That's the cost of around 20 GW in wind turbines btw.
this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2026
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20GW of wind turbines would produce around 44TWh of intermittent electricity over a year, and around 880 TWh of electricity over their lifetime before needing to be replaced. (Around 20 years)
3.2GW of nuclear (the Hinkley Point C reactor) would produce 22TWh of baseload electricity in a year and around 1320 TWh over there lifetime of the reactor.
It really doesn't make sense to compare build costs here. Nuclear uses fuel and that costs money. And you need to take the costs of dismantling the reactor after usage into your calculations. Wind turbines are much easier to recycle and you do not need to store the used wind for millenia
A nuthead will still tell you that wind is no equivalent because of missing winds.
You might have to factor PV and batteries in to make a even better point.
Makes you think how any of the old plants were ever built. Is it just mismanagement and corruption?
Nuclear reactors, despite being one of the safest forms of energy acquisition, have some of the strictest safety standards which drives up cost significantly.
I live not that far away from a (now decommissioned) nuclear power station, and from what I keep hearing from old people who lived through the time of its construction, there was a lot of lenience and looking the other way involved. For instance, (A very persistent) Rumor has it, that many houses built in the nearest town around that time, had their foundation, cellar walls, and floors poured with the heavy anti-radiation concrete intended for the power station, because quite a number of the concrete trucks destined for the containment building (which is made of an awful lot of concrete) did conveniently take a wrong turn and ended up at the wrong construction site for some odd reason. (Maybe the drivers getting a case of beer for every detour they took might have been a factor)
Let's see if those nuclear fanboys are showing up in this thread
I am a nuclear fanboy, because it is a clean and safe form of energy. But the EPR costs and building time are a tragedy for the entire sector and I have no problem in admitting that. But there are good third generation reactor like the hitachi abwr that are fast to build (less the 48 months) and relatively cheap (less than 5 billions).
The real problem is the amount of safety changes required to gen3 design after Fukushima (that was a gen2 reactor that suffered the worst earthquake and tsunami ever in the history of Japan and caused maybe a 1 single death after 4 years, just to put things in prospective).
But this is a problem in general for European nuclear. An APR-1400 costs 4.5 billion in Korea and 9 billions in Europe.
I'm fairly convinced nuclear fanboys on reddit are either paid astroturfers or LLM bots paid for by the oil and gas industry to derail renewables
Or we have functioning brains and know that due to the inability of renewables to supply a guaranteed base load 24/7/365 that energy has to come from a mix of options which includes nuclear.
They are on lemmy too.
Usually they prefer other platforms.
Nah, they are here as well and in numbers.
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If only someone could have foreseen this..
Surprising absolutely nobody...
Nononono, nuclear power is cheap and safe!
Also, nuclear plants can't explode!
How many people have died from nuclear plant accidents? We've had Three Mile Island, Chernyobl and Fukushima.
Three Mile Island: No deaths or injuries.
Chernyobl: 30 during the incident, by 2008 another 19 who received a dose high enough to suffer acute radiation sydrome although 7 of those had nothing to do with cancer. Another 15 from thyroid cancer due to milk contamination.
Fukushima: 1 death
Dumb ass. The radiation cloud that went over Europe was so bad whole harvests had to be destroyed.
And don't forget the simple matter of sourcing, enriching, using, possibly reprocessing, storing, and then disposing. Simples!
No, you don't understand. Uran and the tech to enrich and process it is widely available and they all are totally not dependent on Russia. Why so many still import from Russia then and fight sanctions year after year, you ask? Well... it's because... Look! There! A squirrel!
A squirrel!!? Where???!
Just dig a big hole. Problem solved.
My bad, I keep forgetting!! Thank you.
Finland and Olkiluoto smiles sympathetically and asks "first time?"
No it is not first time, not for UK, and not for the company EDF building it. They have working plants in France, but the latest of those were delayed too.
So not being the first time is no guarantee. You can have delays on similar kinds of projects many times.
I'm sorry, but don't find your schadenfreude is funny, considering this is a crucial part for UK to reduce CO2.
It's a very stupid way to reduce CO2 and they knew this when they started it.
In hindsight absolutely, but had it worked as planned, it was probably OK.
AFAIK there have been calculations that show Wind turbines would have been better.
Still it would obviously be better to have the plant working than not working.
It wasn't schadenfreude but a humorous way of showing sympathy.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/james-franco-first-time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Construction_delays
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Cost
That seems like a very inside joke.
The meme is extremely popular and well used. Olkiluoto is infamous for its delays and cost overruns, not just in Finland. I think at one point it was the most expensive building in the world. Or maybe it was the most expensive unfinished building. Or maybe the most expensive in Europe. Something like that.
Anyway, it's completely understandable that not everyone is aware of it.
Chinas reactors are build for 3.5 billion and are more or less on time.
I beg to differ. For a start the 3.5 billion figure is for the reactor alone. The whole project was calculated to cost 8 billion and of course it got more expensive.
Not to be pedantic, but Wikipedia shows US$7.5 billion for the entire plan that means 3.75 billion for each reactor that is more or less in line with what stated above. Still, 7.5 is much cheaper then 35.
Hinkley Point C is getting built by EDF (France) and China General Nuclear Power Group.