Nuclear industry has no doubt learnt some lessons during the past decade. Not that they learned hot to build reactors properly. And obviously not the economics of nuclear power, better don’t think about who might have been giving an Economics 101 class to the industry. We have seen an impressive unlearning curve that brought the cost of new reactors from 2,000 USD per kilowatt back in 2003 to between 6,000 and 8,500 USD today.
So what is the thing in which nuclear companies truly improved? It is their lobby skills. Thanks to investigative analysis of American University we now know that only in US, companies and unions related to the nuclear industry have during past decade spent more than $600 million on lobbying and nearly $63 million on campaign contributions. This is massive, but still a fraction of how much they will have in return for even building one single reactor.
So instead of trying to improve worsening economic indicators – perhaps knowing better than anyone else what kind of impossible mission that would be – or instead of earning money in some decent way like other people do, the industry focused its efforts to strip dozens of billions from the society.
It’s rate of return seems impressive: not only that it managed continue to shift massive costs related to its liabilities (from reactor operation, dismantling, and waste management) to society. But for an investment of less than a billion dollars, it achieved to secure 18.5 billion dollars loan guarantees from US federal budget. But even this is not enough to satisfy the black hole of nuclear economics - the industry now requests second round and more than 100 billion dollars in the pot. We also should remember many hundreds billions that were already poured to the industry since its birth in 1940s, which failed to deliver what it promised.
So, if this is not the high time to stop this insanity, when is?
Today, there are other flourishing technologies that deserve several years’ worth of subsidies so that they can fully stand on their own legs. Modern renewable technologies, such as wind and solar, manage to deeply cut their costs consistently year by year, coming close to the point of full competitiveness with traditional ways of generating electricity. They are safe and clean, provide sustainable jobs, and with no fuel needed they provide energy security. They can also be built on much faster schedules than nuclear reactors, meaning they have a big role to play in the task to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
We need to say to our politicians: quit nuclear madness, go for renewable energy. NOW!
