Why the World May Turn to Nuclear Power

Why the World May Turn to Nuclear Power
Richard Stieglitz; Rick Docksai
1 November 2009, Futurist, IACA, 16, Volume 43; Issue 6; ISSN: 00163317
© 2009 Futurist. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Demand for fossil fuels may decline, but demand for electric power will soar. Nuclear power, resisted by many, may provide a long-term solution, and it has come a long way since Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
Within the next 10 years, the world's major economies will choose nuclear power as the clean, high-capacity baseload (i.e., primary) electricity. Nuclear power is experiencing a worldwide rebirth, with 12 countries building 45 new reactors. Nuclear power currently generates 16% of the world's electricity, but by 2030 it will approach 30%.
The global warming situation is dire, and fossil fuels are a major cause: 90% of carbon-dioxide pollution comes from the fossil fuels that generate electricity and provide transportation. Solar energy and wind power are attractive, clean energy sources and will proliferate, but a high-capacity baseload energy is vital: The wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine all the time. Countries are already choosing nuclear as a substitute for the fossil-fueled power plants that intensify the destructive climate changes related to global warming. They will continue to do so as years progress.

"We haven't got that much time on the atmosphere. The faster we can shut down every coal plant, the better," says Jim Dawson, science editor for the American Institute of Physics. "We need to get some more of these nuclear plants going, because this is the fastest way on a massive scale to reverse climate change."
At one time, the United States was the world leader in producing electricity with nuclear power, but today it ranks fourth behind France, Japan, and South Korea. Comparatively low-cost foreign oil, plentiful coal and natural gas reserves, and popular domestic opposition will retard the expansion of U.S. nuclear power until global warming is recognized as a major crisis and the cost of foreign oil skyrockets again. President Obama's elimination of funding in the 2010 budget for the state-of-theart nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, which the U.S. government had been developing to be the primary site for storing spent fuel, makes it probable that construction of new nuclear power plants in the United States will be delayed another decade. But when brownouts occur and the U.S. energy system is forced to deliver more electricity with less carbon, there will be no practical choice other than nuclear power.
The Unsustainable Status Quo
Worldwide demand for electricity will rise sharply by 2030, driven principally by economic growth in developing countries and by increased use of electric cars in industrialized countries. The United States is investing hundreds of billions of dollars to develop alternative energy sources, but these sources are decades away from being gigawatt providers of electricity.
Nuclear power critics, who include a diverse group of environmental protectionists, concerned scientists, and community activists, attack nuclear power on the basis of high cost, safety, and nuclear waste. The Chernobyl and Three Mile Island disasters are cited as examples of the safety vulnerabilities of nuclear reactors. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an organization that opposes further development of nuclear energy and encourages more development of renewable energy sources instead, says that even strictly regulated storage sites will be subject to disasters, such as contamination of subterranean water supplies and terrorist attacks.
Nuclear energy also is too costly, according to critics. Estimated construction costs have more than tripled since 2000, according to Standard & Poor's, because of production bottlenecks, increased material costs, and lack of trained workers. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates $1,500 per kilowatt in construction costs for basic reactor designs and $1,800 per kilowatt for advanced designs. Those figures suggest that an investment of more than $4 billion may be required to build each new nuclear reactor.
Increasing Demand for Electricity
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects worldwide energy consumption increasing by 33% between 2010 and 2030. Much of this increased consumption will take place in China, India, and other developing economies, where populations are growing, people are migrating to cities, and electrification is expanding.
The rate of consumption will grow much more slowly in western Europe and North America, where energy conservation and advances in efficiency will curb electricity usage, according to EIA. But it will grow all the same. The reasons why are visible now: Households use more appliances, computers, and communication systems, and young people use more electronic gadgets. It may be amusing to watch young children using cell phones and playing Wii, but such devices drive up per capita electricity usage.
Communities around the globe already feel the pinch of rising energy prices and electricity shortages, so a potent new source of energy will clearly be needed. Solar, wind, geothermal, and other renewable sources will help, but few analysts see them as sufficient in themselves. Nuclear plants, which produced 2.7 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity worldwide in 2006, must play a lead role.
A massive switch from fossil-fueled to electrically powered automobiles would add even further to the projected increase in electricity demand. The use of fossil fuels to propel automobiles and trucks, the largest single contributor to CO2 pollution, will decline markedly within the next 10 years as many new vehicles are powered by electricity and require regular recharging. Therefore, the demand for electricity will increase while the demand for fossil fuels declines.
The EIA predicts that, of all new nuclear plants built between 2010 and 2030, two-thirds will be built in China, India, and Russia - the developing countries who need new electricity the most. This is no accident. The increasing demand for electricity is a favorable development for nuclear power, since nuclear plants have higher capacity than coal-fired or natural gas-fired plants. Solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources also will increase relative to fossil fuels, but the variable production nature of those sources means that they are not suitable for use as baseload power plants.
While nuclear power plants are expensive to build, they produce enormous amounts of electricity. The United States is a case in point. According to DOE, in 2007 the entire U.S. solar industry generated 0.6 billion kilowatt hours. In that same year, the Wolf Creek nuclear plant in Kansas generated 10.4 billion kilowatt hours. The Wolf Creek plant's capacity also was a third of total U.S. wind-energy capacity (32.1 billion kilowatt hours).
Furthermore, U.S. nuclear plants are becoming more productive. The United States had 104 nuclear reactors in 2007, the same as in 2003, but the amount of electricity output from those same reactors increased considerably: from 763.7 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2003 to 806.4 billion kilowatt hours in 2007, according to DOE.
"Build a couple of nuclear plants and you can power whole cities. You produce enormous amounts of power. You're not going to produce anything close to that from renewable sources for a long time," says Dawson. "I don't think you can compare them."
The reactors may cost more, but they produce much more. That does not discount the importance of renewable sources of electricity, which are ideal for low-capacity generation, special applications, and locations where nuclear power is impractical. But in terms of massive baseload capacity, there is a compelling need for nuclear power.
Global Use of Nuclear Power
The nuclear industry is growing around the world, but it is still limited. Most electricity still comes from nonrenewable fossil fuels. According to Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, at the end of 2007 the world had 439 operating nuclear reactors producing 372 gigawatts of electricity.
As of October 2008, U.S. utilities have proposed building 26 new nuclear reactors, and submitted formal applications for 17. Some analysts call for as many as 300 new reactors in the United States by mid-century. Even the modest goal of 26 reactors will only be achievable, however, if nuclear utilities can overcome entrenched opposition that so far has successfully slowed the use of nuclear power. On the other hand, the EIA reports that, spurred by discovery of new natural gas reserves in the United States, 206 of the 372 new power plants to be constructed by 2020 will use natural gas, and most of the remainder will be coal-fired.
Outside the United States, however, a renaissance is occurring in the use of nuclear power for baseload electricity. China put eight new reactors into service in the last five years and plans a fivefold increase in nuclear capacity to 40 gigawatts of electricity by 2020.
India will put 20 new reactors online by 2020, and Russia will build 11 new reactors to provide 10 gigawatts of new capacity.
Worldwide, 112 new nuclear reactors in 25 countries are planned. France is the world's leader in putting nuclear energy to work for its domestic needs as well as the energy needs of other countries. Almost 80% of French electricity is nuclear-produced, and France is exporting nuclear technology to interested buyer countries around the globe.
Relative Cost of Electricity
Nuclear power can overcome fears about safety and waste by offering cost advantages and clean electricity. Operating costs for coal and natural gas power plants are being driven up by increasing fuel prices, carbon taxes, and tightening emission standards.
On the other hand, advanced designs and construction techniques have reduced costs for nuclear reactors, especially in countries with limited access to fossil fuels. For example, in South Korea, extensive use of nuclear power has reduced its costs to a mere 39 won (3 cents) per kilowatt hour - much more affordable than South Korean coal (53.7 won per kilowatt hour) or natural gas (143.6 won per kilowatt hour). So it is no surprise that South Korea relies on nuclear power for 35% of its electricity today and expects to use it for 40% by 2020. Japan has a faster timetable for expanding nuclear power. It now uses 53 reactors to meet 28% of its needs, and plans to be 40% nuclear- powered by 2017.
Is Nuclear Power Safe?
The safety record of the 104 nuclear reactors operating in the United States today, all of which were built at least 30 years ago, is enviable. Despite consumers' fears of nuclear plants' radiation, it has not seriously injured, let alone killed, a single U.S. consumer - and that includes the accident at Three Mile Island reactor #2. The #1 reactor at Three Mile Island continues to safely provide 800 megawatts of electricity. In fact, the average person is more likely to suffer from radiation emitted by the sun. According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the average American absorbs 300 millirem of radiation per year from natural sources. An American who lives within 50 miles of a nuclear plant receives an additional radiation dose of just 0.01 millirem a year.
Furthermore, the reactors now under construction throughout the world are based on advanced designs that virtually eliminate the risk of accidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. New reactor plants are smaller and designed specifically to withstand earthquakes, airplane collisions, and terrorist attacks.
"On balance, commercial nuclear power plants in the United States are safer today than they were before the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island," says a 2007 report from the Keystone Center, a Washington, D.C.-based policy think tank. The Keystone report credits the nuclear industry for plant upgrades and innovations that improve instrumentation and control, expand surveillance, and more accurately assess equipment and material condition in real time. Key components, such as steam generators and piping, are made with materials that have high durability and reliability.
The workforce at nuclear plants has also undergone significant upgrades. After the Three Mile Island incident, industry leaders created the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) to promote safety through peer evaluations, self-policing, and information sharing. The INPO disseminates best practices through the Significant Event Evaluation and Information Network (SEE-IN), Significant Operating Experience Reports (SOERs), and Significant Event Reports (SERs). Under the Institute's aegis, each site is inspected every two years by a team of peers from other nuclear plants. This inspection is in addition to monitoring by the NRC under the Reactor Oversight and Enforcement Program.
Nuclear power plants have also upped their personnel training programs. The report cited significant advances in staff training for plant operations, maintenance, radiation protection, chemistry, and engineering, which are verified by an independent safety board, the Georgiabased National Academy for Nuclear Training.
Experience is also a factor in increased safety. There are 26 utility companies operating nuclear plants in the United States today, down from 51 in the 1970s. The consolidation has enabled nuclear utilities to allocate the resources and expertise required to ensure safe nuclear power.
"Today's companies have many years of experience in operation, and they have dedicated resources to improve operation and maintenance," the Keystone report states.
These efforts have paid off handsomely for the nuclear industry. For example, the rate at which nuclear reactors suffered damage to their cores declined by a factor of three from 1993 to 2000. Plants' median "forced loss rate" - outage time and power reductions due to equipment failure or human error - declined from 2.4% in 1999 to 1.3% in 2008. Plants have become safer for nuclear workers, too: Workplace injuries declined from 0.26 per 200,000 workers in 1997 to 0.13 in 2008.
The Issue of Nuclear Waste
Today's new reactor plants are smaller and contain less in the way of pumps, valves, pipes, and cabling that eventually become nuclear waste. In addition, new techniques are being used to recycle spent fuel, thereby minimizing the need for disposal sites. A long-term (10,000 years or more) waste storage site, such as Yucca Mountain, has sufficient capacity for safe storage of the spent fuel now stored at 120 U.S. sites plus some of the spent fuel generated by future nuclear power plants. In July 2009, the U.S. Senate voted to shut down the Yucca Mountain facility, though it could be revived in the future.
The Nuclear Information and Resource Service warns that even strictly regulated sites will be liable to disasters. All are near water, either subterranean or above ground, and could be damaged as sea levels rise in coming years. Leakage could contaminate water supplies over time. Storage facilities are also vulnerable to overheating and internal combustion, as well as the human menace of a terrorist attack.
"The fundamental safety problems have not been fixed, and they cannot be fixed with the technology that we are using now," says Michael Mariotte, the organization's executive director. "You can't make an inherently dangerous technology safe." [See "Second Thoughts on Nuclear Power," page 23.]
France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and most other nations who produce nuclear energy reprocess their spent reactor fuel to recover its remaining uranium and plutonium.
These can be recycled into new fuel - with twin benefits of increasing energy yield and substantially reducing high-level radioactive waste. A tiny amount (less than 0.1%) of the leftover byproducts (minor actinides) can be transmuted down in advanced reactors.
The United States does not currently have a fuel-cycle program, but the Nuclear Energy Institute, a U.S. nuclear-industry lobbying group, thinks it should:
"What it would do is reduce the volume of used nuclear fuel that would eventually have to be stored permanently," says Mitchell Singer, Institute media relations manager.
The Bush administration took an important first step toward creating such a program in 2003 with enactment of the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI), a DOE project to develop techniques that reduce the volume and heat generated by fuel waste. Since 2006, DOE has worked with volunteer locations to examine the possibility of hosting new fuelcycle facilities in their communities.
Recycling waste would also be an option if plants switched from using uranium to using thorium, an element that is found in large quantities in sand and rock. This element has four advantages over uranium as a nuclear fuel source. First, it is three times as abundant on earth's surface as uranium. Second, properly configured thorium fuel designs would generate about half as much waste as uranium. Third, that waste has substantially less radioactive toxicity, making it safer for long-term storage in repositories. Fourth, the thorium production process produces no weapons-usable material byproducts; it might make a significant nonproliferation contribution.
"Think of thorium fuel as analogous to unleaded gas in automobiles. It's a fuel alternative that can result in a cleaner, safer form of nuclear power," says David Bassiouni Jr., a spokesman for thorium R&D firm Thorium Power Ltd.
The International Atomic Energy Agency endorsed thorium in 2005, and the World Nuclear Association called the fuel a "significant factor in the long-term sustainability of nuclear energy." Also, the U.S. government allocated $250 million in 2008 toward thorium's future use.
No recycling program, however, can eliminate the need for a place to store nuclear waste. Some waste products are not recyclable. Unusable toxins will continue to accumulate as long as we generate nuclear power, and they will require a safe storage location. As of the moment, no nation has implemented a systematic program for storing nuclear waste. It remains to be seen whether Yucca Mountain will ever actually be licensed and used.
Nuclear Power and Global Politics
The geopolitics of uranium are substantially more attractive than oil, since the leading uranium suppliers are among the world's most stable democracies. Australia, the secondlargest uranium exporter after Canada, will expand output 20% over the next three years to meet the growing international demand caused by increased reactor construction. Russia, for example, is negotiating with Australia for uranium to fuel the 11 new reactors it will build by 2020.
Australia has 40% of the world's known uranium reserves. The United States also has significant uranium reserves, but some are under restrictions similar to the offshore oil drilling ban. For example, Virginia enacted a law in 1982 that prohibits uranium mining anywhere in the state, despite having reserves that could fuel all 104 U.S. reactors for more than a decade. In any case, with nuclear power as the major source of electricity, the world can rest more comfortably knowing that its fuels are not at the mercy of quasistable regimes like those currently in power in Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia, countries that are major oil suppliers.
In terms of nuclear technology exports, France seems to be the leading beneficiary of the resurgence in nuclear power. Areva, a French national company, is already constructing reactors in Finland, China, and India, and is negotiating with several other countries. U.S. companies are trying to compete and will build some of China's new reactors, but they must overcome decades of unfavorable national policies and construction inactivity in the United States. The nuclear industry is moving toward global cooperatives and serial production of new reactors to reduce construction costs, exchange best practices, and increase the competitiveness of nuclear power.
Valuable Byproducts of Nuclear Power
In addition to baseload electrical power, nuclear power plants provide three valuable byproducts. First, the waste heat from nuclear power reactors is used for desalination. In Japan, for example, 10 desalination facilities are connected to nuclear power plants to produce 3,000 cubic meters per day of potable water. Second, hydrogen (a clean fuel for automobiles, buses, trucks, etc.) can be produced economically by electrolysis of water in off-peak hours, thus using nuclear baseload capacity more efficiently. Future high-temperature reactors will be capable of producing hydrogen thermochemically.
Third, nuclear reactors produce radioisotopes for medical applications, such as diagnostic procedures and cancer treatments, and for industrial applications, such as quality control, flow tracing, sterilization, and food preservation. In some cases, the only source of the radioisotopes is spent fuel from selected nuclear reactors. More uses for such isotopes are discovered each year, which reduces the amount of waste from spent fuel.
Given the increasing scarcity of drinking water, the growing demand for alternative fuels, and the expanding health needs of the senior population, these nuclear reactor byproducts will increase in value and importance.
The Imminent Challenge for Nuclear Power
With growing demand for electricity and encouraging advances in reactor design, U.S. utilities have filed 17 applications with the NRC for new reactors since 2005. A 2008 Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee report says, "They are attracted to the fact that amortized nuclear power plants produce electricity cheaply and reliably, and that such plants are not subject to the potential fuel supply issues and price swings posed by fossil fuels. They also see the nuclear option as providing the only widely available and expandable baseload, carbon-free option for generating electricity."
Impressed as it is with nuclear power's potential, the committee report takes present-day opposition seriously: "It is unclear that nuclear can overcome the hurdles required to justify a multibillion-dollar commitment over the years it will require to build a new plant."
The nuclear industry has the potential to satisfy the world's burgeoning energy needs, and recent polls show the highest percentage of public support for nuclear power in the last 30 years. But the industry must do a better job of communicating benefits to the public, who still hold misconceptions and fears about nuclear power that can be traced to Hiroshima, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl. The nuclear industry needs to engage with the public to describe nuclear power's pluses, its side benefits, and innovations that make nuclear power safer, cleaner, and cheaper. They must convince the public that having a nuclear power plant in their neighborhood really is a good thing.
The potential effects of pollution from fossilfuel- powered plants, such as this coal plant in Neurath, Germany, are a concern among many public officials and scientists. Nuclear energy's proponents suggest that it would offer a cleaner way.
A new nuclear plant at Kudankulam, India, undergoes construction of two new reactors. India and many other developing countries are increasing their production of nuclear energy to support their fast-growing economies and expanding populations.
A driver uses electric power, not liquid fuel, to power her Nissan LEAF, one of many upcoming models of electric cars. As electric vehicles become more common, the demands worldwide for more electricity will increase significantly.
Resources
Among the sources consulted for this article are:
* David Bassiouni, Bassiouni Group, http://bassiounigroup.com.
* Jim Dawson, American Institute of Physics, www.aip.org.
* Keystone Center, www.keystone.org.
* Michael Mariotte, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, www.nirs.org.
* Nuclear Regulatory Commission, www.nrc.gov.
* Rocky Mountain Institute, www.rmi.org.
* Mitchell Singer, Nuclear Energy Institute, www.nei.org.
* U.S. Department of Energy, www.doe.gov.
* World Nuclear Association, www.world-nuclear.org.
-Rick Docksai