When costs are level per kilowatt over lifetime Nuclear is cheaper thanks to economies of scale
Citation needed.
Vogtle added 2000 megawatts of capacity for $35 billion over the past 15 years. That’s an up-front capital cost of $17,500 per watt. Even spread over a 75 year expected lifespan, we’re talking about $233 per watt per year, of capital costs alone.
Maintenance and operation (and oh, by the way, nuclear is one of the most labor intensive forms of energy generation, so you’ll have to look at 75 years of wage increases too) and interest and decommissioning will add to that.
So factoring everything in, estimates are that it will work out to be about $170/MWh, or $0.17 per kwh for generation (before accounting for transmission and reinvestment and profit for the for-profit operators). That’s just not cost competitive with anything else on the market.
Economies of scale is basically the opposite of the problem that 21st century nuclear has encountered, which is why the current push is to smaller reactors, not bigger.
There’s a place for extending nuclear power plant lifespans as long as they’ll go. There’s less of a place for building new nuclear.