But that's the point, isn't it? You have two types of thermal power plant, one of them has a somewhat lower fuel cost so why does that one have a higher operating cost? Something is wrong there and needs to be addressed.
> It’s a lot more than that, and far from the only cost mentioned. It’s pumps, control systems, safety systems
These things should all costs thousands of dollars, not billions of dollars.
> loss of thermal efficiency, slower startup times, loss of more energy on shutdown, etc.
These are operating costs rather than construction costs and are already accounted for in the comparison of fuel costs.
> Highways don’t use expensive materials yet they end up costing quite a lot to build. Scale matters.
5 miles of highway has around the same amount of concrete in it as a nuclear power plant. We both know which one costs more -- and highways themselves cost more than they should because the government overpays for everything.
> Contamination with newly spent nuclear fuel = not something you want to move on a highway.
Is this actually a problem? It's not a truck full of gamma emitters, it's a machine which is slightly radioactive because it was in the presence of a radiation source. Isn't this solvable with a lead-lined box?
> Taxpayers are stuck with the bill, but that bill doesn’t go away it’s just an implied subsidy.
Have taxpayers actually paid anything here at all? The power plants have paid more in premiums than they've ever filed in claims, haven't they?
> You could hypothetically spend 5 billion building a cheap power plant rather than 20+ billion seen in some boondoggles but then get stuck with cleanup costs after a week.
You could hypothetically build a hydroelectric dam that wipes out a city on the first day. You could hypothetically build a single wind turbine that shorts out and starts a massive wildfire.