That's not how the economics of nuclear power work. The vast majority of the cost of nuclear power is the up-front cost of building the plants; the operation and maintenance costs are remarkably low. The longer you keep them running, the more profitable they are. Once you get them built, you want to keep running them for a long time, because once you've paid off the cost of building it in the first place, it's one hell of a cash cow. We're not talking about "funds tied up in 80 year projects"; we're talking about several-year expensive projects to construct the plant, followed by 80 years of cheap power.
The closest thing to a problem here is that we may develop energy production methods so amazing that they're way cheaper to build and operate than keeping a nuclear plant running. I wish we had such a wonderful problem.
Debt financing means you're funding that project in the long term, even if the costs are technically up front. Promises of long lifespans let estimates per year drop, which allows a higher budget to be approved. And reactors are not cheap: http://www.thestar.com/business/article/665644
They may seem cheap if you cut corners, bury costs in the energy department of a country as a whole, ignore massive cost overruns in building these things, or ignore the potential cleanup cost that only governments are willing to pay for and therefore never truly appears on a ledger beforehand (in the form of insurance).
Comments
That's not how the economics of nuclear power work. The vast majority of the cost of nuclear power is the up-front cost of building the plants; the operation and maintenance costs are remarkably low. The longer you keep them running, the more profitable they are. Once you get them built, you want to keep running them for a long time, because once you've paid off the cost of building it in the first place, it's one hell of a cash cow. We're not talking about "funds tied up in 80 year projects"; we're talking about several-year expensive projects to construct the plant, followed by 80 years of cheap power.
The closest thing to a problem here is that we may develop energy production methods so amazing that they're way cheaper to build and operate than keeping a nuclear plant running. I wish we had such a wonderful problem.
Debt financing means you're funding that project in the long term, even if the costs are technically up front. Promises of long lifespans let estimates per year drop, which allows a higher budget to be approved. And reactors are not cheap: http://www.thestar.com/business/article/665644
They may seem cheap if you cut corners, bury costs in the energy department of a country as a whole, ignore massive cost overruns in building these things, or ignore the potential cleanup cost that only governments are willing to pay for and therefore never truly appears on a ledger beforehand (in the form of insurance).