“NuScale’s estimated ‘levelized cost of energy’ (LCOE) … jumped by one-half last December (to $89/MWh from $58/WMh). The total cost for the project is estimated at a bit over $9 billion, but $1.4 billion is offset by DOE funding, which could increase in the future.”

More news, more problems regarding the live projects being counted on as the beginning of a new era of nuclear power. Back in the 1950s/1960s, the expectation was that learning-by-doing and scale economies would bring parity with fossil-fuel plants. Today, that same goal seems distant.

NuScale

NuScale Power’s small modular reactor project, designed to provide electricity to Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, a joint action agency serving 50 municipal utilities in Utah, Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming, has survived another near-death experience. Facing a vote by the participants in its project for six light-water pressurized reactors, totaling 462-MW on the grounds of the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls.…

“The failure of the uncompleted V.C. Summer Units #2 and #3 ($10 billion), and the continuing woes at Vogtle, have marked the complete failure of Congress to create a ‘nuclear renaissance’ through the 2005 Energy Policy Act. The act provided for up to $8 billion each in ‘loan guarantees’ for new nuclear plants.”

“Nuclear ‘loan guarantees,’ it turns out, is a politically constructed term to cover the fact that the ‘guarantees’ are actually Treasury funds, and loan payments are made to the Treasury.”

The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. And Southern Company announces further delays in the startup of Georgia Power’s Vogtle Units 3 and 4, the only nuclear power plant under construction in the U.S.

In its annual financial report issued Feb. 16, Southern said it will push back the startup date for Unit 3 of the two-unit, Westinghouse AP-1000 reactor project to May or June of this year. …

“… global commodity price increases … sharp and sudden increases in interest rates, prolonged supply chain constraints, and persistent inflation have significantly increased the expected cost of constructing the project.”

Electricity rates are going up because of wind, solar, and batteries being forced upon, and duplicating, the grid. Reliability is going down because of wind and solar intermittency. And higher interest rates are (further) ruining the economics of the infrastructure-heavy, up-front capital necessary to turn “free” wind and solar into electricity.

It’s a perfect storm that might just overcome the taxpayer largesse of the federal subsidies (DOE and IRS) and rate averaging for captive ratepayers. With offshore wind experimental and extra-uneconomic, the worst can be assumed.

An October 30, 2022, article by Colin Young, “Major Massachusetts offshore wind project no longer viable,” explains the fluid situation.…

“Dominion has proposed a lower utilization rate (42.5%) than the Block Island wind farm because of the weaker winds off Virginia. The output from that project is already underperforming, and the records of other older wind farms in Europe confirm that wind farm utilization rates are often lower than initially assumed. Plus, the utilization rate declines as turbines age.”

On August 5, 2022, Virginia’s State Corporation Commission (SCC) approved the application by Virginia Electric and Power Company (Dominion Energy, VEP) to construct and operate the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project. Hearings on the nine-year-old proposed project have revealed numerous high-risk issues, any one of which could make costs skyrocket for customers.  Instead, the SCC wants Dominion to shoulder one of them, causing Dominion to threaten to bail. Maybe it should for everyone’s sake.…