>>> If solar power was economically feasible, we should see it account 
>>> for a
>>> significant percentage of at least some countries' energy needs, 
>>> right?

>> Since when does a traditional economic balance include all costs? 
>> Just
>> because the costs someone has to pay out of his own pocket are 
>> smaller
>> doesn't mean that the overall cost are really smaller. You need to 
>> come up
>> with something better than that. Try figuring in the cost of 
>> maintaining
>> and securing a waste site for just a thousand years and see where 
>> the
>> economics are.

For something like solar it is conceivable that you CAN work out an 
all up cost that DOES cover essentially everything. IF the dread 
market forces apply (and there are many distortions) the energy and 
materials to produce your solar converters are knowable, the cost of 
the greenfield site where you put your solar farm is knowable AND the 
cost of remediation to return the greenfield site to original 
condition when you stop farming it in 1/10/100 years from now is 
known. All the plant and materials is disposable either for $ or as 
scrap or garbage at rates which are set by systems outside the 
industry and application you are in. Exceptions may be the disposal of 
toxic substances in eg solar photovoltaic panels. But, if you had to 
you could calculate "utter destruction" costs of everything left over, 
either by combustion or chemical breakdown or whatever until the 
byproducts were at a level where they could be treated quite literally 
as raw material. That option does not exist for nuclear. You end up 
with an irremediable end product which must be allowed to run its own 
course and for which the only available option is storage. The 
questions are storgae where, storage how and storage for how long 
before it unstores itself. As nobody ever has made a system that lasts 
10,000 years, as 2,000 years is exceptionally good going, as 100 years 
is highly commendable and as "you just try and get a 10 year warranty 
for anything, go on just try" applies to most stuff, then storage is 
certainly an unknown so far. Maybe when we have a few thousand years 
of radionucleitide storage on record we'll be in a better position to 
assess what is liable to work.

And, as long as there is a genuine open ended unknowable involved true 
costing is impossible. and nuclear is very probably the only energy 
conversion technology for which this is true.

> Figure in the value of energy that would be generated by the power 
> stations
> over the course of 1000 years,

That's certainly a misconception. While waste storage for 100 years 
was mentioned (under 1% of the total requisite storage time for some 
of the materials) the power stations that mde that waste are gone in 
maybe 2 or 3% of that time. A reactor environment is a very very very 
harsh one mechanically due to the effects of radiation on many 
materials and it seems likely that nuclear power stationlove swill 
remain in the 10's of years category for a while yet. So ...

> and it doesn't look so bad.

may be true if it applied, but it doesn;t, as the station is long gone 
for most of the time. Also ..

> The amount of waste produced is small,

and

> and most of it can be recycled back into nuclear
> fuel using an existing technology.

is a bit too general here. Some reactor types allow ongoing fuel 
regeneration and some allow extraction of usueful stuff (like eg 
Plutonium) freom 'reprocessed' fuel. But so far ALL produce wate which 
must be dealt witjh, and even if you had a process that was entirely 
waste free, when the station ends it's life (20/40/?60? yeaars hence) 
you have to treat the station itself as waste and deal with it. This 
may yet prove true for He3 fusion systems :-(.

>>> Alas, it isn't so, despite the government subsidies.
>> And try to see where nuclear energy would be without government 
>> subsidies.
>> Probably non-existing.
>
> Not true. The only reason new nuclear power plans are not profitable 
> in the
> US, is because of government overregulation. They are profitable in 
> France,
> thanks to their streamlined certification process.

Those two opinions are opinions :-).

I'd hazard my opinion that the French process is as it is because it's 
the traditional French way to approach things. There are, of course, 
many great things about France, and French people are just people who 
live in France, *BUT* each grouping of people tend to acquire group 
characteristics which persist across years and changes in government. 
The French, more than some, are into doing things because they can, 
and are very proud of being French and go to greater than normal means 
to stay that way. Having a nuclear capability, energy independence and 
a strong place in the world go with the territory. When it comes to 
testing their nukes they decided the territory should be somewhere 
else :-) - my backyard is where they chose for reasons which no doubt 
made good sense to them. [[Sinking boats 'just across the bay' from me 
when people complained about them doing this and knobbling us 
economically when we wouldn't give back 2 of their saboteurs is 
entirely consistent with the appropach that we have experienced over 
the years. ]] I'd not be overly confident that the French decision to 
wholeheartedly adopt nuclear power is because it's long term safe 
(although the murals I saw on their cooling towers suggested that they 
wanted you to think it was) or even that it's economically viable long 
term. It may be both these, but ... .

Summary:

Nuclear energy conversion, unlike any other alternative, has open 
ended costs which so far defy any attempts to quantise them with 
confidence. This does not prevent any number of people confidently 
claiming to have done so. Flee from such.

While the system may show positive cost benefit, it's entirely 
possible that it shows massive negative cost benefit but the Jury's 
still out. Nuclear waste storage is the key problem which needs to be 
overcome before legitimate costing calculations can be made.

Nobody who thinks it's a good idea will believe a word of this.



        Russell





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