How many 4000MW nuclear power plants have been stood up in the last 10 years? What is their total generating wattage/dollar?
To give you a hand, none have been built in the US in that time. The closest ones are the Vogel powerplants in Georgia, and each of them is just 1200MW. They were also something like 17 billion over budget and 7 years late. Local residents are facing a permanent extra $15/month fee just to pay for building them.
Now look at solar. We stood up a 1400MW Gemini solar plant in Nevada in 2 years from paperwork to inception, at a cost of 2 billion dollars. It includes solar and batteries. It won’t give you 24hr steadystate, but properly built, you could indeed make it run “24/7” at 1000MW by adding about 16hr of battery and 2x-3x the panels. This would still cost less and be built way, way faster than even 1 Vogle nuclear plant.
Commodity solar and battery are here and already beating solar while their tech just gets better. Why would we build antiquated, large nuclear plants at this point at all?
How many 4000MW nuclear power plants have been stood up in the last 10 years? What is their total generating wattage/dollar?
To give you a hand, none have been built in the US in that time. The closest ones are the Vogel powerplants in Georgia, and each of them is just 1200MW. They were also something like 17 billion over budget and 7 years late. Local residents are facing a permanent extra $15/month fee just to pay for building them.
Now look at solar. We stood up a 1400MW Gemini solar plant in Nevada in 2 years from paperwork to inception, at a cost of 2 billion dollars. It includes solar and batteries. It won’t give you 24hr steadystate, but properly built, you could indeed make it run “24/7” at 1000MW by adding about 16hr of battery and 2x-3x the panels. This would still cost less and be built way, way faster than even 1 Vogle nuclear plant.
Commodity solar and battery are here and already beating solar while their tech just gets better. Why would we build antiquated, large nuclear plants at this point at all?