In 1954, Lewis Strauss, the Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, promised a future of energy that would be “too cheap to meter”. He was talking about nuclear power. Now, 60 years later, nuclear is an increasingly hot and divisive topic in the energy debate. Is nuclear, as Strauss said, too cheap to meter? Or is it, realistically, too costly to matter?

In the United States, we haven’t built a new nuclear reactor since 1996. However, in 2007, the Tennessee Valley Authority authorized construction of a new reactor at Watts Bar that is currently slated to break ground in December 2015.

Based on the latest Energy Information Administration data, a nuclear plant with a capacity of 2,000 megawatts, about the same as New York’s Indian Point facility, will cost over $11 billion in capital costs alone. To put that number into perspective: based on the same EIA data, a combined cycle natural gas plant with the same capacity costs about half that to construct, and, annually, the operations and maintenance costs are about 15 percent of those of a nuclear plant.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licenses reactors to operate for 40 years, and the average age of a reactor in the US is 33 years old.  The original permits for the two reactors at Indian Point, located in Buchanan, New York, about 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, are both up for renewal: one expired in September 2013 and the other will hit the 40-year mark in December 2015.

There is an ongoing debate over the future of the Indian Point facility, which at times, supplies up to 30 percent of electricity for New York City and Westchester County. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo supports the plant’s closure, but Entergy, the company that owns and operates Indian Point, is fighting hard to keep it open.

When assessing the cost of an energy source, it is important to consider not only the construction and maintenance costs, but also the externalities, consequences of an activity or decision that are borne by a third party but aren’t reflected in the price of a good. Nuclear energy may be extremely cheap to produce, but what costs aren’t we seeing when we look at our ConEd bills every month?

According to the Lancet Medical Journal, nuclear power is responsible for only 0.003 accidental deaths per terawatt of energy generated. Coal, in contrast, was found to be 15 times more deadly. However, when a nuclear disaster does occur, it can be catastrophic. According to a 2008 UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation report, more than 800,000 people were exposed to radiation from the meltdown at Chernobyl, and the true effects of the Fukushima Daichi disaster won’t be known for years. John Armbruster, a seismologist from the Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, when discussing the safety of Fukushima quipped, “Fukushima was prepared for every earthquake known in the last 1,000 years, but it was struck by the earthquake that happened 1,140 years ago”.

The first Working Group Report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in September 2013, stated that the IPCC is now 95 percent confident that climate change is caused by human activity, namely the emission of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels. We clearly need a shift away from fossil fuels to cleaner sources of energy, but but is nuclear energy really the way of the future? I’m not convinced. Because 30% of Japan’s power came from nuclear before the disaster at Fukushima, the nation had to scramble for energy after the meltdown, and was forced to turn back to oil and gas. Instead of lowering its emissions by 25% from 1990 levels, Japan predicts that levels will actually be 3% higher in 2020. Nuclear is too costly and unreliable to be the clean energy source we so desperately need.

There’s a lot of talk in the political and energy community about energy security and reducing the US’ dependence on foreign oil. However, since oil is used mainly for transportation, not for electricity, ramping up nuclear will have no effect on oil use unless we start putting tiny fusion reactors under our hoods.

Instead of investing billions into the renovation of Indian Point, we should be focusing increasing the capacity of other sources of clean, renewable energy before December 2015 when we say goodbye to Indian Point for good.

Bridgette Burkholder is a Masters of Science candidate at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs studying Energy and Environmental Policy.

1. Arkandya, Anil, and Paul Wilkinson. “Electricity Generation and Health.” Lancet Medical Journal. 370.9591 (2007): 979-990.

2. Lovins, Amory, Imran Sheikh, and Alex Markevich. “Forget Nuclear.” Rocky Mountain Institute. 2008. Web.

3. Halbfinger, David M. “New York Denies Indian Point a Water Permit.” New York Times, 3 April 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/nyregion/04indian.html

4. “Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit Nos. 2 and 3 – License Renewal Application”. US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applications/indian-point.html