There's not much to go off of on this subject in the US - only two successful reactor projects have been started since the 70s: Units 3 and 4 at Vogtle in Georgia*. They cost $15 billion each and bankrupted the remnants of Westinghouse (in combination with a similar project in South Carolina which was never finished).
*Many reactors started construction in the 70s and were finished in the 80s or 90s, plus Watts Bar Unit 2 which was started in 1972 and finished in 2016 for a total of $5 billion. The US also of course builds many naval reactors.
> There's not much to go off of on this subject in the US
The main problem is that things cost more per unit if you do them less. The first new reactor in decades is going to be stupid expensive because you have new people doing it who are learning things for the first time, which often means doing them over again, which is expensive. And then we didn't even get to see if the second unit at Vogtle could improve on the first because then COVID hit and made everything cost even more.
Whereas the interesting question is, how much do they each cost if you build them at scale?
The obvious problem with studies like these is when they're from the period in history when the attitude towards regulatory costs was that the cost/benefit of any particular rule should be ignored and the total number of rules should only increase over time. Especially so when the study is from France, where these attitudes are even more entrenched and on top of that the program is centrally planned -- not the thing known for bringing efficiency -- and where higher efficiency is regarded as a cost because you're losing union jobs or lucrative contracts and the one paying is the taxpayer or the ratepayer, who has less influence over the government than the unions or construction companies.
Whereas what you want is multiple companies building these things on an assembly line, where you can plop the components out of a truck already approved and ready to be turned on.
> Whereas what you want is multiple companies building these things on an assembly line, where you can plop the components out of a truck already approved and ready to be turned on.
How many trillions in handouts from tax payer money to get there?
Renewables and storage deliver that dream unsubsidized today.
> The study also shows the same pattern in the US.
The modern US where a negligible number of reactors are being built, or the US in the period of the regulatory changes that accompanied the Cold War when everyone was afraid of nuclear bombs and then The China Syndrome and Chernobyl?
If you want it to mean anything you need data from when the regulatory environment isn't increasing in hostility over time during the measurement period.
> How many trillions in handouts from tax payer money to get there?
It's a loan at an interest rate higher than the government itself is paying to issue the bonds, i.e. the taxpayer is making money from this.
Also, the main issue isn't funding it, it's making it cost less, e.g. by moving most of the approvals from being needed at each and every site to the factory where components are being mass produced.
> Renewables and storage deliver that dream unsubsidized today.
Then why does the price per kWh that consumers are paying keep going up instead of down?
I love how it's always someone elses fault that nuclear power never delivered on its promise. Despite handout after handout trying to get the industry to work.
> It's a loan at an interest rate higher than the government itself is paying to issue the bonds, i.e. the taxpayer is making money from this.
This assumes the risk is zero. Which given e.g. Virgil C. Summer is not the case.
> Then why does the price per kWh that consumers are paying keep going up instead of down?
Depends on where you are in the world. In Europe most of the recent price increases are coming from fossil energy becoming expensive.
The ETS system is making coal power expensive and running a peaker on LNG is extremely expensive.
*Many reactors started construction in the 70s and were finished in the 80s or 90s, plus Watts Bar Unit 2 which was started in 1972 and finished in 2016 for a total of $5 billion. The US also of course builds many naval reactors.