Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University, citing his 2019 analysis he still stands by, serves as an expert witness for the environmental coalition opposing Palisades’ restart. Jacobson has testified that “a fixed amount of money spent on a new nuclear plant means much less power generation, a much longer wait for power, and a much greater emission rate than the same money spent on WWS [wind, water, and sunlight] technologies.”
Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, authored “Carbon-Free, Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy” in 2007. It was the first technical study on the feasibility of generating all U.S. energy from fossil fuel- and nuclear-free sources, including renewables such as wind and solar, combined with efficiency and storage.
Dr. Makhijani concluded then that, by the year 2030 (that is, within a quarter-century), fossil fuels and nuclear power could be phased out of the U.S. economy, and replaced with carbon-free and nuclear-free alternatives, for the same percentage of our gross domestic product currently devoted to those dirty, dangerous, and expensive energy sources. This could be accomplished with no more carbon-free, nucledar-free technological breakthroughs required.
There is really no reliable way to calculate the long-term costs for solar and wind because production is dependent on international supply chains and international energy prices. Even fossil fuels can prove pricier than expected over time due to supply shocks (like what Germany experienced in 2022-today).
Often the transmission lines and opportunity cost of so much land usage isn’t included in the LCOE of renewable. You also can’t run certain important industries on unreliable energy sources like solar and wind. Even being initially long to build and pricey, nuclear is the best investment to ensure uninterrupted, invariable baseload power for a very long time.
The US builds plants rather idiosyncratically, instead of using a standardized cookie-cutter model, and the sector is overregulated. In Japan and China, nuclear plants take only a few months longer than gas-powered plants to be up and running. Just north of the US, Ontario province in Canada successfully commissioned 20 CANDU plants in 22 years. They have been on schedule with all their refurbishments too.
And let’s not forget that renewable need to be renewed. They rely on smooth international production and supply chains. Good luck getting cheap solar panels if the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait become a free fire zone.
If we want to talk about the real problem with nuclear energy, the key issue is nuclear weapon proliferation, which is enormously underplayed even in serious scholarship on civilian nuclear programs, but it’s not a pressing concern when it comes to nations who have nuclear weapons or operate under a nuclear umbrella.
There are quite a few reactor designs that can operate on non-weapons-grade stuff and even can use spent fuel from other reactors.
Saying “it’s overregulated” in the US is a bit dangerous. Other countries do seem to do better at it though.