Natural Resources committee  The costs that you see there are levelized, so they take into account availability. The solar number is again from Lazard, who is looking out to 2016 and sees solar coming down. He's optimistic about solar, and it turns out he's optimistic about nuclear. These are levelized cost

Natural Resources committee  There are ten level-four incidents in the history of the industry. There are five level-five incidents now; Fukushima is now seen as a level five. What I've calculated is the number of operating hours in each year. I can go back, and we know the number of reactors that were ope

Natural Resources committee  No. Those are operating years.

Natural Resources committee  I frankly don't believe the original numbers. We have a cycle of promotion from vendors and what I call enthusiasts, and they underestimated the costs. The $3,000 number that you give me for 2007 is the kind of number they were using here in the U.S. as well. These days, utilitie

Natural Resources committee  He does not see it as economic any more, and I'm glad he has come around to my point of view, frankly. There were analysts who were saying that all along. We'll see what OPG's costs are, won't we? It is important to recognize what your endowment of alternatives is. There are pl

Natural Resources committee  I included the Lazard study—and frankly, Lazard is lower than other people on nuclear, although it's still more expensive—for a number of reasons. One, they include efficiency, and almost nobody else does. Efficiency is an extremely—especially in the U.S.—important resource. It's

Natural Resources committee  Well, I'm not familiar with the refurbishment of that specific plant, although I have participated in proceedings in the U.S. in which refurbishment is an issue, and it suffers a little bit from the same problems. When you first do it, it looks inexpensive, but then when you actu

Natural Resources committee  In the document I gave you and the documents at the Vermont Law School website, there are really two key elements that turned the nuclear renaissance into a bubble. There never was a renaissance; we don't even have one picture on the wall. They really never did produce a renaissa

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today, and I will share some research I've been working on about the cost of building nuclear reactors. Plus, I've done some analysis looking at the impact of safety, an issue the last