I tried to upload a comment to the interesting post the cost of electricity of the blog “Think Through” of Gianluca Carrera but its scripts required to be logged in to comment, so I post my opinion here.
The post refers to a paper of 2004 by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Surprisingly, the only costs of the generation and distribution of electricity mentioned in the report are:
• Capital expenditure, i.e. the initial level of investment required to engineer, procure and construct the plant itself.
• Fixed costs of operation and maintenance, e.g. staff salaries, insurance, rates and other
costs, which remain constant irrespective of the actual quantum of electricity generated;
• Variable costs of operation and maintenance, e.g. lubricating oil and chemicals, which
are consumed in proportion to the actual quantum of electricity generated; and
• The cost of fuel (if applicable) consumed in generating electricity.
I did not find in the original paper any calculation of the cost of management of the nuclear waste for generations, which incidentally is and will be paid for by the taxpayers. In fact, it does not include the managament of the waste of any power generation in its four categories, nor the risk of the dependency of a few fuel providers worldwide for any of the types of power generation.
you are absolutely right. Thanks for calling this out