JAN 05

The problem with determining the true cost of nuclear power has always been 1) the radioactive waste and 2) keeping it from the bad guys.

Fact is, neither of these costs are known or properly accounted for in financial models.

Given the traditional environmentalist antipathy to nuclear power I take some of these stories with a pinch of salt.

However, because the world has not built a nuclear power plant for so long, nobody actually knows what they will cost.

Given that they promised us free electricity last time round, I take stories from that side with a big pinch of salt as well.

Here are some facts. Four advanced boiling water reactors have been built in Japan since 1996, each in less than 4 years and each within budget. Also, a recent engineering report calculates that on a per watt generated basis the amount of materials that go into constructing wind turbines (steel, aluminum, concrete, copper) is at least 10 times greater than an nuclear plant. Also, nuclear plants last at least 60 years, wind turbines last 20 years.

Energy is measured in kWh, Joules or calories. kW/h isn't related to anything (well... we could imagine it represents the speed of a nuclear power plant to power up)

Phil: sounds plausible. However this has only little to do with the costs that are discussed here. A nuclear power plant has huge runing costs, huge security costs, huge waste treatement costs. I you concern was about what to do with all the waste, in a wind turbing you can recycle almost every thing, in a nuclear powerplant almost nothing is recyclable as it is contaminated

Phil:
Wind turbines could be recycled. Where are you going to store nuclear waste?

Please do not comment until you know all involved... This seems to be a problem with people shooting from the hip everyday on things they are not clear on. First of all, prior nuclear plants were not built on a standard design, they were unique, the NRC regulations that came after TMI required nuclear plants to go through great retrofit for compliance, interest rates in the 70's were sky high. Just the few things mentioned cost plants to break their budgets to the point of turning the public and utilities away. With the new standard designs and modular construction, along with more reasonable interest rates, government assurances and realized regulatory guides, new plants will be easier on the wallet. I disagree that renewables are cheaper, renewables cannot even put a dent in the factor of power output a nuclear plant can acheive. Renewables cannot even be close to being consistent in power generation. We are talking apples to oranges here, if we want to make our long or short term goal of the increase of energy required we need to nuclear, coal and renewables for our needs, do not put all our eggs in one basket.

It's rather clear no one knows all the facts, and it will always remain so. That's exactly why nuclear power is so controversial.
Billions of dollars just to boil water (in order to turn a turbine to create electricity.) I'd think we'd have many more creative (and more sustainable) options toward producing electricity, and it seems Climate Progress may agree also. How much money have we've spent already just studying and lobbying for a resurgence in nuclear power? It didn't work before and the public is way too uncomfortable with the technology to make it work in the future.
What saddens me the most is how it's proven that the best money we can spend is toward making our lives more energy efficient - first. If those billions of dollars could go toward making our exiting homes more efficient - we'd never think twice nuclear non-renewable power generation again.

The problem with determining the true cost of nuclear power has always been 1) the radioactive waste and 2) keeping it from the bad guys.

1) It's called nuclear reenrichment. It drastically reduces the ammount of waste and the resulting waste in much less radioactive and easier to store that the ~90% reusable stuff we have today.

2) FUD.

There is no need to study any resurgence, we have the technolgy, always have. As far as the public, opinion is 70% now favor nuclear power as a favorable option. Renewables just cannot compete with the efficiency and output. Why cannot the greatest country in the world do what is necessary and be the leader, other countries seem to realize the need for nuclear power, we also need to.

It's called Economies of scale, that how fission plants operate. Everything in nuclear power is big and complex but the power they yield it huge. Even if the reactor is small, the support and infrastructure to support any reactor is a totally huge issue. However, accidents will happen. People steal stuff and nothing is perfect. So when there is a problem it is also huge. Chernobyl, three mile island to name the most notable. Or how about all the material thats been stolen overseas and stuff thats just gone missing. Then you have storage and transportations issues... Its not as if you can just fedex that stuff around. Everything is way more complex.

Now the simple truth is I would rather have a wind turbine in my back yard. It if brakes down I don't have to worry about much. But anytime a nuclear plant goes down its a big deal and a lot more people are effected.

Just because we have the ability harness harness nuclear fission does not mean we should. Going nuclear is a calculated risk. We calculate the chances of something going wrong, the chances somebody will attack it and so on. They build it so it can withstand a certain level of disaster. But again thats how the world trade center was build...withstand a certain level of disaster! Where wind, solar and geothermal is low risk. It seems that by increasing the use of nuclear power so to does the problem of supporting and risks inherent with it. I forgot to mention the old problem of just war. How many countries are trying to build reactors? Our government doesn't want most of those countries to build them. Israel just bombed one and threatened to take out another...

It seem like the power vs. weapon vs. accident vs. storage surrounding fission is not worth it. Be real who goes to war over wind turbines or who tries to smuggle wind turbines. You don't have to store used wind turbines for a 1000 years or who creates a dirty turbine bomb.

The point is we are smart. But not smart enough to think of everything that might happen. Put the development resources into sources of power that don't require the mining, burning, processing and refining of fuels. there is plenty of energy naturally free we just have to be smart enough and united enough to figure out how to tap it.

One additional comment. By not supporting the use of nuclear energy you will commit us to all of the consequences of large scale fossil fuel combustion (environmental, economic, public health) which will be needed to supplement renewables. The risks of our dependance on fossil fuel combustion are well documented and statistically magnitudes greater than nuclear power.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=1089

Something like that is expected to deliver at 10 cents per kwh.

And that doesn't even take into account newer technologies like pebble bed helium cooled reactors.

Renewables, even if cheaper, are intermittent and/or weakly scalable (at present).

Nuc plants can provide base load more easily than wind or solar (though I do expect solar to be a huge player in time).

The waste issue is a bounded, solvable problem.

Firstly the waste issue is not solvable. Computer modelling has shown that no containment device known to man will work for the 250,000 years it would take for the waste to stop being harmful and will cost immense amounts. Nuclear reenrichment or even glassification is a very costly process that would only make nuclear power even more costly. Your worries about intermitent loads and unreliability of renewables can easily be solved by the many and diverse energy storage devices (that are non-toxic) that I'm sure Eco-Geek could readily show you. Renewables lend themselves to decentralized, site-specific energy generation which not only reduces the risk of rolling blackouts, energy lost in power lines (see line loss), but it also empowers local economies and people. In terms of efficiency, 2/3 of the energy produced by a nuclear plant is lost in waste heat, and renewables have become cheaper and more efficient by leaps and bounds. It looks like this trend is continueing at a blistering rate. But most importantly let's not forget about increased efficiency and conservation, the cheapest and quickest way to solve our energy needs.

Don't forget the Federal(taxpayer) subsidies the Nuclear industry receives.
You could see the externalized costs of waste disposal, mining the fuel and health-related deaths from same, security costs throughout the full fuel cycle, all as further public subsidies.
Also, the liability waivers they've received from the government(taxpayers).
In other words, if something does go wrong, as it eventually will, the companies are not liable over some small dollar amount. Damages from any nuclear accident will be HUGE.
It's time we leapfrog to clean and green, invest in the research and production of solar, wind, geothermal.

Antonio

Security costs of nulear waste : Can someone calculate the present cost of a country's existing Nucl. waste security per year (personnel, monitoring etc.), and then, incorporating increasing inflation year by year for 250,000 yrs. add all the years together ? Is that how much we need to set aside now ? Just for current quantities of waste. Serious mathematical request

Reprocessing spent fuel adds an additional cost to an already too expensive technology.

Those claiming that renewables can't be sufficiently scaled up and can't provide baseload power need to research concentrated solar thermal and geothermal power. Climate Progress is a great site to research these technologies, which can provide baseload power on the order of half the cost of power from new nuclear plants, according to the study in question.

I think we need to acknowledge that each source has its strengths and weaknesses, and no one source of energy can be relied on exclusively.

with all its limitations, is it realistic to rely solely on renewable energy? Instead of bashing nuclear energy and trying to eliminate it altogether we should be focusing on ways to improve and sustain nuclear plants in ways that are environmentally friendly... does anyone agree with me?

This seems to be a problem with people shooting from the hip everyday on things they are not clear on.