https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.67058...
To take an specific example, the Swedish nuclear weapon program was decommissioned 1968 and official ended 1972. Sweden first commercial operated nuclear plant was built 1972. Sweden has shown no military interests in nuclear weapons for as long the power plants has existed, and nuclear power was built up to 50% of Swedish energy demands by around 1985, and kept nuclear power plants operated since then. 4 nuclear plants, 12 reactors, and 0 bombs, all built between 1972 and 1985.
The ones still investing all have nuclear military ambitions and want to share the costs and industry with the civilian side.
> Which as we know today did not pan out without huge subsidies.
Feel free to look up Swedish subsidies in the energy sector. Renewables get much more each year, as does fossil fuel. Nuclear power is currently the energy source in Sweden that get taxed highest per watt produced. Considering that those plants been operating for 40-50 years non-stop delivering consistently energy without releasing greenhouse gases, is taxed more than any other energy source, the claim of "huge subsidies" is plainly false in context of Swedish nuclear plants.
No nuclear bombs, less subsidies than any other energy source, no greenhouse gases. The military did not help fund the construction for them, nor are they using any aspect of the operation to research or build weapons. Sweden signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1968, 4 years before the first commercial nuclear plant. Sweden has been an active advocate for the Non-Proliferation Treaty for 50 years now.
Countries that combine nuclear power and nuclear weapons are those who refuses to sign the treaty, like the US, UK, France, China, Russia, India, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea. Sweden is not on that list.
> After three days and 64 rounds of bidding, the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Offshore Energy Management (BOEM) on Friday concluded the nation’s highest-grossing offshore energy lease sale ever, with winning bids from six companies totaling approximately $4.37 billion.
> Not only does the amount raised in the New York Bight lease sale far exceed the more than $400 million raised during the previous offshore wind sale in 2018, it even surpasses the highest amount raised during any offshore oil and gas lease sale ever in U.S. history.
> The results are a major milestone in the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of reaching 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.
https://gcaptain.com/new-york-bight-offshore-wind-lease-auct...
And given that construction is so expensive, it ruins the economic case for building new nuclear plants (imho).
In this graph you have the marginal cost of traditional generation compared to total cost of new built renewables.
https://www.lazard.com/media/451885/grphx_lcoe-07.png
From Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy 2021.
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load#Description
It is a straight LCOE shoot out. Storage may help at the limits but is a pure loss from a system perspective.
Admittedly you need much less storage (until a tsunami comes along). But pumped storage only costs around $1/watt. (The unit of $/watt rather than $/kWh because the dam is only a minor fraction of the cost of pumped storage, and it drops quadratically with size.) Storage + renewable generation still costs less than 1/2 of nuclear.
I didn't find all that much to go on. Aside from a French Court of Audit report in 2012, this information seems to be mostly non-public? Anyway, it looks like the answer is staffing and maintenance. It seems to be common for nuclear power plants to employ 500 to 1000 people. Fessenheim in France employed 700 people at the time of its closure, plus an additional 600 to 2000 during maintenance (per Wikipedia).
Meanwhile, nuclear seems to be very technically complicated with a bunch of weird Advanced Physics-y shit that can go wrong. Like, water pipes exploding because the nuclear radiation caused water molecules to split up by radiolysis and a design flaw allowed the hydrogen to collect somewhere. Or borated water eating through steel.
And now that I type this, it occurs to me that you can't just turn off the plant for safe maintenance work -- inside the dome is always going to be irradiated and probably require hazmat suits.
And, as you alluded to, nuclear plants use the steam based thermodynamic cycle but run cold because they have to maintain water in a liquid state while absorbing heat from the reactor. The power achievable from the Carnot cycle depends on the magnitude of the temperature difference: nuclear plants run at 300° C, coal plants about 570° C, and CCGT at 1000° C up to 1500° C.
"Study of Equipment Prices in the Power Sector"
https://esmap.org/sites/default/files/esmap-files/TR122-09_G...
From table ES3 we can see that steam based plants are expensive in pure equipment costs. Which makes sense comparing a tiny gas turbine giving direct mechanical force. Then you can use the waste heat for steam generation if that makes sense in your location.
Comparing this to coal and nuclear plants huge boiler and turbine setup with about the same output. Nuclear adding even more complexity of different loops and safety requirements.
Haven't dug deeper into that report than the executive summary though.
I got one news article that said they gave nuclear $130 millions each year in 2019, but then other sources say it is a number between $19 and $52 millions. Then in 2021 I find an article that they increased subsidies for renewables by an additional $350 millions per year. In one article that the total subsidies to build new solar and wind has a total of $600 millions per year. An other said that the total of subsidies for renewables are well above $1 billion per year. I couldn't find an article that estimates Illinois fossil fuel subsidies, but one said that the US spend around $20 billions per year.
Naturally each article want to either inflate or deflate those numbers to drive a political point, so it would be nice if anyone could bring some authoritative numbers that give the exact number of what Illinois actually spend in terms of energy subsidies.