In other words, the externalities. If it takes subsidies to make it cost-effective, it isn't really cost-effective, is it?
If the neoliberal economic calculations of supply and demand are not taking into account important externalities like carbon emissions, can we really say that the advertised cost is the true cost? I feel like that's the biggest mental roadblock for me literally looking at some table "of this costs that per kWh" and assuming it's that simple. I doubt the free market, as it currently exists, is accurately pricing the true costs of these energy forms; I suppose subsidies and other political price meddling could theoretically account for some of those externalities, but that seems like a bandaid, not a solution, and even then only assuming the politicians have an accurate understanding of what those externalities are.
Effectively, you're saying "since there are unexamined externalities on both sides, nuclear must be cheaper."If the neoliberal economic calculations of supply and demand are not taking into account important externalities like carbon emissions, can we really say that the advertised cost is the true cost?
Well, I don't think I'm trying to say nuclear specifically must be cheaper, but I don't think the traditional accounting of costs for fossil fuel sources are taking into account a very significant externality, which if it were factored in, would make nuclear, and other renewable sources, much more competitive. I'm not trying to make some round about argument that nuclear is somehow the cheapest source of energy, it certainly isn't; however, if we're looking at carbon-neutral energy sources that can generate large amounts of power, day and night, rain or shine, without specific geographic and weather requirements, using technology we have right now, to my uneducated eyes, nuclear looks to be at the top of the list. I know some people want to push for only renewables, which is fine, but I'm not convinced we could entirely replace fossil fuels with renewables as quickly as we ought to be.
You know what? Now you've got me wondering. veen - this seems like something you might be curious about, too. Can we find a good source of information as to the actual costs of power generation using, say, nuclear, coal, solar and hydro... accounting for externalities? 'cuz I find a bunch of .pdf sources I simply don't have time for this week, and I'd like to know more.
Thanks for the shoutout - I am interested in the answer, so I've done some cursory searching and I found this Dutch paper. This was the backbone to a public debate some years ago on whether The Netherlands should go all for nuclear energy as a main source of energy. It's issued by the government and answers a very interesting question: how much would it cost for an investor per kWh to produce energy, on a national scale, over 30 years of use? They compare nuclear, wind and biomass with coal and gas energy production and also calculate how much more expensive it would be if the CO2 from coal and gas were captured at 20 to 50 euros per tonne CO2. It doesn't give an exact number; rather, the study looks at a priceband. This is not because of all externalities, but it accounts for construction and operational risks and future price changes. See it as the range of prices to base a business case on. I translated the resulting graph: So it can be lower, although the priceband shares half of its range with regular coal and gasification. They have this to say on externalities: That is surprisingly low, especially since CO2 storage adds about 1 to 2 cents per kWh with regular coal. I don't know if that covers all externalities you are interested in, but it's better than nothing. I also found this Wiki page. It goes in-depth on the Levelized Cost of Electricity, LCOE, which is the cost of capital (buildings & equipment), maintenance and fuel divided by the amount of energy produced over its lifetime. It does not include taxes and subsidies. It's based on this research paper, and has this graph for Germany in 2013: If you look at the history of U.S. projections, you can see that coal is now around 20% cheaper than nuclear and 4 times as cheap as solar. The projection for 2020 is that coal and nuclear will be the same price, but that solar will have gone from 4 times as expensive to just a bit more expensive than coal - dropping 68% over 5 years. As you said, it's only a matter of time. I'm not sure if this is enough of an answer - if anyone knows more about this stuff, feel free to chip in. flagamuffin?
Large-scale electricity production can create external costs and benefits. [...] Examples of this are damages to health because of air pollution, costs of climate change and the certainty of energy demand. [...] A study by Bollen en Eerens (2007) calculated the health benefits of cleaner air and reduced CO2 impact when choosing nuclear over coal to be around 0.5 eurocents per kWh.
Subsidies are the government saying that they are willing to pay more to see this done. It's no different than other publically-funded ventures. Especially since the costs are also mainly taxes.
...right. Externalities. Subsidies affect the price, not the cost. Gas prices are dimes per gallon in Saudi Arabia. Doesn't mean gas is magically a fraction of the cost there as it is in the US; doesn't mean gas in the US is a fraction of the cost that it is in Germany. It means that part of it is being paid by someone else. It's still being paid. Solar is "cheaper" in China right now because China is heavily subsidizing panel development and production. They have incentive to. But once you strip away the externalities, the costs of solar are going down, in no small part because of that subsidized development. So you still have to pick where your economic boundaries are... but a rational boundary around nuclear (ignoring subsidies, including overruns) price it as very expensive. Does that make sense to you?
Oh, yeah, I get what you're saying. Thing is, energy providers will look at the price when deciding whether to build a nuclear plant or a few coal plants.