Getting it Straight on Nukes

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Skeptics contend the nuclear resurgence will cool when nations get entangled in the high costs and long delays typical of nuclear construction. After 14 years, construction of Argentina's Atucha II plant was halted.

"Investors are open and interested but still need to be convinced. The financial community has long memories. They lost tens of billions of dollars during the 1980s and 1990s when utilities built the current reactors," says Caren Byrd, Morgan Stanley Executive Director, Global Power and Utilities Group.

The cost to build a reactor is a make-or-break decision for most U.S. utilities. Exelon Corporation is the largest with a market cap under $50 billion. "Company market caps are small compared with the cost of the projects, which require a significant amount of state and federal support," says Richard Myers, vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbyist.

Jerry Taylor, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, says, "If the government is worried about carbon dioxide, they should tax carbon, not subsidize nuclear power. If nuclear power has merit, investors will embrace it."

How Clean and Safe is Nuclear Energy?

Nuclear proponents' major argument is that nuclear energy can uniquely provide clean energy on a massive scale. Once a plant is operational that's true, but what about the greenhouse gas emissions it takes to build the plant?

Policymakers look only at what comes out of the stack, ignoring the fact that substantial carbon emissions are produced by mining uranium, transporting it to construction sites and constructing the plant itself.

Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen, one of the authors of a British report, "Secure Energy? Civil Nuclear Power, Security and Global Warming" concludes, "The assumption has long been that the greenhouse effect is zero, but the evidence shows otherwise." The report shows that nuclear carbon emissions "lie somewhere between renewable energy sources and fossil fuels." Coal produces 755 grams of carbon per kilowatt hour, nuclear produces 10-150 grams, and wind energy produces 11-37 grams.

Van Leeuwen contends that nuclear will become more carbon polluting over time because it will be increasingly difficult to extract uranium ore and store nuclear waste, requiring more materials, equipment, and energy. The report states that even if nuclear remains at today's level - supplying just over 2% of the world's energy - by 2070 uranium-fueled nuclear power would produce as much carbon as gas-fired power - nearly 400 grams per kilowatt hour.

Indeed, there is no pure clean energy source, or for that matter any material we make. Carbon emissions are also generated to make raw materials and components for solar collectors and wind turbines.

The question we should be asking is which combination of energy technologies can provide the most energy with the smallest lifecycle footprint. That would include net carbon emissions, net energy consumption and net impacts on public health and the environment.

A little known fact is that about a third of the water used in Europe is used to cool electrical generators, including nuclear reactors.

Last summer, Europe's extended drought lowered water levels in lakes and rivers - already at historic lows - forcing utilities to take some nuclear plants offline and reduce operations at others. Even though the plants secured regulatory exemptions to discharge overheated water into the environment, the utility Electricite de France, which normally exports energy, had to buy electricity on the spot market to meet demand.

Sweden shut four of its 10 nuclear reactors when a short-circuit cut power at a plant, raising fears of a dangerous design flaw. One week later, Czech utility officials shut down one of the country's six reactors because a serious mechanical problem leaked radioactive water.

Moving onto the issue of nuclear plants being targets for terrorist attacks, Paul Leventhal, long-time head of the NGO Nuclear Control Institute said, "Nuclear power plants in today's security environment should be regarded as strategic targets in the U.S. with the fullest protection the federal government can provide. They should be protected with ground to air missiles integrated into both the military and the Federal Aviation Administration systems with careful command and control systems. There may have to be permanent troops or special federal protection forces."

Leventhal, who died last week, held senior staff positions in the U.S. Senate on nuclear power and proliferation issues. He served as co-director of the bipartisan Senate Special Investigation of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident, and helped draft the 1974 legislation that established the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

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