Ed Davey has an interesting story at BBC about the proposed nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset, UK which at $35 billion will be the most expensive object ever put together on Earth. For that sum you could build a small forest of Burj Khalifas - the world's tallest building, in Dubai, which each cost $1.5bn, you could build almost six Large Hadron Colliders, built under the border between France and Switzerland to unlock the secrets of the universe, and at a cost a mere $5.8bn, or you could build five Oakland Bay Bridges in San Francisco, designed to withstand the strongest earthquake seismologists would expect within the next 1,500 years at a cost of $6.5bn. "Nuclear power plants are the most complicated piece of equipment we make," says Steve Thomas. "Cost of nuclear power plants has tended to go up throughout history as accidents happen and we design measures to deal with the risk."
But what about historical buildings like the the pyramids. Although working out the cost of something built more than 4,500 years ago presents numerous challenges, in 2012 the Turner Construction Company estimated it could build the Great Pyramid of Giza for $5.0bn. That includes about $730m for stone and $58m for 12 cranes. Labor is a minor cost as it is projected that a mere 600 staff would be necessary. In contrast, it took 20,000 people to build the original pyramid with a total of 77.6 million days' labor. Using the current Egyptian minimum wage of $5.73 a day, that gives a labor cost of $445m. But whatever the most expensive object on Earth is, up in the sky is something that eclipses all of these things. The International Space Station. Price tag: $110bn.
(Score: 2) by BK on Sunday May 01 2016, @03:56PM
I'm too lazy to look it up. How much is it if I just wanted one?
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:20PM
Do you want to unit cost, or the cost with development added in?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:44PM
Cost per plane? Or inception to date? Or total program cost?
Cost per plane today is F-35A: $98 million. F-35B: $104 million F-35C: $116 million for each incremental unit.
Cost to date are hard to come by. Bloomberg [bloomberg.com] says $99.5 billion has been approved to date. The current estimates are $391 billion for the requested 2,457 planes is one often cited number. That would put the unit average cost at ~ 150 Million each.
Total Program Cost:The press likes to quote 1.5 trillion, but that $1.5 trillion is the EXPECTED COST over the next 55-year life of the program. And nobody knows how many will be built yet.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by BK on Sunday May 01 2016, @06:05PM
But there aren't actually 2457 ordered yet are there?
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday May 01 2016, @07:42PM
Doubt it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday May 01 2016, @04:14PM
Immediately after a story talking about a 40 Billion dollar deal for Submarines we get one claiming a 35 billion dollar build of a Nuke plant would be the most expensive object built on earth, and the summary ends by telling of something that cost 3 or 4 times as much.
The ISS was built on earth.
TFS goes beyond the already ridiculous BBC title in the first link.
Can we just tone down the Title hype a bit folks?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:51PM
The ISS was built on earth.
I thought the modules were connected in space. I'm not sure what the single most expensive piece launched was.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:59PM
$35 is Greenpeace's figure. Ignore it.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 01 2016, @07:58PM
Greenpeace are liars. Tell us the true figure, Nuke.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Aiwendil on Monday May 02 2016, @09:24AM
It all depends on how you see it, a quick summary (take care to note when pound, dollars or euro are used)
Initial expectation: £14bn
2014 expectation: £16bn construction+£2bn land&training&storage
2015 Oct: £18bn/$28bn "construction project"
However with the financial cost (interests) the entire project (35yrs, lifespan expected is at least 60years) is estimated to land at £24.5bn (this is btw what the strike price/CfD aims for + profits and risk).. to get to the greenepeace figures just add 50% (which sadly isn't unreasonable in a country where it was long since last new build).
(If you ever see the figure £45bn then it is with estimated inflation as well (on the non-greenepeace, full project price))
Probably also worth noting that:
* It is estimated that it would only cost 40% if the UK gov't was to finance it itself
* The chinese build Taishan 1&2 (ie - also two EPR) for €8bn (about £6bn).
* OL-3 (single EPR, finland) is expected to land at about €8.5bn.
* The cost of generating a kWh (only this - no interests or profits) at Hinkley Point C once the plant is built is expected at 2.4p/kWh (24£/MWh)..
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Monday May 02 2016, @11:54AM
Oops, my bad - and ironic since I asked people to takr care about it - $35 is £24 ... oh well, that means GP just picked the entire project cost (which has 12% risk included)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2016, @04:08AM
Thank you for looking that up. I wonder whether Greenpeace included the decommissioning costs.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday May 03 2016, @09:10AM
(Everying in euro and eurocent, multiply by 1.15 to get to usd and us cent)
Let's do a quick "back of the envelope", since no-one actually has fully decommisioned a non-research/non-military nuclear plant yet it is all estimates. Depending on source it will (in today's money) cost between 0.15bn (sweden (PWR, BWR)) to 1.5bn (ignalia in lithuania (RBMK)) € for each reactor.
In the case of Hinkley Point C we are talking about big reactors of 1600MWe net each (normal is in the 1100MWe size), capacity factor 92% , lifespan 60 years.
1600 * 0.92 * 24 * 365 =12,894,720 (MWh/year).
Or about 13bn kWh per year.
This tells us an extra cost of 1 to 10c per kWh is enough to add per kWh if we want it paid off in one year. If we go for 50 years it will be at 0.02 to 0.2c per kWh...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 01 2016, @06:06PM
The ISS is a conglomeration of pieces built in different countries and assembled on-orbit. If you want to compare the cost of the independent automobile fleet in North America, I'm sure that tops $35B by at least an order of magnitude.
$40B for submarine_s_, same thing, the aggregated US annual military budget far eclipses $35B, even individual research programs can top that, but they produce multiple objects, or a design for construction of multiple objects.
The reason that a $35B energy plant is even being considered is because it has clear and predictable ROI. People pay for energy, at a reasonably predictable rate, and if the ROI is high enough, a $100B energy plant feeding a highly populous area will make good sense to the bankers, politicians, and everybody along the way who are getting a piece of the pie - even possibly including the customers who might experience slightly reduced energy costs compared to a world without the massive (and relatively efficient) generation plants.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday May 01 2016, @09:57PM
Especially given that they will get a guaranteed price for their electricity. [wikipedia.org]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 01 2016, @04:24PM
And that's where the nuclear design idea goes wrong... Counter-example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA [wikipedia.org]
How about 35 of these solar plants instead for 9000MW? http://www.elp.com/articles/2014/09/billion-dollar-solar-power-plant-under-construction-in-nevada.html [elp.com]
That's 3X more than Hinckley Point (but maybe the same after accouting for peak output during the day?):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station [wikipedia.org]
It's unlike those solar plants will "melt down" or even have cost overruns during construction.
And just think what US$100 billion could have done for pulling together all the world's manufacturing information to make a self-replicating space habitat that could duplicate itself from lunar and asteroidal ore and solar power instead of a one-off tin can space station:
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/ [islandone.org]
One thing that may explain all these decisions is economic corruption and/or lack of imagination?
(Score: 4, Informative) by turgid on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:03PM
We need the solar and the nukes, it's not one or the other. We need wind power as well, ugly though it is, but we have plenty of space offshore for those.
It's over 15 years since I left the nuclear industry (I got sick of waiting for the idiots running the country to realise that gas was not the future, that global warming isn't an evil pinko-commie conspiracy) but the designs of reactors then that were likely to get approved were radically different from these PWRs.
The idiot let-the-market-decide politicians have given us a situation where we are having to buy foreign reactor designs, pay foreign companies to build them and to subsidise foreign state-owned electricity generating companies to operate in our highly-unstable "free market" in order to get a guaranteed return on their investment.
It was always said back then that the sort of reactor design that was likely to get approved by the Regulator (now the ONR) would have been "an AGR operating at Magnox temperatures."
Now we are getting European and Chinese PWRs retrofitted, at great expense, with enhanced protection systems to meet British safety standards.
We're paying through the nose for it, and we're putting our baseload electricity supply in the hands of foreign governments (China, France...)
Well done "free market" politicians!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:13PM
idiot let-the-market-decide politicians have given us a situation where we are having to buy foreign reactor designs,
Really? You're going with that?
Can you name ONE SINGLE THING about nuclear power that is NOT regulated by the GOVERNMENT and which is left for the market to decide?
Just ONE thing??!!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bot on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:16PM
The amount of kickbacks.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Informative) by turgid on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:49PM
The UK and US nuclear industries are very different. This is the UK we are talking about.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by Non Sequor on Sunday May 01 2016, @07:55PM
The National Electrical Code, which is drafted by a group set up by the insurance industry and which is in turn adopted by state governments.
A similar model is followed for life insurance and annuity products.
The predecessor of the MPAA instituted the Hays code, eventually replaced with the current rating system, to forestall calls for regulation.
Professional standards for a number of occupations are maintained by private entities as opposed to regulated licensing.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-regulatory_organization [wikipedia.org]
There are a lot of different models in place for deciding who is doing the right thing and who's behaving badly. Honestly they're all pretty mediocre, but that's life.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:36PM
It's not obvious that we need nukes. Nuclear power may be cheap, until you factor in waste disposal and periodic catastrophes like Chernobyl and Fukishima. The site for waste disposal will *always* be a political issue in a democratic country. And there are always going to be operational fuckups at the plants. And possibly terrorism, sabotage, or blackmail in the future.
Solar and wind are getting steadily cheaper as technology improves, experience is gained and capital suppliers spring up around the world. OK, wind is not improving as quickly as solar.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:54PM
It's patently obvious that we need the nukes because we need a reliable and predictable way of producing large amounts of base load electricity and it's the only one we have that doesn't emit carbon dioxide. Demand for energy always increases. That's why we need it.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday May 01 2016, @10:03PM
Those catastrophes are periodic? Great! Now that we have two of them, we can calculate the period, and when the next catastrophe is due, we simply temporarily switch off all reactors until the danger has passed! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fritsd on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:37PM
Great Britain is a very long island stretched in a north-south direction, with prevailing south-west winds almost directly from the Atlantic Ocean, blowing straight across the not-very-accentuated terrain.
The sun is revered in the Beatles song "the Walrus":
"if the sun don't come you get your
tan from
standing in the English rain"
Britain is not famous for its sunny climate.. less bad than Ireland though.
Britain has more wind than almost any other country I know. It's a mystery why they haven't stuck all the coasts and the shallower bits of sea full of turbines yet, like their neighbours the Netherlands and Denmark.
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by Grishnakh on Sunday May 01 2016, @06:39PM
Germany is not famous for its sunny climate either, yet it leads the world in solar power production. Put up enough solar panels and you can overcome the relative lack of sun. In a highly industrialized country, there's plenty of room for such panels too, without even having to waste any land: just put them on top of commercial store roofs and parking lots. By putting them in the cities, close to their point of use, you get a further efficiency boost because there's effectively zero transmission line loss, unlike with regular power plants.
But you're exactly right about wind power: a country with a lot of wind like that should be taking advantage of it. Even better, it's windy both day and night, so you can derive power from it at any time, unlike solar which is day-only (though that's not *that* much of a problem since your peak usage also happens to be in the daytime usually, especially in the summer because of A/C. The mass adoption of EVs would change this though).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RedGreen on Sunday May 01 2016, @06:42PM
"It's a mystery why they haven't stuck all the coasts and the shallower bits of sea full of turbines yet, like their neighbours the Netherlands and Denmark."
What mystery it is because of the same echo wack jobs that want us to go back to the stone age with their carbon dioxide reduction plans do not want the wind mills to spoil their view of the ocean.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday May 01 2016, @11:36PM
Donald Trump [soylentnews.org], for example.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday May 01 2016, @07:35PM
The attenuation of solar output by clouds is about 3 years.
How can I express power output as a number of years? Well, say you have a science project that needs 10 KWh per day, and one set of panels outputs 10 KWh per day, and rain cuts output by 50%, then you get your 10 KWh that day by simply installing twice the number/area of panels. That was easy! Although a little expensive...
Now you interrupt, why if I buy twice the number of panels, do I not express the impact of living in seattle vs a desert as a $ value? Well for decades the price of solar has collapsed by about 50% per decade.
So a panel system that makes economic sense in a desert in 2013 or so, makes economic sense in rainy England around 2016 or so.
I've been there. It doesn't rain ALL the time. And even when its raining the light intensity is very high and you'll get 50% output power or whatever unless its a Kansas style blackout thunderstorm (I guess those are pretty rare in England)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:48PM
It looks like bureaucratic bumbling and/or corruption disguised as bumbling. Certainly other countries are building the same reactor design for a fraction of that cost.
(Score: 1) by esperto123 on Sunday May 01 2016, @06:06PM
A solar plant is not a direct replacement for nuclear as one only produces during the day, with varying output, and the other is usually producing at 100% or near 100% for almost its entire life time, and the efficiency of solar depends of where it is installed (I guess in UK it must not be that high because of cloud cover).
That said, a power plant with such a high price tag will certainly have a very high MWH cost, and I'm pretty sure you could build solar plants with batteries (molten salt or other tecnology) that would be as high up time as nuclear and with more power output, and as you said, we wouldn't need to worry about radioactive spills, waste or accidents.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Monday May 02 2016, @10:22AM
Regarding those 9000W of solar you suggested let's do some math..
The article you linked to doesn't mention if it is PV or Thermal solar in that plant, so I'm going to go with PV (also - there is data for PV in UK).
First up HPC:
2x1600MWe net, capacity factor 92%, lifespan 60years+.
(Capacity * capacity factor * hoursPerDay * daysPerYear)
3200 * 0.92 * 24 * 365 ~ 25_790_000 (MWh/year)
Solar (PV):
9000MWe net, capacity factor 35%, lifespan ~30 years
9000 * 0.35 * 24 * 365 ~ 27_590_000 (MWh/year)
(The capacity factor for solar varies over the year, the US avg are between 19.7% and 34.7% depending on month (EIA figures, roughly same for solar thermal)).
So, assuming we could get all that power all the time it is roughly an even race.. however solar varies quite a bit (clouds, nights) so it will have a greater need for load balancing when deployed at large scale...
So, at large scales the nuclear plant edges ahead if we want baseload or regulating capability (this is why we need grid storage if we want non-hydro renewables)...
However the nuclear plant is in UK and there the capacity factor for solar (PV, no significant thermal solar there) average at slightly below 12% (DECC figure)..
So, HPC beats solar at about 3:1..
Next up, that 35bn is about 30% higher than the expected cost by industry and government.. so assuming gov't and industry knows better then HPC beats solar 4.5:1 ...
Now take a look at the lifespans - HPC over lifetime beats solar with at least 4.5:1 but most likely 9:1
So yeah, nuclear plants are complicated because they are designed to outlast the people who built them and to withstand things that would eradicate their surrounding areas...
I guess the explanation is - someone did the math and looked beyond 30 years.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Monday May 02 2016, @03:39PM
Accidently did the same mistake twice in my mind earlier today..
remove the "30% higher than expected", so the numbers is 3:1 to 6:1 instead of 4.5:1 to 9:1, still quite hefty however
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday May 02 2016, @01:49PM
Solar plants are land hungry. Each of those plants requires 4 square miles. That's about 2500 acres or just over 1000 hectares. Now multiply that by 35 and you have 140 squares miles, a land area equivalent to about half of New York City (304.6miles2). That is a lot of land to be sacrificed.
I'd rather we concentrate putting panels on roofs before we bulldoze hundreds of square miles of land.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:25PM
Has anyone else noticed that this summary and the summary the same article on Slashdot are IDENTICAL? Two things: I came here to get AWAY from you terrible slashdot "editors". Two, how hard is it to not copy and paste the exact same thing wherever you go? Its the epitome of laziness in my opinion, especially when you consider most people are here on soylent because they feel as angry or upset about the current state of Slashdot as I am. Don't bring that horrible slashdot-style work ethic (which is to say complete laziness) here please.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:35PM
Hugh Pickens submits to both sites himself, genius.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 01 2016, @06:03PM
It's all part of the migration plan to Soylentnews. ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 01 2016, @08:34PM
That's HughPickens.com [hughpickens.com] to you.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:44PM
This random website [publicpurpose.com] I googled claims:
It is estimated that the total construction cost of the interstate highway system, through 1995, is $329 billion in 1996 dollars ($58.5 billion in 1957 dollars).
I've also heard that the US interstate highway system is the largest structure made by humans. I'm not saying there aren't other possible contenders, it probably depends on what you count as a continuous structure.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday May 01 2016, @05:49PM
Largest structure?
Its a collection of parts.
If that is a valid way of cost calculation, why not add the cost every city street, country road, sidewalk, parking lot, and driveway, since they are all part of the same collection....
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday May 01 2016, @06:15PM
Its a collection of parts.
Aren't we all?
You contribute wonderful things to this site frojack, but sometimes I question whether or not you finish reading all of the comments you reply to. I can definitely see an argument for counting all of those things as one object, and I could also see an argument for not. Again, it depends on what you count as a continuous structure. This is a very hard to define thing, and totally arbitrary. Object heirarchies are something our brains have made up so that they can model the world in usefull ways, they don't really exist in at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 01 2016, @07:49PM
You contribute wonderful things to this site frojack, but sometimes
He says thanks.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday May 01 2016, @08:36PM
I didn't, but I gladly will. Thanks to all of the volunteer staff generally, and frojack specifically! You guys do great work, and I've never seen evidence of any of you punishing people for criticism and disagreement. This is by far my favorite online community, and I'm sure it's made significantly more lively by the ridiculous amount of articles that frojack submits. My cryptocoins are in very cold storage, but next time I buy some I'll be renewing my membership.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Sunday May 01 2016, @06:42PM
Your car is a collection of parts. You can easily take it apart with a few wrenches. So is your computer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 01 2016, @08:14PM
Meanwhile if we look at parts of the ISS, they are physically attached to each other with integrated power systems and crew access. And a significant part of the station's structure is necessary in order for the system to function at all.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday May 02 2016, @07:05PM
I was going to suggest the Great Wall of China, which is mostly considered a single structure.
If you indemnified the builders' deaths at the current US rates, it would be a lot higher than anything I can think of.
My second pick would be the Pentagon, or its daddy the US congress, which are the "object" of so many fantasies, and by far the most expensive things to maintain.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 01 2016, @08:35PM
That's like saying that a fungus in France is the largest living organism on the planet - maybe true from some technical perspectives, but as with the highway system, if you cut it in half, you'd still have two mostly functional parts. Don't try that with your average power plant, nuclear or otherwise.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday May 01 2016, @08:58PM
That's like saying that a fungus in France is the largest living organism on the planet
Yeah, I've seen it listed as the largest organism (actually one in Oregon, US). Here's an example. [scientificamerican.com]
as with the highway system, if you cut it in half, you'd still have two mostly functional parts
This is an interesting standard for differentiating objects. I can't remember seeing it before (not suggesting you made it up, just expressing my own ignorance). I guess that by this standard a blue whale would count as one object for the purpose of breeding blue whales but as a collection of objects for the purpose of harvesting whale meat, since the differentiation of objects depends on the function of the object. By the same token, the interstate highway system could be a single object for the purposes of Wal*Mart,, and the gigantic fungus could be a single object for the purpose of of routing nutrients between many distant trees. Given that the fungus you mentioned routes resources between trees (assuming it's the same as the one in Oregon), it's actually a pretty great parallel to the interstate highway system.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday May 01 2016, @10:10PM
It's commonplace for nuclear power stations to have multiple "units" that are largely independent. For example, at Chernobyl there are four units and after the accident at Unit 4, the remaning ones were operated until 1997, 1991, and 2000 [world-nuclear.org].
(Score: 1) by eravnrekaree on Sunday May 01 2016, @08:43PM
First, why spend billions on a new design instead of using a standard design like AP1000.
Nuclear Power looks more and more like a racket to keep itself in business, when the enormous cost and risk is hard to justify, and probably would be better spent in vast solar arrays in deserts and thousands of miles of electrical mains to bring them to populated areas. The industry constantly underestimates risks. Touting its safety systems, but the safety systems cannot keep it safe, the systems can fail like they did at Fulashima, and for many other reasons including sabatoge. Even the AP1000 passive safety is not gauranteed safe because even it relies on explosives, valves and piping that can fail.
The cost of failure is unacceptably high, its not a one time hit but the gift that keeps on giving. Refer to studies about the effect on wildlife in Fukashima and Chernobyl, the deformaties, mutations, reduced fertility etc.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday May 03 2016, @10:02PM
Nuclear is safer than solar [nextbigfuture.com]
The reason nuclear SEEMS dangerous is because accidents are rare but significant, while solar accidents are extremely common but far less significant. If fifty people die in a single incident, it's global news for weeks. Even if it only happens once every few years. You'll remember those incidents for the rest of your life. But if someone installing solar panels falls off a roof and breaks their neck, the local news where it happened might not even cover it. That could happen every single day and you'd still never hear about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 01 2016, @10:30PM
A few years old, and i guess we are already sick of pointing out more expensive things, but;
"Chevron has announced a second cost increase and further delays to its giant Gorgon gas project, with the budget now set at $US54 billion."
https://www.businessnews.com.au/article/Gorgon-cost-hits-US54bn [businessnews.com.au]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @02:32AM