The costs of electricity generation

The cost of generating electricity from several technologies is one of the most important factors which should be considered in the choice of a generation technology. It was observed in past NEA studies that generation costs of future nuclear power plants would be cheaper than those of future coal-fired plants in many countries. Recently, however, there have been increasing arguments that nuclear power is not cheap any more if escalation of costs of construction, operations and maintenance and decommissioning are taken into account. These claims are not generally true as shown by the NEA's recent study updating its series of comparative studies on projected costs of generating electricity. (author). 2 figs