A nuclear challenge

Press, 28 September 1976, Page 5

A nuclear challenge

PA Auckland, A university economist has] challenged the Electricity Department to announce the! cost of building a nuclear power station in New Zealand. Professor R. H. Court, associate professor of econ-! omics at Auckland Univers-1 tty, told a public seminar on| nuclear power that the pro-’ posed 1200-megawatt station could well cost four times as much as the existing official estimates. He said that in 1974 the department estimated the cost of the nuclear station at S36OM, and last year it estimated the cost at $463M — a rise of 29 per cent. “In 1976, the estimate was expected to be more realisitic—around SB4OM. but the department, apparently worried by public reaction to amounts and escalations ofj (his magnitude, has refused to publish a further figure.” Professor Court, who has made a special study of the economics of nuclear power, said that in his view even! SB4OM would greatly underestimate the true picture. ■ Taking into account over-j seas experience of rising'

.costs in nuclear power station |construction, final costs were I likely to be one and a half ! to three times greater. The symposium was also addressed by two overseas authorities opposed to nuclear power — Mr Gregory Minor, an American nuclear energy engineer who resigned from I his job earlier this year in i protest against the hazards of nuclear power, and Mr Walter 'Patterson, an energy specialist with Friends of the Earth and author of a new book on nuclear power. Mr Minor said that despite >1 official statements about the safety of nuclear power stations, the greatest danger ! still lay in the fallibility of ! the human beings who ran these plants. s Mr Patterson told the semi- ■ nar that far from being an ideal energy source, nuclear , I power stations would ultiflmately prove a liability, j New Zealand electricity J authorities might think they > I were getting a bargain with ,la nuclear power station, but I I they would then find. ‘lto their cost, that they had J become dependent on the ; I world nuclear power system.