I'd like to ask this here again because I haven't got a clear answer yet. What about building a plant, getting the fuel, storing the fuel, and decommissioning the plant, how is that affecting the cheap and the clean energy in total greenhouse gas emissions? Is it worthwhile compared to wind farms and solar power? And where is the fuel stored in the States, because here in Germany it's hard to find a place to store it for 10 millennia.
Some countries recycle nuclear fuel (e.g. France and some other European countries) whereas others don't (the US). It has obviously some costs, but it also decreases the waste. The re-processing center in Europe is located at La Hague (Netherlands).
>Is it worthwhile compared to wind farms and solar power?
The sun doesn’t shine at night, the wind doesn’t blow all the time, and batteries often are astronomically expensive and impractical at large scales. Solar and wind vary greatly, both over an individual 24-hour period, and seasonally throughout the year. A nuclear plant is producing its maximum capacity 93% of the time, as opposed to wind (34%) and solar (24%). To get 1 GW of reliable energy at any given time, you need 3-4 GW of wind and solar in the hope it will be enough, as opposed to 1.1 GW of nuclear. (Worth noting that coal is only 48% reliable).[1][3]
In order to build a grid that is able to meet demand consistently and reliably, you would have to massively overbuild renewables so they were able to meet peek demand, and deal with the issue of huge load shedding during times of overproduction. See section 5 and 6 of [1] for a study of what it would take to reach 80% and 100% renewables for California. To reach 0% fossil fuels, a total of about 7GW of nuclear power (the equivalent of 4 Diablo Canyon plants) would reduce needed wind by 11.5GW (the equivalent of over 5 million wind turbines) and solar by 5.7GW (the equivalent of 1.8 million rooftop systems). When you only need 40% the capacity, even double the cost is cheaper. Nuclear is only expensive when you compare it to coal and natural gas, which are baseload generating power sources. Again, with intermittent renewables, it is cheaper to build nuclear than to massively overbuild solar, wind, and grid level batteries.
>it is cheaper to build nuclear than to massively overbuild solar, wind, and grid level batteries.
No nuclear power plant ever created has stopped costing money yet, even ones that have been closed for 30+ years. They are costing taxpayers millions per year, each, for the foreseeable future. How can anyone know for sure what the actual cost will end up being?
Meanwhile, the cost per Mwh of batteries is very likely to fall, considering that almost every major economic centre started building battery gigafactories during the pandemic and new chemistries are already viable for cars.
I suspect that energy storage will soon be so obviously the right choice that even if someone decides to make a nuclear plant today, they won't finish it because it won't make financial sense.
