That is a 10GW solar array, at 22% capacity factor, so comparable to 2 VVER-1200 with a $12B contract like Rooppur, also the solar panels/batteries will last 20-25 years and the VVER 60.
The solar array and battery storage (all of which can be recycled today with existing recycling techniques) will be built on time, begin generating on time, and will generate no nuclear waste nor require fuel (besides sunlight) during its operating lifetime. It takes over 10 years to build a VVER-1200 reactor [1] (any fission reactor, really), if you can even get the reactor to the finish line.
[1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-First-VVER-1200-reacto...
Very important point, especially when we're considering costs.
What are the lifetime costs associated with storing the spent fuel? In practice, the only way to get reactors built, is for the public to 100% subsidize the long term consequences.
Steady on, that is a prediction for a project where data is light. The most comparable experience Australia has to this stuff is the Basslink which broke in 2015-16 and triggered a major energy crisis in Tasmania. And I think technically means that 50% of Australia's major undersea cables have been involved in an energy crisis.
This is a major project. It is not yet clear it will be delivered on time and on budget. It is very a very exciting project nonetheless.
Could this project be late? Of course. "Nuclear generator late and over budget"? No.
You've got no data this one. It has never been done before and even the people directly involved in the project can't be sure what surprises may or may not be in store as they push the boundaries of engineering practice.
> Could this project be late? Of course. "Nuclear generator late and over budget"? No.
This is bald-faced fabrication. I've never been confronted with quite so blatant a guess presented as a confident fact.
Even arguing that "nuclear projects can't be completed to plan" is in itself a bit much - planning standards can change. Bad planning isn't a property of nuclear electricity and good planning isn't a property of undersea cables.
This could easily be $50 billion down the drain and the project is still never completed. The risk is there.
I've reached out to an academic with numerous papers authored on the topic of HVDC submarine cables, and inquired as to the feasibility and challenges a 3700km HVDC submarine link might face (to provide a comparison to those faced by the construction of nuclear generators). I'll report back with my findings.
Nuclear, on the other hand, has a negative pricing curve. It gets increasingly more expensive with the passing of time. The only solution are completely new ideas, that to be fair are being researched and a lot of money is invested in them, but nothing has made it to scalable production yet.
So once you do that it goes from $1/watt to more like $4.50/watt. And it starts to look about the same as nuclear if in fact you can spend $5b and you get 1GW.
One nice thing about nuclear is that it's super steady 1GW 24/7 vs the solar needs to have battery storage too, and those batteries aren't free.
Given that solar's cost trend has been going ever cheaper and nuclear's has done pretty much the opposite, solar will probably win out long term.
I do agree that over the course of the next 10-50 years renewables + storage is likely to be cheaper.
What I'm not sure about is if "the grid" will be cheaper or if we'll end up seeing the renewables self-ownership spiral that causes folks to disconnect from the grid, driving prices up for everyone else on the grid, thus causing more people to disconnect, etc. When renewables are cheap and your house's usage is fairly well known (see years of smart meter historical data) then at some point it becomes economically feasible to be your own grid.
One interesting case study is Puerto Rico, which now has a lot of microgrids post-Maria because PREPA is not trusted and suffering from mismanagement.
Once the tax effectiveness of being able to depreciate the panels gets taken into account it's a pretty nice investment.