Globally, new nuclear power stations are becoming one of the lowest cost sources of energy

Figure 1: Global LCOE from IEA Projected Costs of Generating Electricity, 2015 Edition

I was skeptical when I first saw the nuclear data (encompassing 11 new nuclear power stations). Being a joint venture between the IEA and the NEI, I wanted to check for pronuclear bias. And of course, any projection into the future is suspect but this one only went out to 2020, which is just three years away. So, I went looking for verification. I crosschecked the above values for the energy sources listed with those found by other sources, such as the EIA (not to be confused with the IEA) and found that they were reasonably consistent.

I then crosschecked the LCOE values for other countries from different sources and found them to also be similar in value.

Turns out that the cost to build nuclear power varies greatly from country to country. But when you look at the global range, average, and median LCOE (levelized cost of energy) for the new nuclear power stations built in the last five or so years, they're amazingly competitive. Hydro and coal are still shown to be the cheapest source at the 7% discount rate shown in Figure 1, but because hydro can't, and in my opinion, shouldn't scale up appreciably in the last remaining river ecosystems in the last biodiverse regions of the planet, I'm hoping its low cost does not lead to more of it. The study assumed a $30/tonne carbon penalty which makes coal look more expensive than it actually is ...because there is no global $30/tonne carbon penalty. The study also provided results for 3%, 5%, and 10% discount rates. 

Case in point; a South Korean company will bring on line a 1,400 MW reactor, Barakah 1, (the first of the four being built in series for the United Arab Emirates) this year after starting construction in July of 2012. All four are ahead of schedule for completion by 2020, which is an average of one nuclear reactor every two years. Two years is the same time frame used by Lazards to calculate the LCOE (levelized cost of energy) for wind and solar. The LCOE for these Korean reactors being built in the UAE is in the lower portion of the nuclear range in Figure 1.

One of the main costs of nuclear is the interest being paid on loans while it is being built (number of years without any income to start paying off debt). All else being equal, the faster you can build one, the cheaper it is. South Korea is proof that nuclear power stations can be built very rapidly and cost effectively once a company has acquired the necessary level of  engineering and manufacturing expertise (along with its suppliers).

From an article in The Economist regarding the Barakah nuclear power station: