nuclear-news

Nuclear industry’s massive costs have been underestimated

Kenichi Oshima, a professor of environmental economics and policy at Ritsumeikan University, has done some calculations and has reached a completely different conclusion….

“If we were to funnel funds earmarked for reprocessing and the nuclear budget, it would be very feasible to get power generation with renewable sources of energy off the ground.”

Contrary to power company figures, cost of nuclear power generation highest: research  Mainichi Daily News, 23 July 11  Utility companies across the country continue to tout the low cost of nuclear energy on their websites. Tohoku Electric Power Co. boasts nuclear power’s economic efficiency, while Hokkaido Electric Power Co (HEPCO) the stability of its cost. Each site comes with bar graphs indicating the cost of generating power through various power sources, and the figures are exactly the same regardless of the utility. For every kilowatt-hour of power generated, hydroelectricity is listed as costing 11. 9 yen, petroleum 10.7 yen, liquefied natural gas 6.2 yen, coal 5.7 yen, and nuclear 5.3 yen.

In a section of its website responding to questions sent in by elementary school children, Chubu Electric Power Co. informs us that nuclear power “is the cheapest.” The media, including the Mainichi, have often cited the information provided to us by power companies.

However, Kenichi Oshima, a professor of environmental economics and policy at Ritsumeikan University, has done some calculations and has reached a completely difference conclusion. Oshima says that the cost for a kilowatt-hour of electrical power between fiscal 1970 and fiscal 2007 was 10.68 yen for nuclear, 3.98 yen for hydroelectric, and 9.9 yen for thermal generation, with nuclear-generated power coming out as the most expensive. These calculations were even presented at a meeting of the government’s Atomic Energy Commission last September. So how does one explain these two different conclusions?

First of all, there is a huge gap between estimates given by power companies and figures derived from actual records.

The figure “5.3 yen per kilowatt-hour of power” as the cost of nuclear power generation is an estimate submitted in 2003 by the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPC) to a subcommittee of the Committee for Natural Resources and Energy, an advisory body to the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry. The estimate presupposed a power plant that began operations in the 2002 fiscal year and would run 40 years with a utilization rate of 80 percent. Construction costs were calculated based on an actual power plant that had recently begun operations, and foreign exchange rates and fuel prices needed to calculate the cost of importing fuel were derived from economic indices at the time. It’s a government-endorsed figure that has continued to give nuclear-power generation the “low cost” seal of approval.It’s a government-endorsed figure that has continued to give nuclear-power generation the “low cost” seal of approval.

July 23, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Japan