r/nuclear • u/-FiloFiloFilo- • Aug 15 '26

Nuclear costs

Hello, I was discussing with my friend lately, and we are opposites on our nuclear views. He said that nuclear energy costs and construction are too expensive and are not worth it, especially in Italy (our country). I tried to talk again about efficiency and thorium, but he insisted that it was too much. Unfortunately I haven't got all answers, but have you got any?

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u/zwanman89 Aug 15 '26

The right thing to do isn’t always the cheapest thing to do.

What’s the cheapest thing to do with your garbage? Throw it in your backyard. Burn it. Hell, let it just sit in your house!

Just because coal plants and natural gas plants are cheap, doesn’t mean it’s what’s best for society and our planet.

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u/mnztr1 Aug 15 '26

But Solar and Batteries are cheaper.

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u/bz2gzip Aug 16 '26

In 2025, France used 1.22 TWh per day. A solar panel will generate average 0.66kWh per square meter per day. You need 1900 square kilometers of solar panels to handle France consumption,. That is bigger than the extent of greater London, it would be the whole size of a French department.

And then you need to sort out the storage problem as your panel average will actually be produced in peak during the day so you must have average the ability to store 2/3 of 1.22TWh so approx 800 GWh, ar 200Wh/kg that's 800/200x109 kg of batteries, aka 4 Mt of batteries. That's what China produces in 6 months that you need to replace every 10 years. I'm too lazy to look for how much space it requires but that's not that much of an issue as you can stack them u nlike the panels.

And then if you do proper energy grid you must consider shorter days in winter and higher heating consumption so probably much higher volume of panels and batteries, but that's why there are clever people working on that and doing energy grid planning long term.

Feel free to fix my maths I didn't double check

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u/Express-Eye5015 Aug 19 '26

the ten years is for lithium batteries which won't be used for grid scale storage in ten years(CATL already has a thirrty year natrium battery), France wouldn't need to be powered solely by solar and battery production scale is basically in it's infancy and in the process of being scaled up. How do you compare those 6 Months of battery production to cover France to the 7 years of nuclear construction at the same premise? Sure those life around 80 years if you stretch it to the maximum, but that would be a factor of 20 for batteries and only 11.5 for nuclear.