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Nuclear Energy Now More Expensive Than Solar
js_sebastian writes "According to an article on the New York Times, a historical cross-over has occurred because of the declining costs of solar vs. the increasing costs of nuclear energy: solar, hardly the cheapest of renewable technologies, is now cheaper than nuclear, at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, the NY Times reports that financial markets will not finance the construction of nuclear power plants unless the risk of default (which is historically as high as 50 percent for the nuclear industry) is externalized to someone else through federal loan guarantees or ratepayer funding. The bottom line seems to be that nuclear is simply not competitive, and the push from the US government to subsidize it seems to be forcing the wrong choice on the market."
Except during nights.
Nuclear power offers the advantage of massive energy production on a small area of land, giving it a high W/skm rate. The ideal solution probably lies in the intelligent combination of several powering solutions depending on the zone type, energy demand and area coverage...
Utter bunk. See http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/07/gullible-reporting-by-new-york-times-on.html
I'm sure that the amount of regulation in plant creation, "green" subsidies for solar and "politically correct" as opposed to "environmentally correct" disposal of waste serves to distort the true price of these sources.
Besides, anyone who has played sim city knows that nuclear is much cheaper.
Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_thermal_power_stations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations
Now considering that one nuclear power station usually generates 1 to 5 GIGAwatts, and these generate in the order of TENS OF MEGAwatts, it is inconceivable to me how anyone can compare Solar to Nuclear.
Why do people insist on using 1950s reactors as the basis of safety/cost measurements?
Modern reactors can be a lot cheaper/simpler and have very little decommissioning costs (the plant outside the core doesn't become radioactive over time).
No sig today...
Fossil fuels are the cheapest way to produce energy as long as they do not have to pay for negative externalities.
The byproducts of burning fossil fuels for electricity are just dumped in the air and as long those that are doing the burning do not have to pay for the negative consequences of those byproducts they can "produced" electricity for a lower cost.
Here's an example for your understanding:
- Imagine I came up with a process to get gold from seawater. Running the process would cost me $50 for every gram of gold produced. However this process would have the downside that for every gram of gold extracted it produce 1 cubic kilometer of highly toxic water and cleaning that would cost $1000.
If I have to pay for the negative externalities of the process ($1000 per gram of gold produced to clean-up the 1 cubic kilometer of toxic water produced as a side-effect) then my process is only competitive for gold prices above $1050 per gram.
However, if I can get away with just dumping the toxic water somewhere for free, then at $50 per gram of gold my process is highly competitive with getting gold the old-fashioned way (mining).
Generation of electrity from fossil fuels is currently at the point where they get away with dumping some of the toxic products created as a side effect of their process directly to the air without paying for it. Like my example above, their process is profitable because they don't have to pay for dumping toxic substances into the environment.