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A comment on SoftBank Group and Saudi Arabia plan to spend $200B building a solar power plant. Parent comment

Re:SoftBank Group and Saudi Arabia plan to spend $200B build... by Reason077 on Thursday March 29, 2018 @06:51AM (#16705983)
"So best case, 200 GW will only produce 525 TWh annually. This is equivalent to a 66 GW nuclear plant (nuclear has a 90% capacity factor)."

Sure. But these days, you'd be hard pressed to build 66 GW of nuclear for $200 billion. It's costing about US$30 billion for one 3.2GW nuclear plant currently under construction in the UK (Hinkley Point C). And it's probably a lot more than that by the time you account for eventual decommissioning costs and long term waste storage.

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Re:SoftBank Group and Saudi Arabia plan to spend $200B build... by adventured on Thursday March 29, 2018 @07:31AM (#16706123)
China can still build 66GW for $200 billion in nuclear. They're the only large economy still aggressively pursuing nuclear over the next decade.

They have 19 reactors under construction right now that will add 21GW +/-, and 50-60GW of additional nuclear energy planned for the very near-term. Their goal is to add roughly 100GW+ of new nuclear energy output in the next 12 years.

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