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News :: Economy : Environment : Health : Nukes |
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Nuclear Deficits |
Current rating: 0 |
by Peter Bradford and Kurt Gottfried
(No verified email address) |
16 Sep 2006
Modified: 11:34:42 AM |
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Simple prudence and common sense argue in favor of a go-slow approach to nuclear power until we have an international safeguards system genuinely commensurate with the inherent proliferation risks. The U.S. nuclear regulatory process must also be redirected away from its propensity to act as an industry cheerleader, through more statesmanlike presidential appointments and stronger Congressional oversight. Until we have solid evidence that the other carbon-free and carbon-neutral technologies cannot meet the climate challenge, a rush to a major nuclear expansion would be an expensive and divisive impediment to the formation of sound energy and climate policies. |
Now, finally, there is mounting recognition that the worldwide quest for economic growth and the energy needed to fuel it are on a collision course with nature.
Whatever one may have thought about nuclear power in the past, the rising climate change threat is such that all options for dealing with it must be examined in light of this urgency. But even then, nuclear power does not deserve the favored place that Washington is conferring on it among the options available to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
How big a part of the solutions pie could nuclear power be? Its potential contribution to reducing climate change is limited. The risks of accidents, terrorism and nuclear proliferation could undermine expansion efforts, and make nuclear power an unreliable option for the future. Waste issues remain unresolved and pose political problems for U.S. expansion. Common sense dictates support for the quickest, safest, and most cost effective measures, and nuclear power does not fit that bill.
A widely noted examination of this question by Princeton professors Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala (summarized in the September 2006 issue of Scientific American-- http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=000EABE4-BDFF-14E5-BDFF83414B7F0000&pageNumber=2&catID=2) shows that to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions in 50 years requires substantial reductions starting promptly. Therefore, technologies that already exist and can be “rapidly” expanded should be given the highest near-term priority—wind energy, for instance.
The study introduces the useful concept of a “wedge,” defined as any measure that would, over the next 50 years, lead to a global reduction of 25 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions relative to business as usual. The number of wedges that will be required to avoid dangerous climate change will depend on many factors. Under optimistic assumptions, some seven wedges will be needed; this number could increase significantly under less optimistic assumptions.
The study provides a list of measures from technologies to public policy initiatives that exist today and could be scaled up to become one or more wedges. In brief, energy efficiency and conservation comprise four wedges, alternatives to gasoline-powered transportation accounts for another four, and increasing natural sinks provides two wedges. Generating electricity in less carbon intensive ways contributes five wedges. Of the latter, at most just one wedge would be contributed by a world-wide tripling of nuclear power.
However, safety and security risks could hobble growth potential. We know from both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island that nuclear power is never more vulnerable to serious accidents than when safety procedures are under pressure to yield faster and cheaper results. This syndrome is rampant in today’s Washington, where the new chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has just promised further cutbacks to licensing reviews and hearings that have already been eviscerated.
A serious reactor accident (or successful terrorist attack) would inevitably hobble the expansion of nuclear power (as did both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island). Hence the ability of nuclear power to provide a wedge is held hostage to the industry’s worst performers, while pressure to take shortcuts is higher than ever.
And while the world may tolerate very infrequent reactor accidents, it will not tolerate an expansion of nuclear power that substantially increases the likelihood that a nuclear weapon will again destroy a city. Tripling nuclear power around the world under the present regime of international safeguards would carry that risk. The Iranian nuclear power program, for instance, provides cover for a program that has brought that country closer to having nuclear weapons.
With increased nuclear power also comes nuclear waste. While the problem of disposing of nuclear wastes can—from a technical and a safety standpoint—probably be postponed for decades by a well-conceived program of dry cask storage, the political challenge of tripling nuclear generating capacity without an actual disposal plan is another matter. The CEO of Exelon, a U.S. utility often mentioned as being likely to build a new unit, says that he will not do so until he can “look the public in the eye and say, 'If we build a plant, here's where the waste will go.'”
Finally, no nuclear plant has ever been built through a process that was both transparent and open to competition from all potential power sources. Private investors have shown no willingness to put money into nuclear plants in which they must bear the risk of the power being too expensive. To overcome nuclear power’s ongoing incompatibility with these principles of democracy and capitalism, the Bush administration and Congress in 2005 assembled a package of subsidies sufficient to halve the cost that the first few units must recover in the marketplace, thereby making these units competitive with new gas and coal plants, though not with many forms of energy efficiency. This package of subsidies is disproportionate to anything being offered to energy efficiency or to renewable energy despite their far more promising near-term potential in the “wedge” hierarchy.
But even if these subsidies and licensing shortcuts produce what their proponents hope, they will prove only that the government can compel the taxpayers to build nuclear plants. The actual costs, operating performance, and competitive position of nuclear power will not be known until the new plants have come on line and operated for a while. Even if all goes far better than past U.S. nuclear construction history would suggest, these first few units will not be a basis for a major upturn in industry fortunes for nearly two decades.
A wiser approach to both climate change and nuclear power would set the necessary emission targets and assure that they are reflected in fuel prices through a mandatory carbon cap-and-trade program or revenue neutral carbon tax. Under such a framework, subsidies to individual technologies would be less critical and could be directed in proportion to each technology’s potential to reduce rapidly global warming emissions (and oil dependence).
Simple prudence and common sense argue in favor of a go-slow approach to nuclear power until we have an international safeguards system genuinely commensurate with the inherent proliferation risks. The U.S. nuclear regulatory process must also be redirected away from its propensity to act as an industry cheerleader, through more statesmanlike presidential appointments and stronger Congressional oversight. Until we have solid evidence that the other carbon-free and carbon-neutral technologies cannot meet the climate challenge, a rush to a major nuclear expansion would be an expensive and divisive impediment to the formation of sound energy and climate policies.
Peter Bradford is a former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Kurt Gottfried is professor of physics emeritus at Cornell University. They are vice-chair and chair respectively of the Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Formed in 1969, the Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices. |
See also:
http://www.ucsusa.org/
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