Madam, – William Reville (Science Today, April 21st) makes a number of significant points in his article proposing nuclear power as a contributor to Ireland’s electriciy needs. However, the cost of electricity from nuclear energy is less transparent than electricity from any other major source. In purely economic terms, nuclear electricity is unlikely to be feasible in Ireland. Few nuclear plants have been completed in Europe or the US since the three Mile Island incident, complicating the estimation of costs.
In very approximate figures, one of the most recently completed plants in Europe, Sizewell B in Suffolk, England, a 1,200 Megawatt plant, cost £2.5 billion in 1995.
Since the end of the Cold War, decommissioned plutonium (originally produced at great cost for nuclear weapons) has been disposed of by addition to the fuel mix (MOX) of civil reactors, subsidising the cost of fuel. This practice may cease following the Fukushima accident, altering the financial model for the nuclear fuel cycle, and increasing operator costs.
A “sinking fund” must be in place to cover the cost of decommissioning the plant. A Financial Times report from March 1995 indicated the cost of decommissioning a 650 MW nuclear power plant (two Magnox reactors plus associated plant) at £800 million. An internal nuclear industry briefing in April 1995 estimated costs for a similar plant at £1.25 billion.
While there will be some economies of scale, the cost of decommissioning a 1,200MW plant at that time would have been in the range of £1.6 billion to £2.4 billion; approximately the same cost as the plant itself.
The current convention is that a country which uses nuclear energy becomes responsible for the storage of spent fuel. This requires the construction of an underground repository in a geologically stable environment. Based on the costs in the UK and Germany, the costs of such a facility are likely to exceed €1 billion; half of the cost of the power plant.
When lesser costs such as fuel transport facilities (port) upgrades are included, the full cost of a nuclear power facility in a country which does not already have nuclear power is therefore more than two-and-a-half times (250 per cent) the cost of the nuclear power plant. A nuclear power plant which has a “list price” of €2.5 billion will therefore actually cost €6.25 billion. When the full cost is used to compute the cost of electricity per kWh, nuclear power is unlikely to be the most economic option for Ireland. – Is mise,