Areva considers producing cheaper reactors

[bananas]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/00767364-0175-11df-8c54-00144feabdc0.html

Areva considers producing cheaper reactors
By Peggy Hollinger in Paris
Published: January 15 2010 02:00

Areva is weighing whether to bring out cheaper, less sophisticated nuclear reactors after its flagship EPR lost out to a low-cost South Korean rival in one of the biggest civil tenders last year.

Top management at the French group last week launched a review of its product range to determine whether Areva should reintroduce the simpler second-generation CPR1,000 reactors - which it stopped building 20 years ago - for client countries that are new to nuclear power.

<snip>

But the Abu Dhabi setback could also raise questions about the valuation of Areva at the very moment that its French government shareholder is negotiating the price of a sale of 15 per cent of its capital to outside investors, including sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East and the group's Japanese partner, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Patrice Lambert de Diesbach of CM CIC Securities said the outlook for the nuclear market was no longer the same. "Yesterday we all thought the market was for third-generation reactors. Now we know this is no longer the case and that changes Areva's valuation. Now all the others who were once considered the gypsies - makers of the second-generation reactors - can enter the game."

<snip>

This is really bad news for Areva.
They planned to keep costs down by standardizing on the EPR and mass producing it.
Now they know that won't happen.
And their old designs can't compete with the new Asian models.
They should get out of the reactor business and focus on off-shore wind.

[NNadir]

1. Actually, the wind business sucks, at least if you have warranties.

It's why Vestas was bleeding money in the last decade.

Just call up the Vestas company reports for say, 2005 or 2006, and search the word "warranties."

For instance we have this wonderful tidbit from the 2006 report:

The task of identifying and remedying type faults is given top priority in the Group as Vestas’ financial performance and reputation is notably affected by turbine performance. Since it was set up, the CIM organisation has identified and developed a number of solutions which were implemented in many of Vestas’ turbines in 2006. The intensified quality, reliability and work safety initiatives have reduced the number of service visits to each individual turbine. On average for all turbine types, the interval between service visits has been increased by 13 per cent. However, the overall level is far from satisfactory. The technical solutions in all of the major CIM cases are expected to be identified and solved by the end of 2007 at the latest. In addition to solving quality problems on installed turbines, the efforts of the CIM organisation have improved work safety in new turbines and increased their reliability. The work performed by the CIM organisation has taken up a significant part of Vestas’ resources in terms of employees and materials.

The bold is mine.

http://www.vestas.com/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2FFiles%2FFiler%2FEN%2FInvestor%2FFinancial_reports%2F2006%2F2006-AR-UK.pdf.


Of course this "by such and such a year" statement is part of the same tiresome "renewables will save us" bull crap foisted year after year after year after year after year by an industry that year after year after year after year after year is unable to produce even one exajoule of the 500 exajoules consumed by humanity. Wind energy can't even power the computers and servers on this planet that are devoted to saying how great wind is.

In fact, the entire wind industry could collapse in a pile of broken metal tomorrow and no one would notice.

The wind industry is a dirty planned obsolescence industry designed to scam people into strewing the planet with piles of useless greasy metal.

It's like that other distributed energy libertarian nightmare, the car industry, an industry which is more or less identical, inasmuch it foists garbage on consumer denialists in the name of "freedom."

Freedom from what? Gasoline, gas, and toxic batteries?

There are zero companies on the planet who can build a metal grease stick in the sky that will last 20 years and be economical.

But it is true that Asian companies will lead the nuclear energy industry in the future. Dumbells aren't taken as seriously in Asia as they are in the United States.

[Mopar151]

2. How close to a nuke do you live?

Which way does the prevailing wind blow? What is it's safety/outage record, and is it on a license extension yet? Where, pray tell, do you intend to store the obsolete, inoperable reactors? These things have a finite life, and they cannot be rebuilt or reused past that life. And the associated steam power plants are not efficent enough to be commercially viable with coal-fueled boilers.
I am hardly a dumbell. I'm just a guy who knows the nuclear industry from close up, and know that it has insoluble problems in a PERFECT world, and they pale in comparison to it's real-life problems.

[NNadir]

3. I live in New Jersey, happily within a hundred and fifty kilometers of quite a number of reactors.

My kids swim in the waters just outside of Oyster Creek, within an hour and half of Three Mile Island II, Peachbottom I and II, Limerick I and II, and a short drive from Hope Creek and Salem Creek.

I have made it clear many times that I would personally support - vociferously - reactors in my own town.

Every anti-nuke who claims to know anything about the nuclear industry is basically full of shit in my opinion. They routinely elevate stupid stuff like so called "waste" for the nuclear industry with selective attention.

Nuclear energy need not be perfect to be better than all the stuff dumb guys don't care about. It merely needs to be better than stuff dumb guys don't care about.

If you want to kill me try showing me one dumb anti-nuke who is here claiming that the gas industry - the industry that pays anti-nukes Joschka Fischer, Amory Lovins, and Gerhardt Schroeder big money, six figures per year, to say stupid stuff - has problems that can be solved.

The latest dangerous natural gas scheme seems to be to fracture every piece of cap rock in North American, ground water be damned.

I note thet every anti-nuke here is an apologist for dangerous fossil fuels.

This remark of yours,

And the associated steam power plants are not efficent enough to be commercially viable with coal-fueled boilers.

is pretty typical of anti-nuke mentality.

I notice you don't give a fuck about where dangerous fossil fuel waste goes - but have a fetish for used reactor cores.

QED.

I have never met a single anti-nuke who knows any chemistry or physics. Zero. I don't find any of them to be particularly bright, informed, remotely knowledgable or honest.

The first reactor ever built in this country, Shippingport, has its site now released as a park. It's decommissioning resulted in zero deaths, unlike the "decommissioning" of the Banqiao dam in China, which killed 250,000 people in a single night.

I'll take anti-nukes as something more than pathetic jokes if they suddenly discover what Banqiao even was.

[bananas]

4. LOL

NNadir wrote, "I have never met a single anti-nuke who knows any chemistry or physics."
Obviously, he hasn't met many chemists or physicists.
:rofl:

[Mopar151]

5. The dude's blowin' smoke.

Science 'n me get along just fine. If we put the money into developing solar, wind, and renewables that we've pissed away on economic disasters like Seabrook Station, we would'nt be in the bind we're in. And conservation pays back better than any of 'em.