Most commentary on energy is really a commentary on the cost of energy. For instance, stories about natural gas rave about its low price, which it has. Bloomberg reports, for instance, that the natural gas price on Jan 19 was $2.99/million BTUs. For comparison, the Brits pay about $8/million BTUs. Stories about hydrogen-powered electric generators in Japan report the refrigerator-sized units will cost about $16,700 per home. Many articles on gasoline report that the fuel costs less than $2/gallon at many locales. And wind critics loved to bash the now-expired Production Tax Credit because, they say, it was costly. (It was not. It was a tax credit.) They even calculate bogus million-dollar costs to show how much tax payers are supposedly losing.
For at least the next 10 years, natural gas and onshore wind-generated power will provide the least expensive, most reliable, and fastest-to-production source of power.
In contrast, pick up an article about the promise of thorium nuclear reactors and you likely won’t see one dollar sign. What gives? Thorium reactors may well be the power source of the future but the technology will cost something. But how much?
One way to answer the question is to Google it. A recent search pulled up this edited Best Answer from Yahoo:
Japan thinks it can make a thorium prototype reactor for $300 million. The UK estimates that the first thorium production plant would cost £1 billion. France has invested € 1 million investigating corrosion problems found when a test reactor in the U.S. was shut down in 1969 after four years of operation. Generally, it’s believed that $300 million would be enough for small thorium power plant.
We assume a small plant means about 200 MW.
Another way to get a handle on thorium-reactor costs would be to examine the cost of current conventional reactors under construction, such as the Vogtle units in Georgia. From Wikipedia:
The expected cost for the two reactors is $14 billion. Georgia power’s share is around $6.1 billion, while “remaining ownership of the two reactors is split among Oglethorpe Power Corp., the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (MEAG Power), and Dalton Utilities”.
The first two units are rated for a total of 2,400 MW. That is a large plant.
But during Vogtle’s construction, capital investment jumped from an estimated $660 million to $8.87 billion. Additional regulations and a redesign brought the jump in capital costs.
Unfortunately, the nuclear industry has a history and habit of building plants that cost much more than their original estimates. Even though lower construction costs are claimed as a thorium-reactor benefit, when the first cost figures for one make headlines multiply them by at least five for a better estimate. But you have awhile to wait.
For at least the next 10 years, natural gas and onshore wind-generated power will provide the least expensive, most reliable, and fastest-to-production source of power.
–Paul Dvorak
Filed Under: Financing, News
LFTR faces a multifaceted rebuttal from all its competitors for the sake of self preservation wind solar fossil coal all stand to eventually lose to LFTRs because they’ll have less points of failure less required maintenance and less long term investments cost Of course it won’t start this way but in very few years it optimization will reach its peak and soon children will be building them for science projects like old crystal radio’s cause they are so simple in concept design and function I would wager a LFTR could be built using Bronze Age technology LFTRs can commence fission at a mere 400•
Molten Salt reactors (MSRs) and more specifically the thorium variant such as Liquid Fluoride Salt Thorium Rector (LFTR) promise such enormous benefits in decarbonising our power supply and providing abundant process heat for industries such as cement, fertiliser, liquid fuels and hydrogen production as well as combined cycle (Brayton/Rankin) electric power production, as a society we would be irresponsible to ignore the potential.
MSRs to appear to have substantial inherent safety improvements over pressurised water reactors (PWRs). We need to remember PWRs are inherently inefficient, require very expensive enriched U235 fuel and produce plutonium (both proliferation risks). Most importantly however, by their very nature (due in part the high pressures under which they operate) PWRs have potential for catastrophic failure. In the case of Chernobyl and Fukushima the subsequent disasters have required large scale evacuation. These downsides make PWRs unbankable. On the other hand, MSRs with their low pressure operation, and both inherent and engineered walk away safety appear a much better prospect.
I am a solar and wind enthusiast and live with off grid power, but know these sources are vulnerable to outage, think solar’s vulnerability to lack of sun, hail, fire, lightning and more widespread damage such as a Carrington scale solar flare event. Wind of course has similar vulnerabilities. To sustain a modern economy we must have a diversity and abundance of power sources. MSRs fit well in such a context, their modularity and scalability, as well as purported load following rather than baseload characteristics, suggest they could well match the variable supply and demand of future power markets. In an Australian context, the driest continent on earth, their minimal need for a cooling water supply is also a big plus.
Until fusion comes on line (in 50 years) MSRs might be considered a gap filler, fortunately should fusion be further delayed Australia’s proven thorium reserves are so abundant they could last 5,000 years and possibly well beyond.
I think that any form of electrical energy generation we should base the world economy on should be able to out compete even the cheapest oil and gas that can be extracted anywhere.
Electricity can be used to extract hydrogen and CO2 from seawater that can be converted into Synfuels that can substitute diesel and gasoline as well as form the basis for plastics and other products currently based on oil.
This interesting article summarize the opportunity and some cost estimates in an excel sheet. http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/01/16/zero-emission-synfuel-from-seawater/
In 2013 wind at good sites such as in US interior was traded on 20 year PPA contracts that average $0,021/kWh so Excluding PTC the cost of wind electricity was roughly $0,032/kWh.
If you look into the Synfuel excel sheet and factor in that crude oil needs transportation and refinery then Synfuels will be price competitive with very cheap oil around $0,005/kWh to $0,01/kWh or relative to wind in 2013 at good locations we need between 84% and 69%. http://cleantechnica.com/2014/05/08/2013-ppa-prices-us-interior-averaged-2-1-centskwh-windpower-2014-part-2/
84% reduction in cost is a lot but not entirely unprecedented over a short period of time in the renewable industry where solar from 2008 to 2013 dropped 78% and wind dropped 58% http://renewables.seenews.com/news/us-utility-scale-solar-power-lcoe-plunges-by-80-in-5-years-wind-too-439338
Can wind power continue to drop COE 15.6% every year for about ten more years is the interesting question.
Wind turbines can become 30% to 50% cheaper according to this recent report. http://www.windpowerengineering-digital.com/windpowerengineering/february_2015?pg=13#pg13
More importantly will future wind turbines be able to deliver higher capacity factors and will they last longer.
There is no doubt that the average turbine installed in 2013 will be smaller than the average turbine installed in a few years time and there is also no doubt that blades becomes longer so the capacity factor will grow steadily. https://www.windpowerengineering.com/design/mechanical/blades/longer-blades-coming-industry-transport-problems-says-consultant/
Wind turbine durability can be improved by design and better maintenance and nacelle and blades can be substituted at a low cost onshore. http://social.windenergyupdate.com/operations-maintenance/offshore-wind-farm-lifetime-extensions-why-‘beyond-2020’-energy-policy-dialog
It appears probable that wind can deliver energy at the price point needed to end fossils but are the areas with sufficiently attractive wind conditions large enough to actually produce the needed amounts of electricity?
More than half of Australia is required the current total global energy usage with wind power. Clearly other sources of energy and energy efficiency will decrease demand but Synfuel conversion will increase demand, but bottom-line there is land space enough and wind power could singlehandedly end fossils.
Could Molten Salt Reactors also end fossils? There is plenty of cheap or free nuclear waste from classic Nuclear reactors. http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/187917-startup-gets-funding-for-its-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor-that-eats-radioactive-waste Lack of track record and thus bankability combined with price are the obstacles. Transatomic power target $1,7 billion for their 500MW reactor or roughly $34/Watt which will newer fly if the aim is to end fossils.
First, thanks for all the intelligent and civilized comments. To all you thorium power advocates, I hope your optimism is not misplaced. Inexpensive and abundant electricity will do wonders for the world by pulling many people out of poverty.
But I must caution against over-selling thorium reactors. Recall the comments from the dawn of the nuclear industry: Nuclear power would be so cheap it would not have to be metered. So a little under-selling and over-delivering would be a better tactic.
One other comment deserves attention: the old chestnut that every wind farm needs a backup. That’s only true if you accept the idea that every power plant needs a backup, as they do. That’s one reason the power industry invented the grid. That arrangement is such that when a power plant goes offline – as when a nuclear plant scrams – other power producers on the grid, wind farms included, can make up the loss.
Lastly, because competition improves the breed, the price of power generated by the most modern wind turbines will be the price to hit. The negotiators and owners I’ve read and heard say wind farms are selling power at 3 to 5¢/kWh. (We in the Midwest pay about 12.6¢/kWh for generation and transmission.) Natural gas ($2.67/million Btus as of Jan 30) and wind power are the team to beat for the next decade. Of course, an unforeseen solar development could change the equation. But until then, let’s hope thorium-reactor prototypes work better than promised.
─Paul Dvorak
First, thanks for all the intelligent and civilized comments. To all you thorium power advocates, I hope your optimism is not misplaced. Inexpensive and abundant electricity will do wonders for the world by pulling many people out of poverty.
But I must caution against over-selling thorium reactors. Recall the comments from the dawn of the nuclear industry: Nuclear power would be so cheap it would not have to be metered. So a little under-selling and over-delivering would be a better tactic.
One other comment deserves attention: the old chestnut that every wind farm needs a backup. That’s only true if you accept the idea that every power plant needs a backup, as they do. That’s one reason the power industry invented the grid. That arrangement is such that when a power plant goes offline – as when a nuclear plant scrams – other power producers on the grid, wind farms included, can make up the loss.
Lastly, because competition improves the breed, the price of power generated by the most modern wind turbines will be the price to hit. The negotiators and owners I’ve read and heard say wind farms are selling power at 3 to 5¢/kWh. (We in the Midwest pay about 12.6¢/kWh for generation and transmission.) Natural gas ($2.67/million Btus as of Jan 30) and wind power are the team to beat for the next decade. Of course, an unforeseen solar development could change the equation. But until then, let’s hope thorium-reactor prototypes work better than promised.
─Paul Dvorak
Helium-cooled Closed Cycle Gas Turbine Thorium Reactor holds the most promise for safe, less expensive, life-cycle and waste processing lowest cost technology. See work performed at GA Tech circa 1974.
You will find detailed cost comparisons in Robert Hargrave’s well-known book ‘Thorium: energy cheaper than coal’ http://www.thoriumenergycheaperthancoal.com/
Yes, nuclear reactors are expensive to develop. But we’re trying to save the world here, and without nuclear (both existing and next-gen, like molten-salt reactors that use thorium, depleted uranium or spent nuclear fuel from existing plants) we don’t stand a chance of moving the needle off of fossil fuels enough to help. The gap is just too big, and wind, solar and other renewables are too diffuse and unreliable to fill it. You said it yourself — whenever you build windmills, you build gas fired plants to back them up.
Today’s nuclear is safe, efficient and yes, cost-effective when you look at the entire life cycle and consider all that is necessary to produce the same amount of energy of the same quality. Tomorrow’s nuclear will bring many additional benefits, and including it in our energy mix is the only way we will be able to address climate change, and bring dependable, affordable and scalable energy to the billions on earth that do not yet have access to it.
Up-front costs for next generation nuclear are certainly significant, but it will be well worth it. Civilization has come to depend on reliable, scalable energy sources and nothing is better than nuclear in these categories.
Several estimates for MSR reactors have been done over the years, averaging about $2 an installed watt. That’s for a power plant with a 90+% uptime, that operates for about 60 years. Perhaps even more, since unlike conventional reactors, MSRs all operate at atmospheric pressure.
To compare wind, figure in peak vs average capacity, and lifespan of the major equipment. From what I can find, wind turbines are estimated to last an average of 20 years, and their average capacity is about 30-40%.
And, MSRs can’t really be yardsticked against conventional reactor costs. MSRs have no need of a pressurized containment dome, custom high-pressure piping, external cooling, or emergency backup cooling. So you can’t really get even a vague idea of what an MSR would cost by looking at Votgle, SONGS, or anything that’s been built.
MSRs are about as similar to Light Water Reactors (LWRs) as electric motors are to internal combustion engines – they both produce power, but the similarities quickly diverge from there.
Hi Paul,
thanks for your good views. Sovacool et al. (2014) investigated cost overruns over some 300 GW installed in the last decades. Indeed wind power is almost always on budget, so is solar. For nuclear in contrast, nearly 100% of projects have overruns and the mean overrun is some 120%. And that’s for the established technology, ignoring research costs, which are huge.
That article is behind a paywall but a summary is available here:
http://grist.org/climate-energy/wind-and-solar-are-much-less-financially-risky-than-other-power-projects/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Climate%2520Dec%252018&utm_campaign=climate
Paul, please check out the details of this design for a hybrid uranium/thorium fueled molten salt reactor. The complete calculations are exhibited, leading to an electric power generation cost of 3 cents/kWh. http://thorconpower.com
I’m a huge proponent of non-fossil alternative energy, and this includes Gen4 nuclear such as LFTR. One of the negatives to fossil energy is the environmental impact of extraction, a.k.a. MTR, fracking, oil spills, methane leaks etc. How is thorium obtained? Will we end up with huge scars in the land from thorium that will be as bad or worse than fossil fuels?
One point discussed here is cost overrun on the construction of nuclear reactors. Please consider the rapid rate of inflation and the decades of delay caused by redundant government regulation and oversight. A conventional nuclear plant is years on the drawing board before construction begins. The claims for thorium reactors are they can be mas produced then transported to the site of operation. These are smaller units that do not required the vast cooling systems needed in a conventional plant. To increase power output more generating units are placed at the same location. Further information at World Nuclear Association, http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/nuclear-fuel-cycle/power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors/
Several MSR cost estimates have been done over the last few decades, and average around $2 a watt. Comparing them with Light Water Reactors won’t give you a fair price – LWRs need containment domes, which are fantastically expensive. They also need multiple backup cooling systems, lots of custom-made high pressure piping, etc.
Since liquid-fuel MSRs can’t melt down (how do you melt a liquid?) and never operate under pressure (the 700ºC liquid fuel is always at ambient pressure) and need no external cooling or post-shut down cooling (the liquid fuel serves as the coolant / after a shutdown, the liquid is drained into “dump tanks” that allow passive cooling) using LWRs as a yardstick simply won’t work.
As you note, regulatory and policy changes can have a very large impact on project costs. And when policy changes have forced large cost overruns, opponents of nuclear power have seized on that to accuse the builders of dishonesty about what the reactors would ultimately cost. So I can hardly fault thorium advocates for not wanting to venture hard cost projections without even knowing what the regulatory landscape is going to look like.
Even so, it should be possible to do cost projections which bypass the regulatory aspects and leave those blank for now. My suspicion is that we will not make the jump directly to thorium power, and companies like TransAtomic and Martingale intend to develop low cost molten salt reactor technology first, and then see about integrating thorium after they are up and running.
Martingale is projecting a manufacturing cost of around $200 million for the nuclear reactor side of a gigawatt-scale Thorcon power plant. That does not include land cost, excavation cost, module transport cost, module connection cost, burial cost, the steam generator cost (may be able to use some existing steam generators), the external service infrastructure cost, and regulatory and licensing costs. Martingale is hopeful those additional costs can be held to ten times the reactor costs, but they are frank that they may have to seek customers outside the United states to accomplish that, at least initially.
As to whether thorium will be cheaper than wind, the question seems a bit premature at this point. If any of the alternative fusion projects work out (Lawrenceville, Lockeed, Tri-Alpha, Dynomak, etc.) any one of those might kill or greatly slow molten salt reactor development. Even if that doesn’t happen, the success of any of the other molten salt reactor projects could remove a lot of the impetus for thorium fuel cycle development. Ultimately, I expect the main determinant of relative cost will not be the technology per se, but the regulatory, licensing and policy landscape at that time.
The article doesn’t mention the fact that reactors are designed to last decades, run more than 90 percent of the time, and fuel is much less expensive per KWH generated. Also, far less material is used for construction per KWH generated compared to wind. Thorium molten salt reactors are going to be a good deal! The future is everything electric and 4th generation nuclear power with renewables when proven cost-effective.