Comment by legitster
4 days ago
Solar is cheap, but it's only a supplementary power source. If you add in energy costs it becomes much, much more expensive than fission.
The elephant in the room is natural gas which is the true competitor to fission and is still dirt cheap in the US.
No, with proper system design solar + wind + storage is cheaper than new construction nuclear.
There's a reason China is installing two orders of magnitude more solar than nuclear these days (nameplate capacity basis).
China is also the top consumer in the world of coal and they continue to break their record every year.
On the margin I don't argue that renewables are cheaper, but you still need a way to generate base load power on demand.
You can generate baseload power from non-baseload sources. Renewables + storage can do the whole job. There is no need for anything called a "baseload source". Indeed, that label indicates a deficiency, not a capability: it's a source that has to run (almost) all the time to make economic sense.
China needs every power generation it can build.