Vogtle’s numbers are incredibly biased considering they made an entire design and then had to redo it halfway through that’s not a realistic cost that can be expected for future projects. We also have vogtles design be approved now so that new plants can be built for a fraction of the cost. Also where did you see they did amortization of solar?
Comment on Solar + Battery (covering 97% of demand) is now cheaper than coal and nuclear
booly@sh.itjust.works 4 days agoBut the other misleading part is they looked at 20 years which is close to the life cycle for solar/batteries and not even half the life of nuclear
I think Lazard’s LCOE methodology looks at the entire life cycle of the power plant, specific to that power plant. So they amortize solar startup/decommissioning costs across the 20 year life cycle of solar, but when calculating LCOE for nuclear, they spread the costs across the 80 year life cycle of a nuclear plant.
Nuclear is just really, really expensive. Even if plants required no operating costs, the up front costs are so high that it represents a significant portion of the overall operating costs for any given year.
The Vogtle debacle in Georgia cost $35 billion to add 2 MW of capacity. They’re now projecting that over the entire 75 year lifespan the cost of the electricity will come out to be about $0.17 to $0.18 per kilowatt hour.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 4 days ago
booly@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Also where did you see they did amortization of solar?
I’m just familiar with Lazard’s LCOE methodology. The linked paper talks about LCOE, so that’s just how that particular cost analysis works.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
2gw, but yes, before any operational/maintenance costs that is $17.5/watt. Solar is under $1/watt, and sunny AF.
0x0@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Subsidize it like you do oil, there, solved.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
And do the same for solar and batteries, so we can stop using fossil fuels for electricity ASAP.