A U.S. Nuclear Exit?
Many of us are trying to understand the complex dynamics of energy, including the technology, the economics, and the politics that surround our ever-changing mix of coal, gas, oil, hydro, nuclear, and renewables. There are so many factors that enter into the equation, both known and unknown, that predicting the future of this industry is arguably more difficult than it’s even been.
One wild card here is nuclear, and our reaction to things like:
• Carbon emissions and climate change
• Fukushima / public safety
• Reluctance of Wall Street to get behind nuclear with its consistent delays and cost-overruns
• The availability of a new wellspring of loan guarantees from the U.S. federal government
“Reluctance of Wall Street to get behind nuclear with its consistent delays cost-overruns”
That is understandable given that those opposing nuclear energy are often successful in causing costs to skyrocket by means of delays. Eliminating that problem would go a long way towards controlling costs.
The nuclear industry itself must share part of the blame because it has been too slow to agree on standardized designs. That also contributed to excessive costs.
The canceling of funds for nuclear research under the Clinton administration also contributed to the problem. As a result, R & D on a better nuclear technology, which would have been safer and reduced waste to a tiny fraction of what or pressurized water reactors generate, was halted. Development of the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, a very promising nuclear technology, was also halted.
Global energy production must at least double, and perhaps even quadruple, to lift the people in developing countries out of poverty and provide adequate potable water by sea water desalination. Unless the rest of the world, including poor developing countries with huge populations, also take action to eliminate CO2 emissions, it will make little difference what prosperous countries, including the U.S., do. Eventually we must get AT LEAST 80% of our power from non-CO2 emitting sources, including power for transportation and the additional power which will be required for air conditioning to deal with the global warming which it is already too late to prevent.
It is highly unlikely that global warming can be kept to even barely acceptable levels without nuclear power.
I note that John Mecklin, deputy editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, states the following:
“The Southern Company is indeed building two new units at its Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, but the administrations rosy energy report omitted some key context: Those reactors, which likely wouldn’t be financed without a federal loan guarantee, are rare sunbeams in a dismal nuclear power landscape. Because of the nuclear industry’s long history of permitting problems, cost overruns, and construction delays, financial markets have been wary of backing new nuclear construction for decades. The supposed ‘nuclear renaissance’ ballyhooed in the first decade of this century never really materialized.”
“Even though the NRC granted a 20-year life extension to the Kewaunee Power Station in Wisconsin, its owner decided to shutter the plant anyway. This is just one of several recent industry moves that show nuclear power has entered a new phase in the United States, one in which market forces challenge the economic viability even of existing nuclear plants, while making new reactors hopelessly unattractive as investments. Bradford writes. In this new phase, some operating nuclear plants will be unable to compete with the cheaper power produced by coal, gas, and renewable sources. Financial markets will continue to shy away from funding new nuclear plants. And, Bradford writes, as existing reactors run out their licensed lifetimes, nuclear power will, likely, simply . . . disappear. Absent an extremely large injection of government funding or further life extensions, the reactors currently operating are going to end their licensed lifetimes between now and the late 2050s, he concludes. They will become part of an economics-driven US nuclear phase-out a couple of decades behind the government-led nuclear exit in Germany.”
Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) and Molten Salt Storage are both proven technologies that harvest modern sunlight from the only truly safe nuclear reactor known to humankind – the one that we spin around at a distance of 93 million miles and that pours down on our planet thousands of times the energy we need. Our planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere shield us from its harmful effects, and we merely need to act to use the bounty it provides.
The barriers against CSP aren’t technical, resource-based, or even financial – the only barriers that exist are political. Those political barriers manifest most obviously in irrational government subsidies of fossil energy (which continue only as a result of the undue influence of existing moneyed interests vested in fossil technologies), and more subtly in the enormous hidden subsidy of externalized costs that allow fossil energy to falsely appear economically viable in competition with renewables.
There are other barriers, of course, such as all those wrapped up in the nature of our current habits and infrastructure. Yet, as we saw with the adoption of the microwave and the cellphone, and the migration of women into the workforce, popular paradigms can shift with surprising speed.
That fragile structure we call civilization is hanging in the balance, and our energy sources sit at the fulcrum. We may well stubbornly persist in our toxic, extractive and extortive use of ancient sunlight, and watch political instability spin into global conflict with unparalleled lethality, while Mother Nature forcefully and increasingly demonstrates just how small we really are. I don’t recommend that strategy.
Thanks, Cameron. To say that CSP doesn’t face considerable financial obstacles isn’t quite accurate; the levelized cost of energy associated with CSP today is pretty unattractive. But:
1) It’s a technology that, I predict, will enjoy great cost-reductions over time, given a chance. In particular, opportunity #10 here: http://2greenenergy.com/investors/ is a terrific cost-related development. It will come as a great sadness if it CSP doesn’t have its “day in court.”
2) Per another post earlier today: http://2greenenergy.com/gallon-of-gasoline/34567/, the cost of NOT doing something here is far greater than most people imagine.
I agree – it would not be at all accurate to say merely that CSP faces no financial obstacles.
That’s why I made it clear that, “Those political barriers manifest… more subtly in the enormous hidden subsidy of externalized costs that allow fossil energy to falsely appear economically viable in competition with renewables.”
Any holistic accounting that included the massive costs that fossil interests currently externalize would (as you have pointed out) render fossil sunlight unprofitable.
However, it’s quite encouraging indeed to hear of your fact-based optimism on the growing competitiveness of CSP even given the current unlevel playing field.