Why is nuclear energy cheap?

Question

Is it becuase uranium mining is cheap? why would uranium mining be cheap?

Answer 1

Its not really that cheap...but compared to coal it is. One pellet of uranium can provide the same energy that like...a ton of coal would provide.

Answer 2

Nuclear energy is not especially cheap, once one takes into account construction, de-commission & waste storage costs.
Uranium mining is a bit more expensive, but not excessively so.
Nuclear energy is called "cheap" because (excluding the costs listed above) the actual generation costs are minimal.
Unfortunately public setiment against nuclear energy over the last 40 years has seriously hampered the development of the technology & made the world far more dependent on fossil fuels.

Answer 3

Uranium is a naturally occurring element that once you refine it (expensive) build a plant to use it in (expensive), have some place "safe" to house and monitor the waste (expensive), but once you have those thing the actual running of a nuclear plant doesn't take that much and once you have that uranium it does burnout as quickly as say 10 tons of coal.

Answer 4

Nuclear energy is not cheap, because of the cost of building nuclear reactors, as well as the costs of trying to keep it safe, and disposing of the waste. If it were cheap, it would be used much more widely than it is at present.

The fuel for nuclear energy is cheap, because such an enormous amount of energy is obtained from each gram of fuel. Perhaps that is what you had in mind.

Answer 5

simple 150 barrels of oil do the same thing as 2.2 lbs of uranium at a 3-4% u-235 ratioh

Answer 6

E=mC^2
A small amount of mass converted produces huge amount of energy.