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Nuclear power plants are financially risky given high costs mongabay.com April 4, 2007
The paper, published in the April 1 issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology, warns power companies that nuclear power may not be financially attractive even with generous government subsidies. "For energy security and carbon emission concerns, nuclear power is very much back on the national and international agenda," said study co-author Dan Kammen, UC Berkeley professor of energy and resources and of public policy. "To evaluate nuclear power's future, it is critical that we understand what the costs and the risks of this technology have been. To this point, it has been very difficult to obtain an accurate set of costs from the U. S. fleet of nuclear power plants." Analyzes the costs of electricity from existing U.S. nuclear reactors, the researchers found that "cost surprises" could significantly increase the cost of new energy technologies, including next-generation nuclear power.
The study warns that while politicians may play up the security and possible environmental benefits of nuclear, their enthusiasm does not "translate into decreased risk for investors." "In a deregulated electricity environment, investors will increasingly share the financial risks of underperformance of generation assets," said co-author Nathan Hultman of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. "We don't have a good way of forecasting these risks yet, but looking at the historical data can be one way to understand the possibilities and scenarios for the future." The study notes that "no new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States in 29 years, in part because they've proved to be poor investments, producing far more expensive electricity than originally promised." It reports that about 19 percent of U.S. electricity generation in 2005 was produced by 104 nuclear reactors.
"Some U.S. plants were really well done, and they happen to be the older ones," Kammen said. "If we can learn the lessons from those plants, which are often simplicity of design and standardization of design, then I think nuclear could make a comeback." Comment: Concentrating solar power better option than nuclear This article is based on a news release from the Society for Experimental Biology Comments? News options Liquid error: Template not found languages/english/includes/x/_90.liquid
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