On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 01:09:38 GMT, Sunworshiper wrote:
I have mixed feelings about the nuclear power plants. I would like to
know the true costs. They get gov't $ to build , operate, the power
co. gets the $, gov't steps in again to shut it down, clean it up ,

No. Commercial plants do *not* get government money to build or
operate the plants. They have to be financed by private investment
and paid off out of the revenues generated by selling electricity.
(Obviously this doesn't apply to government owned utilities such
as TVA.)

The plant operators are charged a fee per kilowatt-hour generated
which goes into a government trust fund to cover the costs of plant
decommissioning and ultimate waste disposal.

(That fund theoretically contains a very large surplus which has
been paid in over the 47 years of commercial nuclear power in
the US, but like other such trust funds, ie Highway Trust Fund,
Social Security Trust Fund, etc, the government actually spent
the money for other unrelated things as quickly as it came in,
and the fund really just contains a big IOU the government
has written on the taxpayer.)

The commercial operators are currently buying nuclear fuel at
reduced prices from the government (primarily because the
government has a **** load of it left over from their military
nuclear programs that they want to get rid of), but fuel costs
for a nuclear power plant are a very trivial part of the total
costs of the plant.

(They're paying $5 a pound for MOX fuel. That's about half the
world market price. But considering that they only need a few
thousand pounds of fuel over the life of a 1,000 MW reactor,
you can see fuel costs are trivial.)

The commercial plant operators also benefit from the Price-
Anderson cap on liability (the plant operator is only liable out
of pocket for the first $200 million in off site damages per
incident, after that, a government sponsored, and nuclear
industry paid, insurance pool picks up the tab up to a
maximum of $9.6 billion).

Note that even for TMI, the $200 million deductable was
never reached, so the insurance pool has never been
tapped in the 47 years it has been in existence. Again
I'd note that this money has already been spent by the
government, and there's really just an IOU in the pool
that the government has written on the taxpayer.

The actual bussbar cost of electricity from a nuclear plant
depends primarily on how long the government holds up the
licensing process. For the last plants built in the US, that
was running about 12 years. What that means is that the
plant operator is incurring interest costs on the money
borrowed to build the reactor for 12 years before the plant
generates the first billable watt.

When the last US plant was built, that ran the cost of the
plant up between 4 and 5 times compared to the 3 years it
normally took in the 1960s to license a US plant (or to
license a plant in other countries such as Japan or France
today).

Still, even with that steep nuclear paranoia driven cost
penalty, bussbar costs for nuclear power are less than
those for coal fired plants, and somewhat higher than
for hydroelectric. In other words, between 2 and 6 cents
a kilowatt-hour.

Gary