This is a political problem which has nothing to do to with technology or costs themselves.
Most infrastructures are aging and in a bad state in France, and the skills and knowledge to build or replace it has long been lost.
Add on top of this politically strong ecologist-extremists who decided that nuclear is evil and must be gone, and who will do everything to sabotage any project.
To take a counter example, nuclear is doing fine and growing in many countries, including China.
No, nowhere in the world is nuclear power economically competitive. Construction costs are about 3x-4x the cost per kW compared to solar or wind. [0 page 11][1]
> nuclear is doing fine and growing in many countries, including China.
No, net nuclear plants in Asia are not increasing. [0 page 4]
[0] https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.69857...
I only said that the problems in France are mostly due to politics, and so that we cannot use this specific example as an argument. This does not imply any affirmation from me about the absolute costs.
> No, net nuclear plants in Asia are not increasing.
Your link (0) page 4 only shows that the construction rate is not especially increasing lately.
Page 5 of your document (0) shows that almost all reactors < 25 years old are in Asia, which contradicts your affirmation. And it also shows that the number of reactors < 5~10 years old is bigger than the ones of about 10~25 years old, which implies a growth.
I don't have the knowledge or patience to read this further, but it is a very interesting read anyway, thanks.
The problems in France are because they screwed the pooch on building the latest reactor design. This wasn't politics, it was failure to execute.
I just stated the opposite, are you calling me a liar? And then you mock me for crediting your argument, does that make you feel good? Are we like fighting or something?
Not cool.
I mean, when I first read tinco's comment, I thought what you thought. But either reading is plausible.
If you're going to call someone a liar, maybe just don't reply.
Nuclear is in a bad state in France. Their recent attempts to build new reactors have gone massively over budget. Existing reactors are aging and it looks like they cannot replace them.
Fission has some disadvantages over fusion, but those disadvantages won't make fusion cheaper than fission (the costs of fuel and waste disposal for fission are minor compared to other costs.) Fusion is inherently much lower in power density than fission, which will make the nuclear island much more expensive to build. It will require a minor miracle for fusion to be competitive with fission, never mind the cheaper sources of energy that are beating fission.
> Tokamak Energy is building its third iteration in 12 years,
They haven't built a fusion reactor. They have built experiments that are smaller and less complex that what a fusion power plant would have to be. Small fission reactors iterated well too; they weren't commercial power plants.
The chance that we have thousands of fusion reactors all over the world in the next 20 years is indistinguishable from zero.