nucl_klaus

Do you think nuclear energy should be a part of a low carbon energy plan?

This is what the executive summary says about nuclear:

Nuclear energy in the U.S. commonly exhibits cost overruns unattractive to potential investors—it is not viable without government loan guarantees, subsidies, and liability caps. The prospects of meltdown, lack of a long term waste disposal strategy, the potential increase of destabilizing climate events, and weapons proliferation and terrorist threats further contribute to nuclear power’s excessive risks which make it an unattractive and unnecessary option to rely on.

Just some facts:

1) none of the new builds have gotten loan guarantees (and they probably won't).

2) there are also huge subsidies for wind/solar (wind gets 2.3 c/kWh through the PTC)

3) even just with uncertainty about whether the PTC would continue stopped nearly all wind builds; only 1 wind turbine was built in the US in the first 6 months of 2013.

4) the likelihood of a meltdown is extremely small, and the consequences are also small. The NRC's State of the Art Reactor Consequence Analyses (SOARCA) had these preliminary findings:

Existing resources and procedures can stop an accident, slow it down or reduce its impact before it can affect public health;

Even if accidents proceed uncontrolled, they take much longer to happen and release much less radioactive material than earlier analyses suggested; and

The analyzed accidents would cause essentially zero immediate deaths and only a very, very small increase in the risk of long-term cancer deaths.

5) the lack of a long term Disposal Strategy is not a technical problem, it's a political one, which may be closer to being solved by some organizational changes and the passage of the NWAA

6) We have technical solutions for disposing of waste, in the US, that are disposing of waste, right now.

7) The potential increase of destabilizing climate events is a reason to act, not a reason to not build nuclear.

8) Weapons proliferation issues do not change if more reactors are built in developed countries. The major proliferation issues exist in other countries (Iran, North Korea), building reactors in the US and Europe have no impact on them.

I actually am a nuclear engineer, working on my PhD. If anyone has any technical questions, ask away.

Also, in you report, the "cheaper alternatives" that are pricing nuclear out of the market is natural gas. And you never go on to quantify the risk of nuclear, you only mention Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl, without having any references to information about them, or their health impacts. The entire report has the premise that we must move away from risky technologies, but then you never quantify why nuclear is risky.

20 years from now, which country will have built the most new nuclear energy?

Which country will have shut down the most existing nuclear facilities?

This is an important question, because at the end of the day, closing nuclear/not building more nuclear will lead to a tradeoff with higher emissions.

Germany is seeing this right now, where they could have closed coal plants first, they decided to close nuclear plants first, and the renewables htat have been added are basically only making up the difference, not actually cutting into coal use.

We can make significant progress on the environment with renewables and nuclear, or we can make little to moderate progress with renewables alone.