Comment by pfdietz
4 hours ago
> The only credible competition against a state funded nuclear plant is hypothetical next gen geothermal power though.
If we extend renewables and batteries on historical experience curves they could become incredibly cheap, with solar well below $0.01/kWh. Nuclear couldn't even make an operating profit in an environment with solar that cheap.
Price is irrelevant when you need most of your electricity in a season when there's barely any sun.
Most of the European population leave on places that are more northern then Montreal, we have less than 8 hours of daylight per day, and a significant fraction of it is cloudy.
There's no storage solution that can store the excess summer solar exposure (when we get more than 16hours on sun per day) to reinject it into the grid in winter. That's literally science fiction tech, and that's what you'd need to make solar + storage a reliable source in Europe.
Solar in California, India or the middle east? Sure. Solar in Europe, Canada and even Japan, good luck (and yes, these countries constitute most of nuclear power plants operators).