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Comment by endymi0n | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear fans are heavily underestimating the cost of that energy source. The levelized cost of energy per kWh today is TRIPLE that of solar already, at a negative learning curve, with a gap only widening (and accelerating so). For the very same cost per kWh, you can get double overprovisioned solar PLUS battery storage at 90% capacity factor, TODAY.

All of that fully decentralized, within the next years instead of decades, with distributed (not megacorp) ownership AND not having every other of these megaprojects cancelled due to protests.

And that figure doesn't even include externalized cost like national/environmental security or decommissioning costs.

Nuclear is riding a dead horse in 2026.

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The LCOE may be triple, but the LFSCOE [0] (full system cost, not just cost of generation) however of solar, is triple that of nuclear in Texas, and 15x that in Germany. Notice that 1. Solar Irradiance per location is actually taken into consideration and 2. Renewables have not stopped the ongoing deindustrialization of Germany due to high energy costs.

[0] (PDF) https://iaee2021online.org/download/contribution/fullpaper/1...

That benchmark is as outdated as completely unrealistic, as if invented by the oil/nuclear industry. Obviously 100% pure solar generation will be completely unfeasable in a place as Germany, but that completely misses the point that a realistic combo of solar/wind/biomass has a FAR higher combined capacity factor than solar alone.

Also, it's based on 2021 (or before) storage cost figures, which have halved in the meantime. https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/44/LCOE-11.png

I call BS.

Civilian Nuclear Power is a dual use technology. The UK needs to subsidize it's civilian nuclear program if it wishes to also remain a nuclear power. The alternative is it de facto becomes the 51st state of America.

The UK needs to subsidize nuclear, as well as wind, solar, and everything in between.

There's a reason countries like the US, China, Japan, India, South Korea, and others are investing in this kind of domestic capacity and spending tens to hundreds of billions to do so.

The half life of uranium and plutonium is 1000s of years?

Unless the UK is planning on increasing it's number of nukes why would it need more cores?

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