Nuclear vs Renewables Costs

Solar is by far the cheapest source of energy ever fielded, followed closely by wind. Nukes are among the most expensive still in common use.If you are hearing that nuke power is cheap, you are being lied to. Just now, nukes are about even with solar and wind backed with natural gas if, but only if, you ignore their capital cost. But solar and wind costs are still falling.Once renewables have been built out enough to be able to displace other energy sources, they will need to be supplement

Without going back and digging for sources (google it yourself), existing nuclear costs about $100/Mwh. Coal is around there, too (this is round number, different sources have slight variations). Onshore wind and natural gas are currently pushing $40, and PV solar is under $60 and dropping rapidly.Numerous nuclear plants in the US (and MANY coal plants) are being shut down before end-of-life, due to losing key customers to cheaper alternatives. It costs more to keep the plant running tha

Storage is cheaper than peaking power which is why it’s common to add huge battery bank to solar power plants. It’s simply more profitable to add storage.Net result renewables currently save you money until ~80% annual electricity supply. At which point adding more batteries and generation to cover overnight demand is cheaper than adding nuclear to the mix. In such a mix, Nuclear saves a little per kWh overnight and cost way more per kWh during the day, net result it’s more expensive as ba

It is cheaper than wind plus storage. Wind plus storage might even be impossible to meet baseload requirements with current technology. Even if battery costs fall by 80%, they wouldn't feasibly be able to store grid-scale electricity for weeks.But admittedly the situation may change within the lifetime of a new nuclear station, or even in the 20 years before it's actually built.

Yes. Grid scale batteries and solar have plunged precipitously in price. While solar has bottomed out, batteries look to fall still further.Nuclear hasnt. It currently requires pretty lavish subsidies to be built on top of the ones they already had.(this is not true in the UK, but in the UK hornsea's lower intermittency + batteries will likely beat out hinkley point C on cost even though solar + batteries probably couldnt with the UK's weather)

Solar and Wind vary on both a diurnal and seasonal basis. It is one thing for the grid to have enough storage.I was looking at this paperhttps://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost...where solar is quoted at $1300/kwh and adding a battery that can store a little more than an hour of output brings that to around

Please look at a chart of per-MWhr generation costs. Wind and solar are a fraction of the cost of nuclear (with solar plunging by the day, almost) and nuclear is only getting more expensive as time goes on despite being a decade or two away from being a 100 year old technology.In the US nuclear plants are being phased out and wind/solar projects are replacing them at a ratio of roughly 6:1...with huge savings for grid operators and customers. It's so cheap, even with storage system

Nuclear is not more expensive once you factor in storage as that’s required for wind/solar to compete on an even field. Nuclear would also get cheaper if we built more of it.

Nuclear is much cheaper when built at scale. Often 3-5x cheaper. Most of the plants built during the nuclear boom in the 1960s and 1970s were built at a cost of ~$2.5 billion per gigawatt of capacity. Note that this capacity is put out 24/7, so it's equivalent to about 4 times as much solar capacity (which typically has a capacity factor of ~25%).Solar and wind are cheap in terms of watts per day, but become drastically more expensive one you need to start adding storage. Storage co

No, I'm assuming it can be built because the unit economics work better.Back in 2013 I remember people used to constantly trash solar and wind because it was 1-2% of the grid anywhere, max, while nuclear power was often 10-30% (or 70% in France). We're at that same point with storage.Since then we've had a decline in nuclear power due to the high cost and enormous growth in renewables due to it being 5x cheaper.Unit economics prevailed with solar and wind and theyll preva