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To: yard_man who wrote (102433)	5/15/2001 5:41:34 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

To determine whether central station power is always cheaper than some local alternative, such as solar or wind, you have to calculate all the factors, not just the cost of fuel, operations, plant, transmission lines, etc. Coal would be pretty cheap if it weren't for the cost of the pollution, either in the form of pollution controls or health and environmental effects downstream. New York State has a magnificent park (the Adirondack Park) that for years has had lakes with no fish, no plant life, and no possibility of using them as a potable water supply, mostly because of acid rain from coal plants to the southwest. The environmental and health damages are important costs, but unfortunately a lot of people ignore them in order to claim that coal is a really good fuel source for electric power generation. Even more dramatic is the cost of a nuclear plant, which is about the cheapest centralized power--until you figure out what to do with the wasted fuel rods. Storing them outside the plant for the next 10,000 years is really not a good idea, and besides, it's expensive. Storing them in some underground location might be a good idea, but who wants it in their back yard? So far there are no takers, and the costs of handling the wastes just keep mounting. If you ignore those costs, then nuclear is a pretty good alternative, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Art