5 ms·
Expensive to build and cheap to run ignores the high decommissioning and long term waste management costs (both financial & practical impacts). If you add that
by altacc 7y ago
Expensive to build and cheap to run ignores the high decommissioning and long term waste management costs (both financial & practical impacts). If you add that to the kilowatt price, nuclear tends to end up more expensive than most other options.
- kortilla 7y agoCitation needed. Also, don’t try to include plants that were shut down early or plants built on designs from the 50s.
- altacc 7y agoYour oblique point that the costs for newer reactors are probably going to be less than older reactors is acknowledged, but it's still a cost consideration. https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2016/7201-costs-decom-npp.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2016/7201-costs-decom-npp.... A lot of this report seems to indicate that estimating future decommissioning costs is hard. The costs are estimates, often created by those with a financial incentive to keep the estimate low. In 50 or so years time the reality of decommissioning might be very difficult. On the waste aspect: "The cost of managing spent nuclear fuel ... is not always included in the cost of decommissioning, but is often treated separately. This is even more the case for the final disposal of fuel or related waste, which is a major source of costs in waste management, particularly for high-level waste."