GOKHAN YESILYURT
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MISCELLANEOUS
FAQ
What is nuclear energy?
Nuclear power plants split uranium atoms inside a reactor in a process called fission. At a nuclear energy facility, the heat from fission is used to produce steam, which spins a turbine to generate electricity. At this point a nuclear plant is similar to a coal or gas or solar thermal plant; those energy sources also generate steam through heat to spin a turbine. The main difference is therefore how the heat is generated.
How does nuclear energy compare to other power sources?
A single uranium fuel pellet the size of a pencil eraser contains the same amount of energy as 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, 1,780 pounds of coal or 149 gallons of oil.
Does nuclear energy produce greenhouse gases?
There are no emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide during the production of electricity at nuclear energy facilities. Nuclear energy is the only clean-air source of energy that produces electricity 24 hours a day, every day.
Is nuclear energy considered a renewable energy source?
A renewable energy source uses an essentially limitless supply of fuel, whether wind, the sun or water. Nuclear energy is often called a sustainable energy source, because there is enough uranium in the world to fuel reactors for 100 years or more.
What can we do with nuclear waste?
We can bury all of it, burn most of it as fuel and bury the rest, or send it into space. Option two is our personal favorite. Long-lived high-level nuclear waste is solid ceramic or metal, not green ooze. With proper care, it can be safely buried where it will stay out of our ecosystems.
What’s the difference between a nuclear reactor and a bomb?
Atoms capable of splitting are never close enough together in a nuclear reactor to release energy as quickly as in a nuclear bomb. Reactors use reactor-grade uranium, whereas bombs use weapons-grade uranium. Additionally, bombs have chemical explosives designed to compress the weapons-grade uranium into itself. Under no known circumstances in our wildest dreams could a nuclear reactor explode like a nuclear weapon. Note: this doesn’t mean a reactor can’t physically have an out-of-control power increase resulting in major damage to the reactor building and releases of radiation, as happened in the Chernobyl accident. But this kind of excursion is honestly very nearly impossible in modern reactors. That’s another story.
Is nuclear power renewable?
No, but. A renewable resource is one that naturally replenishes itself such as a tree. Cut it down, it will grow back. Use wind up, it will still blow. Uranium is not being produced on Earth so it is technically not renewable. BUT (and this is a big but), the term renewable is often used to convey a resource as sustainable. If we operated nuclear power plants with breeding, or using uranium extracted from the ocean (nearly unlimited, but very expensive), or using Thorium, then nuclear power can easily be considered sustainable.
What’s a meltdown?
A melt-down occurs when a reactor heats up out so much that the fuel melts. This would happen in accident conditions, when the coolant has stopped flowing. The Three Mile Island accident was a partial melt-down, resulting in a economic loss to the utility company. When fuel melts, the core will shut itself down and will not melt through the earth to China.
Do radioactive things glow?
In general, no. The green ooze stereotype is a fabrication of comics. Most radiation is impossible to detect without special equipment. However, when extremely radioactive material is placed underwater (such as in a nuclear reactor), it makes a blue glow. This is called Cherenkov radiation. It is an optical shockwave, like a sonic-boom, that occurs when charged particles (alpha particles, beta particles, fission products) are emitted faster than the speed of light in a medium. Since light travels through water slower than it does in a vacuum, this does not violate relativity.
How long does nuclear fuel stay in a reactor?
A typical reactor cycle is 12-24 months, after which typically a third of the fuel is replaced with new fuel. Thus, the nuclear fuel stays in the reactor for between 3 and 5 years before it is discharged.
What’s the difference between sodium-cooled reactors and molten salt reactors?
A lot! Even though table salt contains sodium, it is a much different material than liquid sodium metal.
Do nuclear energy facilities require large areas of land?
Compared to other non-emitting sources, nuclear energy facilities are relatively compact. The amount of electricity produced by a multi-reactor nuclear power plant would require about 45 square miles of photovoltaic panels or about 260 square miles of wind turbines.
What is radiation?
The radiation one associates with a nuclear energy facility are particles, such as alpha rays and gamma rays, emitted by an atomic nucleus as a result of the fission process.
Do nuclear power plants release radioactive material?
Yes, but in extremely small levels that are regulated by the federal government. Nuclear power plants produce radioactive gases and liquid wastes during normal operation. A plant has tanks designed to store gas and liquid radioactive materials that are generated during normal operation. The radioactive material is held for a period of time to allow for the radioactivity level to decrease before being treated and/or released in a planned, monitored way. This keeps the amount of radioactive material in releases low and well within federal limits.
Radiation releases that are not made in accordance with procedures, or are above regulatory limits, are reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and to the state where the facility is operating.
How is radiation measured around nuclear energy facilities?
During normal operations, very little radiation is released. Multiple independent studies have found have no health effects on the neighboring population. Radiation monitors surrounding the plant site provide real-time data on radiation levels. Additionally, radioactive materials that could cause radiation exposure near nuclear energy facilities are monitored by sampling air, food and water supplies.
Nuclear energy facilities are non-polluting and use multiple, redundant layers of safety to contain radiation within the reactor. There has never been an event in the United States that resulted in harm from radiation exposure. Radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan did not cause any immediate health effects, according to a United Nations panel of scientific experts. It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public, the panel found.
Do Americans support using nuclear energy?
A March 2015 national poll of 1,000 adults by Bisconti Research Inc. found that solid majorities have favorable opinions about nuclear energy and building new nuclear power plants. Sixty-nine percent of Americans favor the use of nuclear energy—up from 65 percent in 2012.
Sixty-two percent of respondents agree that the industry should build more nuclear power plants in the future and almost 80 percent of respondents agree that nuclear power is an important part of our energy future.
Are nuclear energy facilities safe?
Yes. The industry’s first commitment is to operate nuclear energy facilities safely. After more than a half-century of commercial nuclear energy production in the United States—more than 3,500 reactor years of operation—there have been no radiation-related health effects linked to their operation.
Studies by the National Cancer Institute, The United Nations Scientific Committee of the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the National Research Council’s BEIR VII study group and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements all show that U.S. nuclear power plants cause no harm to people in neighboring communities.
Are facilities as safe for workers as for the public?
Yes. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is a smaller chance that a worker at a nuclear plant would be injured than employees at a fast food restaurant or a grocery store. As part of the industry’s commitment to a safe workplace, employees are continuously monitored for radiation exposure, for which strict limits are enforced by the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Could an accident like the one at Chernobyl happen at a U.S. plant?
No. It is physically impossible for a U.S. commercial nuclear energy facility to run out of control and explode like the Chernobyl RBMK reactor design did. During power operations, when the temperature within the reactor reaches a predetermined level, the fission process is naturally suppressed so the power level cannot spike under any circumstances. No RBMK-style reactor operates in the United States.
What about the Three Mile Island accident?
More than a dozen health studies and continuous environmental monitoring have found no effect on public health or the environment near the Three Mile Island nuclear energy facility in Pennsylvania.
Companies that operate nuclear energy facilities have developed proven emergency response plans to protect the public in the event of an emergency. These plans often are used to evacuate citizens during natural disasters such as hurricanes and other storms.
Risks from nuclear energy are considerably smaller than many everyday activities, such as driving a car.
How many new reactors are being built?
Construction is under way on two reactors in Georgia, two in South Carolina and one in Tennessee and another 67 new reactors are being built in 15 countries. Some of these countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, are building their first reactors. Others, such as China and India, already have made a significant commitment to nuclear energy.
Why should new plants be built in the United States?
The U.S. Department of Energy projects that demand for electricity in the United States will rise 22 percent by 2040. That means our nation will need hundreds of new power plants to provide electricity for our homes and continued economic growth. Maintaining nuclear energy’s current 20 percent share of electricity production will require building one reactor every year starting in 2016, or 20 to 25 new reactors by 2040, according to DOE forecasts.
Fourteen companies and consortia are studying, licensing or building 26 reactors in the United States. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing six combined license applications from five companies and consortia for ten nuclear power plants.
Will there be the kinds of delays and cost overruns that affected some earlier projects?
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission process for licensing new reactors is more efficient and the industry is taking advantage of modular construction techniques to make schedules more attractive.
Construction of next-generation nuclear power plants will differ from the previous process, in which companies built plants as the designs and regulations were evolving. Facilities under construction have all design-related safety issues resolved before construction begins, avoiding delays.
The entire process, from starting the license application to the NRC to completing the new power plant, takes about nine years, four of them for construction.
How much do nuclear energy facilities cost?
Nuclear power plants are capital-intensive projects, with construction costs estimated at $6 billion to $8 billion for a large reactor. Once built, operating costs for electricity are low.
How are utilities managing cost recovery for the construction of new reactors?
By paying the cost of building a new reactor as it is incurred, electric companies can benefit their customers by reduced financing costs. This is called Construction Work in Progress (CWIP). While there may be a small charge added to the monthly utility bill, it facilitates paying off finance charges immediately rather than over the entire life of the plant. This avoids “interest-on-interest” charges and prevents a much larger one-time increase in electric rates when the reactor becomes operational.
Improved cash flow to the electric company leads to a stronger financial rating, which in turn results in lower interest costs for the nuclear energy project and all other investments the utility makes over the long term.
How much is added to the monthly electricity bill? The amount differs depending on the nature of the project and what is allowed by the state government and regulator. For example, Florida Power & Light said that the cost recovery charge for its projects was about $1.65 per month to a typical customer. The fee financed $130 million for upgrades to the St. Lucie and Turkey Point nuclear power plants.
What are loan guarantees for nuclear energy facilities?
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 created a program to provide federally backed loan guarantees for building new nuclear energy facilities; however the Department of Energy has not completed its review of any applications to use this financing tool. Loan guarantees provide government backing to ensure construction loans will be repaid in the rare event of default. The guarantee results in lower interest rates for an energy company building a reactor, which passes on the savings to its customers. They are neither grants nor subsidies. Unlike loan guarantees for other sources of energy, nuclear energy facilities must pay the government a fee for granting the guarantee.
How do nuclear energy plants benefit the economy?
Every dollar spent by the typical nuclear power plant results in the creation of $1.04 in the local community, $1.18 in the state economy, and $1.87 in the U.S. economy, according to an analysis of 23 nuclear plants representing 41 reactors.
Companies operating a typical nuclear plant pay about $16 million in state and local taxes annually. These tax dollars benefit schools, roads and other state and local infrastructure. Each company typically pays federal taxes of $67 million annually.
In addition, nuclear energy facilities typically employ up to 3,500 people during construction and 400 to 700 people during operation, at salaries 36 percent higher than average in the local area. It produces approximately $470 million annually in sales of goods and services in the local community.
The construction of new reactors depends on a robust supply chain to support manufacturing. Nuclear plants are comprised of hundreds of components and subcomponents, whose construction requires a deep and diverse supplier base. More than 22,500 companies provide $14.2 billion in components and services to the U.S. nuclear energy industry each year.
How do suppliers thrive when only 5 nuclear facilities are under construction?
Nuclear energy facilities update their equipment over time and also need replacement parts, providing a steady stream of orders through the supply chain. Beyond this ongoing activity, the U.S. nuclear energy industry competes in international markets. The more successful this effort, the more manufacturers contribute to domestic job creation and economic development.
Who works at nuclear energy facilities?
Nuclear energy facilities employ workers across myriad disciplines. Highly trained and licensed employees operate reactors and are supported by engineers of various types, health physicists, instrumentation and control workers and other professionals, as well as skilled craftspeople such as welders and mechanics.
How do nuclear energy facilities contribute to their communities?
Nuclear power plants often are located in rural communities that benefit considerably from a large industrial complex. Companies that operate nuclear energy facilities are involved in the life of nearby towns and communities, offering college scholarships for related professions, participating in charities and sponsoring other activities. Energy education centers at many facilities teach schoolchildren about nuclear energy as well as about other forms of electricity generation. Because the plants operate over several decades, their presence encourages continuity in their communities by offering employment over more than one generation of families and workers.
Nuclear energy facilities enhance the habitat around the plant, too. Many take an active role in preserving the local flora and fauna, often earning commendations from their communities and from environmental and conservation groups.
For example, the St. Lucie facility in Florida has devoted considerable resources to tracking and preserving the health of sea turtles attracted to breeding areas near the plant. At the Peach Bottom facility in Pennsylvania, Exelon Corp. developed a biodiversity team to mold its riverside site into an even more hospitable residence for its furred and feathered co-inhabitants, including bats, white-tailed deer, turkeys, foxes, bald eagles and osprey.
What is used nuclear fuel?
Used uranium fuel assemblies from commercial reactors still have 90 percent of the original potential energy, but are stored at nuclear energy facilities where they are used.
How is used nuclear fuel stored?
Most plants store used fuel in steel-lined, concrete vaults filled with water, which acts as a natural barrier for radiation from the used fuel. The water also keeps the fuel cool while it becomes less radioactive. The water itself does not leave the used fuel pool, rather is constantly circulated to maintain a suitable temperature.
After at least five years of storage in the used fuel pool, the rods can be moved into large, heavily shielded concrete and steel storage containers, whose designs must be approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. There it awaits removal by the U.S. Department of Energy to a disposal facility.
Is the used fuel stored at nuclear energy facilities safe?
Used fuel storage at nuclear plant sites is safe and secure. However, centralized temporary storage at volunteer locations would enable the movement of used fuel from both decommissioned and operating plants before a repository begins operating. This would fulfill the government’s legal responsibility to take possession of used nuclear fuel.
What is low-level radioactive waste?
Low-level radioactive waste is a byproduct of the beneficial uses of radioactive materials, including electricity generation, medical diagnosis and treatment, biomedical and pharmaceutical research and manufacturing.
It is solid material that can be safely transported under strict regulations established by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Low-level radioactive waste usually consists of items such as gloves and other protective clothing, glass and plastic laboratory supplies, machine parts and tools, and disposable medical items that have come in contact with radioactive materials.
How did the 2011 nuclear accident in Japan affect the nuclear energy industry?
In the United States, the nuclear energy industry and the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission immediately took steps to make facilities even safer than before the accident. Most other countries took a similar approach to the United States and kept their facilities operating. Germany and Switzerland are phasing out their nuclear energy facilities. Japan shut down its plants, but has restarted one and may restart others after they make safety upgrades.
What did the U.S. nuclear energy industry do in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident?
The industry quickly implemented a safety enhancement strategy to ensure that plants have the additional equipment needed to respond to extreme natural events such as the tsunami in Japan. The industry initiative will provide additional sources of water and electric power to keep the reactor and used fuel pool cool if electricity from the grid is unavailable, as it was in Japan. Additional generators, batteries, water pumps and other emergency equipment have been purchased at each site. In addition, regional response centers in Tennessee and Arizona will maintain more emergency equipment that can be dispatched quickly to any facility that needs it.
These enhancements follow additional safety measures that were implemented following the 2001 terrorist attacks. Safety enhancements made over more than 40 years, including new processes and procedures based on lessons learned from the accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and in Japan in 2011, have resulted in sustained high levels of safety.
The industry is implementing additional safety measures required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission through 2016.
What is the difference between natural radiation and radiation from nuclear energy?
Radiation is present at all locations where people live and comes from various sources (solar radiation, terrestrial radiation from the ground), and this level of background radiation changes with people’s everyday activities(eating certain foods, flying on a plane, getting an x-ray, where they live on the Earth). However, human bodies are designed to live in an environment with ever-constant radiation at the levels we experience here on Earth. The tiny amount of radiation that comes from a nuclear reactor is the same type of radiation that can be found through these natural sources, and because the radiation from nuclear energy is far below natural levels, there is no threat to a person who comes into contact with it.
Does nuclear energy produce greenhouse gases?
There are no emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide during the production of electricity at nuclear energy facilities. It also doesn’t create any particulate pollution. Nuclear energy is the only clean-air source of energy that produces electricity 24 hours a day, every day.
Isn’t Fukushima a good reason not to build nuclear plants? Isn’t that area now uninhabitable?
No on both counts. The radiation levels near the Fukushima plants have been low enough for human habitation and for growing crops for many months, and people have started returning to their homes. The Fukushima reactors were among the oldest in the world and could have been updated to higher safety standards, had the utility that owns them been willing to spend money to do so (the few commercial reactors in the U.S. of this same design have had these updates made). The newest commercial reactor designs differ considerably from the Fukushima reactors and have features that would have prevented the failures that occurred following the tsunami at Fukushima.
Will radiation from Fukushima be of concern along U.S. and Canadian coasts?
Even near the Fukushima plants, the contamination in the sea is so low that it is not a health hazard, as the radiation levels are significantly less than background radiation. From that low level, it is diluted as it crosses the ocean. Levels of any Fukushima contaminants in the ocean will be many thousands of times lower after they mix across the Pacific and arrive on the West Coast of North America in 2014. At the levels expected even short distances from Japan, the Pacific is safe for boating, swimming, etc.
Don’t nuclear power plants spew out a lot of radiation?
No, they give off almost no radiation. Coal-fired power plants emit about 3 times as much radiation as a nuclear power plant, all from naturally occurring radioactive materials. Radiation exposure from a nuclear power plant is 1/300 as much as natural background levels of radiation.
Won’t a lot of radiation be released if a nuclear plant loses power because of an earthquake, or a hurricane, or a terrorist attack?
No. U.S. reactors have many more additional ways of cooling the reactors in a blackout than did the Fukushima reactors, which had not been updated to handle heat removal following a loss of electricity to the plant. If a blackout occurs, a reactor immediately shuts down (as did the Fukushima reactors); the difference with newer reactor designs is that the remaining heat from radioactive decay is continuously removed whether there is available electricity or not, thus preventing fuel melting and keeping the radioactive material secured within the reactor.
Can’t a nuclear power plant explode like a nuclear weapon?
It is impossible for a reactor to explode like a nuclear weapon. Nuclear weapons contain very special materials in very particular arrangements, neither of which is present in a nuclear reactor. Explosions that occurred at Fukushima were driven by a build-up of high-pressure gases (hydrogen and steam), and the resulting explosion is similar to a can of soda exploding upon impact. In the U.S., these explosions would not have occurred – the gases would not have been allowed to build up.
What about the huge amounts of nuclear waste from nuclear power plants?
There’s no way to get rid of it, is there? Used fuel isn’t “waste” —96 % of this “waste” can be recycled to make new nuclear fuel rods. And it isn’t a huge amount, it’s a tiny, tiny, tiny amount compared to waste products from other on-demand energy sources. All of the used nuclear fuel generated in every U.S. nuclear plant in the past 50 years would fill a single football field to a depth of less than 10 yards. And the radioactive material left over from recycling would need storage for less than 300 years to become no more radioactive than ordinary bricks and stones.
Isn’t it dangerous to store spent nuclear fuel?
No. Used fuel is currently being safely stored at power plants, first in big pools of water, then, after several years, in concrete casks. Used fuel is so well shielded that divers routinely plunge into the storage pools to complete surveillance inspections, and they do not get any significant dose of radiation.
Isn’t it easy for terrorists to steal uranium or plutonium from nuclear plants and make bombs?
Plutonium is present only in spent fuel, and the spent fuel radiation levels, plus the very strong and thick steel and concrete structures where the spent fuel is kept, make this material essentially impossible to access and carry away (which means nuclear plants also don’t provide terrorists with opportunities to steal radioactive materials for dirty bombs). Fresh fuel contains only uranium, which is very heavy and is inside fuel bundles that weigh roughly 1,000 pounds and are about 12 feet tall – again, very hard to steal. In addition, the uranium composition in commercial nuclear fuel is the wrong type for bombs – bombs need over 90% U235, whereas commercial nuclear fuel is no more than 5% U235. Finally, nuclear power plants have very tight security, including armed guards, to ensure that both fresh fuel and spent fuel remain safe.
Why should we build nuclear plants that take 12 years to construct, when solar and wind farms can go up in a couple of years?
Nuclear plants don’t take that long to construct. In China it takes 5 years from initial construction to commercial operation of a nuclear plant. After the initial few years of construction, a nuclear power plant operates for up to 60 years (compared to about 15 years for wind turbines) producing emission-free electricity for 1 million homes with very low fuel costs. Countries like China have the ability to implement long- term energy policies effectively so they are building or planning to build almost 100 reactors in the next few decades to reduce their carbon footprint while providing low-cost electricity.
Why are nuclear plants being shut down for economic reasons?
Current U.S. energy policy gives wind and solar power generators investment tax credits to build wind farms; wind also receives production federal tax credits of $22 per megawatt-hour. These subsidies mask the true cost of producing electricity by these methods, and they also mean that wind and solar plants are paid to produce energy even when profits are zero and power prices are negative. The costs of this upside- down pricing system then effectively get charged against nuclear and fossil fuel plants, since they don’t receive these subsidies. So it isn’t that nuclear power generation isn’t cost effective; what hurts nuclear plants economically is a lack of fair pricing that would reflect the true costs of each type of electricity generation.
Won’t we run out of uranium fuel for reactors?
The U.S. has large uranium reserves and could also purchase uranium from politically stable, friendly countries like Canada and Australia that also have large uranium deposits. These reserves, plus the ability to recycle used nuclear fuel, mean we have enough fuel for nuclear reactors for thousands of years.
Why shouldn’t we use thorium reactor plants? Aren’t they safer than uranium-fueled reactors?
We may use the thorium cycle some day when uranium runs low, or in countries with little uranium. But uranium fuel technology (especially recycling) is much more developed than thorium technology and therefore more commercially viable. All of the arguments commonly made in favor of thorium reactors are also true for advanced uranium reactors, including the safety arguments, and uranium advanced reactors are far closer to commercialization than are reactors using thorium technology, so there are no strong reasons to abandon uranium in favor of thorium.
Do we really need nuclear in order to deal with global warming?
Preventing dangerous warming of the planet due to human emissions of greenhouse gases will require that we cut our emissions by 80 percent over the next 40 years at the same time that global energy demand is expected to double or triple. Doing so will require that we produce vast amounts of zero carbon energy. At present, the only way we know how to do that is with nuclear energy.
Isn’t the real problem that we simply consume too much energy?
Most people on the planet actually need to consume more energy, not less. Energy consumption is highly correlated with better health outcomes, longer life spans, and higher living standards. High-energy societies have liberated billions of us from lives of hard agricultural labor. More than a billion people around the world still do not have access to electricity at all. Ensuring there is abundant energy to power the planet over the coming century promises to unleash the creative potential of billions more. But the basic math of global development and global warming is unforgiving. If we are going to meet the needs of a growing global population while keeping global warming in check, we will need technologies that can produce enormous amounts of energy without emitting carbon.
Isn’t that why we need to control population growth?
Providing universal access to abundant, cheap clean energy is one of the best population growth strategies we have. Consuming more energy allows people to live wealthier, healthier, and longer lives, which translates into lower population growth. As people become wealthier and more economically secure, they have fewer children. This is why leading advocates for human development and environmental sustainability, like Bill Gates and Jeffrey Sachs, strongly support the development and deployment of nuclear energy.
Even if we produce energy with minimal pollution, won’t more energy use incur a greater, more devastating environmental impact?
Cheap clean energy allows us to reduce our impact on the environment. With it, we can grow more food on less land and leave more wilderness for nature. We can reprocess wastewater and desalinate seawater, rather than depleting aquifers and draining majestic rivers. We can also recycle fiber and pulp rather than cutting down ancient forests. A world with abundant clean energy allows us to protect natural resources and leave more of our ecological inheritance undisturbed.
Can’t we become more energy efficient instead of using more energy?
We are vastly more energy efficient than we were just a few decades ago, much less a few centuries ago. Yet, even as we’ve become more efficient, we’ve also continued to use more energy. That’s because energy efficiency makes energy cheaper, and the result is that we find more ways to use it. Just a few years ago, nobody had heard of the cloud, and two decades ago nobody had heard of the Internet. Today, more of us than ever are able fly around the world. We fill our homes with 50-inch televisions and all manner of networked devices. We transform billboards and skyscrapers into gigantic LED video screens. Efficiency is good and we should strive for more, but it won’t eliminate the need to develop enormous quantities of cheap and zero carbon energy to meet the demands of the growing global economy.
Can’t we solve global warming with renewables?
We’ve made a lot of progress with renewables, but they are still costly, intermittent, and difficult to scale. Without utility scale energy storage technologies, which remain unviable, you simply can’t run a modern society on wind and solar alone. Some places, like Germany and Denmark, have achieved higher levels of wind and solar, but they have done so through heavy, historically unprecedented deployment subsidies that can’t be sustained. Furthermore, these societies remain overwhelmingly dependent upon fossil energy: Germany got 70 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels in 2012 versus 5 percent from solar and 7 percent from wind.
But aren’t solar and wind growing rapidly?
It’s easy to achieve high rates of growth when you start from a tiny amount of installed wind and solar. But the fact remains that solar generated just 0.10 percent of US electricity, and wind 3.5 percent, in 2012. This was after more than $50 billion in renewable electricity subsidies over the last three decades. Even Germany, which since 2000 has committed over $130 billion to solar PV in the form of above-market-price 20-year feed-in tariff contracts, only gets 5 percent of its annual electricity from solar.
But isn’t nuclear energy also too expensive?
Installed nuclear generation in the United States is among the cheapest sources of electricity we have – cheaper even than coal. France, which generates over 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear energy, has some of the cheapest electricity prices in Western Europe. Nuclear plants cost a lot of money to build up front, but they operate for 60 to 80 years, producing massive amounts of energy with virtually no fuel costs. Over the long term, this makes them a bargain.
The Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant in Finland – the poster child of expensive nuclear – is $6.5 billion over budget and six years behind schedule. Even still, recent analysis shows that this beleaguered plant will produce electricity at almost one-fourth the cost of Germany’s solar program. These are good technologies to compare, as the Finnish plant is a first-of-a-kind design – an Areva EPR – which is significantly safer, more reliable, and more efficient than existing nuclear power plants. Successive builds, such as the second EPR under construction in France, are expected to be cheaper. But even this extreme case isn’t unreasonably expensive when compared to another innovative carbon-free electricity source like solar PV.
In order to meet our climate goals, nuclear will need to get cheaper. A new generation of advanced nuclear designs is presently under development. They will be simpler, safer, and can be constructed modularly and shipped to the site. All of these features give them potential to be significantly cheaper. Nevertheless, these powerful and complicated machines will require federal help to develop and commercialize.
So if nuclear plants are so cheap, why aren’t we building them anymore?
Many nuclear plants are being built, they’re just not being built in the United States. China, India, and other developing countries, which need to keep up with massive growth in energy demand as they develop, are building nuclear plants as fast as they can. The high upfront costs of building nuclear plants and the uncertainty about how fast energy demand would grow in rich countries populated with high-energy consumers resulted in the United States and other developed countries turning away from nuclear. However, President Obama recently approved loan guarantees for two new reactors in Georgia and South Carolina and development funding for new reactor designs that are smaller and cheaper to build.
Doesn’t cheap natural gas make nuclear uncompetitive?
Cheap gas is making coal, nuclear, renewables, and virtually all other energy technologies less competitive. But that didn’t happen by accident. The shale gas revolution, which dramatically lowered the price of gas in the United States, was made possible thanks to three decades of public investment in better drilling technologies. This is why investing in next generation nuclear technologies right now is so important – so that we have a new generation of cheap nuclear technologies that can replace fossil energy in the coming decades.
Isn’t nuclear power too risky to qualify for insurance, so the government has to cover liability insurance through the Price-Anderson Act?
Nuclear is among many activities and circumstances for which we have established liability limits. Others include plane crashes, oil spills, product liability, and medical malpractice. The largest renewable energy project, hydroelectric dams, has limited liability too. Societies frequently cap or socialize liabilities for events when costs are difficult to predict, quantify, or bound, and where responsibility is difficult to apportion. These are highly uncertain, infrequent, and high consequence events. Even so, nuclear operators still have to buy an enormous amount of liability insurance. That risk is pooled, with current pooled insurance for the US nuclear industry amounting to $12.6 billion.
Even if nuclear is as cheap as you say, isn’t the risk of meltdown simply too great?
Meltdowns are very serious industrial accidents. They are extremely expensive to clean up and may result in radiation exposure that can create serious health risks. But those risks need to be put in context. Compared to virtually all other forms of energy production and generation, nuclear energy is remarkably safe. The most comprehensive peer-reviewed studies done by independent scientists evaluate air pollution, worker safety, and all of the other risks in energy production and find that nuclear is safer than coal, oil, natural gas, and even solar.
In the 60 years that we have been operating nuclear plants, there have been three serious accidents globally. Three Mile Island resulted in no deaths and no observable health problems. According to comprehensive UN and WHO reports, Chernobyl resulted in 27 confirmed deaths of workers and firefighters who were exposed to high doses of radiation during the accident and will cause an estimated 4,000 premature deaths from cancer over the lifetimes of those exposed to significant levels of radiation in the wider region. There has, however, been no observable increase in cancer deaths thus far in the affected regions.
No one was killed during the Fukushima accident due to radiation exposure, and the UN’s Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation expects the long-term effect on the surrounding public to be extremely low, with estimates ranging from as high as 180 to as low as zero additional cancers in a country where 353,000 people died of cancer in 2010. In other words, additional cancer deaths will be so few as to be impossible to distinguish from the more than 30 percent of the population that dies of cancer. A 2014 study of the public health impacts from radiocesium in areas surrounding Fukushima estimated an increased risk of cancer between 1.03 and 1.05 – which will probably be undetectable in future epidemiological studies. In addition, they found that by 2022, the amount of radioactivity in the soil will be indistinguishable from natural sources in the soil.
More than 500 people die every year from accidents in the coal, oil, and gas industries in Europe alone. Globally, more than 170,000 people die annually from respiratory ailments associated with burning coal. We think of solar energy as the cleanest and safest of all energy technologies, but manufacturing solar panels is actually an extremely toxic process, releasing all sorts of pollutants harmful to human health. Moreover, installing solar panels involves two of the riskiest occupations: roofing and electrical work. Calculations drawing on roofing mortality data and solar installation data suggest there are approximately 2 deaths per terawatt-hour in the solar PV industry just from roofing falls. By contrast, nuclear power results in 0.05 deaths per terawatt-hour due to all causes, including meltdowns.
Did Fukushima kill hopes of a nuclear renaissance?
China, India, the United States, and several Middle Eastern countries paused their new nuclear programs for a safety review after Fukushima, but all have gone forward with planned nuclear plant construction. Even Japan, which shut down all of its 54 nuclear power plants immediately after the earthquake, has begun to restart its reactors.
Germany did accelerate its nuclear phase out after Fukushima, but this had been underway since 2000. Not a single country cancelled a new nuclear power plant in response to Fukushima. Several countries, like the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Jordan, are currently moving forward with plans to build their first commercial nuclear power plants.
How can we go forward with nuclear as long as we have waste that lasts up to 100,000 years?
Whereas today’s light water reactors, which were developed in the 1950s, use only a small amount of the energy in their fuel, a range of advanced reactor designs can burn waste as fuel. Many of them are at least a decade or two away from commercialization. But by 2050 and likely before, these reactors will be using what we now call waste as fuel.
Given how much energy human societies are going to need in the coming century, and the reality that fossil fuels are finite, we will almost certainly be reprocessing and reusing waste as fuel. Until that time, all countries will store it. While the proposed US waste facility at Yucca Mountain has been controversial, the dispute is the exception, not the rule. Most nations have moved forward with uncontroversial waste storage facilities.
Didn’t we try advanced nuclear designs and they failed?
The United States developed a number of alternative designs in the 1960s. Following the Navy’s lead, the commercial sector settled on light water reactors and there was little demand for newer and better designs. Today, it has become clear that some of the alternative designs are much more resistant to meltdowns and are modular (thus cheaper to build). Big advances in materials science, nuclear engineering, and modularization will make it feasible to commercialize these new designs soon. China and India are pushing the hardest and the fastest for them, with large teams of engineers developing thorium, metal-fueled, and salt-cooled reactors.
Is it true there are nuclear reactors that can’t melt down?
Many new reactor designs feature fuels that stop reacting when temperatures rise too high, fuel cladding that cannot melt, and coolants that can cool the reactor with no human or mechanical intervention even if there is a total loss of power. These features make meltdown and serious accidents virtually impossible.
What about the risk that terrorists will attack a nuclear plant?
Nuclear plants are not good targets for terrorists. They have high security, extensive perimeters, and are built to withstand the impact of a plane crash or large explosion. Were terrorists somehow able to infiltrate a plant and escape undetected with fuel or waste — a highly improbable scenario — they would still need costly, difficult to obtain equipment and highly sophisticated technical knowledge to turn the material into a weapon. It has taken decades and billions of dollars for nations like India, Pakistan, and North Korea to build a single bomb. The prospect of non-state actors marshaling the technical and financial resources to do the same is highly unlikely.
Doesn’t the spread of nuclear energy increase the risk of nuclear proliferation?
There is no relationship between the global expansion of nuclear energy and nuclear proliferation. No nation has ever developed a weapon by first developing nuclear energy. To the degree that there has been a progression from one to the other, it has always been the opposite, with nations first developing weapons and then energy.
Some nations claimed to be developing nuclear energy capabilities when they were in fact attempting to develop a weapon, but these claims were transparently false to virtually all observers. By international law, nuclear energy facilities must be open to international inspections. The International Atomic Energy Agency has an extensive monitoring and inspection network, and it is not difficult to distinguish a weapons program from an energy program.
- Gokhan YesilyurtLead Nuclear Engineer @ X Energy, LLC in Greenbelt, MD 20770