Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis: Version 16.0 [pdf]

Yes, though those effects are much less on an incremental basis for any technology already at scale. The mechanisms still exist, but delay is longer.

Cost of capital might vary between types of project. It is becoming common in battery storage to have sites funded by private equity. And non-recourse debt is common in offshore wind.

Different sources of capital have different capabilities to assess risk. A battery storage site is easy to understand so can be funded my smaller groups. Offshore wind requires more modelling, due diligence, and technical understanding so needs the resources a bank has. And a nuclear site is too difficult for anyone but government.

Also, inflation can vary across industries. For example wind turbines could be vulnerable to high steel costs. A fast project can better predict staff costs than a slow one.

I disagree. LCOE is a favorite way to make nuclear look awful because it massively weights upfront capital cost (high for nuclear) and completely devalues the fact that nuclear plants can run for 60+ years.

Take any LCOE spreadsheet and check the sensitivity to revenue 30 years out and you'll see that it basically doesn't matter.

> in a world where the main sources of new power (solar and wind) and storage (batteries) are still dropping in price dramatically

If you take a look at the figure in the OP pdf (Levelized Cost of Energy Comparison—Historical Utility-Scale Generation Comparison), you'll see that this is no longer true. They are increasing in price in the last iteration.

Many energy technologies fall exponentially at small scale and then start to increase in price due to externalities at scale. This 'cost scales to first order with generation scale' hypothesis was first put forth by Komanoff in 1980 [1] and may well apply to wind/solar as scale runs into issues related to intermittency and land use (e.g. transmission, NIMBY)

[1] free pdf linked on https://komanoff.net/nuclear_power/

Ooh! I know! The vienna convention on nuclear power! :D

I'm not sure that question has an answer; the regulators are fairly ad-hoc which is why reviews take multiple years instead of happening quickly and it the flux in requirements seems linked to the cost overruns (otherwise the planners would learn and the cost estimates would have error in line with any infrastructure project). Seems doubtful that there are 'some regulations' static enough to be targeted. I have read a lovely article somewhere describing how the regulators interpret nuclear being cost-effective as evidence that the standards need to be raised but I cannot lay my hands on it. However - amusingly - while considering what a reasonable answer would be I discovered that the current head of the NRC appears to have been trained as a priest:

He has a master's from Yale Divinity School and Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Religious Studies from Valparaiso University. [0]

And previous members have been actively opposed to nuclear power as a concept:

After leaving the NRC, Jaczko called for a global ban on nuclear power. [1]

This is not an environment where reasonable and supportive people are trying to make nuclear power work. The NRC is a high-risk arena where the companies involved have confidence only that their applications may be reviewed by people who range between under-educated about the issues and actively hostile to their success as commercial ventures. There is a reason that the industry is almost alone in the 21st century as a technology that is getting harder to implement. That reason is a cult-like group of anti-nuclear activists who are willing to see people starve and freeze before they will allow a Fukushima to happen every 50 years. This is a significant contributing factor to why it is getting harder and more expensive to build nuclear plants.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_T._Hanson [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Jaczko

You see that's the thing though.

From the nuclear stan's point of view nuclear is cheapest and best, and anything that contradicts that is wrong by definition.

They are not wrong, they are incomplete. For intermittent sources, you need to factor in not only storage, but also grid upgrades and interconnects. Somethings LCOE overlooks.

It's the same thing as saying rain water is cheaper than tap water.