Monday, January 28, 2013

Nuclear Costs 5X Coal and are 'Hard to Justify'


Cited in "Natural Gas Suffocates Nuclear Power" The Wall Street Journal Jan 26-27 2013 p. B14

[Excerpted] "UBS analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith estimates fixed costs per kilowatt of capacity at a nuclear plant are perhaps FIVE times those for a comparably sized coal plant. As capital improvements mostly affect cash flow with only a smaller portion hitting profits, it can mean a plant turning a nominal profit can actually generate negative free cash flow" [end]


ALSO see "Financial Times: Nuclear is 'Hard to Justify', GE Says" Financial Times Monday July 20, 2012, p. A1 by Piita Clark

[Excerpted] "Nuclear power is so expensive compared with other forms of energy that it has become 'really hard' to justify, according to the chief executive of General Electric, one of the world's largest suppliers of atomic equipment.
'It's really a gas and wind world today,' said Jeff Immelt....
'When I talk tot he guys who run the oil companies they say look, they're finding more gas all the time. It's just hard to justify nuclear, really hard. Gas is so cheap and at some point, really economics rule,' Mr. Immelt told the Financial Times in an interview in London.... [end]

THIS IS NO ENDORSEMENT OF COAL! We need clean and renewable energy.

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