A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power
With a new projected cost of 25 billion USD the cost overruns of the Vogtle Plant are worse than I thought. There is a reason why nuclear is losing to natural gas and coal. It's too damn expensive and takes too long. If this money was instead spent on building more storage capacity we'd have solved our energy problems a long time ago and even if we started today we'd be done long before the nuclear plant is online.<p>The nuclear plant consists of two units each with 1200MW production capacity. Let's be pessimistic and assume that we need 24 hours of storage or roughly 57600MWh. A modern redox flow  or lithium ion battery can cost as little as $100 per kWh but Tesla's grid battery with 129MWh cost 66 million which is around $500 per kWh so we will use that.<p>Well it turns out 57600MWh * 500$/kWH is exactly 28.8 billion USD. No power grid on earth needs a 24 hour battery but even with this crazy assumption grid storage isn't significantly more expensive than nuclear power.