The (mal)practice of nuclear power economics

Over the past 15 years, the economic fortunes of nuclear power in the United States have steadily worsened, going from promising, to marginal, to calamitous. Now the new generation of U.S. nuclear power plants - the 1980s reactors - looms as an economic disaster. Of the fifty-odd reactors finished after 1982 or still under construction, a handful at most will produce economical electricity. The rest will contribute to a ''nuclear power damage bill'' that may reach $100 billion in cancelled reactors' sunk costs and excess power costs from completed projects,1 (notes at end of paper) apportioned somehow between electricity customers and utility investors. This paper concerns how the nuclear damage bill ran up so high; not the causes of the reactors' hugh costs, but the concealment of the costs by nuclear power interests in business and government. It recounts the methods used by nuclear power proponents to convince policy-makers, the public, and themselves that new nuclear plants would be competitive with other energy sources, long after conclusive evidence was available to the contrary