Reply #17: Very good... [View All]

[punpirate]

... relating a common-sense approach to renewables to Reagan's mind. Cute.

Okay, hidden costs:

1) Government subsidies. If the power is cheaply produced and is competitive in a free market environment, why are they necessary? But, the manufacturers and operators of the plants say they can't do without them. Those include government research grants, subsidies for operation, tax credits and loans, of which 50-60% are later forgiven. And, that's at the federal and state levels. Those subsidies are estimated, for nuclear power, to be about $145 billion through 1999--and that's without consideration of the fact that no license for a nuclear plant has been requested since 1979. Had a similar amount of money been invested in alternative energy and conservation over the same time period, questions about nuclear energy development might well be moot.

2) Insurance protection and subsidies. If the plants are inherently safe and effective, why is the Price-Anderson Act necessary (and, if technology has improved, why is it being reapproved and expanded in the latest energy bill)? In 1968, EPRI issued a consumer publication assuring the public that actuarial and engineering studies showed that the public could expect a serious nuclear plant accident once every 400 years. Eleven years later, a control malfunction caused the Three Mile Island plant to melt 43% of its core. EPRI was off by well more than an order of magnitude in their estimate.

3) Waste disposal. A very small percentage of the wholesale price of nuclear-generated electricity has been set aside for waste disposal. That amount is grossly insufficient to meet safe disposal requirements. The remainder of the cost will be absorbed by taxpayers, and failure to provide for the safest known disposal (such as vitrification, which has thus far been rejected for all federal depositories) risks the water supplies of many people.

4) Decommissioning. Those costs ultimately accrue to the ratepayers. Recent experience shows that initial plans for decommissioning, when most plants were built, do not meet current environmental standards and decommissioning costs are higher than expected.

5) For those of us in the west, where most uranium mining has occurred, tailings and uranium processing have ruined a number of small rivers and streams. In a place where water is at a premium, that's yet another hidden cost.

6) Fuel processing and reprocessing clean-up. This is an on-going process and much of those costs are being borne by taxpayers.

7) Large nuclear plants are centralized operations and lose 10-15% of the power generated on long lines. Smaller decentralized operations would minimize those losses.

8) Government oversight. The NRC is a taxpayer-funded operation, and its necessity is largely a function of the presence of the private nuclear industry which would not police itself adequately if not required to do so by such an agency. Davis-Besse immediately comes to mind in this regard.

9) Design flaws. You mention a few success stories, but you avoid mentioning the failures. The Palisades plant run by Consumers Power that I mentioned was fraught with problems and downtime for years. Heat-exchanger tube ruptures at New York's Indian Point plant have plagued them for a very long time. Diablo Canyon in California had extended shutdowns in 2003 due to heat exchanger and pump problems for which replacement power was required. Davis-Besse was down for over two years. Palo Verde in AZ had a string of problems in its first several years of operation, and just when it seemed those were sorted out, plant 2 required the replacement of a steam generator at a cost of a quarter of a billion dollars. That same new steam generator required shutdown and repairs a year later. TXU South Texas was down for months for leaks. Columbia in Washington state was shut down in 2003 at precisely the time that BPA needed power because drought had reduced hydro power. Approximately half the power of Three Mile Island is gone entirely, since there are no plans to repair or replace Unit-2.

All those and many other unexpected shutdowns cost ratepayers in replacement power and unexpected maintenance costs.

10) Health effects from nuclear program activities. No one is sure of those because of the time delay between problems and onset of disease, but, as with most any industrial activity, those health effects are present. How to quantify them is a problem, given current law and epidemiological method.

11) Security concerns. These days, that's a matter for consideration. The costs aren't easily determined, but in the event of an attack, they could be substantial. And modifications for security throughout the nuclear industry will add to the cost to taxpayers and ratepayers, if they are ever implemented by HSD.

It's not as cheap as you describe.