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Perspectives |  Other Energy

Elliott Negin: January 21, 2010

Nuclear Power: Too Costly to Revive

Is nuclear power a solution we can afford? The short answer is no.

Nuclear Power: Too Costly to Revive

For several years, the energy industry has been claiming that nuclear power is a green, cost-effective solution for global warming, and now it is asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to approve 26 new power plant proposals. Meanwhile, some in Congress are calling for the federal government to support the construction of 100 new reactors over the next two decades.    

No doubt, expanding U.S. nuclear power beyond the current 104 reactors could help combat climate change. Nuclear plants -- which do not emit carbon dioxide during operation -- currently generate about 20 percent of U.S. electricity, and building more could reduce the 50 percent market share held by coal plants, the nation's primary source of global warming emissions.

But is nuclear power a solution we can afford? The short answer is no. Even discounting nuclear power's security and safety problems, the cost of construction could be the industry's Achilles' heel.

The nuclear industry likes to point out that it has low production costs, which it does. What it doesn't mention, however, are its rapidly escalating capital costs, those associated with paying the cost of plant construction, including financing. In the past, the industry has benefited from considerable federal and state government subsidies that mask the true cost of the technology, including staggering capital costs and the risk of catastrophic accidents, by shifting these burdens onto taxpayers and ratepayers. The industry is now seeking to shift even more costs and risks onto the public as part of pending climate and energy legislation.

In 2005, Congress authorized $60 billion in loan guarantees for new energy technologies. Of that amount, the Department of Energy (DOE) allocated $18.5 billion for new nuclear plants. But the industry wants more -- a lot more. The Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying arm, says it needs a "permanent financing platform" to provide the industry a minimum of $100 billion in additional loan guarantees on top of the billions it already has been allocated.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the industry proposed to build some 200 plants, but as construction costs escalated, only about half were finished. Taxpayers and ratepayers were left footing the bill -- about $300 billion in today's dollars -- for abandoned plants, cost overruns for completed plants, and stranded investments that were higher than the wholesale market price for power. No energy company has ordered a new plant since 1978, and all plants ordered after 1973 were cancelled.

In 1985, Forbes magazine called the debacle "the largest managerial disaster in business history," and investors have stayed away ever since. In 2007, six top investment firms told the DOE in writing that they were unwilling to finance new reactors. Utility executives, meanwhile, will not finance new nuclear plants themselves. Both Wall Street and the industry would consider it, however, if taxpayers assumed the risk -- in the form of federal loan guarantees.

Taxpayers should be skeptical about such guarantees. First, projected construction costs have been spiraling out of control. In 2002, the nuclear industry estimated it would cost $2 billion to $3 billion to build a typical 1,100-megawatt reactor, which can supply power for about a million homes. Since then, the projected costs have jumped as high as $9 billion per unit.

Second, based on the industry's financial track record, the Government Accountability Office estimated that the average risk of default on a federal loan guarantee for nuclear plant construction is 50 percent. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) used this rate of default and recent cost estimates to assess the overall risk to taxpayers for guaranteeing nuclear plant construction loans, concluding that taxpayers could be at risk for as much as $360 billion if 100 plants operating today were replaced with new plants by 2040. Without loan guarantees, no company has taken anything more than preliminary steps toward building a new plant.

An April 2009 UCS report, "Climate 2030: A National Blueprint for a Clean Economy," concluded that new reactors would be one of the most expensive options for producing "low-carbon" electricity, even ignoring the likelihood of cost overruns. The peer-reviewed study found that a combination of low-carbon energy polices would economically reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation 84 percent by 2030. New nuclear plants would not be an cost-effective part of the generation mix, however, at least not any more than the four new 1,100-megawatt reactors that were projected to be covered by existing subsidies and loan guarantees. Instead, the study found it would be more economical to meet a stringent emissions cap with a mix of energy efficiency, renewable resources, and combined-heat-and-power plants fueled by natural gas.

Fortunately, there are viable alternatives to nuclear power, including efficiency, wind, biomass and geothermal, which are not only more environmentally friendly and cheaper, but could be built much more quickly and at much lower risk to investors and taxpayers. And recent changes in the long-term outlook for U.S. natural gas supplies make nuclear power look even more uneconomical.

The potential price tag of yet another public bailout of the nuclear industry would dwarf the previous ones. Congress should think twice about putting hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars at risk to underwrite a new generation of costly reactors that Wall Street and even the industry itself are unwilling to finance on their own. The power source that was once promised to be "too cheap to meter" may now be too costly to revive.

Elliott Negin is the media director for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C.

32 Comments

  • J. A. Turner 01/21/10 6:12 PM

    And pouring hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into such unwieldy megaprojects would merely serve to divert ever scacer funds from more cost-effective projects.  It’s a pretty obvious case of big money vested interests with a deathgrip on the public purse.

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  • Tom 01/21/10 7:30 PM

    Nuclear is a terrible option. it may be the worse, except for the others. Coal and oil plants are environmental nightmares. Biomass plants largely rely on the byproducts of industries that are of necessity either too small to produce the needed amounts of waste (for effective grid power integration) or not sustainable. Solar has a low capacity factor and is currently only available part of the day, and not even every day. Wind has the same problems and others as well. Geothermal resources are not currently available in the quantity and distribution necessary to displace coal in the US. This leaves, what? Prayer?
    A mix of nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric power presents the most practical option for the US to meet its baseline power needs at zero emissions.
    As for the risk of catastrophe: more people have died mining, refining and burning coal in the last three years than ever died in a nuclear accident.

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  • Atz 01/21/10 8:36 PM

    Tom, thanks for your balanced comment. In fact, I wish that Elliott’s opinion piece had been as balanced.

    Under the current economic conditions, in the US, coal and natural gas are the only economically viable options:

    * Hydro is cheap, but we ran out of rivers to build major dams on long ago.

    * Geothermal also appears to be relatively cheap, but the technology is not quite mature yet and by its very nature, geothermal is limited to certain areas of the country.

    * The levelized cost of electricity for solar and wind is prohibitively high, and will be for at least the next five years. Solar and wind also do not scale well - they require too much land. And let us not forget that integrating such intermittent sources of energy into the grid effectively will require a massive build out of transmission, which is both expensive and difficult to obtain approval for in this country.

    * That leaves nuclear. Over the last few decades, the US, Japanese and French commercial fleets of reactors have demonstrated that it is a safe source of power, with extremely low operating costs. But construction costs are high (especially for first-of-a-kind projects like Areva’s first EPR in Finland). In spite of that, nuclear would still be one of the cheapest energy sources with coal and hydro, but in the US it also suffers from being overpoliticized - the regulatory process is a nightmare which exposes utilities to massive delays (it takes the NRC at least 4-5 years to approve a COL application, which is unjustifiably long).

    China, India and European countries like the UK and France do not seem to think that nuclear is too expensive to build. The next 20 years will most likely prove that they were right, and that we in the US were fools to place all our bets on two technologies like solar and wind.

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  • kevin johnson 01/22/10 4:48 AM

    Great article, in the late seventies (I was young) I produced viability studies for an investment firm that found that by far the most costly part of a nuke was the end of life reclamation. I think the usable life then was forty years and the EPA wanted the sight returned to some form of nature. I remember a really big contribution number to fund this cost . The utility knew they could not get price hikes from the city so they drop the project. FYI soon after that they stopped all institutional investing of any future utility expansion (to meet population forecasts) because they couldn’t raise the price of electricity. This I remember because the utility stated - they can pay us now or pay us later, but they are going to pay.

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  • Rod Adams 01/22/10 5:46 AM

    The big scary number in the original piece is that - after adding an unstated inflation adjustment - taxpayers and ratepayers were left with a $300 billion bill for abandoned or not completed nuclear power plants. Ignoring for a moment the accuracy of that figure, the question that comes to my mind is what was the total investment in the nuclear construction boom that took place between about 1965 and 1985 and what was the RETURN on that investment?

    Every year, nuclear power plants in the United States generate about 806 BILLION kilowatt-hours of electricity. At wholesale prices of between $40 and $70 per megawatt-hour, that electricity is worth between $32 and $57 billion per year. That figure ignores the additional value to consumers that comes from having a power source that is not natural gas or coal so it competes with those fuels and keeps their prices down a bit compared to what they would be if the demand for them increased to supply our current power needs.

    In addition to the value of the electricity produced in the US designed plants built in the US, there has also been a substantial value to the world from the export of those designs to places like France, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, and China. All together, the world’s nuclear power plants produce the energy equivalent of about 30-40% MORE than Saudi Arabia’s oil production.

    Where would the world be if we had not made that investment and experienced some trial and error that is common in the development of ALL new technologies?

    Compare the return on our nuclear fission investment to the return that we have received from our massive investments in wind, solar, geothermal, and nuclear fusion. Then compare the overall effects of that investment to the effects of burning about 6 billion tons of coal, 5 billion tons of oil and close to 5 billion tons of natural gas every year. All of those totals would be about 6% higher if it had not been for nuclear fission’s discovery a mere 68 years ago.

    If organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists, which actually has far more Lawyers as members than scientists, had not worked so hard to force project costs ever skyward and contributed to the abandonment of many viable projects, the United States would have already stopped burning coal and would be well on its way to eliminating natural gas from the electrical power system, freeing that gas up for industrial uses at a much lower price than it commands today.

    In my opinion, the question is not whether or not we can “afford” nuclear energy. That is kind of like asking a parent with a prodigy if they can “afford” to send that child to college. The real question is will the return on the investment be worth it. The answer to that question has been answered by history in places like the US, France and particularly South Korea. That tiny, resource poor country has just made a $20 billion sale of energy production capacity to the United Arab Emirates using technology and knowledge that they obtained from working with scientists, engineers and technicians from the United States who felt stymied in their ability to use their hard won knowledge here.

    Thanks, UCS. (sarcasm)

    Rod Adams
    Publisher, Atomic Insights
    Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast

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  • Bob Wallace 01/22/10 8:50 AM

    We did not run out of hydro potential.  We have some 80,000 existing dams in the US and use 2,400 for power generation.  Based on a 2007 study of dams on federal lands another 6,000 or so should be usable (adequate head,flow, and reasonable distance to transmission lines) for power generation.  Work is already underway to turn a half dozen or so of these existing dams into power producers.

    Additionally 10,000 of these existing dams should be good candidates for pump-up hydro storage.  These are dams with adequate head, short enough transmission requirements, but don’t have adequate year round flow to be usable for generation.  But they have all the requirements for storage.

    Wind and solar plus adequate storage can replace our existing use of fossil fuels.  And likely do the job cheaper than can nuclear.  And certainly without exposing us to the additional dangers and significant waste disposal problem.

    A massive build out of wind or solar would not be disruptive in terms of land use.  PV solar is best sited on existing rooftops and over parking lots as the power generated is close to point of use, thus requiring no new transmission lines.  Wind farms, while significant is size, use very little real estate for turbine footings.  The vast majority is still available for farming, grazing or wildlife.

    Geothermal, wet rock geothermal, is experiencing a rapid increase in installation.  Hot rock geothermal is currently held back largely because better drilling technology needs to be perfected, but that is soon coming.  Fears over induced earthquakes (as happen with oil and gas wells) will mean that for a while hot rock installations will be limited to less populated areas. 

    We’ll probably build a couple of new nuclear reactors in this country this decade.  We don’t seem to be able to learn from history and we’re too self-centered to learn from what happens outside our boarders.  We’ll use taxpayer money to help Southern Power build a couple.  (Guessing they’ll get the money as Florida Power and Light has thrown in the nuclear towel.)  Ten, fifteen, twenty years from now when those reactors get hooked to the grid we will be reminded how expensive nuclear is.  And during the decade we’ll have watched wind, solar and storage prove themselves along with becoming cheaper.

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  • djysrv 01/22/10 11:40 AM

    Let’s be clear about what is really going on here. The solar and wind technologiy companies want you to believe that nuclear energy will soak up all the available investment capital leaving none for them.  This is not true, especially in states like South Carolina and Georgia, which combined have have plans to build four new Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear plants for 4.6 GW of carbon emission free electrical energy. How will they do it?  The answer is “construction while in progress” also known as CWIP.  In return for long-term and reliable low cost and carbon free energy, rate payers agree to increases to cover the cost of the plant while it is being built.  This plan also reduces the cost of capital since interest charges that would accumulate under a merchant scenario do not come into the financial picture.

    Zero sum attacks on nuclear energy, in terms of sequestering investment dollars, are illogical and untrue.  The editors have not done their readers a service by publishing the essay.

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  • Bill Rodgers 01/22/10 2:06 PM

    Mr. Negin in his role as Media Director of Union of Concerned Scientists fails to mention several key issues in his standard diatribe against nuclear power.

    Primarily is the subsidies issue.  Mr. Negin brings up the usual red herring of loan guarantees as a reason for not supporting nuclear power.  I say it is a red herring for three reasons.  The first is that loan guarantees are not direct subsidies to the nuclear industry.  The US taxpayer is not directly financing the nuclear industry through loan guarantees as is implied by Mr. Negin’s commentary.  They are an indirect support of a technology that supports the entire US power generation infrastructure not unlike the direct and indirect support the wind and solar industries are currently receiving and have been receiving for years from the same DOE programs. 

    Secondly, it is a red herring because loan guarantees are more a result of the complex interactions between Wall Street and Washington DC then from the fact that nuclear cannot be financed on a standalone basis.  Wall Street wants a quick payback to their investments measured in timeframes of less than 10 years for many reasons, many which involve tax write offs.  Natural gas, wind and solar meets those ROI requirements, nuclear does not.  That does not mean Wall Street will not invest in nuclear as is implied by Mr. Negin’s comments.  It just means that Wall Street does not see a quick return to their investment whereas they receive a direct subsidy from the US government in the form of a tax write off for investment in wind and solar.  It has been fairly well documented that wind and solar investments go up and down as the tax subsidies wax and wane which indicates that Wall Street does not care which technology is put forth but only that they receive their ROI in a timely fashion. 

    Third reason the issue of loan guarantees is a red herring is because the money being discussed for indirect support of nuclear is on par with the money directly and indirectly supporting wind and solar when viewed from a $/Kw basis.  The numbers are large for nuclear because the nuclear power plants are large from a power generation standpoint.  Wind and solar receive direct subsidies that on a $/kW basis are similar to nuclear support.  Yes there might be areas where wind and solar are getting the short end of the stick and if so should be directly pointed out so they can be discussed.  However, Mr. Negin attempts to make the large money numbers for financing nuclear power sound scary, without mentioning the true costs of a revamped national power grid that would be required to support non-nuclear and non-fossil fuel power generation sources, is a disservice to all considering his position at the UCS. 

    If someone doesn’t like the idea of loan guarantees then work to change the rules of Wall Street for the better.  Work to change the timeframe of a “good” ROI to something other than a 3-5 year mindset.  However, don’t be surprised if unintended consequences kick in though.  But do not put the blame on the nuclear industry for that method of financing large infrastructure facilities especially since the same DOE program will go to support wind, solar and other GHG friendly technologies.  Any increase in the DOE loan guarantee program for nuclear facilities will only help the wind and solar markets as well due to the politics of Washington DC as it should.

    The primary issue is GHG and its effect on our local and worldwide climates as well as our future.  Assuming there is a finite resource of money that must be sparingly spread out instead of discussing and working to implement a broad range of solutions to the central issue of GHG is a disservice to future generations.  All forms of no- or low-GHG power generation sources will have a place at the table, but to directly tie our national infrastructure and our future to the uncertainties of global weather patterns and the finite resource of natural gas with its own pricing and cost issues is just wrong.  Nuclear will and should be a primary generation source as we move our economy away from fossil fuels over the next several decades (which includes natural gas since it is also a fossil fuel).

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  • Eletruk 01/22/10 5:41 PM

    What happened to all those mothballed projects? I know in Washinton one of the construction sites was turned into a business park. But rather than starting from zero, why not finish those plants that were start in the 80s?

    Of course the other issue is that it’s all based on 50’s technology. The industry has advanced a bit since then but due to the NRC being able to only regulate what it knows (those old 50’s tech plants) anything new would take decades just to get building authorization. Hyperion power is a great example. They aren’t even going to put any in the US because it would take decades, instead they are going in Europe in the next couple years.

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      • Rod Adams 01/22/10 9:22 PM

        Eletruk:

        At least one of the mothballed projects - Watts Bar Unit 2 is back under construction to be completed.

        http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/plant-specific-items/watts-bar.html

        Not only should some of the better projects be completed, but two reactors that were completed, licensed and operated were shutdown with a lot of life left in them. Those two reactors are in a condition that would make it much cheaper to restore them to service than to build new plants on a greenfield site.

        The two plants, Zion 1 and 2, are owned by Exelon, a company that operates 17 large nuclear power plants and has no real need for another plant since its operation would simply lower the market rates for all of the rest of the plants.
  • Mapson 01/22/10 6:56 PM

    For Geothermal, let us remember that Texas/ Louisiana has abandoned oil wells, which primarily produce hot water, sufficient to provide 5000 MW of base load capacity. Just attach the low temp generation equipment. Oh yes, they also still produce some oil, too little to be economic on that basis alone. Much faster & dramatically lower cost than new nukes.

    For hydro, along with the addition of power generators to existing dams currently in progress, there are water current turbines in development which do not require dams.

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  • Bob Wallace 01/23/10 1:25 AM

    No private money is available to build new nuclear reactors.  The only way that they will be built is if the US taxpayers accept the risk. 

    Samsung has just announced that they will invest $7 billion (low ball price for a new reactor) in wind and solar in Ontario.  They anticipate 2.5 GW generating capacity for their investment. 

    Clearly private money doesn’t think nuclear is a good investment.  Wouldn’t taxpayers be wise to pay attention to what well informed people with money to loose are saying?

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      • Rod Adams 01/23/10 5:08 AM

        Bob - it is disingenuous to claim that the Samsung investment is purely private money. The renewable energy portfolio mandates, production incentives from renewable energy sources, and the differential tax treatment provided to those facilities means that there is a substantial direct cost to both taxpayers and rate payers associated with implementing wind and solar.

        The return to the investor is often high enough to attract that private capital, but the cost of electricity for the customers is far higher with a solar/wind system than it is for a nuclear system when we recognize that there are NO ratepayers who are not also taxpayers. Taking money from both pockets at the same time is simply a way to confuse the issue about which power system provides the desired product - reliable electricity - for the lowest overall cost.
      • Bill Rodgers 01/23/10 3:16 PM

        Bob,

        It is also important to note in addition to Rod’s reply to you about tax credits and offsets paid by all the taxpayers in Ontario and beyond (not just the ratepayers directly affected by the new generation coming on line) is that the 2.5GW you mention is not available on demand.  Wind and solar are subject to the global weather patterns, so their output to the grid will be about 15-30% of the nameplate generating capacity.

        Here is a link to Bonneville Power Administration’s (BPA) wind farm output. 
        http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx

        The BPA has 2780MW of wind capacity.  In other words two large nuclear reactors or approximately 10 small reactor blocks based on the B&W mPower reactor design.  BPA has never reached full capacity yet as of 1/15/2010 based on the data that I reviewed on their website.  In fact they highlight when the wind farms reach a onetime 50% load generation point while the nuclear industry is not satisfied until load generation consistently reaches 98-99% reliability.  The red line is load and the blue line is wind generation.

        From this graph two things are readily apparent.  The first is that the wind is not constant and is randomly cyclical thereby requiring backups to quickly come on line in an unpredictable manner.  This mode of operations results in lower lifetime expectancies for both the windmills and the gas turbines that currently back up most wind farms.  Large machines like this are meant to be run continuously not in a random, intermittent fashion.  Total lifetime costs have yet to be fully determined for using a wind farm for large scale power generation while for nuclear we have reliable lifetime figures to base cost expectations.  Wind farms are still in the data gathering stage from a total lifetime cost standpoint.

        The second thing to note from this graph is that the wind does not meet load demand on a consistent, reliable basis.  What that means is that when the load peaks as shown on the red line it does not necessarily correspond to the high peaks of wind generation as shown by the blue line and vice versa. That should not be a surprise to anyone since the wind blowing down the Columbia River basin is not subject to our control.  The wind may blow hard enough to generate sufficient power at 2am or at 2pm depending on when the storms roll off the Pacific Ocean. 

        The final point to note about the BPA data is that right now it is showing a large amount of wind power generation since this is the winter season.  Reviewing the data from this past summer though would show days of no generation which means wind, when viewed from a 24hr/365 basis, is not dependable to supply our national infrastructure.  A similar argument can be made about solar.

        To do a real cost comparison, the backup power generation required to maintain 100% grid reliability must be included in any discussion about using wind or solar.  That may not be convenient to the UCS anti-nuclear position put forth by Mr. Negin or to energy efficiency consultants like Amory Lovins who believes the grid mindset is outdated but from a utility standpoint it is legally mandated since utilities are required to do the day-to-day nuts and bolts operations of keeping the electrons flowing and the grid running.
  • Andrew 01/23/10 1:59 AM

    Since a significant share of current uranium is supplied via dismantling old nukes (Russian), and that programme ends in 2013, where is all the new uranium supply to come from? The Japanese true-believers in NEDO are trying to invent smart sponges that soak up uranium from the sea, but they seem more successful at soaking up subsidies. As for renewables and the allegedly huge costs, limited potential, etc, note how the Europeans balance their supply and demand. Note they’re also constructing a supergrid for the region. “Powering the Green Economy” is an excellent source for real information rather than the cheap slogans thrown around as the various energy industries (including renewables) compete to hold or expand market share.

    And see the SFR on global uranium supply problems:
    http://www.cfr.org/publication/14705/global_uranium_supply_and_demand.html

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      • Rod Adams 01/23/10 5:36 AM

        Andrew:

        Did you even read the CFR article that you linked to? It makes it very clear that the supply of uranium is not a large concern and will not limit the deployment and operation of large numbers of new nuclear plants for well into the distant future.

        Here is a quote from that article which follows a statement indicating that the KNOWN reserves are in excess of 5 million tons, with about 24% in Australia and 10% in Canada:

        “The world uses 67,000 tons of mined uranium a year. At current usage, this is equal to about seventy years of supply. The World Nuclear Association says demand is projected to grow by 33 percent in the next decade to correspond with a 27 percent projected growth in nuclear reactor capacity. However, more efficient nuclear reactors, such as “fast-reactor” technology, could extend those supplies by more than two thousand years. Experts say spent fuel can be reprocessed for use in reactors but currently is less economical than new fuel. Currently, there are nearly one thousand commercial, research, and ship reactors worldwide; more than fifty are under construction, and 130 are in planning stages.”
  • Robert Steinhaus 01/23/10 2:06 AM

    We can make energy projects based on any technology (including currently fashionable solar and wind) arbitrarily expensive given a small, dedicated, and adequately financed group of environmental layers content to repeatedly and mercilessly bring suit against the utilities, the government, and the people of the United States in the narrow interests of environmental special interests. If you would like to make licensing and construction costs for a 1000 MW nuclear reactor to be $2 billion and take 4 years it is eminently doable (America’s first nuclear reactor built at the dawn of the nuclear age the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, PA was built in less than 4 years at a cost of $72.5 million (1958 dollars) or $534.8 million (2009 dollars).
    If you prefer the same 1000 MW nuclear reactor project to cost $20 billion and take 20 years to construct due to legal defense delays and harassment that is also possible.
    The Union of Concerned Scientists has the capacity to make good on any inflated claim for the cost of new nuclear. A dedicated cadre of tag team environmental layers in the employ of UCS, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and other environmental special interests can make new nuclear projects arbitrarily expensive and kill through legal action and promulgation of misinformation combined with free floating fear any new non-GHG producing nuclear project.  The net result of this “environmental” strategy will be that America will suffer many additional decades of dependence on foreign oil while sending 10s of billions of dollars a month into the pockets of regimes that bear the United States no particular good will. A program of “No new nuclear” will bring about a future featuring many additional decades of burning dirty coal to replace the energy that will not be produced from improved forms of fission nuclear energy.
    Note1:  The US Chamber of Commerce maintains a website entitled “Project – No Project” which documents the impact of citizen environmental lawsuit legal action against energy projects of all technology descriptions.
    http://pnp.uschamber.com/

    Note2: The United States could build significantly less costly, safer, and less waste generating nuclear energy. Dr. Edward Teller, the founding director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, wrote a final paper a month before his death on the topic of achieving energy independence while securing a sustainable abundant source of significantly less polluting nuclear energy.
    http://www.geocities.com/rmoir2003/moir_teller.pdf

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      • Rod Adams 01/23/10 5:42 AM

        Another part to understand about your very important comment is the fact that the activity could very logically be supported by competing energy suppliers who want to use the Tonya Harding school of competition - if you can beat them, “beat” them with a “stick” until they cannot even get onto the playing field.

        One more thing - US lawyers have no standing whatsoever in China, France, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, the UK, Italy, Japan, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, South Africa, or Iran. (Please feel free to add to that list of countries that is already moving forward in the important act of deploying new nuclear energy plants.)

        We can compete or we can wither. It is our choice.
  • Bill 01/23/10 10:18 AM

    Tom, How many people died ‘as a result of mining, burning and refining coal in the last three years’? It cannot be as many as were affected by Chernobyl, three mile island and miscellaneous other leaks! Maybe it is but I would like to know where you get the numbers.

    Maybe some history lessons are needed here. People seem to forget these accidents. In the same way they seem to forget that most nuclear reactors were put into operation after the second world war to produce material for the superpowers nuclear weapons programs and not for electricity production. And the treat that each nation felt was enough to override any considerations about long term waste disposal or cost.

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      • Rod Adams 01/23/10 1:23 PM

        Bill - you need to reread what Tom said. He compared DEATHS from mining, burning and refining coal to DEATHS from nuclear accidents. You broadened that very specific term to a vague, ill defined and arguable term of “affected by”.

        Millions can CLAIM to be “affected by Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and miscellaneous other leaks”. However, less than 50 people would be able to have their relatives prove that their death was caused by a nuclear accident. All of those were at Chernobyl (about 31 immediately and about 10 during the 23 since the accident.)

        http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html

        On the other hand, several thousand people per year die in coal mining accidents around the world, with a very large portion of those happening in China. Even if you limit your lens to the United States, 69 people died in coal mine accidents during 2006-2007.

        http://www.msha.gov/MSHAINFO/FactSheets/MSHAFCT2.HTM

        NO ONE forgets nuclear accidents because they are constantly brought up during discussions. Anyone who gets involved in energy related discussions should be able to name the true accidents on a single hand - Windscale, SL-1, Fermi, TMI, Chernobyl. The latest of those happened in 1986.

        On the other hand, how many people remember the accident on August 19, 2000 when a gas pipeline explosion killed a completely innocent family of 12 near Carlsbad, NM? How many remember the natural gas well blowout in China on December 23, 2003 that killed nearly 300 people and put another 9,000 in the hospital?
  • Bill 01/23/10 3:56 PM

    Thanks Rod. The first report that you linked to certainly makes for interesting reading. I don’t think I would be going to far if I accused you of cherry-picking the figure of ‘less than 50’ from that report since you are only counting the people that are recorded as dying directly of radiation sickness.. The 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer that are linked to the incident are hardly insignificant. The report also states that “In addition, according to the UNSCEAR 2000 Report, during 1986 and 1987 about 450,000 recovery operation workers received doses of between 0.01 Gy and 1 Gy. That cohort is at potential risk of late consequences such as cancer and other diseases…”. So we have not yet finished counting the deaths from that accident. Sadly if you are one of the 4,000 with Thyroid cancer you can only ever ‘CLAIM’ to be affected because there is some tiny change that you might have had it anyway even if you were not exposed to Radioactive Iodine, but I doubt that makes any of them feel much better.

    The difference between nuclear accidents and gas explosions is that people cannot move straight back the the large areas of land that are contaminated. For this reason alone, people should be reminded of the history of nuclear reactors every time someone tries to pass them off as a solution to the worlds environmental problems. NO ONE should ever be allowed to forget these things.

    Last point (sorry) on the counting of nuclear accidents ‘on one hand’, I remember from living in the area that Windscale was, not one, but a continuous series of nuclear spills. So much so that the government changed the name of the reactor in the end and finally closed it down. Even now there are bizarre problems with the place, like a house several miles away that had to be isolated and decontaminated because the pigeons shifting between there and the old reactor had caused dangerous levels of radiation.

     Reply
      • Rod Adams 01/23/10 4:30 PM

        Bill - Since thyroid cancer is rarely fatal, you can ACCUSE me of cherry picking all you like, but that will not make it a true statement. In almost all cases, people who contract thyroid cancer can be effectively treated and live happy, healthy lives at the expense of taking a tiny synthroid tablet every day to make up for not having a thyroid. I have been happily married to a woman for nearly 30 years who has been taking that same treatment since she was in college.

        There is a HUGE difference between being killed and being affected by something. Your statement about not being able to move back into the areas of land that are contaminated is perhaps true, but it has nothing to do with any real danger. I suggest that you read a book titled Wormwood Forest by Mary Mycio for a good description of the area evacuated at the order of the Soviet government following Chernobyl and pay attention to the parts where she describes the people who REFUSED to leave.

        Also consider the fact that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki remained populated throughout the reconstruction process after being attacked with nuclear weapons and having radioactive material strewn about their cities.

        Not that I recommend excessive doses to anyone, but it is also interesting to note that just a couple of weeks ago Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a man who happened to be a proven survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki died at the age of 93.

        Radiation is not something to fear if you understand the levels and can reduce your exposure to something reasonably close to natural background levels. We evolved in a more radioactive world than the one that we live in today. Exposure is not fatal or even very bothersome if you keep it within reasonable limits.
      • Bill 01/28/10 10:43 PM

        I just can’t help myself… Japanese nuclear program had the following accidents - maybe you have more fingers on one hand than me?
        Accidents of note include: the fast breeder Monju Nuclear Power Plant sodium leak in December 1995 (the reactor is still shut down), the Tokai reprocessing waste explosion in March 1997, the criticality accident at the Tokai fuel fabrication facility in September 1999 and a widespread falsification scandal starting in August 2002 that lead to shut down all of Tokyo Electric Power Company’s 17 nuclear reactors. Tokyo Electric’s officials had falsified inspection records and attempted to hide cracks in reactor vessel shrouds in 13 of its 17 units.

        Also, on 9 August 2004 five workers were killed after a steam leak at the Mihama-3 station. The subsequent investigation revealed a serious lack in systematic inspection in Japanese nuclear plants, which led to a massive inspection program.

        On 16 July 2007 a severe earthquake (measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale) hit the region where Tokyo Electric’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant is located. As of March 2009, all of the reactors remain shut down for damage verification and repairs. The plant with seven units was the largest single nuclear power station in the world.
  • Bill 01/23/10 4:53 PM

    Rod, The report you cited states that there are 450,000 recovery operation workers who are at potential risk of late caner and other diseases, so it is not just the 4,000 people who received the gift of thyroid cancer that are at risk.
    I admire you skill in making Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem somehow benign by pointing out that someone who was there lived to 93.
    I also like your positive attitude to radiation, but I would still rather not have anything to do with it and I am sure there are more than a few people in the world that agree with me on that.
    it is also good that you make the connection between Nuclear reactors and Nuclear weapons although probably not as directly as I would have. I guess it is a bit difficult not to have the last word on this but I will try to leave it to you now if you like?

     Reply
  • Andrew 01/23/10 9:55 PM

    Rod, the important point about the CFR piece is the quality of ore. Development costs will increase (they already are, as you surely know) as we go after increasingly marginal reserves. Nuclear is not a renewable energy resource, and unlike renewable generation tech will not get cheaper through scale and further advances (like the mobile phone, etc). The CFR piece tells me that, like fossil fuels, uranium supply is finite and probably overstated.

     Reply
  • miggsathon 01/24/10 1:07 PM

    It’s true that nuclear is way too costly, certainly by comparison to everything else.  The April UCS report is correct that we would have much more luck with energy efficiency options like combined heat & power.  CHP could provide an estimated 40% of our electric supply while cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20% (assuming waste energy recovery, its sister technology, is included in the calculation).  To be sure, I could be biased:  I’m associated with Recycled Energy Development (recycled-energy.com), which does precisely this kind of work.  But the numbers are the numbers, and the opportunity is staggering—especially considering that costs go down, not up, with increased efficiency.

     Reply
  • Herbie Robinson 01/24/10 3:52 PM

    I should point out that none of the estimates in this discussion have taken into account the true cost of disposing of the nuclear waste.  They can’t because nobody knows how to get rid of it—The true cost is unknown and currently unknowable!  One needs to design a facility to safely store something that will remain dangerous for more than a million years… or come up with an, as yet unknown, recycling technology.

     Reply
      • Bill Rodgers 01/24/10 8:38 PM

        Recycling technology exists.  We aren’t using it strictly because of politics not technology or even cost.  Decades ago US taxpayers paid for the intial technology that is being now used by the French everyday. We can buy it back from them now that they have refined the technology.  The money for recyclling also exists since nuclear power plants have been paying into the Yucca Mt fund for years.  The fund is over $20 BILLION.  That money would be better spent on recycling/reprocessing actvities instead of Congress using it to help balance the books or continued dickering about what the Las Vegas area will look like 10,000 years from now.

        Additionally nuclear plant costs do factor in storage since that is a requirement as part of the licensing process per the NRC requirements.  I am not 100% if the figures being quoted include spent fuel storage as I have not seen a complete breakdown but to recieve a license from the NRC requires hunderds of millions of dollars in reserve to handle spent fuel and to return the plant land to green fields if the plant is ever decommissioned.  Nuclear power is the only form of power generation that is required to maintain a reserve fund to cover costs associated with decommissioning.  Coal—No, Gas turbines—-No, Hydro—-No, Wind—No, Solar—No, which means the cost of decommissioning of those facilities once they reach the end of life will fall onto the taxpayers when they are decommisoned.

        Also we have IFR technology which could be used for the waste issue but that was shevled due to politics not technology.  Some say that the program was shut down during the Clinton administration to appease the environmentalists but primarily to keep the fossil fuel industry and their donors happy.  There is some merit to that premise when you look at the history of the individuals directly involved with killing the program.
  • observer 01/25/10 12:44 AM

    Regardless of the reason the waste problem has not been solved.  Recycling does not solve the problem of waste. No matter how much you recycle there is still waste that there’s no solution for dealing with. Regardless of whether IFR is feasable it’s not available and unlikely will be in time to be factored into the current question. So the problem remains.. your cost figures for nuclear are false.. fraudulent.. invalid… *#&#@*.  The proponents of nuclear are the people who stand to profit from building and operating it. They don’t give a *#&#@ about anything except the money they’re gonna make from doing the deal.

     Reply
  • Robert Steinhaus 02/2/10 3:25 PM

    It is always preferable to just make less waste to generate a given amount of energy.
    The approach America chose for producing nuclear energy was chosen at the height of the cold war against the Soviet Union and was optimized for the needs of weapons production first followed by needs for power generation. This approach is called the Plutonium Fuel Cycle. There is tremendous value in using the Plutonium Fuel Cycle to produce energy and the vast majority of power generated by nuclear means is produced by Plutonium Fuel Cycle technology. There is a better technology for producing power from nuclear fission if all you are interested in is generating abundant amounts of clean energy and do not care about rapidly breeding large amounts of Plutonium for weapons. Thant is the Thorium Fuel Cycle based on an alternate nuclear fuel. Pure Thorium Fuel Cycle technology has been demonstrated to produce one hundredth the amount of nuclear waste and the waste it produces is almost exclusively fission products that decay to the safe level of the natural radioactive background in less than 400 years (83% of the radiation in fission products from Thorium reactors decay to safety in less than 10 years) [1]. Cleaner, less waste generating nuclear energy is not only possible, it has been positively proven in test reactors built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For nontechnical reasons, Thorium Molten Salt Reactors have never been commercialized and have been sidelined as a technology for many long decades but are clearly a better choice if you want to produce electrical power from nuclear while producing less waste and materials (Plutonium-239) that could conceivably be diverted into weapons manufacture. No nation on earth has as yet succeeded in building a weapon from materials that could be taken from a Thorium reactor.
    If you want to solve the nuclear waste storage problem for the long term do not make the waste in the first place by switching to use of Thorium fuel in alternative Molten Salt Reactors.
    [1] Le Brun, C., “Impact of the MSBR concept technology on long lived radio toxicity and
    proliferation resistance”
    http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/04/14/97/PDF/document_IAEA.pdf

     Reply
  • Tom 02/3/10 3:32 PM

    We currently have 104 nuclear power plants. 27 of them are leaking radioactive tritium into the ground. That means we have leaks in 26% of our reactors (25.9% to be exact).
    So far they have been unable to determine the source and cause of these leaks. Costs for new plants aside, I don’t consider the people currently in charge of running the existing plants, responsible enough to give them more plants to run.

     Reply
  • Ricardo Coelho 02/15/10 9:13 AM

    News for the nuclear power enthusiasts: nuclear power is way too expensive http://wp.me/pv9fo-9B . Why waste money on a dangerous technology when we have so many viable alternatives?

     Reply
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