Nuclear costs in the US go up, up and away!

In other news: "The NEI said that 2007 marked the seventh straight year that nuclear plants have had the lowest production costs of any major source of electricity, including coal- and natural gas-fired power plants."
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP/Record_
performance_by_US_nuclear_power_industry_in_2007_
070208.html

It is well known that most of the cost of generating nuclear electricity comes from the up-front cost of the plant. Long-term it is still the cheapest form of electricity production.

For example in Germany the nuclear powerstations, which have been fully paid for, generate profits of 1 million euros per day, while the German coal industry is subsidised by more than 2 billion Euros per year; and renewables subsidised by 4 billion euros. So the German greens plan to phase out nuclear but keep the coal and renewables. Bizarre.
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/
displaystory.cfm?story_id=9595481

Hi Colin

I have to say I find the argument that nuclear is cheaper in 'the long run' a pretty bizarre one.

How have the NEI (whose objective, by the way, is "to ensure the formation of policies that promote the beneficial uses of nuclear energy and technologies in the United States and around the world") calculated the long-term and external costs?

The cost of "managing" wastes that can remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years?

The external costs of the impacts of radioactivity on our seas and seafood?

The higher incidences of cancers (the government's Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee estimates that this and future generations can expect 200 cancer deaths worldwide for each year that Sellafield discharges nuclear waste into the sea and air)?

The costs of combating nuclear proliferation due to an increase in weapons grade plutonium? etc.

Even in terms of shorter term, more tangible costs, the nuclear industry is notoriously abysmal at calculating them. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) got a slamming from The National Audit Office recently for exactly this. The costs of decommissioning have spiralled from £56bn to £73bn over a few years (the taxpayer pays).

Disposing of the UK's stockpile of legacy wastes is estimated at an additional £10-20bn.

The Sellafield MOX plant - sold to the taxpayer as a money spinner - is producing MOX fuel at a cost of about £90m per tonne.

And, time and again, the taxpayer is left to clean up...

Cheers,

Bex
gpuk

Bex,

Certainly when you look at the headline figures in billions of pounds it seems like a lot of money. But the costs in terms of the price per unit of electricity are pretty affordable.
The key is to pay a proportion of the money from every unit of electricity into a fund as it is generated, and save this to pay for the waste management and decommissioning costs. The fund accumulates over the 40 year (or more likely 60 year) life of the plant. It only needs about 10% of the cost of the electricity to cover the necessary cost of decommissioning and waste management. The waste fund can either provide an income to pay for waste management above-ground indefinitely, or it can be cashed in to pay for deep geological disposal (which is more expensive in capital but requires no further ongoing cost).
The UK Govts Energy Review document covers this (see p193).
http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file32014.pdf

The other factor that has to be borne in mind is that new nuclear powerstations are generally constructed to make decommissioning straightforward, and therefor cheap. This is a commercial necessity. They also produce less waste. The old Magnox stations and research establishments like Dounreay were not run on a commercial basis to make money and cover their costs. New private nuclear plant would be.

As for external costs, the European Commission produced a study on the external costs of all the major sources of electricity used in Europe. The ExternE report converted these costs, representing environmental and health damage, into a monetary figure. The external costs of nuclear are far lower than fossil fuel, as you would expect. But they are also lower than PV solar, biomass and in some cases hydro. The only source of electricity with consistently lower external costs than nuclear is wind power.
Table on p13:
http://www.externe.info/externpr.pdf

I would be interested to see a more detailed citation for your reference to 200 cancers per year from Sellafield. I suspect it comes from applying an extraordinarily low risk to an extremely high population. But at any rate, bear in mind Europe only has two reprocessing plants like Sellafield and gets 30% of its electricity from nuclear. Air pollution, largely from fossil fuel use, causes upwards of 300,000 cancers and other premature deaths per year in Europe. Millions worldwide. So compared to the default alternative, nuclear is a low risk option. Using more nuclear power would undoubtedly save lives. (And by corollary, Greenpeace's opposition to nuclear power causes unnecessary deaths.)

When you include external costs in the price of electricity, nuclear is the cheapest by far, especially compared to fossil fuel (which historically has been its only major competitor on cost).

I agree that the MOX from Sellafield is expensive for nuclear fuel, but bear in mind that the UK renewables obligation will soon cost a £1billion per year in subsidy. The renewables obligation produces less electricity than that MOX could, but costs more money.

And at the moment the taxpayer is looking likely to "clean up" with a tidy profit when its share of British Energy is sold. It turned out to be a shrewd investment by Gordon.