It is probably more since wikipedia was last updated, and plant operators will continue to pay into it for decades in some cases. Two things to consider: decommissioning plants early reduces such funding, and as more are decommissioned, the cost should fall.

Virtually all of the costs associated with nuclear are artificial, wether the endless litigation and permitting barriers, or the industrial base and technology development which has stagnated for decades. These problems are solvable, and nuclear could easily be the most cost effective and environmentally friendly form of energy given a serious commitment to pursue it.

The details of the chemistry control need to be worked out, but the reprocessing in a LFTR is very straightforward. The most common and problematic fission products are gaseous and just bubble out of the liquid fuel, which by the way is 750C, not several thousand degrees C. Some plate out, and others may even remain dissolved in the salt for the lifetime of the reactor.

If you are concerned about human error, then there is no safer place for radionuclides than fluoride salts. Poor chemistry control may damage the reactor, but the fuel and non-volatile fission products are going nowhere, even if the reactor vessel is cracked open. At worst, some of the fission products in the off gas system could escape, but they pose no long term health concern--the ones that do remain safely locked away in the salt, which will eventually freeze solid.

The reactor you describe is a fantasy, and wasteful besides. Ironically, unless it were a molten salt reactor, it could never burn through 100% of the fuel, producing a long-term radiological hazard that should not be left in the ground. An MSR burns virtually 100% of the fuel, is walk away safe, and requires no complex or safety critical control systems. It essentially runs itself, following the load; you add fuel and remove heat, that is all. Sure, some maintenance is required, and a lot of engineering, but nothing else holds half so much promise.

So should we kill the airline industry as well? Limited liability is not exclusive to nuclear, nor has it been a burden in practice with reasonable limits. Rather than calling it priceless, why don't you be honest about what that "free government backed insurance" has cost to date. I believe the word for that you are looking for is "zero". It may not remain zero, but per unit of energy produced, and relative to the alternatives, it will continue to be extremely small. Subsidies for renewables and fossil fuels on that basis have a very real cost, and are quite high.

At any rate, insurance figures will be meaningless as long as regulatory limits on radiation are so absurdly far below safe limits. When nuclear plants can not even be permitted in many places due to perfectly benign background radiation levels exceeding said absurd limits, there is clearly a problem.

Your comments empty of any constructive ideas are no better. Given the endless "raving and foaming at the mouth" of anti-nuclear ideologues, the colorful language is understandable and more easily forgiven.

Decommissioning a LFTR poses no special difficulty, and all of the salt can be recycled for use in a new plant. If anything, the liquid fuel simplifies the process. The fission products are continuously removed so that they do not build up, and can be stored safely. The bulk of them (87%) stabilize within ten years, and the remaining require storage for only a few hundred years. Starting with thorium, very few long lived actinides are produced, and those are continuously recycled into the fuel salt. Only a tiny amount of even that is lost to the waste stream due to reprocessing inefficiencies.

As the storage requirements for LFTR waste are vastly simplified, it makes little sense to insist on building yet another a huge and expensive facility dedicated to storing spent LWR fuel in the interim. Dry casks at plant sites are perfectly adequate for the time being. Even with much increased global energy demands supplied exclusively by nuclear, the waste produced still reaches steady-state at a minuscule quantity. All the waste on earth would fit on a plot of land roughly the size of a wal-mart, though there is no need to geographically concentrate such an insignificant quantity.

China is investing in molten salt reactors because the technology has been proven, and the commercial risks are small. Without the obscene regulatory burden and uncertainty introduced by the dysfunctional permitting process in the west, there would be no shortage of investors. India was pursuing thorium in solid fueled reactors in the past which offers little benefit, though even they have now turned their attention to molten salt reactors. There are many promising efforts and significant interest around the world from those who are actually serious about facing our energy crisis.

It would not be a subsidy. The Nuclear Waste Fund has accumulated a balance of $25 billion dollars, paid in fees over the years by nuclear plant operators. The parent is only suggesting that it be spent on developing the technology which has the greatest potential for managing the "waste", rather than waiting it out. In the end, those are the only two options: fission it, or bury it.

Nuclear "waste" and "spent fuel" are misnomers, as conventional reactors extract less than 1% of the energy from mined uranium. It is insane to treat it as waste, when the technology exists to completely transform the remainder into energy, while eliminating virtually all of the long term radioactivity. The technology was proven decades ago, and the remaining development and commercialization could be completed using a small fraction of the available fund.

Molten salt reactors like LFTR would not only produce enormous amounts of electricity from that "waste", but also valuable medical isotopes, radioisotopic fuel for space probes, and rare earths. As a high temperature reactor, even the rejected "waste" heat has many potential uses, including desalination and producing ammonia or other synthetic liquid fuels. Another interesting application is carbon neutral cement.

Discouraging development of nuclear not only prevents safer designs and a solution for the waste issue, but also assures continuing dependence on fossil fuels in the many cases for which renewables are not suitable. (Including the production of more renewables, which require a whole lot of steel and concrete. Or to provide energy while the wind and sun are unavailable.)

Even coal is a finite resource and it will run out in the future. It is assumed that we will stop mining before reaching an EROEI approaching 1 at infinite cost. In practical terms, I still don't see how that statement can be false. The point is that access to energy is of primary importance, and the welfare of humanity ought to be placed above the business interests of the fossil fuel industry.

Everyone benefits from affordable sustainable energy, and preventing the deployment of nuclear power maintains an artificial scarcity which only benefits the fossil fuel industry. Those in control, appear determined to bring society to the brink of destruction in order to exploit that scarcity, and people who entertain the fantasy of a world powered exclusively by the sun and wind are only helping them.

Expensive, yet still far less so than wind and solar. With nuclear, most of the cost is not inherent in the technology, but arises from the endless litigation and delays, along with the atrophied supply chain and construction industry. Beyond that, the costs of nuclear will be dramatically reduced once molten salt reactors are commercialized.

Deployment of nuclear faces difficult, yet addressable problems. On the other hand, the economics of renewables are limited by the laws of nature, and those are not mutable.

There is a lot of coal, but apart from the coal industry, there is a universal sentiment that we don't want to continue mining or burning it. In fact, a significant number of coal plants are being closed in the US and replaced with gas, which is not nearly so plentiful. The price of natural gas is highly volatile, and we will see a steep increase along with demand. Prices may be low today, but once new export terminals are operational, it will pour out into the global market, and be rapidly depleted while local prices rise to match. An energy policy dependent upon continuing availability of low cost natural gas and perpetual renewable subsidies is extremely foolish.

Fossil fuels are finite and recovery is increasingly difficult and costly; to claim otherwise is absurd. Cheap oil and gas will not last, especially in the face of rapidly increasing global energy demand.

The goal is not to make money for a few, but to produce wealth for the people. That requires energy, which fossil fuels will be incapable of providing in the future no matter the cost. There is no intrinsic value in money, and markets/legislation do not produce energy.

There is an unfortunate disconnect between business/economics and reality which desperately needs to be bridged. Only sane energy policy based in reality can rescue us from a truly dismal future. (Sane is recognizing that wind and solar are only capable of serving a small niche, and reality dictates that the bulk of energy must come from nuclear. Those fighting nuclear are only serving the interests of coal, which is the only practical alternative.)

What a waste – Vermont Yankee is in beautiful condition

The NRC recently extended the operating license for 20 more years, so apparently any issues were minor or have been addressed. It sounds like your claims are significantly exaggerated, and that there is no safety concern.

Most of Vermont's electricity came from that plant, and closing it is only going to result in burning more fossil fuels and increased prices.

Solar versus nuclear: a question of scale. Further comments go into detail about resources and areas.

Read about Germany for an idea of what $50 billion will buy in terms of renewables--that is a drop in the bucket of their expenditures. Despite having been at it for more than a decade, they have little to show for it except skyrocketing electricity prices. Replacing fossil fuels with solar is an expensive fantasy.

All considered, nuclear is the cheapest option available. It can be expensive up front, but 60+ years of reliable energy at virtually no marginal cost more than offsets the initial investment. China is also demonstrating that even conventional reactors can be built for a fraction of the cost of their US counterparts. Molten salt reactors offer even greater potential for cost reduction, and will undercut fossil fuels directly, removing the primary incentive to burn them. Providing a source of energy cheaper than from fossil fuels and offering it to the developing world is the only practical way to curb their combustion.

High cost of nuclear the US can be attributed to the endless litigation, insane regulations, and lack of any recent construction experience. All of these are readily addressed given the will to do so. (Current regulations are not based on science and safe radiation limits, but what is practically achievable. This is absurdly overzealous, and if emissions from gas and coal plants were held to the same standards, we'd be without power.)

4GW is the peak output with clear skies at noon. The 6.4 TWh/y is the expected yearly output, as quoted from the article. That yields an anticipated capacity factor of 0.18, after taking into account that the earth rotates and has clouds and such. Wind and solar look great if you compare nameplate capacity and ignore the variability. In reality though, getting useful power out of them is pure fantasy unless you have pumped hydro available nearby, and even then it is not competitive.

"The solar photovoltaic power plant will have an estimated life of 25 years and is expected to supply 6.4 billion kilowatt-hours per year, according to official figures."

For reference, a single 1GWe nuclear plant operating at (a conservative) 0.85 capacity factor will produce 7.45 TW-hours/year of reliable power. So this solar plant isn't the equivalent of one reactor, much less four. Considering that nuclear plants typically last 60 years and AP1000s are near $2/W in China, the solar option costs five times as much over that time frame.

While this solar farm is idle at night and unreliable by day, the transmission infrastructure must be built to handle the full capacity of the equivalent four nuclear plants, and it will sit idle most of the time. The solar option makes no economic sense, when instead they could purchase two actual 1GWe nuclear plants, and have 15 TW-hours/year of reliable power for more than twice as long.