Nuclear power has been increasingly hailed by lobbyists as a source of clean, cheap and safe power; but cost blowouts in the construction and maintenance of new nuclear plants, along with their need for massive amounts of water and continuing radioactive waste storage issues, is again making renewable energy look to be the only really viable option to power our future.
According to a recent study by economist Dr. Mark Cooper, a senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School, the cost of electricity generated by new nuclear reactors would be (USD) 12-20 cents per kilowatt hour, whereas increased energy efficiency and renewable energy sourced power would cost around 6 cents per kilowatt hour.
This translates to USD $1.9 trillion to $4.1 trillion more over the life of 100 new nuclear reactors.
Projected construction and maintenance costs for nuclear plants have quadrupled since the start of the nuclear renaissance in 2000. The required massive subsidies from taxpayers and ratepayers would not change the real cost of nuclear reactors, they would just shift the risks to the public, according to the report.
According to Dr. Cooper: "We are literally seeing nuclear reactor history repeat itself. The "Great Bandwagon Market" that ended so badly for consumers in the 1970s and 1980s was driven by advocates who confused hope and hype with reality." This latest version of the "Great Bandwagon Market" will see reactors cost seven times as much as the cost projection for the first reactors of the Great Bandwagon Market.
Cost has always been one of the the major issues haunting the solar power and wind energy industry, but the public have been generally unaware of the massive tax payer funded subsidises fossil fuels and current nuclear reactors receive. It’s only been in very recent times that renewable energy is starting to see levels of funding to help put it on equal footing with non-renewable power generation technology.
The full study can be read online here.
