[cycomanic]

The argument that the nuclear power industry suffers from "insane" over-engineering for safety and that this is the reason for the cost is brought up again and again, except there is no real evidence for this.

In fact it's easy to see that a large proportion of a the construction cost is the same as any other (e.g. gas, coal) thermal power plant, because they all need the same steam turbine. Now nuclear power plants have additional costs, also due to safety (and I would argue that we should expect that, a nuclear power plant has more challenges to a coal plant).

Moreover if you look at the cost increases for nuclear power plant projects, they are pretty much inline with the cost increases we have seen for most large infrastructure projects. They all have become significantly more expensive (recently build coal plant also went significantly over budget). Even the world nuclear forum says (https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...): > Nuclear power plant construction is typical of large infrastructure projects around the world, whose costs and delivery challenges tend to be under-estimated.

The reality is that nuclear power is just not cost-competitive (see also this analysis somebody else (in a counter solar argument) posted https://www.lazard.com/media/typdgxmm/lazards-lcoeplus-april...). Especially considering that renewables are on an exponential curve and nuclear is not (and doesn't show any indication of how to get onto one). Because so much of the cost (and energy) is in the construction of a nuclear power plant, it is actually counter-productive to invest into nuclear power plants, because we will increase CO2 compared to an investment into renewables.