Economics of Nuclear Power

Nuclear power was not, is not and will never be economic.

It is the only energy technology whose costs increase generation by generation.

It is the only energy no-one will insure and it is only made affordable by massive, hundred-year public/taxpayer subsidies.

Britain already faces an £85 billion tax bill for the last lot of nuclear waste.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change has 40 per cent of its annual budget creamed off to pay for this disposal and we've yet to face the next round of decommissioning.

Britain is the only place now throwing out nuclear lifelines.

France's nuclear industry is propped up by the state and the fact that EDF makes most of its profits from Britain.

Investors are telling the industry that they won't go within a million miles of new nuclear.

In the US investment has ground to a halt despite huge subsidies thrown at it by the Republicans.

In Europe policy shifts in Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria, Norway, Spain and Italy are taking energy policy in a radically different direction.


One thing that is usually missing from the nuclear energy debate however - particularly from the pro-nuclear lobby - is the notion of democracy.

Just how democratic principles, human rights, ecology and the issue of community are central to the debate look no further than the scientist Vandana Shiva one of India's fiercest anti-nuclear critics.

The 9,900-megawatt Jaitapur nuclear power plant in Madban village, Maharashtra, will be the world's largest nuclear power plant, if it goes ahead.

Vandana Shiva argues the plant will require about 968 hectares of fertile agricultural land spread over five villages that the government claims is barren.

Jaitapur is one of many nuclear power plants proposed on a thin strip of fertile coast land. Villagers have been protesting against the nuclear plant and Jaitapur has been put under prohibition orders whereby more than five people cannot gather.

It's a similar picture in other areas of India where plans for nuclear energy plants are affecting hundreds of villages.

On top of the various dodgy dealings that went on in the Indian parliament to push these policies through, Shiva declares the destruction of democracy and constitutional rights is the price being paid for India's expansion of nuclear energy.