StrategyTalk.org

[JLK]

The Bush Administration's Nuclear Power 2010 Initiative is in my opinion the most important element of its National Energy Policy, and the President deserves accolades for having the political courage to promote it.

Twenty-six years after the near-disastrous accident and partial meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant that released small amounts of radioactivity into the atmosphere, and two decades since the much more serious accident at Chernobyl, nuclear power remains an object of great public consternation and fear. Despite an otherwise flawless record for safety and reliability, no new nuclear power plant has been ordered in the United States since the Three Mile Island incident. In the former Soviet Union, reactor safety remains a concern among experts, where fifteen RBMK-1000 reactors of the type that failed at Chernobyl are still in service. The crude design that was employed used in those reactors dates back to the mid 1950s and was considered obsolete and unsafe by western standard even prior to the Chernobyl tragedy.

Existing US commercial reactors are based on technology that, while it is several decades old, is inherently much safer than the Chernobyl design. All operating US commercial power reactors are either of the pressurized water (PWR) or boiling water (BWR) designs. Because both PWR and BWR reactors are cooled and moderated with ordinary "light" water, the two designs can be grouped into the generic category of light water reactors (LWR). Aside from the way they produce heat, the energy recovery and electricity generating technology used in these designs is not very different than those used in conventional power plants that are fired by coal or natural gas. These plants currently generate about 20% of the electricity that is used in the US.

While the US commercial nuclear power industry has been slumbering, other countries continued to improve reactor designs and build new capacity. France, for example, has built 58 plants since the late 1970s and currently generates more than 78 percent of its electricity from nuclear power.

As I have written earlier, the nuclear power plant operators in the United States have, with the blessing of the NRC, been steadily increasing their generating capacity by stealth through the process of uprating. In many cases, the uprating has been done at the expense of the original safety factors that were built into the facility when it was constructed. I have received comments based on my earlier article to the effect that the uprated plants still operate within a margin of safety that is more than adequate, and that decades of experience in operating the plants has taught engineers more about what adequate safety margins really are. No doubt these comments have merit, but I still think it is preferable to invest in new plant capacity built with the most modern technology than to continue pushing the envelope uprating plants that are decades old. Which brings us back to the Nuclear Power 2010 Initiative.

According to the DOE, the Nuclear Power 2010 Initiative is focused on the development and deployment of a new generation of advanced light water reactor (ALWR) designs:

[asearchforreason]

I'm not sure I'm so gung-ho about nuclear power as you are yet, but it is something we should be devoting more thought to. There has been practically no innovation in the US nuclear industry because of the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents. Furthermore, the demonization of nuclear energy by environmental groups has done nothing to help its public standing. For those interested in what the experts have to say about our nuclear future, read this comprehensive 2003 study by MIT, The Future of Nuclear Power.

I still see several key obstacles:
1. Nuclear energy does not make economic sense when compared to coal and natural gas. Of course this does not consider the natural security concerns involved with natural gas nor the carbon emissions from those sources.
2. Long-term sustainability of nuclear power is questionable. If the US were to switch over to once-through plants, there would need to be many more Yucca Mountain type sites. According to the MIT study, a new site of that size would have to be created every 3 to 4 years by 2050 if worldwide growth goes as they project. Additionally, uranium is a limited natural resource like oil, gas, or coal and will eventually become scarce if overused.
3. Safety concerns, while often overblown, are still a problem for nuclear plants. The MIT recommendation is to try to have "less than one serious release of radioactivity for 50 years from all fuel cycle activity". Not exactly the most comforting statement. But like anything in engineering, every plant has a probability of serious incident attached to it; the best we can do is try to make the probability as small as possible and hope for the best.


So, while I think it is wise to kick start some research in the area, I'm not sure it's the be-all-end-all of the US's energy problems. In the medium term it could mitigate some of the US's oil and gas supply problems as well as reduce carbon emissions. For the long term, it is still necessary that we pursue more sustainable technologies such as solar, which once economically viable, should be sustainable until the Sun dies in about 4 billion years.

[vitaliy]

It is about the freaking time. Like it or not, nuclear technology is a good alternative because of the following items:

- we know how to generate it
- we know or aware of potential dangers
- we know how to store it

Many people do not like the fact that nuclear plants are dangerous and compare them to Chernobyl. Yeah, Chernobyl sucked ass. Take it from somebody whose uncle was one of the first people to come to the rescue. My family is paying for it right now in terms of poor health and the fact that my uncle is almost blind. However, this does not stop me from being an advocate of nuclear energy. Chernobyl could have been prevented. The disaster occured largely because of negligence and then Soviets tried to cover it up. With good measures, it should not be a problem.

Howerver, I am concerned about people trying to blow up nuclear plans intentionally. We need to fix the security issues first.

[JLK]

[asearchforreason]

Well thanks to an undocumented feature of internet explorer, I lost my post so I'll summarize quickly.

As you note yourself, the numbers you provide for per kWh costs are pretty meaningless because they are just production costs. They don't include the costs of the plant, research and development costs, etc. The fact is that natural gas and coal are cheaper and there will not be investment in nuclear without some government subsidies. To this end, the 2010 intiative is going to assess "temporary policies to assist in the competitiveness" of nuclear power.

You're right that uranium scarcity is not an issue right now. I just think it is a good idea to plan for things more than 5 years down the road as humans have been failing to do for their entire history. We should have enough easily recoverable uranium to last for 150 years even if the world moves towards nuclear power.

I must say 500 years is the shortest time I've ever seen saying that nuclear waste would be safe. I'm pretty sure it's at least 1000 years, and probably more. In either case, it's a ridiculously long time. By then, we either won't be living on this planet anymore or will have blown ourselves up and not really care about nuclear waste.