climate, photos, miscellany

This post includes some interesting information:

In the EIA’s analysis, which leaves out all incentives, the average cost of “advanced nuclear” or “next-generation nuclear” plants entering service in 2018—long lead times associated with these technologies will make it difficult to open any early—would be $108.40 per megawatt-hour (MWh), equivalent to $0.1084 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), in 2011 dollars. This seems in the right ballpark, as the estimated cost of power from the new nuclear plant under construction in the Kaliningrad region of Russia is around $0.10/kWh, a German lawmaker said in April.

For reference, the 2012 average retail price of electricity in the US was $0.1153/kWh. So the cost of new advanced nuclear power would be just barely below the retail price of electricity—power sold to you and me at home. (Commercial, industrial, and transportation customers all buy power for less than the LCOE cost for advanced nuclear power.)

In other words, it would be very difficult for a utility to make money selling power generated by advanced nuclear plants, if they had to shoulder the entire cost themselves. But they don’t.

Not included in the LCOE analysis is the cost of decommissioning nuclear plants, which is often externalized and pushed onto ratepayers through surcharges on their utility bills, or the cost of managing nuclear waste for decades, which is generally pushed onto taxpayers through the Department of Energy budget. And these are not trivial costs: Edison International estimates that decommissioning its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station near San Diego, which it permanently retired last week, will cost around $3 billion. So the LCOE analysis actually understates the true, all-in cost of nuclear power.

Related:

• Liability caps
• Obama’s nuclear loan guarantees
• Generation IV nuclear
• Funds for nuclear plant decommissioning depleted
• The costly nuclear option
• The cost of America’s nuclear programs
• Ontario rethinking new nukes
• Monbiot now conditionally supporting nuclear
• Pick your poison: nuclear or ‘clean coal’
• Power plant economics
• Costly delays at Yucca Mountain
• New nuclear plants, new nuclear waste
• The true price of nuclear power
• Climate change and nuclear power
• Choosing nuclear

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