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Before you make such unqualified statements, you need to read the analyses of total system energy. Nukes have huge capital requirements, steel, concrete, reactors, steam plants, fuel. Each of these requires energy to build. The total system requirements of nuclear plants are several times as much as required for coal, gas, or oil fired plants. The government has guaranteed nuclear damages. Without this guarantee no single corporation would even have considered building a plant. They are "uninsurable" because the risks cannot be known, and no insurance company would insure them. It is only government guarantees and favorable rate treatment (adding CWIP to the rate base) that made it possible for power companies to invest in nuclear. In many instances these investments were terrible mistakes (e.g. WPPS, Clinton). Because no one can say what the accidents and shutdown energy requirements will be, no one can say if the nuclear system produces a net surplus of energy at all. Unless there is a new burst of nuclear power, my not totally amateur guess is that we will have invested more energy in the nuclear power system as a whole than we will ever get out of it. Check some of the work of 20 years ago by Bruce Hannon, Robert Herendeen, and Clark Bullard, and Michael Rieber's Testimony against the Clinton Nuclear Plant. |
