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Like I said before, we don't have enough large-geothermal plants in operation to make a fully accurate comparison.


But for your sake let's just take one nuclear plant, just a hypothetical one that represents the basic nuke setup vs one geothermal plant of equal output.


We have to look at what runs the nuke plant as to expense

1. Mining uranium, the equipment, personelle, fossil fuels to run them, containment, contamination, affected surrounding populace near mines.

2. Transportation of uranium fuel.  Terrorist risk.  Personell.  Fossil fuels.  Machinery, maintenance.  Security escort.

3. The startup costs: the safety features, containment vessel, widgets and whatnots of keeping radioactivity from poisoning surrounding populaces.  Permits, appeals, more permits.

4. Personelle to monitor, run and deal competantly with nuclear power, accident claims, health issues, exposure etc. Compensation claims.

5. Waste disposal: facility construction, monitoring (for several generations), transportation.  Security escort.

6. Terrorist target: potential disaster scope: immense


Now if you can put a guestimate on all those costs, then we'll compare them to geothermal

1. Drilling to underground reservoirs once.  No distant ongoing mining.  Steam sources are never "spent" like uranium fuel rods. 

2. No transportation, steam already at site.

3. Startup costs, basic safety features, building permits, no containment for "waste" since there is none. No storage needed.  No threat to generations of people. 

4. Personelle to monitor, run and manage steam turbines.  No claims related to radiation sickness or cancer from steam.  Usual number of industry claims.

5. No waste disposal

6. No terrorist target.


Now guestimate those figures.


Compare the two.


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