Jack Devanney (@jackdevanney)

David, Two points: a) The dollar figures in this piece are 2024 dollars. Thanks in large part to the recent inflation a 2020 dollar was 1.8 times as valuable as a 2024 dollar. Your 2.4 cents in 2000 USD is about 4.3 cents in 2024 USD. b) More fundamentally, I'm pretty sure the price you are quoting was the marginal cost for an already fully depreciated NPP. In a rational world, about 75% of a nukes fully built up cost is CAPEX , the rest is OPEX and fuel. Figure 4 in the piece What is Nuclear's Should Cost shows to get down in the 3 cents/kWh range all in cost we need an overnight CAPEX below $2000/KW, low interest, and reasonable build times. Warning the Figure 4 dollars are 2020 dollars. In a rational world, nuclear's marginal cost wouldbe far below 2.4 cents/kWh, more like 0.7 cents. But ALARA/INPO pushed the marginal costs for a fully depreciated plant up to the point where even such a plant could not compete with gas at about 3 cents/kWh.