Nuclear can be cheap. We have decided to make it expensive.
We throw away 95% of the fuel. This is because Carter gave an order to not reprocess old fuel rods. Well, we would throw away 95%, but actually we just keep it sitting around for political reasons. Most of our fissionable material is sitting in containment ponds.
The NRC refuses to give guidance. They will only approve a reactor or disapprove it, given a finalized design. You have to do all the design work up front, completely in the dark, and then you get a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.
Every stupid insignificant part involves absurd paperwork, right down to changing the lightbulbs.
Nuclear fuel is very cheap per kWh generated. It's so cheap that people don't bother with breeder reactors, because the potential savings in fuel costs are trivial.
It's not why nuclear is expensive. It's the construction costs.
And operation costs. Construction and operation costs are both hampered by regulatory burden that is not currently commensurate with the statistical risk.
It understates the statistical risk! Nuclear power plants have international treatise to severely curtail their liability in the event of an accident because nuclear events are extraordinarily costly.
Fukushima thus far has yielded some $700B USD of costs, and it has no end in site. Chernobyl has been estimated at having cost $235B USD.
No insurance company would touch this sort of liability, so governments put a hard cap on the potential liability. Here in Ontario, nuclear plants were only responsible for $75M of damage for the longest time, though over the next few years it will increase to $1B. The actual damage it could reasonably cost -- what any other industry would have to insure for -- would be more in the $1000B ($1T) range.
Yeah, I actually think the advanced nuclear companies should say they don't need things like Price-Anderson to cap liabilities. They're really that safe, and the designers are that confident. Doing so would demonstrate that level of confidence.
The fair comparison, though, is: what's the cost of global warming, and who will insure against it once fossil fuel emitters are held liable?
Also, if we looked at the latest research on low-dose radiation effects and really let that sink in, we'd spend far less on the cleanup of near background dose stuff after the few accidents that do occur.
We throw away 95% of the fuel. This is because Carter gave an order to not reprocess old fuel rods. Well, we would throw away 95%, but actually we just keep it sitting around for political reasons. Most of our fissionable material is sitting in containment ponds.
The NRC refuses to give guidance. They will only approve a reactor or disapprove it, given a finalized design. You have to do all the design work up front, completely in the dark, and then you get a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.
Every stupid insignificant part involves absurd paperwork, right down to changing the lightbulbs.