Going Nuclear?

Published by Taylor on March 28, 2008 in Energy, Environment and Infrastructure. View Comments

nuclear-power.jpgWhen the subject of energy comes up, I’ve heard a number of intelligent people defend nuclear power as a favorable alternative to coal-fired plants. In recent years, a smattering of environmentalists have even joined the pro-nuclear camp. Nuclear proponents argue that atomic energy produces zero emissions, gained an unfair bad reputation on safety thanks to disasters like Chernobyl, and is a no-brainer solution to energy needs in the face of climate change. A recent Los Angeles Times Editorial speaks to all of the “pros” in the pro-nuclear movement:

Safety:

“Nuclear waste remains highly toxic not for a few years but for millenniums; if the ancient Egyptians who built the Great Pyramid had also built nuclear plants, the waste would still be deadly. This material is being stored on-site at nuclear plants [...] As these plants age, the chance of a system failure increases.”

Emissions:

“Nuclear plants are fueled by uranium, which is becoming harder to find; uranium mining generates a good deal of carbon, which increases as we dig deeper for the radioactive material.”

Climate Change:

“More compellingly, given the cost and time frame for building nuclear plants, it would be impossible to build them quickly enough to make an impact on global warming. There are safer, quicker, cheaper and cleaner alternatives, such as solar and wind power, greater efficiency measures and decentralized power generators that produce electricity and heat water at the same time. Let’s exhaust them before even considering the nuclear option.”

Those are all excellent arguments against nuclear power, albeit somewhat simplified. If you’re looking for a more comprehensive and thorough debate on the issue I recommend this written exchange [warning: PDF] between Steve Berry (University of Chicago), Peter Bradford (former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner and senior utility regulator), and Amory Lovins (Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute). Amory Lovins is one of the most impressive energy thinkers I’ve ever heard, and I particularly appreciate his response to nuclear proponents (forgive the long quote, but it’s all worth reading):

“An efficient, diverse, dispersed, and renewable energy system can make major supply failures, whether caused by accident or malice, impossible by design rather than (as now) inevitable by design. The nuclear phaseout will also speed climate protection, because buying megawatts of micropower instead will save 2-10 times more carbon per dollar, and will do so more quickly. And it can belatedly stem nuclear proliferation, too, by removing from commerce a vast flow of ingredients of do-it-yourself bomb kits in civilian disguise. [...] acknowledging and accepting the market collapse of nuclear power is an important step toward a fairer, richer, cooler, and safer world.”

What Lovins advocates, in place of nuclear expansion, is a diverse blend of renewable micropower sources coupled with cogeneration facilities: plants that produce energy and heat that can be used in industrial, commercial, or residential applications.  If I had to choose between coal and nuclear for a new plant, I would clearly go with nuclear.  But that false choice is precisely the problem: we have other options, and better options.  Diversifying our power generation into many “microplants” might not be as intuitive as building a giant nuclear facility, but it’s a smart investment for all the right reasons: climate, safety, and even reliability.  I see the nuclear debate as a distraction from the real progress that is possible and is ongoing as a response to the world’s energy demands.

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user chascar.

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  • Taylor, the WSJ articles are comparing nuclear to fossil-fuel, mainly coal. Its true: fossil-fuel is cheaper than nuclear; that's exactly the reason why utilities use so much fossil fuel.

    But besides the harm done by CO2 as a greenhouse gas, consider the cost of the harm done by pollution. Please take a look at the European Commission's report on the external costs of energy. Then, consider that fossil fuels are subsidized by tax credits.

    If all energy subsidies were removed and utilities paid for the damage they caused, nuclear would pencil out as cheap as any available energy source.
  • Henry, here's a source you're familiar with discussing the monumental costs of new nuclear power plants:

    "A new generation of nuclear power plants is on the drawing boards in the U.S., but the projected cost is causing some sticker shock: $5 billion to $12 billion a plant, double to quadruple earlier rough estimates."

    I've read the WIRED piece, and I'm still convinced that nuclear power can't be an answer unless we're willing to subsidize the [high] costs of nuclear energy for consumers. We'd spend years building costly plants, and the end result would be extremely expensive power, unless it's subsidized by the government. That doesn't alleviate my general unease with nuclear power, but if it's to be a part of the solution for CO2 reasons, it can't do so without heavy incentives.

    On the subsidy/incentives point, the only way I'd support new nuclear construction is under a carbon marketplace system that would appropriately disincentive coal and natural gas plants. From a different WSJ piece:

    "[Emissions penalties] matter[] because nuclear power’s ability to provide electricity at a competitive price compared to regular sources like coal and natural gas depends largely on those [large] construction costs [for new nuclear plants]. Fuel costs for nuclear power are miniscule. The only way to handicap the field in nuclear power’s favor is to put a big price tag on emissions of carbon dioxide. Since nuclear plants don’t emit CO2, they win when legislation penalizes carbon-heavy sectors like coal (and even natural gas)."

    Are you ready for that type of regulation, Mr. Free Marketeer? If so, let's talk nukes.

    For what it's worth, there's a new type of nuclear plant under development. I don't know enough about it to have an opinion on its value, but here's a TreeHugger article discussing the merits of Thorium.
  • Taylor,

    Although I think Red Craig thoroughly deconstructed your argument here, just in case your looking for more information on this subject:

    http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazi...

    Henry
  • I 100% agree that a mix of energy sources is the best direction. However, renewables face the same obstacles nuclear does. Oil is required to obtain the raw materials. More oil is consumed in transporting the components. The manufacturing and construction effort required for renewables is higher than for nuclear (a little more for wind, a lot more for photovoltaics).

    This waste issue has aways been a work of fiction. Even when the plan was to throw away the spent fuel instead of recycling it, the contention that future generations will be adversely affected didn't bear scrutiny. When the fossil-fuel reserves are depleted and the climate is altered so that most people live in severe hardship, the last thing people will care about is capsules of nuclear-energy waste buried thousands of feet in a desert mountain.

    The simple fact is that renewable energy only works if it has a backup energy source. The two backups available are fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
  • Without investment in renewable energy, I'd be interested to hear how we might construct new nuclear plants (which can take ten years to build) without using oil. I'd also be interested to hear how we might mine uranium for nuclear plants--using current mining technology--without oil.

    If we're facing a continued short-term oil dependency either way, I'd rather wake up 10 years from now having shifted to renewable energy (with manufacturing processes that have gradually adopted those technologies) instead of looking out my window at the new nuclear plant that's still being constructed, with other nuclear plants producing toxic waste without any place to go. Now, that assumes that in ten years Congress still won't have figure out a solution for where to store nuclear waste....I'll take that bet. But even if Yucca or another location gets off the ground, I still prefer my scenario.
  • What else do you suggest? You need to read Jim Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" because he does extensive analysis of what life will be like after oil. He demonstrates why all of the alternative energy sources are still based on a manufacturing base that uses oil. We need to start building nuclear power plants NOW!
  • I use micropower to mean using all different types of energy sources--solar, wind, geothermic (where feasible...which is a very limited area), and (sometimes, though not to the extent you describe) hydro. I don't understand why a healthy mix of energy sources would NOT be a good thing. We have the technology to allow solar arrays, wind turbines, etc to feed excess power into a grid. We also know for a fact that the implementation costs of micropower is dwarfed (on an unbelievable scale) by the up-front costs of nuclear energy. Why wait to build nuclear plants that will cost billions of dollars, take many years to construct, and ultimately produce toxic material (that Congress can debate how to store for another 20 years). We have better options--let's use them. More importantly, let's not distract ourselves with nuclear as a magic bullet to our energy needs. Just as we shouldn't hitch all of our hopes on ANY one energy source--not coal, or solar, or wind, or hydro on its own.

    I don't follow your population limiting theory behind Lovins' work. It seems to me that diversified power sources leave us significantly safer to prosper than loose nuclear material getting into the wrong hands.
  • I'm a proponent of nuclear energy and don't find Mr. Lovins's argument here persuasive, any more than his other arguments.

    Micropower means building many thousands of small dams on all the streams and creeks anywhere there's enough fall to run a turbine. Besides the obvious impracticality of connecting all those turbines, and the difficulty of maintaining them, there's the little problem that it would lead to the extinction of thousands of species. There's a law against that, and if the the law is rescinded then we call all kiss wilderness goodbye.

    You might wonder why Mr. Lovins gets away with promoting ideas that have to possibility of ever being implemented. You see, that's the whole point. The aim of Lovins and his followers is to render the world, western countries in particular, unable to sustain current population levels.

    If we as a species decide that limiting population is in our common interest, then we ought to be deciding in those terms. Forcing the world into the decision can't help but lead to massive hardship. And trying to trick the world into the decision by lying about the most effective solution to global warming is plain dishonest.
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