Today's nuclear is actually already competitive with all clean energy futures. Yes, wind and solar LCOE is dirt cheap today, but only when the wind is blowing or sun is shining. They're riding on the back of the fossil-dominated grid. As we deeploy decarbonize, all studies I've seen show costs rising 30-50 $/MWh to deal with intermittency. At those prices, current nuclear is already in the game.
Yes. Costs of power sources have frequently increased as a function of penetration due to regulations, NIMBY, realities of technology, etc. You're assuming renewables will do the opposite. While popular, this is unconventional. Japan building 22 coal plants right now proves the point.
Serious studies I've seen say 30-50 $/MWh delta is required to deal with reconductoring, storage, recycling, load management, etc.
Nuclear has to standardize and serialize to play. If they don't do that they're out. But if they pull off another France of Korea or Japanese ABWRs its game on. You're also assuming that will not happen.
If you assume nuclear will never improve and other sources will, sure nuclear looks bad.
Nuclear power plants have a 60 year history now. We can see they have not come down in cost, and we can see why. They are complex and difficult to build. Mistakes in design or construction can be disastrously expensive. Avoiding those mistakes is also very expensive.
The refrain of "this time it will be different" is looking like just wishful thinking.
Now we know how to do it right. See Shika 2 abwr build in 2006. It was amazing. Problem is, we keep choosing to do it wrong. South Texas has a full-on license to build a ABWR there right now. Hitachi could show up and deliver it. But we choose to not allow it due to corporate turf issues with GE.
This is a big management and coordination challenge. But with climate change looming, what better time to choose the path we know works.
VVERs are also fully serialized.
While looking at Vogtle and Hinckley C and Finland, we must not forget VVERs and ABWRs and APR-1400s.
What reasonable assumptions? I'm not saying you are wrong, but the energy problem is a quantitive problem. There are many energy sources that are great in certain circumstances and certain regions, but do things actually add up when we create a plan? Without plans and numbers we are stuck with hypothetical ideas that feel kinda right, but you can't solve quantitive problems this way.
That site lets you compute the optimal energy mix under various assumptions for various locations using real historical weather data.
If that Without Hot Air site is the one I think it is, it was from ten years ago, and also assumed large biomass inputs. The latter greatly increases the land area needed, leading to the incorrect conclusion that the UK could not get by just on local renewables.
