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Mon, Aug 30

Debatable: The case for going nuclear (or not)

This recent (August 27, 2021) New York Times column attempts to give a somewhat balanced view of the prospects for nuclear energy and its place as a provider of energy in the US in the future.

The crux of the situation may be found here:

«...several recent studies have found that utilities could achieve 80 percent zero-carbon electricity by 2030 using today’s renewable energy technology, but cleaning up the last 20 percent will prove more difficult.”

This is a little less obvious: 

“Nuclear power may be safer than the public believes, but the public’s beliefs matter a great deal in a democracy. Solar and wind power are extremely popular with Americans, but nuclear power is viewed unfavorably, with more people opposing its expansion than supporting it.»

The following are some other excerpts from the column. However, I suspect that the sources of the ideas in the article are subject to appraisal by Energy Central readers. For example, for comparisons of price for different sources of electricity, the Times refers to this article. 

Do the data support the conclusion in the title?: “Wind and solar kill coal and nuclear on costs, says latest Lazard report»

IÂŽm not so sure, and the data seem to be less clear than the title suggests.

Two things are, however, clear: 1) The issue is increasingly crucial with respect to the outlook for climate change. 2) Technology is progressing in unpredictable ways that make it only more difficult to find the best way forward

 

Another major obstacle for nuclear power is its price: Nuclear plants cost billions of dollars to build, making them one of the most expensive sources of electricity. Solar panels, by contrast, now generate the cheapest electricity in history — so cheap that new solar projects, building costs included, can now compete with existing nuclear plants.

 

“What is remarkable about these trends,” a report on the nuclear industry found last year, “is that the costs of renewables continue to fall due to incremental manufacturing and installation improvements while nuclear, despite over half a century of industrial experience, continues to see costs rising.”

Is France an exception here?

“No country has managed to develop a safe, successful, economically competitive nuclear power industry in a market-based environment,” Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard historian, said last year. “This tells us that nuclear power is unlikely to be successful in market-based economies. It may work in China, but it is unlikely to work in most other places.”

Maybe, but when?

Nuclear power proponents say its economic problems can be solved. Putting a price on carbon pollution so that fossil fuels reflect their true environmental cost, for example, could help make nuclear power competitive with natural gas , as could advances in reactor designs. Last year, the Department of Energy announced that it would fund the development of two such designs, including one championed by Bill Gates."

 

«Perhaps most important, nuclear power plants take much longer to build than renewable energy projects. Since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, the construction time for most reactors in the United States has exceeded 10 years...”

Nevertheless, there is a case for keeping our options open

«But many climate experts who are not especially bullish about the future of nuclear power say that the United States should still take pains to keep its existing stock of nuclear plants up and running.»

“Such complications explain why many climate experts decline to take a hard stance on nuclear power. “It’s absurd to be ‘pronuclear’ or ‘antinuclear’ on an ideological/identity basis,” David Roberts, an energy and climate journalist, said last year. “The world should build whatever carbon-free options are fastest and (with all costs considered) cheapest. Nuclear doesn’t currently fit that bill, but new reactor designs might change that. If so, build them; if not, don’t.”

All of the statements above are, without doubt, debatable, especially those concerning future developments.  I would only add that if the US and Europe take the nuclear route to decarbonization, it would set an impossible example for the developing world to follow.  And without decarbonization by the developing world, getting global ghg emissions under control seems hopeless.

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