in their basement until the cancers kill them.
/
 
longview said:
The cost of solar panels is stated as about $.5 Million per acre, and it would take
26,980 acres to produce the same amount of power as the Nuclear plant.
Click to expand...
Stated by whom? Where are your figures coming from?

According to Lazard (https://www.lazard.com/media/1777/levelized_cost_of_energy_-_version_80.pdf), the unsubsidized cost of nuclear is $124-$132/MWh.

Solar varies on type. Rooftop residential PV is $180-265. C&I is $126-177. Thermal with storage is $118-130. Utility scale is $72-$86. Prices have been slowly dropping over time, so old figures may not be accurate.

That's just generation. It doesn't include transmission, waste disposal, environmental impacts etc.

I'm not sure if it includes cost overages, either. E.g. Toshiba-Westinghouse is going broke building AP1000 nuclear reactors, and is exiting the business. Americans have little experience these days building nuclear plants, leading to significant delays and problems, including cost overruns. Construction is complex, especially for newer reactors. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/...nment/nuclear-power-westinghouse-toshiba.html)

Nuclear does have a big advantage in that a plant can generate more power in a smaller area, and more consistently. Solar is obviously much safer and cleaner overall, has almost no waste, and can be plunked down anywhere.
 
reinoe said:
I'd rather invest in solar than Nuclear. There are costs you're not taking into consideration which includes storage and maintenance costs. Those costs under Nuclear are far far higher.
Click to expand...

Do you have a link showing the operating/storage/maintenance costs between solar and nuclear? Heck throw in wind too if you have it. I would love to see some sort of a total cost/energy generated for the life of the types of energy plants. I'd also love it if someone could come up with some sort of study for risk and environmental damage as well. It's the problem I have when these issues come up, lack of information on viable alternatives. In concept I'm in favor of "green" energy but my pragmatic side tells me nuclear is the best overall long-term solution.
 
I have solar and use very little public power.
 
reinoe said:
I'd rather invest in solar than Nuclear. There are costs you're not taking into consideration which includes storage and maintenance costs. Those costs under Nuclear are far far higher.
Click to expand...

How do the compare?
 
Visbek said:
Stated by whom? Where are your figures coming from?

According to Lazard (https://www.lazard.com/media/1777/levelized_cost_of_energy_-_version_80.pdf), the unsubsidized cost of nuclear is $124-$132/MWh.

Solar varies on type. Rooftop residential PV is $180-265. C&I is $126-177. Thermal with storage is $118-130. Utility scale is $72-$86. Prices have been slowly dropping over time, so old figures may not be accurate.

That's just generation. It doesn't include transmission, waste disposal, environmental impacts etc.

I'm not sure if it includes cost overages, either. E.g. Toshiba-Westinghouse is going broke building AP1000 nuclear reactors, and is exiting the business. Americans have little experience these days building nuclear plants, leading to significant delays and problems, including cost overruns. Construction is complex, especially for newer reactors. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/...nment/nuclear-power-westinghouse-toshiba.html)

Nuclear does have a big advantage in that a plant can generate more power in a smaller area, and more consistently. Solar is obviously much safer and cleaner overall, has almost no waste, and can be plunked down anywhere.
Click to expand...
The source for the cost per acre was,
Solar Farm Cost Per Acre | Budgeting for Solar Farms
I agree that Nuclear has issues, but the alternative is Coal or Natural gas.
I think we need to figure which type of Nuclear power is best, and standardize the design.
The Navy seems to be maturing nuclear technology much faster than the commercial sector,
perhaps some unclassified technology transfer would help.
 
First, your study is seriously flawed, in that it assumes that productive land needs to be used for solar installations. First, rooftops flat-out contradict your argument. Secondly, arid and desert land typically isn't very productive.

And then there is nuclear. Usually, these plants are near waterways, needed for cooling. Many are also in close proximity of population centers. In the US, they are concentrated on the East coast, Southeast, and Mid-East. Is there a 1000 square mile geographic location in any of these areas, that the US can afford to have converted to an Exclusion Zone? This is the size of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Is there a waterway that the US can afford to lose in this area? Fukushima fresh water rivers have Cesium-contaminated fish, far above the threshhold for consumption.
 
longview said:
I was reading about how many acres of land it would take to generate a Gwh of energy per year (2.8),
and was thinking how this would compare to Nuclear power?
So Several new Nuclear plants are in the works, and are expected to cost between 4 and 9 Billion dollars per 1100 MW.
If the plant operated at full capacity for a year it would produce 9,636. Gwh per year.
The cost of solar panels is stated as about $.5 Million per acre, and it would take
26,980 acres to produce the same amount of power as the Nuclear plant.
This means the cost for the same amount of solar panels would be $13,490 Billion.
The story may not end there! Solar home installers get a 30 % tax credit so if that 26,980 acres of panels
were across many rooftops, the homeowner cost would be $9.4 Billion, with the balance coming from the taxpayers.
Of course it may be beneficial to look at it from the other perspective,
The Government, through the tax credit program, added a widely distributed additional 9,636 Gwh,
to the power grid for only $4,047 Billion dollars!
The impacts go beyond that though, because the roughly 600,000 households, now have an extra
$100 a month to add to the economy, or $720,000,000. per year.
Click to expand...

Until we can figure out how to properly store/dispose of nuclear waste, nuclear sucks.
 
joG said:
How do the compare?
Click to expand...

I'd just look at this...I call it "How We Almost Lost Europe"

How 3 volunteers helped prevent Chernobyl from being even worse - Business Insider

Chernobyl is still considered the worst nuclear accident in history — but it could have been much, much worse...

The continuous nuclear reaction, traveling in a smoldering flow of molten radioactive metal, was approaching the water.

"If that happened it would have triggered a second steam explosion that would have done unimaginable damage and destroyed the entire power station, including the three other reactors," author Andrew Leatherbarrow wrote in an email to Tech Insider.

By most estimates, such a blast may have wiped out half of Europe, leaving it uninhabitable for 500,000 years.
Click to expand...
 
I think that nuclear power is absolutely fundamental in addressing our future energy concerns. I don't think they should be privately owned. The risk is too high to have to deal with companies looking to cut corners.
 
MrPeanut said:
I think that nuclear power is absolutely fundamental in addressing our future energy concerns. I don't think they should be privately owned. The risk is too high to have to deal with companies looking to cut corners.
Click to expand...
It may be possible to do both! Private power generation with public owned reactors.
Imagine a complete reactor built to fit on a rail car, and build to a specific set of standards,
with controls, primary, secondary heating loops contained within.
The reactor would be loaded with fuel, tested and sealed up, at the factory.
Special cradles could be built at existing coal plants to host the rail cars.
These could produce power for a finite time, and then be sent back to the factory for refitting
and refueling.
While My idea may be pure science fiction, people are actually looking at small nuclear reactors.
Small nuclear power reactors - World Nuclear Association
 
calamity said:
Until we can figure out how to properly store/dispose of nuclear waste, nuclear sucks.
Click to expand...

What makes you think we don't know how to properly store/dispose of nuclear waste?
 
longview said:
So far!
We need to find out how to safely utilize nuclear power, we have several methods but they are inefficient.
Every reactor is almost a custom design. Standardization will help, but we need to decide which design is best.
Click to expand...

There are a host of unsolved issues which need to be addressed. But, I do agree that if we could cross those bridges to find a safe way to use it, nuclear is the best source for energy.
 
calamity said:
There are a host of unsolved issues which need to be addressed. But, I do agree that if we could cross those bridges to find a safe way to use it, nuclear is the best source for energy.
Click to expand...
The first nation who develops a reactor that uses the spent fuel as it's fuel, will be the
one who offers the world to dispose of all that nuclear waste that has been collecting...for a good price!
 
longview said:
The first nation who develops a reactor that uses the spent fuel as it's fuel, will be the
one who offers the world to dispose of all that nuclear waste that has been collecting...for a good price!
Click to expand...

That's more of a pipe dream than a world 100% powered by renewables. There is nuclear waste all over the ocean floor. Up until the mid-70s, it was legal to dump nuclear waste in the ocean. Of course, making it illegal did NOT end the practice. The Soviets sunk an out-of-control active nuclear submarine in the Kara Sea.

K-19 submarine reactor accident, 1961

The Italian mafia is now in the nuclear waste disposal business. For years, they dumped wastes off the coast of government-less Somalia.

UN Warns Of Nuclear Waste In Somalia Waters

Mr. Nuttall said, on average, it cost European companies $2.50 per ton to dump the wastes on Somalia's beaches rather than $250 a ton to dispose of the wastes in Europe.

This is the world that we are leaving to our children and grandchildren. To this day, there is not one active deep repository that is on-line, for high level nuclear waste. Many of these wastes have half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years. How one morally justifies this, for our 50-year time slice of human history is beyond me.
 
Media_Truth said:
That's more of a pipe dream than a world 100% powered by renewables.
Click to expand...
I think nuclear power may well be a necessary step between our current oil based economy,
and a sustainable future based on 100% renewables.
It would only benefit mankind to at least attempt to develop safe nuclear power.
 
longview said:
I was reading about how many acres of land it would take to generate a Gwh of energy per year (2.8),
and was thinking how this would compare to Nuclear power?
So Several new Nuclear plants are in the works, and are expected to cost between 4 and 9 Billion dollars per 1100 MW.
If the plant operated at full capacity for a year it would produce 9,636. Gwh per year.
The cost of solar panels is stated as about $.5 Million per acre, and it would take
26,980 acres to produce the same amount of power as the Nuclear plant.
This means the cost for the same amount of solar panels would be $13,490 Billion.
The story may not end there! Solar home installers get a 30 % tax credit so if that 26,980 acres of panels
were across many rooftops, the homeowner cost would be $9.4 Billion, with the balance coming from the taxpayers.
Of course it may be beneficial to look at it from the other perspective,
The Government, through the tax credit program, added a widely distributed additional 9,636 Gwh,
to the power grid for only $4,047 Billion dollars!
The impacts go beyond that though, because the roughly 600,000 households, now have an extra
$100 a month to add to the economy, or $720,000,000. per year.
Click to expand...

I say yet again;

I have an idea that will allow wind power to be produced at a very low cost. Less than coal power.

I need to understand how to get such a thing to market.

If there is anybody out there with any experteese or link to anybody with the knowledge or finance or whatever please tell me.
 
Tim the plumber said:
I say yet again;

I have an idea that will allow wind power to be produced at a very low cost. Less than coal power.

I need to understand how to get such a thing to market.

If there is anybody out there with any experteese or link to anybody with the knowledge or finance or whatever please tell me.
Click to expand...
The way to do it is you check if a similar idea is already patented, if not, build a model and work out the problems, (yes there are always problems)
Document your idea in a way to protect it, and start to ask around to people in your area who have done things like this.
 
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