Or this one: Geothermal power releases toxic chemicals and radiation from inside the earth, and poorly informed advocates continue to promote geothermal energy as ‘Clean”.

Atomic fission provides more energy concentrated in one spot then other energies outside of fossil fuels. And fossil fuels are continuing to destroy our global environment worse than the nuclear option http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2008/05/nuclear-option

Besides, we as a people have a moral obligation to convert the nuclear warheads, that will become increasingly available as we pursue nuclear disarmament, into peaceful use. They can not be stored safely. So, forget that argument. It was a failed policy, and needs to be eliminated. Reprocessing is the only viable solution. With discipline, nuclear materials can be utilized safely, over and over. Spent fuel can be turned into new fuel assemblies with reprocessing. That is a technology that has been used since the Manhattan project. But, like always in America, politicians bullied the scientists and we ended up with the impossible problem of attempting to safely store nuclear byproducts commonly called waste. We could put all of those war heads in MOX fuel for the benefit of all humanity and the Earth. We could show by example that more good can come from Nuclear energy instead of aiming weapons at each other.

1) Why would the author ever use the cost of nuclear energy for the FIRST YEAR only for comparison purposes? The advantage of nuclear plants is that they are ridiculously economical to operate over their entire lifespan, which in the new plants’ case is 60 years, and most likely more. Just for rough comparison, a $20B (WAY high!), 1600 MWe plant that ran for 60 years with $250M in annual costs (again, high), and an availability factor of 0.9 (low) would produce electricity at ~4.6 cents / kW. Clearly, very competitive even with egregiously conservative assumptions. With a $7B initial cost and 95% availability factor, that number drops to ~2.8 cents / kW.

2) As mentioned by a previous poster, where are the alternative sources mentioned in the article? Let’s say the author supports wind and thinks we should use those instead (likely). To equal a 1600 MWe nuclear plant we’d need about 800 2MWe wind mills right? No, since wind is AT BEST a 0.25 availability factor, you’d need about 4 times that, or ~3600 2MWe wind mills at ~$4M each (total? $14.4 billion). Not to mention that each windmill completely consumes between 0.35 and 0.5 acres, not to mention the 5 to 10 turbine diameters required between each turbine (not included in the 0.35-0.5 estimate). So, figure between 500 and 1000 acres of land? Remember, this has to be in a WINDY area.

Articles like these, seemingly intended to once again scare the public away from nuclear power, need to be taken with more than a few grains of salt. Hopefully, most people with common sense will realize that…

The author bases all his nuclear-cost calculations on worst-case assumptions. Some nuclear plants have seen cost over-runs because of litigation from political groups, but others have been built on schedule and within budget. But the writer assumes that all future plants will face the same political attacks. The world would be better served if people were given accurate information instead of anti-nuclear propaganda like this article.

To illustrate the author’s separation from reality, consider this quotation from his article: “Energy storage and load management offer additional solutions to reduce, shift and better manage loads. Pumped-water and compressed-air energy storage as well as utility-scale batteries are now being implemented.” A more false statement could hardly be imagined. Not only are there no large-scale energy storage systems being implemented, not only are none to be implemented in the foreseeable future, there is no imaginable system on the distant horizon. For more on this point, please look at Solar Energy, Wind Power, Intermittency, and Storage.

The author believes that reducing electricity demand will solve the problem. Not so. The most effective thing that can be done to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions is converting fossil-fuel applications to electricity — battery-powered cars, electrified rail transport, heat pumps in place of furnaces, etc. etc. Electricity demand will definitely rise, not fall.

Typical of such anti-nuclear polemics, this article references a study by Cambridge Energy Research Associates that calculated the construction cost of obsolete reactor designs using obsolete manufacturing and construction methods at current prices. The CERA study ignores actual data of contemporary designs available from countries that are building nuclear plants. This data shows the CERA study to be wildly wrong.

As would be expected, the author nowhere considers the costs of alternatives to nuclear energy, which have risen in parallel with nuclear costs for the very same reasons. He also leaves out the pertinent fact that most wind turbines, which are the only renewable energy source close to competing with nuclear, are imported from Asia, where workers’ pay and safety standards are much lower. The heavy subsidies wind projects get now benefit foreigners much more than they do Americans. Since the US is running an unsupportable trade deficit, it’s not clear at all how this can proceed.

All the author has achieved is proving that by carefully selecting material that serves his purpose and ignoring inconvenient facts he can succeed in confusing his readers.