Ms. SABERI: Most Iranians will say their country has the right to nuclear energy, but if you ask them at what cost, their answers will differ.

NPR: Iran to Press Ahead on Nuclear Technology

While conspiracy theorists may want to believe that Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Nuclear are stifling the growth of renewables, the simple truth is that coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear can satisfy the Four Imperatives: power density, energy density, cost and scale.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Nuclear energy plants are very difficult to build because they have an extremely high initial cost outlay, which generates financial risk.

FORBES: What Are The Most Important Things To Know/Understand About Nuclear Energy?

Only after the cost of generation and storage of renewable energy matches the cost of on-demand generation from fossil, nuclear and hydro we will we see a transformation of the energy industry.

FORBES: Storage, Not Generation, is the Challenge to Renewable Energy

This means that the cost of conversion plus the cost of storage will have to be similar to the cost of providing energy on demand from the energy stored in chemical or nuclear fuels.

FORBES: Storage, Not Generation, is the Challenge to Renewable Energy

If it cannot be made to work commercially, and at a reasonable cost, then the UK would have to spend much more on renewable energy, nuclear power and other economic transformations, and would face having to make enormous cuts in areas such as emissions from air travel.

FORBES: Getting the Economics of Climate Change Entirely Wrong: Clean Coal Might Be Too Expensive To Use

Professor Adilson de Oliveira, an energy economist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, reckons that electricity from a new nuclear plant would cost 50-60% more than this before counting the charges for dismantling nuclear stations at the end of their lives.

ECONOMIST: Nuclear energy in Brazil

Nuclear energy's best hope lies in carbon pricing, which forces fossil-fuel plants to pay for the environmental cost of the carbon they generate.

ECONOMIST: Nuclear energy is unlikely to work without a carbon tax