After 60 years of nuclear power, the industry survives only on stupendous subsidies - The Ecologist

Almost 60 years since the world's first commercial nuclear power station began to deliver power to the UK's grid, the industry remains as far from being able to cover its costs as ever, writes Pete Dolack. But while unfunded liabilities increase year by year, governments are still willing to commit their taxpayers' billions to new nuclear plants with no hope of ever being viable.

If the owners and operators of nuclear reactors had to face the full costs, no one would have built a nuclear reactor in the past, no one would build a reactor today, and anyone who owned one would exit the nuclear business as quickly as they could.

The ongoing environmental disaster at Fukushima is a grim enough reminder of the dangers of nuclear power. But nuclear does not make sense economically, either.

The entire industry would not exist without massive government subsidies. Quite an insult: Subsidies prop up an industry that points a dagger at the heart of the communities where ever it operates.

The building of nuclear power plants drastically slowed after the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, so it is at a minimum reckless that the latest attempt to resuscitate nuclear power pushes forward heedless of Fukushima's discharge of radioactive materials into the air, soil and ocean…

more: After 60 years of nuclear power, the industry survives only on stupendous subsidies - The Ecologist