Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Real Engineering 'The Economics of Nuclear Energy'

Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Real Engineering "The Economics of Nuclear Energy"

[WanWan-emqu]

Guys, i think this guy has a little over 10 years of experience in the commercial nuclear power industry

[mattpage]

Wow! 51k subscribers! Way to go! So I wanted to point you at another channel called Plainly Difficult. He has a cool delivery and graphics. He has covered quite a few disasters based around nuclear reactors and enrichment facilities. I know you have done a lot of videos on Chernobyl, but I would ask you to take a look at his short series and maybe do a reaction and spill a little bit of your brain power our way. Gratz again on your subscribers, and keep the videos coming!

[matthewmalaker]

I think you should look at Illinois energy prof. This video's block concept came from his channel, and it really is a great YouTube channel for energy technology, especially nuclear.

[palladin]

Late on the comment but I really like how he references capacity factor. Every single attempt I've ever seen at comparisons always ignores capacity factors and we end up getting wind / solar running 100% CF for capital expense purposes.

[Tagson]

I love the fact that your profile name is T. Folse *Nuclear* and that you make *Reaction* videos... Well done my good sir 😂

[AmaroqStarwind]

Got a couple of questions:
- How viable would it be to use a zero-power reactor to destroy forever chemicals in contaminated water through neutron activation of fluorine?
- How viable would it be to create a reactor which uses ammonia instead of water as a coolant/moderator, in order to improve neutron economy?
- What do you think of cooling things through the infrared atmospheric window? (Barium sulfate is one such substance that can exploit it.)

[gustavom.]

Hi, T. Folse. How are you doing? Sorry for any mistakes, english is not my first language. I am a ChemIcal Engineering grad student from Brasil, I alredy had deep interest in nuclear engineering, but your channel made it flourish. I even signed up for a transport phenomena lab that uses gamma rays to do some experiments. I stumbled in a interesting video of a nuclear fuel recharge in Angra 2, an Nuclear power plant in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It would be great to listen to you insights when you react to the video. Its called: Recarga de combustível em Angra 2, from the channel Eletronuclear TV. Keep on the good work, love to see the notification pop up when you post some new things.

[Megabean]

As a Canadian, I'm SO proud of my countries contributions and investment in nuclear power. I know we could spend more on the SMR designs we're working on to get them closer to practicality. But I just feel like we're a step above the US and most of the EU.

[TroyRubert]

One day the anti nuclear folks will have to answer for setting us back so far.

[Warmbodie]

Love this video, it’s in fact the one that sold me on going into nuclear engineering a few years ago : )

[thomasjgallagher]

Gonna chime in as an infrastructure finance guy and clear up some terms. Risk was used a little loosely in both videos. Risk is uncertainty that what you're anticipating won't happen, so it doesn't matter how long your build-out is so long as you predict it accurately. Generally utilities aren't risky because they're needed and you can be pretty confident there will be a need for electricity (or water) in 50 years. Not too many other industries where you can say that. There's a risk to changes in prices, but this is why governments should help in minimzing that risk. You don't want to deter investments in energy because prices are unpredictable, but you also don't want to facilitate over-building so prices are low and your paying for power no one needs.

Investors are investing in companies not in plants. Bonds could be issued for specific projects, but the plant is likely to be one of many owned by the company. A company generating free cash flow is looking for investments that will keep that going. A home builder that stops building homes eventually runs into cash flow issues, so does the power company that milks old capital investments without thinking where future cash will come from. As these are typically publicly traded companies no investor is stuck for 20 years waiting for a dividend. Any good news on the faster build-out or higher anticipated prices could cause more people to be interested in buying the stock at a highrr price from someone who got in earlier.

The concept of discounted future cash flows was nicely introduced, but again, since you're looking at something that's pretty predictable (like utilities) the rate at which future money is discounted is quite small relative to other private investments. There's no doubt that the long build-outs reduce ROI, there is a place for the government to step in and keep those discount rates low so that the long life of the facilities make them attractive investments. I also think that most folks would agree that build-times decrease with the frequency and familiarity. If the government prioritized nuclear for the rest of the century, we'd get faster and cheaper builds. The priority could be a nuclear base, solar with storage for local needs, and gas for following demand beyond that. If people didn't needlessly get spooked about nuclear 40 years ago, we could be there now.

[grayboywilliams]

It’s probably much easier to find investors for a license extension because the return is pretty much immediate compared to a new plant

[grayboywilliams]

19:00 This would make such a good board game concept 😂 go all in on nuclear, just don’t roll a 12 or it blows up

[jolovid]

There is a missing calculation in this economic comparison.
I.E. the 'End of life' deconstruction cost.
Demolition of gas / wind /solar plants will be relatively cheap.
However, deconstructing a nuclear plant must allow for perhaps decades of cooling of High grade nuclear fuel waste.
But the real High costs would be the disassembly of the reactor vessel, and items like the ancillary water pump gear inside the reactor loop.
That dismantling will take years while radioactive components either reduce emission via half life decay, or the process de-assembles High level waste.
Just the time and storage costs, while there is no income stream, should need to be considered as part of the full economic process.

[alexlindekugel]

few years ago a combined cycle gas plant was built in beloit wi. the data plate is like 1200mgw. 500mw at the engin end and remainder at the steam turbin. and there kinda small but really can be built in bout anw size.
a combin cycle plant should take 1.5 years to build. and thats going with standard amount of hicc ups. normaly 1 year can be built if job was pre planed very well and no major delays.

[szirsp]

29:00 How does LCOE NOT take into account the capacity factor?
LCOE doesn't multiply the plant maximum theoretical output with it's lifetime, it calculates with the average (the actual energy produced per year) or rather the sum of energy produced over their entire lifetime. The capacity factor is included in Et. Is it not?

[Mike__B]

6 years to get a nuclear plant up? HA! Not in the US, people will fight the building of it in court for 6 years easily before a single drop of concrete gets poured.

[SuperS]

The gas plant near me (goreway power station) was only $800 million usd equivalent but took 3 years. It's a combined cycle, at 875 MW.

The 3 gas turbines are excellent load followers. The steam turbine is a bit slower.

[mduvigneaud]

I want to say that as an environmentalist I am *very* much in favor of nuclear energy.

[marianmarkovic]

Nuclear in 6 years, how nice, mochovce 3 started build in 1985, Hot test went in 2022, full production late 2023....
6 years and 6 bilions is in case you build several units alonside if you build lot of them, if you go for one unit both skyrocked