Power Generation - Hydrogen and Fuel Cells: Advances in Transportation and Power - page 213

power with less expensive coal plants.
The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) is an industry lobbying group for
nuclear power. Its studies show that nuclear production costs are lower
than other central power sources, including coal. The NEI costs are 1.83
cents per kilowatt hours for nuclear, 2.07 cents for coal and 3.52 cents for
natural gas. These are the plant operating costs.
The cost of nuclear power has been aided by government support.
The government has covered those costs not met by the utility for waste
disposal and decommissioning. Nuclear operating costs do not include
the construction and operation of the U.S. government uranium fuel en-
richment facilities. Other excluded operating costs include Federal regula-
tion and long term waste disposal. Utilities and nuclear waste processing
companies have no long-term legal or financial responsibility to manage
the radioactive wastes.
One view is that nuclear energy is expensive, damages the environ-
ment and is harmful to human health and when the cost of construction
and dealing with regulations and nuclear waste is included nuclear power
becomes more costly.
The capital costs of building nuclear plants has increased greatly over
the decades. Much of this has been due to increased regulations pushing
some plants to $10 billion or more with the many modifications required.
The costs of dealing with a reactors' radioactive waste are estimat-
ed at $58 billion according to the Department of Energy. The costs of de-
commissioning, the tear down and clean up of old nuclear plants is also
high. Decommissioning the Yankee Rowe plant in Massachusetts, which
is about one-seventh the size of the largest nuclear reactor now operating,
is expected to cost almost $500 million according to the Nuclear Informa-
tion & Resource Service.
In New York state a reprocessing plant near Buffalo began to repro-
cess nuclear wastes in 1966. After 6 years Nuclear Fuel Services (NFS), a
subsidiary of W.R. Grace's Davison Chemical Company, abandoned the
facility. There were 2 million cubic feet of radioactive material left behind
along with 600,000 gallons of radioactive liquid waste that was seeping
into a creek that flows into Lake Erie the source of drinking water for Buf-
falo. The cost of cleanup was estimated to be $1 billion.
Nuclear plant utilities are protected from nuclear accidents under
the federal Price-Anderson Act, which was passed in 1957. A utility's li-
ability for an accident is limited to $7 billion. The estimate of Chernobyl's
costs exceeds $350 billion.