Nuclear energy debate fraught with myths on danger, high costs, [View All]

[Coastie for Truth]

Nuclear energy debate fraught with myths on danger, high costs By Eric McErlain

While reading Steve Kirsch's op-ed on nuclear energy ("Despite safeguards, nuclear power carries great risk," April 24), I found many of his arguments distressingly familiar from my time blogging for the Nuclear Energy Institute. Since I started our blog 15 months ago, my colleagues and I have been busy battling many of those same myths about nuclear energy. Here are just three we've dealt with most often.

1. Nuclear energy is too expensive: This claim is rooted in higher upfront capital costs. While this may have been true of some plants when they were built 20 years ago, it isn't today.
In the 1990s, natural gas-fired electric capacity had the most attractive capital structure. But by overbuilding, America opened itself up to punishing price volatility and the prospect of developing an addiction to imported natural gas much like our current addiction to foreign oil.
But new nuclear capacity can hedge against price volatility in natural gas markets. We believe the limited incentives contained in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 for the first half-dozen reactors will jump-start construction. Once new nuclear plants get built, the other half of the equation, production cost, comes into play. After more than 25 years of improving performance, production costs for nuclear power plants are the lowest in the industry. This is even after utilities have spent $1.2 billion enhancing security at American reactors in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

2. Chernobyl proved that nuclear power plants can't be operated safely or reliably: What Chernobyl proved was that you shouldn't disable safety systems -- which is precisely what the operators of the plant did. And while no one can guarantee that there will never be another accident at a nuclear power plant, design differences between Russian and Western reactors make a repeat of that accident impossible.

---snip---

In 1980, one measure of reliability, industry wide capacity factor, was under 60 percent. Preliminary figures from the Energy Information Administration show that had risen to 89.6 percent by 2005.

3<. [u>Nuclear energy's environmental benefits are overstated: Now that environmentalists are becoming familiar with how nuclear energy can reduce emissions, anti-nuclear extremists have become desperate to confuse the public with fatally flawed studies which we have dissected in detail on our blog.

What industry opponents can't deny, however, are the benefits our environment is already enjoying thanks to nuclear energy:
In 2005, U.S. nuclear power plants prevented 3.32 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 1.05 million tons of nitrogen oxide, and 681.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the earth's atmosphere.

From 1995 to 2005, U.S. nuclear generation avoided the emission of 41.0 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 16.9 million tons of nitrogen oxide, and 7.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
---snip---

ERIC MCERLAIN is a speech writer for the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, D.C., and serves is editor of its blog, NEI Nuclear Notes (www.neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com). He adapted this article for the Mercury News from a May 2 post on his blog.