My analysis on nuclear power for the Center for American Progress Action Fund is finally finished and online. I think you will find it useful because it has many links to primary sources and tries to avoid the typical discussions by nuclear proponents and opponents, focusing instead on the rapidly escalating cost of nuclear power.
My point in this paper is not to say nuclear power will play no role in the fight to stay below 450 ppm of atmospheric CO2 concentrations and avoid catastrophic climate outcomes. Indeed, I even include a full wedge of nuclear in my 14-wedge "solution" to global warming -- though as will be clear from the study, "The Self-Limiting Future of Nuclear Power," that achieving even one wedge of nuclear will be a very time-consuming and expensive proposition, probably costing $6-8 trillion.
Fundamentally, the large and growing risks from climate change, particularly the real danger that failure to act now means we will approach a horrific 1000 ppm by century's end, mean two things:
- We must seriously entertain any strategy that can significantly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
- We must focus on the lowest-cost options first, because we simply don't have an unlimited amount of capital.
My primary point in this paper is to shatter the widespread myth among conservatives -- and others -- that nuclear power will be a dominant solution to global warming. No. It is extremely unlikely to even be 10 percent of the total solution. This is particularly true in the United States, where we have so many more cost-effective alternatives now, as I explain in the paper, including energy efficiency, wind power, solar photovoltaics, and concentrated solar power.
Here is the executive summary of the report:
Nuclear power generates approximately 20 percent of all U.S. electricity. And because it is a low-carbon source of around-the-clock power, it has received renewed interest as concern grows over the effect of greenhouse-gas emissions on our climate.
Yet nuclear power's own myriad limitations will constrain its growth, especially in the near term. These include:
- Prohibitively high, and escalating, capital costs
- Production bottlenecks in key components needed to build plants
- Very long construction times
- Concerns about uranium supplies and importation issues
- Unresolved problems with the availability and security of waste storage
- Large-scale water use amid shortages
- High electricity prices from new plants
Nuclear power is therefore unlikely to play a dominant -- greater than 10 percent -- role in the national or global effort to prevent the global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees C above preindustrial levels.
The carbon-free power technologies that the nation and the world should focus on deploying right now at large scale are efficiency, wind power, and solar power. They are the lower-cost carbon-free strategies with minimal societal effects and the fewest production bottlenecks. They could easily meet all of U.S. demand for the next quarter-century, while substituting for some existing fossil fuel plants. In the medium-term (post-2020), other technologies, such as coal with carbon capture and storage or advanced geothermal, could be significant players, but only with a far greater development effort over the next decade.
Progressives must also focus on the issue of nuclear subsidies, or nuclear pork. Conservative politicians such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other nuclear power advocates continue to insist that new climate legislation must include yet more large subsidies for nuclear power. Since nuclear power is a mature electricity generation technology with a large market share and is the beneficiary of some $100 billion in direct and indirect subsidies since 1948, it neither requires nor deserves significant subsidies in any future climate law.
The full report is here.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
New nukes? A fair shot, not a free ride
David Frum says ‘Conservatives Heart Nuke Power.’
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GRLCowan Posted 1:19 pm
02 Jun 2008
Forcing government to guarantee expansion loans provides just such protection: if government jerks the developers of new X around with the result that they eventually give up, this saves government's future special tax earnings on the expensive commodities, but it has to pay off the loans.
At recent prices, nuclear electricity production saves $0.775 per watt-year compared to natgas. If the costs that are being projected for new nuclear plant are true, paying them off from avoided natgas costs takes up to 15 years. Coincidentally, or not, this is about how long the Darlington plant near me took to do this; construction costs and gas costs were both much lower then.
"Concerns about uranium supplies"? That's one way of putting it. They're certainly not afraid of its becoming expensive. They only wish it would.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:40 pm
02 Jun 2008
However demanding that Nuclear power be babied with lavish long term federal subsides.
Gigantic R&D subsides
Gigantic Below-Market Loans
Cost overrun fund
Federal Purchase Agreements
Zero taxation of profits applied toward decomissioning the plant (About half the total plant cost)
AND a 1.8cent/kWh PTC
How much more do we have to do, to just declare it a Federal Monopoly. (Like nearly all the other nations in the world that do Nuclear power. UK, North Korea, China, Russia, France, Italy, Sweden, Germany to name a few.)
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amazingdrx Posted 9:30 pm
02 Jun 2008
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/2/9/1 ...
Let 'em build a few experimental reactors over the next decade. Then compare on cost and safety, then and only then, approve more nukes if they can compete on cost, safely.
Forget clean coal. Storage is ready now, but it will take a renewable smart grid, backed up by biogas/natural gas distributed generation to do it. Xcel is working on the smart grid right now in Colorado. Largely unnoticed and unsubsidized.
As all the best projects seem to be. Maybe with political change, media and government will get behind some of these better solutions to climate disaster and resource wars.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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David Bradish Posted 9:45 pm
02 Jun 2008
"Yet nuclear power's own myriad limitations will constrain its growth, especially in the near term."
Ahh yes, the nuclear industry obviously can't overcome its own constraints. How was the world able to build 200 GW of nuclear plants in one decade, though? Obviously something was working for the industry.
"The carbon-free power technologies that the nation and the world should focus on deploying right now at large scale are efficiency, wind power, and solar power."
And how much electricity does wind and solar provide right now in this world? Not even one percent. Yet these two sources are supposed to substantially power this world in the future. I'm not knocking solar and wind here, but the fact is that the world has to build three to four times more wind and solar capacity than all other energy technologies just to provide the same amount of electricity.
The baffling part is that you say wind and solar can contribute significantly when they haven't yet. But nuclear can't contribute much in the future even though it is making an impact right now.
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mmmtashty Posted 2:18 am
03 Jun 2008
Indeed, it is because most industrialized nations have failed to jump on the "wind wagon" that the wind industry, currently in its infancy, has so much economic and energy potential. If you have read the DOE's report on how wind energy can meet 20% of our electricity needs by 2030, you start to see why wind has been so attractive to investors (oilman T. Boone Pickens has recently just ordered 667 GE wind turbines). On the other hand, you have Warren Buffet (the richest man in the world) abandoning nuclear power plant projects because "they don't make economic sense."
And in reference to your chart, just because 200 GW of nuclear capacity was added within a decade doesn't mean construction for those plants began within that decade. Needless to say, construction time for nuclear plants remains to be a vexing problem.
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 2:24 am
03 Jun 2008
" Yet nuclear power's own myriad limitations will constrain its growth, especially in the near term. These include:
Prohibitively high, and escalating, capital costs ....
So what would be the cost of electricity from new nuclear plants today? Jim Harding, who was on the Keystone Center panel, was responsible for its economic analysis, and previously served as director of power planning and forecasting for Seattle City Light, emailed us in early May that his own "reasonable estimate for levelized cost range ... is 12-17 cents per kWh lifetime, and 1.7x times that number [20 to 29 cents per kWh] in first year of commercial operation."
At these rates a 1.5GW plant with a 0.9 capacity factor, would earn $3.4 billion in the first year, and $2 billion per year after that.
Operation and maintenance cost are about 2¢ per kWh,
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p2.html ...
and should be less for next generation plants because they're greatly simplified, with fewer pumps, valves, and less piping. To be conservative lets assume that O&M cost doubles. The O&M cost would be $237million per year.
Even at the highest cost estimates the plant would pay for itself within 10 years, and then produce very cheap reliable electricity for another 50 years.
Show us a cost estimate for a 1.5 GW solar or wind array with reliable dispatchable power and a 0.90 capacity factor. Now show us a cost estimate for an array east of the Mississippi river with the same specifications. How many such arrays are in operation now? Where can we review their actual performance, construction cost, O&M cost, reliability, emissions, capacity factor, life expectancy and cost per kWh?
Show us a cost and reliability estimate of the required grid for moving the energy from where wind and solar sources are best to where most people live.
" Production bottlenecks in key components needed to build plants...
Twenty years ago the United States had 400 major suppliers for the nuclear industry. Today there are about 80. Only two companies in the whole world can make heavy forgings for pressure vessels, steam generators, and pressurizers. "
Before the first round of construction that were zero suppliers. There's no reason we cannot build another supply chain. Inherently safe plant designs do not require as much safety related equipment as older plants.
" Very long construction times "
We can dramatically reduce construction time and cost by mass producing floating nuclear power plants.
http://www.atomicinsights.com/aug96/Offshore.html
" Concerns about uranium supplies and importation issues "
This is a red herring; the uranium supply is effectively unlimited.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/2/75132/75324#com ...
" Unresolved problems with the availability and security of waste storage "
Nuclear waste is largely a political and educational problem. The most rational solution for nuclear waste is deep seabed burial, but almost anything will work if carefully implemented.
" Large-scale water use Amid shortages
"few realize that electricity generation accounts for nearly half of all water withdrawals in the nation." At the same time, "existing nuclear power stations used and consumed significantly more water per megawatt hour than electricity generation powered by fossil fuels," "
This is another red herring, and even mentioning it completely destroys the author's credibility. The author talks about water withdrawals, but fails to mention that almost all of that water is returned to the source, in sharp contrast to agricultural withdrawals, in which none of the water in returned. The average reader does not understand the difference between water withdrawal and water consumption. The author deliberately takes advantage of the readers limitation to mislead them. This is totally unethical.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/2/75132/75324/#32 ...
Floating nuclear power plants will use the ocean as a heat sink, and can produce huge volumes of fresh water. The authors vaunted solar thermal plants located in the desert will have a lower thermodynamic efficiency than nuclear plants and will require more fresh water per kWh than the nuclear plant. That water will have to be diverted from other uses, or made from sea water, using energy, and transported into the desert using energy.
The release of huge quantities of water vapor in the desert may result in increased cloud formation and reduced plant output. The author does not mention these very real water problems with his proposed solution.
" High electricity prices from new plants...
Nuclear power is therefore unlikely to play a dominant -- greater than 10 percent --
"
The author's conclusions are based on the assumption that there are other technologies that can produce reliable, predictable, controllable, baseload power at an affordable cost. So why aren't we tearing down coal fired power plants and replacing them with this new technology? Why are countries all over the world building more coal plants?
Denmark has been pushing wind extremely hard since 1979, yet they get most of their electricity from fossil fuel and have the most expensive electricity in the world. Residential electricity in Denmark cost 1.92 DKK/kWh in 2007, 40 cents / kWh. In the U.S. it was about 9 cents / kWh.
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-SF-0 ...
Wind power in the state of California, was down to 4% on peak for several days during the 2006 heat wave.
http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/Wind- ...
The entire U.S. wind output was down 20% below average during the heat wave while the demand was 20% above average. Nuclear power was 10% above average because outages are scheduled for spring and fall when demand is low.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1_a.h ...
We should increase R&D to $90 billion per year (only 2.25 cents/kWh) and push every technology as hard as possible. That would include building at least one full scale commercial size plant of every promising technology. Actual performance data would give companies and individuals confidence to make large scale investments rapidly in new and proven technology.
This would accelerate the introduction of practical solutions and is much more sensible than providing feed in tariffs to mass produce expensive immature impractical technology that raises cost enormously while remaining largely dependent on fossil fuel, as Denmark and Germany have proven.
This proposal maximizes the probability that we will develop better technology than fission, which makes it the most anti nuclear recommendation that is practical.
Reducing U.S. emissions is not important. Developing a low cost replacement for fossil fuel that the entire world can afford should be our goal. Wasting money on mass production of impractical expensive systems is counterproductive.
Research and development should not be considered a subsidy. It is an investment in the future, like medical research. Our R&D investment over the last 30 years was barely a token amount; which is a major factor contributing to our energy problem.
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KenG Posted 3:47 am
03 Jun 2008
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David Bradish Posted 4:23 am
03 Jun 2008
I did read all of it and I think it contradicts itself. But instead of my opinion, here's what FPL said at AWEA's meeting in Houston according to Platts' Electric Power Daily article on 6/2/08:
The biggest naysayer of the DOE projection was Michael O'Sullivan, the senior vice president for development at the nation's leading wind producer, FPL Energy. He said FPL will add roughly 1,200 MW of new wind capacity in the US this year, pushing the company's total to approximately 6,300 MW of capacity at 55 wind farms in 16 states.
According to O'Sullivan, growing wind capacity in the US to 20% of total generation by 2030, "just isn't going to happen." He argued that in the US there are no more than 20 states where a company can realistically build wind capacity. "You can't build it in Florida," he said, "nor can you build it in New England."
"Renewables are not cheap," O'Sullivan added. "And wind is a flawed product in the sense that it is intermittent, and is available only 30 to 40% of the time." He argued that it is "an energy displacement product." O'Sullivan said that no one is building coal or nuclear generation right now, and he said that if it were not for the fact that natural gas prices were on the rise, "I'm not sure we would be talking about 5,000 MW of new wind capacity last year."
Interesting...
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