the cost of nuclear energy

[miriam_e]

The Australian government report on the cost of nuclear energy has come in with the verdict that coal is the cheapest power source until you factor in the costs of carbon emissions and then nuclear power becomes the cheapest. How very odd... and how very convenient. Like, none of us expected them to come up with that surprising finding, right? Riiiight. [rolls eyes]

The Queensland government did an investigation into the costs of power generation a couple of years ago. They came up with very different results. (They're ordered in a very telling way -- from the form the politicians love most to the ones politicians dislike most.)

Coal (steam turbine)	3 - 5
Natural gas (CCGT)	4 - 5
Nuclear (USA) (steam turbine)	19 - 25
Large hydro-electric	6 - 10
Small to medium hydro-electric	4 - 12
Wind	6 - 17
Solar thermal	18 - 25
Solar photovoltaic	30 - 50

I'm sure the government hasn't heard of the Internet Archive that can be used to undo orwellian rewriting of information:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041122235941/http://www.energy.qld.gov.au/infosite/electricity_generation.html

Strange how Nuclear power looks to the new fake report as the cheapest option. The costs cited don't (as far as I know) include the additional costs of storing the crap afterwards for hundreds of thousands of years. Meanwhile there have been significant advances in renewable energy during the past 2 years that will have made them even cheaper.

And all this ignores social and security costs. Big, centralised power stations are inherently insecure. In a war, guess what gets bombed first? If solar voltaic cells are distributed then the initial cost might be high, but security is enhanced because there is nowhere to strike, and people are in charge of their own destiny. There is also the point that they don't have to pay through the nose for the rest of their life. (Of course that isn't to say solar voltaic cells don't have their own problems. I'm just using them as an example of the opposite to centralised mega-power.)

Distributed solutions are steadfastly ignored apparently because government is on a short leash from the big-money end of town. But distributed solutions make the most sense. Solar heating is safe, cheap, and after the initial costs, free! Solar cooling is also cheap and after initial costs, upkeep requires little.

This kind of result makes our government look like they're corrupt or liars or stupid.

Comments

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

That, more than anything says to me that they're wanting to do naughty things with it. If it was just going to be stored safely then they might actually be considering this (never mind my reservations mentioned above that there is no way to ensure we actually get it back). But they don't want to use synroc. That tells me they sneakily want to use it to enter the weapons cycle. And that is total madness. We need less nuclear weapons, not more.