The New Yorker has a good article on nuclear power, which discusses the imminent shutdown of a nuclear power plant in California that produces 9% of their electricity, with zero carbon emissions:
Today, the looming disruptions of climate change have altered the risk calculus around nuclear energy. James Hansen, the nasa scientist credited with first bringing global warming to public attention, in 1988, has long advocated a vast expansion of nuclear power to replace fossil fuels. Even some environmental groups that have reservations about nuclear energy, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund, have recognized that abruptly closing existing reactors would lead to a spike in emissions. But U.S. plants are aging and grappling with a variety of challenges. In recent years, their economic viability has been threatened by cheap, fracked natural gas. Safety regulations introduced after the meltdowns at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, in 2011, have increased costs, and, in states such as California, legislation prioritizes renewables (the costs of which have also fallen steeply). Since 2013, eleven American reactors have been retired; the lost electricity has largely been replaced through the burning of fossil fuels. At least eight more closures, including Diablo Canyon’s, are planned. In a 2018 report, the Union of Concerned Scientists concluded that “closing the at-risk plants early could result in a cumulative 4 to 6 percent increase in US power sector carbon emissions by 2035.”
I’ve always found it to be ironic that environmentalists are often the ones that protest against nuclear power, given how good it is for the environment. It would almost be like community housing advocates opposing new housing construction. (Oh wait . . . ) Or public health experts opposing first-dose-first.
Some point to the risks of a catastrophic accident, such as occurred at Chernobyl. In fact, while nuclear power is very good for the environment when working safely, it’s even better for the environment when there is a major disaster. Chernobyl created a vast nature reserve in northern Ukraine, full of wild animals that have disappeared from much of Europe.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that we should be building more nuclear power plants—there may be sound economic or safety reasons for not doing so. But we should not move away from nuclear for “environmental” reasons, as this energy source is extremely good for the environment. And it seems rather foolish to shut down clean energy power plants that have operated safely for decades, and where the high construction costs have already been incurred.
PS. The post title is a reference to one of the greatest actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age:
READER COMMENTS
Brett
Feb 24 2021 at 5:55pm
The big hold-up on nuclear power in the US isn’t the potential environmental risks (Congress has granted them limited liability on accidents), but the upfront costs of building them. They are much more time-consuming and expensive to build than any other power source, and they don’t tend to do as well in competitive electricity markets where the price can fluctuate a great deal. The utilities trying to build them have to rack up a lot of debt, which they often can’t repay from the value of the electricity they generate once they’re operational.
The good news is that they’re relatively cheap to operate in terms of the cost of electricity they produce, so keeping them running is a good idea. Diablo Canyon is closing because the costs of upgrading it to deal with earthquakes is too high.
Scott Sumner
Feb 24 2021 at 9:50pm
Agreed, but some of the high construction costs are likely based on excessive regulation. And a carbon tax would also help.
In any case, it’s probably too late for nuclear; it looks like the future will be solar and wind, perhaps combined with battery storage.
nobody.really
Feb 26 2021 at 11:50pm
I don’t know whether the degree of regulation of nuclear is warranted or not. But otherwise, I share Sumner’s view: Energy is a swiftly-changing business. Investors rationally resist sinking a major investment in building a plant that won’t become operational for the next ten years. By then, battery technology, or hydrogen fuel cells, or whatever, may render your investment unviable. We don’t fear a nuclear meltdown; we fear a financial one.
Without a carbon tax, it’s challenging for utilities to justify renovating existing plants, let alone building new ones.
That said, many people are exploring exciting new nuclear technologies. Maybe one of those technologies will overturn all the current assumptions. But as they say, “nuclear fusion is the technology of the future–and always will be….”
Billy Kaubashine
Feb 25 2021 at 10:46am
In today’s rate environment, utilities could easily issue long term debt to finance clean, reliable, cheap nuclear energy. An opporunity missed??
Mark Bahner
Feb 25 2021 at 12:42pm
The problem is the absolutely monumental failure in building new reactors, not just in the U.S., but in democracies around the world.
In the U.S., there are the two new Virgil Summer reactors in South Carolina, and the two new Vogtle reactors in Georgia.
An operating license for the two Virgil Summer reactors in South Carolina was applied for in 2008. In 2013, construction was started. The project was abandoned in 2017, after spending of $9 billion.
The estimated cost of completing the two Vogtle reactors in Georgia is now more than $25 billion. That’s an absolutely insane capital cost per unit of electricity generated (over $10,000 per kilowatt)…if indeed electricity is ever generated from the two reactors.
In France, the Flamanville 3 reactor is now estimated to cost more than $12 billion. Construction was started in 2007 and originally expected to be completed in 2012. It’s now 2021, and completion is now estimated at 2022. That’s 15 years to complete a single reactor.
In Finland, the Olkiluoto Reactor #3 was originally expected to start commercial operation in 2009. It’s of course now 2021…it hasn’t started.
In places like France and Finland, with limited solar energy and no really viable onshore wind locations, options other than nuclear are limited. But the U.S. has plentiful onshore (and eventually offshore) wind locations, and the southern portion of our country, in the east and especially the west, is well-suited for solar.
Further, one extremely important aspect of the future of electric power generation in the U.S. is the coming revolution in transportation. The future of transportation in the U.S.–and around the world–is in the form of autonomous (computer-driven) electric vehicles, providing transportation-as-a-service.
By 2050, virtually all light duty passenger vehicles on the road in the U.S. will be battery electric vehicles. This provides a tremendously valuable synergy with electricity from solar and wind, because the batteries can soak up extra electric power when it’s available, and deliver electric power back into the grid when that power is needed.
That’s a key aspect of batteries relative to conventional power plants. Conventional power plants (nuclear, natural gas, coal, etc.) can only deliver power to the grid. They can’t soak up excess power from the grid, when photovoltaics and wind are producing more electricity than is necessary.
Todd Kreider
Feb 26 2021 at 1:40pm
Once again Mark is too conservative with his predictions. 🙂
Mark Bahner
Feb 26 2021 at 11:58pm
Hi Todd,
I should have done it light duty passenger vehicle *miles*, not light duty passenger vehicles. (I don’t think laws will be written to prohibit the occasional human-driven vehicle on nearly deserted roads.)
But if I said that 95+ percent of light duty passenger vehicle miles will be by fully autonomous battery electric vehicles providing transportation as a service by 2050…what would you say? Maybe 2045? Certainly not before 2040, right?
What’s your best guess for 95+ percent of light duty passenger vehicle miles in the U.S.?
Floccina
Feb 25 2021 at 12:01pm
Nuclear reactors were built in the 60s, which still operate safely today, for less than $1 billion in 2005 adjusted dollars, today the cost run upward of $10 billion.
Greg
Feb 25 2021 at 1:25am
“…some of the high construction costs are likely based on excessive regulation.” Exactly. Also, physicists tend to support nuclear. Activists, journalists, etc. often oppose it. That tells you all you need to know. It’s clean and safe.
Alan Goldhammer
Feb 25 2021 at 8:42am
The real crux of the problem is that new reactor designs are not being deployed. The traditional reactors were very large with high electrical output. Smaller reactors were thought to be inefficient but that’s not true. I also read The New Yorker piece and it’s not evident that Diablo Canyon needs to be decommissioned. Of course PG&E is not in the best financial position because of ongoing liability for the fires in Northern California.
T Boyle
Feb 25 2021 at 2:04pm
Sorry, no. The nuclear industry has covered itself in whatever the opposite of “glory” is. Fukushima was the nail in the coffin: this was not something that happened to a plant designed in and run by the Soviet Union. It was equipped by industry leaders like GE. It was built in Japan at a time when that country was revolutionizing the world with its quality movement and industrial capabilities.
The nuclear industry has established that a) the damage caused by disasters is extreme b) disasters are not nearly as unlikely as the industry claims and has always claimed c) despite being experts, no, nuclear plant designers really don’t know what they’re doing and d) part of the reason for b and c is that the industry really doesn’t have a good grip on the failure modes yet, partly because relatively few nuclear plants have ever been built (industrial products like cars and commercial jets are reliable, in large part, because so many of them have been built that almost all the odd failure modes have surfaced by now – not true of nuclear power plants, including the “new, safe” designs).
If nuclear is going to move forward, it will have to be with designs that dramatically limit the damage caused by disasters – essentially, that assume disaster will happen and make its consequences acceptable. That probably means much smaller, and designed for safety over efficiency. Of course, smaller would then lead to more, which would speed the discovery of failure modes and – since the plants have been designed to ensure that failure is acceptable – the kind of design improvements that can, some day, stop the failures altogether.
But, big plants with huge failure consequences, will no longer be acceptable just because new, young, still-naive designers and investors and touts reassure us loudly that “this time, we really do know what we’re doing.” Sure they do.
Mark Z
Feb 25 2021 at 2:49pm
You make no actual quantitative or comparative claims about how dangerous nuclear energy is compared to alternatives. It seems nuclear energy generation is actually much safer than all fossil fuel sources and comparable to wind energy (https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy).
Every once in a while there will be an event like Fukushima or Three Mile Island (usually which kill no one). That does not mean nuclear energy isn’t much safer on average than nearly every other source. This is like referring to the occasional high profile plane crash as evidence that it’s safer to drive than fly. The harm caused by other energy sources just tends to be more spread out across time, not less in magnitude.
T Boyle
Feb 26 2021 at 4:05pm
Mark,
The fact that people react much more negatively to large-scale disasters than to low-grade but widespread costs has been much-discussed. It may be irrational; it may not (large-scale disasters have attributes that widespread low-grade costs do not); but it is definitely the case.
And, with that as the background, the nuclear industry has shown that it doesn’t know what it’s doing, while proposing an energy source that generates large-scale disasters. It is an industry that – by its own doing – has severely damaged credibility, while proposing to manage something insanely dangerous.
Essentially, what I’m suggesting is that the industry needs to turn its disasters into something more akin to low-grade events; then work very hard to eliminate those events. This is a model that people can accept; and that could actually produce an industry that does know what it’s doing.
Mark Z
Feb 26 2021 at 4:51pm
If this fear is irrational (it is), then the industry needs to do no such thing. Dying is dying, whether people do it one at a time or in bulk. The idea that we should avoid nuclear in favor of gas or oil, even though the former kill 400-600 times as many people per terawatt-hour, becuase the former two kill people at a more steady rate is patently ridiculous. Beyond that, in absolute terms, oil is still worse even just measured in terms of acute disasters. Fukushima killed one person, Three Mile Island, 0; Deepwater Horizon? 11 people.
Mark Z
Feb 26 2021 at 4:55pm
“even though the former kill 400-600 times as many people per terawatt-hour”
Correction: “the latter” not “the former” and it’s oil and gas kill 40-60 times as many as nuclear, not 400-600
Scott Sumner
Feb 25 2021 at 3:13pm
That doesn’t address my post, which was about the environmental effect, not safety.
T Boyle
Feb 26 2021 at 3:55pm
Scott, your post stated that nuclear power is even better for the environment when there’s a major disaster, because it drives all the humans away. This puts you in the same class of environmentalist as Thanos, of the Marvel movies. Either I shouldn’t take your piece as intended seriously, or you’re an extremist.
So I addressed the safety point, the elephant in the room.
Scott Sumner
Feb 26 2021 at 11:03pm
I was completely serious–merely stating a fact. Why was my claim wrong?
(I have never heard of Thanos.)
I never endorsed building more nuclear power plants.
Thomas Hutcheson
Feb 26 2021 at 6:21am
Whatever the regulatory hurdles, a tax on net CO2 emissions would help pay for overcoming them.
Todd Kreider
Feb 26 2021 at 12:07pm
There are precisely zero safety reasons for not building many more nuclear power plants. Chernobyl can’t happen again and that accident, which was by far the worst, has killed under hundred people. The very small radiation leak from the Fukushima accident, which also couldn’t happen again due to TEPCO’s stupid decision of where they placed the back up power decades ago, will make no one in the public sick and there is maybe around a 1% chance that one worker will get cancer from it in the year 2035 as around 150 workers were exposed to enough radiation. Sadly, unnecessary forced evacuations far from the plants, did kill quite a few elderly over the next few years.
Nuclear power does nothing bad for the environment either. I’m not sure where that notion comes from.
Todd Kreider
Feb 26 2021 at 1:44pm
(150 workers went a little over the radiation line where each has a 1 percent lifetime increase of getting a cancer that wouldn’t show up until around 2035. Add up all of those 1 percent point increases and someone should get a cancer then, maybe even two workers, due to the radiation they were exposed to. Any idea what cancer treatments will look like in 2035?)
Michael Rulle
Feb 27 2021 at 9:43am
One thing I learned from this essay is it seems like we do not know the cost of nuclear power. Since France has been the largest user per capita (even as they seem to be gradually lowering dependence on Nuclear power) it seems like we should know the answer to this at least by some kind of comparative analysis. Many write about the newer smaller nuclear plants that are on the drawing board—-but not mentioned here. Many write about the waste storage problem being largely mitigated by new technology —-again not mentioned here. All forms of energy production “clean” or otherwise have their problems and imperfections. I think we still produce about 20% of electricity from nuclear—-at least that number keeps being printed.
I am of the Judith Curry, Bjorn Lomborg schools of thought on climate change (I.e., either we exaggerate global warming—-or we do not, but understate the opportunity cost of doing too much about it) so this essay assumes what I do not believe. That’s just me of course. Therefore, I view this as an energy supply issue only. 20% each of coal, oil, gas, wind/solar, and nuclear seems like a reasonable form of diversification.
But, I wish we had more published evidence (I am sure they exist somewhere—-just not in essays such as this—-and it is a good essay) on the various costs of energy—-counting more than the marginal costs.
Todd Kreider
Feb 28 2021 at 12:59am
@Mark Bahner, at a minimum, I’d put your 2050 prediction at 2040.
Mark Bahner
Mar 2 2021 at 12:38am
Hi Todd,
Actually, I withdrawn my prediction. I wrote:
But I don’t think the “providing transportation as a service” will come close to 95% of vehicle miles by 2050…or any time thereafter. My thinking is that there always will be 10+% vehicle miles traveled will be from rich people with their own fully autonomous electric vehicles. So I think 95+% vehicle miles will be fully autonomous and electric. And I think a significant majority of those will be transportation as a service…but not 95+%.
Regarding your prediction…Mary Barra of GM has stated that she expects phase out all internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035. I’m not away of any such commitments by other biggies like Toyota. But I guess 19 years is reasonably far in the future, given progress on autonomous vehicles and batteries.
P.S. I could actually see myself as owning a fully autonomous RV, rather than getting some RV in “transportation as a service” mode. It might be fun to spend something like 2 months on the road, alternating nights between a hotel and a personal RV. (I could never stay *only* in an RV, unless the shower was much better than I would expect! :-))
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