Part of the cost of nuclear is all the lawsuits. Someone else talked about China doing a lot with nuclear and part of that is that they don’t have to deal with the lawsuits. So so so many lawsuits.

I do love this chart though. It’s really representative of why we need to invest in new technology even when it seems stupid expensive at first.

The 2 points I do want to bring up are, one, as someone else mentioned, battery storage. It’s sort of the unsolved puzzle of renewables at this point. I’m certain we will figure it out and be able to produce something at scale and renewables at that point will be the only even sort of ethical option (assuming the batteries aren’t made of minerals mined exclusively by slave labor or something, then I guess the debate will still rage on).

And second, SMRs are still not actually a thing yet. The cost of nuclear could drop (probably will drop drastically) when mini nuclear power plants are being produced rapidly and shipped around to various locations. Kinda like how building a modular home is much cheaper than a fully custom one with a bespoke design. Assuming they find a way to make all that happen before widespread large load batteries, I wouldn’t consider it as clear cut.