EU countries defend nuclear's climate role

[wtmusic]

"A forthright statement by the governments of Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and the UK has called for 'neutrality of technology' in meeting future European Union (EU) decarbonisation targets.

The one-page joint communique from the twelve countries, released yesterday, stressed their belief that nuclear power "can play a part in the EU's future low carbon energy mix". It also noted the security of supply and economic benefits that the technology brings and called for an investment environment to be created within Europe that specifically takes into account "the long term nature of nuclear infrastructure projects.

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The economics of nuclear and renewables are similar in that construction and capital costs are the major factor in determining their levelised cost of energy. The payback is typically longer than for an equivalent fossil plant making it difficult to attract investment without incentive, but the operating costs are lower and more stable. Many countries are now looking at ways to encourage new nuclear as well as renewables in order to achieve their pressing climate and energy security goals."

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP-EU_countries_defend_nuclears_climate_role_130313a.html

[bananas]

1. The ongoing bait-and-switch from the corrupt nuclear industry

http://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurehow-much-

How much?
20 November 2007

Just before the release of the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA’s) Annual Energy Outlook 2005 (AEO 2005) the then senior vice president of nuclear generation and chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), Marvin Fertel, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that the assumptions made on new nuclear plant construction were erroneous. The EIA had assumed overnight capital costs of $1928/kWe, which Fertel claimed were “unrealistically high, and inflated.”

The EIA, Fertel said, “assumed that new nuclear plants would experience the same delays, lengthy construction periods and high costs experienced by some of the plants built in the 1980s and 1990s.” These assumptions were unrealistic owing to advances in construction techniques and new simplified, standardised plant designs. More realistic overnight capital cost estimates of new nuclear were of the order of $1400-1500/kWe for the first-of-a-kind and $300 less for the nth-of-a-kind, he claimed.

The EIA’s estimate, however – which has not changed significantly since AEO 2005 – was actually optimistic when compared to a 2003 report by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), titled The Future of Nuclear Power, where the base case overnight capital cost for nuclear was $2000/kWe (in 2002 dollars).

<snip>

All those estimates are now known to be LAUGHABLE.

Then they told us inherently safe small modular reactors like the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor would be inexpensive.
Until Germany and South Africa threw in the towel because it was inherently dangerous and laughably expensive.

Then there was the Molten Salt Breeder Reactor, now relabeled the Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor for marketing purposes (ie to fool people into thinking it's something new).

Now they're going back to LWR's, and want to force future generations to pay for these laughably expensive boondoggles.