New Generation of Nuclear Power Plants More Expensive than Expected
by Michael Graham Richard, Ottawa, Canada 
on 05.14.08
The Wall Street Journal reports that new-generation nuclear power plants are going to end up costing quite a bit more than estimates. Not just a few percents, but double to quadruple, or $5 billion to $12 billion a plant.
Fossil fuels are getting more expensive too, and this increase in cost might partly be explained by high demand from Asia, but it still is quite a big chunk of change and it is eroding the pro-nuke argument about lower overall costs.
For our part, the only nuclear we are excited about right now is Thorium. If it can deliver on its promises, that is. We wish that more R&D would go into it rather than in Uranium-powered plants that have well-known downsides (including the fact that taxpayers usually subsidize their insurance). Some of the benefits of Thorium are listed here (and there's a whole blog about it here). ::New Wave of Nuclear Plants Faces High Costs
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