> All energy sources are subsidized to some extent
Indeed.
> If all subsidies were removed, gas would completely dominate, followed by coal and nuclear
Maybe in the 1970s, but this is certainly not true today. Wind is very competitive with NG, nuclear isn't remotely close.
NG is only competitive because of a grab-bag of direct and indirect incentives on the exploration and development side. These include numerous reductions in oversight to lower the time delay in getting drills into the ground. I'm all in favour of this, but the point remains that if these changes had not been made, NG would still be more expensive than coal.
As to nuclear, it's not even close. The cost of nuclear power was only ever competitive due to *MASSIVE* development funds and spin-offs from the nuclear bomb industry. As the thorium crowd is fond of pointing out, the only reason we use uranium is that its what the bombs were using (as a feedstock, if nothing else). That Chernobyl was an adapted bomb-supply device illustrates this point.
But more to the point, the cost of nuclear has been rising almost continually since the 1960s. It's currently about twice what it used to be. Most of this is due to increased safety requirements, things like remote operating rooms, redundant control wiring, fireproofing, etc. The industry has been trying to fight back by introducing newer designs like the AP1000, but these have seen limited results to date.
To put numbers to the problem, nuclear power currently provides about 53% of Ontario's power, but the reactors are aging out. Plans to add a replacement came in so expensive that they simply gave up (CAPEX was *at least* 8.25 $/Wp). Instead, they are now planning a massive refurb of the Darlington plants. They haven't even started, and they're already $300 million over budget. Ignoring that, the original estimates put the refurb at about 8.3 cents/kWh. That's for a plant where the CAPEX is already paid down!
A MIT report from 2009 calculated the rise in construction costs at *15% per year* during the 2000s, a general figure from industry as a whole. As a result, the power industry has turned to smaller systems that are less capital intensive. The "credit crunch" didn't help either. The same report still said nuclear would be cheaper, but only because they applied a CO2 disposal cost that made it so. Even then, they assumed a 2007 CAPEX at $4, the overnight rate, while the industry is seeing real rates at $8 and over (that florida plant was $11/Wp). At these rates, nuclear is on the order of 6 to 8 cents/kWh *just for the mortgage payments*.
For comparison, conventional hydro is 1 to 3 cents, NG plants about 5 to 6, modern coal plants about the same, and wind about the same too. These numbers are typical, which is why you're seeing nuclear plants being abandoned all across north america, they simply do not compete with modern systems.
As to wind and PV, again, you're just wrong. Wind systems are currently going in for about $1/Wp, which is about the same as an NG turbine. For comparison, even coal plants cost more, about $2/Wp. As a result, wind power is between 5.5 and 6.5 cents/kWh in the US, making it the second fastest growing power source. As to PV, CAPEX is currently 1.80 $/Wp in the US for industrial systems, which makes the power about 10 cents. That's more expensive than base load from the other sources mentioned here, but fairly competitive with peaker systems. More importantly, PV efficiently scales from about 200W to 2GW, something no other power source we have is able to do (hyrdo comes close, but small hydro is even less reliable than PV).
And these last two are in spite of receiving pennies on the dollar in terms of support that the other sources get. Yes, there are incentives, but in the grand scheme of things, they're *tiny*. Yet they are already outcompeting most other power sources, which is why they are the fastest growing power sources world wide.
Nuclear is dead. You can tilt at that windmill all your want, but the facts are plainly evident. There is exactly one new reactor site going in in the US at this time. All other plans to build new plants are either cancelled or on infinite hold. Plants are going out of service faster than they go in. There is no sign that this is going to change.