http://www.net.org/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=18534NUCLEAR POWER:
TOO EXPENSIVE TO SOLVE GLOBAL WARMING
Introduction
Signs of decline for the U.S. nuclear industry are all around: Reactors are closing nationwide, and nuclear power plants are projected to lose market share of electricity generation. Between now and the year 2010, licenses of 17 power plants will expire, no new plants will replace the retired ones, and several other reactors will have been prematurely closed for economic and safety reasons. Since the 1978 Three Mile Island accident, no new plants have been ordered in the United States, and since 1974 about 50 percent of the reactors ordered by utilities have been canceled. Worldwide, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) projects that in the next twenty years global nuclear capacity will fall by half, and the Worldwatch Institute projects a sustained decline by 2002 at the latest.
Despite nuclear's decline, some in the industry see a different situation. Armed with an annual budget of $28.5 million, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the industry's trade association, has spent the past year priming the public consciousness for a nuclear comeback. Spurred on by the impending expiration of the first 25-year power plant operating licenses, NEI has spent millions of dollars on print and broadcast advertisements in the past year reminding people about the supposed "clean and efficient" advantages of nuclear power over fossil fuels, and using the global warming issue as a catalyst for a nuclear renaissance.
But just considering the real costs of nuclear power—namely the enormous price tag of constructing and maintaining power plants, and the toxic nature of nuclear fuel and waste materials—prove the outlook for this troubled technology is as negative today as it was 21 years ago. Nuclear power is not a solution to global warming for the same reasons that it is not a good electric generation option. It is too expensive and unsafe, it produces toxic waste, and encourages the risk of nuclear proliferation.
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Construction costs woefully underestimated In 1968, Pacific Gas & Electric projected the total cost of building Unit 1 of its Diablo Canyon plant at $445 million. By 1984, the final bill was $3.75 billion, an 843 percent increase.
Higher labor and equipment costs, poor management, and higher financing were Diablo Canyon's problems, but it is just one example. The same problems plagued nuclear plant construction all across the country. The Fermi Unit 2 plant in Michigan, the Public Power Supply System Unit 2 reactor in Washington state, the River Bend reactor in Louisiana, and the Clinton plant in Illinois all cost approximately 600 percent more than originally estimated. In fact, a 1986 Department of Energy (DOE) study of the 75 nuclear power plants commissioned between 1966 and 1977 found, on average, a $100 billion increase between the first estimate and final bill for all plants, not including finance or interest charges.
Construction costs also increased because construction lead-times were longer than expected. Instead of the projected 5-6 years, experience showed that it takes about 8–12 years to build a new power plant. The extended timeline increases costs through the effects of inflation.
Constant retrofit, repair, and maintenance The constant need for retrofit, repair, and maintenance has also driven operation costs higher and higher. A 1995 EIA study found that non-fuel plant operating costs rose from about $37 million to $126 million per reactor per year, between 1974 and 1993.
Because of the sky-high operating budgets, many utilities have chosen to shut their nuclear plants down altogether. Since 1988, six plants have permanently closed for both economic reasons and safety problems, all of them much younger than 40 years old, their expected life span. Industry experts agree that the shutdown trend and its skyrocketing price will continue. A 1993 Shearson Lehman Brothers study and a 1993 DOE study found that as many of 25 of the 110 remaining commercial plants in the U.S. could face premature shutdown in the next 10 years for economic reasons or safety problems.
Ironically, closing a plant has proved to be even more expensive than building one. When reactors reach the end of their life or are prematurely closed, the dismantling cost is very high, and particularly difficult to predict. In the U.S., the cost of shutting down nuclear reactors has often reached several hundred million dollars, sometimes double the first estimated costs. In fact, predicting the costs of cleaning-up radioactive generating plants has proved impossible.
Storing waste pushes costs even higher In addition to the enormous construction and operating costs of a nuclear power plant, storing the high-level waste produced by nuclear reactors has proved to be equally expensive. Nuclear reactors generate long-lived, highly radioactive wastes that need to be carefully isolated and stored. Some scientists conclude that it is virtually impossible to assure that fission-reactor wastes would not pose unacceptable risks to current and future generations. Utilities have not found one single safe site for storage, or a secure method to transport radioactive waste. In the Unites States, public acceptability considerations led Congress to choose the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, although it wasn't the optimal technical solution.
The 1982 federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires all nuclear utilities to pay 0.1¢ per kilowatt hour (kWh) to a national trust fund to research and implement the most effective storage methods. To date, the fund has generated $11 billion, and it is expected to top out at $22 billion. However, a 1995 draft DOE report predicted the total anticipated cost of waste disposal will be at least $34.6 billion, leaving a $12.6 billion shortfall in the fund and creating the prospect of levying another 0.1¢ on utilities to pay for it.
Taxpayers contribute to nuclear subsidies Despite billion of dollar subsidies, nuclear power costs remain extremely high. In comparison, costs of renewables and energy efficiency are sharply declining. These new technologies that are growing at a fast pace reflect the new trend in the energy economy: downsizing and decentralization. In this scenario, large-sized power plants, and especially nuclear power plants, with their high costs and management problems, are no longer competitive.
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{b]Worldwide energy needs vastly outweigh nuclear power's capacity
If the nuclear power option were to be considered as a possible solution to global warming, its global capacity would need to dramatically increase, and an enormous number of new power plants would have to be built in the U.S. and in the rest of the world. Currently, nuclear power plants cover about five percent of the global energy share. Doubling that share would require constructing approximately 1,320 new plants, including hundreds in developing countries. Taking into account the huge construction and operation costs, the eight to 12 years needed to build each plant, and the problem of finding adequate waste disposal sites, the feasibility of a dramatic increase in nuclear power is extremely low.
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This report was written in 1999 by the National Environmental Trust. Since its writing, MOre funding has been approved for more nukes in the last energy bill. More on that later.
Cost of Nuclear and other power sources:
www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/cost.pdf
The following table compares the costs of major energy sources
with wind energy. The figures are from the California Energy Commission’s 1996
Energy Technology Status Report <2>, which examined the costs and market readiness
of various energy options. The CEC calculations do not include subsidies or
environmental costs.
Fuel Levelized costs (cents/kWh) (1996)
Coal 4.8-5.5
Gas 3.9-4.4
Hydro 5.1-11.3
Biomass 5.8-11.6
Nuclear 11.1-14.5
Wind (without PTC) 4.0-6.0 (current estimate)
Wind (with PTC) 3.3-5.3 (current estimate)The cost of natural gas has increased since 1996, so that the levelized cost of gas–
fired power plants would now be considerably higher. In January 2001, the cost of
natural gas generated power was running as high as 15 cents to 20 cents per kWh in
certain markets <3>. The cost of wind power, meanwhile, has declined slightly.
NOte that if wind farms were funded using the same terms as utilities use when funding (privately) coal and natural gas plants the cost of wind power would DROP another 30%.
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