![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Libertarian Nuke Skeptics
Oct. 27th, 2008 10:38 amAbout time. Even this fellow stays away from the $7-8,000 per kW figure noted in the recent Toronto Star article. Maybe we'd get close to 20 cents per kWh with that number.
Pretty soon you'll be getting into the price for home solar and wind setups. As a point of comparison, I called Dixon Power Systems, they sell Bergey Windpower units, and they said installed it would be about $55,000 for 10 kW grid-tied wind turbine system. This would be a mere $5,500 per kW.
Nuclear Energy: Risky Business - Reason - 21 Oct 08
"The Standard & Poor's overnight cost estimate of $4,000 is likely the most reliable because it is based on nuclear plant construction costs in economies where labor and material costs are very similar to those found in the United States. Industry analyst Jim Harding, who uses overnight cost figures similar to Standard & Poor's, puts the levelized costs for new nuclear power generation at 12-15c per kWh right now."
"Nuclear supporters often counter that construction costs would be a lot lower if regulators didn't impose insanely demanding safety standards, byzantine and time-consuming permitting processes, or endless public hearings, any one of which could result in the plant being stopped in its tracks. Investors would also be more likely to invest, we're told, if there were a high-level waste repository in place or more political support for nuclear power.
I would love to tell that story. I do, after all, work at the Cato Institute, and blaming government for economic problems is what keeps me in business. But what stops me is the fact that those complaints are not echoed by the nuclear power industry itself.
On the contrary, the industry in the early 1990s asked for - and got - exactly the sort of safety regulations, permit review process, and public comment regime now in place. Both public and political support for nuclear power is running so high than even a majority of Democrats in Congress are happy to not just tolerate nuclear power, but lavish even more subsidies upon it."
Pretty soon you'll be getting into the price for home solar and wind setups. As a point of comparison, I called Dixon Power Systems, they sell Bergey Windpower units, and they said installed it would be about $55,000 for 10 kW grid-tied wind turbine system. This would be a mere $5,500 per kW.
Nuclear Energy: Risky Business - Reason - 21 Oct 08
"The Standard & Poor's overnight cost estimate of $4,000 is likely the most reliable because it is based on nuclear plant construction costs in economies where labor and material costs are very similar to those found in the United States. Industry analyst Jim Harding, who uses overnight cost figures similar to Standard & Poor's, puts the levelized costs for new nuclear power generation at 12-15c per kWh right now."
"Nuclear supporters often counter that construction costs would be a lot lower if regulators didn't impose insanely demanding safety standards, byzantine and time-consuming permitting processes, or endless public hearings, any one of which could result in the plant being stopped in its tracks. Investors would also be more likely to invest, we're told, if there were a high-level waste repository in place or more political support for nuclear power.
I would love to tell that story. I do, after all, work at the Cato Institute, and blaming government for economic problems is what keeps me in business. But what stops me is the fact that those complaints are not echoed by the nuclear power industry itself.
On the contrary, the industry in the early 1990s asked for - and got - exactly the sort of safety regulations, permit review process, and public comment regime now in place. Both public and political support for nuclear power is running so high than even a majority of Democrats in Congress are happy to not just tolerate nuclear power, but lavish even more subsidies upon it."
