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Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
The most expensive way to generate power is nuclear - this is why almost none are being built. Land based wind is the cheapest.
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Hogwash. They aren't being built because of NIMBY and FUD due to the human tendency to be terrible at approaching risk in a rational way. If land based wind were cheaper, my utility would ask if I would like to pay 4 cents less per kWh for "green" energy rather than asking that I pay 4 cents more.
Decommissioning is factored into the price of nuclear plants before construction even begins. The extremely high upfront and decommissioning cost is meant to be amortized over the course of 40 years or more. Fuel and maintenance is extremely cheap beyond these 2 major expenses. The rising cost of nuclear has more to do with irrational fear and NIMBY hurdles than anything else. Storing "waste" isn't a problem, you just store it. The USA has tons of space to store a little fuel. Besides that, today's waste is tomorrow's fuel.
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Decommissioning the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth MA will cost <b>$1,000,000,000 - $One Billion</b> and take (at least) about a decade. They said they will store the waste in New Mexico. But I think it will be staying on site in dry casks - that last only about 100 years. Who will pay in the long run?
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That's 1 plant out of 440 in the world. I'm not up on why they want to decommision the plant, or why it's "losing" money. Normally once a plant is built, the cost is already sunk and you can only make money from there on out. CA wants to decommision a plant due to NIMBY, but it currently produces carbon free electricity at $0.027 /kWh. Somehow those idiots think they are better off building new natural gas plants at a higher cost, than simply continuing to use the plant that is already built.