Ahead of the second meeting of the UPA-Left committee on the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement on Wednesday, the UPA has insisted that contrary to the Left parties’ claims, the cost of nuclear power was the cheapest.
Given that price and availability of power are matters of concern for the common people, both the groups are keen to highlight the issue in their propaganda over the nuclear deal.

The estimates of the Left and the UPA are so different from one another that the issue of economics of nuclear power will be taken up separately at Wednesday’s meeting.

According to the estimates of the Left parties, while coal-based power stations could produce power at about Rs 2.50 per unit at the power plant end, nuclear energy would cost between Rs 5.10 to Rs 5.50 per unit.   
While West Bengal Chief Minister and CPM politburo member Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee advocated in favour of switching over to other forms of energy including nuclear from the present thermal energy, the party leadership in Delhi has asked the government to invest more in generating coal-based power. “We just can’t avoid nuclear power altogether,” Mr Bhattacharjee said on Monday.

However, the central party leadership has said the cost of nuclear energy would be double that of coal-based power. Besides, building a plant with imported nuclear reactor would cost three times the money necessary to build a coal-based power plant.

“If we want to add about 100,000 MW, which the Ministry of Power is saying that we are required to add, then we will be able to build all the 100,000 MW with the same amount of money that we would require for building about 30,000 MW of nuclear power with imported reactors,” a CPM statement said.

However, the UPA leadership has argued that the tariff of coal-based generation would be sensitive to the distance of power station from the coal mines, whereas those of nuclear were location-neutral.
Quoting from a study titled “Economics of Light Water Reactors in India”, the UPA leadership in its response to the Left arguments against the deal said nuclear energy would be the cheapest if the cost of generation for different fuels were compared.

“The cost of generation in paise/kwh for different fuels is as follows: nuclear 114; domestic coal at 800 kms from pit head 160; imported coal at port 162 and gas 179. The sensitivity analysis also revealed that the impact of the fuel price on the generation costs is least in case of the nuclear option,” the UPA document said.