Nuclear Boondoggle Upon Us Again

Looks like Nuclear Power is back. My feelings on this are well known (my comment from last year, plus another) , but it still bugs me to no end that we can't get past nuclear power. But I do hope we get past this new "wave."

Look, I'm a clean air guy (a nation of little obese kids who can't exercise because they have asthma is not my happy vision of the future) and my bet is that human related emissions are adding to the warming trend, but even given both of those, I still think that nuclear is a bad, bad investment by the American people (and make no mistake, we will bear most of the cost, while giving away most of the revenue). My past comments,

The "nuclear boondoggle" is the fallacy of the cost of Nuclear energy. It's commonly touted at about $.06/kilowatt. However, that cost does not include the following: First, there’s insurance. Here the free market has made coverage too expensive for any plant to cover. Insurers just wouldn’t touch it without a very, very high premium. Damages from an accident range from hundreds of billions to trillions depending upon location of plant and scope of damage. Thus, the feds decided that the national taxpayers would cover any and all liabilities. Then, waste. Again, too expensive for the plant operators, so the feds again decided the national taxpayers should build, store, transport, and maintain waste facilities, and again cover any liabilities. Finally, there’s financing. Here the feds decided that the national taxpayers should guarantee the loans for building plants. Add those real costs back into the equation and “cheap” nuclear is easily the most expensive power on the planet. It would be cheaper to hire Lance Armstrong to pedal a generator at my house than to buy nuclear. Especially if the feds cover the three biggest expenses.

As much as I want clean air, I just don't think nuclear is worth the cost and risk. Period. No matter how you look at it, its just too expensive to survive without massive help from the taxpayers, and that will never change. This isn't an emerging technology where the taxpayers could be sold on future reduction in real costs, nuclear is actually the opposite. Take solar. The more solar panels are sold, the cheaper they get, basic business principle, right? The more that's produced the cheaper the cost. But with Nuclear, the more that's produced (waste, building, etc), the more expensive it gets (insurance, waste, transportation, building, land, potential for disaster; either accidental or terrorist related, etc). Nothing gets cheaper, everything related to nuclear power just makes it more expensive as time goes by. Why are we hitching our wagon to that star? What genius thinks this is a good "investment?"

Plus, what genius thinks its a good idea to build nuclear targets and scatter them around the nation during our "long war" with terrorism? Seriously? They don't make sense during times of peace, but war? Especially when our opponent's only hope is use our stuff against ourselves? Someone thinks it makes sense to create nuclear "stuff?" Wow.

Nuclear is just a really bad investment, even when the "clean air" component is figured in, but especially while we're at war. Spend the billions (and potentially trillions) on something else. Please.