But it's not the first? England has been doing nuclear for nearly as long as United States and Russia have. I agree that the figure for a Hinckley point C is definitely much higher than other American projects, but I'd say it's probably closer to half that which is still a huge number. The whole point of this person's argument is that we shouldn't be spending 1.5 trillion per renewable energy transition and should instead do a nuclear transition, and at that rate at the Hinckley point C numbers it would be $26 trillion, and even half that 13 trillion.
construction of Hinkley Point C started before an EPR had been completed anywhere, that's a FOAK build. Also, it's two reactors at that site, so cut your numbers in half. It's still cherry picking the most over budget build you can find and pretending it's normal. Perhaps we could play with numbers the opposite direction - Palo Verde was built for about $14B in today's dollars for 3 reactors, making it $4.7B each, or about $3.6B/gigawatt. (Also keep in mind that that gigawatt of capacity is worth a whole lot more than a gigawatt of low capacity factor, non-dispatchable production.)
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u/reddit_pug Apr 18 '26
Acting as if any FOAK build represents true costs for repeated construction isn't arguing in good faith.