The cost of being on-line

[Martin Naef]

On 24.06.2011 16:23, Joost Schuttelaar wrote:
>> One interesting thing about nuclear.  As currently deployed, it
>> actually doesnt work out to be that much cheaper than coal,
>> particularly since no one has found a cheap way to deal with the
>> leftovers.
>
> This is actually quite different in the US compared to France. As far
> as I understand the US doesn't reprocess the waste, whereas France
> does this a lot (lowering the costs significantly).

Even then there is still the question of the final disposal of both the 
nuclear waste and the actual power plant. Both are quite a bit 
underestimated. Still, disposal of nuclear waste seems to me a "not in 
my backyard"-style of problem. In Switzerland, there's obviously some 
perfectly suitable geology, but wherever the agency turns up for 
exploratory drilling, people oppose it massively.

BTW: Some of the current nuclear projects are massively running over 
cost... Nuclear is rapidly loosing its economic advantage.

Talking about "not in my backyard": All across Europe it's nearly 
impossible to build new power transmission lines due to public 
opposition. What people just don't get is that these are absolutely 
essential to integrate renewables at a large scale. Oh well...

Martin