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Yup. Europe can absolutely still build reactors, just not at a price that is economically competitive. Olkiluoto 3 started regular production in 2023, taking 1

Yup. Europe can absolutely still build reactors, just not at a price that is economically competitive. Olkiluoto 3 started regular production in 2023, taking 18 years to build at a cost of €11 billion (3x over budget). Flamanville 3 started regular production in 2024, taking 17 years to build at a cost of €13.2 billion (4x over budget) or €19.1 billion including financing in 2015 prices. Hinkley Point C (two reactors) is currently estimated to have its first unit come online around 2030, taking 14 years with total costs now estimated at £31-35 billion / €36–41 billion (2x over budget) in 2015 prices.

mpweiher 10mo ago
Funny, the Finns are super happy with their "uneconomic" nuclear reactors. Current approval rating for nuclear is now 81%, up from 77% last year. The UK is so disappointed by their HPC project (which is the most expensive nuclear reactor project in history, AFAIK), that they just completed the investment decision for the follow-up Sizewell-C, which will also be 2 UK-EPRs. Oh, the guarantee price for HPC is the same as that for various off-shore wind-projects. So obviously economically uncompetitive. At 10 pence/kWh the two reactors at HPC will produce electricity worth £200 billion. Which does put the cost of £41 billion into perspective, despite that being the most ridiculously over-time and over budget nuclear project in history. Actually, Flamanville 3 did not start "regular" production in 2024, they were just given go-ahead to go to full power a few days ago. It was first grid-connected in 2024 and then started a lengthy ramp-up phase. It slowly coming online was the time for the Cour des Comptes to give its verdict, which was pretty damning. Flamanville 3 was probably the worst run nuclear project in French history. And even so, this "damning" verdict was that it FV3 would only be somewhat and in the worst case marginally profitable. But still profitable. Which is better than pretty much every intermittent renewables project out there, certainly in Europe. EDF is often accused of receiving heavy state subsides, with the implication that this is to keep the nuclear power plants going or subsidize nuclear electricity. It is true that EDF gets state subsidies. For their intermittent renewable projects. Ba-da-dum-tss. The nuclear party of their business is tremendously profitable, despite being forced to subsidize industry through the ARENH program.
- laurencerowe 10mo ago
  Existing nuclear reactors produce incredibly cheap power. The German decision to stop theirs before coal should be considered an environmental crime. Finns should be super happy with Nuclear since the cost overruns were overwhelmingly born by Areva (majority owned by the French state) which accumulated losses of €5.5 billion and went bust! As a nuclear weapons power the UK has a national security interest to keep its nuclear industry around. It needs to build some reactors to do that, but given the prices of new nuclear I don't expect it to build more than the minimum necessary. Hinkley Point C comes in at £92.50/MWh in 2012 prices (£128.90 in 2024 prices). At the last auction wind prices were £54.23/MWh in 2012 prices (£75.68/MWh 2024 prices). Now those prices for intermittent wind exclude the cost of providing backup power with gas but that is still much cheaper than nuclear.
  - Mawr 10mo ago
    > Now those prices for intermittent wind exclude the cost of providing backup power with gas Yes, let's just handwave those concerns away, it's not like the grid needs power 100% of the time or anything. Two weeks without wind? No problem, just burn gas :) It's so cheap, independent of foreign supply, doesn't leak out of pipes and isn't a huge environmental hazard at all.
    - hvb2 10mo ago
      But then also be honest that nuclear can't solve that problem either. It's extremely slow to ramp up and down so it cannot keep the grid stable either. So the only way to power your grid with all nuclear is to produce at the daily peak load + margin all day. Every day
      - mpweiher 10mo ago
        This is completely false. Nuclear plants can and do ramp up quickly, thought not from/to 0, but that's generally not necessary. And they provide grid stability by having rotating masses on the grid, and thus combine pretty nicely with small to medium amounts of intermittent renewals that can provide some of the peak power.
golem14 10mo ago
I found an interesting set of charts + explanation for China: https://www.reddit.com/r/Infographics/comments/1ijcocq/chinese_nuclear_reactor_construction_timeline/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Infographics/comments/1ijcocq/chine... It would really be great to understand (rather than me guessing) China's rationale to build these plants, and also their safety. They generate about 5% of their electricity with nuclear. That's a lot, but is it enough to power the country if other alternatives stop being viable (war, shortages, ...?) Maybe it's OK for them that in such a situation, they just turn off enough residential power to last through the night with nuclear and storage. z Do they see the nuclear research as dual use? My understanding is that nuclear subs and ships do use entirely different nuclear plants. Maybe research into small modular reactors is more dual use. There's also use for those reactors if they really want to build moon bases. Maybe at their cost of the plans (I heard ≈3B for a 1+GW plant), this is actually competitive with solar+storage. It's definitely competitive with western nuclear power plants, if they want to export in other developing markets.
- laurencerowe 10mo ago
  Rather than being dual use I think it’s more that countries want to keep their strategic industrial capacity around in terms of the nuclear engineering expertise in firms and universities that can potentially be redirected if needed.
mikestorrent 10mo ago
The problem is that we insist on building nuclear plants like cathedrals, when we need to build them like Model T Fords. Small modular reactors need to be rolling out of a factory ready to go, so we can do large redundant arrays of them, put them on trains to transport them around, etc. A nuclear power station making a couple MW should cost maybe a few million tops once we have the ability to make hundreds of them a year from a factory instead of creating these 20 year projects for gigantic facilities that are all bespoke
- laurencerowe 10mo ago
  It’s far from certain that SMRs will end up having lower costs than large nuclear reactors. Maybe they will work out but there is a huge amount of hype. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-10-30/silicon-valley-s-risky-plan-to-revive-nuclear-power-in-america https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-10-30/silicon-v... (https://archive.ph/Wvfqr https://archive.ph/Wvfqr)

mpweiher 10mo ago

Funny, the Finns are super happy with their "uneconomic" nuclear reactors. Current approval rating for nuclear is now 81%, up from 77% last year. The UK is so disappointed by their HPC project (which is the most expensive nuclear reactor project in history, AFAIK), that they just completed the investment decision for the follow-up Sizewell-C, which will also be 2 UK-EPRs. Oh, the guarantee price for HPC is the same as that for various off-shore wind-projects. So obviously economically uncompetitive. At 10 pence/kWh the two reactors at HPC will produce electricity worth £200 billion. Which does put the cost of £41 billion into perspective, despite that being the most ridiculously over-time and over budget nuclear project in history. Actually, Flamanville 3 did not start "regular" production in 2024, they were just given go-ahead to go to full power a few days ago. It was first grid-connected in 2024 and then started a lengthy ramp-up phase. It slowly coming online was the time for the Cour des Comptes to give its verdict, which was pretty damning. Flamanville 3 was probably the worst run nuclear project in French history. And even so, this "damning" verdict was that it FV3 would only be somewhat and in the worst case marginally profitable. But still profitable. Which is better than pretty much every intermittent renewables project out there, certainly in Europe. EDF is often accused of receiving heavy state subsides, with the implication that this is to keep the nuclear power plants going or subsidize nuclear electricity. It is true that EDF gets state subsidies. For their intermittent renewable projects. Ba-da-dum-tss. The nuclear party of their business is tremendously profitable, despite being forced to subsidize industry through the ARENH program.

laurencerowe 10mo ago
Existing nuclear reactors produce incredibly cheap power. The German decision to stop theirs before coal should be considered an environmental crime. Finns should be super happy with Nuclear since the cost overruns were overwhelmingly born by Areva (majority owned by the French state) which accumulated losses of €5.5 billion and went bust! As a nuclear weapons power the UK has a national security interest to keep its nuclear industry around. It needs to build some reactors to do that, but given the prices of new nuclear I don't expect it to build more than the minimum necessary. Hinkley Point C comes in at £92.50/MWh in 2012 prices (£128.90 in 2024 prices). At the last auction wind prices were £54.23/MWh in 2012 prices (£75.68/MWh 2024 prices). Now those prices for intermittent wind exclude the cost of providing backup power with gas but that is still much cheaper than nuclear.
- Mawr 10mo ago
  > Now those prices for intermittent wind exclude the cost of providing backup power with gas Yes, let's just handwave those concerns away, it's not like the grid needs power 100% of the time or anything. Two weeks without wind? No problem, just burn gas :) It's so cheap, independent of foreign supply, doesn't leak out of pipes and isn't a huge environmental hazard at all.
  - hvb2 10mo ago
    But then also be honest that nuclear can't solve that problem either. It's extremely slow to ramp up and down so it cannot keep the grid stable either. So the only way to power your grid with all nuclear is to produce at the daily peak load + margin all day. Every day
    - mpweiher 10mo ago
      This is completely false. Nuclear plants can and do ramp up quickly, thought not from/to 0, but that's generally not necessary. And they provide grid stability by having rotating masses on the grid, and thus combine pretty nicely with small to medium amounts of intermittent renewals that can provide some of the peak power.

golem14 10mo ago

I found an interesting set of charts + explanation for China: https://www.reddit.com/r/Infographics/comments/1ijcocq/chinese_nuclear_reactor_construction_timeline/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Infographics/comments/1ijcocq/chine... It would really be great to understand (rather than me guessing) China's rationale to build these plants, and also their safety. They generate about 5% of their electricity with nuclear. That's a lot, but is it enough to power the country if other alternatives stop being viable (war, shortages, ...?) Maybe it's OK for them that in such a situation, they just turn off enough residential power to last through the night with nuclear and storage. z Do they see the nuclear research as dual use? My understanding is that nuclear subs and ships do use entirely different nuclear plants. Maybe research into small modular reactors is more dual use. There's also use for those reactors if they really want to build moon bases. Maybe at their cost of the plans (I heard ≈3B for a 1+GW plant), this is actually competitive with solar+storage. It's definitely competitive with western nuclear power plants, if they want to export in other developing markets.

laurencerowe 10mo ago
Rather than being dual use I think it’s more that countries want to keep their strategic industrial capacity around in terms of the nuclear engineering expertise in firms and universities that can potentially be redirected if needed.

mikestorrent 10mo ago

The problem is that we insist on building nuclear plants like cathedrals, when we need to build them like Model T Fords. Small modular reactors need to be rolling out of a factory ready to go, so we can do large redundant arrays of them, put them on trains to transport them around, etc. A nuclear power station making a couple MW should cost maybe a few million tops once we have the ability to make hundreds of them a year from a factory instead of creating these 20 year projects for gigantic facilities that are all bespoke

laurencerowe 10mo ago
It’s far from certain that SMRs will end up having lower costs than large nuclear reactors. Maybe they will work out but there is a huge amount of hype. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-10-30/silicon-valley-s-risky-plan-to-revive-nuclear-power-in-america https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-10-30/silicon-v... (https://archive.ph/Wvfqr https://archive.ph/Wvfqr)