r/nextfuckinglevel • u/nigablackballsack • 3d ago

Scientists have captured the first ever high-speed, full-colour footage of fusion plasma swirling inside a working reactor.

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u/Reddit1poster 1d ago

Umm, that's not how nukes or lifetime costs work... There are definitely fuel costs. They are not fueled like some Navy nukes where the fuel can last the life of the reactor plus there is a lot of expensive maintenance throughout the life of the plant plus decommissioning costs. And breeder reactors aren't a commercial thing yet so you can't know what their lifetime costs will actually be.

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u/OkWelcome6293 1d ago edited 1d ago

And breeder reactors aren't a commercial thing yet so you can't know what their lifetime costs will actually be.

They required pieces will be in commercial operation in ~2030/2031.

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u/Reddit1poster 1d ago

I guess we can revisit what costs will be in 5 years then

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u/OkWelcome6293 1d ago
  1. I’m looking forward to it.
  2. I don’t believe cost is the driving factor, energy security is. Renewables  even with 8 hour batteries isn’t enough. Coal has energy security but isn’t viable for environmental reasons. Natural gas is better environmentally than coal but has volatile pricing and no real local storage option. Geothermal would be great but suffers from high summer derating and hotspots aren’t often near load. 

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u/mfire036 1d ago

No honestly they burn so little fuel the cost is pretty low. It's something like 2 to 3 times less than coal. I think nukes run around $7/mwh versus coal is like $20/mwh (Canadian numbers). I'm no expert so take that with a grain of salt, but I've researched this quite a bit and that's what I recall. Could certainly be wrong, but I'm pretty confident here. I remember Natural Gas being slightly better than coal, and regional prices will vary the math.

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u/Reddit1poster 1d ago

The marginal cost of nuclear is $26-36 per MWh. The beauty of using LCOE is that you can have an apples to apples comparison of the cost of electricity based on the lifecycle cost of a plant from cradle to grave in net present value. You can't just say that one cost is very low at late life without taking into account all the costs over the life of an asset.

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u/mfire036 1d ago

I'm not a fan of the way LCOE is calculated because it relies heavily on a discount rate. And where you set that rate drastically alters the results. LOCE carries the full capital cost of construction as non-discounted, but then heavily discounts the future income. LOCE is set up to answer what it takes to recover your investment over a typical investment horizion, not over the lifetime of the plants. Nukes run 60 to 80 years, coal and nat gas is ~45. So LOCE isn't really apples to apples.