What's the problem with redoing it every few decades when you can deploy new more efficient technology, make profit on your investment and it is cheaper for the consumers?
You do know that the full cost including investment for renewables with a 10-20 year ROI are about equal to what running paid off nuclear plant costs? Excluding the accident insurance [1] and decommissioning costs for nuclear power.
A 90 year nuclear project compared to investing every 20 years in more efficient renewables mean:
Assume a 20% ROI, which is very low but easy to calculate.
Year 0: 100% in renewables
Year 20: You have 120% to reinvest. You can now build 120% of renewables plus whatever efficiency gains we had in the last 20 years.
Year 40: you have you have 144% of the original investment to deploy + 40 years of efficiency gains.
Year 60: you have 173% of the original investment to deploy + 60 years of efficiency gains.
Year 80: you have 207% of the original investment to deploy + 60 years of efficiency gains
This is why building nuclear power with a 90 year pay off time is pure idiocy. Building renewables with a short pay off time led to us to have double the energy in 80 years time while also being able to deploy 80 years more modern technology.
Maybe you should look up how compound interest works? [2]
Why you do you keep suggesting the scenario where we simply lose money? Because you entwined your identity with a power source and are using you lack of understanding of economics to try justify it?
Private investors are all over renewables?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...
[2]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/compoundinterest.asp
> Assume a 20% ROI, which is very low but easy to calculate.
20% net ROI sounds a bit high for renewables from 20 years ago, do you have any source?
> You do know that the full cost including investment for renewables with a 10-20 year ROI are about equal to what running paid off nuclear plant costs
Source? Cost of electricity in France being lower than Germany seems to imply otherwise. And that's ignoring the need for storage in a fully renewable grid.
> Private investors are all over renewables?
Exactly, private investors are all over short-term profitable ventures. They won't be all over something which requires multiple decades to become profitable.
It doesn't really matter what happened 20 years ago. What matters is how we spend our money today.
See: https://imgur.com/a/187i2CO
From: https://www.lazard.com/media/gjyffoqd/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...
The ARENH for French nuclear is now at €70/MWh. Horrifically expensive.
The wholesale electricity costs in Germany and France are about equal. Germany has higher taxes on private consumers electricity to promote efficiency gains.
> Exactly, private investors are all over short-term profitable ventures. They won't be all over something which requires multiple decades to become profitable.
Which is an admission that nuclear power is only economical when you do bad math.
> See: https://imgur.com/a/187i2CO
Nuclear at $32 seems pretty cheap, and none of the + storage options come anywhere close. What am I missing?
>>Which is an admission that nuclear power is only economical when you do bad math.
That's like saying that any long term infrastructure is only possible with bad math...
The storage costs only kick in when they supply the grid.
So for 4 hours of storage you have 20 hours of the pure renewable cost supplying the grid and charging the storage and 4 hours with storage filling in the gaps.
That is also the marginal cost of nuclear power. What Hinkley Point C is expected to end up at after running for 35 years. So sometime 2065.
Before that Hinkley Point C is costing the consumers ~$180/MWh which are energy crisis costs.
> That's like saying that any long term infrastructure is only possible with bad math...
Not at all. The difference with nuclear power is that we have viable alternatives which do not need bad math financing the subsidies to get built.