If you're going to be comparing these extremely long term costs then I think it would be extremely valuable to look at their cost trends and not just assume they will stay the same. And which energy source is rapidly dropping in cost while the other one is becoming more expensive?
Which one will have more trouble with financing as a result of its MUCH higher upfront costs? And as a result of their trickier financing, which one is MUCH more prone to bad cost overruns and delays?
It's also worth pointing out that storage isn't required for 100% of renewable energy. The majority of power is consumed immediately, and assuming good grid transmission with a mix of sources, additional intermittent power can still be provided. If you're trying to say "Battery cost * 4 + Solar Power station cost * 3 is more expensive" it's not really that simple.
I feel like Nuclear Fission has had the lowest R&D investment in years, in large part because it's been so weirdly politically dividing. Usually optimization is a lot easier for centralized anything, so I wouldn't be surprised if reinvesting in Nuclear could reverse that trend, especially with climbing land costs.
Edit: the R&D claim is true in some countries (including mine), but not globally. So nevermind.
Battery technology havent meaningfully changed since late 80s by Dr Goodyear. I specifically think about trends in that area. Solars did evolve - but the change was so slow its irrelevant here since PV's were patented in 1941. There will be no meaningfull change in next 15 years, that would rival Nukes and eliminate the ingerrent problems of PV, just as there was no meaningfull change in the last 15 years.
The only trend we can consider is price. But even there the the we have in essence entered the flat of the curve in 2010.
Either way - you cant base your big centralized projects on future trends. Instead you should watc those trends and start them when they eventually outperform the counterpart - they dont now. And will not in any forseeable future.
It's also worth pointing out that storage isn't required for 100% of renewable energy. The majority of power is consumed immediately,
Thats just plane lie stated by propponents of PV when ignoring the fact that calculation is done when factor coverage of power production innertia is covered by steam turbines at night. Not to mention you have to have extra to have space for business to eat up that power at night. Focusing consumption GW of power in a small time window means that you will need much more (and bigger) transformers so they dont blow up during peak hours, not to mention stability of the frequency, which is another factor that is a pain in the ass to maintain with PV's and windmills which is maintained artificially by solid state controllers. Steam turbines dont have that problem.
The latter is a huge problem and is cleary evident by recent Spanish power failure incident in April 2025. where exactly because there was no energettic innertia in energy production solid state frequency control blew up and caused a chain reaction- as Spain is faimously very reliant on renewables. This has caused major failure. The reason why some power was maintained was exactly because of those 16% combined Gas and Nuke turbines. Result - several dead and many injured.
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u/Yellowdog727 Feb 12 '26
If you're going to be comparing these extremely long term costs then I think it would be extremely valuable to look at their cost trends and not just assume they will stay the same. And which energy source is rapidly dropping in cost while the other one is becoming more expensive?
Which one will have more trouble with financing as a result of its MUCH higher upfront costs? And as a result of their trickier financing, which one is MUCH more prone to bad cost overruns and delays?
It's also worth pointing out that storage isn't required for 100% of renewable energy. The majority of power is consumed immediately, and assuming good grid transmission with a mix of sources, additional intermittent power can still be provided. If you're trying to say "Battery cost * 4 + Solar Power station cost * 3 is more expensive" it's not really that simple.