Power Hungry (41 page)

The IEA projects that for power plants that begin operations between 2015 and 2020, nuclear will be among the cheapest options, even when compared to wind power and coal-fired power plants that use high-efficiency ultra-supercritical combustion. The agency estimates that nuclear power plants will be able to produce electricity for about $72 per megawatt-hour, whereas onshore wind costs will be about $94 per megawatt-hour.
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Despite the data, Lovins continues singing from his same tired hymnal. In 2009, he said that nuclear is “continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it's grossly uncompetitive, unneeded and obsolete.”
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Lovins may be wrong, but at least he's been consistently wrong—for nearly three decades. The same can be said of the major environmental groups. Consider this line from Greenpeace International: Nuclear power is “an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power,” and, says Greenpeace, to begin “the shutdown of existing plants.”
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Here's the Sierra Club's position on nuclear, a position it has held since 1974: “The Sierra Club opposes the licensing, construction and
operation of new nuclear reactors utilizing the fission process.” The club plans to continue its opposition, pending “development of adequate national and global policies to curb energy over-use and unnecessary economic growth.”
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FIGURE 38
International Energy Agency's Projected Costs for Commercial Electricity Generation Plants That Begin Operations from 2015 to 2020, in Dollars Per Megawatt-Hour

Source
: International Energy Agency,
World Energy Outlook 2009
, 381.

Unfortunately, neither Greenpeace nor the Sierra Club explains how they plan to replace nuclear power, which now provides about 15 percent of the world's electricity needs and about 5 percent of its total primary energy.
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And while the Sierra Club may be opposed to “energy over-use and unnecessary economic growth,” there haven't been many countries in Africa—or anywhere else—that have expressed concern about using too much energy or about too much economic growth.

Nuclear power is the only always-on, no-carbon source that can replace significant amounts of coal in our electricity generation portfolio. If the United States is serious about cutting carbon dioxide emissions
and reducing the harmful environmental side effects of coal-fired power while keeping the lights on and the beer cold, nuclear has to be an integral part of the plan. Indeed, when all factors are considered, nuclear power may be the most environmentally friendly form of electricity generation.

That's not to say that nuclear doesn't come with environmental costs. It does. But then, so do renewable sources such as wind and solar, which require hundreds—or thousands—of square miles of land for power generation and transmission. The same problems of energy sprawl hamper the development of hydropower and biofuels.

Thanks to their super-high power density, nuclear reactors require small amounts of land. When operational, they emit no carbon dioxide, and the volume of their solid waste production is minuscule. For instance, a 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor produces about 20 cubic meters of solid waste per year.
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Every year, the entire fleet of U.S. nuclear reactors produces about 2,000 tons of spent fuel. Over the entire history of the U.S. nuclear power industry, it has produced about 60,000 tons of high-level waste.
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That volume of material, if stacked to a depth of about 15 feet, would cover an area the size of a single football field.
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The key, of course, is proper waste management. Other countries, including Russia, Japan, and France, are actively and responsibly handling the nuclear waste produced by their reactors. The same can be done in the United States. And it can be done because the volumes of waste being produced are relatively small, particularly when compared with the amounts being produced by the coal industry. In 2007 alone, coal-fired power plants in the United States generated 131 million tons of coal ash—and much of that material is contaminated with heavy metals.
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Thus, in one year,
the U.S. coal industry produces nearly 2,200 times as much solid waste as the U.S. nuclear industry has produced in more than four decades.

By nearly any metric that the environmental groups choose—footprint, solid waste production, neurotoxin releases, or carbon dioxide emissions—nuclear power is beyond green. The main problem facing nuclear power is the environmental groups themselves. Mainstream environmental groups continue to oppose nuclear energy despite the fact that the existing global fleet of reactors prevents the emission of about 2 billion
tons of carbon dioxide per year—that's about 7 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
¹⁹

Sources
: Rebecca Smith, “The New Nukes,”
Wall Street Journal
, September 8, 2009,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204409904574350342705855178.html
. The wind figure is for the Sheringham Shoal offshore wind farm in the United Kingdom. Estimated cost is 1 billion British pounds. In mid-September 2009, that was equal to about $1.7 billion. See “Onshore Construction Begins for Sheringham Shoal Wind farm,”
NewEnergyFocus.com
, September 7, 2009,
http://www.newenergyfocus.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=1&listcatid=32&listitemid=2978§ion=Wind
.

While nuclear power's green credentials are obvious, critics bring up valid concerns about its cost. Building a large nuclear plant in the United States will cost billions of dollars. Utilities are understandably nervous about committing $10 billion or more to a project that could be delayed and cost more than expected. And over the past decade or so, the costs associated with building new reactors have increased substantially. For instance, a reactor being built at Olkiluoto, Finland, by the French nuclear giant, Areva, has been hampered by repeated delays, with the price tag for the project reportedly increasing by about 50 percent. Another Areva reactor project in Flamanville, France, is also over budget and running behind schedule.
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In May 2009, Areva officials in Paris admitted to me that the company was having problems with the deployment of its latest reactor design, the European Pressured Reactor, in Olkiluoto and Flamanville. But Areva is confident the problems will be worked out over time.

Some U.S. utilities are shying away from nuclear power over cost concerns. In April 2009, resistance from Missouri legislators led the state's biggest electric utility, Ameren UE, to drop its plan to hire Areva to build a $6 billion copy of the European Pressured Reactor.
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A few months later, in October 2009, the San Antonio city council delayed a vote on $400 million in bonds that were to be sold to support the municipal utility's plan to invest in two additional reactors at the South Texas Project. The vote was suspended after reports surfaced that the two new reactors,
with a total capacity of 2,700 megawatts, were going to cost a total of $13 billion, or about $3 billion more than previously expected.
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At the $13 billion price, that works out to about $4,800 per kilowatt.

Obviously, the relatively high cost of nuclear power presents a barrier for both utilities and consumers. But comparing the initial construction costs of a nuclear power plant with those of coal and natural gas is misleading, because the long-term operating costs of the nuclear plant are lower than those for coal and natural gas plants. The reason: The fuel for nuclear reactors costs a fraction of what utilities pay to fuel their coal- and gas-fired plants. But the higher operating costs of coaland gas-fired plants appear to be acceptable in the current marketplace, particularly given the recent declines in U.S. electricity consumption and the general nervousness about the future health of the economy.

Although the high initial costs of nuclear power are substantial, the per-kilowatt construction costs of nuclear power plants are similar to the per-kilowatt costs of constructing offshore wind projects. In 2009, Norwegian energy giant StatoilHydro began building the 315-megawatt Sheringham Shoal offshore wind farm. That project, located in British territorial waters about 120 miles northeast of London, carries a price tag of about $1.7 billion, which works out to about $5,000 per kilowatt of installed capacity—a sum that puts it in the same ballpark as a nuclear power plant.
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And unlike nuclear plants, which usually have a capacity factor of 90 percent, those offshore generators will likely only produce power about 30 to 40 percent of the time.

The high capital costs and low power density of offshore wind means higher costs for consumers. In November 2009, a Rhode Island electric utility rejected a proposal from a company called Deepwater Wind, which wanted to sell electricity. Deepwater Wind had proposed a $200 million array of wind turbines off the Rhode Island coast. According to the
Providence Journal
, Deepwater wanted to sell electricity to the utility at a cost of $0.253 per kilowatt-hour. And, as the newspaper reported, “that price would increase by 3.5% annually.” The
Journal
went on to report that the local utility currently pays an average of $0.092 per kilowatt-hour for electricity produced from conventional generators. Thus, for the luxury of buying wind generated by offshore wind turbines, Deepwater Wind wanted Rhode Island consumers to
pay more than twice as much for their electricity as they would from conventional generators. Nevertheless, the company's chief development officer, Paul Rich, was unabashed, declaring that the expected price of electricity from Deepwater Wind's offshore project was “in line with major European wind farms in an established market with an established supply chain.”
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Solar power is even more expensive than offshore wind. In early 2009, Austin's utility, Austin Energy, agreed to spend $180 million on a 30-megawatt solar facility. At that price, the solar plant will cost about $6,000 per kilowatt. And according to Austin Energy officials, the solar farm will run at a capacity factor of about 23 percent.
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Thus, Austin Energy has agreed to build a solar plant that will operate about one-fourth as often as a nuclear plant and cost about 25 percent more on a per-kilowatt basis.
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And the cost of the Austin solar project appears to be about average. In late October 2009, Barack Obama gave a speech at a new 25-megawatt solar photovoltaic facility in south Florida owned by Florida Power & Light. The cost of that project: $152 million, or about $6,000 per kilowatt.
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To summarize, officials in San Antonio are worried, rightly, about the $13 billion cost of a new nuclear plant at the South Texas Project. But if they wanted to build a solar plant with the same output—2,700 megawatts—as the new reactor, it would cost about $16.2 billion. And the energy production—measured in kilowatt-hours—from the solar facility would be one-third, or less, of the output from the nuclear reactors.

Obviously, the price tag for nuclear plants presents a significant obstacle, no question about it. But when compared to offshore wind or onshore solar, the costs of nuclear are comparable—and unlike wind and solar, nuclear plants can provide the always-on electricity that our society demands. The reality is that every form of power generation exacts costs. But when considering all of the costs, there's no greener choice than nuclear.

Antinuclear ideologues remain opposed to nuclear power even though the nuclear industry has developed new reactor designs—both big and small—that can be used to meet almost any need. But before I discuss the merits of the new class of reactors, we must deal with the issue of nuclear waste.