The tl;dr. It’ll cost a fortune with a small reduction of CO2.
“If those 1,000 nuclear power plants were cheap and could be built quickly, investing in nukes might still make sense. However, Lazard Financial Advisory and Asset Management[22], with no dog in the fight, has developed a rubric that estimates that the construction cost of those new nukes will be $8,200,000,000,000. Yes, that’s $8.2 TRILLION to reduce CO2 by only 6%”
Arnie Gundersen has more than 45-years of nuclear power engineering experience. He attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where he earned his Bachelor Degree cum laude while also becoming the recipient of a prestigious Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship for his Master Degree in nuclear engineering. Arnie holds a nuclear safety patent, was a licensed reactor operator, and is a former nuclear industry senior vice president. During his nuclear power industry career, Arnie also managed and coordinated projects at 70-nuclear power plants in the US.
I think we could safely say he's a whistleblower and exactly the right kind of person to be commenting on nuclear power.
“If those 1,000 nuclear power plants were cheap and could be built quickly, investing in nukes might still make sense. However, Lazard Financial Advisory and Asset Management[22], with no dog in the fight, has developed a rubric that estimates that the construction cost of those new nukes will be $8,200,000,000,000. Yes, that’s $8.2 TRILLION to reduce CO2 by only 6%”