nuclear-news

“Nuclear can’t compete today”

Asked about Duke Power Florida’s August decision to cancel new reactor plans, Peter Bradford, a former NRC commissioner, told theTampa Bay Times that a nuclear construction boom “was just this artificial gold rush. And yes, it does show the renaissance is dead.”

Nuclear Power: Dead in the Water it Poisoned, CounterPunch,  by JOHN LAFORGE    NOVEMBER 5, 2015  “……..Well before Fukushima’s triple meltdowns staggered nuclear’s future, Congress and the industry were struggling to ignore its abandonment by important players around the world and public condemnations made by former supporters, and since March 2011 major figures the world over are saying “No nukes.”

Speaking in New York City Nov. 27, World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim said, “The World Bank Group does not engage in providing support for nuclear power. … [O]ur focus is on finding ways of working in hydroelectric power, in geo-thermal, in solar, in wind. … and we don’t do nuclear energy.” A week earlier, Kim said governments weren’t doing enough to confront climate change, revealing that the WBG well knows that nuclear power is no answer.[33]

World Bank directors may have adopted the recommendation of the US Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which concluded in 2009 that governments can and should help stop nuclear weapons proliferation by “… discouraging … the use of financial incentives in the promotion of civil nuclear power.”[34]

More pointedly, Gregory Jaczko, who was Chairman of the NRC when Japan’s Fukushima-Daiichi catastrophe started in 2011, warned in 2012 that “All 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the US have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology…”[35] When he left the NRC, theTimes editorialized that “the country is losing a strong advocate for public safety who was always willing to challenge the nuclear industry and its political backers in Congress.”

John Rowe, recently retired chairman and CEO of reactor-heavy Exelon Corp., said “unequivocally” in March 2012, “that new ones [reactors] don’t make any sense right now…. It just isn’t economic, and it’s not economic within a foreseeable time frame.”[36]

Germany’s gas and electricity giant RWE Corp. announced in June 2012 that it would exit the nuclear power sector altogether and invest in solar power. As Germany’s largest utility, RWE had been one of the most vehement defenders of nuclear power.[37]

Even the president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, Marvin Fertel, toldScientific American, “We won’t build large numbers of new nuclear in the US in the near term … Today, you ought to build gas.” [38] Bill Johnson, CEO of Progress Energy, one of the utilities filing for a reactor construction license but with no plans to actually build, said in in the same issue, “Nuclear can’t compete today.”

A year earlier, Siemens, the largest engineering conglomerate in Europe, fired a shot heard round the world, declaring that — following Germany’s decision to close its reactors by 2022 — it would stop building new ones anywhere in the world. Siemens built all of Germany’s 17 units. It was the first industry giant to announce such a departure. “The chapter for us is closed,” said chief executive Peter Löscher.[39]

Calling new reactors “too expensive,” Jon Wellinghoff, the chairman of the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said in 2009, “We may not need any, ever.” Wellinghoff directly countered the industry’s oft-heard complaint about meeting “base load” needs, saying that renewables “like wind, solar and biomass would be able to provide enough energy to meet base load capacity and future demand,” since the US can reduce energy usage by 50 percent.[40]

According to Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of the ubiquitous reactor engineering firm General Electric and one of nuclear power’s staunchest defenders, “If you were a utility CEO and looked at your world today, you would just do gas and wind. … You would never do nuclear. The economics are overwhelming.”[41]

Asked about Duke Power Florida’s August decision to cancel new reactor plans, Peter Bradford, a former NRC commissioner, told theTampa Bay Times that a nuclear construction boom “was just this artificial gold rush. And yes, it does show the renaissance is dead.”[42]………http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/05/nuclear-power-dead-in-the-water-it-poisoned/

November 6, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA