This is even formalized in international agreements. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Civil_Lia...)
This means that any and all estimates of prices per MWh are, and can never be anything but, fictional. Including this one.
That's true for any kind of power and, more generally, for any kind of human activity.
You don't pay the real cost when you wear a pfc coat. You don't pay the real cost for the plastic-wrapped takeout you buy. You don't pay the real cost for the co2-emitting taxi you hail. You don't pay the real cost for the industrial agriculture you rely on. You don't pay the real cost for the water you drink.
Accounting is not meant to measure "real costs, it's just a short-term measure of human activity.
Once your solar panel reaches its end of life, who will collect it for recycling? How efficient is the recycling? How much power does that recycling cost, and how is it produced? Are there parts that are deemed uneconomical to reprocess into new solar panels and used for other activities?
Looking at the current state of e-waste, I'm not sure the outlook 100 years from now is great.
You're thinking philosophically perhaps? :)
I mean what you have to pay, financially, to be clear. In the sense that when you don't want to pay for more solar power, you close the plant and stop paying.
That's not an option for nuclear power plants. All closed nuclear power plants are still costing money.
I'm using the very same definition you used.
If we take one example I gave, there is $0 in the cost a taxi ride provisioned to pay for insurance losses related to climate change, current or future.
>If we take one example I gave, there is $0 in the cost a taxi ride provisioned to pay for insurance losses related to climate change, current or future.
That is not the same definition. To continue the metaphor, I'm talking only about the money you have to pay to the taxi driver according to the meter. :)
Nobody knows how to turn off the meter on a "nuclear taxi". Someone has to pay it even after the taxi has been demolished, the driver has retired, and the passenger is dead.
The same is true for a regular taxi. No one is going to put carbon back into the ground when you kick the bucket, and no one can put a price on the actual cost.
No, for "regular taxis" you just stop paying after you have closed the plant.
Meaning, again, that if a normal power plant operator goes belly up, you can just leave the power plants in place. Nobody has to pay anything. When the same happens for nuclear, taxpayers have to pay.
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/07/climate-change-is-making-som...
It actually does, the forests in the US alone absorb carbon equivalent to the emissions from over 100 average coal plants per year. The lifetime emissions from a plant operating for 50 years is gone in 6 months after closing, one might say.
Power plants only account for 1/4 of emissions so the blame for global warming will mainly land on other sources.
Unlike the trillion dollars and counting that are currently being caused by only two nuclear plants and nothing but them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_at...
From an accounting pov, carbon capture is extremely scarce. If we mark it as an offset to, power plants (or taxis, or whatever), it won't be available for other essential activities. That's probably the most extreme cost we can imagine now.
> the blame for global warming will mainly land on other sources.
Atmospheric greenhouse gasses are fungible, there is no difference between power plants and any other source from that point of view. 1/4th of emissions is one of the largest budgets, and there's no reason for it to exist, considering we know how to have carbon-free power without much sacrifices.
You don't force hundreds of generations to pay for the decision, which is what we are actually doing with nuclear.
It is an "always on" source?
Why does a particular fuel type need to be always on?
It’s a concept that was created for nuclear, because it has a very similar problem as renewables: the cost lies in building the generating capacity, not in using it. For nuclear to be cheap it needs to get used 100% also in the night and during the weekend. In a purely nuclear power net you also need overcapacity to be able to generate maximum load.
Citation needed. Large energy grids have plenty of capacity to transfer electricity across countries if not whole continents and balance out production and usage. Industrial loads (and various consumer loads) have been adaptive for decades.