That was indeed in 2004 – long before nuclear stopped being cost-competitive with renewable energies.
Oh, and renewables are also faster to deploy than nuclear plants (which take years to build).
Oh, and renewables are also faster to deploy than nuclear plants (which take years to build).
As renewables build out, the prospects for nuclear will only get worse. At this point, it's a delaying action by utilities to try to get their existing reactors profitable enough to keep from shutting them down. New reactors are not close to making economic sense, and the effective CO2 taxes that would be needed to make them so would be very large.
Think carefully about the economics. Suppose we want to use nuclear to cover the (say) 20% of the time renewables + short term storage might not cover. Nuclear's cost of power would be greatly inflated over what it would be if it were baseload. The effective CO2 tax to make that cheaper than (say) gas turbines burning natural gas would be outrageous, over $1000/ton. A vast array of CO2-reducing changes would occur before that. It would also likely be cheaper to use renewable hydrogen (from electrolysis, stored underground) in gas turbines for that last bit. The round trip efficiency would be lousy, but it would still be cheaper than using nuclear there.
View it another way: if we have really cheap power most of the time, insisting we use nuclear then, just so nuclear would be available in that other 20%, would incur a huge opportunity cost. That cost should properly be assigned to the place nuclear is being depended on (that 20%).
Dispatchable demand is also a big possibility, especially if it can exploit the times the curtailed output is almost free.
There was a study in Minnesota that solar and wind could get to 70% of the market there before storage would make sense. The crossover point depends on economic details.
I still would like an answer from you on EROI
Heat is difficult to transport any great distance, and the reactors we have today produce only moderate grade heat, which isn't very valuable. And if PV becomes a bit cheaper, then the cost per joule of its power will become comparable to the cost per thermal joule of natural gas. In that situation, consumers will shift to resistive heat, and be able to bank that heat in large thermal stores. This will provide enormous cheap storage capacity for that solar energy.
EROI of renewables is just fine, some horribly flawed claims to the opposite notwithstanding. In particular, the EROI of PV was estimated to be about 8 in Europe -- but that assumes one puts the solar-powered PV factories IN EUROPE, rather than in a location with more sun. The real issue there is that energy-intensive industry will flee Europe in a solar-powered world.
Australia (Hornsdale) enjoys some of the highest electricity costs in the world despite being a major coal producer and using coal for 75% of their electricity.