Negligible compared to the environmental costs of oil drilling and gas flaring, coal mining, oil spills, not even considering the radiation that comes from coal smokestacks themselves.

"lack of qualified nuclear engineers"

Straw man, and in addition there has been an increase in nuclear engineering majors, you may want to check your facts, we will have the needed staff in 5-10 years max

"the problem dealing with radioactive waste"

This is made out to be worse than it really is, what we really should be doing is reprocessing but on-site storage is sufficiently safe, you really think terrorists would choose a waste site over oil or gas pipelines or drilling rigs to conduct attacks?

"The [US Dept. of Energy] report found that wind power should cost 6 to 8.5 cents per kWh, even without the current tax credit, including the cost of transmission to access existing power lines. And the cost of integrating the variable wind power into the U.S. grid would be under 0.5 cents/kWh."

Those are about the same figures I have seen. The cost of nuclear power varies between 3.1 to 6.4 cents per kWh so it is 0 to 65% cheaper than windpower.

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ydinvoima
Unfortunately the source is in finnish because I could not find any exact price information from english wikipedia page on nuclearpower. But sources for these prices are from a Finnish indrusty consortium and from study made by the European Union commission which should be reliable.

"I agree with you that we shouldn’t rely on wind for 60% of our energy production. I prefer solar thermal, which can provide baseload power. However, we’re getting off topic, since this article was primarily about nuclear power."

I know this is offtopic, but just out curiosity I would like to know how would you produce/store energy required during nighttime or during cloudy periods?

Here's the report:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/pdfs/418…

I agree with you that we shouldn't rely on wind for 60% of our energy production. I prefer solar thermal, which can provide baseload power. However, we're getting off topic, since this article was primarily about nuclear power.

"I’m forced to disagree with you. If you compare energy production statistics (cost per kilowatt-hour of energy produced), wind power is significantly lower than nuclear."

Could you show me some calculations.

"Additionally, wind power does not require ‘extra powerplants’. They do require other plants which can produce baseload power when the wind isn’t blowing sufficiently, but they reduce the amount of non-renewable energy required."

Yes but you still need to keep the amount of power produced by wind in reserve. And that reserve has to come from somewhere. If you only produce about 10 % of the total power produced with wind power you can create this reserve simply by adjusting the power output of the existing plants which is relatively cheap. But if you build more windpower you'll start

needing plants that are shutdown during high wind periods and turned on during low wind periods.

These are the extra poverplants I was talking about.

These power plants are build only to create the power reserve for wind power and should be calculated towards the total cost of wind power.

And I agree with you that wind power is great way of reducing carbon diokside emissions. I only disagree with those wind power enthusiasts who think we should produce 60% of our energy with wind power.

If you really want to go into the details, we could talk about the environmental costs of uranium mining, the problem dealing with radioactive waste, the lack of qualified nuclear engineers to run all these proposed new reactors, etc. etc.

However, the costs and risks discussed in the article are accurate.

The cheapest way to build nuclear reactors would be on existing sites that already have reactors. Estimates have shown that nuclear capacity could be more than tripled if more nuclear plants were built at sites that already exist.

Large nuclear energy parks of 10 to 40 reactors could reduce the capital cost even further.

Marcel F. Williams

http://www.hushenergy.com.au/

(I am not affiliated with these turbines in any way except I am a *fan*)

Additionally, wind power does not require 'extra powerplants'. They do require other plants which can produce baseload power when the wind isn't blowing sufficiently, but they reduce the amount of non-renewable energy required.