>“Decades and decades” would satisfy your 20-yr scenario
Actually it's more like "decade and decade" lol
I have been surprised at the figures I found for nuclear power versus wind. The reason our nuclear reactors cost so much, so far as I've heard, is that each one is designed anew and there are tremendous regulatory compliance costs. I think designs could be standardized and regulatory stuff streamlined, so as to drastically reduce costs for nuclear. Say what you will about Chinese safety or quality, but they seem to be cranking out a ton of new nuclear reactors as most of the West is foolishly retiring theirs with no good replacement.
Yes; there are a few companies (iirc / top of my head) developing or deploying small-scale, standardized / modular nuclear power plants; NuScale [0] has developed a few models that have gotten Nuclear Regulatory Commission approvals in 2022 and this year [1] they approved a 77 MW generator, which is enough to power a data center. This one weighs about 700 tons, about 23 meters tall, is built in a factory and can be transported / installed anywhere.
Unfortunately Nuscale (and the other SMR companies) aren't going to work.. they keep missing all their deadlines and earlier announced plans/contracts have all fallen through when they start to try and build the things. Nuscale is instructive in that they announced a plant in 2015 that would provide energy in 2023 cost $3 billion in 'overnight' dollars. In 2018, they increased the cost estimate to $4.8 billion. In 2020, they increased it to $6.1 billion. In 2023, they increased the estimate to $9.3 billion -- before a single shovel had hit the ground. Needless to say, the utilities who would be on the hook for these costs walked away. Why in the world would anyone spend well over $10 billion on an "SMR"?
Sure, but "just build nuke plants cheaper" isn't really a viable plan when you need electrons tomorrow. There's a well-known issue in the West that we've lost the ability to build large projects on budget or schedule and there a million reasons for it, but none of it really matters to people buying power.
As of today, if you had $20 billion and had to choose between maybe generating your first watt from nuclear somewhere around 2040 if things go well or just building 15,000 3MW wind turbines that could start generating power next year and will have over a decade of revenue coming in before you see the first dollar from the nuke - investors make the obvious choice.
I’m sure I dropped a 0 somewhere and the math works out to be 1,500 turbines - but China installed over 5,000 turbines last month.. so even the larger number isn’t too outlandish
Actually it's more like "decade and decade" lol
I have been surprised at the figures I found for nuclear power versus wind. The reason our nuclear reactors cost so much, so far as I've heard, is that each one is designed anew and there are tremendous regulatory compliance costs. I think designs could be standardized and regulatory stuff streamlined, so as to drastically reduce costs for nuclear. Say what you will about Chinese safety or quality, but they seem to be cranking out a ton of new nuclear reactors as most of the West is foolishly retiring theirs with no good replacement.