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Focus on '100 New Nuclear Plants' Would Hamper Efforts to Slow Global Warming
A new era of nuclear power wouldn't be "up to the job" of shrinking America's greenhouse gas pollution fast enough to stop the most damaging consequences of global warming, according to a new report from Environment America.
Nuclear power advocates in the United States have championed the idea of constructing at least 100 new nuclear plants by 2030 as a strategy against climate change.
Not only would that timeframe be logistically nearly impossible to meet, but building a new generation of reactors would be far more expensive and far less effective at reducing emissions than other sources of carbon-free power, Environment America said in its report, "Generating Failure."
The up-front capital costs of 100 new nuclear reactors would be roughly $600 billion and could leap to $1 trillion.
If that same money were "invested in energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy instead," it "could prevent twice as much pollution over the next 20 years," the report said.
Blueprints for Nuclear Expansion
The report came as Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) introduced legislation laying out a blueprint for how 100 new nuclear plants could be built in 20 years. Their proposed Clean Energy Act of 2009 would be an alternative to the Boxer-Kerry cap-and-trade-based climate legislation wending its way through the Senate.
The Alexander-Webb bill would provide $100 billion in taxpayer-funded loan guarantees to the nuclear industry, on top of the $47 billion in federal loan guarantees already approved.
Alexander has argued for "100 new nuclear plants" at every opportunity this year, claiming that "nuclear is our best source for large amounts of cheap, reliable, and clean energy." In a Congressional hearing, however, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) questioned the value of his approach for U.S. taxpayers. Under Alexander's plan, the costs of those new nuclear plants would fall heavily to taxpayers, whereas a price on carbon via cap-and-trade would encourage private investment, likely resulting in even more nuclear over time without dedicating as much taxpayer money, Boxer said.
Currently, the U.S. has 104 nuclear reactors, which provide 20 percent of the nation's electricity and 72 percent of its low-carbon energy supply. No new reactors are under construction, but this will soon change: The nuclear industry estimates that as many as three could be up and running by 2016, and a few more by 2018.
But that timeline may be "too optimistic," according to Environment America.
If construction delays follow historical patterns, the first plant may not be up until the 2020s. That means 10 years from now, new nuclear power may be making no contribution toward reducing U.S. emissions, despite hundreds of billions of dollars being plowed into the sector, the report found.
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Thank you very much for the
Thank you very much for the excellent and useful subject.
Healthy Fear of Nuclear
There's a very important account that anyone talking about nuclear energy must read. It is called In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age by Stephanie Cooke.
It provides a very persuasive argument, and a lot of first-hand evidence, that there is an inextricable link between civilian and military uses of nuclear power.
We do not want to go down the nuclear road. It's like licking honey from a knife.
Read the book, you'll see for yourself.
The nuclear apologists commenting here with honeyed words are dangerous.
Besides,
Jfarmer9 shows convincingly that taking information from a political group like Environment America is foolish. But I want to point out a basic mistake in the article, where it says the goal of building a hundred nuclear plants in twenty years would be "logistically nearly impossible to meet." In fact, the US built a hundred plants in twenty years decades ago, and without anything like the urgency the world faces in heading off the climate change crisis. By ramping up the country's construction capacity, we could eliminate CO2 emissions from electricity generation even while other fossil-fuel applications are being converted to electricity. Further, the whole process will give Americans good-paying, steady jobs.
Put this in comparison with the problems of the alternatives. It takes thousands of wind turbines spread over hundreds of square miles to generate the same amount of electricity as one nuclear plant. Or it takes square miles of solar panels. And there's no way to overcome the problem of intermittency, short of telling people to stay home in their cold, dark houses when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
With nuclear energy, the country can succeed. Without it we can say goodbye to the natural world.
Stacy, How about using less
Stacy,
How about using less assumption and more facts? Your article and the non peer reviewed study you site are full of assumptions and misrepresentations. Take for instance your quote:
By 2018, solar photovoltaic (PV) power should be on par with a new nuclear reactor in terms of its "per-dollar ability" to stop global warming pollution. Wind energy will be more than twice as effective by that time. And offshore wind will be on the order of 40 percent more effective. That's all without help from the current production tax credit.
What a bunch of wishful thinking. PV being an intermittent power source will never be cheaper than nuclear power. The fact is that you must build in redundancy power like carbon producing natural gas plants to be able to provide power for all the times that the sun does not shine. Second, how is wind energy going to be more efficient in 2020 as it is now? Just saying things do not make them true. Finally if it where not for tax credits and mandated subsides there would be very little building of any wind or solar. This as been proven time after time when the tax credits for wind and solar power are lifted.
The fact is that you can not get a cheaper power source than nuclear if you base the cost on the entire lifespan of a nuclear power plant and yes this includes all cost like decommissioning and insuring. Another point is that with nuclear power you will not have to rebuild the entire electrical grid like you must when introducing large scale intermittent power sources of wind and solar to the nations three electrical grids.
There are other dates that are also important like 2050 when the acidity of the ocean will become so severe from all of the carbon we are producing that crustacean life in the oceans will fail. Having an ocean filled with just jelly fish is not something I look forward to. If we invest heavily in wind and solar and utility rates sky rocket as result and rolling black outs become the norm king coal will come back to fill the our need of cheap electrical power.
250 new nuke plants now,
Jfarmer9
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