Friday, May 29, 2009

india's future: the ugly reality of nuclear power costs

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/business/energy-environment/29nuke.html?ref=business

50% cost overrun (so far) on EPR - the world's premier reactor technology. makes you wonder what the Yankee junk that Manmohan buys will be like. of course you will not see this printed by the twits in the english media in India. they are too busy being paid off by the kickbacks obtained by KKKangress
Some Indian analysts like Swaminathan Aiyar of Swaminomics fame think that cost of nuclear fission reactors will come down as India becomes a manufacturing base. They feel we can do to nuclear reactors, what we have done to software - apply high skills/low cost base to dramatically lower the cost of building reactors. Hence support the Indo-US nuclear deal.
I have my doubts. For one India does not possess a critical mass of scientific/ intellectual/ academic base in reactor construction that it does in software. Even if this does happen - the deal does not immidiately allow us critical technologies like reprocessing spent fuel. In fact - this might lead to dual slavery. We build cheaper reactors for others (e.g. US, Australia and Canada) while they hold us hostage to Uranium shortages.
Incidentally - Brahma Chellaney has been warning for years about the absurd costs of fission, and Manmohan's pipe-dream deal. India is better served investing in indigenous breeder reactors - or better yet solar power

1 comment:

witan said...

OT
A malicious attack on Gujarat (and the "Third World") under the guise of environmental concerns: The great carbon credit con: Why are we paying the Third World to poison its environment?
By Nadene Ghouri in Daily Mail (UK), 31st May 2009

“In the fields around this giant chemicals factory in Gujarat, the barren soil smells of paint stripper and the water from the well makes you gag. So why has it been given tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer-funded UN ‘green reward points’, which are traded hungrily on the financial markets at huge profit?” ... etc.