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Watts Bar got approved an eternity ago and just got finished 30ish years late. Vogtle 3 & 4 got approved recently, though I’m not sure the 40 years number is a
by mchannon 3y ago
Watts Bar got approved an eternity ago and just got finished 30ish years late.
Vogtle 3 & 4 got approved recently, though I’m not sure the 40 years number is an apples-to-apples comparison.
The elephant’s foot in the room (see what I did there?) is that nuclear is just not cheap the way it used to be. It takes a lot of steel and a lot of concrete.
The reason we haven’t been building nuclear plants is that other plants, gas, wind, and solar, deliver way more power in way less time, and with a lesser quantum of plant size.
The fossil fuel consumption of a nuclear plant, while certainly less than coal, is still higher than wind or solar.
- ipaddr 3y agoNuclear offers a steady cheaper than solar base line of power. While gas has many advantages climate change isn't one of them.
- mchannon 3y agoThan solar, ok. Than solar plus batteries, the numbers don't back you up on that (or no longer do).
- hn_thrwn 3y agoThe only thing more expensive than a nuclear reactor is a battery bank of the same capacity.
- mchannon 3y agoNow that’s just silly. Lots of things are more expensive than a nuclear reactor. Grid-tied batteries are now about $300/kWh. Capitalized over 25 years, that adds 3.3 cents to peak (11AM) solar prices, which themselves can go negative at times (duck curve in action), and overall are 3-4 cents per kWh. Nuclear (new) portends to cost between 7 and 20 cents per kWh according to Wikipedia. Downvote me if you must, but the numbers are right there. Nuclear may have been the best option for a time, but that time has passed and is not coming back.
- ipaddr 3y agoIn some locations on an industrial scale. For everyone else: The average solar panel cost is $3–$5 per watt or $15000–$20000 for a typical 5 kW system
- pfdietz 3y agoThis just shows that residential solar is kind of dumb. It's more gaming quirks of rate structures than it is producing cheap energy. Fortunately, there's more than enough room for large scale solar, installed at about $1/W.
- mchannon 3y ago2008 called. It wants its prices back. A visit to sunelec.com or santansolar.com yields a litany of panels for sale well under $1/W. Half the offerings on Amazon are below $1/W as well. As such, nowadays you should be paying no more than $10k for a 5kW system.
- ipaddr 3y ago10k+install+taxes=15k-20k
- mchannon 3y ago"But why don't we pay it off in Canadian dollars and save ourselves some money?" "Just so you know, if that's a route you want to follow, it's 50,000 American, It would be 70,000, roughly, Canadian dollars." "How are we going to come up with $120,000?!"