Re:First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has b...
by kragen on Thursday November 09, 2023 @01:32AM
(#38201834)
1.5 cents per kilowatt hour even
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/05/28/record-low-solar-ppas...
Your solar numbers are wildly inflated because that’s per watt not per watt hour. Over 2/3 of nuclear power plants costs occur after you build the things. It would be comparable if 22B was the total cost and if nuclear didn’t need ~1,000 full time employees, fuel, decommissioning etc. Those costs delay how quickly you can pay back loans which then drives up how much interest nuclear pays over the plants lifetime.
Companies have signed solar power purchase contracts at 2c/kWh. Adding solar redundancy and batteries for 24/7 power is actually more flexible and cheaper than nuclear because you can cheaply follow the demand curve. Meanwhile nuclear power plants need to go offline for multiple weeks every ~2 years and really want to sit at 100% the rest of the time.
PS: Even just looking at construction costs is misleading because solar starts producing power so much sooner. You’re paying interest from day 1 of construction not day 1 of operations. So if you take 6 years to build that’s 5 years of interest on the first years construction costs without any revenue. Meanwhile solar’s been producing power for ~5 years and paying down debt.