I wrote this when I heard that the new South African Nuclear Power Station has been put on hold: (written 10/12/2008) The cost of the stopped nuclear power station was going to be R100 Billion (R100,000,000,000) and for this amount we could take more than 200,000 houses completely off the grid, paid for by the government and with minimal running costs and almost zero decommissioning costs. This at R500,000 per house (*1) The R100 Billion nuclear plant would have produced 3,400 MW. So the cost is R29 per watt. The biggest wind turbines are 6MW. This would need 567 wind turbines plus a factor of 20% for wind free days = 681 turbines. Large Wind Turbines cost in 2002 was R20 per watt (*6) which means that a 6MW turbine costs R120m Rand. Multiplied by 681 = R80,720,000,000 (R80 billion). Meaning we have money left over if compared with R100 for a Nuclear Power Station. This R19.3 Billion could possibly be used to add more wind turbines giving us a spare capacity of close to 50...