[ViewTrick1002]

In Ontario they now want to double the electricity price to 15 cents kWh to finance refurbs and ”SMR” new builds.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/ontario-utility-wants-to-double-...

New built nuclear power simply does not make any sense anymore given the costs and timelines involved.

[Moldoteck]

You need to read precisely what's happening. Ontario wants to front finance all refurbs and SMRs instead of spreading the financing over years like it's usually done.

BWRX is expensive for sure. It'll cost more per GW than the failed french FLA3 or Vogtle. To me this seems a mistake considering Canada had Candus, an own authentic design that doesn't rely on enriched fuel and they did some very serious refurbs recently on time and on budget. On the other hand, bwrx is american tech and needs enriched fuel and SMRs will always have worse economics than large units, there's a reason humanity scales everything up, be it nuclear, be it wind turbines or solar fields

Again. Refurbs are extremely cheap. At 1-3bn/unit you get 1GW of firm power. That would be vastly cheaper vs deploying say solar, that would have the same TWh/y averaged even with China's costs. And this doesn't even account for firming.

Heck, even Barakah built as new by Korea is competitive vs renewables in the west. And it's understandable considering they spent per unit 1/3 of what FLA3 did cost... In under half of the time

The question is rather why they want front financing. But I have some clues considering who is their current head of govt

[ZeroGravitas]

> The question is rather why they want front financing. But I have some clues considering who is their current head of govt

I assumed it was, like the UK, because it let them avoid committing to a specific price like all the other competing technologies so they could raise the price later once the project was too far along to cancel.

[natmaka]

> even Barakah built as new by Korea is competitive

You bet it does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korean_nuclear_scandal