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New Clinton Nuke?: Nuclear Looks Worse than Ever |
Current rating: 0 |
by Meir Carasso repost of interest to downwinders
(No verified email address) |
30 Apr 2005
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The News-Gazette has run several letters in the last few days attacking those who raised concerns about Exelon's plans to build a new nuclear plant at Clinton at a hearing last week. A quick review of the facts is needed, because it's hard to educate the ignorant supporters of nuclear power in a 250-word letter to the editor. |
President Bush is promoting the use of nuclear power plants to generate electricity. It seems a political choice. Investing in nuclear power plants can be attempted only by very large corporations, of the kind that are in his support base. They belong to a very exclusive big-money club, and there are many billions of dollars at stake. But to belong, one also has to be willing to forget Three Mile Island, to forget market economics, nuclear proliferation, radioactive waste and, in particular, to forget nuclear terrorism.
The nuclear industry, unlike, say, the automobile industry, is not a self-sufficient, commercial industry. From its inception in the late 1950s, the commercial nuclear-power enterprise in this country developed a dual personality, as it were. It is schizophrenic. It had to be, and is entirely, dependent on agencies of the federal government. The reason is that what makes a nuclear power plant "nuclear" is its fissionable fuel, and nuclear fuel is radioactive. Because radioactive materials are toxic, and concerns of national security, the government today has to be a party to every phase of nuclear power generation, from beginning to end.
Consequently, the "first personality" of the nuclear industry is that of a compliant, highly dependent and regulated industry. The federal government manufactures the industry's radioactive fuel and lends it to a power plant for temporary use. The government has to certify and license the detailed design of each power plant, approve each site, supervise and certify each construction detail, certify fuel loading and initial operation, certify and monitor the power plant's operating procedures and personnel, and finally, the government has to reclaim the irradiated fuel when it is no longer useful for electric power production — that is, when it is considered spent.
The "second personality" of the nuclear industry is similar to that of any other industry in a market economy. The ground rules are simple: As a business necessity, a nuclear power plant has to be insured, and to prove itself profitable and economically competitive against other technologies in the market for producing electricity.
Here you meet two fatal shortcomings of the nuclear industry: No insurance company has ever agreed to insure a nuclear power plant. A nuclear plant is too risky to insure. Congress had to step in and pass a law that limits the owner's liability (called The Price Anderson Act of 1957. You and I, dear taxpayer, are the industry's insurance). And regarding competitiveness, Nuclear News, the American Nuclear Society's magazine of March 2005, had this to say:
"Nuclear advocates have made it clear in recent months that even if all regulatory matters were settled ... the actual ordering and building of new power reactors would depend heavily at first on financial incentives to reduce the cost burden to those organizations that build the first plants."
So much for competitiveness.
Since the events of Sept. 11, 2001, operating nuclear power plants include a huge new vulnerability. Because of insurmountable safety and technical challenges, and public resistance to siting of a federal repository for radioactive wastes, the government has failed to reclaim spent nuclear fuel from any of the 103 operating nuclear power plants. Consequently, spent fuel continues to be "temporarily" stored at each plant site, by the plant owner, in water-filled, spent-fuel pools. These pools are now recognized as a nuclear terrorism hazard.
On March 28, the Washington Post revealed that the National Academy of Sciences completed a study commissioned by Congress, and in a classified report raised concerns about terrorist attacks on spent fuel pools.
The existence of the NAS report was made public only when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates nuclear power plants and is responsible for certifying their safety, responded to the NAS report with a defensive, but unclassified, letter that disagreed with its findings.
On April 6, the NAS released a declassified version of its report, titled: "Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report." In the section called "Summary for Congress" the report states:
"(1) Spent fuel pools are necessary at all operating nuclear power plants to store recently discharged fuel.
(2) The committee [of the NAS] judges that successful terrorist attacks on spent fuel pools, though difficult, are possible.
(3) If an attack leads to a propagating zirconium cladding fire, it could result in the release of large amounts of radioactive material.
(4) Additional analyses are needed to understand more fully the vulnerabilities and consequences of events ..."
The report uses declassified, guarded language. It raises new doubts and unanswered questions about specific nuclear terrorist attacks, and the release of radioactivity with possibly devastating consequences. Yes, they should indeed be "understood more fully."
In summary: It is a fact that in the last 50 years or so, electricity-generating nuclear power plants have been tested for competitiveness in the U.S. marketplace and have failed the test. In spite of ongoing government regulatory support and incentives, no new nuclear power plants have been ordered by industry in the last 32 years. Apart from failing the market test, the industry has failed to resolve the public's concerns about radioactive materials.
Rejection of nuclear power in the United States is the result of failure to resolve conflicts between the business objectives of privately owned corporations, and the extraordinary public safeguarding and security needs (including nuclear terrorism) necessitated by the use of fissionable materials and relegated to government. Our energy future is elsewhere.
Meir Carasso who holds a Ph.D. in engineering, worked for the U.S. and California governments and in private industry. He lives in Boulder.
Copyright 2005, The Daily Camera and the E.W. Scripps Company
http://www.dailycamera.com/ |
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Interest in Building Reactors, but Industry Is Still Cautious |
by Matthew L. Wald
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
01 May 2005
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WASHINGTON, April 30 - President Bush may be cheerleading for nuclear power, but the electric industry is not ready to order new reactors.
Electric companies have shown more interest in building nuclear reactors in the last few months than they have in the last two decades. But conditions are not yet right to induce companies and investors to gamble the billion or two it would take to build a reactor and see whether the country is ready for a second round of plants, according to industry experts.
The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Nils J. Diaz, said he expects five or six applications by 2008 and has asked Congress for money to add staff members to handle them. "I have no proof, but that's what they tell me," he said in a telephone interview on Friday. "They come around and whisper, 'You need to have the people there.' "
But others remain cautious. John W. Rowe, the chairman of Exelon, the largest nuclear operator in the United States, says that the high price of natural gas is an incentive to build new plants, but that an offsetting factor is the continuing low cost of coal. The lack of a solution for nuclear waste is also a deterrent.
Mr. Rowe's company, though, is spending millions of dollars to win early approval from the nuclear commission for a new reactor site next to its existing reactor near Clinton in central Illinois. The company is at least five years from a decision on whether to build there, Mr. Rowe said.
Dominion, an energy company based in Richmond, Va., is also applying to have a site approved for a new reactor. But Thomas E. Capps, the chairman and chief executive, said in a telephone interview, "We aren't going to build a nuclear plant anytime soon.
"Standard & Poor's and Moody's would have a heart attack," said Mr. Capps, referring to the debt-rating agencies. "And my chief financial officer would, too."
Mr. Capps said substantial government aid would be needed, perhaps to pay the interest costs during construction, which could take six and a half years. He said that ideally, Congress would also help prevent the project from being dragged into the federal courts. Both ideas would face substantial resistance in Congress.
Some experts also think a revival is much further away. Peter Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the former head of the public service commissions in New York and Maine, said that in the last 20 years, predictions of a revival had "rivaled - in frequency and in accuracy - forecasts of the second coming of the messiah." But the technology is still uneconomic, he said.
And there is still the risk of accidents, which could devastate the industry even if no one outside a plant was harmed.
"The abiding lesson that Three Mile Island taught Wall Street was that a group of N.R.C.-licensed reactor operators, as good as any others, could turn a $2 billion asset into a $1 billion cleanup job in about 90 minutes," Mr. Bradford said in an interview conducted by e-mail.
The accident at Three Mile Island was 26 years ago, and the far more serious accident at Chernobyl, in Ukraine, was 19 years ago. The industry asserts it has sharply reduced the risk of accidents since then.
Environmentalists remain divided. "Many people in the environmental community think it should be off the table," said John Holdren, a professor of environmental policy at Harvard. "On the other hand, if people are as sensitive about climate as they say they are, how can you throw out the window one of the largest carbon-free sources of energy?"
The president's suggestion this week that the federal government provide insurance to plant builders against the risk of delays might be helpful, some experts said, but a lot of other factors would have to come into line first.
The most prominent is the price of natural gas. Most of the electric plants built in the 1990's were powered with natural gas, but lately gas has sold for between $6 and $8 per million B.T.U., the standard unit in which it is sold. The average price in the 1990's was under $2 per million B.T.U. At that price, a kilowatt-hour of power costs more than 4 cents just for the fuel, and in many hours of the day, that is uncompetitive with coal and other power sources.
"The high gas prices are making all the utilities stop and think twice about solid fuel," said David E. Dismukes, an associate professor at Louisiana State University and the associate director of the Center for Energy Studies there. But solid fuel, meaning conventional or lignite coal, carries its own risks because no one is sure what the rules on emissions will be in the decades over which a new plant would operate, experts say. For example, a carbon tax imposed in 2015 could make companies wish they had placed an order for nuclear power instead.
But Dr. Dismukes said there were competitors to new reactors, including liquefied natural gas, also proposed by Mr. Bush in the same speech. The Bush administration would like to give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission authority to approve liquefied natural gas plants over the objections of state and local governments, which often are wary because of safety and security considerations.
Liquefied natural gas could push the price of natural gas down to about $3 per million B.T.U., said Dr. Dismukes, who added, "I don't know that nuclear works so well" with natural gas in that price range.
Oil prices are up, too, of course, but new nuclear plants would not reduce oil use significantly.
Nuclear power also has an unattractive financial history that industry backers say they must overcome to obtain financing for new plants.
"There is a perception in the capital markets, and with the general public, that the next generation of nuclear plants needs help in getting past the perception of risk," said Ray W. Ganthner, the senior vice president for new plants at Areva, a French-German company that has sold components for a new plant in Finland and is hoping to do the same here soon. His company recently began the process of obtaining a license for its design here.
The nation has 103 operating plants, but about the same number were ordered and then canceled, in some cases after hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent on construction, in the 1970's and 80's.
The last nuclear reactor ordered in this country that was not later canceled was the Palo Verde plant, in Arizona, in late 1973. The last reactor commissioned was the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar reactor, in 1996 (23 years after the construction permit was obtained). Industry supporters have been predicting a renewal of orders throughout the 80's and 90's. In the mid-90's, there were persistent rumors that a plant had been ordered, but no one could confirm it; in October 1993, a trade publication, Nucleonics Week, joked that the phantom plant should be called Elvis 1.
But industry executives say they are closer now. Gary Taylor, the president and chief executive of Entergy Nuclear, which runs 10 reactors around the country, said in a telephone interview on Friday that there was a high likelihood of a nuclear plant being ordered in the next few years. His company, like Exelon, has applied for early approval at its Grand Gulf site, on the Mississippi River south of Vicksburg, Miss. Dominion is seeking approval for a site at North Anna, Va., about 40 miles northwest of Richmond. And a fourth company, Duke Power, has expressed strong interest in a reactor without naming a site.
"With the president saying this is important to the country, that brings us to a whole new level of playing field," Mr. Taylor said.
The competition over what type of generating plant to build, he said, is often within a company. In the South, Entergy's biggest area of operation, nuclear competes against gas, the price of which is expected to stay high, he said.
Still, he said, the industry would require financial help. The underlying economics would have to be sound, he said, but that would not be enough.
"It's got to be shown that it's a business, but it has got to be jump-started," he said. "The only people who can make that happen is the president of the United States and the government." Mr. Taylor said loan guarantees and risk insurance of the kind mentioned by Mr. Bush would be very helpful.
The risk of licensing problems has been on the minds of nuclear advocates for decades. To try to limit risk, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began a licensing process in 1989 that was meant to avoid the debacles of the mid-80's. The process, known colloquially as "one-stop licensing," is mostly untried. Under it, a utility can apply for "early site approval" with no commitment to build, and vendors can submit completed designs for preapproval.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com |
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When It Comes to Replacing Oil Imports, Nuclear Is No Easy Option, Experts Say |
by Matthew Wald
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
09 May 2005
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WASHINGTON, May 8 - President Bush has proposed reducing oil imports by increasing the use of nuclear power, which he said in a recent speech was "one of the most promising sources of energy."
There is a problem, though: reactors make electricity, not oil. And oil does not make much electricity.
Nuclear reactors produce about 20 percent of the electricity used in the United States and about 8 percent of the total energy consumed. Oil accounts for 41 percent of energy consumption.
Could a few dozen more reactors, in addition to the 103 running now, cut into oil's share of the energy market?
"Indirectly, but very indirectly," said Lawrence J. Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, a nonprofit group that studies the economics of oil. People who think nuclear power is a way to reduce oil imports are "confusing several issues," he said.
Peter A. Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, added, "No one knowledgeable about energy policy would link nuclear power and gasoline prices."
In the puzzle of energy consumption and production, however, experts point to three intersections of oil and nuclear power that would offer opportunities to cut demand for oil, pushing down its price and strategic significance. But all are limited, clumsy, expensive or dependent on new technologies whose success is not guaranteed, the experts say.
The first option is to replace the oil used to make electricity with new nuclear reactors. But most of the oil in the electric sector has already been replaced, by coal.
According to the Energy Department, last year the electric utilities used about 207 million barrels of oil, or less than 600,000 barrels a day. (Total American consumption of oil is about 20.5 million barrels a day.)
Even the 600,000-barrel figure is higher than what nuclear reactors could replace, because some of that oil is used in generators that run only a few hundred hours a year. Reactors must run continuously, so they could not replace the oil-fired plants that are used only intermittently.
The electric system consumes another fuel that nuclear power could replace: natural gas. Last year, American utilities burned just under 5.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, out of total consumption of 22.3 trillion cubic feet.
"You can get a scenario where nuclear would free the gas to go to other things," replacing oil and gasoline, said Thomas Capps, the chairman of Dominion, one of several electric companies that have expressed interest in building new nuclear reactors. "You can run cars on natural gas," he said.
The technology for that is available, but not many people use it. According to the Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition, a lobbying group, about 130,000 such vehicles are on American roads today, out of more than 200 million. After decades of promoting natural gas, federal and state governments have made some headway in persuading commercial fleets to switch. But they have essentially given up on selling natural gas to ordinary consumers, who have been unwilling to convert their vehicles to use it.
There is also little economic incentive behind using natural gas. Mr. Goldstein noted that the current wholesale price of gas, about $7 per million B.T.U. (the standard unit by which gas is sold), is the equivalent of $42 per barrel for oil. But oil now sells for about $50 a barrel, which means the price difference is not enough to induce a switch.
Gas must also be pressurized for a car to hold enough to travel more than a few miles; pressurizing it and distributing it to service stations would add expense.
But there is another way that nuclear reactors could influence the oil supply, one that bypasses electricity completely. Nuclear engineers are working on designs and materials for a new class of reactors - which could be ready in about 20 years - whose main product would be heat.
The Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, which is owned by the Department of Energy, is working on ways to take very hot steam from a nuclear reactor, then run a small electric current through it to separate the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. If that can be done more cheaply than the current method of producing hydrogen, which uses natural gas, the hydrogen could be used at refineries to make components of gasoline.
Gasoline is made of molecules with a certain ratio of carbon to hydrogen. Part of each barrel of oil consists of molecules with too much carbon to be useful in gasoline; instead, those molecules are used only in low-value products like asphalt and tar.
The technology exists for refineries to break up those molecules and add hydrogen, until the hydrogen-carbon ratio is suitable for making gasoline or diesel.
David Lifschultz, chief executive of Genoil, a company that makes systems for using hydrogen at refineries, says the oil supply being exhausted first is light oil, which has many components that can be used in gasoline. Heavy oil, with components high in carbon, is far more abundant and often sells at a discount of $20 or $25 a barrel, he said.
Available technology could convert 16 million barrels a day of heavy oil, about a sixth of the world supply, into gasoline components, Mr. Lifschultz said, driving down the price of light oil.
J. Stephen Herring, a consulting engineer at the Idaho lab, explained two other ways for reactors to make motor fuel.
Canada has vast reserves of shale oil, now being converted to ingredients of motor fuel by using natural gas. The gas is used to heat the shale to make its oil flow more easily, and hydrogen, also obtained from the natural gas, is incorporated into the oil to make it suitable for use in gasoline. But a nuclear reactor could do those jobs, delivering both hydrogen and steam for cooking the oil out of the rock, Mr. Herring said.
Another strategy, he said, would be to break down coal, shale oil or other hydrogen fuels into a gas comprising hydrogen and carbon monoxide. At high pressure, these materials could form molecules suitable for making gasoline or diesel. A reactor could provide the energy required.
But using a reactor to make the ingredients of gasoline is many years away; the new reactors being considered by utilities are similar to the ones running now. The experts say that only after several of those have been built and have run for a few years is a private company likely to try something more adventurous.
Mr. Herring did not fault that strategy. "If I were responsible for spending the billion dollars," he said, "I'd be conservative, too."
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com |
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