[dTal]

Your cost comparison does not factor in the grid storage required to convert unreliable solar+wind into 24/7 power. You can only directly compare $/MWHr when the proportion of unreliable energy is small, and offsetting reliable sources (i.e. when the cost of electricity is roughly constant). When all generation is unreliable, there's a huge question mark - how long can the grid weather dark, windless days? What's an appropriate safety margin, and what happens when you breach it?

From your own source, the Lazard 2023 LCOE study: "Most LDES (long duration energy storage) technologies have not yet reached commercialization due to technology immaturity and, with limited deployments, seemingly none of the emerging LDES technologies have achieved the track record for performance required to be fully bankable."

Ideally we'd have a combined approach - nuclear base load, renewables and grid scale storage to reduce the number of expensive nukes we need. That way you'll always have at least some power. But we don't have grid storage yet. And without storage, there's not much point in offsetting the output of nuclear plants, since fuel costs are so minimal - you might as well run all the nukes full tilt, all the time. So really, the only sensible thing to do is build primarily nuclear, and renewables in proportion to our ability to deal with wildly fluctuating energy supply.

[AtlasBarfed]

Doesn't really make up for the fact that nuclear is 6x more expensive than solar. I really think synthfuels or all the hydrogen stuff going on (or the CO2 --> propane story also on the board today) will far outperform nuclear in grid leveling/storage.

Nuclear simply needs a reset to figure out how to make it economical. I love nuclear power in theory, there is simply so many more orders of magnitude of energy density and long life that it has to be viable somehow.

Again, I'm in favor of keeping the current nuclear plants operational. But build out a substantial new build of nuclear plants? Absolutely not. Research reactors, long term R&D / national laboratory projects on advanced nuclear? 100% support it, to the tune of a billion per year or more.

[dTal]

I would say that 24/7 power you can have using real technology that actually exists today makes up for any claims you might make about "6x more expensive". More expensive than what? Magic non-existent grid storage?

It's all very well saying you think that "synthfuels" and "hydrogen stuff" WILL outperform nuclear, but the practical upshot is that you are arguing in favor of sitting around twiddling our thumbs hoping some new technology will save us, when we could be building nuclear plants. What do you suggest we do now that will substantially eat into fossil consumption?

[AtlasBarfed]

Go ahead and pretend grid storage is some pretend technology and isn't in actual production use.

That is honestly unhinged, and if nuclear proponents thing grid storage is some far off technology, they are more divorced from th economic reality than I thought.

Nuclear is 141$ per mwhr. Solar +storage is $45. Solar/wind are $24.

This pattern of improvement isn't some new phenomenon, and you can't pretend these are made up figures. Is storage pricing new? Yeah. Is the cost of battery backup going to drop? Virtually guaranteed with new sodium ion techs and the other stuff in the pipeline.

Attitudes like this frankly just validate that the entire current generation of the nuclear industry simply has a flawed and obsolete structure and outlook. They are simply ossified in a huge regulatory capture wall.

[_hypx]

Your bet is based off of magical batteries from the future. This is not at all a coherent counterargument to nuclear. Nevermind the very concept of having redundant systems, or admitting the possibility of nuclear getting cheaper.

You can easily be accused of Silicon Valley style innovation delusion. As if something being older or more "regulated" means it is bad. It is the same delusion that got Uber to lose billions until they changed the same per ride as any taxi company. In reality, facts don't care about how you think the world works.