A misperception of the historic cost of nuclear generation is contributing to a misunderstanding of its role in the clean energy transition, panelists said during a March 4 briefing on nuclear cost and decarbonization at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University's School of International Public Affairs.
The power industry, investors and the broader public may, in some ways, be taking the wrong lessons away from more recent nuclear development such as the scuttled V.C. Summer plant or the long-delayed Vogtle Nuclear Plant expansion from Georgia Power Co., said Julie Kozeracki, senior advisor with the US Energy Department's Loan Programs Office. The two-unit Vogtle expansion evolved from an initial cost estimate of $14 billion to estimates of more than $30 billion.
Some of the cost overruns associated with Vogtle units 3 and 4 likely reflect underestimations of overall project costs and a tendency by some developers to begin projects when designs are only partially complete, which can lead to significant delays and mounting costs down the line, said Jacopo Buongiorno, director of the Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Developers of more recent projects, including some advanced reactor pilot projects, are waiting significantly longer to begin construction than was common practice previously, Buongiorno added.
Other challenges include the decades the US and parts of Europe spent not building any new nuclear, which diminished supply chains and the workforce, Buongiorno said.
"For three decades, the industry didn't build anything," Buongiorno said. "And when they decided to restart, they were already behind."
Instead of capitalizing on lessons learned from Vogtle's expansion — including supply chain and workforce challenges — by looking to build additional large reactors more efficiently, Kozeracki said she often hears "people saying that it means that we shouldn't be building big reactors anymore."
"But it means quite the opposite," Kozeracki added. "These are solvable problems. ... It's not that nuclear is impossible to deliver on time and on budget."
Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power has applied lessons learned from the first of two new units at Vogtle, leading to an approximately 30% cost reduction with the second unit, Kozeracki said. Other utilities could benefit similarly, should they look to add more large reactors.
Utilities now forecasting "unprecedented" load growth and working to transition their fleets to lower emissions have also "changed the equation" for larger reactors and standardized reactor designs, panelists said.
"The most serious conversations I've had with utilities over the past three months has been about building more AP1000s," Kozeracki said.
Nuclear generation's poor financial reputation could hamper utilities' efforts to meet both demand and clean energy goals, panelists said.
"Everyone is so focused on [levelized cost of electricity] that they've driven us down a path of just building a bunch of natural gas with a little bit of solar instead of actually accounting for the system costs of decarbonizing resiliently," Kozeracki added.
Standardization for advanced reactors as well as existing large-scale reactors is key to making nuclear generation financially feasible and to mitigating "the financial risk that comes with deployment of any innovative technology," Tennessee Valley Authority President and CEO Jeff Lyash said. The TVA, with one of the largest nuclear fleets in the US, is seeking license extensions for its units and also holds the only early site permit for a small modular reactor in the US.
"We really need to look at that full portfolio of clean energy options, and nuclear energy will play an essential role in that future mix," said Shannon Bragg-Sitton, director of integrated energy and storage systems at the Idaho National Laboratory, adding that nuclear is a complementary resource to more intermittent generation such as solar and wind, typically requiring less land area and transmission infrastructure.
If decision-makers focus only on capital costs, they could miss opportunities to meet clean energy goals more efficiently by including nuclear generation, Bragg-Sitton said. "As we make those choices going forward, it will take all of these solutions to get to our end goals."
