A Carbon Diet Needs a Healthy Serving of Nuclear Energy
Eliminating our dependence on oil and coal is only part of the clean energy equation. It's time that the United States gets serious about nuclear power.
The United States may soon go on the Mother of All Fad Diets. But this one isn’t about losing 10 pounds a week by eating grapefruit or joining the ranks of the Hollywood waifs by drinking some strange potion. No, this snake oil isn’t being hawked on late-night television; it’s coming straight from the halls of Congress. Call this one the CO2 Reduction Diet.
Unlike most diets that are voluntary, this one would be forced on us by government. But as with many other diets, our wallets would be all that ends up skinny.
Carbon dioxide is the latest fear being peddled by environmental activists. Never mind that climate has been changing forever, from cooler to warmer and back again, and that studies show solar activity has much more to do with climate than the miniscule amount of CO2 generated by humans.
So what do some in Congress want to do? Put us all on a CO2 diet. The problem is that energy without CO2 is kind of like a diet without carbohydrates — which are, in fact, vital to a nutritious diet. But the CO2 diet is worse: The government is restricting how energy can be produced, right as the economy recovers and energy demands soar. Indeed, the U.S. government projects a 40 percent increase in electricity demand in the next 25 years.
Knowing such a strategy is unsustainable, green activists have taken a page from the anti-carb playbook. Americans showed they were prepared to shell out for expensive carb substitutes. Now activists are betting that America is ready to pay big for alternative energy.
But there is one key difference. While there is no affordable, sustainable alternative to replace carbs as part of a balanced, nutritional diet, nuclear power can be just that for the CO2 diet.
Despite being demonized itself for the better part of three decades, nuclear power has survived. Today 104 commercial nuclear power plants provide the U.S. with 20 percent of its electricity. These plants account for over 70 percent of America’s CO2-free electricity. The U.S. Navy uses nuclear reactors to power its submarines and aircraft carriers.
Yet despite the promise of nuclear power, many still raise concerns about moving too quickly toward using more of it. These concerns generally revolve around three things: safety, waste, and cost.
Nuclear energy in the U.S. has a sound track record on safety. No one has ever died as a result of a commercial nuclear power accident in the U.S. The closest the industry has ever come to having such an accident, the 1979 incident at Three Mile Island, resulted in no deaths. In fact, the reactor’s safeguards worked as designed.
Nevertheless, some activists falsely equate Three Mile Island with Chernobyl to create the illusion of danger at home. But it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. The Chernobyl accident resulted from human error and poor design, something that simply could not happen in a modern nuclear power station. U.S. plants are fundamentally different from Chernobyl, and technological safeguards would prevent any meltdown that could result from human error.
Another political sticking point is nuclear waste. Undoubtedly, Yucca Mountain — which has no scientific or technological barriers, only political — is crucial to resolving the issue and must be opened. Beyond that, a more practical and comprehensive approach to managing spent nuclear fuel would include a combination of geological storage, interim storage, and recycling.
Recycling nuclear waste was suppressed by politics, not the market. In 1977, President Carter dealt the U.S. nuclear industry one of its greatest setbacks by banning commercial recycling in the U.S.
Recycling spent nuclear fuel would help the U.S. and the world to reduce the volume of high-level nuclear waste and recover vast amounts of energy remaining in spent nuclear fuel. The method used in France, which gets 80 percent of its power from nuclear plants, could yield enough energy from the spent fuel in the U.S. today to light every household in the country for 12 years. (And that method, by the way, was pioneered in the U.S.)
A third cause for concern is cost. Yet despite decades of over-regulation that drove up construction costs — which ultimately were passed on to the ratepayer, as all regulatory costs are — nuclear power has remained competitive with other energy sources.
Today, the costs of building a new nuclear reactor appear high, with price tags in the $4 billion to $6 billion range. But a modern reactor could last up to 80 years and is very inexpensive to maintain and fuel. Nuclear reactors provide stable and reliable long-term energy answers.
If the government is fixated on the CO2 Reduction Diet, at least it has an effective means to an end in nuclear energy. If government doesn’t stand in its way, nuclear energy can help America and the world meet its clean, safe, and affordable energy demands.
Nicolas Loris is a researcher and Jack Spencer is a research fellow in nuclear energy at the Heritage Foundation.
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27 Comments
1. Bill N:The *perceived* cost of a nuke plant is greatly exaggerated because almost all of the cost of building, running, and maintaining the plant and disposing of the waste is passed on to the rate payer as line items on the electric bill. For example, I pay some 50 cents a month as my share of disposing of waste generated by the San Onofre nuclear generating station. Only the cost of enriching the fuel is subsidized by the taxpayer.
On the other hand, the entire cost of building a dam for hydroelectric power is borne by the taxpayer on his/her *tax* bill and is not perceived as a cost of electricity. The cost of disposing of coal waste is borne by the people living downwind of the plant on their *medical* bills and house *repair* bills, and, again, is not perceived as a cost of electricity. The cost of combating terrorism (e.g., the war in Iraq) is, again, part of the *tax* bill, not the cost of petroleum for generating energy. The costs of “alternative” electricity are subsidized to a great extent by tax incentives and once again, appears on your *tax* bill and not listed as such, disguising the true cost of these sources.
If you compare the *true* costs of all forms of electricity generation fairly, including all construction costs, disposal costs, and ancillary costs you will find that nuclear power is the cheapest of all of our alternatives per kilowatt-hour.
Also if you fairly compare the safety factors you will find that nuclear power is the safest alternative, too.
I condemn the greens for killing nuclear power and then complaining about CO2! What HYPOCRICY!!!
May 18, 2008 - 1:25 am 2. A Carbon Diet Needs a Healthy Serving of Nuclear Energy | Best Diets, Diet Pills and Weight Loss Tips:[...] snugglenugget wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptEliminating our dependence on oil and coal is only part of the clean energy equation. It’s time that the United States gets serious about nuclear power. [...]
May 18, 2008 - 1:43 am 3. A Carbon Diet Needs a Healthy Serving of Nuclear Energy · Buwin Technology:[...] Latest news from India – India eNews wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
May 18, 2008 - 1:52 am 4. DoktorNo:Funny thing; the nations admired by the Left, like Sweden or France, are making their power from nukes, and get free pass from Greens, meanwhile Green’s own nations are encouraged for not going the nuclear way.
In my country in 1980s, just before fall of communism there were construction of nuclear plant going on, using the Soviet technology (safe water WWER reactor, instead of dangerous RBMK reactor, like in Chernobyl). This investment in 1990’s vere put on hold by the pressure on greens.
Now our dependance on Russian gas (also used as a political tool by Moscow) and domestic dirty coal is apparent, and the nuclear option is again on the table. But 2 bilios USD has gone.
Just a warning for other nations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Żarnowiec_Nuclear_Power_Plant
May 18, 2008 - 2:25 am 5. News » A Carbon Diet Needs a Healthy Serving of Nuclear Energy:[...] Pajamas Media wrote an interesting post today on A Carbon Diet Needs a Healthy Serving of Nuclear EnergyHere’s a quick excerptA Carbon Diet Needs a Healthy Serving of Nuclear Energy by Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer Eliminating our dependence on oil and coal is only part of the clean energy equation. It’s time that the United States gets serious about nuclear power. [...]
May 18, 2008 - 2:41 am 6. Bruce Rioux:Bravo!!! An excellant article and commentary!!!!
May 18, 2008 - 3:55 am 7. SAF:If you look at Japan’s use of imported oil it has actually decreased since the end of the 90’s. How did the Japanese accomplish this miracle and still grow their economy? They built dozens of nuclear plants and stopped burning oil for electricity.
The analogy of Nero fiddling while Rome burned is quite apt for the USA today.
May 18, 2008 - 5:01 am 8. JB:SAF:
Just a point of detail: the US doesn’t burn much oil for electricity – here, oil goes to distallates. Coal and gas are the fossil fuels that nuclear can and should replace. If you want nuclear power to substitute for the US’s oil consumption, consider a massive 10 year mandated shift to plug in hybrid vehicles in conjuntion with an Apollo scale 100 reactor building program.
Short of a Federal steamroller to flatten NIMBY and some environmental opposition to nukes, I’m pessimistic that a menaingful nuclear build program will ever happen.
May 18, 2008 - 6:32 am 9. Dan Irving:What really burns me is that China is using our technology to better effect. They have a Pebble Bed Reactor (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.html) and are using it to split water vapor which would create a cheaper way to produce hydrogen. Both these technologies would help lessen our dependency on petroleum. If the Greens and our government were really interested in a viable alternative they would ditch bio-fuels go nuke.
May 18, 2008 - 8:00 am 10. Don:The NIMBY people are just like the grossly fat, they want instant gratification without effort or sacrifice on their part. Nuclear power has been safe and productive for a very long time (witness France and Japan), it’s time a sock got stuffed in the mouths of the NIMBY’s and “environmentalists” and we got on with doing what has to be done, namely; building new refineries where they are most needed, building as many nuclear plants as (and where) necessary, and drilling for oil (another technology that has matured)) in ANWAR, off the coast’s of Florida, California, New Jersey and wherever else.
Corrupt politicians saying these things can’t be done (like Sen’s Lautenberg and Menendez in NJ) are the reason energy costs what it does.
May 18, 2008 - 8:17 am 11. Joe Sixpack:Nuclear power could replace (some) imported oil indirectly even in the US. More nuclear power would free up natural gas that is now being used for electricity generation. The natural gas could be used to power vehicle fleets such as big city buses. Of course, plug in hybrids will be available to the public shortly so nuclear power can run our cars in the no so distant future.
May 18, 2008 - 9:08 am 12. Gary Ogletree:I’m all for nuclear power for several reasons. I’m all for increased carbon dioxide as plant food, but fossil fuels are too valuable for other things to be burned up. My problem with nukes begins with uranium mining. Radon gas, etc., are released without much restriction–to the peril of those downwind and downstream. I need to be convinced that safety technology in the nuke plants has been greatly improved. The record for safely moving nuclear waste has been pretty good, and I think Yucca Mtn. makes sense for storage. Nukes are not cheap, but they can create a lot of power for a long time.
May 18, 2008 - 9:44 am 13. John Moore:Agreed that we need new nukes. We should use standardized designs (significantly cutting costs), unlike in the past. We should push the NIMBY’s out of the way so we can store whatever wastes we don’t reprocess (which we should do). Considering that 1000 or so nuclear weapons were detonated underground at Yucca Flats, NV, why not bury the waste there? It’s already loaded with radioactive nuclides, which are not glassified or contained in any way.
If we are forced to buy into the religion of CO2 reduction, then by all reason build nukes. But that utterly fails to solve transportation problems. Over half of US oil imports go into transportation.
In the medium term, here are no large scale, viable alternatives to CO2 emitting combustion mobile engines.
Biofuel fails for many reasons, and the bloom is off the rose as the price of food rises and everyone (even greenies) realizes the environmental damage of creating and watering new farmland for biofuel crops
Batteries and hydrogen, of course, are not energy producing technologies, only an alternative to gasoline as a storage technology. Hence switching to either would require vast increases in primary energy production in order to produce the electricity or hydrogen.
Batteries have way too low a specific energy density and are too expensive.
Hydrogen is hard to work with (it leaks out of almost anything, burns invisibly, and embrittles metals on contact). Both technologies require a vast infrastructural change (at enormous cost to the economy).
Batteries are not improving rapidly enough to solve the storage problem, and as they achieve higher density, they become increasingly dangerous. A high capacity battery in a collision can become a bomb. Try driving a nail into a Lithium Ion battery – NO – DON’T – It will inljure you! The best batteries today have 1/40th the specific energy density of gasoline, and a battery is a vastly more expensive energy container than a gasoline tank. Oh, and batteries do not have the temperature range tolerance of gasoline – here in Arizona they have dramatically shortened lives, and the most modern batteries lose charge (energy) very rapidly while just sitting in the heat (full discharge in a week). Furthermore, battery engineering for electric cars has been proceeding for over 100 years, with little to show for it. While there are outlier chances that new technologies such as nano-tech could make major changes, we cannot bet on it.
One good approach for mobile energy needs is goal gassification, which can produce gasoline and other POL chemicals directly from coal. And guess what… North America is the OPEC of coal – we have huge reserves.
Furthermore, we could produce coal electrical plants much faster than nuclear.
…
As an aside, NIMBY has been replaced by a new word that encompases both movements: BANANA – Build Absolutely Nothing At No time Anywhere.
May 18, 2008 - 11:40 am 14. John Moore:Gary,
The safety of nuclear, including mining, is superior to any alternative that I’m aware of (except perhaps hydropower). For example, coal burning releases more radioactivity than the uranium cycle. Nuke plant safety technology is solidly proven – the worst case accident for an American reactor was Three Mile Island – it was a core meltdown. And guess what – nobody was injured.
There is an unreasonable fear of radiation, enhanced by the nuclear safety industry’s unscientific use of the precautionary principle – the Linear Dose Response No Threshold model of radiation hazard. Recent studies, and lots of evidence gather since Chernobyl (which was the worst possible nuclear plant disaster for any technology) has shown the fears to be VASTLY overblown. Toxicologists no longer accept that theory, but all the radiation safety/danger information and standards are still based on it.
See Nuclear Facts for a summary and useful linkes.
May 18, 2008 - 11:45 am 15. Jim from Pittsburgh:Nuclear is a no-brainer. The bigger picture issue in my book is the opposition to it. It is only a matter of time, but how much? I am of the mind that environmentlism is a church, and unless we can separate THIS church from our state, legislation will block every common sense turn of events. I am wondering if anyone out there with any legal knowledge knows of any attempt to classify worshipping the planet as a religion. Seriously.
May 18, 2008 - 6:46 pm 16. Spencer from Colville:Economic niches play a large part in keeping countries from warring. Try living in Europe, it becomes apparent immediately. My question is, have the contracts for foreign-made nuclear reactors already been written?
May 18, 2008 - 10:38 pm 17. schnargley:http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2008/04/ge-hitachi-cut-ties-with-toshiba.html
Jim would now prosecute us environmentalists simply because we object to the desecration of the earth, to the vile rape of our mother, or flesh and blood through the brutal ejaculation of horrible chemicals and poisons into her womb thus upsetting the harmonic life forces that throb in her belly and gives life to us all.
May 18, 2008 - 11:24 pm 18. OmegaPaladin:schnargley,
As satire, that is repulsive and disgusting without being funny. If you actually believe that, put down the bong and step away from the acid.
Nuclear can replace some transportation technologies. We know a lot about propelling boats with nuclear energy – we have working nuclear powered vessels of all sizes. Nuclear powered vessels that are built from the ground up as cargo haulers could cover the world with speed. Diesel was made from oil, last time I checked.
May 19, 2008 - 1:03 am 19. Jim from Pittsburgh:I feel compelled to respond. I don’t want to prosecute anyone. Perhaps you meant persecute. Either way, my only problem with radical environmentalism is that time and again, common sense energy behavior is blocked by small sects of “scientists” and radical groups (read:religion) working with theories(not facts) that are unproven and some downright absurd. And our government seems willing to either capitulate altogether or schedule some sort of “hearing” that almost infinitely postpones action. In the meantime, I suppose we just keep burning fossil fuels and emitting the dreaded CO2. Although I have heard of a process called “coal liquification” that I need to research further before sounding off on.
May 19, 2008 - 2:50 am 20. Dlanod:I can assure you that carbohydrates are not necessary to a nutritious (or healthful) diet. Assertion of an incorrect and unsubstantiated viewpoint made in support of a another position for which one is arguing does not lend much credence.
May 20, 2008 - 7:37 am 21. Patrick:This reminds me of the endless stream of book and movie reviews in our newspapers in recent years which routinely have at least one gratuitous jab at Bush, the moron, the warmonger, the evil genius, etc., apropos of absolutely nothing.
If you ALL want to see something interesting and very exciting for the future, google “National Ignition Facility” and take a look. Keep in mind YOUR tax dollars are being spent for this monster, and it IS located just outside the San Francisco Bay Area (a known earthquake zone.) This, should it work, will make all the nuke stuff irrelevent along with oil for automotive power. Yes, it won’t happen tomorrow, but the initial start is scheduled for 2010! I think we have a very Bright electrical future with no radioactive waste to fool with, no reactor embrittlement, no meltdown potential and NO carbon emission.
May 21, 2008 - 6:10 am 22. nuclear power plants:[...] & energy storage tech. Build 100 nuclear power plants next 2 years and 1000 units within 10http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/a-carbon-diet-only-works-with-a-serving-of-nuclear-energy/Nuclear Power Plants: Vulnerability to Terrorist AttackFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as [...]
May 21, 2008 - 10:57 am 23. George:Its amazing how well the balance of the nations energy problems are represented in a game of Sim City. In the end, you won’t ever get anywhere until you go to nuclear power….I think all of congress needs to spend a little time playing it sometime.
The ‘green’ movement is the biggest bunch of self-indulgent hypocrates out there, why anyone cares what they have to say is a mystery. Orin Hatch is probably the only person in congress that makes any sense when it comes to dealing with our nation’s energy problems.
May 21, 2008 - 4:42 pm 24. Bill N:Patrick, I admire your willingness to embrace cutting edge technology, but we’ve been there and done that countless times. You, pardon the pun, are wishing upon a star. You said it yourself: “If it works.” What if it doesn’t? Scientists, bless their hearts, have hyped their research (or allowed reporters to do it for them) many, many times. It keeps the grant money flowing in. The very same argument you make; “don’t build nukes, wait for this new technology” has been made for cold fusion, tokomaks and hot fusion, wave power, wind power, solar power, and pumping water (one of the earth’s best lubricants) down a seismically active geothermal well. All of these have produced only a piddling watt or two, if anything. We have long since passed the point where we can wait any longer. We need nukes now. They DO work. If something better comes along, fine, stop building nukes and go for that TOO. If the new technology proves to be another broken reed, at least we will have SOMETHING.
May 21, 2008 - 10:06 pm 25. drill here drill now:[...] & energy storage tech. Build 100 nuclear power plants next 2 years and 1000 units within 10http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/a-carbon-diet-only-works-with-a-serving-of-nuclear-energy/AubreyJ.org – Home Page: Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.May 20, 2008 … Read the News Article [...]
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