There's a simple, compelling argument that the world ought to be building many more nuclear power plants. We'll need vast amounts of carbon-free energy to stave off global warming. It's not at all clear that renewables can do the job alone. And nuclear is a proven technology, already providing 11 percent of electricity globally.
Before we dive into the US story, a note on numbers. The Energy Policy paper focuses on "overnight construction costs" for power plants. This is the price of parts, labor, engineering, and land. It doesn't include fuel, operations, maintenance, or financing costs, but it's the dominant component of lifetime costs. And it's phrased in terms of dollars per kilowatt, so we can compare plants of different sizes.
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For context, the EIA calculates overnight construction costs for new US power plants ordered in 2014. Advanced nuclear reactors are estimated to cost $5,366 for every kilowatt of capacity. That means a large 1-gigawatt reactor would cost around $5.4 billion to build, excluding financing costs. By contrast, a new wind farm costs just $1,980 per kilowatt. A new gas plant costs just $912 per kilowatt, or one-fifth as much. (This isn't a perfect comparison, since reactors run at capacity more often than wind farms or gas plants. But even if you adjust for capacity factors, those construction costs make nuclear uncompetitive. High upfront costs can also scare off investors.)
Today, nuclear power provides just one-fifth of America's electricity, and there are only five reactors currently under construction. Because the industry is essentially starting afresh, these new reactors are quite pricey.
France started making a big push for nuclear power in the 1960s, starting with gas-cooled reactors and pressurized water reactor designs from the US and later, in the 1970s, developing its own PWR designs.
1) Stable regulations are essential for nuclear power to thrive. Nuclear reactors will always need safety and environmental regulations. The key, says Lovering, is making sure these regulations are predictable. A rule that forces reactors to limit the temperature of its water discharge can be dealt with. But a requirement that changes midway through construction can be devastating. Predictability was a key difference between the US and places like France or South Korea.
3) Build multiple reactors at the same site. France, Japan, Canada, and South Korea often built anywhere from two to eight reactors at a single power plant site. That led to major efficiencies: It saved on site-related costs (like evacuation plans), it's easier to get specialized equipment and workers, and you can consolidate control rooms.
It's tough to say what the future holds. Nuclear power has been in sharp decline globally since the 1970s, and it seems like every three years the media hypes a nuclear "renaissance" that never pans out:
-- The International Energy Agency put out a huge report in 2015 on policy steps needed to deploy nuclear power more widely and bring down costs. And Jessica Lovering wrote a report for Breakthrough in 2014 titled "How to Make Nuclear Cheap."
Pacific Gas & Electric planned to build the first commercially viable nuclear power plant in the USA at Bodega Bay, a fishing village fifty miles north of San Francisco. The proposal was controversial and conflict with local citizens began in 1958.[4] In 1963 there was a large demonstration at the site of the proposed Bodega Bay Nuclear Power Plant.[5] The conflict ended in 1964, with the forced abandonment of plans for the power plant. Attempts to build a nuclear power plant in Malibu, CaliforniaMalibu were similar to those at Bodega Bay and were also abandoned.[4]
On 22 February 1974, Washington's Birthday, organic farmer Sam Lovejoy took a crowbar to the weather-monitoring tower which had been erected at the Montague Nuclear Power Plant site. Lovejoy felled 349 feet of the 550 foot tower and then took himself to the local police station, where he presented a statement in which he took full responsibility for the action. Lovejoy's action galvanized local public opinion against the plant.[6][7] The Montague nuclear power plant proposal was canceled in 1980,[8] after $29 million was spent on the project.[6]
Seabrook power plant was proposed as a twin-reactor plant in 1972, at an estimated cost of $973 million. When it finally won a commercial license in March 1990, it was a single reactor which cost $6.5 billion.[9] Over a period of thirteen years, more than 4,000 citizens committed nonviolent civil disobedience at Seabrook:[10]
Image:Diablo canyon nuclear power plant.jpgthumbnailDiablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County, California, USASeabrook's Clamshell Alliance inspired the formation of California's Abalone Alliance, a coalition that included sixty member groups by 1981. The AbaloneAlliance staged blockades and occupations at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant site between 1977 and 1982.[21] Nearly two thousand people were arrested during a two-week blockade in 1981, exceeding Seabrook as the largest number arrested at an anti-nuclear protest in the United States.[21] Specific protests included:
Even before the Three Mile Island accident, the nuclear industry was facing considerable adverse public opinion. A "sizeable and tenacious opposition movement had caused significant delays" in the licensing and construction of new power plants in the United States. The TMI accident stimulated a rise in anti-nuclear sentiment.[28]
In 1979, Abalone Alliance members held a 38-day sit-in in the Californian Governor Jerry Brown's office to protest continued operation of Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station, which was a duplicate of the Three Mile Island facility.[43] In 1989, Sacramento voters voted to shut down the Rancho Seco power plant.[44]
Businesses with sustainability goals are also driving renewable energy development by building their own facilities (e.g., solar roofs and wind farms), procuring renewable electricity through power purchase agreements, and purchasing renewable energy certificates (RECs).
All sources of renewable energy are used to generate electric power. In addition, geothermal steam is used directly for heating and cooking. Biomass and solar sources are also used for space and water heating. Ethanol and biodiesel (and to a lesser extent, gaseous biomethane) are used for transportation.
Large conventional hydropower projects currently provide the majority of renewable electric power generation worldwide. With about 1,170 gigawatts (GW) of global capacity, hydropower produced an estimated 4,370 terawatt hours (TWh) of the roughly 26,000 TWh total global electricity in 2020.
The United States is the fourth-largest producer of hydropower after China, Brazil, and Canada. In 2011, a much wetter than average year in the U.S. Northwest, the United States generated 7.9 percent of its total electricity from hydropower. The Department of Energy has found that the untapped generation potential at existing U.S. dams designed for purposes other than power production (i.e., water supply, flood control, and inland navigation) represents 12 GW, roughly 15 percent of current hydropower capacity.
Hydropower operational costs are relatively low, and hydropower generates little to no greenhouse gas emissions. The main environmental impact is that a dam to create a reservoir or divert water to a hydropower plant changes the ecosystem and physical characteristic of the river.
Small hydropower projects, generally less than 10 megawatts (MW), and micro-hydropower (less than 1 MW) are less costly to develop and have a lower environmental impact than large conventional hydropower projects. In 2019, the total amount of small hydro installed worldwide was 78 GW. China had the largest share at 54 percent. China, Italy, Japan, Norway and the United States are the top five small hydro countries by installed capacity. Many countries have renewable energy targets that include the development of small hydro projects.
Hydrokinetic electric power, including wave and tidal power, is a form of unconventional hydropower that captures energy from waves or currents and does not require dam construction. These technologies are in various stages of research, development, and deployment. In 2011, a 254 MW tidal power plant in South Korea began operation, doubling the global capacity to 527 MW. By the end of 2018, global capacity was about 532 MW.
Low-head hydro is a commercially available source of hydrokinetic electric power that has been used in farming areas for more than 100 years. Generally, the capacity of these devices is small, ranging from 1kW to 250kW.
Pumped storage hydropower plants use inexpensive electricity (typically overnight during periods of low demand) to pump water from a lower-lying storage reservoir to a storage reservoir located above the power house for later use during periods of peak electricity demand. Although economically viable, this strategy is not considered renewable since it uses more electricity than it generates.
Wind was the second largest renewable energy source worldwide (after hydropower) for power generation. Wind power produced more than 6 percent of global electricity in 2020 with 743 GW of global capacity (707.4 GW is onshore). Capacity is indicative of the maximum amount of electricity that can be generated when the wind is blowing at sufficient levels for a turbine. Because the wind is not always blowing, wind farms do not always produce as much as their capacity. With around 290 MW, China had the largest installed capacity of wind generation in 2020. The United States, with 122.5 GW, had the second-largest capacity; Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Kansas provide more than half of U.S. wind generation, with Texas greatly leading all other states in installed capacity, at 27 percent of the U.S. total. In 2019, wind energy overtook hydropower for the largest share of renewable generation in the U.S., providing 8.4 percent of electricity in 2020. 2ff7e9595c
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