The UN International Atomic Energy Agency expects more growth in nuclear power to 2030.
The IAEA has revised upwards its nuclear power generation projections to 2030, while at the same time it reported that nuclear´s share of global electricity generation dropped another percentage point in 2007 to 14%. This compares to the nearly steady share of 16% to 17% that nuclear power maintained for almost two decades, from 1986 through 2005.
Part of the drop in nuclear power's electric generation marketshare comes from an earthquake in Japan that took several nuclear power plants off-line. But I suspect very rapid coal electric power plant construction in China played a role as well. The Chinese are cranking out the coal plants. If they switched to cranking out nuclear power plants instead the air of the world would be a lot cleaner.
The IAEA thinks the number of nuclear power plants will go up in the next 20 or so years. But they aren't sure by how much. But even their high case isn't enough to make much of a dent in the enormous growth in coal electric power plant construction.
In its 2008 edition of Energy, Electricity and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period to 2030, the IAEA expects global nuclear power capacity in 2030 to range from a low case scenario of 473GW(e), some 27% higher than today´s 372 GW(e), to a high case scenario of 748 GW(e), i.e., double today´s capacity.
In the US alone coal produces about two and a half times more electricity than nuclear. In China coal accounts for 4/5ths of total electric power generation and in July 2008 electric power generation was up by 8.1% over a year earlier. That's coal growth and shows how far nuclear power is from displacing coal. Still, at least projections for future nuclear power growth are up.
"Over the last five years projections have gone up for several reasons," said Hans-Holger Rogner, Head of the IAEA´s Nuclear Energy Planning and Economic Studies Section.
"Performance has improved greatly since the 1980s, and the safety record of the types of reactors on the market today is excellent. In addition, the average load factor of the global reactor fleet has increased from 67% in 1990 to more than 80% since early 2000. Rising costs of the dominant alternatives, particularly natural gas and coal, energy supply security and environmental constraints are also factors that are contributing to nuclear´s appeal."
The report´s projections reflect major expansion plans that are under way in key countries like China and India, and new policies and interest in nuclear power that are emerging in countries like the UK and USA.
But while projections for nuclear power´s future rose, its share of the world´s electricity generation today dropped from 15% in 2006 to 14% in 2007.
"The reason is that while total global electricity generation rose 4.8% from 2007 to 2008, nuclear electricity actually dropped slightly," Rogner commented.
I expect an increase in interest in nuclear power in Europe due to Russia's conflict with Georgia. Europe suffers from a compact geography and northern location that place limits on how big a role solar power can play. The compact geography and dense population also place limits on wind's potential. So nuclear seems especially necessary in Europe.
Brazil is embracing a nuclear future.
SÃO PAULO, 9/12/08 - The Brazilian Mines and Energy minister, Edison Lobão, said today in Angra dos Reis (state of Rio de Janeiro) that Brazil has already decided to give priority to the resumption of the country's nuclear program. Some 60 nuclear power plants should be built in the next 50 years. Each unit should have generation capacity for 1,000 megawatts.
Will the cost of coal get bid up so high that nuclear power becomes more competitive? Coal supplies probably will have the biggest effect on the future of nuclear power. Once world oil production starts declining the demand for coal for use in coal-to-liquid processing to make liquid fuels for transportation might drive up the price of coal high enough to make nuclear power more cost competitive. Also, political pressures to lower carbon dioxide emissions might help nuclear power.
Der Spiegel examines the question of whether Germany should go through with plans to phase out nuclear power.
Put a monkey in front of a keyboard, and he might come up with something like this: Biblis A, Neckar-Westheim 1, Brunsbüttel, Biblis B, Isar 1, Unterweser, Philippsburg 1. The names, though, are far from meaningless. All of them are nuclear power plants in Germany -- seven of the 17 still in operation in the country. And all seven of them are scheduled to be shut down between 2010 and 2012 and taken off the electricity grid.
If Germany phases out its nuclear power plants (which currently supply over a quarter of Germany electric power) it will face electric power shortages.
The reason for the planned shut downs is clear -- they are part of the country's legislated shift away from atomic energy. But just what that means for Germany's energy supply only becomes apparent after looking at a small graphic that Stephan Kohler, chief executive of the Germany Energy Agency, keeps in a plastic folder in his office. The graphic estimates trends in both consumption and production of electricity in Germany's near future. Whereas the consumption line gently and consistently falls, the production line climbs slightly for the next couple of years -- and then it plunges. The edge of the cliff depicted in the diagram coincides with 2010, just when the 126,036 gigawatt hours of electricity produced by Biblis, Neckar-Westheim and Brunsbüttel disappear.
Germany has 17 out of Europe's 130 nuclear power plants. Britain has 19 and France has 59. If Germany goes through with its nuclear power phase-out it will inevitably buy more electric power from French nuclear plants and also build more coal fired electric power generating plants. Germany's plan to phase out nuclear power is not doing either Germany or the world any favors. But the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel is showing signs of backpedaling on the nuclear power phase-out.
"The chancellor has noticed that the discussion about the use of atomic energy has been re-energized" said Merkel spokesman Thomas Steg recently. Her party is willing to go even further. "For the foreseeable future," party leadership recently wrote in a policy paper on global warming, "the contribution of nuclear energy to the production of electricity in Germany is irreplaceable."
The world has 439 nuclear power plants in operation, 36 under construction, and 81 planned. While Russia, India, and China each have 6 nuclear power plants under construction Russia's 6 make a much higher ratio of power plants under construction to people and so Russia's commitment to nuclear power is much bigger.
German electric power providers plan to build 26 new coal fired electric power plants. Germany has 3 choices: A) Raise prices to cut back on demand; or B) Build more coal plants, or C) reverse the decision to phase out the nuclear power plants. While the majority of Germans still favor the nuclear phase out the majority has shrunk considerably in just 8 months. The plans for coal plants suggest that there's no stomach left for raising already high electric power costs. Germany already has electric power costs more than double the US costs.
In absolute values, household electricity prices were highest in January 2006 in Denmark (23.62 euro per 100 kWh), followed by Italy (21.08), the Netherlands (20.87) and Germany (18.32). The lowest prices were observed in Greece (7.01), Lithuania (7.18), Estonia (7.31) and Latvia (8.29).
At the time of this writing the exchange rate is about 1.5 Euro per US dollar. Even if it reached parity of 1 to 1 the cost for electricity would be $0.1832 per kwh which is almost double the 2008 US average rate of $0.1031 per kwh. Shutting down the nuclear power plants will drive it higher still. My guess is that the German government will eventually reverse their decision to phase out nuclear power in Germany.
High energy prices seem to powerfully concentrate lots of minds. After banning nuclear power for a couple of decades Italy has had a change of heart.
ROME — Italy announced Thursday that within five years it planned to resume building nuclear energy plants, two decades after a public referendum resoundingly banned nuclear power and deactivated all its reactors.
“By the end of this legislature, we will put down the foundation stone for the construction in our country of a group of new-generation nuclear plants,” said Claudio Scajola, minister of economic development. “An action plan to go back to nuclear power cannot be delayed anymore.”
Italy is partly motivated by Kyoto and EU obligations to cut CO2 emissions. But the huge run-ups in fossil fuels energy costs in recent years and the possibility of far higher energy costs are forcing a lot of people to rethink their energy and environmental priorities. Want to be poor? Or want to build some nukes that put a price ceiling on your energy costs?
Itay's use of oil to generate electricity is really anachronistic (and the US has a few such anachronisms still for dumb political regulatory reasons). Oil is a very expensive way to generate electricity.
Enel, Italy’s leading energy provider, announced this year that it would close its oil-fired power plants because the fuel had become unaffordable. Italians pay the highest energy prices in Europe. Enel has been building coal plants to fill the void left by oil. Coal plants are cheaper but create relatively high levels of carbon emissions, even using the type of new “clean coal” technology Enel had planned.
Back in 2006 Italians were paying .17 Euro per kwh versus .16 in Germany and .11 in heavily nuclear France. Italy buys much of its electric power from Switzerland and some from France. That .17 Euro converts into US dollars at over 25 cents per kwh - which is very expensive. Italy could enjoy substantial savings by scaling up for a big nuclear power build. Italy's use of oil to generate electricity is one of the most expensive ways to generate electric power and one that is little used in the US outside of Hawaii.
In America by contrast retail electric power averaged 10.64 cents/kwh nationwide in 2007 with the highest costs in Hawaii at 24.13 cents/kwh. Hawaii uses oil for a lot of its electric generation and it is likely going to get hit by far higher electric power costs in 2008. Wyoming pays a mere 7.73 cents/kwh with cheap Powder River Basin coal and Washington State with lots of hydro power pays only 7.24 cents/kwh.
Also, Wired Magazine endorses nuclear power.
We really need faster ways to construct nuclear power plants.
Rebecca Smith of the Wall Street Journal reports on the thinking of big new nuclear power plant buyers. Nuclear power is seen to cost double to quadruple previous estimates.
A new generation of nuclear power plants is on the drawing boards in the U.S., but the projected cost is causing some sticker shock: $5 billion to $12 billion a plant, double to quadruple earlier rough estimates.
What became of all the efforts to develop newer lower cost designs? Are these cost increases due to the Asian demand for commodities driving up the cost of iron ore, concrete, and other construction materials?
The latest projections follow months of tough negotiations between utility companies and key suppliers, and suggest efforts to control costs are proving elusive. Estimates released in recent weeks by experienced nuclear operators -- NRG Energy Inc., Progress Energy Inc., Exelon Corp., Southern Co. and FPL Group Inc. -- "have blown by our highest estimate" of costs computed just eight months ago, said Jim Hempstead, a senior credit officer at Moody's Investors Service credit-rating agency in New York.
Oil costs a lot. Then coal and natural gas go up in price in response. Optimists think we still have nuclear as another substitute. But its costs have skyrocketed as well. The inflationary pressures seem inescapable. Photovoltaics might be our only hope for cheap future energy. It doesn't do well as a baseline energy source. But PV makers are coming up with innovations that lower costs.
The Congressional Budget Office still hopes for eventual cheaper nukes.
The Congressional Budget Office just finished a rosy-glasses report on nuclear economics. Even while acknowledging that historical costs for nuclear plants always doubled or tripled their initial estimates, the CBO took heart from promises made by manufacturers of next-generation reactors and a single on-time and on-budget project in Japan to project cheaper nuclear construction costs in the future.
Whether nuclear costs can come down depends on why they are high in the first place. Does anyone know where these cost increases come from? Can innovations in speed of construction yield big cost savings?
Back 8 months ago Moody's was already pretty pessimistic on nuclear costs. But they've become even more pessimistic.
While utilities reportedly have priced the cost of a kilowatt of nuclear power at $3,000 to $4,000, Moody's Investors Services said in October that a more realistic price would be $5,000 to $6,000. That puts the cost of a 1,500-megawatt nuclear plant at about $9 billion, according to reports.
Wulf Bernotat, chairman and chief executive of E.ON, the German energy giant that owns Powergen, has told The Times that the cost per plant could be as high as €6 billion (£4.8 billion) - nearly double the Government's latest £2.8 billion estimate.
Still, getting your own national nuclear power plant has become all the rage.
VIENNA -- At least 40 developing countries from the Persian Gulf region to Latin America have recently approached U.N. officials here to signal interest in starting nuclear power programs, a trend that concerned proliferation experts say could provide the building blocks of nuclear arsenals in some of those nations.
The British government has been signaling for months that it would probably shift to a more supportive position toward the construction of new nuclear power plants. Well, that shift is now official. More nukes for Britain.
A looming energy crisis caused by unstable supplies of gas and oil has forced the Government to back nuclear which will also help meet global climate change targets.
The French-owned company EDF announced their plans to build four power stations in Britain - the first by 2017 - immediately after Business and Industry Secretary John Hutton told MPs that nuclear would give Britain "safe and affordable" energy.
The German power company, E.On, formerly Powergen, the British Gas parent Centrica and RWE npower, Britain's largest electricity supplier, also expressed interest in building nuclear stations at a likely cost of £2.8 billion apiece.
I do not believe the biggest motivation for this decision was the fear of global warming, though that played a part. The decline in North Sea oil and natural gas production has turned Britain into a big and growing importer of fossil fuels. The fossil fuels imports contribute to a growing trade deficit. European OECD natural gas production might peak in 2008. Worse, Russia is the major external source of natural gas for Europe and Russian oil and natural gas fields look like they are approaching production peaks as well. Look for prices to rise and the savings to be had from shifting to nuclear power to grow as well. Plus, dependence on Russia for natural gas makes Britain vulnerable to Russian diplomatic pressure. Not a good place to be. So nuclear power is the road to reduced economic and political vulnerability.
The British government has also recently opted for a large build of offshore wind towers. With these two announcements the Brits have opted for the two biggest realistic energy options they have available for domestic energy production. Wave energy is still a research project. Solar is too expensive, especially for a country as far north and overcast as Britain. So playing both the wind and nuclear cards makes sense.
The UK's 19 nuclear power stations supply a fifth of the country's electricity, but all except one are due to close by 2023. Replacing them with new nuclear build would fill the electricity shortfall and limit greenhouse gas emissions - and the government has committed to a 60 per cent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.
The UK Department of Trade and Industry (now the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) projects a competitive cost for new nuclear power plants.
The central case cost of new nuclear power generation is assumed to be around £38 / MWh. The main cost drivers are construction and financing costs, giving an assumed capital cost of £25 / MWh; this is significantly higher than the capital cost for the project currently under implementation to add a new nuclear plant in Finland. Other categories of cost are small in comparison: fuel costs are around £4 / MWh, and Operation and Maintenance costs are roughly £8 / MWh. Back end costs (decommissioning and waste management), whilst potentially of a large order of magnitude far into the future, would need only a relatively small annual contribution over time to ensure that the required amount is available. No decisions have been taken on the specific mechanism required.
We can translate that £38/MWh into US currency. Assume 2 dollars per British pound. That would work out to $76/MWH or 7.6 cents per kwh. Well, the average national retail price of electricity is 10.65 cents per kwh. The delivery costs will up that 7.6 cents price to something slightly above the US average, but without coal pollution. In some areas (e.g. California and New England) the cost of electricity is much higher. In areas with lots of coal or hydro power it is lower.
If you want to read the supporting documents for the British government announcement then start here.
Back 5 years ago in early 2003 Britain's top science academy called for a resumption of new nuclear power plant construction as necessary for the environment.
The UK will be unable to cut greenhouse gas emissions without new nuclear power stations, the country's top science academy has warned.
The Royal Society has urged the government to show "political courage" in its forthcoming White Paper on energy, and make a clear decision on the future of nuclear power.
The scientists saw the obvious: Take away fossil fuels and the list of alternatives in Britain is pretty short.
An article in Popular Mechanics examines generation IV nuclear reactor designs now under development and reports that pebble bed reactor designs look likely to get built before other Gen IV designs.
Kevan Weaver, like most of the lab's 3500 employees, works in a sprawling group of campus-like buildings on the outskirts of Idaho Falls. Standing in his third-floor office, the fresh-faced nuclear engineer holds what could be the future of nuclear power in his hand: a smooth graphite sphere about the size of a tennis ball. It could take years to weigh the pros and cons of all six Gen IV designs, Weaver says, but Congress can't wait that long. In addition to replacing the aging fleet of Generation II reactors, the government wants to make progress on another front: the production of hydrogen, to fuel the dream of exhaust-free cars running independent of foreign oil.
As a result, the frontrunner for the initial $1.25 billion demonstration plant in Idaho is a helium-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor whose extremely high outlet temperature (1650 to 1830 F) would be ideal for efficiently producing hydrogen. There are a couple of designs that could run that hot, but the “pebble bed,” so named for the fuel pebble that Weaver holds, is attracting particularly intense interest.
A typical pebble-bed reactor would function somewhat like a giant gumball machine. The design calls for a core filled with about 360,000 of these fuel pebbles--"kernels" of uranium oxide wrapped in two layers of silicon carbide and one layer of pyrolytic carbon, and embedded in a graphite shell. Each day about 3000 pebbles are removed from the bottom as fuel becomes spent. Fresh pebbles are added to the top, eliminating the need to shut down the reactor for refueling. Helium gas flows through the spaces between the spheres, carrying away the heat of the reacting fuel. This hot gas--which is inert, so a leak wouldn't be radioactive--can then be used to spin a turbine to generate electricity, or serve more exotic uses such as produce hydrogen, refine shale oil or desalinate water.
The ability to make hydrogen more efficiently will only matter if and when we find better ways to store hydrogen. Since Gen IV reactor designs are easily a decade away from initial use in commercial reactor construction better methods for storing hydrogen will become available by then.
The biggest promise of pebble bed is much more rapid construction. A substantial part of the cost of nuclear power is the interest cost of reactors when they are only partially constructed. If a reactor takes 5 years to build then the portion of the cost spent in the first year doesn't start earning back on its investment for over 4 years. That period during which the capital equipment is sitting idle while the rest of the plant gets constructed makes nuclear power far more expensive.
The article claims a new demonstration reactor build decision won't be taken until 2014. So the development of new nuclear reactor designs seems really slow. Does it have to take that long?
Some politicians want to push thorium nuclear reactors. They are doing this for fairly parochial reasons. But there are potentially much wider benefits if they manage to kickstart thorium nuclear power.
Senators representing several Western states, including Utah's Orrin Hatch and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, are working on legislation to promote thorium. They say it's a cleaner-burning fuel for nuclear-power plants, with the potential to cut high-level nuclear-waste volumes in half.
"They're concerned about the spent fuel from nuclear reactors ending up in their states," says Seth Grae, president of thorium-fuel technology developer Thorium Power, based in McLean, VA.
This method of fueling reactors can work with existing reactors modified to use a mix of uranium and thorium fuel rods. Neutrons from Uranium-235 are used to convert Thorium-232 into Uranium-233. The Uranium-233 is fissile (it can break down to release energy to drive electric power generation). The Wikipedia Thorium page says that Thorium as a nuclear fuel requires solving problems related to fuel fabrication and reprocessing.
In theory Thorium delivers a few benefits. First off, the waste is not as difficult to dispose of in part because thorium rods stay in reactors for longer periods of time than uranium rods. So fewer rods come out needing disposal. The greater ease of disposal motivates the US Senators from Western states to support it since they oppose the use of sites in their states (e.g. Yucca Mountain in Nevada) for disposal.
Thorium's fuel cycle also poses less risk for nuclear proliferation. The reduced risk of nuclear proliferation sounds very beneficial as well. The coming decline in world oil production is going to cause a big drive to develop nuclear power around the world. The ability to put thorium reactors into less developed countries would reduce the use of uranium in places which aren't full of peace, love, and understanding.
Combining uranium with thorium would also basically stretch the supply of uranium. Whether we really need to do that is much debated. The Japanese process for uranium extraction from the oceans might make uranium reserves depletion a non-problem. But thorium at least might lower total nuclear fuel costs.
If you are curious about thorium as an energy source Kirk Sorensen writes a web log Thorium Energy dedicated to the topic.
Update: Thorium Power will test thorium in a Russian nuclear reactor in 2010 (PDF format).
Lead test assemblies of thorium fuel are planned to be loaded into one of the VVER-1000 reactors at Kalinin near Moscow in 2010 as part of a multi-year demonstration program, Ernie Kennedy, a member of US company Thorium Power Ltd.’s technical advisory board, told a London conference October 31. He said the idea is to demonstrate the new fuel, which consists of a central “seed” assembly surrounded by a thorium blanket, in a VVER and “then expand to other PWRs and then perhaps BWRs,” for which the thorium fuel design is more difficult.
Thorium Power says thorium as a fuel reduces nuclear proliferation risks in a few ways.
Charles said spent thorium seed-and-blanket fuel would be “very difficult” to reprocess because of gamma radiation, and “wouldn’t be worth it” because the seed assemblies would contain very little fissile material and a lot of minor actinides. In the seed-and-blanket assembly, a central metallic “seed” consisting of either uranium-zirconium or plutonium-zirconium fuel rods is surrounded by a thorium-uranium dioxide blanket.
Kennedy said the thorium in the blanket reduces the proliferation risk of fissile materials in the spent fuel because, under irradiation, the thorium is converted to fissile U-233, which is burned in-situ over the life of the fuel assembly. Also, the thorium fuel cycle leads to the production of only small amounts of plutonium and the isotopic content of that plutonium makes it more unsuitable for weapons than normal reactor-grade plutonium.
For countries that want to consume excess plutonium, plutonium in the seed of the thorium fuel assembly can be burned “about three times faster and at somewhere between a third and half the cost of the mixed-oxide process,” he said, referring to more conventional uranium-plutonium oxide fuel now used in LWRs.
More nuclear power plants are on the way.
With this week's application to build a new nuclear plant – the first such filing in nearly 30 years – the industry says the US is on the verge of a nuclear power renaissance.
With virtually no greenhouse-gas emissions, reactors are touted as part of the solution to global warming. Over the next 15 months, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects a tidal wave of similar permit applications for up to 28 new reactors, costing up to $90 billion to build.
These reactors are going to be larger than the existing 104 reactors. They'll also be safer and require less maintenance.
The nuclear power industry is being helped by federal loan guarantees.
Now, the Senate version of a new energy bill includes a provision that could provide tens of billions of dollars more in federal-loan guarantees. On Tuesday, the Energy Department announced it would provide up to $2 billion in federal risk insurance for the first six new nuclear-plant projects, protecting them against losses from regulatory or legal delays.
Those loan guarantees do not cost the federal government billions of dollars. Their main effect is to lower the interest rates on bonds sold by nuclear reactor builders. Since capital costs are such a huge part of total nuclear power costs the reduction of loan interest rates via loan guarantees cuts new nuclear power plant electric costs from 6.33 cents per kilowatt-hour (kwh) to 4.78 per kwh. That cut in capital costs makes nuclear power cheaper that coal. By contrast, electric power from a new pulverized coal plant would be 5.36 cents per kwh. Without loan guarantees nuclear power costs more than coal electric.
The biggest argument for the loan guarantees is that new coal plants are both dirtier with conventional pollutants (e.g. particulates) and also emit large amounts of carbon dioxide which many want to cut back due to its global warming effects. Now, we could instead just require new coal plants to not pollute at all (or just plain ban new coal electric plants). But the political will does not exist to block new polluting coal electric plants (and if I was king that political will would exist to stop coal electric pollution - but the peoples of the world haven't yet realized that they should make me king for their own good). Given current circumstances I see the nuclear loan guarantees as the most politically feasible way to cut back on the construction of new coal plants.
A House-passed farm bill would give corn growers $10.5 billion over the next five years, even if prices stay high. These "direct payments," a kind of annual allowance, are set by formula and go out automatically, regardless of prices, profits, yields or weather.
...
The rural prosperity is due in large measure to billions of dollars in federal subsidies and incentives for corn-based energy. These include a 51-cent tax credit that gasoline manufacturers get on every gallon of ethanol they mix with their blends, and more than $500 million in federal cash to ethanol refiners between 2001 and 2006.
In 2005, Congress required the use of at least 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2012. Then in 2006 came new demand for ethanol as a pollution-curbing additive, along with a jump in gasoline prices that made the corn-based fuel competitive.
Corn ethanol is a bad idea. Biomass energy boosts nitrous oxide emissions and by causing the cutting down of lots of forests a big shift to biomass will even boost carbon dioxide emissions. But the tax dollars flowing into it make nuclear subsidies small potatoes in comparison.
Will construction of the next round of nuclear power plants lead the nuclear industry down a learning curve to where it can construct reactors eventually build them for lower costs and compete with dirtier coal electric even without loan guarantees? Or will people become sufficiently opposed to air pollution that resulting tougher emissions cutting regulations will drive coal electric costs above nuclear electric?
Brian Wang of the Advanced Nano blog has figures that answer a question that comes up here on occasion: How big a strain on productive capacity would a massive nuclear power plant construction program impose? Not much.
Building 1,000 one gigawatt nuclear plants per year would use less than 10% of the worlds annual concrete and steel. Modern nuclear reactors need less than 40 metric tons of steel and 190 cubic meters of concrete per megawatt of average capacity. 1,000 one gigawatt nuclear plants per year would need 40 million metric tons of steel and 190 million cubic meters of concrete. World supplies in 2006 are 1.24-billion tons of steel per year & 2.283 billion tons of coal per year.
So what do these raw materials cost? A short ton (2000 lb) of steel costs about $600. (and the metric ton used above equals 2,204.6 pounds)
Spot prices for cold-rolled steel in June averaged $602.24 a short ton, down from $672.95 a year earlier, according to Dow Jones Indexes.
Then (2204.6/2000)*602.24 equals $663.85 per metric ton of steel. Then times 40 metric tons per megawatt of capacity we get to $26554 worth of steel per megawatt of nuclear electric power plant capacity. So then the steel cost for a 1 gigawatt nuclear power plant is only 1000 times that amount or about $26 to $27 million at current steel prices. That's not much for a plant that costs perhaps nearly $2 billion to build. However, note that steel comes in many forms and the steel used in some parts of nuclear power plants is more expensive. A table of highway construction materials costs shows that structural steel can cost as much as double the cost of reinforcing steel. I'm not sure how expensive the most expensive types of nuclear reactor steel get. So my rough steel cost calculation has a large margin of error.
I couldn't come up with good data on concrete costs. Does concrete or steel cost more for nuclear power plant construction?
I am suspicious of the cost numbers I came up with above because they do not fit with the news stories about the rising costs of coal and nuclear power plant construction. A recent New York Times story by Matthew Wald drives home the effects that rising raw materials costs are having on power plant construction:
NEW YORK: When General Electric called in reporters for a briefing on its new nuclear partnership with Hitachi, it said that atomic power plants could be built faster than before, operated reliably and had a vanishingly small chance of an accident.
But what will they cost? After some hemming and hawing, company executives Monday gave figures by the standard industry metric, dollars per kilowatt of capacity, but in a huge range: $2,000 to $3,000.
"There's massive inflation in copper and nickel and stainless steel and concrete," said John Krenecki, president and chief executive of GE Energy. The uncertainty is not just in nuclear plants, he said. Coal plant prices are similarly unstable.
At $3000 per kilowatt that is $3 billion for a 1 Gigawatt nuclear power plant. Seems expensive. Is it? Does anyone know how to get from that to pennies per kilowatt-hour (kwh)? The answer depends on operating costs, fuel costs, interest rate for the capital, and still other factors. A kilowatt of capacity translates into 1 kwh every hour, right? So then 24 kwh per day times 365 days a year or 8760 kwh. But then assume operation of the plant 90% of the time and it goes down to 7884 kwh per year. If that sells for, say, 5 cents per kwh at wholesale (how close is that to actual in various parts of the US) then $3000 of investment generates about $400 in revenue per year. At about 13% of the $3000 that sounds like it more than covers the cost of capital. Is my method of calculation roughly correct?
If my calculation approach above is close to correct then nuclear power at $2000 per kilowatt capacity looks pretty competitive. A $2000 investment generates $400 in revenue at 5 cents per kwh.
Some argue against nuclear power by claiming that nuclear power plant construction requires large amounts of energy usage. But compared to what? How about wind? Brian also quotes Per Peterson of the UC Berkeley Dept. of Nuclear Engineering on the steel and concrete needs per megawatt for wind.
Modern wind energy systems, with good wind conditions, take 460 metric tons of steel and 870 cubic meters of concrete per megawatt.
Does wind power really require 11.5 times as much steel as nuclear power per megawatt? Does wind power really require 4.5 times as much concrete per megawatt? Wind is making strides in terms of size of blades and materials in blades. Do these numbers really represent the state of play right now? Given wind's rapid rate of growth I'm having a hard time believing it takes so much steel and concrete (i.e. so much money) to build.
If anyone has high quality original sources on materials needs per megawatt capacity for various electrical power sources please post in the comments.
I am also looking for authoritative sources on Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROEI) for nuclear and wind. I've come across claims that nuclear power plants pay back their energy invested within the first 6 months of operation.
I also want to know how much steel and concrete costs can fall as a result of expansion of production facilities. Can nickel's price come down as a result of expanded mining operations? Can copper's price come down or is the world running out of copper? How much of the current high costs of new power generation capacity are long term and how much due to a transitory period where many sources of demand are peaking?
One might argue that China's rapid rate of growth has temporarily caused demand to exceed supply. But isn't China going to continue to expand rapidly? If so, can the mining and raw materials processing industries (e.g. steel, cement) start growing at rates that will prevent Chinese demand from holding prices high for an extended period of time?
The New York Times reports that the US Senate's energy bill has a single sentence that opens the door to tens of billions of loan guarantees for the nuclear power industry.
WASHINGTON, July 30 — A one-sentence provision buried in the Senate’s recently passed energy bill, inserted without debate at the urging of the nuclear power industry, could make builders of new nuclear plants eligible for tens of billions of dollars in government loan guarantees.
As regular readers know, I'm a supporter of nuclear power and see it as a desirable replacement for dwindling fossil fuels supplies. But I'm skeptical of an argument that every nuclear power plant that gets built should receive federal loan guarantees. What's the justification for this?.
All those plans for new nuclear power plant construction? Well, now we find out that the nuclear power industry says it won't build them without loan guarantees.
Power companies have tentative plans to put the 28 new reactors at 19 sites around the country. Industry executives insist that banks and Wall Street will not provide the money needed to build new reactors unless the loans are guaranteed in their entirety by the federal government.
Um, are they serious or bluffing? Surely, capitalists want to reduce risks and increase returns on investment. Loan guarantees will lower the cost of capital and therefore increase profits. But is the nuclear power industry saying that the cost of capital for nuclear plants is so high that without lowered interest rates that new nuclear power plants can't be profitable?
I am skeptical of the claimed need for loan guarantees. The cost of fossil fuel competitors is going to keep going up. North American natural gas production is headed for a downhill slope. World coal and oil supplies are looking pretty limited. (and Saudi Arabia's Ghawar oil field looks like it has peaked) Well, nuclear's long term competitors end up being wind and solar. Unless wind and solar can out-compete nuclear why won't new nuclear power plants turn a profit even if operators borrow money at market rates?
Update: To clarify: I happen to think it is a good idea for a subsidy for the next few reactors that get built to test out the licensing process and to come up with a few reactor designs. All the utilities otherwise sit around waiting for other utilities to go first. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn't know what it is going to decide during a review of any of the new designs. So the industry can get stuck with regulatory uncertainty.
Also, this loan program is supposed to apply to all energy sources that will not generate carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. There's an argument to be made for pushing along all the non-fossil fuels energy sources. Currently the dumbest and most damaging non-fossil fuel source - biomass corn ethanol - gets huge subsidies and gets used instead of far smarter choices. We need to level the playing field. I'd rather level it by ending all subsidies for corn ethanol. But the grain farmer lobby and numerous Congressional whores make that impossible.
Costs of new nuclear power plants are still the realm of speculation.
A new study appearing in the April 1 issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology notes, however, that the country's history of unexpected cost overruns when building nuclear plants should sound a cautionary note for power companies that nuclear power may not be financially attractive.
We will only find out the real costs of new nuclear power plants in the United States when new plants get built here. Costs in countries which have more regulated electric markets can provide at best rough equivalents. Plus, international (and even regional) differences in labor costs and materials costs make international comparisons even more difficult.
One of the study co-authors says even costs for existing US nuclear plants are hard for researchers to get access to.
"For energy security and carbon emission concerns, nuclear power is very much back on the national and international agenda," said study co-author Dan Kammen, UC Berkeley professor of energy and resources and of public policy. "To evaluate nuclear power's future, it is critical that we understand what the costs and the risks of this technology have been. To this point, it has been very difficult to obtain an accurate set of costs from the U. S. fleet of nuclear power plants."
The study, conducted by a research team from Georgetown University, Stanford University and UC Berkeley, analyzes the costs of electricity from existing U.S. nuclear reactors and discusses the possibility for cost "surprises" in new energy technologies, including next-generation nuclear power.
What they found was a range of electricity costs, from 3 cents per kilowatt hour to nearly 14 cents per kilowatt hour, with the higher costs attributed to such problems as poor plant operation or unanticipated security costs.
At 3 cents per kwh nuclear would beat coal even before coal gets saddled with future tougher emissions restrictions. But we aren't going to know whether nuclear with the latest reactor designs can be that cheap until a few of those designs get built.
If the public becomes less tolerant of emissions from coal plants then expect to see more announcements of plans to build more nukes. For the record: I expect that as living standards rise and as research fleshes out the health costs of fossil fuels emissions the public will become less tolerant of coal plant emissions. As that happens the economics of nuclear power will become more attractive to electric utilities.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 24 — The nuclear power industry has asked the government to specify how new nuclear plants should minimize damage from airplane attacks, weeks after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided not to institute requirements on building new plants that are tougher than the rules that prevailed decades ago when the old ones were built.
Airplanes have gotten bigger. The new Airbus A380 has 50% more floor space than a 747-400 and can have take-off weight of over 600 short tons (2000 lb per ton). That is approximately 4 times the takeoff weight of a 707 (which varies considerably depending on the dash model).
The nuclear industry wants the government to spell out any new requirements for nuclear power plants before the industry tries to build new plants.
Mr. Peterson said the industry wanted the regulations to be issued soon, because companies had expressed interest in building 30 new reactors. The actual number built is likely to be much smaller, experts say, but there is a widespread expectation of new orders, probably in 2007.
That small number of reactors means the continued ascent of coal. The problem is that coal is cheaper in many locations as long as carbon sequestration is not required (see the comments of Phil Sargent at the bottom of the comments there). Tougher emissions regulations work in favor of nuclear power. Tougher safety regulations raise the cost of nuclear power. The competition between nuclear and coal is therefore driven by regulatory environments. Nuclear needs big technologically driven cost improvements so it can win a much larger portion of the market.
What would happen with a next gen nuclear reactor if an A380 crashed into it? How hard would it be to aim such a large jet to strike a nuclear reactor? How much iron and concrete or other materials would be needed to protect a reactor from a direct strike?
There's a smarter way to deal with the problem of airplane hijacking: Program the auto-pilots to prevent airplanes from getting near a nuclear reactor. If an airplane started heading toward a nuclear reactor at a low enough altitude the auto-pilot could activate and change the course of an airplane to make it pass around the reactor. The system could be designed to only cut in below some threshold altitude so that airplanes passing over at normal cruising altitudes would not suffer any inconvenience.
Another option: build reactor vessels underground.
Yet another option: Develop an auto-pilot system that can be remotely activated to take over an airplane if the airplane is hijacked. The auto-pilot could land the plane on a runway and then shut down the engines. That seems like the best option because it would save lives of passengers. It would also protect skyscrapers and natural gas unloading terminals that are tempting targets for suicidal jihadists.
Writing for the New York Times Magazine Jon Gertner has written an excellent article surveying the state of the nuclear power industry and signs that new nuclear power plant construction will commence in less than 10 years. For anyone seriously interested in energy policy I urge you to read this long article in full.
Thanks partly to large government incentives and to market forces that have pushed the price of other electric plant fuels (especially natural gas) to historic heights, the prospect of starting a new nuclear reactor in this country for the first time in 30 years has become increasingly likely. By early summer a dozen utilities around the country had informed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees all civilian nuclear activity in this country, that they were interested in building 18 new facilities, nearly all of which would be sited next to existing nuclear reactors.
The electric power industry is taking nuclear power very seriously.
The sooner and higher the carbon taxes come the more attractive nuclear power will become. But nuclear power plants take several years from beginning of planning to first power production. So the electric power industry must make multi-billion dollar guesses about the state of emissions regulations in future decades.
Moreover, what makes the choice of fuels such a knotty problem is that something that is cheap now, like coal, may not be so cheap in 10 years. This isn’t because we’re running out; we probably have at least a century’s worth of coal reserves in the United States alone. But if the government were to impose a tax or a cap on carbon emissions, something that almost everyone I spoke with in the energy industry believes is inevitable, or if new laws mandate that coal plants must adopt more expensive technologies to burn the coal cleaner — or to “sequester” the carbon-dioxide byproducts underground — the financial equation will change: a kilowatt-hour generated by coal suddenly becomes more expensive. There are other contingencies at play, too: fuels, like natural gas, could experience a supply interruption that leads to enormous price spikes. As for the hope that wind and solar power will generate large amounts of clean, affordable electricity in the near future? I encountered great skepticism inside and outside the utility companies. “Maybe in 40 years,” Paul Joskow, of M.I.T., told me.
Looking out over decades the electric power industry also has to guess about the rate of technological advances in wind, photovoltaics, and other non-fossil fuels based alternatives for generating electric power. Nuclear power plants do not pay back their capital costs for decades. So the cost of competing electric power sources 20, 30, and 40 years hence have to figure into decisions about whether to start building nuclear power plants today.
If carbon taxes become a major cost then that might drive the cost of coal electric well above nuclear. But another risk that nuclear faces is the potential for innovations that lower the cost of carbon extraction when burning coal. So even if evidence of global warming from carbon dioxide becomes very strong that's not a guarantee that nuclear will become the lowest cost electric power source.
Some see construction of new electric plants as avoidable by use of technologies that greatly improve energy efficiency.
There is a counterargument to building large new power plants. One view — voiced most forcefully, perhaps, by Amory Lovins, a physicist who runs Rocky Mountain Institute, which advises corporations and utilities on energy efficiency — is that we don’t need to increase our electrical supply. We need to decrease demand by rewarding utilities for getting customers to reduce electricity use by, say, updating their appliances, furnaces and lighting. Lovins, a longtime critic of nuclear power, contends that it remains financially uncompetitive and that the 30-year absence of new plants is proof that the market has rejected nuclear power as a viable technology. When we spoke about whether utilities need to build more big generating plants in this country, he told me no — not now, not in 15 years, not even after that. “I think if you do,” he remarked, “your shareholders and ratepayers will be asking awkward questions that you would really rather not want to answer.” Yet the concern, even among Lovins’s admirers, is that if he is mistaken — that is, if either his estimates on efficiencies can’t accommodate population and industrial growth, or because what is possible in principle for energy efficiency is not possible in the real world — then the utilities will require an alternative plan. And that would entail more supply, likely meaning more big base-load plants (whether they rely on uranium, gas or coal) as well as large investments in renewable sources like wind and solar power.
My view: Only a big rise in the cost of electricity will substantially reduce per capita electric usage. Rising living standards will make electric power more affordable. People will find more ways to use electricity if they can afford it. They'll get bigger televisions, faster computers, run air conditioners to a lower temperature, and so on. Sure, technological advances will improve energy efficiency. But when energy efficiency rises part of the response is to do more of whatever is now more efficient to do. For example, make cars more fuel efficient and people will drive more miles and get bigger cars. Also, other technological advances will raise incomes and so people will buy more gadgets that use more power. This is especially the case in the industrializing countries, most notably China. So I do not see conservation as a solution. Increases in energy efficiency can raise living standards. But it is unlikely they will stop the increase in demand for energy.
Westinghouse with their AP1000 design and other nuclear reactor designers claim they've gotten their costs down far enough to be competitive. But read the full article for reasons behind the uncertainty about their cost estimates.
But the appeal of the AP1000 remains doubtful, even as 11 utilities, including the Southern Company, have expressed interest in the design. Westinghouse maintained to me that the cost will ultimately be somewhere between $1.4 billion and $1.9 billion. “We’re negotiating contracts,” Dan Lipman, who runs the new-power-plant division at Westinghouse, told me over lunch at the company cafeteria. “We’re well beyond the should-we-do-nuclear phase. It’s now a matter of, How should we do it?” So I asked Lipman what it would mean to actually cut a deal with a utility for a new plant, the first in 30 years. Would it happen a year from now? Two years? “If your definition of a deal is, when do you first start getting money, then that could happen very soon,” he said. “I look for that this year, with big money committed after licensing by the N.R.C.” From his continuing negotiations, Lipman said, it’s clear that his customers are interested in “off-ramps”: clauses in the contracts that allow them to bow out if they hit an unexpected financial or construction snag.
The industry has a number of advantages that it did not have during the last wave of nuclear reactor construction. First off, computers can track design changes, automate communications, manage order tracking and parts inventory, and otherwise manage the design and construction process. Computers have made large construction projects more manageable. Also, the industry is going to use standard designs this time around. So each new plant won't have a large assortment of unique problems to work out. The industry has even formed a consortium for constructing the first reactors that use the new designs. This consortium will allow a great deal of sharing of regulatory forms and knowledge about costs and technological problems encountered during the construction process.
The second cushion is the creation of an industry consortium, called NuStart, to test the licensing process. NuStart is filing several applications for nuclear plants, on behalf of its members, with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. These applications — for the Grand Gulf plant in Mississippi and the Bellefonte site in Alabama — have preceded all others and may end up being built first. One goal of NuStart is to prove to Wall Street that utilities can get a license in a timely manner. Another goal is to establish a way for the industry to pool risk and information. If NuStart’s construction-and-operating applications for its two sites are approved, in other words, any utility in the consortium (including Entergy, Exelon and Southern Company) can copy huge parts of the approved application for its own use, thus saving time and money.
A lot is going to hinge on the costs of building the initial reactors that test out the regulatory process and the new designs. We will find out from the costs and schedules of those reactors how far the nuclear power industry has progressed toward making nuclear power competitive. The big wild card for nuclear power is global warming. If the global warming threat starts looking serious enough to justify large carbon taxes then I expect a huge shift toward nuclear for new electric power plants.
Again, read the full article if you are seriously interested in the energy debate.
Elizabeth King and Eric McErlain of NEI Nuclear Notes blog have a post comparing the cost of new nuclear power plants to other types of electric power plants. (note: O&M means Operations and Maintenance)
The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), an agency within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the International Energy Agency (IEA) recently published a 2005 update to their “Projected Costs of Generating Electricity” series. The study provides some interesting perspective on some ongoing discussions posted on FuturePundit and Disinterested Party regarding the costs of generating electricity using nuclear power versus other technologies.
The NEA/IEA study uses the levelized lifetime cost approach to compare generating costs for the future. This approach looks at generation costs over the plant economic lifetime, while taking into account the time value of money; that is, money spent yesterday or tomorrow does not have the same value as money spent today. Levelized costs are comprised of all components of capital, Operations and Maintainence (O&M) and fuel costs that would influence a utility’s choice of generation options, including construction, refurbishment and decommissioning, where applicable.
The study finds that at a 5% discount rate, levelized costs for nuclear range between $21 and $31 per MWh (2.1 to 3.1 cents per KWh), with investment costs representing 50% of total cost on average, while O&M and fuel represent around 30% and 20%, respectively. For gas-fired plants, the study finds levelized costs ranging from $37 to $60 per MWh (3.7 to 6 cents per KWh), with investment costs accounting for less than 15% of total costs, O&M accounting for less than 10%, and fuel costs accounting for nearly 80% of total costs, on average. The study finds levelized costs for coal-fired plants ranging between $25 and $50 per MWh (2.5 to 5 cents per KWh). Investment costs for coal plants account for just over a third of total costs, while O&M and fuel account for around 20% and 45%, respectively.
If you are wondering why oil is not mentioned oil is more expensive and is rarely used in electric power plants anymore.
Nuclear power is more sensitive to interest rate levels. But a nuclear builder can try to time financing for construction of a nuclear plant to periods when long term interest rates are low. Whereas a builder of coal or natural gas plants will have to live with fluctuations in fuel prices over the life of the plant. Nuclear plant construction could be made much more responsive to long term interest rates by shrinking time spent in the regulatory approval and construction stages. Uranium fuel costs also fluctuate considerably but count for a much smaller percentage of total costs of a nuclear plant.
The costs above are production costs for electricity leaving an electric plant. The physical transmission system and electric losses due to resistance in the transmission both add additional costs as do billing and customer service. Still, the price of new nuclear power plant electricity would be about a third the average American retail price for electricity.
Keep in mind that the figures we quote here don't reflect retail electricity rates, which also include transmission costs.According to the most recent data from the Energy Information Administration, the average retail price of electricity for residential customers in the U.S. clocked in at 8.5 cents per KWh. However, in some areas of the country, that can be significantly higher, especially during periods of peak demand
Does anyone have a good source for the relative contributions of transmission and other downstream costs?
Coal generation costs could be raised by toughening environmental regulations on coal plant emissions. But technological advances in emissions control methods will eventually reduce those costs. Of course technological advances will reduce nuclear plant construction costs as well.
Natural gas prices have already risen substantially in the last few years and could rise further still, at least until planned liquified natural gas terminals come on line. Coal prices probably have lower upside pricing potential in the United States because US coal reserves are enormous. A long term increase in coal demand will be matched by a long term increase in capital deployed for extracting coal. Therefore the real competition to watch is between coal and nuclear.
With nearly 100 coal fired electric plants planned by industry in the United States and 5 times that number of coal plants planned in China coal is clearly in the lead to provide the next increase in electric power generation capacity. However, signs of serious industry consideration of new nuclear plant construction can be found.
Until such a time that solar power becomes competitive we need to ask ourselves a basic question: Would we prefer 100 more coal-fired electric generating plants or 100 more nuclear plants? The coal generators insist the costs of eliminating all the mercury, other heavy metals, particulates, oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, and other pollutants are too high and not worth the effort. This attitude and their ability to enshrine their views in policy make me much more well disposed toward the arguments coming from the nuclear power industry.
Science writer Joe Kaplinsky argues that the same environmentalists who most fear global warming caused by carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels are going to oppose nuclear power as a solution because they see the same human character flaw of hubris as motivating the use of both fossil fuels and nuclear power.
The idea that nuclear power has a role to play in reducing greenhouse emissions makes sense only if we disregard the mythic dimension of the global warming discourse. Science has established that rising concentrations of greenhouse gases are likely to lead to warmer temperatures. The 'myth of global warming', however, goes beyond those facts, interpreting them through a story of man's arrogant attempts at mastery leading to a revenge of nature. There is no place for nuclear power as a hero in this myth. Rather, nuclear power is the original villain - the hi-tech, scientific, large-scale solution to economic development. Seen in this light it is apparent that while a higher profile for global warming might give nuclear power a boost, in the end it will hold nuclear energy back. A substantial revival of nuclear power could only occur if the case was made for science and technology contributing to social progress. Without that case being made nuclear technologies will remain hedged in with restrictions, and society will be unable to realise their potential.
How dare we mere humans, faced with the mightiness of nature, think we can harness nature's forces and use them wisely. But I see a contradiction in this paganistic attitude: Why would infinitely wise nature give humans the innate ability to develop technologies that could cause such damage to Gaia? Or do the environmentalists fear that if we step too far up the ladder of high technology then mother nature will strike out and destroy us for our impudence?
I see a shift of public opinion back in favor of nuclear power as more likely to occur in the United States than in Britain. Why? Americans are less afraid of technology. For example, genetic engineering of foodstuffs attracts little political opposition in the United States while it is strongly opposed by environmentalists in Britain.
Why the difference? I see the lesser fear of technology in America as due in part to the wider spead belief in Christianity in America as compared to Britain. In the Chrisitian view humans stand above nature while God stands above humans. Humans then have a God given right to control and master nature. Take away that Christian world view and some (though not all) Westerners revert to a paganistic view of nature as being imbued with supernatural qualities. To master or redesign some part of nature becomes sacrilegious to a pagan who sees life forms in nature as more authentic and legitimate than devices which are the product of human minds.
Looked at this way the French, with their continued enthusiasm for nuclear power, might be more authentically unreligious (in the sense that they didn't just shift from Christianity to paganism) than the Germans who are shutting down all their nuclear power plants.
Does this explanation really work? Lots of influences come together to cause changes in public opinion. So at best the decline of Christianity and the lingering echoes of pagan cultures explain only part of the differences in views toward nuclear power or genetically modified foods. But the opposition to genetic engineering of crops seems especially difficult to justify on any scientific grounds. So explanations for the opposition must be sought in culture, religion, and other influences.
Whole Earth catalog founder and environmentalist Stewart Brand expects environmentalists to shift back in favor of nuclear power and change their tune on other issues as well.
Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.
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Along with rethinking cities, environmentalists will need to rethink biotechnology. One area of biotech with huge promise and some drawbacks is genetic engineering, so far violently rejected by the environmental movement. That rejection is, I think, a mistake. Why was water fluoridization rejected by the political right and “frankenfood” by the political left? The answer, I suspect, is that fluoridization came from government and genetically modified (GM) crops from corporations. If the origins had been reversed—as they could have been—the positions would be reversed, too.
I have one quibble with Brand: In America the mainstream environmental movement abandoned opposition to population growth decades ago. Why? Immigration and concerns about racism. Opposition to population growth was seen as opposition to reproduction and migration by non-white people. White fertility was falling more than that of other races and ethnicities (leaving aside Japan) back in the 70s and 80s and so to continue to push for birth control efffectively became a push for birth control by people who are not white. For similar reasons the environmentalist movement in the US dropped its opposition to large scale immigration. So while environmentalists were upset by California reaching 20 million population (and I agreed with them fwiw) they make nary a peep about the nearly 40 million now in California and the projections of 50 plus million for California's future population. This issue has come back to life as Richard Lamm and allies have tried to gain control of the Sierra Club and return it to its previous opposition to immigration. The Sierra Club's members are even voting again on this issue in April 2005. But population growth is not a big issue for most American environmental organizations.
Genetic engineering of plants for food crops strikes me as a very pro-environment development. Why? Plants can be improved to produce more food in less land area, thereby freeing up lots of land to return to nature. Advances in agricultural technologies have already caused this to happen in the United States where there are far more trees now than there were 100 years ago. Though in the future population growth will continue to spur the development of previously natural areas and may increasingly offset the gains from higher agricultural productivty per acre. Also, if the enthusiasm for biofuels is translated into wider spread use of land to grow crops for energy this could more than wipe out any gains in land made available for nature that come from higher agricultural productivity.
I predict that when genetic engineering produces treatments that rejuvenate our bodies then opponents of genetic engineering of food will find themselves in a small minority even in Britain and Europe. The public will see genetic engineering as capable of delivering wonderful benefits and will tend to give most other applications of the technology the benefit of the doubt.
Brand thinks the alternatives to nuclear power all add up to not enough.
So everything must be done to increase energy efficiency and decarbonize energy production. Kyoto accords, radical conservation in energy transmission and use, wind energy, solar energy, passive solar, hydroelectric energy, biomass, the whole gamut. But add them all up and it’s still only a fraction of enough. Massive carbon “sequestration” (extraction) from the atmosphere, perhaps via biotech, is a widely held hope, but it’s just a hope. The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere is nuclear power.
Whether these alternatives add up to a sufficient set of solutions to various projections for carbon dioxide emissions depends on whether you think the effects of CO2 emissions create a problem that really needs to be solved and how urgently you think it needs to be solved. Even if you think CO2 will cause large changes in climate (and I remain unconvinced) and even if you think humans can not adapt to those changes without a big net loss in our collective well being (and again I'm unconvinced and suspect a warmer world might even be a net plus) the feeling of urgency in some quarters to start implementing ways to do CO2 emissions reduction today seems like a wrong response. The longer we wait the larger the array of lower cost technologies we will have to prevent or reverse global warming.
Most temperature projections from those unproven climate models show the bulk of the warming will occur in the second half of the 21st century. Why not spend the next 20 to 30 years funding many research and development efforts to produce new technologies for creating and harnessing and reducing emissions from various sources of energy? Yes, these technologies are all "just a hope". But so is funding of research for the development of cancer cures. Does anyone really believe that cures for cancer will not eventually come or that ways to make cheap photovoltaics or better batteries will not be found? To argue that we must use nuclear power is to argue that the brighter scientific and engineering minds will fail to develop other alternatives.
Mind you, I say all this as a person who likes nuclear power. I think we should develop pebble bed reactors and continue to do research on fusion energy. I would even go so far as to say that it be imprudent not to build more nuclear reactors and not to develop more advanced nuclear power technologies. Why? First of all, wind and solar power are not reliable sources of energy under some natural catastrophe scenarios. For example, at 600,000 to 700,000 year intervals massive volcanic eruptions have been occurring at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Such an eruption would release so much sunlight-blocking ash and gasses into the atmosphere that photovoltaics would be rendered useless in much or all of the world. The reduced light levels might last for a period of years. In comparison, nuclear power is an uninterruptible power source. Yes, reactors have to shut down periodically. But with thousands of reactors we'd always have thousands running even though hundreds would be shut down down for maintenance at any given moment.
While some people are shifting toward support of nuclear power due to concerns over global warming I see other environmental reasons for nukes. First off, unlike coal, nuclear power does not emit mercury, other toxic metals , oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, assorted organic compounds, or particulates. The uranium emissions from burning coal are causing far more health damage than radiation from nuclear plants. Also, nuclear power does not require strip mining operations. Plus, nuclear power avoids the need to cover the landscape with windmills or to convert land to crops for biomass energy production. On the downside nuclear power is still not "too cheap to meter". Plus, political opposition has prevented the development of good ways to store the waste. But those problems are probably solvable should public sentiment shift in favor of nuclear power.
The high cost of natural gas is making nuclear power more attractive. The New York Times reports that nuclear power plant operators Entergy, Exelon, and Dominion have applied for approval for sites where nuclear reactors might be constructed and Duke Power has informed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission it plans to apply for a reactor license. None of the new reactors are expected to be radical departures from previous designs.
On the drawing boards are all kinds of exotic designs, using graphite and helium, or plutonium and molten sodium, and making hydrogen rather than electricity. But the experts generally agree that if a reactor is ordered soon, its design changes will be evolutionary, not revolutionary.
The utilities are not ready for a giant technology leap; they want a plant that does what the existing ones do, but slightly better. So if new orders materialize in the next five years, it will be the mechanics and engineers who will get to show what they have learned. The physicists will have to wait.
The Westinghouse AP1000 is considered typical of the new reactors that incorporate many improvements.
Westinghouse is one of the companies trying to market a reactor, the AP1000, with more modest technical goals. It has an output of a little over 1,000 megawatts with what is called a passive approach to safety. It requires only half as many safety-related valves, 83 percent less safety-related pipe and one-third fewer pumps.
Unfortunately the article does not provide cost estimates. However, two GE reactors are under construction at Yenliao, Taiwan and an Areva European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR) is under construction at Olkiluoto, Finland. I can't find any total reactor cost information on it in Areva's press releases (anyone who wants to look through those press releases go here) but Areva claims that the new reactor in Finland will provide cheaper power than previous nuclear reactors.
With a capacity of about 1600 MWe, the EPR has a number of major innovative features making it safer and more competitive. The electricity generated is 10% cheaper than that generated in the nuclear reactors currently in operation. It uses 15% less uranium to generate the same amount of electricity and so produces less spent fuel. Maintenance operations are simpler and therefore shorter, increasing availability to over 90%.
But what is the total cost of the Finnish project? Anyone know?
Even if we leave aside the hard-to-calculate clean-up costs it is hard to find good information on the real costs of nuclear electric power for new reactors today as compared to natural gas and coal. If anyone has some good sources for comparative costs please post them in the comments. One complicating factor on clean-up costs is that old reactors are being kept in operation for longer htan originally planned and hence their clean-up can be amortized over a longer than expected operating life. Double the life of a reactor and the effect is to greatly decrease clean-up as a fraction of total costs.
The Taiwan project has a total cost of $6.5 billion (presumably US dollars).
The Lungmen (Dragon Gate) nuclear project is Taipower's fourth and largest single investment in a broad building programme. Pressed by demand and the country's uncomfortable exposure to foreign fossil fuel supply disruption risk, Taipower is determined to proceed. This is despite unprecedented protests against its plans and the total price tag of an estimated $6.5 billion. Its opponents, mostly from the site area and opposition parties, are equally determined to stop what they see as an unnecessary investment with very high risks.
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The project involves a 2,700MW plant consisting of two 1,350MW units at Yenliao, on the north eastern tip of Taiwan, near the capital Taipei. The advanced boiling water reactor technology marks a departure from the utility's three existing nuclear plants, which are smaller units completed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. US technology, however, will be a common thread from the first to the fourth plant. The units will come on-line in 2004 and 2005.
Does 2,700MW of reactor capacity for $6.5 billion strike anyone as pricey? I've read previously that Westinghouse's 1,100 MW AP1000 reactors might cost $1 billion each. But perhaps that figure is a price for a smaller subset for the reactor itself and not including the electric generators and surrounding complex? How to compare nuclear electric power costs to fossil fuel electric power costs?
MIT chemistry professor and former CIA chief John Deutch has co-authored a New York Times Op-Ed with MIT physics professor Ernest Moniz entitled Nuclear Power Can Work.
We built a model to compare the costs of producing electricity from new nuclear, coal and natural gas plants. The model focuses on economic cost, not regulated or subsidized cost. According to our study, the baseline cost of new nuclear power is 6.7 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to 4.2 cents for coal and natural gas (when the price of gas is $4.50 per thousand cubic feet). Plausible, but unproved, technology could reduce nuclear costs to those of coal and gas.
However, if a cost is assigned to carbon emissions — either through a tax or some other way, as in a current Congressional proposal that would limit emissions but allow companies to buy and sell the right to discharge more pollutants — nuclear power could become an attractive economic option. For example, a $50 per ton carbon value, about the cost of capturing and separating the carbon dioxide product of coal and natural gas combustion, raises the cost of coal to 5.4 cents and natural gas to 4.8 cents.
Well, even with the cost of CO2 removal included that still leaves fossil fuels cheaper than nuclear power. Clearly nuclear power can not currently compete on the basis of production costs.
The Op-Ed alludes to a recent study done at MIT on the future of nuclear power of which both Deutch and Moniz were among the co-authors. That study, The Future Of Nuclear Power, outlines a number of problems with nuclear power.
"Fossil fuel-based electricity is projected to account for more than 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2020," said Deutch. "In the U.S. 90% of the carbon emissions from electricity generation come from coal-fired generation, even though this accounts for only 52% of the electricity produced. Taking nuclear power off the table as a viable alternative will prevent the global community from achieving long-term gains in the control of carbon dioxide emissions."
But the prospects for nuclear energy as an option are limited, the report finds, by four unresolved problems: high relative costs; perceived adverse safety, environmental, and health effects; potential security risks stemming from proliferation; and unresolved challenges in long-term management of nuclear wastes.
The study examines a growth scenario where the present deployment of 360 GWe of nuclear capacity worldwide is expanded to 1000 GWe in mid-century, keeping nuclear's share of the electricity market about constant. Deployment in the U.S. would expand from about 100 GWe today to 300 GWe in mid-century. This scenario is not a prediction, but rather a study case in which nuclear power would make a significant contribution to reducing CO2 emissions.
"There is no question that the up-front costs associated with making nuclear power competitive, are higher than those associated with fossil fuels," said Dr. Moniz. "But as our study shows, there are many ways to mitigate these costs and, over time, the societal and environmental price of carbon emissions could dramatically improve the competitiveness of nuclear power"
Nuclear power used worldwide would greatly accelerate nuclear proliferation. In my view this isn't just a hypothetical risk to manage and minimize. Place nuclear reactors all over the world and it is inevitable that more countries will use the presence of reactors as an opportunity to get the materials needed to make nuclear weapons. Just a single nuclear bomb exploded in an American city could kill millions of people and cause hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars in economic losses. Nuclear power has to be weighed against that risk.
The biggest argument Deutch and Moniz make for nuclear power is that increasing its use will slow the growth in CO2 emissions. For the sake of discussion leave aside the question of whether CO2 emissions are a threat to the environment. Reduction in CO2 emissions can be accomplished at less cost by using methods to capture CO2 emitted by fossil fuel plants.
The use of fossil fuels from the Middle East also sends money to the Middle East that helps fund the spread of Wahhabism, support for terrorism, and efforts to make weapons of mass destruction. But an increased use of nuclear power only in the United States will do little to decrease those cash flows. What is needed are power sources that can displace Middle Eastern fossil fuels at a cost much lower than current Middle Eastern fossil fuels market prices.
As far as increasing the use of nuclear power is concerned, the US government should pursue two main policy objectives:
- Develop a nuclear fuel cycle that greatly reduces the risk of proliferation.
- Develop technologies to much more cheaply build and operate nuclear power plants and to dispose of nuclear waste.
If a form of nuclear power that does not pose proliferation risks could be developed and if it could be made to be much cheaper than current fossil fuel-powered electricity then it would become a viable option.