When nuclear power was promoted in the 1950s, there were enthusiasts who said that it would be so cheap that they might not even bother metering it. Unfortunately, this early prediction turned out not to be true. Nuclear power plants are extremely complex and expensive to build. Nuclear fuel has to be mined, refined and disposed of when spent. Nuclear power has been competitive with other sources in the past but those days may be ending.
The availability of very cheap oil and natural gas, as well as the arrival of competitive alternative energy sources such as wind and solar has lowered the price for electricity to around two cents per kilowatt hour. Currently, nuclear power sources needs about three cents per kilowatt hour to break even. Since 2012, four U.S. nuclear power plants have been shut down and slated for decommissioning because they were no longer competitive in the energy market.
This situation leads to calls for subsidies for nuclear power because it is a low-carbon power source. There are also areas where there is a high demand for energy and other sources are not sufficient. These factors causes intense political squabbling over such subsidies. And even if subsidies are handed out, they are always vulnerable to shifting political winds.
Given the serious competition and political uncertainties, there is great pressure to keep the cost of building nuclear power plants and operating them as low as possible. Some critics of nuclear power are concerned that cost may be lowered at the expense of safety. Three quarters of the nuclear power plants in the U.S. have reports leaks of radioactive materials. There have also been fires, and explosions as well as corrosion and embrittlement of metal components and structures. Although many national nuclear regulatory agencies around world passed stricter safety standards following the March 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory has actually been weakening U.S. regulatory safety standards to make it cheaper for nuclear plant operators to comply.
The cost of nuclear power plant construction has fallen a little since 2012. In December of 2015, the Nation Energy Institute, a nuclear industry trade group, announced an initiative called Delivering the Nuclear Promise. This new initiative is billed as a program to reduce the cost of nuclear plant construction by as much as thirty percent. There are five new nuclear power plants being built in the U.S. which will be the first new nuclear power sources to be connected to the U.S. grid since 1996.
Nuclear power supplies about twenty percent of the electricity for the U.S. At three cents per kilowatt hour, nuclear power is still relatively cheap. However, rising construction costs, rising operation costs, intense competition, problems with disposal of spent nuclear fuel and other factors do not inspire confidence among investors in the future viability of nuclear power in the U.S. Although nuclear power may be a low carbon power source, there are other low carbon power sources such as wind and solar. Unlike nuclear power, these sources are becoming cheaper and more competitive. The days of nuclear power generation as a major source of electricity in the U.S. may be numbered.
Status of U.S. nuclear power plants as of 2013:
