The government has justified keeping the public in the dark about the cost of its project to build eight nuclear reactors on two grounds: Doing so would jeopardise the procurement process, and that it is still negotiating the price. Such justifications are absurd in a democracy.Citizens, who will be asked to foot the bill for the purchase of 9600MW of nuclear energy through the construction of eight atomic reactors, surely deserve to at least be given a ballpark figure, given that the procurement process has already started.In the absence of any factual information, experts have speculated that the atomic build programme could cost upwards of R1-trillion - an astronomical figure for a mid-sized developing country.Factor in the inevitable cost overruns and construction delays and the ultimate cost of the programme that is expected to meet 23% of our energy needs by 2030 could be even higher.This week The Times' sister publication, Business Day, provided the first realistic glimpse of the price we will be forced to pay for the Zuma administration's nuclear ambitions.Several new studies, including one by a Council for Scientific and Industrial Research analyst, persuasively suggest that, even at today's prices, electricity generated from atomic power would be far more expensive than that supplied by new coal plants, solar photovoltaic panels or wind.The government is committed to nuclear power and it would be naive to expect it to backtrack now, even in this straitened economic climate.But it would be well advised to scale down the procurement in line with the recommendations of its own National Planning Commission, which suggested several years ago that less nuclear power would be needed if the demand for electricity was lower than projected because of slowing economic growth, or if the atomic programme proved too expensive...