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Nation's Biggest Nuclear Firm Makes a Play For Carbon Credit Cash
tomhath writes with this story that may shake up the nuclear industry. "The biggest player in the beleaguered nuclear power industry wants a place alongside solar, wind and hydroelectric power collecting extra money for producing carbon-free electricity. Exelon Corp., operator of the largest fleet of U.S. nuclear plants, says it could have to close three of them if Illinois rejects the company's pitch to let it recoup more from consumers since the plants do not produce greenhouse gases. Exelon and other around-the-clock plants sometimes take losses when wind turbines produce too much electricity for the system. Under the system, electric suppliers would have to buy credits from carbon-free energy producers. Exelon says the plan would benefit nuclear plants, hydroelectric dams, and other solar and wind projects."
...what is very little recognized worldwide, is that nuclear energy gets a free lunch at the expense of the taxpayers, as regards risk insurance.
How many other industries have more than $12B in insurance before the government will step in?
I mean, there's no other industry that could cause that much damage in a single incident, is there?
It is the most damned uninsured thing in developed countries and when one of these plants goes bust, you know what happens, ref. Fukusima.
Yeah, we're up to 2 busted nuclear plants in the whole world. All of them were old as hell plants, newer plants survived just fine, and realistically speaking we're being paranoid about the radiation.
If nuclear industry wishes to operate on-par terms with other forms of green technologies, please, bring the actuarial scientists in, to do all the math!
They have. It has even fewer deaths per TWh, including Chernobyl and Fukushima, than solar & wind
I don't read AC A human right
Even if we give the nuclear industry a pass on the problems/issues with radioactive waste disposal a tremendous amount of carbon is expended in the mining/refining and transportation of the nuclear fuel. This carbon foot print seems to be forgotten; it can because the location of the uranium ore is not a consideration for siting the reactor: out of site out of mind. Hydro electric dams and wind turbines also have an initial carbon load. However once the dam or turbine is built only maintenance is required, not on going fueling, however small it may be.
Solar and wind use far more natural resources. Steel, concrete, and even rare metals like neodymium and silver are used in huge quantities. Furthermore, coal is required for the production of concrete and steel.
Way to cherry pick the most energy inefficient and obsolete uranium separation process. "The gaseous diffusion process consumes about 2500 kWh (9000 MJ) per SWU, while modern gas centrifuge plants require only about 50 kWh (180 MJ) per SWU." So, a factor of 50 more energy intensive, to say nothing of upcoming laser enrichment.
Next generation reactors like the LFTR won't even require enrichment, nor any extra mining at all. Thorium is a free by-product of rare-earth mining.
The Three Gorges Dam isn't primarily a hydroelectric scheme. It's primary purpose is to protect the lower parts of the Jangtze river from flooding, which has regularly affected some 10-20 mio people.
But you could say the same about lignite or other coal strip-mines. Lignite mining in Germany has stripped some 1500km^2 so far and is still ongoing.
> There's a reason why China has 30 nuclear plants under construction
They don't. They have 22 under construction, where "under construction" is something from "we have the signed paperwork" to "we're putting in the switchyard".
And the reason is widely recorded - they wanted to put their coal plants out of business because they're poisoning everyone. Of course a nuclear plant doesn't really compete with coal economically (few things do) so to do this the plan was giving the plants free money and cheap fuel. If this were true here, the same would be happening.
However, as the cost of wind and solar plummeted, these plans are rapidly changing. The plans used to be based on a 400+GWe nuclear buildout by 2050, but these have been scaled back to 60GW with another 30 at the outside. Meanwhile, wind power has already reached 115GW at the end of 2014, more than the nuclear plants. Current install rates for wind are far greater than the peak installation rate for nuclear would have been even at the highest end of the original projections. Since 2012, much of the planned nuclear capacity of the earlier plans has been moved to wind. Gansu alone is expected to grow to a staggering 20 GW.
Read all about it:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-A-F/China--Nuclear-Power/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_China
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-25623400