Nuclear power is just too damn expensive.

The sensational version is here, estimating that the levelized capital cost of electricity from a new nuke is 17-22 cents per kW-hr and the all-in cost (including operations, maintenance and fuel) is 25-30 cents per kW-hr. This compares with current retail costs prices in the neighborhood of 10 cents per kW-hr.

A less dramatic (but not necessarily more accurate) all-in estimate by Lazard is here, 9.7-12.8 cents per kW-hr. The Lazard report has the virtue of comparing costs of nuclear power with all the other generation technologies in use now or expected to be commercial in the near future. According to Lazard, electricity from coal fired power plants with carbon capture and sequestration would be even more costly, about 13.5 cents. That makes renewables look pretty good cost-wise—except that some of the technologies (wind and solar, e.g.) are unsuitable for base load.

Update on Friday, May 29, 2009 at 09:38AM by Skeptic

The French company Areva is building a 1,600 megawatt nuclear plant in Finland.  It was budgeted at $4 billion, but is behind schedule and now expected to cost $8 billion, according to this NYT report.  The original budgeted capital cost of $2.50 per peak watt and the currently expected cost of $5.00 per peak watt may be compared with approximately $0.50 per peak watt as the capital cost of new combined cycle power plants running on natural gas.

Update on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 02:20PM by Skeptic

Ontario has shelved plans to build two 1,200 MW nukes because capital cost bids were 3-4 times the budget amount, according to this Toronto Star report.  On a peak watt basis, the only "compliant bid" was CAN$10.80 (US$9.50) from Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd.  A lower submission of CAN$7.375 per peak watt from Areva NP was non-compliant apparently because it was not a fixed price bid.  Ontario had budgeted CAN$2.90 per peak watt.