Abstract

This article reviews the issues underlying current and past nuclear cost forecasting debates. The text and tables tally the history of forecasting errors and the range of current cost debate. The essay demonstrates that the positions of nuclear optimists and pessimists reflect different expectations of future development paths and are therefore relatively immune to falsification by existent empirical data. Drawing on recent trajectory models of technical change, the paper analogizes nuclear cost debates to paradigm debates over the fertility of different research agendas. The conclusion notes how viewing cost debates in paradigmatic terms potentially undermines technically deterministic theories of technical change.

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