Antinuclear

Missing from the entire debate about nuclear is the most important fact of all: Nuclear is dying due to poor economics, and the debate is already over as far as the market is concerned.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus have backed up their arguments with junk accounting on nuclear energy’s costs. This is where the discussion must depart from mere boosterism and descend into the deep, dark world of energy economics—a subject that Blustein did not even address.

The generally accepted way to compare the cost of various power generation technologies is a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) analysis. There are valid questions about this approach, which serious energy analysts continue to wrangle over. But for mere mortals and policy advocates, LCOE will have to do. There isn’t a better alternative.

As the Energy Information Administration (EIA) explained in the LCOE analysis section of the Annual Energy Outlook 2013:

[LCOE] represents the per-kilowatthour cost (in real dollars) of building and operating a generating plant over an assumed financial life and duty cycle. Key inputs to calculating levelized costs include overnight capital costs, fuel costs, fixed and variable operations and maintenance (O&M) costs, financing costs, and an assumed utilization rate for each plant type. The importance of the factors varies among the technologies. For technologies such as solar and wind generation that have no fuel costs and relatively small O&M costs, the levelized cost changes in rough proportion to the estimated overnight capital cost of generation capacity. For technologies with significant fuel cost, both fuel cost and overnight cost estimates significantly affect the levelized cost. The availability of various incentives, including state or federal tax credits, can also impact the calculation of levelized cost. …As with any projection, there is uncertainty about all of these factors and their values can vary regionally and across time as technologies evolve and fuel prices change.

Anyone who really wants to understand the costs of power generation should read that report, as it explains the many factors, assumptions and uncertainties that a good LCOE analysis entails.

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………

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.

But the complexity doesn’t end there. As EIA explains, the true cost of power generation can vary substantially based on a number of other factors specific to where the plant is located…….

The EIA has historically overestimated the cost of renewables, and underestimated the cost of conventional fuels.  The new 50-MW Macho Springs solar plant under construction by First Solar in New Mexico is will deliver power for $50.79/MWhunder its Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), and other US solar projects have come in this year in the range of $70 to $90/MWh.

By those recent numbers, the cost of US solar PV is already as little as half that of advanced nuclear generation in 2018. Further, we should bear in mind that the cost of solar and wind is still falling, while the cost of nuclear keeps rising…….

Over the years I have spent many, many hours reviewing the cost estimates for new nuclear plants. Every time I’ve gone down that rabbit hole I have reached a point where I threw up my hands and quit because the data quality is so poor. Since no nuclear plants have been built on schedule in recent years, there are no reliable real-world cost data to establish a baseline. ……

In short: Cost estimates for new nuclear plants are not credible. I have yet to find a single one that stood up to close scrutiny. And as far as I am aware, no nuclear plant has ever been built for close to its original cost estimate………….. http://qz.com/94817/the-real-reason-to-fight-nuclear-power-has-nothing-to-do-with-health-risks/