Atomic Dreams
(Page 5 of 9)
January / February 2008
by Jason Mark, from Earth Island Journal
Nuclear plants could reduce the need for waste storage by “reprocessing” the fuel, but that would create weapons-grade radioactive material. While the industry has improved plant management and design since the Three Mile Island near-meltdown, post-9/11 fears have created new safety worries, including the possibility that terrorists could attack a plant or obtain nuclear materials to make “dirty bombs” or atomic weapons.
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Cost is another pressing issue. Even with government subsidies, nuclear power is not cheap. The complicated reactors cost between $2.5 billion and
$4 billion each; the Watts Bar plant ended up with a price tag of $7 billion. The capital costs of atomic expansion are so high that one nuclear executive told the New York Times that his firm’s chief financial officer “would have a heart attack” if he proposed constructing a new reactor.
From a market standpoint, constructing new plants does not appear to be economically competitive. Most estimates put nuclear-generated electricity at around 8 to 11 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). By comparison, wind prices currently average 5 cents per kWh. Energy efficiency improvements can cost even less—for example, swapping out incandescent lightbulbs for compact fluorescents amounts to less than 4 cents per kWh.
“Just financially, it won’t happen,” says Geoff Fettus, a senior attorney at the NRDC, about an expansion of nuclear power. “The question we pose to people is not whether you are for or against nuclear power, but whether you are for or against new subsidies for nuclear power. We think they are a terrible waste of money. If you move away from the subsidies for nuclear, the debate ends right there.”
The very challenges of financing and building new reactors reduce the potential for atomic energy to make a meaningful dent in carbon emissions. Currently, 104 nuclear power plants produce about 20 percent of the United States’ electricity. To make a real reduction in U.S. carbon emissions would require building as many as 250 additional power plants. To make significant cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, the world’s nations would need to build 21 new reactors every year for the next 50 years. Given that it takes about 10 years to build a nuclear reactor, the first new nuclear plants wouldn’t start contributing to carbon reductions until nearly 2020. Too late to be effective, if you accept NASA climate scientist James Hansen’s prediction that we have only a decade to take action.
A June 2007 statement by the Union of Concerned Scientists sums up the sentiments of the major environmental organizations: “There are faster, safer, and significantly cheaper ways to meet our energy needs. . . . Nuclear power is not a current solution for global warming.”
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