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At this point, solar power costs less than coal power delivered in most of the US, to the point where it's cheaper to build new solar power capacity (and cover the capital costs) and operate it than to keep operating the coal plants.

And nuclear power costs more than that - $112/MWh, compare to $40 for industrial scale solar power or $29 for wind power. Coal is $60. (All best-case numbers, from https://www.lazard.com/media/4... ).

And if you look at the costs over time, nuclear power is not only extremely expensive, but the cost has increased dramatically over time, while in contrast the real world cost of wind and solar has dropped dramatically over time.

Cost is relevant because for $X that can be invested in capacity, a strategy that generates 1/4th as much power for the same investment is 1/4th as effective in shifting current capacity away from coal and oil to a clean source.

So while if I were a nuclear power plant salesman, I would certainly try to sell nuclear power as "clean" - because "radioactive" and "expensive" aren't much of a sales pitch - if you are looking for clean energy sources, the most effective clean energy sources are wind and industrial scale solar, because they can produce clean power for 1/4th the cost. And you don't have to figure out how to safely dispose of radioactive waste.

See also Lazard's annual analysis of costs for power generation 2018 and check out the graph on page 7. Coal and gas peaker plants aren't coming back from those sort of price drops, and solar costs are still dropping. Yes, I know this isn't dispatchable generation, but demand-response, and long-distance transmission, will largely get you around that...

You don't really start needing a lot of storage until renewables are over 50% of the generation mix, and costs are falling for storage rapidly, so that there's a reasonable chance that solar + storage will be the cheapest form of generation by the time we get to 50% renewables (by just replacing generation plant on the usual replacement cycles i.e. without added cost) too.

It's easy to show nuclear is cheaper than solar.
https://www.lazard.com/perspec...

Lazard's numbers are calculated by investors seeking short-term profit, and do not reflect actual costs to society in the long term. They also make assumptions that are borderline lies to arrive at their conclusions.

Nuclear is a Crucial Piece of the Carbon-Free Puzzle puts the Lazard report in perspective, and Cost of Nuclear for Dummies, and Future Generations shows how LCOE is gamed in particular.

It's easy to show nuclear is cheaper than solar.
https://www.lazard.com/perspec...

Your citation says the OPPOSITE of what you claim:
Cost of grid-scale PV solar: 4.6 cents/kwh
Cost of nuclear: 11.2 cents/kwh

Even that is not a fair comparison, because it is looking at the cost of existing nukes, while the cost of NEW nukes is considerably higher.

hold on there.
I think that you will have a difficult time showing that Nukes are as cheap as Wind/Solar.

It's easy to show nuclear is cheaper than solar.
https://www.lazard.com/perspec...

Solar is only cheaper than nuclear when there is no storage and done on utility scale, which means not on rooftops. Wind is cheaper than nuclear, and perhaps even with storage. I have nothing against wind except when people claim it, with solar and storage, can replace all else.

As such, we NEED real base-load power, such as geo-thermal and nukes. And these should not compete against wind/solar in economics, since they are in different classes.

We must evaluate wind and solar on cost along with nuclear if only because the advocates for wind and solar assert that wind and solar can displace nuclear. It can be shown that wind is only cheaper than nuclear if we ignore the storage requirements. Solar is simply too expensive all around to bother, with maybe regional exceptions because of the climate and access to cheap pumped hydro storage.

A agree that we must account for the varying demands through the day and year, and the need to have technologies capable of matching these variations. This ability to match load to demand is inherent to any storage technology. If we assume that there is storage, in the form of pumped hydro or batteries, then concerns on base load vs peak generation is gone. Not only is the concern gone but also quite likely the distinction. The idea of "base load" becomes meaningless if there are viable storage technologies available, after that there is no need to be concerned on the ability of any energy source to follow load.

What boggles my mind is the assertion that batteries will make solar power viable but do nothing to address the costs of operating nuclear power. A couple problems of nuclear power is it's need for backup power in the case of a scram and it's inability to follow load (at least do so economically), both of which would be resolved with a sufficiently advanced energy storage technology. I saw the Tennessee Valley Authority uses pumped hydro along with its nuclear power to provide the load matching and such for safe, cheap, and reliable energy. As far as I'm concerned any technology advancement in storage makes nuclear power look better compared to solar, not worse. I expect this to become quite apparent in time.

Indeed. Objecting to nukes because of safety is silly.

Objecting to nukes because of economics makes much more sense. They are far too expensive, and the cost is going up while the cost of solar, wind, and storage is falling.

I've seen the economics and here's a report that seems to get cited often:
https://www.lazard.com/media/4...

On the second page of the PDF there's a chart showing that solar is indeed quite inexpensive compared to nuclear. There is also a warning at the top of the graph that costs addressing the intermittent nature of solar and wind were not taken into account. Solar power with storage is not cheap, and neither is putting solar on rooftops. Solar power is only cheap when there is no storage (meaning reliance on things like hydro, natural gas, and internal combustion diesel engines) and when placed in large open fields close to the ground. Wind is cheap, and will likely still see some gains in getting cheaper yet, but it has problem with being intermittent as well. Wind is not considered safe enough to put near inhabited areas and, while it does not displace cropland and grazing areas like solar would, it's not something people will put on their rooftops either.

That Lazard study and articles like the following explaining the safety and resource needs of solar tells me that there is not much future in solar power.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...

Solar is complicated, expensive, and when compared to other energy sources available to us it's really not that great on safety and CO2 output. What really kills solar, by my estimation, is the resources needed. We'd be far better off with wind, hydro, and nuclear.

If you want to make an economic case against nuclear then I'd like to see the costs from storage. If you say that the storage costs will come down in a decade to be affordable then I'm fine with waiting. The question then is, what do we do until then? Keep burning coal? I say we build nuclear power plants. The claim has been that solar and wind prices will come down with economy of scale. Would that not also be true for nuclear? Japan, South Korea, and France, all saw costs go down by standardizing their nuclear power. In the USA we kept building a bunch of reactors by the ones and threes and so costs stayed high. Stop doing that and costs go down.

Here's a couple experts in the field that did a study on the costs of storage and it's not a pretty picture they paint. The storage alone for wind and solar would cost much more than an equivalent supply of energy from nuclear power.
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

The "Roadmap To Nowhere" authors make it clear that an all nuclear power grid is not ideal or perhaps even possible, they just use that as an intellectual exercise. I recognized this as well, we'll need something other than nuclear, and to me wind and hydro are far better options in nearly every case than solar. As it is now, today, solar is a bad idea. Until that changes we'll need something that's cheap, reliable, safe, low in CO2, and something we can deploy in quantity today. Solar scores poorly on all metrics.

Prove to me that solar and storage can compete and I'll change my mind.

Something fishy is going on here. Australia has some of the highest insolation levels of any developed country. It would be cheaper to build a new solar plant in the sunniest part of the country and run it for 10 years than it would be to restart an existing coal plant. Hunter Valley is a nice place to live, but bitcoin miners DGAF about that, they probably don't even live in the country.

I guess the only benefit to coal is it can run 24x7, but I have to think the biggest cost of bitcoin mining is the energy, not the equipment, so just buy 2x the amount of miners...

I smell some sort of government subsidy.

The levelized cost of nuclear power, cost over plant lifetime. is the most expensive form of electricity on the market. There is no dispute about it, any study will show this. .

Didn't you even try to valide your assumption before wrongly stating it as fact? Its not even remotely correct. But I am sure you will rationalize it somehow and keep repeating it.

https://www.lazard.com/perspec...

Don't equate the failure of a plant processing nuclear weapons waste with a plant that is processing nuclear power waste. Anyone that can think should be justifiably suspicious of people that need to use the failure of a military weapon producing plant to prevent contamination to argue against civilian nuclear power.

Nuclear power is in fact very safe. I'll see opinion articles mention the deaths caused by mining uranium and such as a case against nuclear power but make no mention of how many deaths there are from wind and solar power. This is lying by omission. If people want to make the case against nuclear power then they need to make an honest assessment of how dangerous the alternatives would be by comparison.

Go ahead, show me how dangerous nuclear power is compared to wind, solar, natural gas, or whatever else you believe should replace it. I already know the numbers. I saw them here:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/...

We should be moving to nuclear power based on lives saved alone. It's ability to compete on price with solar is another reason to use it. My source:
https://www.lazard.com/perspec...

That 9-year-old article is dead wrong. The levelized cost of electricity for nuclear is 11.2-18.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. More expensive than coal, NG, and most renewables. https://www.lazard.com/perspec...

Well, most of the taxes and fees are *not* used as subsidies for the renewables. The renewable surcharge was about 7 ct in 2017. But yes, one should look at LCOE.
  https://www.lazard.com/perspec...

https://www.lazard.com/media/4...

Utility scale PV is cheaper than nuclear but that means taking up land that could be used for things like crops. Rooftop PV costs more that nuclear, but that also means the land used is effectively zero. So, pick one. If you want to claim that PV is cheaper than nuclear then the panels are stuck on poles out in a field. If you want to claim PV panels are on rooftops, where it takes no land, then it costs more than nuclear, potentially double the cost.

Saying that PV panels can be put on rooftops AND cost less than nuclear is a lie.

I agree that we should be doing more nuclear.

But for my state anyway, wind production in Texas, not counting government subsidies, runs from $36 to $51 per megawatt-hour while an average national cost for coal-fired electricity ranges from $65 to $150 per MWh and for gas, depending on the type of plant, from $52/MWh to $218/MWh.

The U.S. has the largest coal reserves on the planet it's our cheapest and most abundant energy source.

"Most abundant energy source"? Nope. Solar energy is far more abundant and will still be here even if we (foolishly) burn every ounce of coal from the ground. The earth receives more energy in one hour from the sun than all of humanity uses in an entire year. "Cheapest"? Wrong again. Currently natural gas is cheaper in many cases at today's prices. So is on-shore wind, geothermal, and hydro. Nuclear is about equal to coal. Solar PV is competitive even without subsidies and falling fast. If you take into account the full cost of coal (including pollution) then it isn't even close to the cheapest option for power generation. Coal only seems cheap because we don't require coal plants to mitigate the full cost of the pollution (including CO2) that they produce. Yes the US has a lot of coal but the best thing we could possibly do with that is to leave most of it in the ground.

If anything we should be building more coal plants instead of trying to drop our economic growth to zero and surrender comparative advantage.

Why would we do such an idiotic thing? Natural gas plants currently make a lot more economic sense and while not clean are certainly cleaner than coal plants. Perhaps you don't care to actually be able to breathe the air? If you want to see the effects of your suggestion in real life I encourage you to go travel to China and see the results of abundant coal power. Never mind the fact that burning all that sequestered carbon is without question going to wreak havoc with the global climate. What, you thought that putting billions of tons of carbon that is currently buried into the atmosphere would come without consequence? That's a foolish and dangerous thing to believe.

https://www.lazard.com/perspec...

and

https://www.lazard.com/media/4...

The levelized cost of rooftop (both residential and commercial/industrial) solar PV has declined significantly over recent years, driven by more efficient installation techniques and improved supply chains. While rooftop technologies are likely inherently higher cost than utility-scale technologies (as a result of small scale, installation complexity, etc.), the value associated with certain uses of rooftop solar PV by sophisticated commercial/industrial users (e.g., demand charge management, etc.) may exceed, under some circumstances, even this relatively elevated cost profile. Recent investment by incumbent utilities in the suite of technologies that could potentially capture these value streams weighs in favor of such an interpretation.

This cost will continue to drop.

Very large-scale conventional and renewable generation projects (e.g., IGCC, nuclear, solar thermal, etc.) continue to face a number of challenges, including significant cost contingencies, high absolute costs, competition from relatively cheap natural gas in some geographies, operating difficulties and policy uncertainty.

These costs won't.

https://www.lazard.com/perspec...

and

https://www.lazard.com/media/4...

The levelized cost of rooftop (both residential and commercial/industrial) solar PV has declined significantly over recent years, driven by more efficient installation techniques and improved supply chains. While rooftop technologies are likely inherently higher cost than utility-scale technologies (as a result of small scale, installation complexity, etc.), the value associated with certain uses of rooftop solar PV by sophisticated commercial/industrial users (e.g., demand charge management, etc.) may exceed, under some circumstances, even this relatively elevated cost profile. Recent investment by incumbent utilities in the suite of technologies that could potentially capture these value streams weighs in favor of such an interpretation.

This cost will continue to drop.

Very large-scale conventional and renewable generation projects (e.g., IGCC, nuclear, solar thermal, etc.) continue to face a number of challenges, including significant cost contingencies, high absolute costs, competition from relatively cheap natural gas in some geographies, operating difficulties and policy uncertainty.

These costs won't.

Nuclear power is currently cheaper than solar thermal with storage. Cite:
https://www.lazard.com/media/2...

The cost of PV solar is cheaper than nuclear only when built up at utility scale in high insolation areas. Not much help for a lot of the population. Running wires to places that have sun to places with people would get the power to where it is needed but this adds to the cost.

Claiming that solar is cheap when people need it most is just outright provably false. Go look at demand curves for once and you will see what I mean. Demand peaks at dusk, when there isn't enough sun left to matter. At noon power demand tends to dip a little actually, probably due to people stopping work for lunch.

Also, no civil power reactor is used to make weapons. The people building these things are bound by law to make sure that such a use is impossible. The last dual use reactor blew its lid in the 1980s, and that is only one of many reasons why all similar reactors have been dismantled long ago.

You need to update your facts. Wind and solar are affordable now. The price of solar has come down quite a bit in the last decade. Lazard's levelized cost report shows solar and wind as cheaper than nuclear.

"Base load" is still an argument, but it isn't relevant until solar and wind become a vast majority of the energy in a locale. You only need a small percentage of "base load" to cover some emergency situations. We have enough existing conventional energy that we don't need to build more.

Unsubsidized onshore wind is consistently estimated to be one of the cheapest energy sources. For example, see here
https://www.lazard.com/media/2...

http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Leve...

Clearly the LCOE for SPV and ST (even with storage) is NOW competitive with nuclear power. Its probably not yet competitive with NG, but again NG is getting a free pass on CO2 and other issues. Given that recent research suggests that the actual social cost of carbon may be as high as $1000/ton we're pretty sure at this point that SPV is a huge good deal. Why do you think it is growing by leaps and bounds?

Yes, of course subsidies help, but they don't even cancel out 10% of the subsidy that coal/gas/oil get. Just the EXPLICIT subsidies on fossil fuel use are on a par with ALL the subsidies for renewables, so it isn't even clear to me that in terms of incentive we wouldn't be best off just getting rid of everyone's subsidy, not even counting carbon costs.

Nuclear is expensive. http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Leve... Look at page 11.

Page 11 is talking about capital cost. The figure for nuclear is $7,591/kW, which is a lot more than some (although not the highest). But how does that work out over the lifetime of the plant? Assuming 100% uptime, that's 8,760kWh in the first year, so that's less than $0.90/kWh. If the plant is operating for 20 years, then that's around 4/kWh. Most nuclear plants are built with a 40-60 year expected lifespan, which makes the capital cost negligible over the lifetime of the plant.

The correct page to look at is Page 2, which gives the unsubsidised cost of electricity from all of the generating mechanisms. Nuclear is $124/MWh - that's lower than all of the other fuel sources in their 'conventional' bucket that have a little representative diamond listed (coal doesn't, and has a range that extends both above and below nuclear). Only Gas Combined Cycle is cheaper on average, and that's only when excluding most of the costs. Only utility-scale PV comes out cheaper overall, and you also need to add in storage costs if you want to use PV for a significant amount of grid supply.

"Over the last five years, wind and solar PV have become increasingly cost-competitive with conventional generation
technologies, on an unsubsidized basis, in light of material declines in the pricing of system components (e.g., panels,
inverters, racking, turbines, etc.), and dramatic improvements in efficiency, among other factors"

http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Leve...

You don't need to factor in "external" costs. I work in the energy policy field, and this is pretty much the gold standard for comparing cost of electricity generation. Other than energy efficiency, wind is already the cheapest. http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Leve...

The linked article may not follow your standard of cheapest, but this does. Wind is cheapest, with external costs or not: http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Leve...

did you mean Lazard Freres ("Lazard Brothers" in French)? They are a huge, rich "wall street" firm. They wouldn't even notice spending $20K so their SAs could run Linux on company laptops to dialup and fix shit from whereever. They also invest in scads of companies, big to small, and some portfolio company might also need this technology. Who cares, they said they'd GPL it.