You need to include the cost of battery storage to wind and solar to get a true apples to apples comparison. Comparing the cost of unreliable energy with reliable energy is like comparing the price of a high risk bond with a risk-free bond. People expect energy to be available, and if it's intermittent, they will need to buy batteries.
The reality is that we now work and already have technologies that increase solar efficiency (and some really clean solar collections) coming to market within next 5 years. Thats not enough to construct even one plant. As well in field of batteries there's some extremeley interesting stuff coming to market. Batteries that can have 10 time more recharge cycles are coming. Same with lithium replacement. Prototypes and ready ones are already being tested with multiple different materials.
650 billions dollars as for now to clean up... What about costs of keeping that stuff safe for next 50 years? What about costs for next 300 years? I dont want grandkids of my grandkids to pay for that. You can buy a lot of powerwalls for that. Thats why tesla got contracts to reduce tensions on electrical grid in california.
Batteries are coming but the cost of batteries can't just be ignored in the calculation of cost efficiency of solar and then waved away with "batteries are coming". Battery cost is the single largest cost of any solar or wind installation in order to compare it to reliable power. Solar and wind could be free, and still they wouldn't be cost effective with nuclear because of battery costs.
Ignoring that is a recipe for sky high prices and rolling blackouts, as well as the widespread abandonment of the entire enterprise. Those costs need to be factored in and then nuclear starts looking much, much better. It's not just solar not working at night -- even a cloudy day can result in 80% losses for solar. And wind is very intermittent.
The costs of keeping nuclear waste safe for 50 years is trivial compared to the costs of going through hundreds of billions of batteries and then recycling them over the same period of time, not to mention what to do with trillions of solar panels after they end their useful life, which is much shorter than 50 years. Solar and wind have a much bigger and more expensive waste problem, especially when you realize you need to recycle the batteries too.
https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=304070... and... Its just one of many options. Thank you :) you did compare with 50 years, what abkut 150? 300? 500? 1000? Or we dont think about shit thats beyond our lifetime? You dont want to leave nice clean planet for your kids? Or for kids of other people/in your familly? We need to think beyond our lifetime. Keeping up and fixing nuclear plants is extremely huge cost and needs to be done constantly. And the waste needs to be paid for for 100,000 years. Not for 50.
> And the waste needs to be paid for for 100,000 years.
No, it only needs to be protected until the radioactivity is the same as background level, or whatever comes from a banana (which is much higher than background level but still safe).
Seriously the amount of radioactive waste produced is extremely small and dealing with it may be a political problem because people are irrationally terrified, but it's not a technical or financial problem. Dig a hole, put the waste in, and cover it up. It's not some lighter than air stuff that will bubble out of the hole, form a monster, and then ravage the earth.
Now do the same for recycling many billions of tons of batteries and solar panels each year, which are made of lead, which is a known toxin and never stops being a toxin.
Solar, wind, and battery waste is a much harder and much more expensive problem to deal with -- one that we don't have any practical solutions for at the moment.
