The capital costs per kilowatt of average power generation are surprisingly good for nuclear. I don't have time to look up the figures now (sorry) but last time I checked, wind was more expensive to build average capacity than nuclear, even when you compared the cost of <i>just</i> the wind turbines with the <i>complete</i> cost of nuke plants.<p>&#62; If you use a Brayton-cycle gas turbine for a nuclear reactor, for example, now heat exchange to the gas becomes the biggest issue. And even the most optimized gas peaker turbine plants cost $500/kw.<p>Heat exchange to the gas is an issue, but it's the sort of issue that nuclear reactor designers have a lot of experience solving. The Chinese pebble bed reactors, for example, are cooled with helium gas, and they don't seem to have much trouble with that.<p>As for the cost of the turbines themselves, in general Brayton-cycle gas turbines are cheaper than steam turbines, and supercritical CO2 gas turbines are remarkably small, so they'll probably be cheaper than the conventional ones. Even conventional gas turbines would work, though.<p>Of course, when competing with natural gas burners, the fuel cost is a huge issue. Natural gas fuel costs are vastly higher than those of nuclear plants (per kilowatt-hour, of course).<p>I'm not sure I answered what you were saying, but I hope I covered something interesting.