7. Are nuclear power plants expensive to build?

However, when looking at cost, it’s important to consider the lifetime costs of electricity production using levelized cost of energy or LCOE. To do this, you divide the initial cost of construction and implementation by the lifetime electricity generation. When you take into consideration that most nuclear power plants will produce electricity for 30 to 60 years and have a high capacity factor (i.e., run at full power the majority of the time), the actual lifetime costs of nuclear energy is low.