Reply #6: Even if your numbers were realistic, I note that the total cost of 50

[NNadir]

years of nuclear power would amount to a fraction of the cost of fossil fuels.

300 billion dollars over 50 years amortizes to about 6 billion dollars per year, the cost of a few weeks of oil imports. I further note that 300 billion dollars could not solve the global climate change crisis, or even scratch the surface of what it will cost.

In fact, for 300 billion dollars, the United States has not been able to conclude an oil war, and that's the money spent in just three years.

Even more stark is this reality: As of November 2005, the most recent month for which oil import data in the United States was available, the United States was importing 13 million barrels of oil per day. Annualized this represents importation of about 4.8 billion barrels of oil. At around $60 per barrel, this represents about $300 billion dollars per year, every close to the (dubious) figure you give for the entire history of nuclear power.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t34.xls

Numbers only have meaning in context. Otherwise they are useless, misleading, or, even worse, deliberately fraudulent. If the cost of nuclear management over 50 years has been 300 billion dollars over 50 years, it is a demonstration that nuclear technology is relatively cheap. It is about 6 billion dollars per year, next to nothing on the scale of the return.

In fact though, the numbers come off the top of your head and I don't buy them at all. They are of the same quality and quantity of all anti-nuclear claims - all of which have been more or less rejected by international consensus.

I very much doubt, by the way, that 300 billion dollars invested in renewable energy would produce anything like the 50 exajoules of electrical energy that nuclear power plants have produced since 1980 in the United States. Renewable energy is mostly notable for giving a very small return on investment - which is why we are in such dire straights right now.