Jack Yetiv

Economics of Nuclear Energy

This article is far worse than just an apologist nuclear rant. It presumably comes from an academic, but nothing about it employs academic principles. It's as if the author believes that since he is a professor, just his say-so is support enough for his position.

He dismisses renewables without reasoning, uses 4-year old price data for various power sources even though coal and nat gas have approximately quadrupled in cost during those 4 years while production cost per watt on solar has probably dropped from a peak of $5/watt down to $1.14 (according to FSLR's recent quarterly report).

As an economist, he completely fails to take capital construction costs and insurance costs for nuclear plants, and dismisses waste fuel storage costs by relying on some unnamed future technology that will make those spent fuels less costly to dispose of because they will have some value.

He also fails to put a price on environmental costs, even though there are good data for those from existing cap-and-trade programs.

As to the fact that solar and wind aren't on 24/7, that is certainly an issue, but not at this stage, given that these two sources barely account for 2% of power in the US. And solar in many parts of this country match VERY nicely to the peak-load demand profile (think Arizona max AC power demand occurring when the sun is shining strongly in the afternoon).

By the time we get to 10-20% (at minimum 5-7 years from now, and probably more like 10 years), I believe that the energy storage problem will have been solved.

If you take ALL costs into account, nuclear is nowhere NEAR the bargain suggested in this superficial article, and by the time a nuclear plant is built in the US (10 years), solar's cost will drop by at least another 50%.

Jack