I see nuclear having a lot of trouble competing with solar/wind for two reasons: 1: incremental construction costs: (NB, numbers speculative, think order of m

I see nuclear having a lot of trouble competing with solar/wind for two reasons: 1: incremental construction costs: (NB, numbers speculative, think order of magnitude). Roughly speaking, 100e6 dollars gets you a decent solar/wind utility scale installation (heck, you can do it retail for a few 10e3's on SFH rooftops), but only (maybe) a feasibility study for nuclear. Definitely not an operating plant. Spending 100e6 dollars a year gets operating solar/wind generating capacity on an ongoing basis, same on nuclear gets you a working plant in how many years? 2: backend costs: I don't think nuclear has a business plan about the cost of decommissioning a plant. Or maybe it ends up like orphan wells: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_wells_in_Alberta,_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_wells_in_Alberta,_Canad.... Reason 1: means that the business risk associated with solar/wind is far less than that of nuclear. Given that nuclear and solar/wind are very similar as being base load [1] and not well suited to tracking fluctuating demand (so, both need the same sort of backup / storage tricks, albeit for different production profiles), solar/wind win the "cheap 'n' cheerful" race hands down. Also, manageable by private entities, so no WPPSS scandals ("whoops!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNP-3_and_WNP-5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNP-3_and_WNP-5). Reason 2: decommissioning/recycling costs are far lower. This reduces taxpayer risk (ie., externalizing costs). There's nothing exotic: aluminum frames can join the "beer can to beer can in six weeks" loop and the other materials (can't be bothered to find the references just now) aren't as hard to reprocess as detractors claim. Also, again, it's smaller increments, so no massive 6 reactor plant that will take twenty years to dismantle. It's far easier to develop a 'panels to panels' industry with a steady stream of little projects than with a "my career was about remediating Splitters Bay" model. [1] nuclear has to 'throw it away' by paying someone to take the power, they can't ramp down. Solar/wind has to 'throw it away' by not taking what's on offer. No way to make back six hours of curtailed sunshine.