[gatestone]

If Hornsea 2 really produces anywhere near the nominal 1,4 MW and was built in three years, that is remarkable.

The Olkiluoto 3 nuclear plant here in Finland (1,6 MW) was just started. The construction took 20 years.

The price seems to be in the same ballpark, 5000 million euro was quoted for Hornsea 1, and 9000 million for Olkiluoto 3?

[thehappypm]

What about operating costs and decommissioning costs? I imagine that it takes a pretty substantial workforce to run a nuclear plant, and decommissioning is a pain, but not too sure about wind.

[eugene-d]

You mean GW? I'm confused

[spenrose]

1. He does mean GW

2. Orsted will average around 60% of nameplate, with wide but predictable variance[1]

3. Nuclear averages 90% of nameplate, with a mix of planned and sudden large outages [op. cit.]

4. Nuclear has higher running costs but longer capital lifetime

5. We need to decarbonize aggressively on multiple timescales: get solar+storage (quickest), wind+storage(reasonably quick), nuclear (s-l-o-w), and advanced geothermal (in development; s-l-o-w then maybe reasonably quick) all deployed.

6. The broad path forward for industrialized societies is solar everywhere, TWh of hour-scale storage, TW of wind, and ~25% of electricity provided by "clean firm": some combination of nuclear, geothermal, H2, and fossil gas with CCS.

7. Electricity consumption will grow faster than the economy in industrialized societies, and as fast as the economy in the currently underserved global south (~3B people). Roughly 10TW today, 20TW in 2040, who knows after that.

[1] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/hornsea-spawns-...