It just took another 10 Megawatts to make this news hugely endearing to an entire generation :)
If* a small chunk of plutonium can output 1.21GW, then $4.7B in spending seems extremely high, like multiple orders of magnitude high.
If that's the true cost of green electricity then I understand why conservatives have been bullish on the topic.
Though I'd rather use green alternatives and reduce power consumption overall, personally.
* Movie magic could be lying to us, I'm just running with the movie's idea.
EDIT: from cursory checking it seems like plutonium can output 8 gigawatts, holy shit.
EDIT2: Downvoted for asking a question. :\ is it because I said conservatives may have had a point? I can be wrong, don't downvote to disagree.
How many tens of billions of dollars (of mostly taxpayer money) does it cost to build, run, and maintain a nuclear power plant?
"plutonium outputs 8 gigawatts" is meaningless without an amount, and without specifying if it's electrical or thermal output.
Fun fact: the lifetime electrical energy output of the Neckarwestheim plant is approximately 30 kg by relativistic equivalence.
The original design claim was apparently £24/MWh. So the agreed subsidy price was £92.50/MWh.
The strike price is high, and it is an implicit subsidy. But the construction cost is covered by the constructor. So u cant complain about both of them.
The 1.2GW of renewable runs at ~30% capacity. Nuclear is generally at 90%. So your 3.2GW nuclear is equivalent to 9.6GW renewable !!
Nuclear is too expensive, true, but you are paying for dispatch-ability. Do you want a 50% discount on electricity which only runs 70%/80%/90% of the time?
The 24/mwh was just a presentation slide. Yes, the UK got a shitty deal. But when negotiation started 10 years ago off-shore wind as 500% more expensive. And on-shore wind was banned by politicians.
I love the green stuff. It is cheaper. More scalable. It will win. But we need every nuclear reactor we can get.
/end runt
EDIT: The UK is also x10 more densely populated than the US. Metros such as London or Tokyo are an extra challenge for low-density renewables.
If you state this fallacy you should at least tell everyone the unique geological issues HPC is facing.
What unique geological issues?
South Korea's nuclear plants are also much cheaper, for the same reason.
A critical mass of plutonium will output just any imaginable amount of power your powerplant can handle.
Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption, you would need ten of those each day to cover the world’s energy needs (≈ double that to convert heat into motion, move it to users (who won’t want to live near the energy production facility, etc)
Capacitors are reactive components and don't consume power.