True! And you might not even have to redesign most of the power plant, just the final stages of cooling. You could even avoid suffering lower Carnot efficiency during the day by using a daily thermal store.
Other problem, even without redesigning significant parts of atomic power plants, they're economically uncompetitive with PV.
The worst builds ever are worse than PV (this is how lazard computes it) but Hualong 1 and APR1400 designs are cheaper when you consider full systems costs. We'll build those.
But how do you consider "full system costs" for something that needs people to manage the waste for 1000+ years even after you have closed the plant?
We can evidently not even predict inflation correctly from one month to the next so it seems unlikely that we can know what a nuclear plant actually costs.
France has certainly not known, they're currently over 40 billion dollars in debt for their plants (to be paid by taxpayers when they nationalize the operator), and they have over a million cubic meters of waste that needs manpower to manage for longer than France has existed as a nation.
Instead of nuclear plants in 0.1% of the Sahara, I propose solar panels on 10% of existing parking lots. Much easier, much faster, much cheaper, and coming generations will thank us instead of curse us. :)
It's debatable, but at least everyone† agrees that solar panels don't impose major additional costs after initial construction. So I think we can come to less debatable conclusions by noting that the fairly knowable initial construction cost of nuclear power plants is higher than that of utility-scale solar plants, per watt, in most of the world. That way we don't need to argue about how long we have to hire guards for the million cubic meters of slightly contaminated gloves and concrete—even if that cost is zero, nuclear still loses, except in places like Norway.
By the way, France has existed as a nation for about 1700–1800 years. Maybe you mean "longer than France has existed as a state."
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† There are a few coal-industry shills raising alarms about cadmium, but of course the currently popular kinds of solar panel contain no cadmium, and even the ones that did contain cadmium didn't pose a real problem because of the minuscule quantities and their resistance to corrosion.
Maybe, we'll see. The Chinese Communist Party doesn't seem to agree with you, even though the capacity factor of PV in the PRC is absolutely abysmal.
The figures I've seen suggest that the capex cost of a coal power plant — which is basically a nuclear power plant without the nuclear reactor — is high enough to be uncompetitive with PV in most of the world now, even if the coal were free. So I'm skeptical that GE or CGN has found a way to make their nuclear power plants as cheap as PV, except in, like, Manchuria or Svalbard or something.
Thank you for linking this article! It answers a lot of questions I'd had after reading some poorer coverage of this initiative last year.
I'm definitely not talking about LCOE; I'm just talking about up-front capex. Conceivably nuclear plants could be cheaper to build than PV farms, but still have a worse LCOE, but I don't think they're even cheaper to build. Even for China, which is the best in the world at building things.
This article says the PRC plans to build another 147 GW for a total of 200 GW by 02035, over 14 years, averaging 10 GW per year. Total PRC marketed energy consumption is on the order of 6 TW (6000 GW), though I'm extrapolating that from a figure of 28 PWh/year in 02010 and an increase in energy consumption of 90% since then, and I'd be delighted to have more reliable data.
So the plan is to add an additional 2% to their energy supply (assuming capacity factor 90%) in the form of nuclear — over the course of 14 years, during which time their total energy consumption will presumably roughly double.
In that context this doesn't seem like a huge bet on nuclear to me.
The article says, "China keeps the exact costs a state secret, but analysts including BloombergNEF and the World Nuclear Association estimate China can build plants for about $2,500 to $3,000 per kilowatt." That's roughly six times the cost of PV plants—barely competitive with PV in polar and cloudy regions where PV capacity factors are 10-15%, completely unviable in sunny regions where PV capacity factors approach 30%.
I don't have figures yet for 02021 (do you?) but in 02020, looking only at electric power generation, they installed 48.2 GW(p) of new solar, 71.7 GW(p) of new wind, and 38.4 GW(e) of new coal. If the capacity factors are average for the energy source, that would be 6.3 GW(mean) of new solar, 16 GW(mean) of new wind, and 19.2 GW(mean) of new coal, and yes, PRC's average coal capacity factor really is reported to be just 50%. Solar and wind have been rising much faster.
So that's the context in which I'm saying the CPC doesn't seem to think nuclear power is economically competitive with renewables. It's already installing more renewables than nuclear, even after derating for the different capacity factors and including these future nuclear plans, which may fail to materialize, and it has been for years.
Other problem, even without redesigning significant parts of atomic power plants, they're economically uncompetitive with PV.