[hwillis]

Not true. Nuclear is fantastically expensive in every country regardless of regulations or NIMBYism. Regulatory expense is a minority problem that exacerbates the core issues.

The big problems are mostly competency. A nuclear plant requires huge parts from tons of companies all over the planet. People are always messing it up. The biggest issue is that this huge coordination problem makes everything take way longer, which means almost everyone involved with the plant is sitting around getting paid to do nothing. That's incredibly expensive when the project stretches over a decade.

[opo]

>... Nuclear is fantastically expensive in every country regardless of regulations or NIMBYism.

Not true. One example is France - they generate over 70% of their power through nuclear:

>...France enjoys one of the lowest electricity prices in Europe; at 14.72 euro cents per kWh, the average cost of electricity in France is 26.5% cheaper than the EU average (20.02 euro cents per kWh).

https://en.selectra.info/energy-france/guides/electricity-co...

[hwillis]

The per kWh cost of electricity does not correlate well with the actual amount of money paid, particularly for nuclear. The cost of building plants was and is immense, and was heavily subsidized for obvious reasons. There is a reason France is not building more nuclear plants- they are scaling their nuclear energy back 30% over the next 8 years.

Take Flamanville: it's basically the posterchild for expensive nuclear. It's French and huge so it should theoretically be one of the most affordable reactors in the world; the French are nuclear experts. Construction began in 1979 and has was planned to end in 1985.

Instead, it's been delayed until 2019 and the budget has inflated from 3.3 billion euro to 10.5 billion. In USD that's an overnight cost of $4,522 USD/kW not counting financing, and a 40 year construction period. You'd have to be insane to invest in that, and it's one of the cheapest nuclear projects. The overnight cost of advanced nuclear in the US is $6,000/kW[1].

For comparison, the overnight cost of natural gas is $700/kW and wind is $1900/kW (with capacity factor >30%). Nuclear can't compete on price even before the cost of fuel, security and staff are factored in.

[1]: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost...

[opo]

>...The cost of building plants was and is immense, and was heavily subsidized for obvious reasons.

Do you have any evidence that they subsidized nuclear as much as wind/solar have been subsidized in other countries?

Rather than focussing on the cost of the plant, it is more accurate to look at the levelized cost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

Certainly not "fantastically expensive in every country".

>...Construction began in 1979 and has was planned to end in 1985. Instead, it's been delayed until 2019 ... and a 40 year construction period ...

That seems to be misrepresenting the situation quite a bit. The first 2 reactors came on line in 1986 and 1987 and have produced many terra watt hours of power since then. The third reactor began construction in December 2007 and is a new design which has had problems and cost overruns.

>...For comparison, the overnight cost of natural gas is $700/kW

Unfortunately, the CO2 emissions and methane releases from drilling/processing natural gas might make natural gas as bad for climate change as burning coal. Unfortunately without a major advance in grid storage, there will likely be major increases in the use of natural gas.

Given the political environment in the US, there will likely be little role for nuclear power for at least the next few decades. Instead it will likely be China which builds/deploys nuclear power.