12.95 ¢/kWh to 13.60 ¢/kWh.
I think that’s a fair price for cleaner air
I also think there are proven better reactor designs that are far cheaper.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=table_5_06_a
Sadly not. There are unproven ones which might be, but the US nuclear industry has a substantial history of coming in really really expensive.
The reason electricity in most places is cheaper are:
- Nuclear was built a long time ago, so the reactors are paid for already
- Electricity is generated using methods other than nuclear
The US Navy has had functional Small modular reactor designs mostly PWR designs since the 1960s in the 5mw to 500mw range with no major failures yet.
That’s thanks to the training (started with Rickover) and discipline and no shareholders. Commercial nukes don’t measure up, e.g. when it comes to leakages and knowing what to do in case.
Yes. Operated on a military budget. There’s a reason they’re not used for civilian use.
The problem is that none of these designs have ever been used to power the grid. Every nuclear project in the recent past has blown by cost and time estimates. Wind and solar are not only cheaper than nukes, they can also be installed much quicker and predictably. Nukes have a place, but we need clean energy now.
It’s also for reasons with nothing to do with nuclear in particular. The US is just terrible at executing large civil projects. It costs more to build at large scales here than virtually anywhere else, for a confluence of reasons – highly decentralized project management (state, county, federal, city governments all fighting for authority), lack of sustainable learning curves, NEPA being weaponized by NIMBYs to kill every project including environmentalist ones, plain dumb politics… you know you have a problem when you look onto the efficiency of Italian bureaucracy with envy, but meanwhile they can build e.g., rail projects at something like a third to sixth the budget the US can.
A big part of the problem is that we insist on fully custom and experimental projects. Every fucking time. We never just use the catalog builds. We never set and stick to a standard. Not even in road design, where the AASHTO green book is treated like a fucking Holy Bible – we follow its (largely dumb and dangerous requirements while still bespoking every fucking project.