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this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2026
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Is this true? Because Holy shit this would be hilarious if it was.
You can cherry pick the numbers to show whatever you like.
Wikipedia has an article on the economics of nuclear power. To summarize: it's expensive upfront. If you look at it from a pure commercial enterprise it's not really worth it. If you look at it as decarbonizing the future it's better.
Solar and wind is cheaper, but intermittent and it's a question if we can wait for grid scale energy storage being viable before we cook ourselves.
Given the average time to build one single nuclear power plant, you should consider whether we have time to finish construction of one before we cook ourselves.
I would not put all my money on just one solution. I don't know how many years away grid scale storage is. I hope it's 1 year, I expect it's a decade or more.
Besides, we had 6 consecutive weeks country wide harsh winter this year. Storing it over night, or over a few days of mild winds is feasible. 6 weeks of little to no sun, mild winds and high demand is eyepopping.
Cheaper is the definition of better. Power is a fungible good. Price is what matters. And it's not like they include the cost of waste handling in the price of nuclear energy. For simplicity it is easiest to assume it free. And it's not like it would change the result of the calculus.
A low maximum price is a better measurement of what is good.
We had 6 consecutive weeks of country wide harsh winter temperatures this year. Suddenly the fact that electricity was almost free and occasionally negative spot price during summer was irrelevant.
Nuclear power plants are ridiculously expensive to build.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_buildings
they also last decades and are cheap to run with extremely low carbon emissions
Any source for this significant claim?
The German ministry for Safety of nuclear energy (BASE) published an official statement that nuclear energy is not only unsafe, but also way too expensive:
https://www.base.bund.de/shareddocs/faktencheck/base/de/atomstrom-alternative-energiequellen-kosten.html
There are studies by the Deutsches Insitut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW, German Institute of Economic Research) that show significant higher costs per kWh than other power sources:
https://www.diw.de/de/diw_01.c.867887.de/publikationen/wochenberichte/2023_10_1/ausbau_von_kernkraftwerken_entbehrt_technischer_und_oekonomischer_grundlagen.html
https://www.diw.de/de/diw_01.c.670481.de/publikationen/wochenberichte/2019_30_1/zu_teuer_und_gefaehrlich__atomkraft_ist_keine_option_fuer_eine_klimafreundliche_energieversorgung.html
At my company, we work together with the Gesellschaft für Endlagerung (BGE). These guys are responsible to find safe long time storage for nuclear waste. Spoiler: as of now, there is no such thing as safe long time storage.
The German energy provider Enbw claims costs per kWh to be as high as 0.49€ for nuclear energy, which is ridiculous high. And they did not even factor in the high costs of safe long time storage!
What do they say about Onkalo ?
Nothing, because they have only space for 6500 t high-level nuclear waste which is already reserved for Finnish nuclear waste, whereas Germany has like 17.000 t.
But with regards to the "no such thing as safe long term storage" comment?
Now I get what you mean. I should have phrased this better. I meant "no such thing as safe long term storage [could be determined in Germany yet]". Which means, as of today, they could not find a safe location in Germany to build such a storage facility like Finland did.
Germany is densely populated and the ground/earth is mostly unsuited for long time storage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkIa99touXQ
I am open to change my mind on this, but i never seen evidence for a single one that was profitable when you include development cost, maintenance, build back and disposal (and long term maintenance of disposal).
most of costs are costs of construction. french and koreans don't seem discouraged and some plants in japan and china were built under budget. finland energy supply has large fraction of nuclear and they have extremely cheap electricity
The costs of construction and deconstruction are significant. You cannot just ignore them. That is useless cherry picking.
OK, here's a starting point https://youtu.be/cbeJIwF1pVY
Ok i gave this the benefit of the doubt and watched the whole video.
Things there where not included in the calculation:
Cost of compensating for environmental destruction from uran mines (and health care costs for thost impacted by the radio active dust from them)
Political cost of importing fissile fuel from other nations (importing from russia/usa gives russia/usa leverage over you wich then can get expensive in other parts of the economy)
Cost at end of plant life cycle, aka building it back once the structure has aged beyond what maintenance can fix
Cost of storing and maintaining radio active waste for the next few million years
The video also only compares those selective picked numbers to fossil fuels and not things like solar or wind.
This video did not change my opinion, but thanks for suggesting it.
Nuclear's costs are primarily a capital cost issue. It takes so long to build a power plant that capital, interest and (?) utility of the investment grows to outrageous amounts.
Also you tend to not estimate the cost of waste handling since who knows what that's going to cost.
I feel like the deeper truth highlighted here is that being pro-nuclear, or anti-anti-nuclear, is very much a “reddit” style opinion.
Whatever the actual truth is, that is. It seems to fall neatly into the “I know something and can make a ‘well actyooally’ argument about it” category without having expertise like being on top of the historical financial performance and context of the technology, about which I personally know nothing.