But these days interest rates are pretty low and I wonder how much this has affected the price of building new nuclear power plants.
But these days interest rates are pretty low and I wonder how much this has affected the price of building new nuclear power plants.
Agreed, the project hit some regulatory roadblocks, yet, this is a lot of money. The original cost bid was 18 billion already. Imagine how much solar/wind that would give you. And the costs for operation and waste storage are not even considered.
Also in this article: "The giant atomic project is expensive compared with U.K. wind, for example, where power from the latest offshore auction sold at less than half that from Hinkley" [...] "The additional costs will be borne by EDF [...], though they’re still set to receive 92.50 pounds for every megawatt-hour of power Hinkley generates -- more than double the current market price" [1]
This is a state-of-the-art reactor.
Nuclear is not the solution, particularly not the "cheapest", and particularly not green.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-25/edf-raise...
edit: forgot to cite source