Coal or Nuclear in New Power Stations: The Political Economy of an Undesirable but Necessary Choice

Marian Radetzki

The Energy Journal, 2000, vol. 21, issue 1, 135-148

Abstract: Where gas and hydro are not available and power capacity needs to be expanded, the choice will be between coal and nuclear, for there are few viable alternative options. This paper analyzes the factors that will determine the choice. The internal costs of power generation using coal and nuclear show no clear edge for one or the other. A tilt in favor of nuclear emerges when the external costs, as assessed by experts in the field, are added to the internal ones. Laymen's evaluations of the external costs appear to be at least an order of magnitude higher than the expert assessments, however. Given their high level and strong influence on energy policy making, these evaluations will ultimately determine the choice. But since the laymen's views in this regard are formed in an unsystematic manner and are unstable over time, it is not possible to use economic analysis to determine what that choice will be.

Keywords: Electricity generation fuels; coal; nuclear energy; Electricity generation costs; climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5547/ISSN0195-6574-EJ-Vol21-No1-7 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:enejou:v:21:y:2000:i:1:p:135-148

DOI: 10.5547/ISSN0195-6574-EJ-Vol21-No1-7

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Energy Journal
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().