With today's battery prices, I would expect nuclear to be cheaper if x is high enough.
Maybe in 10 years, batteries will be cheap enough for renewables to be competitive without relying on fossil fuels or hydro plants during cloudy days with no wind.
> Hard to estimate that, when putting $10^x into nuclear for serious R&D may yield surprising results.
It might however that money could spend making solar panel factories for enxt gen solar cells which yields real results.
> Also, why not benchmark $10^x in nuclear vs. $10^x in coal or fossil fuels?
You can do that comparison, however since coal is not competitive in that metric you will not learn anything about how society should allocate money. We are proposing an intervention in the economy. We should try to only do the most efficient allocations.
So a 10^x investment now in atomic power will continue to do that for 10 years until that has an effect. (You will not develop a cheap new reactor type and build it out at scale with less then 10 years)
A 10^x investment in solar & storage now will curb the need for 10^x being spend on fossile stuff over the next 10 years.
True. Tesla just installed a huge solar farm and battery pack near Las Vegas. It will be interesting to see the grid of the future. I think it would be a shame if mankind never harnessed the power of the atom though.
