Define "better." Personally, I think nuclear is too expensive to be a current solution. Let all the existing nuclear plants continue out their useful lives, and extend them as feasible, but constructing new nuclear plants is probably not worth the cost, even compared to solar + enough grid scale storage to cover multiple nights of demand even when days are cloudy.

Terrapower just got approval to build their $4 billion, 345-MW reactor. That's $11.6 million per MW.

NuScale canceled their 462 MW project in Utah when it became clear that the total cost was going to exceed $9 billion. That's $19.5 million per MW.

Solar plants are about $1 million per MW. Grid scale 4-hour batteries are about $750,000 per MW.

And the costs of solar/batteries keep dropping, while nuclear tends to increase in cost over time.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And the solar doesn't need nuclear industry staff, and doesn't need nuclear industry certified parts, and doesn't produce radioactive waste

Solar doesn't need to refuelled

[–] sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Solar needs active maintenance, including personnel of varying skills. All projects have ongoing costs, especially if they're gonna sit outside in the weather.

Better to just compare all costs, across the projected lifespan, and compare replacement costs if one source lasts longer than the other.

Doing all that tends to show that building new nuclear isn't cost competitive. Not big reactors, not small reactors.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago

My point is you don't need people with doctorate level education to run a solar plant, you occasionally need people with a technical level education to fix stuff, or near unskilled to clean

And if you need parts they don't come with the x hundred percent markup for certification that nuclear has