Nuclear Waste
- Posted by: Ben Jervey
- on July 14, 2009 at 9:00 am
Some lawmakers want 100 new nuclear power plants for America. Here’s why that’s a bad use of your tax dollars.
“It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.” So said Lewis Strauss, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission. Back in 1954. Needless to say, that vision of a nuclear-powered future hasn’t come to pass. Turned off by exorbitant capital costs and paralyzed by the Three Mile Island scare, utilities cooled to nuclear pretty quickly.
But there’s been something of a “nuclear renaissance” of late (at least in debate—the last plant to come online did so over a generation ago). With all the calls for greater supplies of carbon-free electricity, and as Americans demand energy independence, many are again holding up nuclear power as the way forward: clean, safe, too cheap to meter.
Republicans across the board have turned into unlikely Francophiles, pointing to that nation’s use of atomic fusion fission. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has lately held the bullhorn for his party’s call to build 100 new nuclear power plants over the next 20 years, calling it “the cheap clean energy solution.” And it now seems that if the Senate stands any chance of passing a climate and energy bill in line with that which just emerged from the House, nuclear will be a big part of it.
President Obama has been compelled to play along, sending his top brass into the Upper Chamber to offer support for nuclear provisions in the bill with hopes of swinging a few fencesitters. “Quite frankly, we want to recapture the lead on industrial nuclear power,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the Senate’s environment and public works committee. “I think nuclear power is going to be a very important factor in getting us to a low carbon future.”
If you’re expecting a knee-jerk environmentalist rejection of nuclear power here, I’m going to disappoint. Given the climatic stakes, I’m compelled to support any form of carbon-free energy. My rejection of nuclear energy, rather, is more pragmatic.
Even if we ignore concerns about waste disposal, weapons proliferation, or the threat of some operational accident or meltdown, there are other pieces of the nuclear puzzle that just don’t fit. Time to dispel a couple of myths.
Myth #1: Nuclear power would increase our energy independence: The United States imports about 85 percent of the uranium that powers our nuclear plants, and prices have tripled in the past three years. By my calculations, nuclear plant operators spent $19.8 billion on imported uranium in last year alone.
Myth #2: Nuclear power will help achieve carbon reduction targets: Maybe by 2100, or 2050, but certainly not sooner. Building nuclear plants takes a long time—at least 10 years from proposal to power. Look, for instance, at Florida’s Progress Energy. Progress filed for permits for twin 1,100-megawatt reactors over a year ago, in March of 2008, and the plants aren’t expected to be producing any juice until 2018 at the earliest. If a bumper crop of new nukes is in our future, we can’t realistically expect any carbon-free power until 2020. Not in time to help reach any emissions targets that are firm enough to actually avoid climate mayhem.
Myth #3: Nuclear power is “the cheap clean energy solution”: This one’s a doozy. Despite all the claims being thrown around by special interest shills, nuclear power is not cheap. Just last year, the California Public Utility Commission found that new nuclear was more expensive than every other new electricity option, with the exception of coal plants with carbon capture and sequestration. Building Alexander’s 100 new plants would cost at least $1 trillion. (In fact, a study last month by a Vermont Law School economist found that “Consumers could pay $1.9 trillion to $4.4 trillion in excess costs if 100 new nuclear reactors are built instead of using renewable energy and energy efficiency to provide the same electricity.”) The same amount of investment, according to CPUC, would buy four times as much wind power capacity.
It might be easier to understand in terms of your utility bill. By industry estimates, new nuclear energy would cost $.15¢ to $.20 per kilowatt-hour. That’s about 50 percent higher than the average U.S. household electric rate. Even worse, a January report by the Center for American Progress “puts the generation costs for power from new nuclear plants at 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour—triple current U.S. electricity rates!” As ratepayers, we’d take the biggest hit, but we’d be on the hook as well as taxpayers for whatever subsidies, tax breaks, and loan guarantees come out of Congress as part of this climate and energy bill.
This isn’t to say that nuclear shouldn’t have any part of a low-carbon energy future. But on a level playing field, there’s no way it can compete economically with concentrated solar, wind, biomass, natural gas, and—most important of all—efficiency. Private investors are staying away—Warren Buffett just pulled out of a project, for instance—and in 2007 there were exactly zero dollars of private capital globally funding new nukes (compared to $71 billion for renewable energy globally). Ellen Vancko of the Union of Concerned Scientists recently said, “The nuclear industry would like to be able to finance the next generation of nuclear reactors using the faith and credit of the U.S. taxpayer to underwrite the expansion. They don’t want to be responsible for any risk of financing these plants and neither do their lenders.”
Rather we as energy customers and taxpayers will essentially underwrite this big risk—again, cost estimates range from $1 trillion to $4.4 trillion for construction of the proposed 100 new plants. In other words, the playing field won’t be level, and it’ll be our dollars propping up nuclear’s side of the field.
DISCUSSION: 18 Comments
I don’t like it one bit, I really hope they avoid including any of these nuke-flavored expenditures in the upcoming energy bill. It would be an absolute shame when we have so many other, cleaner solutions… on top of the ones you mentioned in this article, we also have oceanic wave and current energy solutions! both as clean as it gets!We have all the answers and solutions staring us right in the face, if only we could all just open our eyes and stop letting bureaucracy hold us back or drive us off a cliff!~Johnjrod portfolio
Jerves, where does the US import the uranium from? I googled around couldn’t find the answer.
I couldn’t find numbers from the EIA (Energy Information Administration) as to where exactly we import our uranium from and in what amounts, but we do only have 6% of the world’s supply, and you can see who has the rest here: http://www.energy.eu/stats/energy-uranium-proved-reserves.html
You mean “nuclear fission,” not “nuclear fusion” in the first sentence of the third paragraph.
Well considering that the primary supplier is Australia, a stable, western demorcracy and U.S. ally, that makes the energy independence issue notable less of a concern for U.S. foreign policy.
Well considering that the primary supplier is Australia, a stable, western demorcracy and U.S. ally, that makes the energy independence issue notable less of a concern for U.S. foreign policy.
this is a pretty silly article. unless you have a degree in a physics-based scientific discipline you have no right to discuss the viability of nuclear power. do more research next time
You’re right, ths. As a taxpayer, what right could one possibly have to criticize this? I’ll leave it up to them big genius like folk with all the smarts and stuff.
^ that would exclude all politicians as well.
@ths your usage of the tern “no right” frightens me.according to UN data @ (http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=EDATA&f=cmID:UR;trID:01)The US consumes about 40% of the worlds uranium supply of approximately 87 million pounds. Major producers are Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, Niger, Namibia, Russa.I’m not entirely convinced with your cost estimates. According to http://alternativeenergy.procon.org/viewanswers.asp?questionID=1269There seems to be several different views about what the costs of nuclear energy. Apparently 2007 costs for existing US nuclear reactors was about 1.7 cents. Of course this leaves out the amortized costs of the initial construction of nuclear energy (Which is a significant portion of nuclear energy cost). Nuclear energy might make sense when building costs are low (ie during a recession), and could help stimulate local depressed economies. I also don’t know why you’re stuck with the idea of 100 plants? I’m assuming that we can build however many we end up needing if any.
Thanks, Bill–Silly mistake. Cooper–t’s my opinion, but I feel that we couldn’t claim true energy
independence if we relied heavily on resources from anywhere overseas. Besides, after Australia, the world’s largest uranium supplies are in Kazakhstan, Russia, and South Africa, none of which really fit the “stable Western democracy” conditions you set. THS– I don’t have an advanced physics degrees, but I have done considerable research into the economics of nuclear vs. other supplies. The nuclear industry doesn’t even hide the fact that it’s incredibly expensive to bring new nuclear online. It’s simple math–per kilowatt produced, nuclear is the most expensive low-carbon energy source besides carbon capture and sequestration (which has never proven itself at a large scale).
Ben,The only legitimate concern you express above is regarding the cost. I tend to believe the economics of the situation rule everything, and will determine our future energy path (whether we like it or not). However, you ignore the unstated “cost” of other sources — specifically, pollution / depletion / cost of human life. These costs aren’t reflected in the dollars / kilowatt hr rates. And many other energy sources have regular accidents that harm workers (and people’s health) much more than nuclear.Further, you come off as an unrealistic idealist when you vaguely hand-wave and say that we should look at other renewables. You ignore the fact that these alternate sources are complimentary to a primary energy source. Right now it’s coal. There is little hope that wind / water power can possibly hope to produce enough energy in quantity to fill the coal void. Nuclear power is the only option that can generate huge amounts of energy, cleanly.WRT independence of source and waste, the French reprocess their waste to around a 90% efficiency. Here in the States we don’t do that because the other 10% is closer to weapons-grade. But there exists a solution to reduce the physical waste by an order of magnitude; the U.S. doesn’t use it because of political concerns.Further, you also fail to acknowledge the advances which will be made through further implementation and research. Costs will go down, safety will go up. And that is to say nothing of the wonders that widespread nuclear power could do for public awareness of the real power source, fusion. But most people don’t understand the difference (and I would guess that you don’t either, based on your fusion/fission mistake above), and wouldn’t care to put money into something that supercedes modern day nuclear power (fission).Another mediocre article on GOOD. Well done.
Okay lets start by taking a look at the big picture here. Building 100 nuclear power plants is obviously not the answer. That being said more of these plant need to be built. Nuclear power plants are expensive and time consuming to build but in the long run will lead to lower energy costs. This is so obvious. First of all Uranium can be made, using nuclear chemistry one can shoot neutrons to mine different uranium isotopes to get the preferred uranium type. Now solar power has yet to actually become viable source for power. The thing about solar energy is that it takes more power to build and maintain them than they actually save. Now Coal and Power plants are still cheaper right now than nuclear but lets remember that these are non-renewable resources that will run out and based on supply and demand their prices will only get higher. Not to mention tax pentalies that will be put on this energy because of its carbon footprint. So right Now build 20 nuclear plants to help phase out coal and natural gas because it will be at least another generation before we see any real power coming from solar or wind
Travis– Appreciate the comments. We seem to agree that cost is the main concern. I’m a little confused by your other arguments though. I didn’t purposefully “ignore” the costs of pollution/depletion/human life when considering expense–when space allows I’m always happy to point out the hidden costs of fossil fuel-based energy. But I was comparing expense of nuclear to the expense of other clean energy sources and to efficiency (really the most important element of it all), so pollution/depletion/human life is really a threat concentrated on the nuclear side, and falls into that “knee-jerk” anti-nuke argument that I wanted to avoid. We disagree entirely that other renewables are “alternate sources…complimentary to a primary energy source.” I spend a lot of time reading studies and talking to energy experts about this stuff, and there’s plenty of level-headed confidence that with 1/2 the proposed investment in nuclear, we could quickly (5-10 years) scale solar and wind to baseload capabilities. Storage and transmission are the only things holding big wind and CSP back from providing round-the-clock baseload power. Which is a challenge, to be sure, but by most reports, it’ll cost less to advance storage and transmission to where they’d need to be than it would be to build all those nuclear plants. As for fusion/fission–yes, it was a boneheaded mistake. I’ve been spending a lot of time reading about (and planning a hopeful research visit to) the fascinating ITER project and the tokamak reactor so I’ve had fusion on the mind. No excuse, but an explanation. I agree completely that we need more research on this front and I do expect to see great advances. Hopefully we’ll be spreading more awareness w/ a piece on ITER sometime in the future.
Everybody is so worries about all these new nukes pie in the sky, while Finland and Canada are right now kicking the French nuke clan out for selling them a sad bill of goods!
What we should really be worrying about are all the old tired leaky nukes ridling this country, spreading radioactive poison all around these facilities, the air, the ground water, contaminating everything… Let alone the risk one of these will lose more than just their cooling towers to metal fatigue like the one in Vermont last year!
We’re insane, boiling water with a substance so toxic, you can only handle behind 8 inches of leaded glass, which also becomes contaminated waste you have to deal with when you’re finished.
All the physicists who worked on the early days of the so-called peaceful atom warned us this was a scam to enrich uranium for bombs. 50 years later, we’re all screwed, looking at billions upon billions of decomissioning cost the NRC are just kicking back a few more years so they don’t have to deal with it, as companies like Entergy keep raiding the funds now gone which should have been allocated for when these plants have to close.
Now they have to keep them running way past their due date, threatening the lives of millions, to put money back into the fund, which they will raid again.
We need a president who is going to take firm action on this miracle of technology now threatening the planet worse than climate change!
Join the fight
http://www.rockthereactors.com
WHERE IS THE TOXIC WASTE GOING? THIS WASTE IS THE END OF LIFE ON EARTH. BELIEVE IT. THE TRUTH.
what is going to be done with the waste?i.e. spent rods ect…
So, what are the costs of the other sources of clean energy sited above. How can one make an intelligent decision based on the cost of nuclear if we really don’t know the cost of solar etc..