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by KptMarchewa 848 days ago
There's no cheaper stable source of electricity then existing nuclear power plant.
2 comments

https://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-leveliz...

The only thing more expensive than nuclear — in these stats at least — is small-scale solar installations.

Btw, this widespread (but wrong) belief that nuclear is cheap stems from the fact that a lot of countries heavily subsidized their nuclear industry in order to gain know-how and/or materials for atomic weapon production. It's not even cost-covering at current energy prices without those subsidies.

The _existing_ is the important part.
Unfortunately, you cannot build an existing plant. You have to build a new one.
Funniest thing I've read this year so far, thanks ;D
You can do a lot of other stupid things, for example consider it EOL after very short time, like 40 years and close it though.
Nuclear power is just too expensive. Look at France - the have 80% or so nuclear and all of their power companies run at a loss and have to be subsidized. Meanwhile in Germany wind and solar make a pretty good complement and are cheaper, even with storage included, which is mostly provided by Switzerland and Austria.

It's just not worth the hassle.

Just need half a century of first construction and then amortizing the loans to get an existing paid off nuclear plant.
You need 0 years to construct an already existing plant, and would pay those loans either way.
Of course, the issue is what you do when the said plant is EOL or you need more capacity. Can't expand capacity using existing plants.
Extend the life to 80 years.

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/whats-lifespan-nuclear-re...

And fund the plants from budget, not commercial debt.

> "Governments can borrow much more cheaply that private companies and that lower cost of borrowing can drastically reduce the ultimate cost. Hinkley Point C would have been roughly half the cost if the government had been borrowing the money to build it at 2%, rather than EDF's cost of capital, which was 9%."

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44363366

Everything is cheaper than nuclear, at this point.