Solar and wind with natural gas backup are cheaper than conventional nuclear.
For solar and wind to run civilization without fossil backup, you need a lot of extra infrastructure. A couple years ago, one study looked at what it would take to run a certain section of the U.S. electric grid on 99% wind/solar. They had a computer try 10,000 combinations and picked the cheapest, which was to overproduce energy by a factor of three, and add a little storage. That's not just overcapacity, it's actually producing that much extra energy to make sure you always have enough to meet demand.
On the nuclear side, molten salt reactors and factory-produced modular reactors have the potential to reduce costs quite a bit, if we can get the regulators up to speed.
> On the nuclear side, molten salt reactors and factory-produced modular reactors have the potential to reduce costs quite a bit, if we can get the regulators up to speed.
MSRs, even module, require at least a decade of approval through the NRC. You won't see a new reactor online, modular or not, for at least 15-20 years, by which point solar, wind, and utility scale battery storage will have slaughtered nuclear.
How do you compete against a tech that can be deployed in weeks or months? And that has no licensing time? Nor requires $1-2 billion just to start.
Hence my comment about fixing our regulatory process. Canada for example is much more streamlined, which is why Terrestrial Energy is starting out there.
For solar and wind to run civilization without fossil backup, you need a lot of extra infrastructure. A couple years ago, one study looked at what it would take to run a certain section of the U.S. electric grid on 99% wind/solar. They had a computer try 10,000 combinations and picked the cheapest, which was to overproduce energy by a factor of three, and add a little storage. That's not just overcapacity, it's actually producing that much extra energy to make sure you always have enough to meet demand.
On the nuclear side, molten salt reactors and factory-produced modular reactors have the potential to reduce costs quite a bit, if we can get the regulators up to speed.