Here are a couple of items (here and here) regarding the Florida Public Service Commissions’ go-ahead for Florida Power & Light to pursue two new nuclear units at Turkey Point.
Let’s do some number crunching.
First, note that these are huge units. Depending on the technology ultimately chosen, the two units will total “between 2,200 and 3,000 MW.” That’s 1,100 to 1,500 MW each.
Second, and hold on to your hat, the cost (again, depending on technology chosen) is expected to be between $12 billion and $24 billion. Let’s ballpark it by associating the lower estimate with the lower MW and the higher estimate with the higher MW. That comes to roughly $5,500/kW to $8,000/kW.
It’s not clear to me at all whether these cost estimates are future costs (including inflation to the commercial operation date) or present day costs (excluding inflation)
The units are expected to come on-line in the years 2018 and 2020. Just to see what the numbers look like, let’s take 2019 as a mid-point and presume 4.5% inflation and assume (since I don’t know) that the $12-24 billion is a future cost, not present day cost.
Bringing those costs back to present day gives us a rough range of $3,400/kW and $5,000/kW.
In any event, just as data points, here are the PSALM auction prices to date. They have averaged $1,550/kW.
And here’s my PSALM spreadsheet.