I have doubts you’re going to be able to remove enough regulation to get nuclear near the same cost as storage backed renewables (which will continue to decline in cost each year even further).
Without storage, renewables are already close to or below 2 cents/kWh (unsubsidized). Can nuclear startups make generating units as fast as automated fabs can spit out solar panels?
A big argument I have heard in support of nuclear is that it is good for maintaining some amount of base load. As I understand this is particularly important in the current scenario of renewable energy without good storage, since we can't necessarily maintain our energy requirements with solely other clean (relatively speaking) forms of energy.
The race will be to see who can win the day: modular commodity nuclear, or utility scale battery storage (Flow batteries, lithium ion/polymer, etc).
Presumably, both get cheaper as you make more, but anyone can make batteries and ship them around the world with little notice. Tesla’s Hornsdale Power Reserve system was built in 90 days. I don’t know of any nuclear plants that get built faster than 10 years.
> I don’t know of any nuclear plants that get built faster than 10 years.
And the Brits are demonstrating just how woefully optimistic costs, build quality, and schedules can be even with that kind of protracted delivery expectation :
Without storage, renewables are already close to or below 2 cents/kWh (unsubsidized). Can nuclear startups make generating units as fast as automated fabs can spit out solar panels?