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Nuclear Power, Energy Security and Climate Change

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Missing Ingredients of a Sustainable Nuclear Renaissance ... High case. Low case. 11.1. 8.3 /kwh. Total (levelized) 6.2. 4.6 /kwh. Capital costs ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Nuclear Power, Energy Security and Climate Change


1
Nuclear Power, Energy Security and Climate Change
  • Peter A. Bradford
  • CEES, University of Colo. Law School
  • February 1, 2008

2
The Easy Part
  • Nuclear power has very little to do with U.S.
    energy security because we burn almost no
    imported oil to generate electricity.
  • At best, nuclear power displaces some natural gas
    which displaces some imported oil used for
    heating in the Northeast.
  • For France or Japan, which import coal and gas to
    make electricity, this situation is quite
    different.

3
Delusions
  • It could save the earth National Geographic,
    April, 2006
  • Clean, green atomic energy can stop global
    warming Wired Magazine, February, 2005
  • Nuclear energy just may be the energy source
    that can save our planet from catastrophic
    climate change Patrick Moore, Washington Post,
    April 16, 2006

4
How Much Difference Can Nuclear Power Actually
Make?
  • To make a 10-15 difference as to climate change
    between now and 2054 would require building
    triple the worlds current nuclear capacity.
  • Or about 1000 gigawatts (historically 1 gw 1
    plant in future, perhaps 3gw 2 plants)

5
And What Else? (NRDC 10/06, updated)
  • /- Fifteen uranium enrichment plants
  • /- Fourteen Yucca Mountains or
  • /- Fifty reprocessing plants
  • /- Four - five trillion dollars

6
Current status of nuclear power
Data from the International Atomic Energy Agency,
http//www.iaea.org/programmes/a2/index.html.
7
The Nuclear Renaissance Rhetoric v. Reality
  • Mentions Per Google
  • Megawatts Per Reality

8
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9
With Few New Units (Paul Joskow, MIT)
10
U.S. Nuclear Output and Nuclear Capacity,
1973-2006 Productivity Improvement in the Face
of Competition
Gigawatts
Gigawatt-hours
11
The 15 Wedges (Scientific American, 9/06)
12
A Wedge
  • Prevent 1 billion tons carbon per year by 2054
  • Scaling up only of technologies already deployed
    on an industrial scale
  • Seven needed to stabilize CO2 at 500ppm
  • More may be needed

13
Wedges 1-5
  • 1)Doubling fuel efficiency of 2 billion cars from
    30 to 60 mpg
  • 2)Decreasing the number of car miles traveled by
    half
  • 3)Using best efficiency practices in all
    residential and commercial buildings
  • 4)Produce twice todays coal power output at 60
  • instead of 40 efficiency (compared with 32
  • today)
  • 5)Replacing 1400 coal electric plants with
    natural gas-powered facilities

14
Wedges 6-10
  • 6) Capturing and storing emissions from 800 coal
    electric plants
  • 7) Producing hydrogen from coal at six times
    today's rate and storing the captured CO2
  • 8) Capturing carbon from 180 coal-to-synfuels
    plants and storing the CO2
  • 9)Adding double (i.e. tripling) the current
    global nuclear capacity to replace coal-based
    electricity
  • 10)Increasing wind electricity capacity by 50
    times relative to today, for a total of 2 million
    large windmills

15
Wedges 11-15
  • 11) Installing 700 times the current capacity of
    solar electricity
  • 12)Using 40,000 square kilometers of solar panels
    (or 4 million windmills) to produce hydrogen for
    fuel cell cars
  • 13)Increasing ethanol production 50 times by
    creating biomass plantations with area equal to
    1/6th of world cropland
  • 14)Eliminating tropical deforestation and
    creating new plantations on non-forested land to
    quintuple current plantation area
  • 15)Adopting conservation tillage in all
    agricultural soils worldwide

16
The Nuclear Wedge
  • Doubling of nuclear power really requires
    tripling the existing capacity (372GW/438plants)
    because todays plants must be replaced.
  • Probably 700-900 new plants needed to get 1100GW
  • Assumes nuclear replaces all coal. In fact,
    nuclear will replace some gas and large hydro,
    requiring more new capacity to make a wedge.
  • Prodigiously difficult and expensive, but so are
    many of the wedges.

17
Who Else is in the Nuclear Wedge? NYTimes,
April 15, 2007
  • With Eye on Iran, Rivals Also Want Nuclear Power
  • Dmitry Astakhov/Presidential Press Service, via
    Agence France-Presse Getty Images
  • King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia with President
    Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who is offering
    nuclear aid.

18
Who Else is in the Nuclear Wedge?
19
Missing Ingredients of a Sustainable Nuclear
Renaissance
  • Significant number of new plants per year
    financed by private capital
  • Successful participation in competitive power
    supply markets
  • A waste disposal program decisively underway
  • A nonproliferation regime adequate to the nuclear
    fuel cycles in prospect

20
Relative costs per MIT 2003 Study
21
Nuclear Costs per 2007 Keystone Collaborative
Fact Finding
  • Average Colorado power generation cost now is
    under 5/kwh.

22
The Cost of Nuclear Power
  • Old plant operating cost between 1.2 and 2
    cents/kwh
  • Clearly competitive and moneymaking
  • Cost from new plants between 8.3 and 11.1
    cents/kwh (Keystone) or 9.5 and 13 cents/kwh
    (Moodys extrapolated)
  • Clearly uncompetitive with energy efficiency,
    coal or natural gas

23
Relative Risk
  • No nuclear plant has been bid since power supply
    processes became competitive in 1978.
  • In most of the large U.S. markets, power plant
    costs must now be recovered on the basis of
    market performance, not regulatory decisionmaking.

24
Uncertainty of Construction Costs
  • History of optimistic forecasts and schedules.
  • No one has ever overestimated the cost of a
    nuclear power plant at the time it was ordered
  • Industry estimates of 1500/kw in 2002-3 are now
    3000-4000 and rising
  • Finland plant well behind schedule and at least
    50 over budget.

25
Energy Policy Act of 2005
  • Loan guarantees available to all carbon free
    technologies
  • Production tax credit (1.8/kWh for first 6 GW)
  • Accident liability limit renewal
  • Delay insurance (.7-.8/kWh for 1st tier)
  • All this plus licensing cost sharing and the
    evisceration of public involvement

26
The Ongoing Loan Guarantee Debacle
  • In 2005, 4 billion for a few first mover
    plants and other low carbon sources. No plants
    ordered
  • In 2007 Congress upped this to 20 billion for
    nuclear power in 2008-9 alone, though the
    industry asserted more than 50 billion was
    needed or the Renaissance would be derailed The
    Hill, May 24, 2007
  • From 4 billion to 20 billion for loan
    guarantees in two years, before construction even
    begins, makes the nuclear renaissance the
    greatest cost overrun of all.

27
Such guarantees distort power markets
  • To investors nuclear power will be less risky and
    will promise higher returns (because the equity
    owners will need to put up less capital).
  • All other alternatives will seem riskier and less
    attractive
  • To regulators and to market operators, nuclear
    power will seem less expensive because risks have
    been shifted to taxpayers
  • Thus both public and private investment will be
    disproportionately shifted toward nuclear power

28
Are the Default Risks Real?
  • In the 1990s, nuclear power was the largest
    beneficiary of a rescue that Moodys estimated at
    between 50 billion and 300 billion and
    necessary to avoid bankruptcy for several major
    utilities.
  • These were the stranded cost surcharges that
    accompanied electric restructuring and charged
    the unrecoverable costs of nuclear power to the
    customers, including those in Illinois
  • The pending legislation would charge the next
    rescue to the taxpayers instead of the customers,
    and would do so before the fact.

29
Are the Default Risks Real?
  • Fifty-one nuclear plants have shut down for a
    year or longer
  • As many plants have been canceled as completed,
    some after billions spent
  • Much maligned old NRC licensing process
    licensed more plants (200) than next four
    countries combined. No rejections.
  • Some cost overruns bankrupted N-plant builders in
    the 1970s/1980s several others nearly did so.

30
Are the Safety Risks Real?
  • Nuclear safety risks increase when we behave as
    though the plants will be safe because they are
    needed.
  • All of the reviews of the Three Mile Island
    accident cautioned that the NRC was putting too
    much emphasis on licensing rather than overseeing
    the existing plants
  • Nuclear power develops best when it grows apart
    from politically driven mandates and expectations

31
Lessons of the 1970s, Now Being Studiously
Unlearned
  • Who bears risks of runaway costs?

32
An Unfortunate Reality
  • The nuclear power programs that actually unfold
    are never the idealized programs that nuclear
    enthusiasts suggest are possible.
  • Just look at the loan guarantee overrun or the
    evisceration of public involvement in nuclear
    licensing

33
Nuclear Waste
  • Repository date has slipped slightly more than
    one year per year since 1977 (when it was 1985)
  • Is now 2020 for Yucca Mtn, but maybe never
  • Fuel seems destined to stay where it is for
    another decade.
  • Centralized dry cask storage is possible in
    theory but perhaps not in fact.

34
Sensible Energy Policy that Might (or Might Not)
Improve Nuclear Power Prospects
  • Implement climate change policy that creates (or
    recognizes) value of all carbon reducing
    technologies, including carbon sequestration,
    energy efficiency and renewable energy
  • Carbon caps and markets
  • Carbon taxes
  • Carbon reducing set asides (portfolio standards)
    and/or production tax credits
  • Remove liability limitations for future projects
  • Use neutral market mechanisms to choose least
    costly approaches among these
  • Avoid pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey energy policy
    making and repressive licensing practices
  • Take the time to deal sensibly with waste,
    proliferation and safeguards
  • Rigorous prioritization of options for research
    purposes effective, efficient, expeditious

35
Dont Call It a Renaissance Until Theyve Shown
You a Masterpiece
36
Conclusion
  • A nuclear renaissance is not essential to
    combating climate change.
  • At reasonable cost and in wiser hands, it might
    help.
  • At excessive cost under present policies, it will
    divert limited resources in potentially ruinous
    ways.

37
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38
NRC as an regulator under pressure to license
  • Davis Besse incident review
  • Ongoing efforts to exclude public from hearing
    process
  • No effort to take advantage of advances in
    hearing approaches
  • Exclusion of energy efficiency contentions
  • Domenici threat of budget cuts
  • Chairman promising approval of Westinghouse
    design during visit to China
  • 2002 NRC Survey showing that almost half of the
    staff thought that raising safety concerns would
    hurt their career
  • Current chair was before taking the post paid
    to do ads on behalf of Yucca Mtn.

39
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40
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41
Customers or Investors Left Hanging This Time?
42
Nuclear cant be taken away from the table
43
Ford Nucleon 1958 Concept Car, Never Produced
  • Reactor in rear, designed for recharging every
    5000 miles at recharging stations that would
    replace gas stations.
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