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Following the money

Posted on: July 27, 2009 11:28 AM, by James Hrynyshyn

Whether or not nuclear power should be a part of the future energy mix, two things seems almost inescapable. First, nuclear power will part of the near-term energy mix because there are plenty of existing plants that have more than a decade left in their lifespan. Shutting them down doesn't make any economic sense nor would that do anything measurable to mitigate climate changes. Second, nuclear power won't be a part of the long-term energy mix unless some way can be found to split atoms a lot more cheaply.

Just about every time I give a presentation on climate change, someone in the audience will ask why I haven't devoted much attention to the potential contribution of nuclear power. After all, it's (almost) carbon neutral and it's one of the only existing technologies that can produce baseload electricity (unlike PV solar and wind). My response is always the same: Assuming we are willing to find a way to deal with the relatively modest waste and weapons proliferation issues, we still have to acknowledge that nuclear power generation is hideously expensive.

Joe Romm's posts are among the best at laying out just how expensive. The cost of a gigawatt of generating capacity for a new plant just keeps going up. From $4 billion, to $7 billion to $10 billion, depending on the technology involved. There's a reason why no nuclear power plants have been ordered in 30 years and Three Mile Island isn't an excuse anymore.

In Canada, Ontario Hydro just last week announced it was giving up on building more nukes for the foreseeable future because "the bid from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the only 'compliant' one received, was more than three times higher than what the province expected to pay" That from the Toronto Star.

Yes, Canada likes to use heavy-water and U-238, rather than ordinary water and U-235, but the same problems are afflicting US power utilities. And in France (where the nuclear utility has the highest debt load in the world), and in Finland.

Wind is now cheaper the nuclear, even though you have to build three times the capacity to account for the fact that the wind only blows strong enough a third of time. And baseload power can be supplied by concentrated solar-thermal plants, in which heat is stored in fluids for release at night. So why spend the extra money when competing technologies are less expensive?

A related problem is the ever-changing regulatory and economic context. In order to invest the huge upfront sums of money required by nuclear plants, utilities need to know what kind of world they'll be operating in for decades to come. They simply don't have that when it comes to nuclear power. Costs are always rising, and environmental restrictions are ever tightening. The Tennessee Valley Authority learned that the hard way and end up mothballing incomplete nukes. Plus, the question of where we're going to put the waste is now completely in doubt thanks to Barack Obama's decision to scrap the Yucca Mountain plan.

By comparison, we know that wind and solar power, as uncertain as the economics are at the moment, will be increasingly favored.

Consider also the news that GE, one the biggest nuclear plant builder, is now asking for more government financial assistance "to help make power generation from new nuclear plants easier." GE would like to try to recycle nuclear waste, presumably using breeder reactors or other "fourth-generation" technologies.

So would we all. But thorium reactors, for one, and the other 4G technologies aren't ready for prime time and won't be for another 15 years or so at the earliest. And we need clean alternatives now.

So maybe, just maybe, nuclear power in some new form will be part of the energy mix in the distant long term. Maybe. But I wouldn't bet on it.

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