NEI Nuclear Notes

More than a month ago, Mr. Craig Severance wrote about his lively debate on new nuclear costs with NEI’s Leslie Kass and in response, we posted this . The following week, Mr. Severance responded timely to us and now it’s our turn again. We’re on our second round of posts and the debate has gotten into the weeds. The statements on nuclear from Mr. Severance have become more glaring, in my opinion, so that simply letting just a few of the statements go would be a mistake. Besides the needless analogies and repeating literally half of his rebuttal with previous literature, there are some major interpretation issues Mr. Severance assumes in his latest rebuttal that need airing. (Disclaimer: you're about to read a really long post with no pictures and visuals, hope you enjoy and make it through it!) “Black Box” From Mr. Severance's latest post: The NEI fight-back response is welcome in that we are blowing open the "Black Box" of hidden assumptions about the costs of new ...

In case some of you missed it, the Climate Progress blog has picked up a study by Craig Severance, Business Risks and Costs of New Nuclear Power [PDF]. The report has quite a number of holes in it, in my opinion, and the biggest hole has to do with a flawed assumption in how the study calculates the cost of electricity from a new nuclear plant. We've been discussing and debating the study over at Climate Progress and the author has been great in responding to most everyone's critiques. So what's the flaw? The study claims that a new nuclear plant's capital costs, when all is said and done, will be about $10,500/kW. Many studies that I'm aware of estimate that a new nuclear plant will cost between $5,000-$8,000/kW for the all-in construction costs. Mr. Severance's capital cost assumptions are quite a bit higher than the highest estimate but whatever. That's not the flaw of the study's cost numbers. The flaw is how the cost of electricity from a new...