Richard Karlgaard of the DigitalRules, Forbes.com's blog, criticized President Obama for supporting Iran's nuclear power and not ours yesterday. In his post, he recounts the history of nuclear power in the United States, ultimately criticizing liberals for halting construction of new nuclear power plants after the disaster at Three Mile Island. He points to the strong safety record of nuclear power plants following the events, but his argument is the same slight of hand that we have seen from proponents of nuclear power in the past.
While there are those who oppose nuclear power because of the safety concerns, there are other serious barriers to nuclear power, and one of them is cost. In his testimony to Congress in July 2008, CAP Senior Fellow Dr. Joseph Romm explained how nuclear power is prohibitively expensive. Romm explained that the costs of building a new nuclear power plant increased by 195 percent between 2000 and 2007, an increase of $7.4 billion.
Nuclear power proponents claim that nuclear power is competitive at market prices, but Romm cited Jim Harding, the former director of power planning and forecasting for Seattle City Light in his testimony. According to Harding, his own "reasonable estimate for levelized cost range ... is 12-17 cents per kWhr lifetime, and 1.7x times that number [20 to 29 cents per kWh] in first year of commercial operation." At those rates, lifetime costs for nuclear power double the per kWhr prices of new wind energy, and far more than the 8.9 cents per kWhr average cost across the country in 2007.
Romm was suspect of the future for nuclear plants that are currently in operation as well as the development of new plants.
Merely maintaining the percentage of generation provided by nuclear through 2050 and beyond will require building on the order of 75 large replacement reactors, which itself is likely to pose challenges unless new nuclear plants can be built for under $4,000/kW total cost and provide electricity to the grid at $0.10 per kW or less.