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Nuclear Energy: The Good News and the Bad News In the EPA Clean Energy Plan
Lasrick writes: Peter Bradford explains what the EPA's new Clean Power Plan has in store for nuclear energy. He provides an excellent explanation of the details of the plan, and how the nuclear industry benefits (or doesn't). "The competitive position of all new low-carbon electricity sources will improve relative to fossil fuels. New reactors (including the five under construction) and expansions of existing plants will count toward state compliance with the plan's requirements as new sources of low-carbon energy. Existing reactors, however, must sink or swim on their own prospective economic performance—the final plan includes no special carbon-reduction credits to help them."
3 points...
1. I believe that nuclear energy must be part of our nation's power supply. Wind and solar should as well, but they alone won't do it, we need nuclear to get off coal, oil, and natural gas.
2. I believe that anyone running a nuclear plant needs to be responsible for the total end to end costs of it, from site prep to site clean when the place is shut down.
3. I believe we must repeal the restrictions and bans on various types of reactors. We need new designs, the ability to build breeder reactors, run them on plutonium, and develop newer safer designs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Nuclear waste is a concern, but keep in mind that waste that is highly radioactive generally has a short half-life and waste that is long lasting is generally not very radioactive to begin with, or isn't after a short while.
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As a side note, I'm always reluctant to say "more government anything", however it is possible that nuclear reactors are just not something that for-profit companies should run, since the temptation to shortcut safety is always present. The US Navy has used nuclear power for years with very few problems, perhaps we should simply have the Navy run our reactors and sell the power.
The question I would ask in response is why is nuclear so expensive?
At its core, it shouldn't be. It is simply heat decay of radioactive materials heating a liquid to run steam turbines, it is simple stuff in concept, but seems to be insanely expensive in practice. One of the challenges is that we have never allowed economies of scale into nuclear, every plant is a one-off build and they are spaced too far apart to really develop. It is like hand building cars vs. Ford's assembly line. Wind and solar are made on assembly lines, so it is hard to compare them. Get nuclear up to 50% of the world's power generation and it may well get cheap.
The other issue is that if price alone determined what we build, then coal, oil, and natural gas would continue to make sense.
Finally, keep in mind that we like a dependable power grid. Wind and solar vary from place to place, and while the idea of "the wind is always blowing somewhere" sounds nice, it often isn't blowing where you need it.
We would need a whole new power grid to really make wind and solar work like people want it to, and that would change the economics of both options.
While that sounds nice, the issue there would be, "then we should build lots and lots of natural gas and coal power plants, since they cost less than solar and wind do.
I live in Texas, we make more wind power than any other state. We have the right to buy our power from any of dozens of different companies.
Wind power costs more than coal power does, when you get the bill. Maybe it shouldn't, but it does.
A whole new power grid is probably where we are headed. Tesla is cranking up its battery business precisely for this reason. If every home had a car or two with a battery that could be tapped for grid supplementation, the grid can be very dependable. And don't forget at least part of the US has huge hydro plants that can be kicked in when needed to balance the grid to demand. The barriers here are only political. The timeline to make these changes makes the timeline for nuclear power seem positively glacial.
A new nuclear power plant takes decades to plan and construct. Wind and solar can be implemented in a few years, depending on the scale of the individual project. Why would we subsidize a nuclear plant that would take decades when we can have new wind or solar up and running in a few years?
All power sources have gotten subsidies over the years, mainly because abundant low cost energy is seen a central to a thriving economy. Nuclear has received a lot of subsidies, but has also produce huge amounts of clean air power in return. If you calculated in on a per MWH basis, no energy source has ever been subsidized nearly as heavily as solar and wind are. Its not even close. And that includes estimating future generation from installed sources. If you would give nuclear 1/3 of what solar and wind are getting on a per MWH basis, there would be a rush to get going.
Levelized cost projections from a credible, objective source can be found here: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/a...
Of course, there is value in being consistent and dispatchable rather than variable and non-dispatchable that is not reflected in these numbers, nor are the cost of overcapacity required if were were to be fully wind and solar based. What is included in the levelized cost for nuclear is waste disposal and decommissioning, just in case you were wondering.
Not a massive "if" at all. Here is how it works. You buy an electric car and keep it plugged in. You charge it when energy costs are low, and SELL electricity back to the grid when rates are high. This is assuming you want to make some spare cash while your car is parked. Most cars will be out driving during at least part of the daylight hours when solar power is being generated. As the sun goes down the car can sell some of its leftover power while demand is still high but solar power is unavailable. The battery will be recharged later in the night when demand for power is down but power is still being generated by fixed output sources like coal, nuclear, and geothermal plants.
No one is forced to participate. If you want to make some cash you sign up for this. If you imagine even half of the electric cars participating in this program, you have a massive power storage grid. And there are more electric cars being built every day.
Second, the political barriers in the power grid involve power companies cooperating to maintain power availability. This isn't an insurmountable problem. This is really different from the political issues that surround the construction of nuclear plants.