> Afaik, nuclear energy is more expensive only because it is regulated far beyond what any other form of energy for the same level of risk. Nuclear's problems

> Afaik, nuclear energy is more expensive only because it is regulated far beyond what any other form of energy for the same level of risk. Nuclear's problems are neatly encapsulated by one number. It's called the learning rate. The learning rate is how the unit cost of production changes as production increases. As a general rule the more you make, the better you get at it and so the costs reduces. The fast the cost reduces the greater the learning rate. This is a good a summary of learning rates for various ways of producing electricity as any: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421515002293 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... Here are some figures from that paper: - Coal: 2.5% ... 20% - Gas Turbine: 10% ... 22% - Onshore wind: –11% ... 32% - Offshore wind: 5% ... 19% - Solar PV: 10% ... 47% - Nuclear: –38% ... 6% The point the paper was making is "gosh, we are bad at measuring learning rates". Even so, you could make two predictions based on those 2015 ranges: - Solar PV is going to crush everything else, - Nuclear is totally screwed. And that's now looking like how it will turn out. It's nice to see predictions come true. Getting worse do doing something the more you do it is difficult to imagine, getting -38% worse demands an explanation. As it turns out -38% is the figure for the USA. Other countries returned +6%, so perhaps regulation is it as you suggest. But now turn your attention to the other end of the range. Nuclear is +6%, even in the best country. Everything is better than that. Solar is +47%. No matter how you look at it, Nuclear is still screwed on cost. It's not hard to understand guess reasons why it's a low +6% either. Gas, wind, solar - they churn out thousands to millions of units a year, so there is lot of opportunity for experimentation and learning. For nuclear it's maybe 10 units a year.