IAEA hikes nuclear power projections for 2030 (40% more reactors in next 2 decades).

[Statistical]

The International Atomic Energy Agency raised its nuclear power projections for 2030 on Tuesday, with China, India, Japan and South Korea seen embracing atomic energy more than before.

The Vienna-based agency expects installed nuclear power capacity to rise by at least 40 percent worldwide over the next two decades to around 510 gigawatts. It could more than double in one scenario, the agency said.

The projections were eight percent higher than last year's estimates for 2030 and predictions for Asian countries in particular helped pull up the total.

http://www.reuters.com/article/usDollarRpt/idUSL848363820090908

We are a global leader in reactor design, construction, and operation. We should be able to take a substantial portion of the world market. Failure for us to join the global nuclear Renaissance not only means continuing to burn massive amounts of coal but puts our high paying nuclear design jobs (Westinghouse, GE, B&W) at risk. Toshiba, Hitachi, AER are making rapid advances at securing valuable construction contracts around the world.

[kristopher]

1. That's one perspective...

but it doesn't stand close scrutiny.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

Nuclear has also become one of the most expensive ways to meet our energy needs in terms of dollars and cents.

COOPER: ESCALATING NUCLEAR REACTOR COSTS SEEN IN MAJOR REVERSALS FOR INDUSTRY ON WALL STREET AND IN TEXAS, CANADA

Ratings Warning From Moody’s Followed by Mothballing of New Reactor Plans in Texas and Ontario; Developments in Line with Cooper Report from June Projecting Trillions in Excess Costs for Nuclear, Compared to Combination of Renewables and More Efficiency.

WASHINGTON, D.C.///July 13, 2009///Three major developments in the nuclear power industry in late June underscore the key findings of the “The Economics of Nuclear Reactors,” a report released on June 18, 2009 by economist Dr. Mark Cooper, a senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School. The Cooper report finds that it would cost $1.9 trillion to $4.1 trillion more over the life of 100 new nuclear reactors than it would to generate the same electricity from a combination of more energy efficiency and renewables.

Available online at http://www.vermontlaw.edu/Academics/Environmental_Law_Center/Institutes_and_Initiatives/Institute_for_Energy_and_the_Environment/New_and_Noteworthy.htm the Cooper analysis of over three dozen cost estimates for proposed new nuclear reactors shows that the projected price tags for the plants have quadrupled since the start of the industry’s so-called “nuclear renaissance” at the beginning of this decade – a striking parallel to the eventually seven-fold increase in reactor costs estimates that doomed the “Great Bandwagon Market” of the 1960s and 1970s, when half of planned nuclear reactors had to be abandoned or cancelled due to massive cost overruns.


Cooper said that three late June developments provide new evidence of the validity of the cost-related
concerns documented in his report:

• On June 30, 2009, Exelon cited “economic woes” as a major factor in postponing for up to 20 years plans to build two nuclear reactors at its site in Victoria, Texas. (See http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/2009/jun/30/gs_exelon_070109_56587/?business&local-news
for local coverage of the decision.)

• On June 29, 2009, the Government of Ontario announced that it has suspended the competitive bidding process to procure two replacement nuclear reactors planned for a Darlington, Ontario site. As the New York Times reported: “Two years into a $20 billion nuclear upgrade project meant to replace aging reactors with next-generation technology, the Ontario government postponed the entire process on Monday, citing excessive cost and uncertainties involving the ownership status of the sole Canadian bidder ... Yesterday’s move is a setback for the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, the 57-year-old government-owned corporation that has built all of Canada’s reactors and could soon be sold off to a private investor.” (See http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/ontario-puts-
nuclear-expansion-plans-on-ice/.)

• On June 23, 2009, Moody’s Investor Services issued a report titled “New Nuclear Generation: Ratings Pressure Increasing.” The summary to the report included the following: “Moody's is considering “taking a more negative view for those issuers seeking to build new nuclear power plants ... Rationale is premised on a material increase in business and operating risk ... most utilities now seeking to build nuclear generation do not appear to be adjusting their financial policies, a credit negative. First federal approvals are at least two years away, and economic, political and policy equations could easily change before then ...” Cooper pointed out that even though Moody’s concludes that reactors might be financially viable once operating, the barriers to actual permitting and affordable construction may make it impossible to reach the operational new-plant phase. See the report summary at
http://www.alacrastore.com/storecontent/moodys/PBC_117883 and a related news story at
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200906250936DOWJONESDJONLINE000658
_FORTUNE5.htm.

CONTACT: Ailis Aaron Wolf, [phone] or [e-mail].