Our energy policy over the past 30 plus years has been abysmal. We have gone from having a robust electrical grid that had margin in the system to allow it to meet summer peaks in demand, to a strained system with rolling brown-outs in California. We have been in a state of paralysis due to competing economic, ideological and political interests, and the NIMBY mindset. Having oil from overseas coming in at $27 per barrel also made it easy to do nothing.
In a previous post I began to lay out some of the energy issues confronting our country, and how nuclear power is the most logical choice as an alternative to oil. In this article I expand on the feasibility of deploying nuclear power, its current availability, and some of the safety concerns. The hopelessness of attempting to use other alternatives such as wind, given the current state of that technology, is also touched upon.
Oil is now over $140 per barrel; much of it going to countries whose regimes are openly hostile. The economy is being impacted negatively by the price of oil and its corresponding $500B per year drag on the economy. It will only get worse. Not planning for this day to come is an epic failure on the part of our political leadership from both parties. For the past three decades, this threat has been on the horizon. The collective lack of vision, cowardice, and pandering to partisan supporters has brought us to this predicament. The failure is tragic, because it was ever so preventable.
Currently the United States has 104 Nuclear Power Plants. These power plants provide us with 97.4GW of electricity, which is ~19% of all electrical power generation in the country. These power plants are operating in 31 states, in 65 locations. There are 27 shutdown reactors, many of which can be brought back on line with some overhaul. In 1972 the United States had 42 commercial reactors, the number of reactors rose steadily to 96 by 1985. The number of reactors peaked at 112 in 1990, with a peak in percentage electrical production of 21% occurring in 2001. The French currently get 78% of their electrical power from nuclear reactors.
For us to achieve the same level of independence from fossil fuels we would need to build over 250 new reactors. McCain proposes 45 new reactors, which can be charitably characterized as a ‘good start‘. Obama proposes no new nuclear power generation, this defies charitable characterization. According to Westinghouse, the time it takes to bring a modern class reactor on line is 3 to 5 years.
The AP1000 design saves money and time with an accelerated construction time period of approximately 36 months, from the pouring of first concrete to the loading of fuel.
The 5 year number is intentionally pessimistic so as to account for site preparation etc. Furthermore, if we start building 45 let alone 250 such plants the construction time is likely to decrease. When compared to the most optimistic estimates as to when the other zero emission powers sources will come on line this 3 to 5 year wait appears wildly optimistic; for other alternative energy sources such as solar, wind or bio-diesel will start to produce electricity on this scale in some 30 years, maybe. Can we afford to bank our nations future on such whimsy?
The peak number of plants we had under construction was 5 per year from 1980 to 1985. The nuclear industry outside the U.S. has not been idle, there are many modern designs to choose from, all of which are far safer than the infamous TMI design (whose safety systems were successful in stopping the problem from escalating). If we where to bring 5 or more new reactors on line for the next 20 to 40 years we could retire the use of fossil fuels. Such a pace is not beyond the industry’s capacity, and, if commitment is made to pursue this known technology, the rate of plant construction can be greatly increased over time.
Our need for energy will increase over the coming years. According to the DOE, the number of households will increase by over 25% by 2030. This increase will require the production of electricity in the US to accelerate. Considering that US production has stagnated over the past decades, this is a worrisome prospect. We are on our way to a having third world energy grid if we do not take decisive action now.
FORECASTS INDICATE that the U.S. will need about 335 billion W of new generating capacity by 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy, Science & Technology.
That is a huge increase in needed capacity. To ensure we meet this need, we must turn to a source that can cover the current shortfall and expand on an industrial scale to meet the growing future needs. Conservation alone will not meet our needs; wind power, typified by 2MW wind mills that require 1200 such wind mills to generate as much electricity as a single modern 1GW nuclear plant, will never meet our needs.
To match nuclear power, wind power would need to build 240,000 2MW windmills. At three months per windmill, it will be a century before wind power could meet our needs in 2025. When the forecast calls then for an increase of some 50 new nuclear reactors just to maintain the current 20% of electrical production, how many more fossil fuel based plants does this then indicate? If we choose to ignore the current inadequacy of other alternative power how much economic misery will this bring?
Generation III and IV Nuclear reactor designs are far and away safer than their predecessors and are thereby building on a very solid foundation. The generation II reactors have an excellent safety record.
Generation III systems were developed in the 1990s and feature enhanced safety systems. They are more economical to build, operate, and maintain than the previous generation …
… a vast amount of effort is going into enhancing the safety of advanced generation III+ reactor designs that are now evolving and the revolutionary generation IV technologies. They all incorporate what is known as passive safety systems.
The current coal fired plants put more Thorium and other radioactive debris into the atmosphere as part of their typical operation than will be generated and contained by a nuclear power plant. Japan is in the most seismically active regions of the world, and they have made the decision to develop this for power. Europe has also made the decision to press ahead despite the fact that they are far more densely populated than we are.
We are approaching a crossroads where we need to make some hard choices. Nothing is guaranteed in life, that is why the founders sought to protect our right to pursue happiness, note they did not guarantee happiness, just its pursuit; to continue to be paralyzed by ignorance, fear and the hope that the problem will just go away will lead to an economic collapse. Along the way to this collapse, by not choosing, we then do nothing and watch our wealth continue to line the pockets of those who hate us via the oil we will then buy and use.
The alternative is that we, like other first world nations, begin the long overdue path to becoming free of these parasites. Considering that the during last oil embargo we imported 30% of our oil, imagine the impact of such an embargo now — we import 60% of our oil today. At the very least, nuclear power can buy us the time to develop a power source that would satisfy even the most militant environmentalist.