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nilslindemann 3 days ago

Yep, the data suggests that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

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JackSlateur 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

And some of those data seems sane: the cost of solar panels reduces due to tech improvements: ok

The cost of coal increases a bit, maybe due to geopolicital issues: ok, seems legit

The cost of nuclear increases .. why ? Why the step between 2016 and 2017 ? Does tech "de-improved" ?

More insights would be interesting

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epistasis 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

There are several factors, but the single biggest reason for nuclear's ever increasing cost is due to construction productivity.

All other forms of productivity have gone up drastically. However construction productivity remains stuck at a constant. And as other areas are more productive, we need to still pay those in construction competitive wages or else they would switch to more productive jobs with higher wages. (Let's just elide the disconnect between wages rising fully with productivity increases, but they do rise some!)

Despite being far more wealthy today than centuries ago, we don't build cathedrals with super intricate stonework, because labor is so much more expensive.

I fear that nuclear is like the gothic cathedral: something that was far easier to do when labor costs were low, but at wealth increases it becomes far more difficult to make economic sense.

	▲	pfdietz a day ago \| parent [-]
		Baumol's Cost Disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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tomatocracy 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This doesn't measure the cost of providing dispatchable electricity though. If I want 1MWh of electricity at night provided by solar, it's going to cost more than solar's LCoE because I will also need to pay for a way to store and dispatch it.

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ViewTrick1002 2 days ago | parent [-]

Which again does not capture the cost of a nuclear plant being forced off the market because no one is buying its electricity during the day and they have to amortize the cost over a 40% capacity factor instead of 85% like they target.

And this can be a purely economical factor. Sure a plant may have a 90% capacity factor but if the market clears at $0 50% of the time they still need to recoup all the costs on the remaining 50%, pushing up the costs to what would be a the equivalent to a 42.5% capacity factor when running steady state.

Take Vogtle running at a 40% capacity factor, the electricty now costs 40 cents/kwh or $400 MWh. That is pure insanity. Get Vogtle down to 20%, which is very likely as we already have renewable grids at 75% renewables and it is 80 cents/kWh.

Take a look at Australia for the future of old inflexible "baseload" (which always was an economic construct coming from marginal cost) plants.

Coal plants forced to become peakers or be decommissioned.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant...

You can say that "no one would do that" but it is the end state of the market.

Electricity is fundamentally priced on the margin and if you start forcing nuclear costs on the ratepayers they will build rooftop solar and storage like crazy, leaving you without any takers for the nuclear based electricity.

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tomatocracy 2 days ago | parent [-]

Solar has this problem to a much greater extent though. If you have a market where solar is >100% of demand during the day then it will be dispatching at or below $0/MWh for almost all of its life.

But of course the marginal market is not the whole story. In reality solar largely receives effectively fixed prices in most markets (via CfDs or PPAs). Nuclear does the same and can also take capacity payments and sell into flexibility markets where those exist.

	▲	ViewTrick1002 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Which is shifting as that is getting saturated. In those markets renewables are built with storage now to deliver the electricity when needed. Nuclear power also used to get built with PPAs. Look at Hinkley Point C for a completely insanely expensive contract, that EDF is now looking to make to make a loss on. For Sizewell C they don’t even dare touch a fixed price contract and instead want the ratepayers to pay the construction cost in advance hoping it works out. That is how far nuclear power has fallen. PPAs between commercial entities of course also adapt to the market. To guarantee the nuclear price at daytime comes with a corresponding discount, because the ones buying the PPA know they can get what they need either way. Nuclear power also generally does not participate in ancillary markets. Too slow and inflexible with weighting too much on CAPEX. They can get capacity payments but as soon as the true need is defined in terms of how much reliable energy is needed for how long renewables with carbon neutral gas turbine based backups win. The only market civilian nuclear power wins is the ”I want to have a workforce and industry capable of building nuclear weapons and naval reactors”. Essentially a military jobs program. That may be worthwhile, but let stop pretending nuclear power actually gives a modern grid anything it need at the current costs.