Electricity Prices and Percentage of Energy Provided by Nuclear Energy in US States.
As an advocate of nuclear energy, which I regard as the only acceptable form of primary energy, despite much criticism over the years here and elsewhere of this position, I am often told that nuclear energy is "too expensive." My retort generally consists of the remark that the claimant is, in effect, announcing that the destruction of the planetary atmosphere is not "too expensive." This position reflects and is dependent upon my contention - which I can and sometimes do back up with something called "data" - that so called "renewable energy" has, at a cost of trillions of dollars in an atmosphere of wild cheering, not done a damned thing to even slow the acceleration of the rate of rises in the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. (The second derivative is positive.)
My claim obviously includes the external cost of electricity, that is the cost of environmental and health effects that the generation of electricity involves. My bourgeois critics, who care to my mind only about money, are interested only in the internal cost of electricity, that is the bill that comes by email, mail or logging in to a website, that is what one pays to the power supplier.
Below is some graphic data to reflect the only thing about which my critics care, what they pay in money for electricity.
The first of these graphics is from the Visual Capitalist:
Mapped: The Average Cost of Electricity by U.S. State
The second, from 2020, is from the EIA, the US Energy Information Agency:
Twelve U.S. states generate more than 30% of their electricity from nuclear power
The second refers to 2019 data, which was before the two new Vogtle nuclear reactors in Georgia came on line, reactors that produced screams of dubious agony from bourgeois antinukes, who I often describe as "arsonists complaining about forest fires" since many of them have spent their lives caterwauling to destroy the nuclear manufacturing infrastructure that once, in this country, built more than 100 nuclear reactors - the bulk of which still operate - in a period of about 25 years, while producing the lowest cost electricity in the industrial world.
The more recent data for electricity production by source, current to the most recent month of 2025 can be found here:
Net Generation by State by Type of Producer by Energy Source (2001-2025). It is downloaded as an Excel Sheet and includes the operating Vogtle reactors about which penny pinches complain vociferously. (The reactors are likely to be operable until the 22nd century approaches, decades after every solar cell and wind turbine on the planet will be landfill. The reactors are gifts to future generations, as opposed to liabilities.)
In 2025, total generation in Georgia was 13,353,590 MWh, of which 4,690,002 MWh was generated by nuclear power. This means that Georgia has joined those states with greater than 30% nuclear energy, 35.12% nuclear to be more exacting.
In "percent talk" according to the Visual Capitalist, the cost of electricity in Georgia is 47.2% the cost of electricity in that wind and solar gas dependent nirvana, California.
The cost of redundancy, which to my mind explains electricity prices in California, is a hidden cost of so called "renewable energy." In California, as is the case elsewhere, redundancy, even redundancy using dubiously "green" batteries (or worse) hydrogen, implies an environmental cost, an external cost, only one of which is involves the depletion of resources like cobalt and copper, but also climate cost, because the reality is that most back up for wind and solar junk is dangerous fossil fuels, in California, largely dangerous natural gas.
It can be shown, again by appeal to data, that on a 12 acre footprint, the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California produces more electricity than all of the wind turbines therein, spread well over a thousand square miles of industrial parks that once were pristine (and exceedingly beautiful - if you've ever been there) wilderness.
Have a nice evening.