Why nuclear isn’t the answer (and why electricity growth will never meet projections)
January 7th, 2009 by Jim JustThere are some stunning figures and graphics posted at Prime Numbers: the Nuclear Option that illustrate the enormous challenge nuclear power faces in scaling up.
For nuclear to do nothing more than maintain its current share of global electricity to 2030 – 15% – a one-thousand megawatt reactor must be built every 16 days for the next 21 years. For nuclear to offset just a small fraction of the additional 7 billion tons of CO2 emissions expected by 2050 – say, one billion tons – a 1,000 megawatt reactor must come on line every 14 days now and 2050.
What I get from this is the sheer fantasy of thinking that any power source will enable our projections of future electricity use to be fulfilled. And on top of this, we fantasize that we can replace oil by electrifying our transportation systems?
A new study, Business Risks and Costs of New Nuclear Power by Craig Severance concludes that new nuclear power is not economically competitive:
Generation costs/kWh for new nuclear (including fuel & O&M but not distribution to customers) are likely to be from 25 – 30 cents/kWh.
The study clearly states all of its assumptions, and methods of calculation, so any reader can easily understand it. What jumps out at me is that the cost estimates of the study are conservative. For example, they assume that nuclear fuel processing will continue to be subsidized by the government, that the intractable technical and political nuclear waste storage and disposal problems will be solved, that decommissioning and nuclear waste handling costs will continue to be heavily subsidized.
Joseph Romm at Climate Progress observes that the cost of nuclear power is far higher than the cost of a variety of carbon-free renewable power sources available today – and ten times the cost of energy efficiency.