Intelligent people all over the place are still touting nuclear energy as the solution to the problems of growing energy demand, dependence on fossil fuels, and climate change. This is increasingly hard to understand, given what's true about nuclear generation and its alternatives. Nuclear is not the answer. It's not even part of the answer. Why?
1. It takes too long. It takes at least a decade to get a nuclear power plant up and running. Climate scientists (actual scientists, not politicians or energy companies) say we need to reduce CO2 emissions by 80 percent by 2050 in order to avert catastrophe. The hundreds of nuclear plants we'd need to achieve that reduction won't happen in time.
2. It's economically unviable. Nuclear power plants cannot exist (let alone compete) without massive government subsidies. Wall St. banks and insurers won't put up the money. A subsidiary of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. recently abandoned a multi-million dollar investment in a plant in Idaho because "it does not make economic sense." The Congressional Budget Office estimates that risk of default on loan guarantees for new nuclear plants is "well above 50 percent." By the way, the industry will be asking Congress (i.e., American taxpayers) for $30 billion in loan guarantees this year. A "carbon tax" of $45 per metric ton might make nuclear more competitive, but there's a lot of uncertainty about even that assessment.
3. We haven't even fully sorted out the issue of nuclear waste for existing plants. What are we going to do with the waste from hundreds more plants?
4. There are better, cheaper alternatives. The idea that renewables like wind and solar are unreliable has been convincingly debunked. Plus, each dollar spent on nuclear generation displaces up to 11 times less carbon than a dollar spent on renewables or more efficient use of electricity, so investment in nuclear is actually the worse option in terms of climate protection.
For a much more elegant argument than I've provided, read this (link to full story at bottom of page).
1 comment:
Thanks for calling me intelligent. That's a much more gracious beginning than what we're used to in anti-nuclear diatribes.
Actually, it's easy to understand why more and more intelligent people are touting nuclear. As the severity of the climate-change problem becomes better known, and the magnitude of the challenge becomes more apparent, people everywhere are realizing that the solution will depend upon a major investment in renewable and nuclear energy as well as in conservation.
1. It takes longer to bring renewables on line than nuclear. That's because the manufacturing and construction effort required per unit of energy output is greater.
2. I hope that we're not going to decide the world's energy future on the basis of one abandoned project. If that becomes the rule we won't develop any energy sources, because there certainly have been abandoned wind, solar, geothermal, and even fossil-fueled projects.
The problem with using the CBO report as a reference is that it only compares nuclear energy costs to fossil-fuel costs. The conclusion doesn't surprise anyone; the whole reason utilities burn fossil fuels is that it's cheaper than anything else. That's where the problem arises. Also, you're misreading the report. The $45/MT tax is the level that would justify bulldozing operating fossil-powered power plants and replacing them with nuclear plants, not the level that would make new nukes competitive with new fossil burners. The tax required to make renewables competitive would be much higher..
3. The "waste problem" was always fictitious and, like all fictitious problems, was easily solved. Nuclear wastes are much smaller in quantity than coal wastes and thus are much safer. Spent fuel is being reprocessed, as it is in the UK, and more countries are setting up to do it, including the US. Reprocessing the wastes separates out the valuable uranium and transuranic actinides to use as fuel. The remaining wastes are only 3% of what was there before and lose their toxicity in much less time. [chart] Many geologic places, such as caves or abandoned mines, could store those wastes safely. Besides that, proven technology exists to irradiate the wastes into other, shorter-lived materials. [source ] To deal with the wastes this way doesn't require any technological breakthroughs, just a political decision.
4. No, every study done by qualified analysts shows that renewables always cost more than nuclear. Here's one example of many: http://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/ElecCostSUM.pdf Only political ideologues claim otherwise. And the idea that renewables like wind and solar are unreliable has never been debunked, only denied by propagandists paid to do so. It's interesting that most people understand that wind and solar don't work when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining. Only misguided people blinded by ideology and false hopes don't get it.
Basically, the problem here is that you've chosen to believe propaganda. The sole purpose of the Rocky Mountain Institute is to mislead people whose enthusiasm overwhelms their objectivity. If you seek out better sources of information you'll be able to understand the situation better.
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