Nuclear Power: Too Expensive to Use II

{previous post 6.17.09} Nuclear power generation is enjoying a faux renaissance as an energy policy option thanks to some overly optimistic cost studies, the most influential of which was made by MIT in 2003. The study was based on plants built in the seventies and operating in the nineties which significantly skewed the results of future projections of nuclear power plant cost. The direct costs of nuclear plants were vastly underestimated in these studies. The most recent cost projections, including those made by independent and Wall Street analysts are on average over four times the so-called "renaissance" projections[1]. You do not have to be Amory Lovins to know that vast economic subsidies will be required to make nuclear competitive with technologically advanced coal plants and renewable energy systems. These subsidies must either come from ratepayers or the government. Even stoutly capitalist Forbes magazine concluded midst the flurry of state regulatory proceedings to deal with massive cost overruns of the eighties[2], "The failure of the US nuclear power industry ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale...only the blind or the biased can now think that most of the money has been well spent"[3].

Enter Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who with his industry allies, has targeted the pending climate legislation for inclusion of vast subsidies for the nuclear power industry. Instead of being "two cheap to meter" nuclear power is now touted as the magic bullet solution to the climate crisis. Senator Alexander has called for a non-binding resolution to be attached that endorses a doubling of the number of US reactors--100 new plants--with at least $50 billion in loan guarantees for the industry. Under both Senate and House versions of the proposed Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) agency intended to provide affordable financing for accelerated deployment of clean energy, nuclear power is considered a "clean energy technology"[4]. In the Senate version, one technology could get most of the subsidies on offer. It could well be nuclear power since has the highest capital investment costs of all energy options. Estimates by independent energy analysts and Wall Street investment analysts put the cost of electricity from renewable sources (wind, geothermal, kinetic) at six cents per kilowatt hour. Electricity from nuclear reactors is in the range of 12to 20 cents per kWh. The cost of building 100 new reactors is estimated to be between $1.9 and 4.4 trillion over the life of the plants[5]. But because the American public has such a short attention span, hustlers like Alexander are able to repeat the sale of snake oil every generation. Show you get it and contact your senators to tell them no subsidies for power to expensive to use[6].

[1] www.nirs.org/neconomics/cooperreport_neconomics062009.pdf, chart p. 3
[2] the writer appeared before the Texas PUC concerning the Allens Creek nuclear plant in which the PUC penalized the utility for mismanagement of the project. The decision was later reversed on judicial appeal.

[3] Id. at 13.
[4] www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/ceda-provisions.pdf The big lie of course is that nuclear power has its own highly toxic waste stream. Significant radioactive fallout occurred at the Three Mile Island near meltdown on March 28, 1979, and despite a partial evacuation, people died from it. www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO.pdf
[5]. Op. cit. at 2.

[6] Atomic Energy Chairman Lewis Strauss declared nuclear power "to cheap to meter" in 1954. The pipe dream was shared by Dick Nixon who envisioned a thousand nuclear reactors by now. Times change and the dream dashed by staggering costs and radioactive dangers.

[photo: protestors at Pennsylvania capital, April 9, 1979; NARA]