Rolls Royce lays out funding plan for small nuclear reactors | Hacker News Reader

Rolls Royce lays out funding plan for small nuclear reactors

bloomberg.com

1 pointdane-pgp3 comments

Amusingly, the headline says "funding plan" but the URL, more accurately, says "subsidy plan". Anyway, the crucial number is in the first paragraph:

> Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc will need a guaranteed price of 60 pounds ($80.62) a megawatt-hour for electricity produced from its small nuclear reactors, significantly less than the contract for Electricite de France SA’s Hinkley Point C station.

For comparison, the UK government's 2020 report on Electricity Generation Costs[1] said:

> In September 2019, the CfD AR3 Pot 2 auction cleared at £39.65/MWh and £41.61/MWh for offshore wind projects commissioning in 2023/4 and 2024/5 respectively (2012 prices).

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Going with only offshore wind would be great if they didn't also subsidize fossil fueled power in order to meet demand during non-optimal weather conditions. The UK spend €12bn per year on fossil fuel subsidies, which isn't the best thing a country can do during a climate change crisis. Fossil fuel subsidies need to go down to zero which can either be achieved by sacrificing grid stability or subsidizing fossil free technologies that can do the job of maintaining grid stability.

Grid stability cost money and right now most of those money goes to fossil fuel. It shouldn't. If one can build green hydrogen farms, storage and the power plant to burn it for as little as £41.61/MWh then go for it! Even $80.62 per megawatt-hour would be a fine alternative.

To provide a useful data point[1] about "non-optimal weather conditions":

> Between the 26th of February and the 8th of March the capacity factor of the national wind fleet did not go above 20%. Its average over these 11 days was just 11%, less than a quarter of their average in the month either side.

So it is possible for wind power to fluctuate by a factor of 4 on a national-weekly scale. Offshore conditions are less variable than the UK average, but even over-provisioning the amount of wind power by a factor of 3 would make wind energy more expensive than the Hinkley Point C agreed strike price of £92.50/MWh to £89.50/MWh.

[1] https://reports.electricinsights.co.uk/q1-2021/when-the-wind...

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