France's nuclear provider has incredibly high debts, which is only possibly because they are state backed. So no, nuclear energy does not work economically.
France's latest nuclear reactor, Flamanville 3, was finally connected to the grid in December 2024 after 17 years (!!) of construction beset by problems, delays, and massive cost overruns.
Nuclear can be part of the solution, but renewables are much cheaper and faster to build. So for every $/€ spent, you are achieving more CO2 reduction, much more quickly, by building renewables compared to building new nuclear.
The "problems, delays, overruns" is basically euphemism for political sabotaging. I can't feel so sympathetic to those in denial of that.
It's just hot rocks boiling in a pressure cooker. 1940s technology. Not 1940s as in Portal timeline. Making assumptions that there must be complicated technical challenges that cannot be overcome or could delay construction as long as 17 years to mitigate is just stupid.
The US has long sabotaged, sometimes figuratively and sometimes literally, nuclear development efforts of everyone but itself. Especially fuel recycling which scalably yield nuclear warhead materials. One could say call it a noble act, but the resultant "problems, delays, overruns" aren't indicative of true potential of the technology.
See where kragen had to find negative examples from, those are "enemy" states of the US. How convenient is that.
Just an estimate of the reactor cost based on the overall boat cost. If you have a better estimate feel free to share.
Moreover, it turns out that years-long construction is also the norm for naval nuclear power; for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borei-class_submarine says:
> The launch of the first submarine of the class, Yury Dolgorukiy (Юрий Долгорукий), was scheduled for 2002 but was delayed because of budget constraints. The vessel was eventually rolled out of its construction hall on 15 April 2007 in a ceremony attended by many senior military and industrial personnel.[11] Yuriy Dolgorukiy was the first Russian strategic missile submarine to be launched in seventeen years since the end of the Cold War. The planned contingent of eight strategic submarines was expected to be commissioned within the next decade, with five Project 955 planned for purchase through 2015.[12]
> Yuriy Dolgorukiy was not put into the water until February 2008. On 21 November 2008 the reactor on Yuriy Dolgorukiy was activated[13] and on 19 June 2009, the submarine began its sea trials in the White Sea.[14] By July 2009, it had yet to be armed with Bulava missiles and was therefore not fully operational, although it had been ready for sea trials on 24 October 2008.[15]
> On 28 September 2010 Yuriy Dolgorukiy completed company sea trials.
And on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_094_submarine:
> A Type 094 was photographed by commercial satellites in late 2006 at the Xiaopingdao Submarine Base.[9] The first commissioned in 2007[1] and six were in commission in 2020.[5] They began nuclear deterrence patrols in December 2015.[10]
Admittedly, that's only 9 years rather than 17 years.
So, in fact, there are complicated technical challenges that create many-year-long delays. And they are not due to "political sabotaging". In cases like nuclear warfare where there is no alternative to nuclear power, it can clearly be made to work, but so far nobody has figured out how to make it economically competitive with other energy sources in situations where they are viable. That's a technical challenge nobody has been able to overcome yet.
If you are talking about submarines, the US Navy hasn't had diesel submarines since 1990.
And not all Navy surface ships are nuclear or turbine powered. Many classes of US Navy surface ships are diesel-powered, including some of the newest ones. Ships with gas turbine engines typically feature diesel powerplants also.
Nuclear energy is stable but generally quite costly per kWh compared to renewable energy.
Nuclear energy and renewables in combination balances out disadvantages. Nuclear energy reduces the need for energy storage solutions in renewables by providing a base load, while renewables would enable cost-efficiency in even quite energy demanding uses (e.g. carbon capture, generating methane etc.).
You can buy 10x as much solar+battery as nuclear these days. Nuclear is simply too complex and dangerous to compete.
You are talking about a statistical value not a deterministic one.
So it is solar+battery which is sufficient for n% of typical years.
1. Building better/more transmission lines interconnecting carbon-intense grids with low-carbon ones. This is cheaper than ramping up nuclear, and will needed regardless of the technology.
2. Batteries are becoming more and more efficient. One can even mine with electric excavators.
3. Wind and solar not necessarily need to be connected to the grid initially. Look at ERCOT. This incentivizes demanding moving where electricity is generated, specially in small countries. Look at the UK.
You still do not solve the issues with nuclear waste (10k year problem) and its high prices (LCOE). Also, you cannot build nuclear everywhere, specially in the emerging world. We need a mix of solutions, there is no silver bullet in this situation.
A Megapack 2XL can output ~2MW and has a capacity of ~4MWh for $1.39M.
A GE BWRX-300 is rated for 300MW and an 18-24 month refueling cycle and allegedly costs ~$1B.
You can build 150x Megapacks for $208M to match that 300MW output, but there is only enough energy stored to provide that output for two hours. If you want to provide 12 hours capacity (to run through the night), you need 900 units at a cost of $1.25B. That’s just for the storage though, you still need the source of electricity to charge the packs, overprovisioned to deal with the capacity factor issues that solar and wind have.
Will the nuclear plant go over budget? Almost certainly. Will it then provide a long-term baseline source of power? Also yes.
I’m pro-renewables and pro-storage, but there’s a mix needed here. Even with storage tech, there needs to be something else that can just sit there and run and produce reliable and controllable power output long-term.
It is so pathetic that Standford professor spreads this kind of crap. No, wind and solar will not save us, as on majority of our planet we have long period of time without wind and solar.
Unpredictability of solar/wind energy forces to use something to balance the grid. Which, typically, has to be gas, as only gas power station has sufficiently fast start/stop cycle (about 1h in case of modern installation, lignite power plant has several hours cold start, coal power plant even more).
And gas means CO2 emission, even though in some countries, which were buying gas from Russia through Nord Stream, it was considered to be "ecological", similarly like "biomass", that is burning wood and corn (and as we all know burning wood does not emit CO2, right?).
In addition, this is economical idiocy. When there is too much wind/sun, you need to pay producers to stop producing, not to overload the grid. When there is no wind/sun you need to buy energy paying overpriced spot prices. That's why "renewable energy champion" - United Kingdom has the most expensive energy on the planet.
We have one ecological, 100% CO2 emission free, source of energy - nuclear energy (check France if you don't believe it works).
But how Standford professor might promote nuclear power plants when for long, long years all major universities and organizations, with Greenpeace on the head, were fighting nuclear energy, leading to the shitty situation we have now.
10 years ago anyone who wanted to work on nuclear energy research were treated like Holocaust denier, so there was almost no development of new tech in that area.
And now exactly the same people, who were telling us how bad is nuclear energy, are telling us to use wind/solar. What can go wrong...