Wow, 17 BILLION dollars? Those are 1154 MW units, so a total of 2308 MW, gives an installation cost of $7.4 million dollars per MW of capacity. And the nuclear industry constantly promotes how cost-effective it is.

Never mind the cost of running these things, how many nuclear engineers salaries will you be paying? Then there's the cost of mining and refining uranium, upkeep, inspections, regulatory, safety, waste processing, transport and storage, and decommissioning.

Makes a wind turbine look pretty cheap, doesn't it? Danish Wind Power quotes an installed cost of about $1 million per MW capacity. No figures on maintenance, but you know it just has to be less than nuclear given the above. So if the wind only blows one hour out of every seven, you are still getting a better deal with wind.

Not to mention there's very little risk of a catastrophic meltdown with wind.

Nukes came of age when electric utilities were regulated monopolies. Many of them had pricing structures that permitted them to make a defined percentage profit on their investments and operating costs. That meant that the more expensive the electricity was the more they could charge and the more profit they would reap. Nuclear generated electricity went from 'too cheap to meter' to the most expensive power ever produced on a large scale. Still is.

With deregulation, utilities got to charge off the 'stranded costs' of their generating equipment, the fact that those nukes could never compete on cost with coal plants. Rate payers picked up that bill. US taxpayers pick up the bill for insurance - since no private insurance is available for nukes, pay for waste storage and reprocessing, security, fuel enrichment, and research.

The US used to be leaders in wind, solar and photovoltaics, but has ceded research and commercialization to Europe and Japan. This is a moment to reverse the decline and take responsibility for our economic well being and energy security, but investment incentives have just been allowed to lapse. Heckuva job there.

"Makes a wind turbine look pretty cheap, doesn't it? "

Unfortunately wind and solar are expensive compared to nuclear (stated costs) What the real cost is my be in question, but those figures aren't available.

If solar and wind were cheaper, the utilities would be building wind and solar farms like crazy!

"$7.4 million dollars per MW of capacity."

I would have to do the math, but that sounds on par with Wind.

The reason is that you have to factor in utilization and life expectancy.

Most wind turbine average 30% utilization of rated capacity, Nuclear is >90%. So you would need three times as many wind turbines on average to get the same net energy generation.

Also, the average life span of a wind Turbine is around 20 years while nuclear plants generally are designed for 50 years.

Plus the quote includes costs of land and interest.

(The story quotes $14 Billion for the two plants, the extra $3 billion for new transmission lines)

So net net, they sound like they cost about the same.

Of course, this is really not a meaningful comparison, SC and FL have no real wind to utilize. Solar might be big in the states, but after dark there really are no renewable sources of energy that could power the state.

One reason that nuclear is so expensive right out of the box is that it is required by law to include many of the costs you mention: decommissioning, safety, short term storage of spent fuel, permanent storage of nuclear waste in a geological repository, etc.

Some of the costs you mention will not be included in the lump sum figure including mining, processing and shipping of nuclear fuel. Those costs are very small compared to the cost of the facility and are included in the fuel costs.

Comparing the costs of nuclear to wind is not really that useful. The nuclear plants would be baseline, similar to coal plants. Because they would need to be utilized almost constantly they have many redundant systems and safeguards that peaking power plants don't and that aren't required of wind or solar.

Nuclear power is one of the few industries that is required to account for much of its external costs. Coal, by comparison, accounts for very little of its external costs and is much cheaper than nuclear, wind, solar and everything else because of it.

If you wanted to create an electrical system that utilized wind for baseline power you might really be surprised at the cost per MW. You'd have to find a way of storing power produced at times of low utilization. That cost would probably be more than the installed cost for the wind turbines themselves.

It's possible, but it's not nearly as cheap as wind power is at present.

JC:
Utilities are building wind farms like crazy. Ironically, they're building them George Bush's backyard (Texas) instead of Ted Kenedy's (Masachussett).