A Good Day for Nuke Power
September 28th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
“It is a new day for energy in America,” said David Crane, the CEO of NRG Energy, this week. Actually it was just another muggy Monday in Washington, D.C., but for an industry whose “renaissance” has been dished on ceaselessly by journalists and predicted hopefully by its boosters, it was a Very Good Day. This week NRG Energy and San Antonio’s CPS Energy turned in an application to the feds for what could be the first new nuclear power plant in the U.S. since the Three Mile Island incident in 1979. The first of many to come, the industry hopes.
The huge 2,700 megawatt, $5.2 billion plant is slated for Bay City, where NRG runs the South Texas Project, a nuke station that was plagued by cost overruns, lawsuits, and countless delays. Ratepayers are still paying for that boondoggle. (See the plant on Google Maps.)
Texas, it seems, has been deemed by our betters ground zero for the nuclear comeback. In addition to NRG, three other companies - TXU, Amarillo Power, and Exelon - have announced plans to pursue new nuclear power plants. An exploding population, a hands-off regulatory system, and a general unwillingness to pursue aggressive conservation programs have made the state attractive.
There are many reasons for this comeback, not least the billions in freebies Congress and the Bush administration are offering investors. But the one reason most in need of some healthy fact-checking and skepticism is that nukes are a panacea for climate change. The subtitle of NRG’s press release reads in part, “Plant will produce no greenhouse gas emissions.” This line is being repeated endlessly by credulous reporters and pundits. But is it true? Well, sort of.
Unlike coal-fired power station, a nuclear plant does in fact emit no carbon. However, the full life-cycle of nuclear power tells a different story. Uranium, the fuel for nuke power, must be mined. That process requires enormous diesel machinery, which belch carbon like nobody’s business. (Uranium mining also has other serious environmental consequences. Just ask the folks in Goliad.) Then the uranium ore has to be enriched, an energy-intensive process itself.
By the time the electricity is on the way to your home - and the radioactive waste is preparing for its very long lifespan - 33 grams of coal have been emitted for every kilowatt-hour of power, according to a study by the Oko Institute. That compares favorably with coal (about 900 grams) but not so well with wind, solar, and biomass energy. Certainly it puts the lie to the idea that nuclear energy has no greenhouse gas output.
Even if nuclear was truly carbon-free, it offers little hope for dealing with climate change when it needs to be dealt with - now. Rebecca Solnit, writing in Orion, explains:
Still, the biggest stumbling block, where climate change is concerned, is that it takes a decade or more to construct a nuclear plant, even if the permitting process goes smoothly, which it often does not. So a bunch of nuclear power plants that go online in 2017 at the earliest are not even terribly relevant to turning around our carbon emissions in the next decade—which is the time frame we have before it’s too late.
Then there are the problematic economics of using nuclear power as a replacement for other energy sources. John M. Deutch and Ernest J. Moniz, professors at MIT, have estimated that the world needs one terawatt - or one million megawatts - of carbon-free power to take make a dent in carbon dioxide emissions by mid-century. That would require, by my back-of-the-envelope calculations, 740 new nuclear reactors the size of NRG’s planned units. That’s three big new nuke plants every two months for the next 41 years. The cost of this building bonanza would come to $2 trillion, according to Deutch and Moniz. It’s an enormous undertaking for a technology that has already had 50 years to overcome its shortfalls.
Here’s the take-home lesson: In the months and years ahead, we’re going to hear a lot about how nukes are green, how we can fight climate change by siting a power plant in our town. Let’s try not to get greenwashed to death.
September 29th, 2007 at 2:29 am
Mr. Wilder cautions us not to get greenwashed to death in the coming debate about new nuclear power plants. That is good advice, but I come at the discussion from a different point of view.
As a former Navy nuclear engineer officer, I know that it is possible to put a uranium fueled engine inside a sealed submarine full of human beings, and to operate that engine for months at a time without needing any outside air. Not only did my sub’s engine not need any outside air, but it helped us to make all of the fresh water that we needed for the people and all of the oxygen that we needed to sustain life from the water that we made. Throughout our operations we did not put any detectable emissions into the ocean.
The really fascinating aspect of what I learned was that it was possible to operate a 9000 ton, 425 foot long submarine at various speeds - occasionally in excess of 20 knots - for about 15 years without any new fuel. The active part of the fuel load weighed about as much as I did when it was new. About 40% of that material was left over and ready for recycle when it could no longer sustain a fission chain reaction.
Having had the opportunity to see first hand what atomic fission is capable of doing, I began studying the political debate in earnest in 1991 while also digging deeply into the technical history. I was trying to figure out what went wrong politically and if there were any technical improvements that could use fission in a more appetizing form. It was pretty apparent by 1991 that there was not a big market for the nuclear fission machines that seemed to be available.
No customers in the US were stepping forward saying they needed a 1000 MWe power plant that required 7-10 years of construction time and a few billion dollars worth of capital investment before being able to produce any revenue.
What I believe is a reasonable technical solution - the Adams Engine - only took about 2 years to get to a stage that excited me enough to make me resign my commission as a naval officer and start a company. (Adams Atomic Engines, Inc. Feel free to search for us.) That is a story for a different comment.
The political solution took longer to really understand, but an old friend (thanks Dave L.) gave me a hint when he shook my hand on my way out of the Navy - he told me to watch out for the oil guys. He said they would work hard to prevent my success. Being an engineering type and a guy who generally thinks in a linear, problem solving mode, I did not “get” the connection at the time.
After nearly 15 years of involvement in discussions and debates, however, I now realize just how right Dave was. The fundamental truth is that atomic fission is extremely threatening to anyone who is in the established energy business or who makes their money supporting that business.
Examples of the not so obvious actors include railroads that move coal, shipping companies that move oil, steel companies that sell piping, banks that invest in OPEC countries, states that obtain royalties from fossil extraction industries, and even many mainstream environmental organizations whose money can be traced to oil through foundations like Pell, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, or those who take major contributions from Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP or the hundreds of other corporations that make billions from selling fossil fuel.
In fact, even many companies that some associate with the “nuclear industry” make far more money supporting the fossil fuel industry or operating fossil fuel powered electrical generating plants. Some of them now make more money every year selling heavily subsidized or mandated wind turbines than they do in supporting the parts and fuel requirements for the plants they built several decades ago. They have little incentive for an honest comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the technology.
Bottom line before this turns into a comment longer than the original post - atomic fission can make a huge difference in the cleanliness, peace and prosperity of the world. Read all you can about the technology, follow the debates, and most of all - FOLLOW THE MONEY.
September 29th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
THE LONG-TIME PURPOSEFUL GENERIC PURPOSEFUL EXTANT FRAUD IN NUC”EL”AR-REACTOR FABRICATION AND CONSTRUCTION WILL MOST CERTAINLY DOOM NEW NUC”EL”AR-REACTORS AS IT DID OLD NUC”EL”AR-REACTORS!!!
MANDATORY BUT COMPLETELY ABSENT AGAIN AS USUAL ARE DEVIL’S-ADVOCATES, NON-GROUPTHINK NAYSAYERS TO COUNTERBALANCE THE PRO-NUC”EL”AR CHUTZPA OF ONGOING MEDIA-HYPE P.R. SPIN-DOCTORING “BUSH-WAAA…-AAAH”[A.K.A. B.S.(IN THE GREAT ONE JACKIE GLEASON BROKLYNESE RASPBERRY LINGO), DECIDEDLY NOT MEANING MIDDLE-CLASS!!!] NUC”EL”AR-UBERALES NONSENSE AD INFINITUM /AD NAUSEUM!!!
[REFERENCES:
ANA MAYO, “IF LEAKS COULD KILL”, THE VILAGE VOICE, PAGE 440, 8/21/78;
E. SIEGEL, JOURNAL OF MAGNETISM & MAGNETIC MATERIALS, VOL. 7, PAGE 312 1978);
GO TO http://WWW.ANIMATEDSOFTWARE.COM, LOCATE ANTI-NUC”EL”AR SECTION, IN IT SEARCH ON “SUPER”ALLOYS &/OR ON “SIEGEL”;
LAWRENCE PRINGLE, “NUC’EL’AR-POWER: FROM PHYSICS TO POLITICS”, MACMILLAN(1979);
JOHN BRADSHAW, “HEALING THE SHAME THAT BINDS YOU”, HAZELDEN(1980s)]
FOR MORE INFO. CONTACT:
Dr. Edward Siegel,
Nuc”el”ar: Metallurgist/Physicist/Whistleblower
WHISTLEBLOWER@SAN.RR.COM
September 29th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
What if there were no “billions in freebies” for investors in new nuclear power plants, and they went ahead anyway?
Nuclear power skeptics occasionally refer to the IAEA “Red Book” uranium reserve estimate in 2003 of about three million tonnes. They are less likely to follow the example of Martin Sevior and look at the same authority’s report two years later:
The recent $85-a-pound price translates into $220/kg, significantly higher than the price at which 10 million tonnes was known to be on hand in 2003, so prospectors have been finding the stuff at a much greater rate than the world’s reactors have been burning it. No-one really expects this to change until the price goes way down again. It’s already fallen about a third from its peak earlier this year.
And what is the connection to the billions in freebies? Well, to produce a billion watts of electricity by burning natural gas, one must now-a-days pay a gas bill near $0.4 billion a year. This includes substantial royalties for government. The uranium bill for a billion watts from nuclear plants like the Darlington one near me is $0.036 billion a year.
That’s a lot less than $0.4 billion; it is less than a tenth. So if those investors build tens of gigawatts, tens of billions of watts, of new nuclear plants, they’ll be depriving government of billions of natural gas dollars each year.
If there were no “billions in freebies” —
(Actually, loan guarantees, worth much less than the billions they cover, just as mortgage insurance for a housebuyer costs much less than the house)
– then regulators would be in a conflict of interest. They could protect billions a year in future income for themselves and other public servants by betraying the public: red-taping the new nuclear plants to death.
But with the loan guarantees, they lose billions either way, and if they let the nuclear plants go ahead, they, personally, will know that those nukes are a comforting presence over their back fence, rather than a gas pipeline or a railway line carrying coal.
September 29th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Don’t forget that probably none of these nukes will be paying school property taxes any time soon. HB 2994 added nukes to the projects eligible for school property tax abatements, which means that billions of dollars in profitable nuclear plants will off the tax rolls for a long time to come.
September 29th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Does Mr. Wilder really believe that we only have ten years left:
“So a bunch of nuclear power plants that go online in 2017 at the earliest are not even terribly relevant to turning around our carbon emissions in the next decade—which is the time frame we have before it’s too late.”
This is blatant and baseless fear mongering, and it makes Mr. Wilder unbelievable. How does he know that we have less than a decade left? Who established this time frame? How sure are we that the time left is exactly ten years - maybe we only have an hour to go? How many governments and organizations are working in accordance with this ten year limit? Mr. Wilder has absolutely no data or reasoning to support this claim, and he is acting in an irresponsible manner when he makes such terrifying statements - like shouting “Fire” in a crowded theater when there is no fire.
As we all know, we have thousands, perhaps millions, of years left to fully play out the human adventure. We are approaching a hot interval. The sooner we start doing things to mitigate the heat, the easier it will be to live through this period. Clean nuclear reactors will help, and we should start building them immediately.
September 30th, 2007 at 11:21 am
We get the usually anti-nuk garbage from people who are not concerned about global warming, and are not concerned about the future of the Earth. The construction and operation of heavily government subsidized wind generators leads to far more CO2 emmessions. Since wind generators produce power only 30% of the time, fossel fuel electrical generators must be kept constantly spinning to provide power at a moment’s notice. They must produce all of the electricity we need at a moments notice, and during the peek demand period during Texas Summers, when Texas wind seldom blows, they will be emitting CO2 100% of the time. Solar power will still require CO2 emitting fossil fuel generated electricity half of the time, because the sun still does not shine during the Texas night.
Anti-nuclear fanatics are lying maniacs, who are trying tho hide the truth from the people of Texas. Your anti-Nuclear views are not science based, they are a sort of religion, that is ideologically devoted to an irrational opposition to nuclear power.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
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