Shortsightedness in a Greening Global Economy?

Malaysians must decide if nuclear energy is the right choice for our country. The key word to note here is “choice” – there is now an increasing number of truly clean and renewable energies in solar, wind, tidal, wave, etc. Nuclear energy is merely one of the many available options. For some, however, the threat of climate change and peak oil has forced a false dilemma of either nuclear or unabated global warming.
Nuclear is neither renewable nor clean. Nuclear is not only potentially catastrophic to human lives, but is also now economically, socially and environmentally inferior to the new technologies mentioned.
The recent UK Sustainable Development Commission answered a clear “no” to nuclear as a solution to our energy and climate crisis.

Nuclear is more costly

In fact, if we take the example of solar power in Concentrating Solar Thermal (CST) plants, this is widely expected to come to cost parity with fossil fuel power generation by 2020 or earlier.
Conservative estimates by studies done for the US Department of Energy  and by McKinsey expect the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LEC) at around RM0.17-RM0.36/kWh in 2020, with an optimistic scenario of as low as RM0.11/kWh.
These figures are supported by an award-winning and peer-recognized research conducted by the University of Melbourne Energy Research Institute, which expects the range at RM0.15-RM0.24/kWh for CST with molten salt storage for “better-than-baseload” performance.
(LEC is a method of measurement which factors in all costs involved throughout the lifespan of a power plant, per unit of the total power generated.)
This is on par with or cheaper than our current cost of electricity of RM0.315/kWh once government subsidies are taken into account.
However, the LEC for nuclear is estimated at around RM0.321/kWh to RM0.414/kWh, and expected to increase. It must be noted that the LEC for nuclear is highly variable due to large risks and uncertainties as demonstrated by the most recent example in Finland’s Olkiluoto plant.
There is a strong consensus in the industry and among analysts that technologies like solar, wind, tidal, wave will become considerably cheaper in the near future as economies of scale of manufacturing is achieved and the technology matures. Today, wind power has already reached cost parity with fossil fuel power in some countries.
However, the opposite is true for fossil fuel including nuclear as reserves dwindle.