This is why people now compare cost of nuclear with cost of solar PLUS capacitors/batteries to handle for base load. Surprisingly, with recent achievements in molten sand batteries, solar is still comfortably cheaper than nuclear per kwh. As the base load. Yes, solar as the base load is more expensive than solar on-demand, but if we’re comparing to nuclear, Solar just wins.
And solar’s cost is far less front-loaded, making it more affordable than the “cost per kwh” implies.
The point is, if we are not at the point of moving our base load to renewables today, we would be faster than we would be with nuclear and provisioning all the locations needed for secure, regulated, nuclear plants across the country/world. And the “world” part is a big one. Nuclear power material might not be fully weaponizable, but allowing some countries nuclear power plants could still create risk.
This is why people now compare cost of nuclear with cost of solar PLUS capacitors/batteries to handle for base load. Surprisingly, with recent achievements in molten sand batteries, solar is still comfortably cheaper than nuclear per kwh. As the base load. Yes, solar as the base load is more expensive than solar on-demand, but if we’re comparing to nuclear, Solar just wins.
And solar’s cost is far less front-loaded, making it more affordable than the “cost per kwh” implies.
The point is, if we are not at the point of moving our base load to renewables today, we would be faster than we would be with nuclear and provisioning all the locations needed for secure, regulated, nuclear plants across the country/world. And the “world” part is a big one. Nuclear power material might not be fully weaponizable, but allowing some countries nuclear power plants could still create risk.