I understand there are other extraneous costs for nuclear and alternatives alike, but I don't like to include them in my analysis. Just as the other guy tried to bring in costs regarding the energy to build and transport wind turbines, I think it's rather silly to include it in the cost comparission analyis. Those are fixed costs that nothing can be done about, and which affect all technologies (like it doesn't take lot of energy to build a nuclear power plant?).
Sure, nuclear has other considerations, if a meltdown occurs, the costs of dismantling the plant go up astronomically. But, to keep the playing field level for discussion's sake, I like to discussing normal operational costs, which should include the cost of constructing the technology, but not extraneous costs like the power to construct or if a mishap happens, the cost to decontruct.
The regular decomissioning costs for nuclear are really a cost that should be factored into the cost of producing nuclear power (it costs lots of money to decomission a nuclear plant even if there are not accidents during its lifetime), wheras decomission a wind turbine means just dismantling it and selling it for scrap or selling it on a secondary market (a neglible cost compared to nuclear).
Bottom line, nuclear power is far more expensive that it appears to be on the surface. Someone should calculate the actual cost per kWH for nuclear with construction and decomissioning and subsidy costs factored into the cost. Perhaps U.S. PIRG or some other enviro group has already done just that. |
