Vogtle nuclear plants 3 and 4 are now forecast to cost a total of $34 Billion. $30.34 Billion (USNews and GPB), plus the $3.68 Billion Westinghouse paid to the owners in conjunction with it’s bankruptcy filing (GTTSI), that’s $34.02 Billion, $14 per watt.
These are each 1.215 Gigawatt plants. So the ratepayers will pay $34.02 billion for 2.43 Gigawatts of electricity generating capacity. That’s $14 per watt. And it doesn’t factor in the costs of fuel, maintenance, safety and security, and the lost value of ecosystem services.
Decommissioning the Oyster Creek nuclear power station, a 636 MW reactor, were estimated by then-owner Exelon, at $1.16 Billion to $1.4 Billion, in a statement to the NRC, here. This is $1.82 per watt to $2.20 per watt.
The new 1.11 GW Ocean Wind facility, under construction about 15 miles east of Atlantic City, NJ, was budgeted at $1.6 Billion, $1.44 per watt.
Vogtle: Construction of 2.43 GW: $34.02 Billion, $13.99 per watt.
Oyster Creek: Decommission of 636 MW: $1.16 Billion to $1.4 B, $2.20 per watt.
Ocean Wind: Construction of 1.11 GW: $1.6 Billion, $1.44 per watt.
It costs more to decommission a nuclear power plant than to build an offshore wind farm.
This suggests why we are not building nuclear power plants.
A 1.0 GW nuclear power station can be composed of one or two reactors. A 1.0 GW offshore wind farm is composed of 125 to 200 wind turbines of 2.5 to 8 MW each. Because a wind farm is comprised of a large number of small units, and therefore a larger attack surface, and because there are no radioactive or other concentrated toxic materials on a wind turbine, security concerns are likely to be dramatically less than those associated with nuclear power, or coal, oil, or natural gas fired power plants.
It takes four or five years to bring utility scale wind on line, as opposed to 10 to 15 years for nuclear.
And as the Russians demonstrated in Ukraine, my nuclear power plant is my enemy’s target.
Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy, LCOE, for 2022, here, calculates generation costs for electricity from wind at $26 to $50 per MWh, from utility scale solar: $28 to $41 per MWh, and from nuclear: $131 to $204 per MWh.
While the 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents negatively impacted public perception of nuclear power, what really killed nuclear was President Reagan’s deregulation and disconnection of electricity generation from distribution. Thanks to Reagan, nuclear had to compete with coal and natural gas and now solar and wind. With its huge capital requirements, expensive safety requirements, and very long implementation times, nuclear couldn’t compete in the 80s or 90s and cannot compete today.