True, but it's not necessarily expensive either in the current context. The strike price EDF agreed for Hinkley Point C in 2013 was £92.50/MWh in 2012 prices. W

True, but it's not necessarily expensive either in the current context. The strike price EDF agreed for Hinkley Point C in 2013 was £92.50/MWh in 2012 prices. Wholesale prices (both day-ahead and next-season) have been well above that level for some time now (although it is also delayed and over budget so there is additional subsidy in the form of the pain-share mechanism to account for). For new build baseload coming online in 10-20 years, coal or CCGT with carbon capture are probably the realistic alternatives to nuclear in most countries which don't have the resources to build out significant hydro or geothermal baseload. But it's not clear that carbon capture technology can be scaled enough (especially if we go down the storage rather than reuse route), and those technologies look like they could be equally as, if not more expensive than nuclear at this point. Realistically we need to plan for nuclear to at least potentially be a significant part of the energy mix if we can't solve the current scalability issues with carbon capture, demand reduction and storage. On the plus side the costs per unit should scale down as we build more (as the French did in the 70s/80s), if there is the political commitment.