Are We Being Told The True Cost of Nuclear Energy?

October 6, 2008

The coast program on BBC last week featured the section of the UK coastline around Sellafield. During the program, it was explained that radioactive pollution emanating from the plant has been picked up as far away as Norway and that the Irish government has been trying for years to have the plant closed down.

It went on to say that the amount of pollution caused these days is far lower than in the 1970’s when it was 100’s of times worse.

The program showed a pipeline used to dump the waste from a process used at Sellafield where nitric acid is used to dissolve solid, spent fuel assemblies. Some technical guy from Sellafield explained that it just ‘wasn’t practical’ to deal with the waste arising from this process and that the chosen solution of discharging the waste into the sea was the only practical solution.

I found myself getting annoyed about this. Perhaps it may be true that it would be phenomenally expensive to deal with this contaminated nitric acid, but then that cost should be reflected in the cost of producing energy via this method. If these costs were reflected in the price of the nuclear energy generated by this method, then it would help make the economic case even stronger for alternatives such as microgeneration.

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