A study recently found that a nuclear powered grid to be vastly more expensive than a renewable grid when looking at total system cost.
Nuclear power needs to come down by 85% in cost to be equal to the renewable system.
Every dollar invested in nuclear today prolongs our reliance on fossil fuels. We get enormously more value of the money simply by building renewables.
> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources. However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour. For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.
Which is confirmed by Sweden continuing its renewable buildout with both the cheapest electricity prices in Europe and no subsidies on the books for new renewable production.
> For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved
Cost assumptions in table 2
Offshore wind 1.9M EUR/MW, 1.67% O&M, 30 year life at 0.51 capacity factor
Onshore wind 1.03M EUR/MW, 2.51% O&M, 30 year life at 0.37 capacity factor
Solar PV 0.6M EUR/MW, 1.50% O&M, 40 year life at 0.14 capacity factor
So they are claiming nuclear (which has a > 0.9 capacity factor in Finland, and 60 year life) needs to have an investment cost between onshore and offshore wind to make sense.
Due to energy system constraints, there might be reasons for down regulating the nuclear power stations, thus as an output the capacity factor might be lower than 90%, but never higher. The study allows for nuclear power to be down regulated to 25% of the maximum load in for instance hours with high wind and solar production.
So the authors decided that the non-dispatchable wind/solar has market priority over nuclear. Hence it is important to pack out the high nuclear scenario with renewables. Also note how the all renewables scenario adds biogas (presumably from all the pig slurry) to firm up demand along with 6GW of inter-connectors to friendly neighbours.
Edit :- Closer analysis of the high nuclear with district heating scenario (figure 4, in the supplementary material) reveals a total electrical demand of just under 10,000MW (unflexible + heating + transport). Note that the authors have chosen to represent nuclear as a continuous 6,686MW of power (rather than the nameplate capacity of 7,400MW).
> Which is confirmed by Sweden continuing its renewable buildout with both the cheapest electricity prices in Europe and no subsidies on the books for new renewable production.
The Swedish government raised its subsidy for solar cell installations from 15% to 20% in January 2023. ... The income tax reduction for households and businesses that micro-produce renewable energy was introduced in 2015
Nuclear power needs to come down by 85% in cost to be equal to the renewable system.
Every dollar invested in nuclear today prolongs our reliance on fossil fuels. We get enormously more value of the money simply by building renewables.
> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources. However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour. For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...
Which is confirmed by Sweden continuing its renewable buildout with both the cheapest electricity prices in Europe and no subsidies on the books for new renewable production.