God 20 minutes isnt enough time with Mark Nelson. I could listen to him for hours, he really is one of my favorite return and guests. Still a good podcast though.
The difference between the few hundred million dollars needed for upgrades before the decision to close the unit and the $1.6 billion to return the unit to service is probably mostly the costs of reassembling a staff, retraining them, figuring out what the licensing process and requirements are for restarting a plant that gave up its previous operating license and doing a few months of startup and commissioning tests. Had the plants done the upgrades without retiring the unit, they would have done them gradually, over say 6 to 8 years, doing them in parallel with the normal refueling outages. To put personnel costs into perspective, the annual cost of the staff needed at an operating reactor just for routine operation and maintenance of the plant, without any special work such as major refurbishments and relicensing, is in the range of $110 to $120 million per year. Just the personnel costs of a 3 or 4 year restart effort will be quite large.
@@pierre-yveschauvet5136 I didn't say the whole $1.6B might be for staffing, retraining, etc. I pointed out that in the four years between now and restart, they could easily be having to spend something much more than $110M per year in personnel costs. Those costs would not have been incurred if the plant had been upgraded gradually during refueling outages, where the work is being done in parallel with operation and refueling. As a point of reference, when a few plants got shutdown by the NRC for regulatory issues in the 1990s, it typically took a couple of years and more than $0.5B to resolve the issues and restart the units.
OK, now I'm kind of pissed! The existing fleet of legacy reactors has been paid for by consumers of electricity paying their electricity bills. Yeah, sure the plants get sold and resold to different management companies but they were bought and paid for by utility bill payers whether they are residential electric business, electric or industrial electric users. If a company wants to make a deal with data centers to open up closed legacy fleet machines that's one thing. it's also another thing if data center companies want to build their own nuclear power plants to provide clean electricity. But I feel the existing fleet belongs to the citizens and businesses that have been paying the bills for all these decades.
> I feel the existing fleet belongs to the citizens and businesses that have been paying the bills for all these decades Electricity was reformed by politicians on behalf of the people (well, some people), putting in place a generation market; can we blame actors in the generation market for finding the most attractive bids, especially when a few years ago the market (and politicians) attached little value to the qualities of nuclear?
@@scottmedwid1818 The power plants were sold to private owners when the state governments, with their superior wisdom, ended the regulated monopoly model, ordered the formerly vertically integrated utilities to divest themselves of all their generating plants, and formed regional electricity markets where generators now have to compete on price for customers. The plants now belong to the private entities that bought them, and they have to sell their electricity for what they can get customers to pay for it to survive. For a while, electricity prices were so low that single-unit plants like TMI-1 were losing money. It lasted long enough that they were forced out of business, reducing the surplus in capacity existing at the time. Now that demand for electricity is tightening, prices in the competitive market are rising. A large customer wants to secure a stable supply of electricity into the future, and has agreed to a purchase contract whose terms are attractive enough that the private company owning TMI is willing to restart the plant. It's still a competitive market-- if you want the power from TMI more than Microsoft does, offer the plant owner a higher price. That is how competitive markets work.
@@pierre-yveschauvet5136 it may be that both parties in the United States had a role in not pursuing nuclear power to the levels that the French did or Ontario Canada and Sweden did.
Years ago I traveled to Columbia University (when it was still a University, not a Madrassa) to hear Jimmy Rogers explain his value investing methods. As I said in the back of the class, I remember how he tracked the nuclear industry presumably in the process of ruin, and pointed out where opportunities were hiding (in some bonds, if I remember). In retrospect, he hit it as close to the bottom as was humanly possible. And that's for an outsider who knew little about the industry except for what he picked up from the financials. My conclusion then (which persists): If you want to make a bundle, focus on necessary industries when they are in the dumps, and talk to insiders to learn what they think are the essential fundamentals.
Article on this topic in the Washington Post today. Predictably with their readership, 99% of the 1,300 comments so far are, shall we say, unfavorable, and almost entirely (if not all, I didn’t read all, but all of the ones for which I had the patience) out of impassioned ignorance. We could hope that folks will be influenced by inflation, and the growing, insatiable US debt, expected to exceed our GDP this year. Unsustainable, yet far less painful with the availability of abundant, clean, 24/7/365 energy.
As anyone who has done home renovation knows, when you start digging around, you discover new unexpected problems... It will end up costing more than $1.6 billion.
Been literally 40 years we've (when we were decommissioning Shippingport PA) been consistently saying we needed to be building plants around the US while watching stupid media pushed decisions trying to stop building out and then shutting down plants. Unfortunately where we are is pretty much what we expected, except we hoped there would be some leap in wind or solar or tidal or geothermal to take up the gap. Instead it's going the other way and nuclear would be SO much cheaper now if it hadn't been essentially abandoned back then.
@@blahblah-ss4yk Yes, you are wrong here. There are seven days in a week, not one. In addition, the capacity factor of the average nuclear power plant has been about 92% for the past 20 years or so. When you fix those problems with your math, the annual revenue is about $800 million per year.
@@yurialtunin9121 that may be a challenge, but I am speaking from outside the industry. In my reading, however the US could move and adopt Canadian CANDU technology. The US could also accelerate the pace of 21st century designs for Molten Salt Reactors, we could also hire the Koreans to come here and build 12 Baraka style say build 4 Three pack complexes around the country? I would love to see the associations of municipal electric producers, and rural electric cooperatives join forces in order such a scheme.
>= 92% low carbon electricity is pretty good, even if the other 8% of the time might be on CCGT. Perhaps 12g/kWh for 92% of the time and 490g/kWh for 8% = 50 g/kWh. One might argue the nuclear is an over-estimate as the power station was mothballed so construction/demolition costs would have already happened.
Energy is energy and to a large extent substitutes. If natural gas became very cheap it would remove almost any other energy source not already being constructed.
@pierre-yveschauvet5136 let's see. The original poster said he doesn't want TMI to re open, or that is how I interpret his post. My post says those with the gold are the defacto rulers of society. Therefore microsux will get their nuclear reactor. You asked if he wants windmills. My suggestion is that anyone who wants windmills should move where they are. Because IMO they're a blight on the landscape only slightly less annoying than acres of solar panels.
@pierre-yveschauvet5136 windmills have their places. But no where that you want power that's portable and on demand. If I had a remote well with a stock tank, that might be a place for a windmill.
@pierre-yveschauvet5136 When I was a youth, there used to be several windmills around where I grew up. So far as I know, they're all gone now. They were used in remote areas exactly as I described. For pumping water for livestock.
Mark, paint the whole picture…Offshore wind in New England is 140-180USD/MWh including new grid transmission and 50-60 capacity factors vs >100USD/MWh for 80% capacity factor for refurbishing an already existing power plant and transmission. A brand new nuclear power plant in the US would be over 200 USD/MWh if it can be delivered.
Mark is angry because Nuclear cannot compete with other sources of electricity in the spot market. Kicking and mocking PhDs because you cant or are not willing to understand how electricity markets work is not the way to promote nuclear.
It’s mandatory for nuclear advocates to have mustaches.
God 20 minutes isnt enough time with Mark Nelson. I could listen to him for hours, he really is one of my favorite return and guests. Still a good podcast though.
Marks mustache needs it's own podcast 😂
My new fav channel I have 3 like three tabs open to go back and watch! Thx for the content!!
Great show and congratulations to Mark!
The difference between the few hundred million dollars needed for upgrades before the decision to close the unit and the $1.6 billion to return the unit to service is probably mostly the costs of reassembling a staff, retraining them, figuring out what the licensing process and requirements are for restarting a plant that gave up its previous operating license and doing a few months of startup and commissioning tests. Had the plants done the upgrades without retiring the unit, they would have done them gradually, over say 6 to 8 years, doing them in parallel with the normal refueling outages.
To put personnel costs into perspective, the annual cost of the staff needed at an operating reactor just for routine operation and maintenance of the plant, without any special work such as major refurbishments and relicensing, is in the range of $110 to $120 million per year. Just the personnel costs of a 3 or 4 year restart effort will be quite large.
@@pierre-yveschauvet5136 I didn't say the whole $1.6B might be for staffing, retraining, etc. I pointed out that in the four years between now and restart, they could easily be having to spend something much more than $110M per year in personnel costs. Those costs would not have been incurred if the plant had been upgraded gradually during refueling outages, where the work is being done in parallel with operation and refueling. As a point of reference, when a few plants got shutdown by the NRC for regulatory issues in the 1990s, it typically took a couple of years and more than $0.5B to resolve the issues and restart the units.
OK, now I'm kind of pissed! The existing fleet of legacy reactors has been paid for by consumers of electricity paying their electricity bills. Yeah, sure the plants get sold and resold to different management companies but they were bought and paid for by utility bill payers whether they are residential electric business, electric or industrial electric users. If a company wants to make a deal with data centers to open up closed legacy fleet machines that's one thing. it's also another thing if data center companies want to build their own nuclear power plants to provide clean electricity. But I feel the existing fleet belongs to the citizens and businesses that have been paying the bills for all these decades.
I mean you're a consumer of datacenter services whether you know it or not. You're also a voter who voted in the people who shut down these plants.
> I feel the existing fleet belongs to the citizens and businesses that have been paying the bills for all these decades
Electricity was reformed by politicians on behalf of the people (well, some people), putting in place a generation market; can we blame actors in the generation market for finding the most attractive bids, especially when a few years ago the market (and politicians) attached little value to the qualities of nuclear?
@@scottmedwid1818 The power plants were sold to private owners when the state governments, with their superior wisdom, ended the regulated monopoly model, ordered the formerly vertically integrated utilities to divest themselves of all their generating plants, and formed regional electricity markets where generators now have to compete on price for customers. The plants now belong to the private entities that bought them, and they have to sell their electricity for what they can get customers to pay for it to survive. For a while, electricity prices were so low that single-unit plants like TMI-1 were losing money. It lasted long enough that they were forced out of business, reducing the surplus in capacity existing at the time. Now that demand for electricity is tightening, prices in the competitive market are rising. A large customer wants to secure a stable supply of electricity into the future, and has agreed to a purchase contract whose terms are attractive enough that the private company owning TMI is willing to restart the plant. It's still a competitive market-- if you want the power from TMI more than Microsoft does, offer the plant owner a higher price. That is how competitive markets work.
@@erikkovacs3097 All those irritating adds, p@wn, tons of useless videos, photos, Facebook pages of deceased and this new pyramid scheme called AI.
@@pierre-yveschauvet5136 it may be that both parties in the United States had a role in not pursuing nuclear power to the levels that the French did or Ontario Canada and Sweden did.
Amazing news! Let's hope more will follow.
By golly, this is good news!
No its not. Starting a toxic nuclear waste generating plant for useless microsoft ai
@@RodimusPrime🤡
Well well well if it isn’t my favourite podcast
Years ago I traveled to Columbia University (when it was still a University, not a Madrassa) to hear Jimmy Rogers explain his value investing methods. As I said in the back of the class, I remember how he tracked the nuclear industry presumably in the process of ruin, and pointed out where opportunities were hiding (in some bonds, if I remember). In retrospect, he hit it as close to the bottom as was humanly possible. And that's for an outsider who knew little about the industry except for what he picked up from the financials. My conclusion then (which persists): If you want to make a bundle, focus on necessary industries when they are in the dumps, and talk to insiders to learn what they think are the essential fundamentals.
Thank you, build, build ,build 😊
Welcome to the team Thomas!
Article on this topic in the Washington Post today. Predictably with their readership, 99% of the 1,300 comments so far are, shall we say, unfavorable, and almost entirely (if not all, I didn’t read all, but all of the ones for which I had the patience) out of impassioned ignorance. We could hope that folks will be influenced by inflation, and the growing, insatiable US debt, expected to exceed our GDP this year. Unsustainable, yet far less painful with the availability of abundant, clean, 24/7/365 energy.
As anyone who has done home renovation knows, when you start digging around, you discover new unexpected problems... It will end up costing more than $1.6 billion.
Felicitations to Mark!
Been literally 40 years we've (when we were decommissioning Shippingport PA) been consistently saying we needed to be building plants around the US while watching stupid media pushed decisions trying to stop building out and then shutting down plants. Unfortunately where we are is pretty much what we expected, except we hoped there would be some leap in wind or solar or tidal or geothermal to take up the gap. Instead it's going the other way and nuclear would be SO much cheaper now if it hadn't been essentially abandoned back then.
Nice one
I've got a problem with the revenu assumption 800MWe * 24h * 42 weeks (with ~80% capacity factor) * 100$ = ~80 millions $, not 800, am I wrong here?
@@blahblah-ss4yk Yes, you are wrong here. There are seven days in a week, not one. In addition, the capacity factor of the average nuclear power plant has been about 92% for the past 20 years or so. When you fix those problems with your math, the annual revenue is about $800 million per year.
@@thomasgreene5750 thanks for your answer, indeed a "tiny" mistake that you pointed out 🙄
Build, baby build!
How’s the baby’s stache coming?
I am so glad that USA returning for nuclear power! The only problem is industrial base. Is USA capable to produce high pressure vessels and turbines?
@@yurialtunin9121 that may be a challenge, but I am speaking from outside the industry. In my reading, however the US could move and adopt Canadian CANDU technology. The US could also accelerate the pace of 21st century designs for Molten Salt Reactors, we could also hire the Koreans to come here and build 12 Baraka style say build 4 Three pack complexes around the country? I would love to see the associations of municipal electric producers, and rural electric cooperatives join forces in order such a scheme.
What happens to Data Center power supply when nuclear plant needs to shut-down for re-fueling?
fossil reserve jumps in, hopefully for not long
Data centers have multiple redundancies. During refueling they will switch over to the grid as a secondary source.
>= 92% low carbon electricity is pretty good, even if the other 8% of the time might be on CCGT. Perhaps 12g/kWh for 92% of the time and 490g/kWh for 8% = 50 g/kWh.
One might argue the nuclear is an over-estimate as the power station was mothballed so construction/demolition costs would have already happened.
@@asabriggs6426 you can use CCS
Depending on the presidential outcome fracking may be back on the table in a big way. How will this impact nuclear/
Energy is energy and to a large extent substitutes. If natural gas became very cheap it would remove almost any other energy source not already being constructed.
big catalyst!
As a local resident we dont want this. Also its not even for residents its 100 percent for useless Microsoft tech.
But master spy has the megawarbux.....
@pierre-yveschauvet5136 If you want windmills in your backyard, move to somewhere they already exist.
@pierre-yveschauvet5136 let's see. The original poster said he doesn't want TMI to re open, or that is how I interpret his post.
My post says those with the gold are the defacto rulers of society. Therefore microsux will get their nuclear reactor.
You asked if he wants windmills.
My suggestion is that anyone who wants windmills should move where they are. Because IMO they're a blight on the landscape only slightly less annoying than acres of solar panels.
@pierre-yveschauvet5136 windmills have their places. But no where that you want power that's portable and on demand. If I had a remote well with a stock tank, that might be a place for a windmill.
@pierre-yveschauvet5136 When I was a youth, there used to be several windmills around where I grew up. So far as I know, they're all gone now. They were used in remote areas exactly as I described. For pumping water for livestock.
Wyat could possibly go wrong ?? 🤔
Mark, paint the whole picture…Offshore wind in New England is 140-180USD/MWh including new grid transmission and 50-60 capacity factors vs >100USD/MWh for 80% capacity factor for refurbishing an already existing power plant and transmission. A brand new nuclear power plant in the US would be over 200 USD/MWh if it can be delivered.
Mark is angry because Nuclear cannot compete with other sources of electricity in the spot market. Kicking and mocking PhDs because you cant or are not willing to understand how electricity markets work is not the way to promote nuclear.