[The Vector] Nuclear Madness
While many in the world are rejecting, stalling or abandoning nuclear power, what about the U.S.? Why should the U.S. consider abandoning nuclear? What are a number of experts saying about the nuclear industry in the U.S., and its future? That it is problematic, contentious and not well thought-out. The Obama Administration proposed $36 billion in Treasury-backed loan guarantees for new reactors, which is controversial in itself on many fronts.
I personally would say there are simply two main reasons to reject or abandon nuclear. And I fully expect some nuclear supporters to reject this.
1) Costs
2) Danger & Damage, both short-term and long-term
Costs
A majority of the general American public does not realize the immense and rising costs involved with building and developing a nuclear plant.
A former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Peter Bradford, who is also former chair of New York and Maine’s utility regulatory commissions, said recently: “Even before Fukushima, events over the last 2 years have amply demonstrated that new nuclear power was a bad investment in the U.S. Cost estimates have continued to rise while costs of alternatives are falling. Wall Street rating agencies are skeptical. Constellation pulled out of Calvert Cliffs last October. Exelon did the same for it proposed Texas reactors, and in the context of a review of its low carbon options that showed new nuclear to be far more expensive than most of its other choices.”
Paul Fremont, managing director of equity research at Jefferies & Company, Inc. said that the cost of building a new nuclear plan “…varies widely from $4,500.00 per KW estimated by the NRG for its cancelled project in Texas to $6,350.00 per KW estimated by Southern Company for its project in Georgia. Today, nuclear represents the highest cost option to construct as compared to traditional technologies…the economic alternative for new building today is gas-based on forward prices ranging from $4.40 now to anticipated $6.00 in 2015.”
Paul Gipe at RenewableEnergyWorld wrote that the sheer cost of nuclear that may overwhelm any industry “renaissance”.
A group of scientists at www.NuclearBailout.org makes that three-fold case against nuclear, saying it is uneconomical; it is polluting; and it is a health threat. The group created the site as a project of the Safe Energy Program at Physicians for Social Responsibility and points out that nuclear is far too expensive and uneconomical in a number of papers.
The New York Times ran a story on August 31st, 2010 by James Kanter that looked at the nuclear power question. (“New Warnings about Costs of Nuclear Power.”) In that story, the Bulgarian economy and energy minister had just announced that the cost to build their second plant (near the Danube River) was over $11.4 billion dollars ($9B Euros), while the original cost projection had been at $4B for the two reactors. At the same time, the British ministry of state for energy said that he expected each new nuclear plant to cost about $9.3 billion. Costs are dramatically out of control at a Finnish project where the French builder (Areva) agreed in 2005 to build a cutting-edge plant by 2009 at $3 billion Euros but the costs have doubled and it is not even complete (perhaps not until 2012.)
Christian Parenti, a scholar at CUNY and fellow at The National Institute, wrote in The Nation that for all of the boosters and champions of nuclear power, none seem to consider the economic factor, and he writes that the numbers just don’t add up. He also believes that trying to argue that nuclear is a solution for climate change is just plain dangerous, because it threatens to delay the shift to clean energy. Every dollar spent on nuclear is a dollar not spent on green tech.
Henry Sokolsky wrote the paper “The High and Hidden Costs of Nuclear Power” published in Policy Review (no 162), August & September 2010 (Stanford University.) “Since the early 1950s, every major government in the Western Hemisphere, Asia, the Middle East and Europe has been drawn to atomic power’s allure only to have market realities prevent most of their nuclear investment plans from being fully realized,” writes Sokolski.
In 2003, says Sokolski, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the nuclear industry would probably default on nearly 50% of governmental loans, even though subsidies have been pushed through. Moody’s announced that it would downgrade its rating of any power provider that invested in new nuclear construction. At the same time, the president of “America’s largest fleet of nuclear power plants, who now serves as the World Nuclear Association’s vice chairman, publicly cautioned that investing in new nuclear generating capacity would not make sense unless both natural gas prices rise and stay about 8 dollars per cubic feet and carbon prices or taxes rise and stay about $25 a ton…Industry officials believe neither condition is likely to be met…” (page 56, Policy Review, Aug & Sept 2010.)
The good news is that clean tech is catching up. An authoritative study by the investment bank Lazard Ltd. found that wind power actually beat nuclear power, and nuclear essentially tied with solar power as to costs. Further, the Worldwatch Institute reports that between 2004 and 2009, electricity from wind (not capacity but actual power output) grew by 27 percent, while solar grew by 54 percent. Over the same time, nuclear power output actually declined by half a percent.
… to be continued
