WSJ: The Nuclear Option (nuclear power)

Wall Street Journal ^ | May 12, 2005 | GARY BECKER

[Final Authority]

In NH, the cost calculation for power produced by the Seabrook nuke has changed since it was built. Initially, a projected cost for the decommission of the plant was added to the price for every kWh and many of us know that the cost to build the plant was so high and money borrowed was at such a high interest rate (during the Carter years) that the possibility that the power costs would ever be low enough to make this plant's production affordable. It was never affordable even at rates twice that of competition or three times that of Quebec Hydro. Many NH consumers were held hostage by partnership agreements made with the plant's builder, PSCO NH.

The plant's owner threatened bankruptcy and a series of laws were passed to stick the stranded costs of the nuke directly with the electric customers in NH without regard for production. The plant was sold at a fraction of the sunk costs of the plant. So now the new owner can sell power at reduced costs and appear to make a profit. With the original owner, even at full production, the plant lost a fortune because of the carrying costs of the project.

So now the new calculation makes it seem the plant is making money and the rates seem cheap only because the customers are picking up the tab whether or not they are using any of the power produced. It is called stranded costs and we pay though the nose. Add it all up and folks in NH have the highest costs for power in the nation.

To top it all off, if nuclear power plant owners had to fund the project designed to forever store nuclear waste, and put money in escrow for decommissioning, then I think the cost of nuclear power would increase dramatically. In the end however, the lesson of the Seabrook nuke is quite simple. If nukes are to be built they must be built on a proved and standard design, not a custom idea like Seabrook. Use nonunion labor as the unions milked the job at Seabrook as I have direct knowledge of the actions by the unions which cost the project management company tens of millions. Standardize, Standardize, period.

[mvpel]

(PS: aren't the major sources of uranium overseas? Therefore, why trade one despotic cartel for another one?)

Australia is one of the major producers of uranium. Canadians also own a uranium mine in Montana.

And, consider - there's more energy in the naturally-occurring uranium and thorium found in coal ash than was released by burning the coal to produce it. And it's possible, though not economically feasable, to extract nuclear fuel from seawater.

Further, it's possible to design a nuclear fuel cycle so that no new material is needed once the cycle is up and running - new fuel is produced within the core of one reactor from the separated waste of another reactor. Energy-scarce Japan is working diligently towards this goal.

[CPOSharky]

Ever since the meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979

TMI melted down?

I thought it was just a small leak inside the containment vessel.

[mvpel]

To top it all off, if nuclear power plant owners had to fund the project designed to forever store nuclear waste,...

Utilities already collect 0.1 cents per kilowatt hour for this purpose. Where do you think the money for the Yucca Mountain studies is coming from?

Of course, disregarding the fact that we're throwing away 97% of the energy content of the spent fuel thanks to Carter's reprocessing ban...

[mvpel]

I thought it was just a small leak inside the containment vessel.

There was partial melting of about half of the fuel due to a steam bubble, and further damage due to thermal shock when the bubble collapsed and cooling water was restored. About 700,000 gallons of cooling water wound up in the basement of the reactor building and in tanks in the auxilary building.

http://www.nei.org/doc.asp?catnum=3&catid=294

[gogogodzilla]

I wonder if anybody has done a study or written a paper about the possibility of placing our nuclear waste at a tectonic subduction zone.

Subduction zones are places where the earth's crust is forced back into the mantle of the planet (where it becomes liquid).

Being that the mantle is roughly 25 miles under the surface of the planet, I would think that the distance and blocking materials would shield us from the radiation. Also, it would dang *HARD* to try and steal it.

(being that the radioactive materials would be 25 miles underground in molten lava)

Any ideas on this?

[mvpel]

That would be a tremendous waste of useful energy.

By reprocessing spent fuel, we can get far more than the 3% or so of its energy content that we're getting now with our once-through fuel cycle, and what's left over is only dangerously radioactive for a few hundred years.

There's enough uranium and thorium on the planet to provide every person in the world with US standards of energy consumption until the sun burns out, if only we can overcome the political obstacles.

[bagman]

It's been proposed. I first heard of this scheme back in grad school about 30 years ago.

[slowhandluke]

As an advocate of coal liquafaction that is now exceedingly clean and green,

I thought the biggest long-term problem with burning coal was the tons of mercury put into the air. That's catastrophic, and not easily fixed, while C02 will cycle back into plant life.

Where does the mercury in the coal go in the liquifaction process?

[slowhandluke]

All mining, processing, transportation, distribution, refining, sales, and marketing costs would create huge numbers of jobs in our economy and ALL of that money would stay in the USA.

All those jobs just mean that coal is more expensive than nuclear. There's more to dig, more to transport, more men dying in mines.

According to http://www.world-nuclear.org/usumin.htm, the US does have large uranium deposits. I read some time back that we also have large thorium deposits which also can be used as nuclear fuel.

[xzins]

The final cost will be seen at the point of sale for either nuclear or coal.

Go here for mercury question:
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/news/techlines/2003/tl_mercury_netluv.html

[AFPhys]

I once heard that we have sufficient uranium already mined and above ground in this country to supply our electric needs for 600 years. I don't know how to check the veracity of this...

[xzins]

There have been others making the point that we have sufficient uranium of our own.

[Celtman]

And coal generation also release radioactivity into the environment ...

[mvpel]

... more radiation, in fact, than a nuclear power plant is permitted to release.

[Final Authority]

What is your point? Is the price of nuclear power an accurate one based on the present and future costs of the industry or are you just pointing out a nuance in the discussion?

[mvpel]

What would the costs to the coal industry be if they were required to store all of their radioactive waste until the end of time, instead of dumping it into the air or fly ash piles, I wonder?