The US and EU have been decommissioning a few older nuclear power plants early because just operating let alone building them is not cost effective.
People talk about base load power like it's a good thing, but it's the opposite demand varies a lot over the day and you want to be able to ramp up and down quickly. You can do this with nuclear, but it pushes costs up even higher.
There is some regional differences and areas with a lot of dispatchable hydro don't care nearly as much. Still nuclear needs to be under 6c/kwh to be viable as base load power or be able to ramp up and down with demand while staying fairly cheap and it can't do either when you look at total lifetime costs.
In the US it it has more to do with how the utilities are regulated. For example, solar/wind get production tax credit when the produce energy that is not needed.
We could go into a long debate about how political management of these market hide many of the costs and so on
> People talk about base load power like it's a good thing, but it's the opposite demand varies a lot over the day and you want to be able to ramp up and down quickly. You can do this with nuclear, but it pushes costs up even higher.
Many modern nuclear plants designs you would build are actually able to load follow. Even in that situation some amount of base-load exists. A nuclear plant actually doesn't cost that much more if you have to run it while demand is low, the fuel cost does not matter in nuclear.
Even worse with solar and wind these things are even worse, you have variability on the demand and the supply side.
> There is some regional differences and areas with a lot of dispatchable hydro don't care nearly as much.
Yeah but that is a fantasy. Hydro is already largely build out all over the world and there is not nearly enough for most dense population centers.
> Still nuclear needs to be under 6c/kwh to be viable as base load power or be able to ramp up and down with demand while staying fairly cheap and it can't do either when you look at total lifetime costs.
6c/kwh is realistic, maybe a little more. But nobody can compete against gas. However against solar/wind and batteries it would easily compete.
Not being perfect does not mean the smart grid/solar/wind/battery approach is cheaper or better in any way. In fact is makes every problem harder, specially in terms of regional differences.
The designing for load following does not directly cost that much more, but it quickly pushes up average kWh costs through the roof while adding a lot of thermal stress.
Nuclear has become a political issue in the US, and these kinds of decisions can be political, not done for economic or safety reasons as one might have hoped.
As an example, the California Public Utilities Commission, decided to shut down Diablo Canyon even though PG&E says in regards to the Diablo Canyon power plant:
>...At 2.78 cents per kilowatt-hour, DCPP’s average production costs are lower than all other forms of electricity, but are higher than the national average of 2.19 cents per kilowatt-hour for nuclear power
(Doesn't bother PG&E, the CPUC will let them increase the rates.)
People talk about base load power like it's a good thing, but it's the opposite demand varies a lot over the day and you want to be able to ramp up and down quickly. You can do this with nuclear, but it pushes costs up even higher.
There is some regional differences and areas with a lot of dispatchable hydro don't care nearly as much. Still nuclear needs to be under 6c/kwh to be viable as base load power or be able to ramp up and down with demand while staying fairly cheap and it can't do either when you look at total lifetime costs.