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Douglas_Knight comments on Open thread, Feb. 16 - Feb. 22, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Considering options for reducing environmental impact of energy, it seems it would be both more economical and more environmentally sound for a large group of people to get together and invest in a nuclear power plant than for each of them to individually install solar panels on their roofs. Taking the USA as an example, the typical home consumes about 15,000 kWh/year and an average home solar installation providing this power would have a total cost of $30,000, or about $12,000 after city rebates and tax credits. It would provide power for about 20 years without extensive maintenance. If a million people got together and paid $5000 each, however, they could fund a full-size nuclear power plant and get the same amount of power for 60 years (they would actually get about 18,000 kWh/year, and the excess capacity could be sold off to fund power plant maintenance).
A number of small towns in North Carolina invested in nuclear plants a few decades ago. They regretted it and have recently been getting out of the deal.
This thing? The key sentence seems to be
That agrees with my previous impression, which is that nuclear power is currently too expensive to be viable without government subsidies. But I guess passive_fist is comparing nuclear against solar power, rather than against the cheapest available power, so nuclear could still be the better choice between the two.