7/23/2011 Contrary to power company figures, cost of nuclear power generation highest: research

Source: The Mainichi Daily News
Date: 7/23/2011

Utility companies across the country continue to tout the low cost of nuclear energy on their websites.

Tohoku Electric Power Co. boasts nuclear power's economic efficiency, while Hokkaido Electric Power Co (HEPCO) the stability of its cost. Each site comes with bar graphs indicating the cost of generating power through various power sources, and the figures are exactly the same regardless of the utility. For every kilowatt-hour of power generated, hydroelectricity is listed as costing 11. 9 yen, petroleum 10.7 yen, liquefied natural gas 6.2 yen, coal 5.7 yen, and nuclear 5.3 yen.

In a section of its website responding to questions sent in by elementary school children, Chubu Electric Power Co. informs us that nuclear power "is the cheapest." The media, including the Mainichi, have often cited the information provided to us by power companies.

However, Kenichi Oshima, a professor of environmental economics and policy at Ritsumeikan University, has done some calculations and has reached a completely difference conclusion. Oshima says that the cost for a kilowatt-hour of electrical power between fiscal 1970 and fiscal 2007 was 10.68 yen for nuclear, 3.98 yen for hydroelectric, and 9.9 yen for thermal generation, with nuclear-generated power coming out as the most expensive. These calculations were even presented at a meeting of the government's Atomic Energy Commission last September. So how does one explain these two different conclusions?
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7/4/2011 Nuclear Power Subsidies: The Gift that Keeps on Taking

Source: Union of Concerned Scientists
Date: 7/4/2011

Download: Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies (2011) | Nuclear Power Subsidies: Executive Summary (2011)

Government subsidies to the nuclear power industry over the past fifty years have been so large in proportion to the value of the energy produced that in some cases it would have cost taxpayers less to simply buy kilowatts on the open market and give them away, according to a February 2011 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report, Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies, looks at the economic impacts and policy implications of subsidies to the nuclear power industry—past, present, and proposed.

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5/30/2011 | In Japan, a Culture That Promotes Nuclear Dependency

Source: The New York Times
Date: May 30, 2011
by: MARTIN FACKLER and NORIMITSU ONISHI

Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

The Chugoku Electric nuclear power plant in Kashima. A third reactor is currently under construction.

KASHIMA, Japan — When the Shimane nuclear plant was first proposed here more than 40 years ago, this rural port town put up such fierce resistance that the plant’s would-be operator, Chugoku Electric, almost scrapped the project. Angry fishermen vowed to defend areas where they had fished and harvested seaweed for generations.
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