Wind advantages:
* Faster to build
* Electricity production can begin before entire project is finished
* Lower cost per MWh generated
* Much less expensive worst-case-scenario failure mode
* No cooling water required
Disadvantages:
* No guaranteed output without storage add-ons
* Much lower areal density of annual generation (e.g. "how much energy can you generate yearly on a 10 km^2 parcel of land?")
Other differences:
* A nuclear reactor may operate 40-60 years before replacement; a wind turbine is more like 20-25 years
* Over its full life cycle, a wind farm demands less human labor per MWh generated
I put nuclear's long life under "other" rather than "advantages" because the other side of "long life" is "long term commitment." I also put the lower labor demands of wind under "other" because many people (not me, but many) consider "providing good jobs" as more of a benefit than a burden when they evaluate power sources.
On balance, I think that wind has the advantage now and for at least the next decade or so. Nuclear could become more attractive again once there's a high penetration of intermittent renewables on the grid that make guaranteed-output sources relatively more valuable. The high areal density of nuclear power vs. wind is much more of a theoretical than a real advantage in a country like the USA, which has low population density by global standards and a lot of windy area. The more interesting contest will be between wind and PV; the latter has historically cost more nameplate watt, but its costs have been falling faster. PV also has lower day-to-day variability even though its annual capacity factor is typically lower.
What's really, really expensive is building the plant in such a manner that it is both secure and maintainable.
The problem with securing it is that a critical event is so damn expensive (cf. Fukushima) that you need to secure it against all imaginable problems - and as you can imagine, that list is growing over time. And still, you can't buy insurance for a plant. So the government carries the bulk of the risk.
It's not that hard if you avoid greedy power plant owners. TEPCO was repeatedly warned many years ago that they had to build a barrier against tsunamis, and all other plants of the area followed the advice.
Less space: that's true. But you still need a fair bit of space to the nearest city. :)
(But that's an easy target to beat.)
And even assuming those accidents are unavoidable, coal still produces more health problems and deaths.
(I'm also not sure why so many people are playing the nuclear/coal dichotomy when we got into this discussion from wind power and the default backup for renewables is now CCGT?)
Almost in every industry i can think of there are countless examples of how profit is traded for safety. Why should this be any different?
Modern designs for things that can fail dangerously incorporate features that cause the system to go down a branch that ends in a safe failure mode high up the tree rather than allowing the possibility of a less safe failure many more steps down the tree.
It's like how Uhaul overbuilds the living crap out of it's trailers then puts relatively (compared to the rest of the system) light duty tires on them. Better to have idiots blow out tires than other less safe failure modes.
Edit: a projected cost breakdown for Hinkley Point C! https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Hinkley-Po... (figure 2)
So fuel is not inconsiderable; 6.2bn "fuel costs", 1.8 "fuel management", 2.6 "fuel disposal". From a total of £54.8 bn.
Add 10-50% to actual construction and decommissioning costs for overruns.
They are not competitive, and haven't been for decades if I'm not mistaken.
It's not impossible that a new design could be cheaper, but figuring in both development, test, and time for industrialization, we're probably at least 20 years from that. Meanwhile, both PV and wind are falling in price from industrialization.
That said I am very pro Wind. The American Midwest is a goldmine for that and I'm very excited to see it increase over the next five but I hope they keep the tax credit, wind growth will significantly fall without it
The big problems are mostly competency. A nuclear plant requires huge parts from tons of companies all over the planet. People are always messing it up. The biggest issue is that this huge coordination problem makes everything take way longer, which means almost everyone involved with the plant is sitting around getting paid to do nothing. That's incredibly expensive when the project stretches over a decade.
Not true. One example is France - they generate over 70% of their power through nuclear:
>...France enjoys one of the lowest electricity prices in Europe; at 14.72 euro cents per kWh, the average cost of electricity in France is 26.5% cheaper than the EU average (20.02 euro cents per kWh).
https://en.selectra.info/energy-france/guides/electricity-co...
Take Flamanville: it's basically the posterchild for expensive nuclear. It's French and huge so it should theoretically be one of the most affordable reactors in the world; the French are nuclear experts. Construction began in 1979 and has was planned to end in 1985.
Instead, it's been delayed until 2019 and the budget has inflated from 3.3 billion euro to 10.5 billion. In USD that's an overnight cost of $4,522 USD/kW not counting financing, and a 40 year construction period. You'd have to be insane to invest in that, and it's one of the cheapest nuclear projects. The overnight cost of advanced nuclear in the US is $6,000/kW[1].
For comparison, the overnight cost of natural gas is $700/kW and wind is $1900/kW (with capacity factor >30%). Nuclear can't compete on price even before the cost of fuel, security and staff are factored in.
[1]: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost...
Do you have any evidence that they subsidized nuclear as much as wind/solar have been subsidized in other countries?
Rather than focussing on the cost of the plant, it is more accurate to look at the levelized cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
Certainly not "fantastically expensive in every country".
>...Construction began in 1979 and has was planned to end in 1985. Instead, it's been delayed until 2019 ... and a 40 year construction period ...
That seems to be misrepresenting the situation quite a bit. The first 2 reactors came on line in 1986 and 1987 and have produced many terra watt hours of power since then. The third reactor began construction in December 2007 and is a new design which has had problems and cost overruns.
>...For comparison, the overnight cost of natural gas is $700/kW
Unfortunately, the CO2 emissions and methane releases from drilling/processing natural gas might make natural gas as bad for climate change as burning coal. Unfortunately without a major advance in grid storage, there will likely be major increases in the use of natural gas.
Given the political environment in the US, there will likely be little role for nuclear power for at least the next few decades. Instead it will likely be China which builds/deploys nuclear power.
So how does it compare to nuclear energy?