Reply To: Competition from the Thorium reactor

[Brian H]

Rematog wrote: My estimate. I am very sorry about the readability. I’ve yet to find a way to get this forum to format tables or allow posting files.

Rematog

Power Block Fabrication
Controls $10,000 PLC with local screen
Building $20,000 Prefab building, skid mounted
Cables, conduit, etc $20,000 power and control
MCC, Low voltage xformer $20,000 power distribution, 480V aux power
Solid State Power Controls $50,000 specialized high speed switching (to pulse reactor)
Capacitors, power supply $50,000 SWAG
HV xformer, disconnects $20,000 Output step up, required isolation devices.
Reactor Vessel $5,000 SWAG
Discharge Electrodes $5,000 SWAG
Vacuum pump $5,000 SWAG
Fuel system $5,000 SWAG
Ion beam power converter $10,000 SWAG
X-ray power converter $20,000 SWAG
Shielding $20,000 SWAG
Radiation detectors, other sensors $10,000 SWAG
Fabrication Labor $36,000 1200 $30.00 30 man-weeks @ 40 hr/wk
Overhead and Profit $100,000 Very arguable number
–
$406,000
Site Work, Installation
Foundation $20,000 excavation, fill, forms, rebar and mud, incs labor
Site Work (civil, fences, roads) $5,000 $500,000 Additions and changes
Control Room, etc $50,000 $5,000,000 Oversight for all system, DCS and Datalogging
Installation Labor $50,000 1000 $50.00 20 man-weeks @ 50 hr/wk (typ field work)
Shipping $5,000 for Power Block
Interconnection Cables $20,000 Power to transmission transformer yard
Engineering, supervision $10,000 $1,000,000
Rental Equipment $10,000
–
$170,000

Site Cost, New Development
Land $5,000 1/2 acre @ $10k/acre
Site Work (civil, fences, roads) $20,000 $2,000,000
Other Site Buildings $25,000 $2,500,000 Offices, maint, warehouse
Transformer Yard $200,000 $20,000,000
–
$250,000

Brown Field Cost $576,000
Green Field Cost $826,000

Lots of items there that don’t quite mesh with available info.

1) the units are conceived as factory pre-fab, trucked in and erected. The man-hours for installation etc. estimate is way high, probably at least an order of magnitude.
2) capacitors are off-the-shelf, and $50,000 seems high
3) profit for the installed unit seems questionable, as the revenue projections use licensing as pretty much the sole profit source.
4) Normal grid interfaces are not necessarily a good model for connection costs, as distributed generation would argue against large “brown field” clusters as the dominant model. Many, particularly in industrial zones, would likely be primarily dedicated to local consumption. Further, standardized interfaces would certainly be developed and implemented at far less than these projected costs for the volumes of installations projected.
5) Offices & site buildings are overstated, IMO; the projection I saw was for one office housing one or two technicians per 5 or 10 generation sites, remotely monitored.
6) Land costs are not part of any estimate process for the units. They would vary from $0 to a few hundred thousand perhaps, for the garage-sized building and interconnect facility, and the control site is a “shared” cost between 5 or 10, and might even be an office rented in a local commercial building.

Etc.