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Energy Use and Options:
This is a rather long subject, and I have broken it into 4 parts, and then this part 3 into 2 parts as I decided to excise the full discussion on nuclear to this a separate post. Please read the other sections, in order for an overview on the energy use issues facing us. Part 4 will follow in the next week or so.
Part 1: US Energy usage and the effects on the environment and us.
Part 2: Current Electrical Generation.
Part 3A: Future Electrical Generation.
Part 3B: Future Nuclear Generation.
Part 4: Transportation Fuel Options for the future.
Nuclear Issues (Perry’s view):
The three sides of nuclear power: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
The biggest problem with nuclear power is that should anyone list out a comprehensive list of items for discussion related to nuclear power – different people will group those items differently. What I may see as a “Good” you may see as an “Ugly.”
Thus, I proceed knowing full well that I stretch my neck out by raising my head to speak; and in do doing provide ample opportunity for others to swing their mighty sword of personal righteousness to whack my head off. I but have one last request (the condemned get a last request – don’t they). Please thoroughly research all sides of the issue before swinging your sword. I used to have grave concerns about nuclear power. In the end, I found out I was wrong on most of the issues.
Nuclear generation produces no air pollution emissions and has proven to be the most reliable and cheapest generation that the US currently has. Standardized designs have reduced construction cost (there are currently over 20 nuclear plants under construction worldwide).
Just like coal plants, nuclear plants have an expected life of 50 to 60 years. However, cost of power is figured based on paying for the plants in 20 years due to how plants are financed and depreciated. After 20 years, the price of power will drop from these plants to essentially just fuel, operations, and maintenance, which means that over the very long term – that nuclear plant generation prices go down, and most probably again be the low cost generator.
Overall, these plants are still more expensive to build than a coal plant; but the higher capacity factors (more KW-Hr;s to spread the cost over) and the lower fuel, operating & maintenance cost make the 20 year cost of these plants on par with new US coal fired generation.
The history of nuclear power is full of good things that happened and terrible things that happened. The potential for good cheap energy is great, getting there has had its price, and only in the last 10 years has the industry worldwide really started to figure out how to get it right.
One of the good things, is that the nuclear power industry actually tries to learn from its mistakes – and tries to do things better.
Here is a list of some of the mistakes, and lessons learned, and issues that stand out in my mind: Note that I have “bolded” the titles on the different mistakes and issues so that you can brows the items and chose what to read if you are in a rush.
Fear of Radiation & Normal Plant Radiation Releases: There are a lot of people who make all kinds of claims that any radiation is harmful, that nuclear plants are horrible because of their radiation emissions, and that there are patterns of cancer downwind of nuclear plants. Look at all that low level waste the plant produces.
The facts are that we live in a radioactive world. Every one of us lives in a place that provides us with 250 to 500 mrem per year radiation does from background radiation. That does not count medical radiation (and the medical field tosses around radiation like it was nothing), and does not count radiation received when flying to other cities in the world. I get more radiation dose from one round trip flying to the west cost and back from central US than I get in an average year working at a nuclear plant (and I am monitored at work whenever I go into the Radiological Control Area). Aircrews typically have a much higher lifetime radiation dose than nuclear plant workers. How come no one seems to find radiation induced illnesses in flight crews or business people who fly all the time? The typical large coal plant releases the same amount of radiation products in a day that a typical nuclear plant releases in a year. Yes there are patterns of cancer downwind of nuclear plants. Major peer reviewed scientific studies have looked at the issue and found that the pattern of cancers are the same as similar patterns downwind of anywhere. Why are their not standout patterns of cancer downwind of coal plants?
Atom bomb testing has spread a lot of radioactive materials and isotopes all over the world. It can be found everywhere and is now part of the background dose we all receive. No one seems to be claiming that this is causing massive cancers in the population (but a few do legitimately warn of what happens if you pick up one of the plutonium particles that are scattered about from Atom bomb testing).
Folks, I have looked hard from within a nuclear plant on what little we emit, what are limits are, what the NRC requires us to monitor for. I can’t seem to find an issue; and would be quite willing to build a house right next door (about the safest place around). What I find interesting is that people are claiming that they are finding this or that element in the ground downwind of nuclear plants – and the nuclear plants do not emit those elements (but Atom Bomb testing did).
The facts are that we all are exposed to low levels of radiation – and during medical treatments perhaps high levels of radiation. US Nuclear power plants have no real impact on this – perhaps unless you work at one and do some of the “hot” jobs (yes there are a few who can get significant doses, but I’ll still bet aircrews get more).
Please note, it was the nuclear power industry issue who discovered the Radon gas issue with many homes – because one worker kept setting of the radiation detectors at work. That person received more dose from his house in a few years than he probably received during his entire career working at a nuclear.
Containment Buildings (& catastrophic radiation disasters): Within the US, the engineers calculated away and said that if all the equipment works, if the operators don’t do something really stupid, that the chance of a major problem or meltdown with contamination of a large area was so small… that it wasn’t likely to ever happen. But just to be sure, just in case, the US would build very expensive containment buildings around the reactors. The Soviet Union made the same calculation and decided that they did not need to build very expensive containment buildings. Compare the documented results of radiation release and cleanup between 3-Mile Island (meltdown) and Chernobyl (explosion/meltdown/fire): 3-Mile Island radiation releases offsite were limited to very low levels. Laboratory analysis presented as part of a lawsuit indicated that downwind particulate release was 1/40th (2.5%) the level of the fallout from a recent Chinese Atom Bomb test (and atom bomb test used to be routine in those days). The 3-Mile island reactor core and other disaster waste has been disposed of. Chernobyl was an outright disaster that has affected thousands of people, and turned a large area inhospitable for a number of years. No one will ever “properly” dispose of it – they can only entomb it – or live with the radioactive contamination.
The biggest failing in both cases was the assumption of “if the operators don’t do something really stupid,” in part due to lack of training. Key lesson learned: all new power reactors worldwide are built with containment buildings. Key focus on training and human error prevention tools as well. Retrofit of some instruments that would have helped the operators understand what was going on in the reactor. New reactor designs are focusing on minimal, if any, operator involvement for safe shutdown and protection of the core (make them as “stupid proof” as possible – just walk away and they will be OK). 3-Mile Island had many lessons and produced a huge change on how business was done in the US and rest of the world.
A recent issue of terrorism attacks using jumbo jets has forced further evaluation of containment buildings. Containment buildings are massive high strength reinforced concrete structures many feet thick designed to withstand many kinds of natural disasters. Analysis of every containment building in the US indicates that not one of them should fail to the point of allowing any damage to the reactor and its adjacent systems within containment if a fully loaded jumbo jet were to hit one head on (not saying you wouldn’t spall off some concrete). New plants are likely to be mostly buried, where they cannot be flown into.
I know that nuclear plant have evacuation zones for “What if… containment fails.” I do the drills – which present credible scenarios of how multiple things can go wrong and create a toxic soup inside containment; and then we are just told in the drill that “containment has failed and you have a leak of x amount of gas and the wind is blowing in that direction at this speed” No one ever presents an explanation on why containment failed. Yet, despite those drills, and the assumption of a crack or a hole in containment, and the worst wind speed and direction -we never seem to contaminate a large area of anything (not saying that their might not be a small area to evacuate). That is because even if we have a leak – the greatest bulk of stuff still stays in containment. Containment buildings – something the US nuclear industry did right.
SL-1: This was the US Army’s version of a battle theater nuclear power plant. It was built and tested in Idaho. It and its operation crew are buried in Idaho as well (the operators in lead coffins). After piecing together what must have happened the US Army dropped the idea of having a small nuclear power plant they could move into a battlefield theater. The nuclear industry learned that reactor cores must be designed to not start (go critical) and after removal of a single control rod, and to be able to safely shutdown minus a single control rod (today it’s called a “rod ejection event”).
What happened: the operator had lifted a control rod a bit to far as part of reconnecting it to its control linkage (he was supposed to lift the control rod a certain distance to connect it, he lifted it too far) – and the reactor went “prompt critical” creating an instant steam explosion and a meltdown. That operator was found pinned to the ceiling by the control rod he was connecting. His buddy was recovered alive from elsewhere in the reactor room but died shortly thereafter from massive radiation exposure without ever recovering enough to talk.
Sodium Cooled Reactors: The goal of a nuclear plant is to transfer the heat from the nuclear core so that it can be used to generate power. How do you transfer that heat? Water boils and you must keep the reactor pressurized (and the reactor becomes a pressure vessel), you also have a hard time getting superheated steam if you cool the reactor with water (and there are many advantages to using superheated steam over saturated steam). Low melting temperature liquid metals would work well, and allow you to keep the reactor itself at atmospheric pressure. Liquid sodium also has “good” nuclear properties (so does lead), and would be easy to pump because it is fairly light (by volumn – and lead isn’t). Why not circulate liquid sodium through the reactor and then through a heat exchanger with water on the other side? You can then have all the superheated steam you want, and have a much simpler reactor. It seems such a good idea.
Duh man; did you ever consider that metallic sodium explosively reacts with water, and a sodium leak could be catastrophic? Of course, they answer. “We’ll build our heat exchangers so they can’t leak and ensure that the piping can’t leak either” (do any of you believe that…). I know of four reactors in the world that used sodium cooling. 3 of them had sodium leaks (2 of these were small power reactors, 1 a research reactor). Thankfully, I am aware of no meltdowns as a result. But, massive plant damage, people died in at least one case, and I do not believe that any of those plants ran again (the 4th plant, actually the first experimental sodium reactor, was shutdown without ever having an incident).
Lesson learned: There are no sodium cooled power reactors. The power industry lives with the restrictions that water cooled reactors place on them. Note: The Soviet Union did build some lead cooled reactors, and there is now talk that perhaps we should be considering lead cooled power reactors for the future.
Atomic Energy Commission “Atoms For Peace:” This was how the civilian nuclear program started in the US. Great initial idea, poor execution in that they did not recognize the conflicts of interest and deal with it soon enough: The same people promoting nuclear power were also regulating it. Safety concerns could be minimized if it affected production. I can’t point to specific problems, but as a person who works at one of the earlier “atoms for peace” plants – I often wonder why certain things were not recognized up front (we have a lot of retrofits and have countermeasures in place). Solution: Creation of independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to regulate safety. Department Of Energy (DOE) to assume promotional aspects of nuclear technology. This has worked much better (and the DOE is having fits with the NRC currently on Yucca Mountain).
Lack of Standardized Designs: Within the US, the initial wave of nuclear power plants were designed and built by a multitude of different companies. There are over 70 designs in the initial wave of 100+ nuclear units. Since virtually everything was custom to each plant – everything was expensive; and everything needed separate justifications and explanations on how it works. Also, since all the plants are “different” no one paid any attention to problems at other plants – because they are “different” (when in reality, many of the problems cross through the different component designs). Now there is a good side to this as well. The US nuclear industry got to find out just what technological solutions worked, and what had problems – and the US has lead the design of the next generation plants based on that information. However, the next generation plants will be largely standardized, except for site specific items, and relatively cheap to build because of the economics of scale from using standardized parts (the French built 2 standard designs in their first 50+ power reactors).
High Level Waste Disposal: Spent fuel disposal is often a divisive issue, and an important one. Some of the other countries in the world reprocess the spent fuel, and stuff the worst stuff back into the reactor where it can be further reacted to produce less troublesome elements, making disposal of the remaining waste a lot easier. The US has decided that it should long term store and bury the waste. There are other countries in the world who have decided the same. The arguments for that is that current reprocessing technology has problems and that the spent fuel is a resource that can always be reprocessed later if needed.
What then are the issues to be resolved? Who pays; What is adequate storage; Who does it; and the list goes on and on. I can answer some of these questions and for others I have no current answer – I just believe they can be answered.
A simple visual: There is a remarkably small amount of spent fuel. Laid side by side all the US power reactor spent fuel would fill a football field about 4 feet high. However, the storage containers make it look very bulky.
Who pays for the disposal for this waste (isn’t the government subsidizing the nuclear industry)? All consumers that purchase nuclear generated power pay for the high level waste disposal. A 0.1 cent per KW-Hr charge has been applied to all nuclear power and is part of the 1.68 cents per KW-Hr average cost of nuclear power. This money gets passed to the US Government (who has collected about $27 Billion dollars so far, and is collecting about $0.8 Billion more each year at the current rate). As part of the deal to get this 0.1 cents per KW-Hr the US Government signed contracts to take possession of the used spent fuel and dispose of it.
This money is expected to more than pay for the cost of disposal of the spent fuel. In fact, the US Government is making quite the profit on the deal. The latest estimates puts Yucca mountain style disposal at about 1/3 of the cost that the US Government has and will collect. Although some of the most pessimistic estimates for deep burial cost put it at about ½ of the cost of the collected money. Unfortunately, there is no trust fund and the US government just puts the money into the general fund, and funds Yucca and other waste disposal options out of the general fund – so it appears that the government is funding waste disposal efforts.
Recently questions have been raised about the wisdom of deep burial; and the possibilities are being discussed of using a long term above ground “dry storage” repository. That option would cost about 1/10 of the cost of the money the US Government has collected.
Thus the facts are that the nuclear industry is substantially subsidizing the US Government on the issue of high level waste disposal (which you car argue that it needs to clean up and dispose of the weapons program mess).
What is adequate storage? The general concept behind Yucca, and future sister sites, is to deep bury the waste in a geological stable place to minimize future problems with the waste – and so that it can be relatively easily recovered for a period of time as well.
I am not sure if the specific plans for Yucca at this time are adequate – or that Yucca itself is the best place. I have seen things that give me pause and raise questions. Yet, I believe that it is possible to build some form of deep storage.
However, a point: The US is the only country in the world seeking deep storage where a 1 million year “safe” time limit has been placed on the waste storage system. I do not believe that is rational. Civilization has only existed for about 4000 years. There is no way to guarantee anything will last a million years (including mankind). No other disposal issue has this standard (chemical waste, poisons, and biologics). Most nations have set “safe” high level waste storage goals ranging from 1,000 to 50,000 years. The arguments commonly quoted are that first the future people of the earth will know how to detect and avoid radiation contaminated areas – if such contamination should ever occur. Second, that Mother Nature herself has created some high radiation areas in the world. It is felt that it would be extremely unlikely that any radiation leakage from deeply buried waste would approach the levels that already exist on the surface of the earth in certain parts of the world (and the people who live in those areas seem to do OK). In the end, I believe we should set some form of reasonable standard – something that can be achieved. A one million year standard in impossible to achieve with any confidence; thus it is not a standard at all.
How safe is spent fuel to transport? Very, and actually a lot of shipments have already occurred in the US years ago with no problems. The containers have been crash tested, fire tested, and all kinds of test to ensure that bare fuel bundles would not be exposed to atmosphere in the event of the worst possible kinds of crashes. The fuel is many years old and much of the radioactive intensity has already decayed away, and the container acts as a good shield. You get far more radiation from flying a single trip somewhere than you would get from being near a transport canister for a while. In the event of an accident; the area would be ropped off a few dozen feet back until a crane could be arranged to put the canister back on another truck. No evacuation would be needed (unlike a chemical spill), and no one would be injured unless they were directly crushed by the canister.
Terriorism against the plant: The US nuclear plants are some of the best defended sites in the US (and in the world). By their very design they are a hardened site. They also employ fairly large highly trained, often ex military, security forces with weapons well beyond anything you local police have.
Terrorist tend to pick easy targets. A nuclear plant is not. While a large enough force can of course overwhelm plant security, they still have to be able to hold the plant. My guess is that even if they gain control of the control room – that they will not have control of the plant. You do not need the control room to safely shut down the plant (it is just a bit more convenient to do it from their). Security drills assume that the terrorist have inside help from a high level security force member to ensure that the drill teams are defending against realistic treats and scenarios.
New plants will be largely buried to make crashing a plane into them not a possibility.
The NRC and Regulatory Process is not good enough: This actually has two sides to it. Some consumers do not think that the NRC does a good enough job; and the industry is concerned about the regulatory process.
Does the NRC do a good enough job ensuring plants are safe? There is evidence that the NRC has slipped here and their and missed things. There is evidence that the NRC spends too much time chasing items of no merit. Let’s be honest here. The NRC is not perfect. I have environmental friends who are concerned that the NRC does not regulate good enough; and I know people inside the plants that thinks the NRC over-regulates. What I really feel is that both sides are somewhat frustrated with the level of attention that the NRC gives us and its processes. That indicates to me that the NRC has it about right. I do not think the NRC is missing anything of importance at my plant. If I was concerned I would tell them about it (we are encouraged to raise issues – even directly to the NRC if appropriate – when we have them).
Is the regulatory process workable? This is a question largely raised by the nuclear power industry. Past changes in the regulatory process midway through projects litterly bankrupted power companies. This is the real reason that nuclear plant orders stopped after 3-Mile Island.
Prior to 3-Mile Island nuclear plants went through a construction and licensing process with a certain degree of reasonableness in the timetable. Many of these plants cost on the order of $300 Million dollars to build and license (not saying things were perfect, just that it was a doable process).
No one argued that changes had to be made after Three Mile Island (TMI). Certain new features needed to be added to the plants already under construction, and new plants needed to be modified in the design phase. These were not big changes and in reality would not delay construction that much. But the approval process for those changes took many years as the NRC kept changing the process. Imagine starting to build a plant estimated to cost $300 million and to be finish in 4 years – only to go though 6 more years of hearings after hearings after hearings – always with new requirements - and the final plant is finished in 10 years at a cost of $1.2 Billion. Or coming in with post TMI prints with all the appropriate post TMI modifications, and estimating that the plant will cost $500 million and being finished in 4 years; and getting initial approval for construction – and then being tossed into the hearing after hearing after hearing process and the final plant (build to the initial approved prints) is finished in 8 years at a cost of $1.8 Billion. Some plants even cost more than $4 Billion to finish and license.
The history of nuclear plant construction after TMI is one of constant construction delays because of constant changes in the regulators expectations. Cost overruns were mammoth on project after project due to those construction delays as the interest on the construction loans built up. Most State Utility commissions made it worse by refusing to allow a power company to cancel a project in its early stage and recover their initial “prudent” investment (that the utility commission pre-approved as prudent). Who would build another plant under those conditions? Several utility companies were forced into bankruptcy.
The NRC has admitted that this happened, and does understand that no new US nuclear plant will ever be constructed unless they changed their process (in other countries the process is very short). They worked with the industry and Congress to define a new process for plant construction and license approval. Yet no one really knows how well it will work and how long it will take to get a new plant approved. Current estimates are 3 – 4 years for approval of a site and plant (assuming they use a pre-approved plant design); followed by 4 years construction. It cost an estimated $100 Million dollars to go through the site approved and a license process – assuming it goes as planned. But who knows what surprises the NRC will find in the process. They have not approved a site license in about 25 years.
The Government is providing huge subsidies to the Nuclear industry: Not true, in fact if you add things up the government is making money off of the nuclear industry and using the nuclear power industry to subsidize others.
Under the spent fuel item above I explained how the nuclear plants are paying much more than the expected cost for high level waste disposal (many billions of dollars more).
Another angle the government has is that the NRC is largely self funded from fees it charges all the license holders. There are many hundreds of license holders for nuclear instruments (construction, weld inspection, etc), hundreds of hospitals with nuclear medicine licenses, Dozens of research reactors, and yes 104 operating power plants.
The fee structure is set so that the nuclear power plants subsidize other license holders. A power plant license is very expensive. A hospital license is almost free. Then in addition to the annual license fees; the plants pay a set billing rates for every hour of every NRC inspector’s or employee’s time involved with their plant or application (and this is not cheap).
Thus, the nuclear industry is subsidizing the government on waste disposal and subsidizing the NRC.
Oh, how about those recently passed subsidies in the Energy Bill (and previous energy bills). Yes they are their. The nuclear power industry is about a $13.25 Billion dollar a year industry in the US (2004 data – what the nuclear plants get paid at 1.68 cents, not what the utilities charge at 4.9 cents). It is not uncommon for any industry that size to receive some form of research subsidies; especially considering the impact on the US economy of having economical power generation.
The biggest reasons for the latest subsidies is the question related to how many delays and what will be the actual cost of getting nuclear power plants approved and constructed due to government delays. We know how much it will cost to build these plants in many other nations of the world – over 20 of them are under construction now – they don’t have a NRC approval process to go through.
Given that nuclear appears to be both the long term low cost provider, no air pollution, and the government is making money from the industry to subsidize other things; doesn’t that warrant a granting of some money to get things started again so that everyone can figure out how expensive the NRC process is going to make it?
Nuclear plant insurance: Who insures a nuclear plant and the public if there is a disaster? Let’s face it, no insurance company is going to write a multibillion dollar policy and have to spend years fighting in court if something goes wrong. They would also of course exclude any form of terrorism or act of war.
The “Price Anderson Act” was the answer. Essentially, the nuclear utilities self insure for the fist 9 Billion dollars on a no fault basis; after that the government takes over (just like they have for major hurricane damage). To keep things simple, lawsuits are not allowed. It has actually been used once for Three Mile Island.
How it works is that the nuclear utilities have built up a huge nest egg of money; if something bad actually happens they can tap the money right away. During Three Mile Island a commission was set-up to handle the cost and economic effects of the evacuation. Bills were submitted to the commission, and they were paid if they looked reasonable. Almost everyone was paid in a short period of time. The industry also paid through this fund for the cleanup of the melted reactor core and the accident related decontamination of the site.
So there is a $9 Billion dollar pot of money set aside for this. Some people claim that the government is thus subsidizing the industry because they would be responsible for anything over $9 Billion.
The nuclear industry is not unique in this respect. Name any multibillion dollar disaster and you will see that ultimately the government is the party that steps in. In this case, they got the industry to cough up the first $9 Billion, regardless of cause. By eliminating the lawsuits it was felt that more of the money would actually go to the people needing it and not the lawyers.
To sum things up: The world is generally voting nuclear, and for a good reason. This is the only technology currently available that realistically can replace coal, oil, and natural gas fired power plants at this time, and its long term cost is also the lowest cost option at this time (including waste disposal).
5 years ago if you had asked me about nuclear power – I would have laughed at you. Now, I no longer laugh and feel that it must be considered.
Cost of new generation (first 20 years):
Nuclear Power plant: Around 3.20 cents per KW-Hr
This puts nuclear power as one of the low cost options (tied with pulverized coal), and an air pollution free option at that. It is my preferred option for new major generation. To see why, read Part 3A on the rest of the power generation options.
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