First, nuclear power is expensive compared to the cheapest forms of renewable energy and is even outcompeted by other “conventional” generation sources [...] The consequence of the current price tag of nuclear power is that in competitive electricity markets it often just can’t compete with cheaper forms of generation.
This estimate does not seem to include capacity factors or cost of required energy storage, assuming I read it correctly. Do you have an estimate that does?
Unfortunately, we didn’t find a good source for that. However, given that fossils usually don’t need storage and solar+batteries are dropping exponentially in price, we think both options should be cheaper. But good estimates of that would be very welcome.
Yes, this could be simplified. That being said, I get numerical stability issues if I don’t include the year offset; it’s easier to just include said offset.
Admittedly, this is a 2-parameter fit not a 3-parameter fit; I don’t know offhand of a good alternative third parameter to add to the fit to make it more of an apples-to-apples comparison.
As an aside, people fitting exponential trends without including an offset term and then naively extrapolating, when exponential trends with offset terms fit significantly better and don’t result in absurd conclusions, is a bit of a pet peeve of mine.
This estimate does not seem to include capacity factors or cost of required energy storage, assuming I read it correctly. Do you have an estimate that does?
Paul Christiano made some estimates here.
Unfortunately, we didn’t find a good source for that. However, given that fossils usually don’t need storage and solar+batteries are dropping exponentially in price, we think both options should be cheaper. But good estimates of that would be very welcome.
Pulling the data from this chart from your source:
...and fitting[1] an exponential trend with offset[2], I get:
(Pardon the very rough chart.)
This appears to be a fairly good fit[3], and results in the following trend/formula:
$/MWh=319.67∗e−0.43796∗(year−2009)+37.706[4]
This is an exponentially-decreasing trend… but towards a decidedly positive horizontal asymptote.
This essentially indicates that we will get minimal future scaling, if any. $37.71/MWh is already within the given range.
For reference, here’s what the best fit looks like if you try to force a zero asymptote:
$/MWh=336.02∗e−0.28833∗(year−2009)
This is fairly obviously a significantly worse fit[5].
Why do you believe that solar has an asymptote towards zero cost?[6]
Absolutely, which is one of the reasons why in the absence of wanting clean energy people tend to lean towards fossil fuels.
Nonlinear least squares.
I’m treating the high and low as two different data points for each year, which isn’t quite right, but meh.
Admittedly, just from eyeballing it.
Yes, this could be simplified. That being said, I get numerical stability issues if I don’t include the year offset; it’s easier to just include said offset.
Admittedly, this is a 2-parameter fit not a 3-parameter fit; I don’t know offhand of a good alternative third parameter to add to the fit to make it more of an apples-to-apples comparison.
As an aside, people fitting exponential trends without including an offset term and then naively extrapolating, when exponential trends with offset terms fit significantly better and don’t result in absurd conclusions, is a bit of a pet peeve of mine.
See below- I made some estimations based on literature and analyzed a current large scale project.
cheers,
Danny