this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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One of the great sins of nuclear energy programs implemented during the 50s, 60s, and 70s was that it was too cost effective. Very difficult to turn a profit on electricity when you're practically giving it away. Nuclear energy functions great as a kind-of loss-leader, a spur to your economy in the form of ultra-low-cost utilities that can incentivize high-energy consumption activities (like steel manufacturing and bulk shipping and commercial grade city-wide climate control). But its miserable as a profit center, because you can't easily regulate the rate of power generation to gouge the market during periods of relatively high demand. Nuclear has enormous up-front costs and a long payoff window. It can take over a decade to break even on operation, assuming you're operating at market rates.
By contrast, natural gas generators are perfect for profit-maximzing. Turning the electric generation on or off is not much more difficult than operating a gas stove. You can form a cartel with your friends, then wait for electric price-demand to peak, and command thousands of dollars a MWh to fill the sudden acute need for electricity. Natural gas plants can pay for themselves in a matter of months, under ideal conditions.
So I wouldn't say the problem is that we don't know their cost-efficiency. I'd say the problem is that we do know. And for consumer electricity, nuclear doesn't make investment sense. But for internally consumed electricity on the scale of industrial data centers, it is exactly what a profit-motivated power consumer wants.
Nuclear plants cost a lot to produce but electricity from a nuclear plant sells for the same as electricity from anything else. Since many other options are cheaper to produce and maintain, nuclear is less cost efficient, not highly cost efficient as you claim. That's why it's not successful.
The high production capacity drives down the market rate by flooding the retail market
It costs more to produce that electricy with nuclear than it does to produce it with other technology. Making lots of cost inefficient electricity is still making cost inefficient electricity.
Electricity production costs of new power plants in €/MWh per the 2015 column are consistently some of the lowest across sources, with Hydro being the only serious competition.
The other table has newer studies than 2015, where nuclear is not cheaper, but you've only pointed out the column where they found it was cheaper 10 years ago. Wind and solar have gotten cheaper to produce, and nuclear more expensive. It is not cost efficient compared to other modern options.
The only one that's in the ballpark is the most recent stats on Photovoltaics. And we've had a decade to improve breeder reactors and molten salt reactors since then.
Nuclear has not gotten more expensive.
According to the article you have provided, it has... The first figure under Global Studies shows nuclear prices have increased, and the general trends of the various studies in the two tables show an increase over time.