They're not the only ones:
> the 732-mile TransWest Express high voltage transmission line filed its first permit application in 2007, but did not receive all of the approvals until 2020. The Environmental Impact Statement alone took eight years to complete.
Local landowners tend to object to these projects. On average, they take over a decade to complete and that includes much shorter lines, which are quicker. Building underground can help with political resistance but multiplies cost by 5X to 10X.
As of 2020, over 750 GW of proposed generation, most of it wind and solar, were waiting for transmission to be built.
https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/challenges-decarbon...
China builds transmission a lot faster, and we might be able to speed things up with the SITE Act, which gives the federal government authority to override local and state resistance: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/america-...
But if our solution set can include unpopular new laws to override NIMBYism, then we can make nuclear a lot faster and cheaper, too.
Nuclear also takes 4-6 years to build but can take decades to get permission to start.
So, the main role of interconnect is to deliver power that is cheaper than replenishing your storage locally, or to use replenishing your storage faster than you could with local generation or by ship.
Far-northern climates will need to keep stockpiles of anhydrous ammonia or hydrogen to burn in gas turbine generators when transmission lines fail, probably synthesized using equatorial solar and shipped, or synthesized using transmission-line delivered hydro power. Each place will use the cheapest power available in each moment.
The LCOE for grid storage of power (necessary addition to solar) is $160/MWh.
Double solar with grid storage is as much as $300/MWh at the utility scale using globalized averages reported to NEA, BNEF, Lazard, IRENA 2018-2020. Obviously some countries will be a lot more or less on costs depending on their circumstances and location.
Interconnect isn't enough, all of the US is in darkness for several hours a day. (And Texas will never connect). You require storage, and I still question if 2X is enough to produce enough power during a 10 year minimum without firing up extensive hydrocarbon peaker plants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_energy#/medi...
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Your $50MWh also does not include storage LCOE, and not including secondary costs for solar when Nuclear has no secondary costs is considered "a trick" to lie about solar costs.
Include the costs of gigawatts of Elon's lithium ion batteries, and include the cost of having to 2X-4X solar compared to Nuclear to account for variable solar output due to days and seasons, as I said, and your $50MWh becomes around $300MWh
Your also trying to cherry pick numbers the Wikipedia article also lists “$164/MWh” for nuclear. I found the table you got those numbers from which included multiple estimates from 2018 that used data from 2015 and double counting very optimistic nuclear estimates. Frankly utility solar is already being installed at sub 2c/kWh in the US. 68$/MWh would be 6.8c/kWh which shows how far off your umbers are.
Anyway, I would be happy to see the power plant actually run that cheaply but your looking at very optimistic estimates for something that isn’t even online yet and is getting some serious subsides.
Having said that if you’re data is from “Source: IEA/NEA, 2015.” https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2018/7441-full-costs-2018-.... I can understand why you picked those numbers.
So many people talking about energy seem to be stuck in an obsolete past.
Subsides could make up the difference for nuclear as could vastly increased nighttime prices.
PS: It’s only when your looking at islands like say Hawaii where you want that kind of massive overproduction. Across larger areas you never see 100% production from everywhere at the same time, but you also don’t see minimum production from everywhere at the same time.