The last reactors France has built were also the first of their kind built in the country. The reactors built during the Messmer plan were mostly of 4 distinct types built repeatedly. The main to away from analysis of nuclear plant cost history is that plants become cheaper when the knowledge from previous builds is taken to subsequent builds. Problems that are encountered in earlier builds are avoided, lowering cost.

Plants built during the nuclear boom in the 1960s and early 70s often had inflation -adjusted costs of 1-2 billion USD per GW of capacity. And that's with no intermittency and a capacity factor of over 90%.