-  January 25, 2006

Good piece. But it doesn't go far enough. You could mention the plant in Cass County, MO that Delta January (No kidding, that is her name) and the Cass County commissioners are trying to stop. Right now they have a court order requiring the company to remove the $140 million dollar plant.

And you could mention the Coal Fired unit in southern Illinois that the Sierra Club successfully stopped from going operational. I believe that was a $400+ million dollar unit. If I was a Utility, I think I would hunker down and let the rolling blackouts begin, and sell all of my excess power for California rates until the government paid me to build more units. Also, your numbers could be tweaked. How did you arrive at them?

A couple of 600 MW coal plants that are being constructed in Wisconsin are looking at an overnight rate of about $900 megawatt, fully expensed at $1200 (with the cost of capital). A clean coal plant in PA is looking at $1100 and $1500, which are in line with nuclear costs.

Were you looking at historic figures? It seems to me that if you are going to compare the costs of current nuclear plants, you should look at current coal plants, but what do I know? Maybe you have other sources that I don't know about.

The other problem that is rearing its ugly head this year is the cost of natural gas. Cheap natural gas fired plants are uneconomical when you have to add the cost of fuel. They suck all the gas out of the pipelines and leave us poor consumers under-supplied and overcharged. If you add the added cost to the consumer for their natural gas bill to the cost of electricity to arrive at a total energy bill, then you can really see the cost advantages to Nuclear Power, at least from the consumer's point of view.

You guys could really whip a good story if you looked at total energy costs.

Wally Taylor

The University of Chicago got it right. The real issue of nukes has been cost overruns. As you pointed out, the Shoreham plant's costs had exceeded the original estimates by a 100 fold when they pulled the pin on it. Further, the "one off" nuke model prevents anyone from learning anything that can be shared with others. If you get a crack in your cooling system, it tells you nothing about anyone else's plant as they all used different "one off" cooling systems and reactors and ... If everyone had the identical plant, then a problem in one would lead to fixes in all of the others before the problem occurred at those plants, as well. This is the model that the FAA and airlines use. When an MD-88 has a specific identifiable problem, all MD-88's get fixed. No one waits for each one to fail.

A cookie cutter approach is needed, but that offers up comparisons which utility executives dread and fear. The thought that a regulator could make a one to one comparison of performance and costs in identical plants at different utilities keeps utility CEOs awake at night. One approved model replicated numerous times is the best idea, but will never happen. That's too bad, but that's the reality.

Rick Devaney

Your articles are always right on message, but this one is not. You are mixing pears and grapes when you compare Shoreham to today's environment; you also are confusing the reader on "unsafe". New nukes will be new design and passive safety, which has been begrudgingly accepted as much improved over the current fleet, like Shearon Harris.

The premise has always been that the next nuke will have a new design, one stop licensing, and short (5-6 years) construction and coming in at $1000/KW. When that is believed, the next nuke will be ordered

G. Neil Midkiff
Director, North America Sales - I&C Group
Data Systems and Solutions LLC