Generating electricity with nuclear energy is economically advantageous. This applies despite the high level of investment required in new nuclear power plants, which - heavily dependent on financing conditions and costs - lead to plant-related electricity generation costs (so-called LCEO, Levelised Cost of Electricity) that are competitive with or cheaper than the corresponding full costs of fossil-fuelled power plants, but more expensive than the generation costs of wind power and photovoltaic systems, which have become cheaper over time.

However, an exclusively plant- and project-related analysis is incomplete, especially when comparing controllable electricity generators such as nuclear power plants, gas-fired and coal-fired power plants on the one hand and supply-dependent volatile generators such as wind power and photovoltaic systems on the other. Due to their technical nature, these lead to additional system costs that are not considered at system level for individual plants, i.e. are nevertheless incurred by the community of electricity customers and must be borne by the latter.

These costs can be broken down into the costs of the generation profile, connection costs to the electricity grid, additional grid control costs and grid expansion costs. The costs of the generation profile include the backup costs and reflect the specific nature of electricity generation with wind and solar power, which often generate a large amount - too much - or very little - too little - electricity in a large geographical area at the same time and thus either significantly reduce their own profitability and that of all other generation plants or, in the case of a high level of expansion, also have to be switched off to a significant extent, or lead to high price peaks due to a shortage of electricity.