12 ms·

Are the costs of this 13 years and counting expense tab added to the cost of electricity generated by nuclear power plants in any way? Seems to me like it shou

Are the costs of this 13 years and counting expense tab added to the cost of electricity generated by nuclear power plants in any way? Seems to me like it should, so that generations-long decisions are not made from overly optimistic numbers.

kchoudhu 2y ago
Japan has (within reason) concerns other than the total cost of electricity: having to haul in coal, oil and LNG over an ocean contested by an increasingly hostile neighbor must be very worrying to them.
baq 2y ago
Money is numbers in computers, joules and watts are real things. Coal, gas and oil is full of externalities which are nowhere near being correctly included in the nominal prices of these commodities. Arguably neither are solar panels and wind turbines.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  What are these putative externalities of wind and solar? These is a constant whataboutist argument from nuclear apologists, but it falls apart when examined closely, as all pro-nuclear power arguments do.
  - elzbardico 2y ago
    The fact that their system cost is prohibitive in the real world? The fact that we don’t fucking have the slightest idea of how to deal with recycling that stuff on their EOL? Or would be the fact that mining cobalt and lithium in the required quantities to indulge on the fantasy of a solar/wind based grid would poison an inordinate portion of our environment? Or would it be the fact that every single fucking country that went all in on the siren’s song of the renewable industry scammer is now plagued with absurdly high energy costs and are slipping into becoming impoverished third world de-industrialized economies like the UK and Germany?
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      You provide excellent examples of the bogosity of the arguments. Let me demolish them in turn. 1) System cost Sure, it's high. That's because we spend huge amounts of money on energy. ANY system to replace fossil fuels will be expensive, in the trillions of dollars. But if this is an argument against renewables, it's an even bigger argument against nuclear. Because nuclear is much more expensive than renewables. 2) Recycling At worst, we can bury the stuff. Recycling it is not necessary. After all, the amount of material is small compared to everything else we do in society, and it's not some special kind of waste (like high level nuclear waste) that requires some particularly unique handling. 3) Lithium and cobalt Lithium is abundant. If you hadn't been paying attention, the price has been crashing, as it pretty much always does after a price spike of a mineral resource, when the price spike encourages investment to increase the amount available. As for cobalt: probably the same is true, but why do you think cobalt is needed? 4) poison the environment This is just emotional bullshit. No, renewables would not "poison the environment". You beclown yourself with this nonsense. 5) absurdly high energy cost As opposed to those still burning fossil fuels where they are foisting off the cost of the externalities on others? Ignoring those external costs doesn't make them go away. In any case, the place that's normally pointed to is Germany, where they made a large investment in renewables from 2009-2012. Solar was much more expensive then, and they are still paying that down. But the costs of renewables crash with time, so pointing to past expenditures is grossly misleading. Going forward renewables will be much cheaper. That's why we're seeing so much investment in them now globally. One can tell the intellectual barrenness of the pro-nuclear position when you have to resort to this sort of deplorable nonsense.
      - akerl_ 2y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
        OrigamiPastrami 2y ago
  - zdragnar 2y ago
    As of now, the thermoset epoxy in turbine blades can't be recycled. Turbines optimistically last 20-25 years, which means entire generations of them have either been buried or worse, incinerated. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sweetwater-wind-turbine-blades-dump/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sweetwater-wind-t... https://cen.acs.org/environment/recycling/companies-recycle-wind-turbine-blades/100/i27 https://cen.acs.org/environment/recycling/companies-recycle-... The same is true for solar panels. These are NOT unique problems to renewables, of course, except they tend to produce more waste compared to their energy output than other methods at the moment. Recycling is a big area of research, but is not yet especially CO2 positive for solar versus just burying them, and non existent for wind. The point isn't that the problem is impossible, but that these things are overlooked and green washed.
    - natmaka 2y ago
      Most blades are now burnt in cement killns. Burying them is forbidden in most (maybe even all, now) Western nations. Recyclable blades have recently become available (RecyclableBlade, ZEBRA, PECAN...), and there are even new ways to cope with the old ones: https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/02/08/newly-discovered-chemical-process-renders-all-existing-wind-turbine-blades-recyclable/ https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/02/08/newly-discovered-che... > The same is true for solar panels I doubt so, details will be welcome.
    - locallost 2y ago
      Solar panels last a lot more than 20-25 years. There is a guarantee you will still get 80% of the capacity after this time, but the panels will continue to work after that just fine.
      - zdragnar 2y ago
        Assuming they aren't hit by hail, or large branches, manufacturing defect in an onboard micro inverter, or any other reason, yes, solar panels don't just die at the year 20 mark. Instead, they supply 1/5 less power than they were originally rated for, which means the system needs to be expanded or replaced to do what it was provisioned to do.
- Filligree 2y ago
  On the other hand, the existence of coal power proves that releasing small amounts of radiation is fine, really. So we should be able to build a lot more nuclear power plants; it would take a lot of accidents like these to match the releases from coal.
  - fsh 2y ago
    The explosion of Chernobyl released a few thousand PBq of activity. Coal contains a few tens to a few hundreds of Bq/kg. You would have to burn something like 50 times the world coal reserves (and make sure not to use any exhaust filters) in order to match the radiation release of Chernobyl.
    - jajko 2y ago
      While I like nuclear on the paper and its theoretical env impact, this one is hard to ignore. Add costs of current projects which became ridiculous in reality. Plus as we see with various wars nuclear powerplants would be a prime target for terrorists or even state actors, they are certainly not considered as excluded from wars, in contrary. If we move to renewables, over 100 years there would be 0 reason to have a single nuclear plant running anywhere, apart from making nuclear weapons fuel. I just wish we were now where we would/will be in 50 years in terms of renewables technology maturity and its spread.
      - polotics 2y ago
        Do pray tell calculate a world's energy system looping back while running purely on renewables, with electric powered mining, transport of ores, refining, panels production... You will find that you cannot, cheap (for now) fossil fuels are subsidising solar panels and wind farms massively.
        pfdietz 2y ago
        The mining for renewables would be a small fraction of the mining for industrial society as a whole. So, if electrification cannot be done on this, industrial society as we know it is doomed, and nuclear cannot save it. Unless you're thinking we're going to have nuclear reactors in our mining vehicles...
- Kon5ole 2y ago
  Once you decide to run nuclear power in a country you have centuries of unavoidable costs no matter what the next government, or next ten generations of citizens decide to do. This is a unique cost consideration for nuclear power, which IMO is rarely considered by the proponents.
  - pyrale 2y ago
    Negative industrial byproducts creating costs for future generations is an unique challenge? Have you heard of climate change?
    - _ph_ 2y ago
      Your argument would be valid if nuclear power would be the only option to prevent climate change. But there are other options: the various renewables, most importantly solar and wind. So it is not nuclear vs. climate change, but nuclear vs. solar/wind.
    - Kon5ole 2y ago
      Any one power plant has no measurable effect on global climate. (All fossil power plants combined worldwide have about the same emissions as all cars; about 1/6). So, if your fathers started coal plants, you close them, stop paying for them and can forget about them. this is not at all the case if your fathers started nuclear plants, not only do you have to pay, your children have to pay, all their lives, and all your grandchildren, and so on. What bugs me is the tendency of proponents to pretend that the decision is no biggie. It is a biggie. At least understand that, then we can have a rational discussion about it! Energy storage solutions and infrastructure for generating synthesized fuels (hydrogen and others) will require investments, but those investments will be a gift to the future. We will bear the burden of building the infrastructure now, but future generations will benefit from what we have built. Nuclear is the opposite, we get the benefits and the future gets the burden.
      - pyrale 2y ago
        So basically you’re so caught up in this infighting between two carbon neutral energies that you’d rather spread disinformation about climate change and the negative effects of coal…
slt2021 2y ago
japan has limited land, no oil&gas resources, so the nuclear is the perfect source of electricity for them, plus they have the expertise.
- Krasnol 2y ago
  Japan has 34 000km (21 126 miles) of coastline. They import about 90% of its energy requirements. This includes nuclear fuel. So this is far away from "perfect" if you can get wind and sun without having to import it.
  - vkou 2y ago
    > This includes nuclear fuel. Nuclear fuel is both relatively plentiful, and can be sourced from a multitude of countries, both Eastern, Western, and, most importantly, unaligned. A lot of countries have economically viable (for power generation) uranium reserves, but do not exploit them because global prices for it are so low. It differs significantly from oil in this respect.
    - Krasnol 2y ago
      This is so weird because despite being so plentiful, the EU has still to throw money at Russia for all kinds of stuff related to nuclear energy. Imagine that: we have all kinds of sanctions on Russia here in the EU. The tone is aggressive. There is fear of a Russian invasion into EU countries, and we still have to get that stuff from Russia. So it seems not to be such an easy solution. It gets even worse for poor countries which jumped on the Rosatom train being fully dependent on Rosatom tech, fuel, personal. Even if it wouldn't be for that, it's far away from the availability of sun or wind. Here is a nice read on the topic: https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/04/16/russia-is-earning-billions-selling-nuclear-fuel-to-the-west/ https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/04/16/russia-is-earning-b...
      - Moldoteck 2y ago
        not all eu, just some countries. And those(some that want it) are gradually replacing ru enriched fuel with the one from westinghouse. France and US are boosting local enrichment facilities to replace the russian ones. You'll basically have the same problems with renewables if china would ban export to eu/us
Krasnol 2y ago
As the generational costs for the waste management should be. The odds of some weird future generation digging this stuff up for bad reasons already adds enough incalculable costs.
pyrale 2y ago
I would be curious to know which industry would survive such drastic standards.
Zigurd 2y ago
If you think Hollywood accounting is opaque and full of shenanigans, look into electric utilities. Nuclear power is not conventionally insurable. The NRC has the most understandable explainer I have found here: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/nuclear-insurance.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/n... The current fad of buying old nukes to power data centers is going to be a learning experience for the tech industry about taking on the liabilities entailed.
credit_guy 2y ago
At least in the US such costs are factored in. First of all, after Fukushima, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) performed a huge "Lessons learned" exercise, and asked all the power plants to do various upgrades. Here are some links [1], [2]. The ask was not "pretty please, can you do this if it's not much of a trouble for you", it was "you have to do this by this date if you want to continue to operate". Second, it's the nuclear insurance. The scheme is codified in the Price-Anderson Act [3]. Basically, all the nuclear power plants need to purchase insurance for $0.5 BN per reactor. If anything happens, and the cleanup costs exceed this number, then the rest of the industry has to chime in, and the total is up to $16 BN per reactor. So, if 3 reactors were to have a core meltdown, the industry would have to pay close to $50 BN. The total estimate of the Fukushima cleanup stands currently at about twice that, so one can say that $50 BN is too little, but it certainly is not nothing. Edit: the efficacy of the Price-Anderson Act was tested at the Three-Mile Island. Virtually no taxpayer money was used in the cleanup [4]. Of course, there were other costs incurred, such as in collecting data, doing investigations, upgrading regulations and enforcing them, but that's how Government should work. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2132/ML21322A288.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2132/ML21322A288.pdf [2] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/fukushima.html https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/fukush... [3] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821 [4] https://www.gao.gov/products/117345 https://www.gao.gov/products/117345
- Kon5ole 2y ago
  >At least in the US such costs are factored in According to [3] the industry is liable for 16b per reactor but the industry doesn’t have that much money to pay out. Entergy for example operates its nuclear plants in a subsidiary that generates about 100 million in revenue per year. They would have to raise the price of nuclear electricity by orders of magnitude to gave any chance of paying 16 bn, let alone the 10x more for a Fukushima-esque incident. So when things go pearshaped the operators will undoubtedly go bankrupt, and since the cleanup is very mandatory the taxpayers end up paying basically everything. Also consider who has paid for the decades long paperwork around Yucca mt, who pays the military that has had guards stationed at closed plants for decades (rancho seco) and so on and so forth. In short, even in the US, the hidden costs of nuclear power are immense.
throwaway2037 2y ago
I think this is a fair point. Are nuclear waste disposal costs also included? I cannot prove it, but I am pessimistic. I also doubt that coal includes the health costs associated with many decades of emissions.
Moldoteck 2y ago
is it included in case of hydro dam accidents? not quite. Because these are accidents, these don't participate in providing electricity
EasyMark 2y ago
Japan needs nuclear to have more reliable power source as they have limited land and natural resources. The government may have to just pay for this and learn from the mistakes that led to it. Nuclear is the future.

kchoudhu 2y ago

Japan has (within reason) concerns other than the total cost of electricity: having to haul in coal, oil and LNG over an ocean contested by an increasingly hostile neighbor must be very worrying to them.

baq 2y ago

Money is numbers in computers, joules and watts are real things. Coal, gas and oil is full of externalities which are nowhere near being correctly included in the nominal prices of these commodities. Arguably neither are solar panels and wind turbines.

pfdietz 2y ago
What are these putative externalities of wind and solar? These is a constant whataboutist argument from nuclear apologists, but it falls apart when examined closely, as all pro-nuclear power arguments do.
- elzbardico 2y ago
  The fact that their system cost is prohibitive in the real world? The fact that we don’t fucking have the slightest idea of how to deal with recycling that stuff on their EOL? Or would be the fact that mining cobalt and lithium in the required quantities to indulge on the fantasy of a solar/wind based grid would poison an inordinate portion of our environment? Or would it be the fact that every single fucking country that went all in on the siren’s song of the renewable industry scammer is now plagued with absurdly high energy costs and are slipping into becoming impoverished third world de-industrialized economies like the UK and Germany?
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    You provide excellent examples of the bogosity of the arguments. Let me demolish them in turn. 1) System cost Sure, it's high. That's because we spend huge amounts of money on energy. ANY system to replace fossil fuels will be expensive, in the trillions of dollars. But if this is an argument against renewables, it's an even bigger argument against nuclear. Because nuclear is much more expensive than renewables. 2) Recycling At worst, we can bury the stuff. Recycling it is not necessary. After all, the amount of material is small compared to everything else we do in society, and it's not some special kind of waste (like high level nuclear waste) that requires some particularly unique handling. 3) Lithium and cobalt Lithium is abundant. If you hadn't been paying attention, the price has been crashing, as it pretty much always does after a price spike of a mineral resource, when the price spike encourages investment to increase the amount available. As for cobalt: probably the same is true, but why do you think cobalt is needed? 4) poison the environment This is just emotional bullshit. No, renewables would not "poison the environment". You beclown yourself with this nonsense. 5) absurdly high energy cost As opposed to those still burning fossil fuels where they are foisting off the cost of the externalities on others? Ignoring those external costs doesn't make them go away. In any case, the place that's normally pointed to is Germany, where they made a large investment in renewables from 2009-2012. Solar was much more expensive then, and they are still paying that down. But the costs of renewables crash with time, so pointing to past expenditures is grossly misleading. Going forward renewables will be much cheaper. That's why we're seeing so much investment in them now globally. One can tell the intellectual barrenness of the pro-nuclear position when you have to resort to this sort of deplorable nonsense.
    - akerl_ 2y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
      - OrigamiPastrami 2y ago
- zdragnar 2y ago
  As of now, the thermoset epoxy in turbine blades can't be recycled. Turbines optimistically last 20-25 years, which means entire generations of them have either been buried or worse, incinerated. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sweetwater-wind-turbine-blades-dump/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sweetwater-wind-t... https://cen.acs.org/environment/recycling/companies-recycle-wind-turbine-blades/100/i27 https://cen.acs.org/environment/recycling/companies-recycle-... The same is true for solar panels. These are NOT unique problems to renewables, of course, except they tend to produce more waste compared to their energy output than other methods at the moment. Recycling is a big area of research, but is not yet especially CO2 positive for solar versus just burying them, and non existent for wind. The point isn't that the problem is impossible, but that these things are overlooked and green washed.
  - natmaka 2y ago
    Most blades are now burnt in cement killns. Burying them is forbidden in most (maybe even all, now) Western nations. Recyclable blades have recently become available (RecyclableBlade, ZEBRA, PECAN...), and there are even new ways to cope with the old ones: https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/02/08/newly-discovered-chemical-process-renders-all-existing-wind-turbine-blades-recyclable/ https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/02/08/newly-discovered-che... > The same is true for solar panels I doubt so, details will be welcome.
  - locallost 2y ago
    Solar panels last a lot more than 20-25 years. There is a guarantee you will still get 80% of the capacity after this time, but the panels will continue to work after that just fine.
    - zdragnar 2y ago
      Assuming they aren't hit by hail, or large branches, manufacturing defect in an onboard micro inverter, or any other reason, yes, solar panels don't just die at the year 20 mark. Instead, they supply 1/5 less power than they were originally rated for, which means the system needs to be expanded or replaced to do what it was provisioned to do.
Filligree 2y ago
On the other hand, the existence of coal power proves that releasing small amounts of radiation is fine, really. So we should be able to build a lot more nuclear power plants; it would take a lot of accidents like these to match the releases from coal.
- fsh 2y ago
  The explosion of Chernobyl released a few thousand PBq of activity. Coal contains a few tens to a few hundreds of Bq/kg. You would have to burn something like 50 times the world coal reserves (and make sure not to use any exhaust filters) in order to match the radiation release of Chernobyl.
  - jajko 2y ago
    While I like nuclear on the paper and its theoretical env impact, this one is hard to ignore. Add costs of current projects which became ridiculous in reality. Plus as we see with various wars nuclear powerplants would be a prime target for terrorists or even state actors, they are certainly not considered as excluded from wars, in contrary. If we move to renewables, over 100 years there would be 0 reason to have a single nuclear plant running anywhere, apart from making nuclear weapons fuel. I just wish we were now where we would/will be in 50 years in terms of renewables technology maturity and its spread.
    - polotics 2y ago
      Do pray tell calculate a world's energy system looping back while running purely on renewables, with electric powered mining, transport of ores, refining, panels production... You will find that you cannot, cheap (for now) fossil fuels are subsidising solar panels and wind farms massively.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        The mining for renewables would be a small fraction of the mining for industrial society as a whole. So, if electrification cannot be done on this, industrial society as we know it is doomed, and nuclear cannot save it. Unless you're thinking we're going to have nuclear reactors in our mining vehicles...
Kon5ole 2y ago
Once you decide to run nuclear power in a country you have centuries of unavoidable costs no matter what the next government, or next ten generations of citizens decide to do. This is a unique cost consideration for nuclear power, which IMO is rarely considered by the proponents.
- pyrale 2y ago
  Negative industrial byproducts creating costs for future generations is an unique challenge? Have you heard of climate change?
  - _ph_ 2y ago
    Your argument would be valid if nuclear power would be the only option to prevent climate change. But there are other options: the various renewables, most importantly solar and wind. So it is not nuclear vs. climate change, but nuclear vs. solar/wind.
  - Kon5ole 2y ago
    Any one power plant has no measurable effect on global climate. (All fossil power plants combined worldwide have about the same emissions as all cars; about 1/6). So, if your fathers started coal plants, you close them, stop paying for them and can forget about them. this is not at all the case if your fathers started nuclear plants, not only do you have to pay, your children have to pay, all their lives, and all your grandchildren, and so on. What bugs me is the tendency of proponents to pretend that the decision is no biggie. It is a biggie. At least understand that, then we can have a rational discussion about it! Energy storage solutions and infrastructure for generating synthesized fuels (hydrogen and others) will require investments, but those investments will be a gift to the future. We will bear the burden of building the infrastructure now, but future generations will benefit from what we have built. Nuclear is the opposite, we get the benefits and the future gets the burden.
    - pyrale 2y ago
      So basically you’re so caught up in this infighting between two carbon neutral energies that you’d rather spread disinformation about climate change and the negative effects of coal…

slt2021 2y ago

japan has limited land, no oil&gas resources, so the nuclear is the perfect source of electricity for them, plus they have the expertise.

Krasnol 2y ago
Japan has 34 000km (21 126 miles) of coastline. They import about 90% of its energy requirements. This includes nuclear fuel. So this is far away from "perfect" if you can get wind and sun without having to import it.
- vkou 2y ago
  > This includes nuclear fuel. Nuclear fuel is both relatively plentiful, and can be sourced from a multitude of countries, both Eastern, Western, and, most importantly, unaligned. A lot of countries have economically viable (for power generation) uranium reserves, but do not exploit them because global prices for it are so low. It differs significantly from oil in this respect.
  - Krasnol 2y ago
    This is so weird because despite being so plentiful, the EU has still to throw money at Russia for all kinds of stuff related to nuclear energy. Imagine that: we have all kinds of sanctions on Russia here in the EU. The tone is aggressive. There is fear of a Russian invasion into EU countries, and we still have to get that stuff from Russia. So it seems not to be such an easy solution. It gets even worse for poor countries which jumped on the Rosatom train being fully dependent on Rosatom tech, fuel, personal. Even if it wouldn't be for that, it's far away from the availability of sun or wind. Here is a nice read on the topic: https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/04/16/russia-is-earning-billions-selling-nuclear-fuel-to-the-west/ https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/04/16/russia-is-earning-b...
    - Moldoteck 2y ago
      not all eu, just some countries. And those(some that want it) are gradually replacing ru enriched fuel with the one from westinghouse. France and US are boosting local enrichment facilities to replace the russian ones. You'll basically have the same problems with renewables if china would ban export to eu/us

Krasnol 2y ago

As the generational costs for the waste management should be. The odds of some weird future generation digging this stuff up for bad reasons already adds enough incalculable costs.

pyrale 2y ago

I would be curious to know which industry would survive such drastic standards.

Zigurd 2y ago

If you think Hollywood accounting is opaque and full of shenanigans, look into electric utilities. Nuclear power is not conventionally insurable. The NRC has the most understandable explainer I have found here: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/nuclear-insurance.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/n... The current fad of buying old nukes to power data centers is going to be a learning experience for the tech industry about taking on the liabilities entailed.

credit_guy 2y ago

At least in the US such costs are factored in. First of all, after Fukushima, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) performed a huge "Lessons learned" exercise, and asked all the power plants to do various upgrades. Here are some links [1], [2]. The ask was not "pretty please, can you do this if it's not much of a trouble for you", it was "you have to do this by this date if you want to continue to operate". Second, it's the nuclear insurance. The scheme is codified in the Price-Anderson Act [3]. Basically, all the nuclear power plants need to purchase insurance for $0.5 BN per reactor. If anything happens, and the cleanup costs exceed this number, then the rest of the industry has to chime in, and the total is up to $16 BN per reactor. So, if 3 reactors were to have a core meltdown, the industry would have to pay close to $50 BN. The total estimate of the Fukushima cleanup stands currently at about twice that, so one can say that $50 BN is too little, but it certainly is not nothing. Edit: the efficacy of the Price-Anderson Act was tested at the Three-Mile Island. Virtually no taxpayer money was used in the cleanup [4]. Of course, there were other costs incurred, such as in collecting data, doing investigations, upgrading regulations and enforcing them, but that's how Government should work. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2132/ML21322A288.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2132/ML21322A288.pdf [2] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/fukushima.html https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/fukush... [3] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821 [4] https://www.gao.gov/products/117345 https://www.gao.gov/products/117345

Kon5ole 2y ago
>At least in the US such costs are factored in According to [3] the industry is liable for 16b per reactor but the industry doesn’t have that much money to pay out. Entergy for example operates its nuclear plants in a subsidiary that generates about 100 million in revenue per year. They would have to raise the price of nuclear electricity by orders of magnitude to gave any chance of paying 16 bn, let alone the 10x more for a Fukushima-esque incident. So when things go pearshaped the operators will undoubtedly go bankrupt, and since the cleanup is very mandatory the taxpayers end up paying basically everything. Also consider who has paid for the decades long paperwork around Yucca mt, who pays the military that has had guards stationed at closed plants for decades (rancho seco) and so on and so forth. In short, even in the US, the hidden costs of nuclear power are immense.

throwaway2037 2y ago

I think this is a fair point. Are nuclear waste disposal costs also included? I cannot prove it, but I am pessimistic. I also doubt that coal includes the health costs associated with many decades of emissions.

Moldoteck 2y ago

is it included in case of hydro dam accidents? not quite. Because these are accidents, these don't participate in providing electricity

EasyMark 2y ago

Japan needs nuclear to have more reliable power source as they have limited land and natural resources. The government may have to just pay for this and learn from the mistakes that led to it. Nuclear is the future.