The Truth About Nuclear Power  Tags: nuclear, energy,
electricity, united, states, percent, reason, economic, france,
between    Fact 1: It isn’t.   Until that time comes, producing
nuclear energy remains a very costly business.  The chart above
uses data from a 2009 interdisciplinary study at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology to compare the costs of
generating a kilowatt hour of electricity using nuclear, coal,
and gas power. Looking at this data, the cost differential is
clear—nuclear-powered energy costs 14 percent more than gas to
produce a unit of electricity, and it costs 30 percent more than
coal. Furthermore, according to Gilbert Metcaf’s recent National
Bureau of Economic Research paper on energy, this increased cost
of nuclear energy includes a baked-in taxpayer subsidy of nearly
50 percent of nuclear power’s operating costs.  While the
nuclear industry in the United States has seen continued
improvements in operating performance over time, it remains
uncompetitive with coal and natural gas