Nuclear Power In the United States: Finally Ready For Its Second Act
Something happened this week in the American power industry that has not occurred in at least 30 years: Applications were filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build new nuclear reactors.
The last application was made in 1977, two years before the infamous partial meltdown at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (One report says it was 1973.)
Nuclear power went into eclipse in the U.S. not because it was an unsafe technology, although it did have its issues, but because the knuckleheads who ran TMI and other nuclear plants made a compelling case that the did not take public safety seriously enough and were not to be trusted.
The myriad safety problems hidden by the nuclear power industry came crashing home in admittedly exaggerated form in 1979 in The China Syndrome. The hit movie, revelations that TMI’s owners had done a fair share of covering up and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 further cemented public mistrust, and that more than any other reason is why no nuke plants have been built in the U.S. since forever.
But now a new generation of nuclear plants will be coming on line. This primarily is because new designs make them inherently safer and the 2005 Energy Policy Act considerably streamlines the licensing and regulatory processes and provides substantial tax credits to utility companies.
Ironically, there is a second reason as well: Global warming.
This bring us to the Supreme Court’s smackdown of the Environmental Protection Agency back in April.
A divided court, ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, found that the EPA could not claim that it lacked the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles.
In a further irony, nuclear power — which in theory creates no pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions — is the biggest beneficiary of the ruling because wind power, solar power and other renewable technologies favored by Greens remain too limited technologically and economically to make much of an impact in an American energy economy addicted to fossil fuels.
The applications filed this week with the NRC are for two huge 1,350-megawatt advanced boiling water reactors that would join two existing NRG Energy reactors at the South Texas nuclear power plant in Bay City, Texas, near Houston. The price tag: $6 – $7 billion.
France and Japan have leaped ahead of the once dominant U.S. in nuclear technology in the last quarter century and the reactor vessel heads for the Texas reactors will be manufactured by Japan Steel Works, the only forge in the world now capable of casting the huge structures.
One lingering question is whether anti-nuclear organizations like Greenpeace, Public Citizen and the Natural Resources Defense Council will be able to mount a last-ditch campaign against the revival.
William Tucker writes in The American Spectator that:
“While continuing to play brazenly on public fears (NRDC’s latest position paper has the word “Radioactive” emblazoned across the top), environmental groups have also become more circumspect in their arguments. Rather than conjuring up ‘silent bombs’ and nuclear holocausts, they now make the following arguments:
“Nuclear is too expensive. Investors will never go for it.
“The money would be much better invested in conservation and solar energy.
“Nuclear power is not carbon-free. The mining, processing and transportation of uranium consume vast amounts of energy supplied by fossil fuels.”
The NRC says it expects U.S. companies to file applications for about 30 new combined construction and operating licenses in coming months.
I was downwind from Three Mile Island and was not a happy camper. But times have changed and I’m looking forward to nuclear power’s belated second act.
More here.
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65 Responses to “Nuclear Power In the United States: Finally Ready For Its Second Act”
There is quite a thread here. It is good to see that there are some people that are actively seeking information and are willing to learn and discuss. For those who prefer to make assertions based on few facts and little understanding, I hope that you open your mind a bit.
First of all I will admit my bias – I am definitely interested in making money from my investments of time and money into the atomic business. However, I do not think that being an atomic entrepreneur qualifies me as a “shill” for anyone else – if I get paid for my work it is because someone values what I am already saying, not because someone has managed to pay me to say what they want me to say.
I initially earned my atomic understanding as a submarine engineer officer. I then spent the better part of three years worth of free time in the library and in engineering classes refining my understanding of the existing technology and refining an idea I had for a refinement to that technology that is intended to alleviate some of the current cost, schedule and flexibility disadvantages that large, conventional reactors have. If you want to learn more about that search for Adams Engines.
Atomic energy is clean, abundant, potentially low cost, reliable, and it is a serious competitor to oil, coal, and gas.
Any energy source clean enough to be sealed inside a submarine full of people is worth considering and anything safe enough to put on a floating city full of young American sailors is at least as safe as our existing power sources.
One thing that my technical and political research has shown me is that a major reason that people have so much misunderstanding of the potential benefits of the technology is that it is a huge economic threat to the fossil fuel industry. Anyone who seriously studies human history – especially in the period since the Industrial Revolution – will understand that the control and distribution of fossil fuels is an intricate part of that history. Most of the world’s power brokers have at least some involvement in the industry.
Uranium is a fuel with unique qualities – a handful costing about $90 contains more energy than 30 tanker trucks full of petroleum worth more than half a million dollars. Converting the uranium to electricity does not release any pollution to the environment because it can be completely sealed up, but burning 30 tanker trucks full of oil produces a lot of deadly waste that must be dispersed to the environment.
Reactors do not have to be big, they do not have to cost billions of dollars, they do not even have to be limited to producing electricity. The fossil fuel industry and its associated industries (railroads, pipe manufacturers, banks, shipping companies, and many others) do no want you to learn about atomic energy. They prefer to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about the only competitor that poses a proven threat to their market share and profitability.
Feel free to visit Atomic Insights to learn more.
Rod Adams
Editor, Atomic Insights
Well, at least the shills are now IDing themselves.
Yet, the fact remains that there is no safe way to get rid of nuke waste, and the only arguments for it are relative cheapness, monetarily, vs. the startup and R&D costs for alt sources.
Ain’t greed wonderful?
I’m a big fat pinko, but I like nuke powr.
Global warmin has changed the equation a bit, so local, long-lived, and radioactive polution is better than global (atmospheric), climate-changing pollution. So the inevitable slips, spills and stains are winning the cost-benefit race, perversely.
About waste: an advanced fuel cycle to reprocess waste and fast-neutron reactors can greatly reduce radioactive waste. But the more you fuck around with waste, spills and accidents become that much more likely.
Which brings me to my main concern: human error. As a big, fat pinko, I have so very little faith in our heroic private enterprizes to not cut mad corners and drip that icky yellow uranium water all over the place in order to save their Lord and Savior $$$.
So I have a really dim opinion of people who just up and call wind and solar uneconomic or impractical. We’re not putting in the effort to see how well they can integrate into the energy system. We can expand subsidies and tax credits, put federal research money into these technologies, and see where we get in a few years. We can really pressure people to conserve, and see how much energy we actually need. But to just dismiss wind and solar is about as silly as calling nuclear uneconomical. We’re talking about the actual inputs to make our society function at the basic level. We’ll make them somehow, assuming we haven’t let private corporations dismantle our infrastructure and sell it to the Chinese for scrap. The question is, are we going to make the effort to persue every avenue, or just sell out to the next power- and profit-hungry group who can buy enough legislators? Are we going to demand actual humans get elected? Or are we going to keep playing with the two parties, acting like they have any substantial ideas to be “moderate” about, while it’s the same old corruption at the end of the day?
I agree. As I styated, the main arg’s against alt sources id that the R&D and start up costs may be more, although the costs down the road will likely be vastly less, as things gets to scale- not to mention that the cost of a single spill to the environment can be Chernobyl or worse.
But, I’m far less sanguine about our ability to dispose of and deactivate the waste, even if $ is removed from the equation.
This is false. If you want to look at analysis across the whole of life cycle, in terms of grams of CO2 per kWh generated, nuclear energy is far better than solar photovoltaics, and is on par with energy systems such as wind and geothermal – up there with the best of them.
Tens of millions of years? The numbers that people quote for these time scales seem to keep going up, and up, and up! It’s quite obvious the numbers are simply made up.
The radioactive fission products that constitute radioactive waste from nuclear energy will remain radioactive and dangerous for about 500 years.
There’s a foolproof way to detoxify radioactive materials – in fact, it detoxifies itself with no intervention at all – it’s called radioactive decay, and all it takes is time.
There is a foolproof way to isolate radioactive waste from the environment for hundreds of years while it decays.
We’re going to do exactly the same thing that Nature did with its radioactive waste from nuclear reactors two billion years ago. But we can do it even better.
Enoch- well- no we cannot.
a) Nuke wastes, made by most conventional reactors- will take tens of thousands of years to decay- with certain byproducts much longer. The only place to store them is in isolated caves. But, earthquakes, or water seepage can rust and rupture containers so that waste can get into soil, water tables etc.
It’s nice to see that the pro-nuke lobby is spamming TMV, though.
But, couldn’t you be a bit less obvious?
So, which radionuclides you have in mind when you say that?
It is of course clear that I’m pro-nuclear. Nobody’s asking the anti-nuclear energy people to be any less obvious.
I don’t work in the nuclear energy industry nor do i have any commercial interest in it.
The radioactive waste generated from the nuclear reactors at Oklo, two billion years ago, didn’t have containers that could rupture or rust.
‘The radioactive waste generated from the nuclear reactors at Oklo, two billion years ago, didn’t have containers that could rupture or rust.’
So, was this before the Borh seeded the earth, or after Von Daniken’s ancient astronauts?
[...] Anti-nuclear quote of the day. From a nuclear energy discussion thread over at The Moderate Voice: [...]
Cosmoetica
Would you be so kind as to let me ask you the following questions:
A. How often does a radioactive atom emit radiation? Your choices for the answer are: 1) All the time; 2) Once in a while according to half-life; 3) Once; 4) Never; 5) I don’t know.
B. If you were forced to choose between putting five atoms of Uranium (long half-life alpha emitter) or five atoms of Bismuth-197 (short half-life alpha emitter), which would you choose?
These two questions are basic, elementary questions about how radioactive materials work. The answers have profound implications on the risk (or lack of risk) from radiation. If you cannot answer them correctly, then unfortunately you have been poorly educated about radiation. Note: this does not imply that you are dumb or stupid. Au contraire. It just means no one taught you how radiation works and how our bodies handle radiation effects.
There is a large fear in our society about radioactive waste disposal, but when one understands the implications of the above questions, the fear goes away. If you would like me to expand on this, let me know.
FYI: For my entire career, I’ve been associated with the safety aspects of radiation use in medical and academic settings (I have no nuclear power or weapons association). I teach radiation safety and risk.
The answers to the questions are:
A. #3, a radioactive atom only emits radiation once. The rest of the time, it is behaving like a normal atom.
B. The long half-life nuclide (Uranium) as the odds are the five atoms will never emit their radiation during your life-time.
Well, cosmoetica, you don’t know much about the Oklo, West African Natural Nuclear Reactors? Not made up, actually occrurred and well documented. In fact here some data on them from the US Dept. of Energy:
At that time, going back 1.7 billion years, there was far more natural uranium in the crust than there was now and U235 was almost 3%. Just add water and fission occurs. This is what happened in what is not Oklo, Gabon in Africa. These suckers were uncontrolled fission for 500 million years or MORE. The water would evaporate, thus un-moderating the nuetrons, killing off the reaction. Then it would get wet again, etc, ad infinitum until the uranium deposit was burned up.
The WHOLE POINT of this is that the total left over ‘waste’ never, in a billion years, “moved” relative to other areas of Gabon, thus proving the ability, and safety, of geological storage of wastes.
left-atomics
[...] The Moderate Voice – The money would be much better invested in conservation and solar energy. Nuclear power is not carbon-free. The mining, processing of CO2 per kWh generated, nuclear energy is far better than solar photovoltaics, and is on par with energy systems Read More [...]
[...] The Moderate Voice – It is still better than gas or coal but far more than what it is for wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable energy technologies. That is why it has the support of those who understand the facts. And, if we wanna speak of motives, the only Continue Reading [...]
[...] Nuclear Power In the United States: Finally Ready For Its Second ActThe Moderate Voice – is the biggest beneficiary of the ruling because wind power, solar power and other renewable technologies favored by Greens refinement to that technology that is intended to alleviate some of the current cost, schedule and flexibility disadvantages [...]
[...] The Moderate Voice – That will come as an incredible suprise to Affordable Internet Services Online (AISO) who have been doing it for over 6 years . I provided just now some links in another posting that direct the reader to some company reactor-design Web pages, and on next [...]