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The article says that for each doubling of capacity, solar has dropped 20% in cost. Nuclear currently represents 10% of world capacity. So if we scale nuclear t
by gcanyon 5y ago
The article says that for each doubling of capacity, solar has dropped 20% in cost. Nuclear currently represents 10% of world capacity. So if we scale nuclear to 80% (3 doublings), the cost would drop to ~50% of what it is now -- which would only drop it to about twice the cost of solar at present.
So apart from the fact that nuclear probably wouldn't react the same way as solar, even doing so wouldn't make it cost competitive. But I still like nuclear.
- ncmncm 5y agoNuke costs are not coming down like solar, wind, and storage. There is no reason to think they would: they are really mostly concrete, plumbing, pumps, heat exchangers, and steam turbines, all extremely mature tech. And they are unavoidably expensive to operate. Those costs also will not be coming down. Fortunately, we don't need for them to come down. All we need is not to build any; then the cost stays fixed at zero.