I'm interested in seeing data backing this. It is taking real wind turbines/PV panels lifetime and real production? Nuclear reactors have a lifetime of 60 years, wind turbines/PV panels less than that.
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Some GenIV reactor designs also should be helping with that.
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
They also have a separate analysis for the cost of energy storage by various means, which is also awesome.
Given the long lifetime of nuclear plants, the huge upfront costs for a single project, and the rapidly plunging costs for renewables and storage, nuclear seems like a risky financial proposition, personally, and I think most utilities and investors appear to agree. I think that by 2030, PV solar and storage will be cheaper than nuclear, as well as being far more dispatchable and decentralized.
I wish we had built a lot more back in the 80s, as that would have cut off so much of our emissions over the past 30 years.
Gen IV reactors certainly have some better traits compared with conventional nuclear power, however they might not be good enough, are far off and lots of problems might only be detected when you actually put them into use (like it happened with the THTR-300).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_... [2]: https://www.solarwirtschaft.de/fileadmin/media/pdf/Verguetun...
Edit: does it also take into account the massive investments into grid storage and smart grid upgrades that are going to be needed for solar/wind-based grids to handle the volatility?
Also check out capacity factors for different types of power plants. Nuclear and geothermal plants are operated as base load plants and have among the highest capacity factors. Solar photovoltaic is basically just sitting around, yet it's still useful as a distributed grid-interactive power source (on your roof for example).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03...