At 07:31 03/07/2005 -0700, you wrote:
Karen,
This is just propaganda by anti-nuclear people.
They might have overstated their case but, hitherto, the propaganda has always come from the nuclear side -- and deceptive it has always been because they have never included development costs nor long term storage nor decommissioning costs. Don;t you realise that if the nuclear generation of electricity is all that is cracked up to be then every developed country in the world will have done what the French did -- depend mainly on nuclear power stations for electricity (and only then because De Gaulle wanted to be independent in the production of nuclear weapons). And what of the French now? They're still very keen on nuclear power -- but only in order to land big contracts with China (which will only build a few nuclear power stations anyway for a small proportion of their electricity generation -- more more security reasons than anything else.) The French are not replacing their first generation nuclear power stations which are now coming to the end of their time. They have too many legacy problems.
British nuclear incompetence is well recorded. They had the second worst disaster at Windscale releasing maybe 20,000 curies (Chernobyl 7 million and Three Mile 15).
I don't think that the British are any more incompetent than others, but only second-rate engineers and scientists have been going into the nuclear industry for the past 30 years (and probably anywhere in the world) -- there are so many more interesting things to do. Would you want to sit and look at dials all day long, never having a chance of making a decision for perhaps weeks on end? Of course you wouldn't. No self-respecting individual would want to do so.
As it is they buy nuclear produced electricity from the French.
This has nothing to do with it. This is only a useful reciprocal arrangement to swap electricity across a narrow stretch of 22 miles and would occur whatever technology the French had..
However, their figures are created by enthusiasm rather than facts. I don't know why the BBC bothered.
Because the BBC has some of the brightest people of any institution in the world and is about the only medium left that has some sort of independence -- and that includes most of your newspapers and TV channels -- and some regard for the truth. If you want to damn the BBC then you also need to question your perceptiveness of what goes on around you and the lies that are told. You have been told a feast of lies by the Bush administration for three years now and it is only with the greatest reluctance that you begin to admit it.. Come clean, stand up for God's sake, and realise that the BBC, often woolly minded and soppy, is one of the few media that have been telling the truth for years.
Keith
Harry
*******************************
Henry George School of Social Science
of Los Angeles
Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042
818 352-4141
*******************************
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Karen Watters Cole
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2005 11:16 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Futurework] Update in the Nuclear vs Alternatives discussion
Cost of nuclear 'underestimated'
The cost of new nuclear power has been underestimated by a factor of three, according to a British think tank.
BBC News, 29 June 2005
The New Economics Foundation (NEF) says existing estimates do not allow for the cost of building novel technologies and expensive time delays in construction. They claim that renewable energy sources like wind and solar should be relied upon instead of nuclear power.
However their report has been dismissed as inaccurate by the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA). "This report is grossly out of kilter with almost all other reports that have been done," said Simon James of the NIA.
Escalating costs. According to British Energy and British Nuclear Fuels, the cost of nuclear generation is between 2.2 and 3.0p/kWh. But the NEF says that this figure is probably a severe underestimate, with the real cost being somewhere between 3.4 and 8.3/kWh.
The NEF report claims that existing nuclear estimates are based heavily on "engineering judgements", which tend to be skewed towards the lower cost limits because they do not take sufficient account of "upside risk".
In other words, the lower limits of cost are predictable but the upper limits might sky-rocket if things go wrong. And, the NEF says, current cost calculations for nuclear power do not acknowledge the very real risk factor involved in generating new nuclear power.
In their report, Mirage and Oasis, the NEF highlights the example of Dungness B, a power station which took 23 years to complete instead of five, costing 400% above the predicted estimates.
'Voodoo economics'. These hidden costs, combined with the risk of terrorism, mean that nuclear should not be promoted as an answer to climate change, the NEF claims. Instead, the report says, renewable energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal could meet the world's energy needs in a way that is environmentally friendly.
At a cost of 3.0-4.0p/kWh for offshore and 1.5-2.5/kWh for onshore production, wind is a far cheaper option than nuclear, the NEF claims. "But a resurgence of interest in nuclear power, justified by voodoo economics, stands to hinder and potentially derail renewable energy," said Andrew Simms, NEF policy director.
However, the Royal Academy of Engineers (RAE), who recently completed their own estimates of the cost of nuclear power, dismissed the report. "They are focusing on the worst-case scenario for nuclear power and the best-case scenario for renewables; so it is hardly a balanced view," an RAE spokesman told the BBC News website.
"Too much of the debate at the moment is either nuclear or wind, when really we should be looking for a holistic approach."
Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4631737.stm
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
