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Nuclear operating cost is comparable to offshore wind, coal, and combined cycle gas, and around 4X more expensive to operate than onshore wind or solar. (Of co
by bronson 6y ago
Nuclear operating cost is comparable to offshore wind, coal, and combined cycle gas, and around 4X more expensive to operate than onshore wind or solar. (Of course, coal and gas would be more expensive if they had to pay a fair price for their emissions)
Nuclear is also eye-poppingly expensive to decommission.
Finally, note that operating cost doesn't include the sort of re-engineering and upgrades that are routinely required, and have doomed plants like San Onofre.
- sir_bearington 6y agoMost levelized energy costs do include cost of decommissioning and maintenance. On the other hand, estimates of wind and solar do not include the cost of storage to actually make intermittent sources viable. Which is understandable, because there's really no plan to provision this much storage without a massive breakthrough in storage solutions. Almost all plans for a predominantly wind and solar grid assume that something like hydrogen, synthetic natural gas, or something else will provide massive amounts of cheap storage. Until then, it's fossil fuels to fulfill off-peak demand.
- mjevans 6y agoModern nuclear plants (with 50+ years of safety lessons) for baseload and a mix of other sources (wind, solar, etc) sounds ideal.
- sir_bearington 6y agoPeak energy consumption happens in the evening, when solar isn't producing any energy. And nuclear costs just as much to run at partial capacity as it does to run a full capacity. So if you build enough nuclear plants to support the grid when solar and wind isn't producing, then there's no reason to build any solar and wind. Nuclear makes the intermittent sources redundant.
- bob29 6y agoIf nuclear isn't subsidized by military uses its energy negative when you factor in mining, enrichment, and operation.