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."

Comments

And why not?

[daveschroeder]

Considering that nuclear power is the safest form of power the world has ever known, I'd say it's worthy of recognition for offsetting carbon more than anything else. To borrow a phrase, "It's the energy density, stupid."

There's a reason why China has 30 nuclear plants under construction, while the US just approved its first new plant in 30 years.

Re:And why not?

[Gavagai80]

In case you're serious, nuclear plants are not capable of exploding into atomic bombs. And they're not really a partisan issue, lots of liberals like them, myself included.

Re:And why not?

[quenda]

when it goes wrong it renders a large area of land uninhabitable,

When a hydroelectric scheme goes right, it renders a large area of land uninhabitable.
China's Three Gorges covers 1000 km2 and displaced over a million people. And if anything goes horribly wrong, ...

Re:And why not?

[atherophage]

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.

Re:And why not?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Safe until it kills millions when a plant blows up.

Unlike, say, coal, which kills millions under normal operations, right?

Or didn't you know that routine coal-mining fatalities are a couple of orders of magnitude more numerous than all fatalities associated with nuclear power? Hell, coal mining fatalities in the 20th century in the USA ALONE were comparable to the death-toll from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

And then there's the rest of the world's coal mining casualties, plus secondary effects from the pollution.

And never mind that nuclear plants don't "blow up". Unless you fill them up with TNT and set it off, of course.

Re:And why not?

[MightyMartian]

Safe except for the byproducts, which are most definitely not safe. I'm not an opponent of nuclear, but it's ludicrous to claim that it is safer than, say, geothermal or solar.

Re:And why not?

[tp1024]

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.

Re:And why not?

[garyisabusyguy]

Suspicion just requires that I see things that make me suspicious

Greenpeace claims to advocate for the environment
CO2 presents a huge threat to the environment
Nuclear power offers a way to maintain a baseline power supply without creating CO2
Greenpeace constantly works against the building of nuclear power plants
When one of the founders of Greenpeace spoke out about the advantages of nuclear power not creating CO2, they removed him from the organization
Nuclear power represents a threat to the fossil fuel industry's position as the primary baseline power supplier
By fighting nuclear power through lawsuits, Greenpeace makes it more likely that we will continue to use fossil fuels, even though they are causing damage to the environment by releasing CO2

There is nothing slanderous about stating the facts that present themselves
If I want to say that it makes me suspicious, then that is my right

Re:And why not?

[Maury Markowitz]

> 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

Re:Full benefits & Full responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay so then we will also do the same for all the radioactive impurities in coal power too. I mean burning it and letting spread across the land is just fine. How about the coal ask ponds that are already busting and polluting water and land.

You don't want to pay the full cost of the power you use. You are just happy to ignore the costs while pointing at nuclear and saying look at all that toxic waste. Except the amount is miniscule compared to traditional power sources. The problem is all the FUD related to nuclear power prevents and one from even considering to build a safe disposal location. Doesn't matter if it is 100 miles from anyone people still don't want THAT waste there. They are happy to have fraking fluids in their water and coal ash in their rivers, but forget putting that radioactive waste inside a mountain a 100 miles from me.

Re:Full benefits & Full responsibility

[pubwvj]

Rather the point. If they want to claim the special benefit credits they need to take full responsibility along with it.

He's just trolling

[rsilvergun]

it's easy to spot since he calls one of the political party's out by name. There's still some weight to the NIMBY folks though. The trouble with nuclear, at least in America, is that it's damn near impossible to keep it safe. Sooner or later some venture capital firm notices how much money's being spent on safety and moves in with promises of "efficiency", takes over the plant operation and starts cutting back. That's really what the NIMBY crowd worries about, they're just not allowed to talk about it because those same venture capitalists are our ruling class. It's pretty much the same thing that happened in Japan. They knew the plants weren't safe but didn't want to spend the money. Big disaster, lots will die of cancers and the like, but nobody important go in trouble.

Re:Full benefits & Full responsibility

[Tailhook]

Payment in advance please.

Already paid, at least in the US. The US has been accumulating funds via taxes to do exactly as you demand since early days of Nuclear power. The nuclear industry, it's rate payers and their governments have already set the precedent you demand and paid the taxes you demand.

Nuclear waste is not a finance problem or a physics problem. It's a political problem, and the political problem comes from hysterical, low-information anti-nooks coupled with anti-energy, anti-prosperity libtards.

Re:Well, well, well, taking about safety...

[Firethorn]

...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

Fukushima and Chernobyl not worse case failures

[WolfWithoutAClause]

In Japan, they found at one point that there was a possibility of it *seriously* going to hell in a hand basket.

If the wind had been really wrong, it would have put serious fallout over Tokyo; which would have been really, really, really bad. While few people would have died, the economic disruption would have been (without any hyperbole) unbelievably stupendous.

http://world.time.com/2012/02/...

You can tell me all you want that this kind of accident can never happen, but I just don't believe it. We have no reason to think that Chernobyl or Fukushima were the worse cases, nor that these kinds of failures cannot happen again worse.

Re:Carbon Neutral?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.