The year 2009 is in full swing, and never before has there been so much discussion as there currently is about how to power our nation’s enormous energy needs. Any essential energy for our country must surely possess the following qualities. It must be scalable affordable, and safe. Not only that, but our new clean energy source must also be clean, that’s to say producing such energy shouldn’t cause an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and shouldn’t contribute negatively to climate change.
Which of the current proposed clean technologies possesses enough of these qualities to be considered a premier alternative to our current coal-producing power plants? Nuclear has to be considered a top contender. Certainly it’s not a renewable or sustainable energy source like solar or wind, but despite its drawbacks, nuclear energy represents a nearly perfect way for our highly developed nation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly and permanently at an affordable cost.
In order for the United States to invest more heavily in nuclear energy, a movement has to begin to gather steam. So far President Barack Obama seems more bullish on wind and solar than he does on nuclear, but all indications are that he’s probably an “energy realist” who would be willing to listen to strong arguments for increase investment in nuclear power generation, especially because it represents a strong domestic industry. Nuclear power generation would result in high skilled labor jobs opening up in the domestic market, which is always goods news to any politician.
There hasn’t been much discussion about nuclear energy from the Obama adminstration yet
President Obama shouldn’t ignore nuclear energy as part of America’s future, like he currently seems to be doing. When President Obama appointed Steven Chu the head of the Department of Energy (DOE), he called on him to reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil, create jobs, and spur innovation.
How can President Obama ignore nuclear energy if he wants to create a new, greener America that isn’t thirsty for foreign oil? He can’t for long.
Many proponents of nuclear energy say that Obama should accelerate the Next Generation Nuclear Plant program if he really wants to see advancement in the nuclear industry.
“The Next Generation Nuclear Plant is a public/private cost-sharing technology development program. The high-temperature gas cooled reactor (HTGR) technology being developed by NGNP is critical to the future of nuclear energy.”
Energy policy has seemingly taken a backseat to the consumer credit crisis and meltdown on Wall Street. That’s likely to change in the next few months and a real debate is likely to break out concerning what direction the energy needs to go in concerning energy production.
Certainly increased spending for wind and solar energy will be well rewarded, but so would an upgraded regulatory environment for the nuclear industry. Small nuclear plants could seemingly be a boom for certain towns that could greatly benefit from the energy production. If an emphasis is maintained on safety and education, the nuclear power industry would also easily create tons of jobs.
With the current economic climate, it seems reasonable that a discussion of energy policy including nuclear is likely to be sparked on a national level. Nuclear energy can help with the economic problems because building new nuclear power plants is a sure-fire method to create high paying jobs.
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One thing I would add to your argument is the notion of whether nuclear is “renewable”. That phrase is meant to depict a source of energy that will never run out of fuel. Not necessarily that the fuel is literally inexhaustible but that at a forseeable rate of consumption we will not run out. What many people do not know is that Uranium is 40 times more abundant than Silver. Worldwide Uranium reserves are huge. Given the relatively small quantities that must be extracted for nuclear power (and any other industrial uses), even if we extrapolated major growth in the number of nuclear plants, we will NEVER run out of Uranium. Also, if we do come up with a way to safely reprocess used fuel (like the French) our mining needs would be cut easily by a third.
There is another thing about the energy debate that bothers me. All the emphasis, especially from this administration, seems to be towards wind and solar. I definitely like the idea of increasing our use of wind and solar, however there are issues of practicality involved. If you go to the DOE website and drill down you can find data tables that display ALL electricity production in the USA by fuel source. For the 12 months ending October 2008 there were a total of 4,121,053 million MW/hrs generated. The breakdown by fuel was:
Coal = 48.61%
Nat Gas = 21.2%
Nuclear = 19.56%
Hydro = 6.32%
Wind = 1.03%
Solar = 0.02%
The remainder made up of geothermal, biomass, wood, etc.
Think about these numbers. We actually have 3 “practical” means to produce the huge generation numbers needed to support our demand. The other sources are almost in the “novelty” class. Do people have any idea of the amount of acreage it would take to replace an appreciable portion or our coal-based generation with either wind or solar? Current estimates show that for serious quantities of generation the ratio of Megawatss per acre for wind is about 55. Solar is worse – something like 30-40. But there is yet another major problem. Sometimes the wind stops blowing and sometimes the sun doesn’t shine. These are variable energy sources. We cannot lump them in with what is called “baseload” generation. That means that we will still need to have other generation immediately available at all times when we are supplying the grid with wind or solar generated power. These would have to be coal or nat gas fired plants running at low power (very inefficient and costly to operate that way) ready to take over at a moments notice. That is unless we can condition the America people to gladly accept sporadic and sudden blackouts, often lasting almost half a day. Nuclear plants are designed only for full power operation 24/7 – using them as backup generators is simply not an option. The costs to utilities to maintain these backup plants while investing in more and more wind/solar will have to filter down to the consumer. The only reasonable way to use wind/solar that can make a serious dent in nationwide generation is at the residential and individual business level. If 50% of the population had solar panels on their house’s roof sized to support their entire usage then we COULD make some serious reductions in coal and nat gas generation.
Darren – I agree with your sentiments and those of the other commenters here, but I can think of a few additional reasons to be enthusiastic about nuclear power.
1. The current definition of “renewable” energy already includes such sources as biofuels and municipal solid waste. Both of these are not infinite and can definitely run out. There was a time, for example, when the UK depended heavily on trees for its industrial fuel, and they almost ran out before switching to coal. To this day, you can visit places in Scotland that are attempting to restore the forests that used to exist. We also should be able to consider reactors that burn some portion of used fuel as “waste to energy” plants.
2. Your definition of “clean” is a bit limited. For me, a clean power plant needs to be something that can run inside a sealed building without filling up with waste or causing any harm to the inhabitants. I cannot imagine how any fossil fuel plant can be considered to be clean since they all depend on spreading their deadly waste into the environment and using “dilution is the solution to pollution” schemes for waste handling. (I was a submarine engineer officer, so I know that nuclear plants qualify as clean under my definition.)
3. As Ed mentioned, uranium is rather abundant. We are only using about 0.7% of the potential energy in the earth’s uranium; most of the rest is already accessible with the right kinds of reactor designs that have already been proven through lengthy testing. The world was also endowed with an additional fissionable material called thorium that is 3-4 times as abundant as uranium. Thorium has also be proven in operating reactors like the last core of the Shippingport (it was a light water breeder reactor.)
Keep up the pressure to include nuclear as part of the very important energy discussion that is going on. Ignoring it is not an option – especially if we keep pushing it into the conversation.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast.
Another factor about nuclear power is the potential that it has for improvement. Changing from coal to uranium gives us a large improvement in cleanliness, efficiency, and safety. Changing from current reactor designs to fourth generation designs offers further improvements as large or larger than the step away from natural gas and coal. This evolution is already happening which means that cost and sustainability will be much better than present estimates. Furthermore, the new designs are clean, safe, and small – to such a degree that we can locate reactors in the middle of cities, or even in buildings. This reduces that need for transmissions lines and this gratly reduces cost and ugliness for the whole electrical system. I am totally in favour of expanding nuclear power with its wealth creating and job creating potential.
I recommend David MacKay’s Sustainable Energy – without the hot air for a survey of the options for energy (from a somewhat UK-ish perspective). It’s available for free at withouthotair.com.
Thanks for the comments everyone. Several of them gave me an idea for more more discussion on Obama’s Energy Policy and his position on the nuclear energy debate.
Darren,
Another factor in this is the potential for improving the whole world economy with “smaller” reactors. Bringing electricity to places like the Philippines that rely heavily on diesel generation for electricity would shift spending from power needs to other consumer items, thus giving a boost world wide to other kinds of economic activity. Increasing the cost of energy, which is the current strategy with wind and solar, hurts the poorest the most. Nuclear is very pro poor.
David Phillips
Manila Philippines
Rod – I wish we used 0.7% of the mined heavy metal. With current burnups (20-50 GWd/kg) we only use about 0.2-0.5 %
The bright side is that we had already mined all this uranium, which is now stored as “spent” nuclear fuel and enrichment tails (depleted uranium), so we don’t need to mine fuel for fast reactors for centuries to come.