Affordable by looking at any other measure than the balance sheet, maybe.

Nuclear plants that are on time and on budget are exceptions, not the rule.

Affordable by looking at the decimation of the plantet. It comes at a fraction of the cost (destruction of human civilization and 80% plus of the world's animal population)

The balance sheet doesn't include externalized costs, last I checked.

I read an excellent article written in Physics Today by a nuclear physicist once. For the life of me I have never been able to find it again. But he describes this in detail.

Basically, in his description this is entirely due to the environmental movement. Any time a nuclear plant gets planned the green groups move in a mountain of lawyers and lock down the process for years and years. The costs this adds to the projects are staggering and it is solely because of this that nuclear power can't be built in the US. In Europe, people have no problem building nuclear cheaply and on time.

> In Europe, people have no problem building nuclear cheaply and on time.

Not true, unfortunately. The same political dynamics that made nuclear expensive in the U.S. eventually made it expensive in Japan, France and, mostly recently South Korea. None of those countries, which were global leaders during their respective nuclear industry booms, can build nuclear nearly as cheaply as they used to; certainly not domestically, and not even internationally as the absence of continuous construction meant loss of skilled labor and project management expertise. See, e.g., https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-u... (Google other more recent articles that better detail the current state for South Korea.)

> In Europe, people have no problem building nuclear cheaply and on time

Very much no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...

"The main contractor, Areva, is building the unit for a fixed price of €3 billion, so in principle, any construction costs above that price fall on Areva." [...] "The total cost of the project, therefore, is estimated to be €11 billion."

Since it's hard for me to track the scandals surrounding Areva and the different ownership structures of it, involving EDF, Framatome, TVO and who-knows-what-else, take this with a grain of salt, but I think the cost overruns may ultimately have to be paid by French tax payers?

"The construction of the unit began in 2005. The start of commercial operation was planned for 2010,[19] but has been pushed back several times.[20] As of August 2020, the estimate for start of regular production is June 2022.[21]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

"EDF estimated the cost at €3.3 billion[4] and stated it would start commercial operations in 2012, after construction lasting 54 months.[5] The latest cost estimate (July 2020) is at €19.1 billion, with commissioning planned tentatively at the end of 2022.[6][2]"

And there were also problems with the EPR reactor containment vessel EDF/Areva/Framatome delivered to China.

This is all from the foremost "experts" at fission plant production in France.

To my knowledge, only China has successfully (that we know) built new reactors lately.

China: overbudget and overdelay. Then a reactor leaked and was shutdown for maintenance.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/31/asia/taishan-nuclear-plan...

I'm pretty sure I know why you can't find it anymore...this is ridiculous.

Don’t worry, they did their own research.

Astroturfing by fossil fuel companies.

I'll bet the physicist was also an ex-environmentalist. I've seen a few nuclear/carbon PR pieces dressed up this way.

I imagine there are probably ways to make nuclear power cheaper than it is without sacrificing safety, but can it compete purely on cost with solar and wind, or even coal and natural gas?

If you have a plan to fix the regulatory environment in a way that makes it cheaper than fossil fuels (ignoring long term hidden costs of fossil fuel use), then by all means advocate for that. I just think that we shouldn't assume that the technical, economic, and political hurdles will be overcome. Wind and solar are the cheapest option we have right now, so I think that's what we should plan to use. If another better option becomes available we can use it too. I just don't think we should put our eggs in the "nuclear will save us" basket. Maybe it could, but maybe it won't and we need a plan B.

From what I've read, most cost and time overruns from nuclear are due to lots of design revisions during construction to make site-specific adaptations that need to be intensively reviewed, approved, revised, over and over again. Small modular reactors are designed to address this since they're preassembled at the factory and small enough that you can easily just move the reactor to adjust for any site adaptations. Unfortunately still years away from approval.

Nuclear can compete purely on cost with coal. Which is fundamentally the problem. A decade ago nuclear was still legitimately the cheapest source of power but the economics have totally changed and now coal is not profitable and nuclear is likely on the way out.

how are you getting that coal is not profitable? Demand for coal is at an all time high. Check out coal prices.

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/coal

We are also producing more coal than ever before (modulo the dip during covid lockdowns), and coal use is projected to increase:

"Global coal production is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.3% between 2021 and 2025 to reach 8.8 billion t in 2025. While thermal coal production is expected to have a relatively marginal 2% CAGR to reach 7549.6 million t, metallurgical coal is forecast to register stronger growth of 4.2% per year, to reach 1216.9 million t in 2025."[1]

[1]https://www.world-energy.org/article/17139.html

By that chart it looks like mining coal is quite profitable. On the other hand, if you're generating electricity from coal, high coal prices make generating electricity from coal more expensive, and thus less competitive with nuclear or renewables.

The price represents the intersection of supply and demand. Since supply of coal is steady, the higher price is coming from an increase in demand.

Of course coal purchasers would prefer a lower price, but the fact that the price is high is proof that there is great demand for coal. This does not mean that there is not demand for renewables, either. Both the usage of renewables and the usage of coal is predicted to increase.

See https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49976

Increases in coal-fired generation in Other non-OECD Asia—which includes Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand, among other countries—will account for over 75% of our projected increase in global coal-fired generation from 2030 to 2050. For Other non-OECD Asia, we project that renewable energy sources will account for about 60% of the generation increase over the projection period, primarily from wind and solar. Coal-fired generation will account for nearly all of the remaining growth.

It is the solution to the climate change problem caused by coal and natural gas. Competing with their price should not be in the equation. Your second paragraph seems hostile, no, I don't have a plan and won't submit one.

Sadly competing with coal and natural gas on cost is relevant. I think we should close those plants as soon as possible even if it means replacing them with a more expensive option, but sometimes it's hard to get political traction on things that cost more. Solar and wind tends to be cheaper than fossil fuels, anyways, though that might not be true if you have to factor in batteries. (Whether that's an issue is geography-dependent: I'm in Oregon, and we get a lot of our power from hydroelectric, which means we can use bodies of water essentially as capacitors to buffer out the irregularities in wind and solar. The East coast doesn't really have that option.)

I don't mean to be hostile, I'm just saying that as far as I understand it, nuclear is expensive which means that people who are looking to get the most power for the least cost probably are going to go with wind and solar. If we can somehow make nuclear cost competitive then that's great but I don't know what's needed for that to happen and in the mean time I think the sensible thing is to treat nuclear as something that might work, but we aren't counting on it.