Comment by KennyBlanken
6 days ago
Nuclear is not zero-carbon nor is it "cheap."
It's the most expensive form of power generation. Meanwhile solar, wind, and BSS are the cheapest and continue to get cheaper as volume goes up and all the tech around them matures. More and more storage methods are being developed and put into use.
Utilities and grid operators have lined up behind solar, wind, BSS, and HVDC transmission. That's what they are funding, installing, and buying power from. This has been a trend for a number of years now, around the world. That isn't some conspiracy or coincidence.
The only place this is still considered a debated topic, or nuclear is considered preferential, is social media and forums like HN.
An already built nuclear plant is cheaper than building new solar and wind, which is what this article is about. It had already started operational tests at 5% capacity when it was shut down.
And nuclear power doesn't inherently emit CO2 (or equivalents), which is what is meant by zero-carbon in this context.
The low end of costs for new build solar and wind in the US is nearly identical to the average running costs of fully deprecated nuclear plants in the US according to Lazard.
Solar low end $38, Wind low end $37, Nuclear running cost average $34, Nuclear new build low end $141
Normally I'd say that renewables cost is likely to continue to fall over time, but with Trump in charge and putting his thumb on the scale that future is a little cloudy. These are all long term investments and risk causes higher prices.
Either way if a nation is looking to get out of nuclear today then it's not a clear cut case to say that they'd lose money by doing so.
Yeah, with how much focus there is on the capital costs of nuclear power plants it's easy to forget they also have moderate operating costs. With the developments we're seeing, you're right that the LCOE of solar and wind is or will soon be lower than the operating costs of nuclear. That leaves the only remaining upsides of nuclear being production stability and energy diversity, and grid batteries are making the first less and less important every year. Not to mention that the capacity factor will be pushed down from the demand side worsening the costs even more since not all operating costs are proportional to the amount of energy generated.
> according to Lazard. ... Nuclear new build low end
Here's what Lazard actually says:
“We do not, in this study, try to cost out new nuclear” (2:35)
“We think nuclear will be a big part of the future” (2:47)
“the costs of nuclear should go down “ (12:54)
“next five to 10 years the nuclear bar the one that's most likely to change the most in in terms of cost reduction” (14:06)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16HVh_Fx6LQ
And to claim this is the "low end" is a bald-faced lie.
They used a single nuclear power plant that was the most expensive nuclear power plant ever built in the US and one of the 3 most expensive in the world, ever. Of course, they note that this is the case, and that this is unrepresentative. Alas, all the anti-nuclear activists quoting Lazard are not this honest.
Lazard makes recommendations for investors in different kinds of energy generation.
But the costs for electricity customers depend on the price of the whole electric mix, for US it's a mix of cheap renewables and cheap natural gas, for China it's a mix of cheap renewables and cheap coal, for EU it's a mix of cheap renewables and very expensive natural gas.
I agree, in US new nuclear power build is not competitive with the combination of cheap renewables (especially cheap solar) and cheap natural gas. The Nuclear Renaissance talked in US since about about 2001, was made insignificant in US by the franking gas revolution, starting in about 2008.
"According to the Department of Energy (DOE), by 2013 at least two million oil and gas wells in the US had been hydraulically fractured, and, of new wells being drilled, up to 95% are hydraulically fractured. The output from these wells makes up 43% of the oil production and 67% of the natural gas production in the United States."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking_in_the_United_States
The thing is that educated people like HN users see very simple thing: 1 kW nuclear can be safely replaced with 20 kW well distributed renewables. While solar is dirt cheap wind isn’t. Especially offshore wind. And the math clearly shows advantages of nuclear.
> And the math clearly shows advantages of nuclear.
If that's the case and the advantages are so sharp and clearly defined, ...
Then why did Australia's latest CSIRO (National Science body) energy options for the nations future report* clearly state that nuclear was not an economically pragmatic choice compared to renewables?
Any chance "Nuclear V. {X}" is a qualified comparison with edge cases and nuance?
* https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/news/2025/july/2024-25-genc...
Because the nuclear issue in Australia is highly politicized and the report is deeply flawed?
https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/the-flaws-in-c...
https://theconversation.com/known-unknowns-controversy-over-...
I heard Australia is pretty sunny country. If that’s right they can go with solar and be alright. Sweden has less options for sure.
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Having renewables distributed however is the big challenge. We've gone from a world where you have a small amount of large generators in static places to having many generators everywhere. If you don't have the capacity to transfer that energy to where it's being used it doesn't matter how cheap it is.
Except it does because the money saved on generation can be used to pay for extra transmission capacity and storage.
Solar and wind aren't 20% cheaper than nuclear power they're 20% of the price of nuclear power.
Offshore wind is cheaper than coal in China now. Which also makes it much cheaper than nuclear in China.
Onshore wind is only very slightly more expensive than solar in China too, most projects overlapping in cost ranges, both roughly half the cost of coal.
This is reflected in their deployment numbers, which also feeds back into cost reductions.
> Offshore wind is cheaper than coal in China now. Which also makes it much cheaper than nuclear in China.
Citation needed.
China reportedly builds the CAP-1400, a localized and uprated version of the passively safe Westinghouse AP-1000, in 5 years and for around $3.5 billion.
Serial production of a known-good design with a savvy workforce rocks!
If those reported numbers are correct, which I cannot verify, they can profitably sell that electricy at 2 cents/kWh or below.
> Nuclear is not zero-carbon nor is it "cheap."
1994.
> Meanwhile solar, wind, and BSS are the cheapest [...]
1994