[The Vector] Nuclear Madness (Continued)
…continued from an earlier article …
What is the history of support for nuclear energy, and why?
Professor Parenti reminds us that the a great wave of interest hit after the Arab Oil embargo of 1973, with its subsequent fear and shock on developed economies. Japan and France strongly developed nuclear power at this time. France, a socialized country, was able to develop nuclear widely because the companies that constructed or operated the plants never had to turn a profit and could be paid for by the public, while Japan’s industry was heavily subsidized. The particular generation of reactors of this era make up the world’s majority of 443 nuclear power stations.
In the U.S., President Nixon announced his Project Independence, insisting that nuclear energy was crucial to the U.S. and planned that 4,000 plants should be brought online by 2000. Before Three Mile Island, says Sokolski, costs and operations already were in disarray (costs higher than projections, delays, etc.) After Three Mile Island, Parenti says, projects were cancelled or slowed down and investors began to reject nuclear. Some bankruptcies occurred in the U.S., which in fact helped bring the debacle of energy deregulation through the mid 1990’s. At this time, Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico began to champion nuclear again, stressing that 3rd and 4th generation reactors would be not only better but cheaper to build.
By February 2002, the Bush administration tried to introduce its “Nuclear Power 2010 program,” a package of subsidies and streamlined planning procedures with plans for plants to be operational by 2010. Yet after almost a decade in which the federal government did all it could to boost nuclear, only one new reactor project has even been approved. Work on it has just begun in Georgia, and already there are conflicts between the utility, Southern Company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Moreover, this project is going forward only because it is in one of the few regions of the United States (the Southeast) where electricity markets were not deregulated. That means the utility, operating on cost-plus basis, can pass all of its expenses and cost over-runs to the consumer, who has little or no recourse.
Parenti tells us that another U.S. reactor is being assembled at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar plant. But construction on this second-generation, Westinghouse-designed Pressurized Water Reactor (an older design from the 1960s) has had long delays and may be up by 2012. On top of this, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s review process to certify the safety of the EPR is itself two years behind schedule.
Today, of the sixty-four nuclear plants under construction worldwide, twenty-seven are in China and eleven are in India. China already has thirteen operating reactors, and they produce less than 2 percent of its total electricity. If China finishes building all of the nuclear plants under construction there, nuclear power will still only account for 9 percent of the country’s total electricity.
Here is an interesting fact: in China, wind is outpacing nuclear power.
The rising cost of new nuclear plants and the quickly falling costs of renewable energy are actually making renewable energy a better option every day.
Please forget nuclear…we have an array of better options that are or soon will be more cost efficient!
China’s total installed wind capacity, which has been roughly doubling every year for the past several years, was 44.7 gigawatts at the end of 2010. The Chinese wind sector is set to reach as much as 200 gigawatts by 2020, according to the China Wind Power Outlook 2010 report. That figure dwarfs the 10.06 gigawatts of nuclear power online now, which will increase by only 27 gigawatts if all of China’s planned plants get built.
