Comment by rstuart4133
19 hours ago
He mixed some units there, mostly by translating Chinese costs into OECD/USA costs. China does indeed take 5 years to build a reactor. That's what happens when you build a couple a year for decades. After 20 years, that might be true in the OECD/USA too, but for now you are looking at over 10 years, $10B/GW, and over 8% interest.
None of that is the real issue though. The real issue is for at least 8 hours a day, but probably more like 16 hours a day, renewables can generate power at well under 1/2 the price of what he calculated. So they won't sell the 9 units of power he forecast - it will be at best 4.5 units, and the nuclear plant even at his optimistic assumptions never makes money.
If you look at South Australia [0] - they are at 80% renewables now. At 80%, the average wholesale is cheaper than what nuclear can supply. The percentage will go higher, probably to around 90%..95%. They are and will achieve that with very limited (ie, cheap) storage.
But obviously that isn't 100% - so it becomes a question of what can fill the gap of 60 days or so a year the cheapest. Nuclear has no hope. Generating and storing ammonia using excess renewables and burning it when needed is one of the most expensive forms of energy available - but if you only need to do it for 60 days a year, it is still far cheaper than nuclear, because nuclear's primary cost is it's interest bill, not fuel.
The good professor paints gas fuel cost as a disadvantage. But when you are only burning it 60 days a year, then compared to paying nuclear's interest bill 365 days a year it's cheap.
[0] https://www.energymining.sa.gov.au/consumers/energy-grid-and...
Which should we expect will find more cost reductions in the next couple decades? Nuclear or battery storage?
Looked at it that way, I'm skeptical of all these new nuclear projects. No one has made SMRs work economically, yet we're seeing incredible improvements in batteries, and there's enough unexplored chemistry possibilities we don't have a reason to think we're near the end of the road on that.
There's also very interesting work on non-battery storage technology. The one that has gotten my attention is Standard Thermal's "hot dirt" thermal storage technology. I don't know where they are in crossing the chasm on this, but the theory looks very promising, with capex as low as $0.10 per kWh of thermal storage capacity. This promises to make 600 C heat available 365/7/24 for a cost as low as $3/GJ, similar to heat from combustion of Henry Hub natural gas.
Indeed. Cost of nuclear is static or climbing. Renewables are cheaper and falling. Batteries are about the same, and falling.
If a western country starts building nuclear today, they will have something to show for it in ten years at the earliest. Renewables and batteries are already cheap, and getting cheaper, so it seems like a very silly bet. Especially in a place like Italy with excellent sun and lots of space.
This must at least partly be region-dependent right?
In the darker northern parts of Europe, the German transition to renewable haven't really been a cost-saving success story (right?).
From my (very) casual Swedish vantage point, the wind build out here was a very government subsided race to zero marginal prices that barely helped anything?
Most of Finnish wind capacity was built without subsidies. The demand was saturated at ~25% of total generation, after which the market started building solar. Wind power is more cost-effective at these latitudes, but solar generation is currently more valuable, as it correlates less with existing renewables.
That only makes sense if you're burning hydrocarbons to heat your homes; about 1/3 of total energy use is space heating. Shifting to heat pumps and more wind before wasting money on solar panels at high latitudes is better ROI on energy independence and carbon reduction.
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> China does indeed take 5 years to build a reactor.
I've seen it claimed that this figure is not equivalent to the time-to-build in West, as the clock starts later in the process. I don't know if that's true, but I've seen the claim.
SA is at 168 gC02eq/kWh for 2025.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/AU-SA/yearly
France is at 32 gC02eq/kWh for 2025.
So France's emission intensity is 1/5 that of SA.
SA has a population of 1.9 M. France is at 69.1 M. SA is physically larger than metropolitan France ( 983 km^2 vs 549 for France). It is very sunny. It is rich and solar has been subsidised for ages.
It is really ideal for solar.
But the emissions are still much higher than France.
Australia is ideal for solar in general and the government has been giving money to millionaires all over the country to put it on their roofs.
But most of Australia, with the exception of Tasmania that uses hydro, has fairly high emissions.
Australia's emissions have also been effectively flat for the past half decade :
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/measuring-what-matters/mea...
This is despite increasing solar.
> So France's emission intensity is 1/5 that of SA.
True. But France is 70% nuclear plus 15% renewables, with the remainder 5% fossil. In 2026 South Australia was 75% renewables, and 25% CCGT (gas turbine - fossil).
So France is 5% fossil vs SA's 25%, and accordingly has 1/5 the CO2 intensity. No mystery there - and obviously has nothing to do with nuclear vs renewables.
SA says they will hit 100% renewable in next year. [0] I struggle to believe that, but 95% at some point seems likely given the price of CCGT.
[0] https://www.energymining.sa.gov.au/industry/hydrogen-and-ren...
This really should be a top level comment. It accurately explains the broken economics of nuclear, and is the real reason effectively no nukes will be built going forward. Not the usual tired points about regulations and safety fears and Chernobyl or whatever
To be fair South Australia is:
* Incredibly sunny
* Incredibly sparely populated
* Functionally winterless
Like it's the perfect setup for solar.
Somewhere like Denmark, Japan, even the US Northeast does not have those.
Precisely. France built out its current nuclear fleet over decades. The first reactors were expensive, but then costs came down. Of course, then they stopped and are now trying to restart again with new reactor models. It's been expensive and it's not clear they'll start building en-mass again.
France's reactors became successively more expensive as the need for more layered safety features was exposed. The first generation (CP0, CP1, CP2) was quite inexpensive, the P4 and P'4 designs were already more expensive and the N4 was yet more expensive.
At this point I think if you want inexpensive nuclear, you just have to accept some risk. Going from 99.9% safety to 99.99% adds just too much complexity to remain economically viable.