alt Hacker NewsNot OP - but dead as in "not financially viable to add new grid capacity". Had we gone all in on nuclear 40 or 50 years ago, that might be a different story but alas. You can buy so much more solar + storage than nuclear capacity now, and the former has definite timelines and almost zero construction risk. The latter bankrupts whichever companies touch it.
Vogtle 3/4 saw negative learning rates (the second was more expensive to build than the first) and came in a decade behind schedule at over $20,000/KW. Enormous solar + storage projects are coming online at more like $2,500/KW. Their levelized cost is less than half the comparable cost to a nuclear plant without all the risk.
Some numbers:
At current prices, to power the UK for 36 hours off battery storage, it would cost (according to Gemini) £150bn to £400bn for the batteries alone - that doesn't include purchasing land, wiring them up and so on, nor the cost of the wind farms and solar panels to feed the batteries. We don't/can't/won't do hydro pumped storage in the UK.
Sizewell C, our massively overpriced nuclear power station, comes in at about £100bn.
Rolls Royce SMR for Czechia at 0.5GW is about £3bn - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_SMR#Cost
The current dunkelflaute with no wind, and little sun, in Northern Europe has been 3 days, or 72 hours. This is a regular occurence.
The longest dunkelflaute was the winter of 1996/97, for 55 days.