[Moldoteck]

Refurb costs are for the entire fleet which is 50+GW and are in fact dirt cheap. Refurbs are in 1-3bn/unit range. CF of say solar in this region is roughly 10-12%. To have same average output as a single 1GW npp you would need about 10GW solar and much more if you want to achieve firm generation. French refurbs will happen anyway. In fact, carenage is already undergoing.

[ViewTrick1002]

In Ontario they now want to double the electricity price to 15 cents kWh to finance refurbs and ”SMR” new builds.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/ontario-utility-wants-to-double-...

New built nuclear power simply does not make any sense anymore given the costs and timelines involved.

[Moldoteck]

You need to read precisely what's happening. Ontario wants to front finance all refurbs and SMRs instead of spreading the financing over years like it's usually done.

BWRX is expensive for sure. It'll cost more per GW than the failed french FLA3 or Vogtle. To me this seems a mistake considering Canada had Candus, an own authentic design that doesn't rely on enriched fuel and they did some very serious refurbs recently on time and on budget. On the other hand, bwrx is american tech and needs enriched fuel and SMRs will always have worse economics than large units, there's a reason humanity scales everything up, be it nuclear, be it wind turbines or solar fields

Again. Refurbs are extremely cheap. At 1-3bn/unit you get 1GW of firm power. That would be vastly cheaper vs deploying say solar, that would have the same TWh/y averaged even with China's costs. And this doesn't even account for firming.

Heck, even Barakah built as new by Korea is competitive vs renewables in the west. And it's understandable considering they spent per unit 1/3 of what FLA3 did cost... In under half of the time

The question is rather why they want front financing. But I have some clues considering who is their current head of govt

[ZeroGravitas]

> The question is rather why they want front financing. But I have some clues considering who is their current head of govt

I assumed it was, like the UK, because it let them avoid committing to a specific price like all the other competing technologies so they could raise the price later once the project was too far along to cancel.

[Moldoteck]

Maybe for smr, but for refurbs it doesn't make sense - all recent refurbs were either on time or ahead of planned timeline and on budget. Heck, even if refurbs would suddenly triple in price it would still be dort cheap vs any alternative for 1GW of firm power.

And they kinda committed to a price with Hitachi, that's why we can say it'll be worse even than recent failed big projects.

UK has other problems to tackle, mostly heavy overregulation. UK's HPC and french FLA3 are very different in many aspects, ranging from more concrete &steel use, up to a parallel analog system on top of a parallel digital system because UK regulation is 'special'. Maybe things will change, we'll see

To me this front financing looks like a cash grab from political entities since nobody guarantees money will be used in this direction, especially with current Ontario's 'governor', that dude is local trump equivalent but maybe a bit more tempered. Another possible reason is political - this frontload means project can't be easily cancelled if relationship with US gets even worse, since Hitachi GE is an US company. So who knows. Either way, IMO bwrx decision wasn't smart and front loading isn't smart too. But this has nothing to do with refurbs cost which are dirt cheap

[natmaka]

> even Barakah built as new by Korea is competitive

You bet it does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korean_nuclear_scandal

[Moldoteck]

I know about it, affected components were replaced. They still built it relatively on time and on budget

"On 7 February 2014, the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission declared that its investigation since mid-2013, they found eight cases out of 2,075 samples of foreign manufactured reactor components that were supplied with fake documents."

[natmaka]

Hopefully all little tricks are now known...

> relatively on time and on budget

Nope. 7 years late (plan: 2017, last reactor diverged in 2024).

Total cost not known, at least 24.5 billion USD and maybe up to 32 according to Bloomberg (plan: 20). Koreans are even fighting: KHNP (a subsidiary of KEPCO, the company building the plant) officially seeks for about 1.2 billion USD in compensation ( https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=... ) and it may worsen up.

Such a resounding success... as usual: https://www.fastcompany.com/90844859/why-massive-wind-and-so...

[Moldoteck]

8bn/unit is successful considering fla3 was 23bn. 8y/unit is successful, several in parallel with 1y distance, considering fla3/vogtle took about 20y.

Yes. It is a success.

Korea also announced they plan to build two additional reactors domestically by 2038

I've seen what a success Energiewende was. Really top notch execution to spend more than the entire french fleet and after 25y to have much worse emissions, while planning to have 80GW gas firming per Fraunhofer ISE to cover under generation periods