Comments about ‘Cost of a Utah nuclear plant could reach $3 billion’

Nuclear power plants generate such a huge amount of electricity, that start-up cost will pay for itself. All with no pollution. Build it, please!

"No nations now have permanent repositories for high-level nuclear waste, he said." That is because they don't have a cheap source of uranium and already forced to reprocess the depleted rods. Water is a bigger problem in the desert West and Southwest U.S. When they wake up, I think Southern California and Mexican Baja will build more nuclear plants than anywhere, because they can create large amounts of fresh water from seawater almost as a by product of power production through evaporation and condensation. They are just not there yet, emotionally.

Roc Doc, what we need to be looking at are the total costs, not just start-up costs. We need to look at the rising costs of uranium, the cost of the heavy machinery that has to be imported, because there are no domestic suppliers. The costs of building on-site storage, The eventual cost of reprocessing or disposal, and the costs of decommissioning. The only way nuclear plants are even contemplated, is because of the massive subsidies, and the assumption of liability for accidents by the federal government. Now there is a trend to pass laws at the state level to reimburse costs for the building of such plants, even if they do not produce electricity. Are these plants a good deal? For whom? Certainly not for taxpayers or ratepayers.

Spanish Fork, there are countries that reprocess spent fuel, and the process is rife with problems. Reprocessing has its own concentrated waste stream, and in France and England they have been dumping this waste stream in the ocean! There are no reprocessing plants in the US. The "new" process that Diz talks about has not been proven outside of a laboratory environment, so the assertion that "such plants are ten times as safe" is absurd. Locating nuclear power plants next to the ocean so as to provide a source of cooling water has caused the changes to the surrounding ocean fauna and flora with fish and mammal kills and algae blooms. The water released from nuclear plants contains "acceptable" levels of tritium, although the CDC and the NIH do not believe there is any acceptable level.

Be sure to add the cost of litigation when California, Nevada, Arizona have at Utah in court for putting nuke plants on their primary water supply. Then get ready to face Mexico in international court. The Green is a tributary of the Colorado. Prepare for years of courthouse war, Utah, and prepare to shell out billions of tax dollars in an interstate court frenzy the likes of which you have never seen.

Bear in mind that this proposed plant is actually a California power plant. Like the IPP, it will just be located in Utah. Most of the power, however, will be exported.