Contrary to power company figures, cost of nuclear power generation highest: research

[bananas]

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/features/news/20110723p2a00m0na011000c.html

Contrary to power company figures, cost of nuclear power generation highest: research

Utility companies across the country continue to tout the low cost of nuclear energy on their websites.

Tohoku Electric Power Co. boasts nuclear power's economic efficiency, while Hokkaido Electric Power Co (HEPCO) the stability of its cost. Each site comes with bar graphs indicating the cost of generating power through various power sources, and the figures are exactly the same regardless of the utility. For every kilowatt-hour of power generated, hydroelectricity is listed as costing 11. 9 yen, petroleum 10.7 yen, liquefied natural gas 6.2 yen, coal 5.7 yen, and nuclear 5.3 yen.

In a section of its website responding to questions sent in by elementary school children, Chubu Electric Power Co. informs us that nuclear power "is the cheapest." The media, including the Mainichi, have often cited the information provided to us by power companies.

However, Kenichi Oshima, a professor of environmental economics and policy at Ritsumeikan University, has done some calculations and has reached a completely difference conclusion. Oshima says that the cost for a kilowatt-hour of electrical power between fiscal 1970 and fiscal 2007 was 10.68 yen for nuclear, 3.98 yen for hydroelectric, and 9.9 yen for thermal generation, with nuclear-generated power coming out as the most expensive. These calculations were even presented at a meeting of the government's Atomic Energy Commission last September. So how does one explain these two different conclusions?

First of all, there is a huge gap between estimates given by power companies and figures derived from actual records.

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From robdogbucky's Sunday post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1563245

[madokie]

1. After being dishonest about everything else

why should the nuclear power industry be honest about this?
Shut 'm down, all of them and let us deal with the power shortage in the mean time. I think we'll be ok if we do. We're getting less than 20% from nukes now and we've lost most all of our manufacturing base so I'm not so sure we'd miss the power they're producing anyway.

Rec.

[GliderGuider]

3. The same thing applies to the FF industries.

While they may not use data trimming around costs, they employ egregious misrepresentations and lies, usually conducted by smokescreen organizations (pun intended).

Nuclear power and fossil fuels are together the bane of all life on this planet. Shut them all down, and let life find a natural balance again.

[madokie]

4. I can't argue with that

I doubt that man will ever get back to where we are today technology wise ever. I do see a situation where most inhabitants of this earth are killed off and it'll take millions of years if ever for man to re inhabit this world. Man is well on his way to destroying the things that make it possible for him to survive here.

[kristopher]

2. Data trimming is endemic to the nuclear industry

The good news is that recent events and current trends are making it harder and harder for them to successfully pull off the deception on price that is needed to get plants built.



The Economics of Nuclear Reactors: Renaissance or Relapse?
Posted by Mark Cooper in Unsustainable

Within the past year, estimates of the cost of nuclear power from a new generation of reactors have ranged from a low of 8.4 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) to a high of 30 cents. This paper tackles the debate over the cost of building new nuclear reactors. The most recent cost projections for new nuclear reactors are, on average, over four times as high as the initial “nuclear renaissance” projections. The additional cost of building 100 new nuclear reactors, instead of pursuing a least cost efficiency-renewable strategy, would be in the range of $1.9-$4.4 trillion over the life the reactors.
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From the first fixed price turnkey reactors in the 1960s to the May 2009 cost projection of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the claim that nuclear power is or could be cost competitive with alternative technologies for generating electricity has been based on hope and hype. In the 1960s and 1970s, the hope and hype analyses prepared by reactor vendors and parroted by government officials helped to create what came to be known as the “great bandwagon market.” In about a decade utilities ordered over 200 nuclear reactors of increasing size.

Unfortunately, reality did not deliver on the hope and the hype. Half of the reactors ordered in the 1960s and 1970s were cancelled, with abandoned costs in the tens of billions of dollars. Those reactors that were completed suffered dramatic cost overruns (see Figure ES-1). On average, the final cohort of great bandwagon market reactors cost seven times as much as the cost projection for the first reactor of the great bandwagon market. The great bandwagon market ended in fierce debates in the press and regulatory proceedings throughout the 1980s and 1990s over how such a huge mistake could have been made and who should pay for it.

In an eerie parallel to the great bandwagon market, a series of startlingly low-cost estimates prepared between 2001 and 2004 by vendors and academics and supported by government officials helped to create what has come to be known as the “nuclear renaissance.” However, reflecting the poor track record of the nuclear industry in the U.S., the debate over the economics of the nuclear renaissance is being carried out before substantial sums of money are spent. Unlike the 1960s and 1970s, when the utility industry, reactor vendors and government officials monopolized the preparation of cost analyses, today Wall Street and independent energy analysts have come forward with much higher estimates of the cost of nuclear reactors....

Read entire article here: http://www.olino.org/us/articles/2009/11/26/the-economics-of-nuclear-reactors-renaissance-or-relapse