HIDING TRUE ENERGY COSTS

On September 17, the Wall St. J. published another of Lovins' dissertations in Mickey Mouse economics on how various energy sources are subsidized. His figures on nuclear subsidies are far and away the biggest in his chart. Are they in error? No: they are entirely concocted. I will not waste much space on his numerous gimmicks such as counting tax-deductions that are not peculiar to nuclear utilities (or for that matter, to mustard manufacturers), or comparing invested dollars to power not yet delivered. (If a loaf of bread has 1,000 calories and you pay $1 for it, what's the cost per calorie? By Lovinsian economics, it's infinite: when you pay for it, you haven't eaten any calories yet.)

So let me go straight to the point: To the best of my knowledge, and I have wasted much time digging for information, commercial nuclear power production in the US does not get one red cent of government subsidy; if you know of any exceptions, please let me know. But don't give me DoE research projects (whose funding I deplore), or military program, or the figures of the 1950s, or tax breaks that are not peculiar to nuclear (I get an investment credit for a new typewriter, too), and don't give me Price-Anderson, which is one of the very few cases where government has finally gone out of the business (except for small reactors, mostly at universities).

You would have expected the spokesmen of the nuclear industry to say:

It's a lie, we do not get a cent of subsidies for producing nuclear power. Instead, AIF President Carl Walske, after three weeks of pencil chewing, came up with a letter under the heading "Seed Money," with these brilliant insights: "The nuclear industry has benefited from federally sponsored research... The cumulative amount [is] $12 to $18 billion since the early fifties."

Once again I must say that if I were an antinuke, I would take one Carl Walske over three Jane Fondas.

Now let us look at the true costs of nuclear power. Unlike West Europe, Canada and Japan, where nuclear power is invariably cheaper than coal-fired per kWh delivered, the US cost in 1984 for the first time averaged more than coal (4.1 cents and 3.4 cents per kWh, respectively; oil-fired was 7.4 cents). The geographic distribution, based on DoE figures, is shown below.

But these aren't the true costs at all. Read on.