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Even if this is true (which we cannot know since there is no pipeline of projects - so no economies of scale for nuclear) you deeply discount the price of reliability.

We need batteries that are order of magnitude better to have something that could produce 5GW of energy for weeks on end.



You grossly overstate the cost of storage needed to back up renewables. And you ignore that batteries are not the storage of choice for weeks of backup -- hydrogen (burned in CC or OC turbines) would make much more sense for that. The efficiency is lower, but for weeks of storage capital cost is much more important than efficiency.

BTW, we very much can know that nuclear is more expensive than renewables. The attempts to build reactors in the west have been disastrously more expensive. It's not even close. It's because of this failure to compete that the pipeline is bare. And nuclear has historically shown lousy experience effects, so what economies of scale?

If you want to talk about woulda-coulda-shoulda cost numbers for nuclear, instead of the actual demonstrated numbers, then you must do the same for renewables, especially renewables that could be built in a year or two a decade from now when any reactor started today could come online. Unlike nuclear, renewables have shown Silicon Valley-style relentless cost decline.




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