“Here’s a question to ponder: Would we be more energy independent today if the $100 billion invested in the study of Yucca Mountain had been invested in building a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility?”

You must have made a typo and added a zero. The US government has “only” wasted $10 billion on its study of Yucca Mountain. The nuclear waste fund collects one tenth of one cent per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated in US nuclear power plants, which provides it with an income of approximately $800 million per year. Here is a quote from the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) resources and stats page about the Nuclear Waste Fund:

“Funds Committed for the Nuclear Waste Fund: $33.2 billion (1/10th of a cent per kWh of electricity generated at nuclear power plants plus interest since 1983). Of the $33.2 billion, $10.8 billion has been spent. Payments to the Nuclear Waste Fund are included in the fuel costs. ”

However, I would assert that the US would be far more energy independent if that $10 billion had been spent by doubling the budget for the NRC over the past ten years so that they would be better equipped and ready to efficiently review the numerous license applications that they have already received and those that are being held back because the applicant does not want to start paying NRC fees to have its application sitting in a queue.

Robert Bradley asked me to comment on this post when I made a comment on a more recent post asking him to explain why he described nuclear power as “highly uneconomic”.

I have other comments, but it is hard to get engaged in an accounting based discussion on a post with at least one cost assertion that is off by a factor of ten.

Well researched item, however it should be pointed out that the present cost of uranium only constitutes ~10% of the production cost of a nuclear generated kWh (less than 0.2 cents per kWh) according to latest published NEI data. Even if (in the unlikely event within the next 25 years) the cost of uranium should increase by an order-of-magnitude, light-water fission production costs would remain less than half that of natural gas; and certainly be more than competitive with any IGCC carbon capture & sequestration scheme.

I’m also of the opinion that there is no intrinsic reason that a standardized NPP should have an installed capital cost this is any more than present emissions control-regime coal plants.

Ken Maize

2. Why the cost increases? Is it solely due to longer construction times?

What do the Japanese know/do that we don’t?