Why would this person turn to /. for an answer?

That does not seem wise.

> But you have to understand the scale of energy production that they are capable of

Of course you do, it's called CF. And when you divide CAPEX by CF you get a rough estimate of the cost of the power in question. So let's do that.

Wind turbines here in Ontario have CF's on the order of 30%. CAPEX is around $1.50/W. So that's 1.5 / .3 = $5 effective CAPEX.

Darlington B was low-balled at $8.25/W and would have a CF around 90%. So that's 8.25 / .9 = $9.17 effective CAPEX

So even though I have to built three units of wind for every unit of nuke, it's still half as expensive. And that's why they cancelled Darlington B.

> Is there a working large scale CCS project to demonstrate the truth of those facts?

It's right beside the nuclear reactor that didn't go overbudget. Sorry, couldn't resist.

But more directly, there are a number of very large plants, and a whole lot under construction. I was surprised to learn this after all the years of inaction. Prices to date have been on the order of 0.01/kWh LCoE, which is in-line with the estimates in the document I posted.

> Generally, modern small reactors for power generation are expected to have
> greater simplicity of design, economy of mass production, and reduced siting costs

All of these statements are likely true, except that they assume, as the quote notes, "mass production".

Nuclear power economy scales *very* strongly with reactor size. That's why almost all modern reactor designs are around 1 GWe. There are somewhat smaller designs, like CANDU6, but they have been unable to compete with the larger designs in the market.

The *very* small designs, the SMR's that you're referring to, attempt to address this through a modular scale-out. But in order for this to work, you need mass production, hundreds or thousands of modules. Until that time, the price/performance appears to be *terrible*. So everyone's sitting on their hands waiting for someone else to pull the trigger. After decades, no one has.

> Most of the losses come not from Areva's core business

You're joking right?! Every reactor they are building is over-budget and draining the company's coffers.

> trying to build a reactor in Finland without its usual parters

They're building them in France with their usual partners, and they're just as much a disaster as Finland.

> getting swindled when buying uranium mines

So, bad management. Which is precisely what you want running a company that makes nuclear reactors.

> investing heavily in renewables because it's cool

And profitable, for most everyone else at least. Did Areva *actually* loose money in renewables? I'm not so sure you actually have numbers on that. But it's worse if its true.

> Nuclear is not expensive, it requires an upfront investment

LOLZ.

You understand that the vast majority of the LCoE from nuclear is the payments on the construction loans, right? And, so, if it requires an upfront investment, that is, by definition, going to make it expensive.

*How* expensive is another question. That is clearly answered by the 11 Euro/kWh price. In other words "youch, expensive!"

> And they're still lower than the costs of fossil fuel based technologies

Gas plants with CCS cost less than nuclear. Coal with CCS is about the same price.

> Nuclear is cheap.

Nuclear is expensive. http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf Look at page 11.

> Project delays are not cheap in nuclear, or a dam (hydro if you will) or a tunnel

Too true. But it is also true that reactor construction has a history of going overbudget on average by two times, making it one of the most consistently bad investments in history.

> Uncertain political environment is a death knell for large scale projects

Also very true. Which is why wind and solar are the fastest growing sources of power in history: a large wind farm can go from napkin sketch to pumping electrons in 18 months. Residential PV can be completely installed in 2 weeks. Arranging financing for these projects is akin to arranging a car loan. The $30 billion needed for 5 years for a reactor? Not so easy.

> This heat warms the atmosphere

No it doesn't. Waste heat rapidly radiates into space. Temperatures only rise if you interrupt the radiation, say though GHG's that trap it.

> The more wind energy we use the stronger the winds

Premise incorrect, conclusion non-factual by default.

> I've seen plenty of markets that seemed mature, but the fact those were stagnated due to lack of interest in innovating

Or investment. PV is a clear example of this - panels are selling today below the cost that was predicted only a few years ago to be the lowest possible cost of product. The mad rush of money into the market raised production so much that supply/demand pressed all the input costs way down, while the manufacturers were slitting each other's throats squeezing costs out of their lines. I can't recall anything like it, a 5x decrease in price in under 5 years.