How do the costs of nuclear and coal generation power compare?
When comparing nuclear against coal fired plants, a comprehensive estimation of all life cycle costs should be conducted. This should include costs of extraction and handling of fuel, capital costs, costs associated with safety, chemical or radioactive pollution and processing of waste. Normal market processes suffer from improper and incomplete reckoning for many of these aspects. For example, coal resources in the earth, or uranium resources in the earth, are generally not priced correctly. Particularly in India, commercial principles are not being used in the computation of capital cost of nuclear plants. It is not easy to separate out the public goods of R&D being done by State-run labs as opposed to a clearly visible financial structure of a generation plant. In contrast, coal plants are now being put up by the private sector, and their financial structure is visibly identifiable, and can be judged based on commercial considerations. Coal fired plants generate a very high degree o
