The price of uranium is 3-5% of the final delivered cost of nuclear power (including capital cost and decommissioning). I note poeple in Europe talk about the Finish reactor and it price, but the last constructed G3 reactor were Korean and they were completed for only $1.6Bn each. I would think it made perfect sense for Britain to build more nuclear plants - even at $80Bn thats not a huge cost for 25% of UK generation and to ensure you meet the Kyoto goals (which the public feels is worthwhile regardless of China's impact).
As for uranium scarcity every day we drill more holes as the price goes up and we redefine the optimal pit shell and drop the cutoff grades and guess what - there is a lot more uranium out there in the existing mines already and we havent even done infill drilling on the largest known uranium orebody in the world yet (which has cutoff grades in the current resource which are higher than most mines average grades). No need for reprocessing yet even.

Paul Hughes, Darwin, Australia

Unfortunately uranium production in Canada and Australia is falling, down 15% and 20% resp in 2006 over 2005 and that in Kazahkstan is signed up to the Russians and Chinese. The price rise indicates the current short supply and the only two new mines able to stem the partial blackouts in the US and France are held up, one, Cigar Lake, in Canada is flooded and the other, Olympic Dam, in Australia depends on a feasibility study it is likely to fail. The current many-nations nuclear wish-list cannot be satisfied - the nuclear renaissance will be stillborn.

John Busby, Bury St Edmunds, UK

YEAH! all my money is in uranium mining companies, XEMPLAR IN Namibia, DITEM AND STRATECO in CANADA, FORSYS in NAMIBIA, thats where the future is.

we all go back to nuclear power, cause everybody needs electricity for tv and washing machine, more people can afford it, more people exist in the world, more electricity is being used.
and nuclear power is cheapest compared to all other ways.

the price for uranium went from 7$ per pound to 136 $ and is now at 93$. That happend in 4 years. china, india and everybody start to build more nuclear plants. all will come online in the coming years and they will need a lot of uranium.
good for africa, canada, australia and kazahstan, coz they all have a lot of uranium. and the cost of uranium is still less then 5% of the operating cost for the nuclear power plant.
and helps against global warming too, coz no coil,oil,gas has to be burned. and you could get cheap electricity for your electro car, 0,50 $ for one "tank filling" isnt it great?

Surya, Germany,

Could someone please put me straight on one matter: Are these big businesses intending to get cheap nuclear power exclusively for themselves in return for their investments, or is this meant to be available to us all?

Gerald Messoud, bradford, west yorkshire

To Ludwig, regarding 'incidentally there won't be enough for the nuclear renaissance' - this is not correct, with reprocessing there is enough uranium for about a thousand years of the current energy consumption, and with the use of breeder reactors, there is enough uranium easily minable for hundreds of thousands of years of current energy usage rates.

Pete, London, UK

I think it is Ludwig in Vienna who should be doing his homework. Go back to finding a new constant or probablity distribution or something. To say that there wont be enough uranium to supply the nuclear renaissance would make the Australian and Canadian mining companies chuckle. In addition a rise in uranium prices brought on by shortages would make the recycling of plutonium by reprocessing MOX fuels (mixed plutonium and uranium oxides) even more economical than it already is now . The UK has substantial stocks of reprocessed plutonium. Furthermore any shortage would bring back the fast breeder reactors and the prospect of unlimited fuel supply.

Clerk Maxwell, Glenlair,

Holy smokes! They are going to build a bomb!

Ahmad Kamal Abu Bakar, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia

Ms. Jameson's article is accurate and well balanced - just what this debate needs. Mr. Boltzmann, however, does not have the same scientific accuracy as his namesake. The £80bn does not refer to the cost of civil nuclear power but has buried (sic) in there, the cost of the military program which (nobody knows) probably swamps the civil costs but is, in any case, very significant.
There is also the other fact that the modern plants such as Olkiluoto and Britain's own Sizewell B are fundamentally and radically different to the early devices in the same way that the Toyota Prius cannot be compared to a Model T Ford.
He is, of course, quite accurate in the cost of new nuclear compared to the cost of climate change.

John, Scotch Plains, New Jersey

The UK is running out of Energy supplies and needs new nuclear power stations Now. Keep talking about whiter to have nuclear power or not and in the not to distant future the UK will switch the lights out. Wind power and Solar power is not an option. Start building new nuclear power stations ... Now.

Ian, Grangemouth, scotland

Whatever became of tidal power?

Considering the cumulative force expended by waves beating against Britain's coasts and the advent of electrics generation through tidal generators - one might believe the UK has all the energy neccessary to satisfy everyone.

Add in the force (in windpower) from the occasional gale-force storm and use of this FREE energy to produce and distribute Hydrogen (from seawater) and it would seem all bases are covered - from home cookery to public and private transport. After-all, hasn't science the means to generate liquid petrol from gaseous hydrogen and CO2 - provided sufficient energy?

Larry, Middletown, USA/NY

Why is it perfectly reasonable to assume that the Finnish workforce is more skilled than the British one. Utter rubish to say that. Nothing indicates that either country's sector is more skilled than the other. Simply have a bash because they are British. Isn't that called racism?

Matthew, Portsmouth,

I can see that Ms Jameson has not been doing her homework. For example, the Finnish reactor is running behind schedule already (at least a year). It is perfectly reasonable to surmise that the Finnish workforce is more skilled than the British one, and add that to the fact that building efforts will be stretched by the 2012 olympics, you can see cost overruns looming big in the horizon due to skilled labour shortages. Also, no mention is made of the £80 billion pounds being spent to clean up the last nuclear folly. It would be a brave person indeed to put a price on the nuclear kilowatt with the rise in uranium prices (incidentally there won't be enough for the nuclear renaissance), potential building costs overrun and uncertainty on what to do with spent nuclear fuel and decomissioning. A silver lining though: all these costs could pale into siginificance compared to the consequences of a one degree increase in the average temperature of the earth. No such thing as a free lunch.....

Ludwig Boltzmann, Vienna, Austria

RWE is German, not Italian. You must be thinking of Enel.

Michael, Dubai,