From: Dr. Blake Nelson (bnelson301@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Sep 10 2002 - 14:05:24 EDT
Euratom or the EU recently did a study of the
environmental and societal costs of different forms of
power generation and the degree to which the industry
carries the cost of those effects. I don't have any
time to look this up, but I am sure it is somewhere on
the internet, maybe at Euratom's website. Nuclear,
with the fact that the generator has to pay for the
cost of waste disposal, paid close to the actual
environmental, health, etc. costs of the generation of
power. Even natural gas did not come close to paying
the costs -- it covered in the neighborhood of 50% of
the environmental and societal costs. Coal, of
course, is abyssmal in this regard.
Nuclear would be far and away most cost-effective if
the fossil fuel burners had to pay the true cost of
cleaning up fly ash and other environmental impacts of
fossil fuels. With the consolidation that has gone on
in the ownership of nuclear plants, the US fleet has a
pretty good safety record and excellent power
performance over the last decade -- which is why
despite higher demand for electricity and the
decommissioning of some plants, nuclear has stayed
steady at 20% of electric generation. The remaining
plants stay close to full efficiency most of the time
these days.
The radioactive waste storage is less of an issue if
reprocessing is done, which becomes an occupational
safety and proliferation issue -- since what you have
to dispose of has a relatively short half-life.
Reprocessing, of course, was (is?) a political
football in the US.
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