Neil:
Excellent clarification, which needed to be made.
Benjamin Rouben, FCNS
Manager, Reactor Core Physics, AECL SP
Tel: 905-823-9060 x 4550; Fax: 905-822-0567
e-mail: roubenb@aecl.ca
Cell: 416-526-2752
-----Original Message-----
From: Neil Craik [mailto:ncraik@nbnet.nb.ca]
Sent: 2003/mm/20 2:21 PM
To: cdn-nucl-l@informer2.cis.McMaster.CA
Subject: [cdn-nucl-l] 1. Hugh Winsor in the Globe and Mail (Brown,
Morgan)
1. Hugh Winsor in the Globe and Mail (Brown, Morgan)
The statement that the US nuclear regulator ( the NRC) reported that the 104
US reactors produced power at an average 1.59 cents per kilowatt-hour last
year needs clarification.
(1) Presumably this was converted to Canadian cents to compare with the
Ontario price cap. All the costs below are in Canadian cents.
(2) The NRC number must only include the O&M (operating and maintenance)
costs plus the fuel costs and must not include the repayment and financing
of the capital costs. As a safety regulator, the NRC would not be expected
to have or publish information on capital costs.
(3) The total generation costs would be more than double the (O&M+fuel)
costs for a total generation cost of at least 4 cents/kwhr; probably much
higher when the historical construction costs have been taken into account.
Many of the US nuclear plants had construction cost overruns like
Darlington.
(3) The target costs for new reactors in the US is about 4.5 cents per
kilowatt hour generation cost.
(4) The generation cost is only up to the terminals of the power station to
which have to added the transmission and distribution system costs which are
more than 15% of the generation costs; maybe much more in order to pay for a
backlog of improvements to these systems. So a total cost to the consumer of
5.5 cents per kwhr would be minimal.
I am not an expert in electrical utility costs and would appreciate any
better information than above including a reference to the NRC report which
Ihave been unable to find on the extensive NRC web page.
Neil Craik
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