John Blackburn, a former chancellor of Duke University and emeritus chair of its economics department, and Sam Cunningham, a graduate student, have presented the results of a study showing that solar electricity has become cheaper than that from new nuclear power plants in North Carolina, and will be far less expensive than energy from newly built nuclear plants.
Blackburn and Cunningham produced an “apples to apples” cost comparison, net of incentives for both technologies, based on interviews with solar installers across North Carolina. Their report includes rooftop solar PV arrays for homes and businesses, along with large ground-based solar arrays.
Clean energy advocates have eagerly awaited the point at which solar and nuclear prices cross, and with solar PV and hot water system costs falling steadily and design problems and rising cost estimates leading to delays and cancellations of US nuclear plants, this “historic transition” is now becoming a reality.
One focus of the study is North Carolina, where, Blackburn argues, nuclear installations seek massive public subsidies and therefore transfer additional financial risk to electric utility customers and taxpayers. “North Carolina should be leading, not lagging, in the transition to clean energy,” Dr. John Blackburn said during a press briefing last month. “We call on Governor Perdue and state agencies to see that a very important turning point has been reached, and act accordingly.”
Rejecting nuclear
Comparing North Carolina with other states, the report says that those which have opted for free competition in the electricity market are rejecting nuclear power, especially in favour of the combined benefits, both economic and environmental, of solar and wind energy, combined heat and power, and energy efficiency.
For his part, Mark Cooper, an economic analyst at the University of Vermont, said that "while the cost of solar energy is decreasing, the costs of nuclear power have increased over the past eight years".
In 2002, the estimated cost of building a nuclear reactor was $3 billion, which has been periodically revised upward to an average of $10 billion per reactor. Estimates suggest that this figure will continue to rise, added Cooper, whose speciality is specifically to assess the price of nuclear energy.
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