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from the safe-like-ms-windows-and-real-estate-doing-fission-together dept.
Wyoming has selected billionaire Bill Gates's company TerraPower LLC and Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway's owned power company PacifiCorp to build the nation's first Natrium reactor. As reported by Reuters:
TerraPower, founded by Gates about 15 years ago, and power company PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N), said the exact site of the Natrium reactor demonstration plant is expected to be announced by the end of the year. Small advanced reactors, which run on different fuels than traditional reactors, are regarded by some as a critical carbon-free technology than can supplement intermittent power sources like wind and solar as states strive to cut emissions that cause climate change.
"This is our fastest and clearest course to becoming carbon negative," Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon said. "Nuclear power is clearly a part of my all-of-the-above strategy for energy" in Wyoming, the country's top coal-producing state.
The project features a 345 megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten salt-based energy storage that could boost the system's power output to 500 MW during peak power demand. TerraPower said last year that the plants would cost about $1 billion.
[...] Chris Levesque, TerraPower's president and CEO, said the demonstration plant would take about seven years to build.
"We need this kind of clean energy on the grid in the 2030s," he told reporters.
Also seen over at ZeroHedge.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 03 2021, @07:33PM (3 children)
So, $2.90/W - at $0.08/kWh that's a ROI within 36,232 hours, or 4.1 years. Smart money for an investment expected to run 40 to 60 years before refueling [wikipedia.org].
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 03 2021, @10:04PM (1 child)
ROI starts when it starts operating, at least 7 years from now.
Where did you get $0.08/kWh? Wholesale electricity is running at less than half that. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46396 [eia.gov]
So, best case, a billion dollars today earns you $86 million per year starting 7 years from now. Which is equivalent to your billion earning 5.5% starting today.
That is best case. It assumes no cost overruns or delays getting an operating license. Nuclear power has historically been plagued by cost overruns and license delays. It also assumes that in the meantime solar/battery technology doesn't become cheaper than dirt, lowering electricity prices.
There may be money to be made here eventually, a lot of money even, but not anytime soon. And not from this reactor. The money is in learning how to build them faster and cheaper.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 04 2021, @11:13AM
So, the longer time to start of the initial prototype is cost of development, and of course there is massive uncertainty - not so much in the 70 year old aspects of the tech but in the regulatory and "carbon negative incentive" climate.
Commercial electric prices in Wyoming (location of the project) run 8 to 9 cents per kWh - this is ignoring the cost of transmission / maintenance, but one aspect of "microgenerators" is that they are, or should be, located much closer to consumers than traditional big plants.
Out the other end, if the US nuclear regulatory climate of the 2030s in any way resembles the French breeder reactor building phase of the 1960s and 70s, this looks like a solid investment. Solar and wind aren't really cleaner, and no matter what the press flak says: having a lot of plutonium on hand, even if it is buried underground in domestic power generators, is still an implied threat on the world's balance of power stage.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 03 2021, @10:47PM
The calculation is obviously much more complicated than that.
Time to build, opportunity costs of capital, risk, etc.
Rule of thumb is that a project is worse than another if (all other things being equal) it has a higher: time to start earning, time to recoup, risk, novelty, or government oversight or risk of regulation changes.
That does not mean that this project is doomed to fail or be non-profitable.
Also, this single implementation is almost certain a test bed for a wider strategy.
So on the profit side you would have to factor in the next dozen reactors they intend to build at a much cheaper cost since the test case has been completed.