14 DAY TRIAL // For the past three decades, there have been no new nuclear power plants built in the United States. The Three Mile Island incident, in 1979, persuaded the public opinion to turn against this form of energy, on account of it being too dangerous. The last order for such a plant that was actually carried out came in 1973. Since then, no new facilities have been constructed, but they may soon begin to be. Mounting pressure from environmentalists to curb greenhouse-gas emissions means that nuclear energy is back on the table again, as one of the potential solutions to ridding the country of its dependency on fossil fuels.
The Congress is one of the main drivers behind this rethinking, mostly because it plans to tax carbon-dioxide emissions, in agreement with international decisions. Reducing our carbon footprint is essential to averting a global-warming disaster. With these new taxes, the price of energy obtained from oil or coal is bound to go up by anywhere from 30 to 50 percent for a kilowatt-hour. On the other hand, because modern technology allows nuclear power plants to run 90 percent of the hours in a year, rather than the 60 percent they did in 1979, the cost of nuclear energy is now 30 percent lower.
Many electrical companies are reluctant in relying too much on natural gas for their energy production. This is largely owed to the fact that, while gas prices remain low, they are way more volatile than the prices of oil on the international market, so huge cost variations can be recorded throughout a few months. This makes companies uneasy with the idea of investing in such sources. However, they cannot afford to pay the huge price tags associated with a nuclear facility either, Technology Review reports.
In 2005, it was estimated that building a nuclear reactor would cost about $2,000 per kilowatt-hour, for a facility that generated about 1.2 to 1.6 gigawatts. Currently, that price is estimated to have doubled, to about $4,000 per kilowatt-hour. When taking into account that a new coal plant can be built at under $3,000 per kilowatt, and that a natural-gas plant comes with a $800-per-kilowatt price tag, constructing a nuclear reactor might not be such a good idea, or a profitable one at that.