The World in 2030

The World in 2030 179
know the true cost of the energy generated by nuclear power
stations. Just as consumers aren’t (at present) told the cost of
the damage that fossil fuels do the environment as energy is
produced (and that cost is not yet levied on the consumer),
so the unit of power generated by a nuclear power station is
not priced in a way that reflects the huge cost of mining and
refining nuclear fuel, building the nuclear power station,
the huge cost of decommissioning the plant after use and
the ongoing cost of storing the radioactive waste. All of
these costs are borne by ‘the general taxpayer’ over a long
period (during which politicians, governments and civil
servants change, thus evading individual and even collective
responsibility) and there is no transparency in the process.
We therefore have no idea how economic or uneconomic
nuclear power is when compared with other forms of power
generation.
This objection holds for governments all around the
world and the nuclear industry has a vested interest in
keeping such information opaque. Professor Dan Kammen
of the University of California (Berkley) co-authored a
report entitled ‘Weighing the financial risks of nuclear power
(unknown)’:
‘For energy security and carbon emission concerns,
nuclear power is very much back on the national
and international agenda,’ said study co-author Dan
Kammen, UC Berkeley professor of energy and resources
and of public policy. ‘To evaluate nuclear
power’s future, it is critical that we understand what
the costs and the risks of this technology have been.
To this point, it has been very difficult to obtain an