nuclear-news

Nuclear power far too slow to have any impact on climate change

This Map Of All The Nuclear Reactors In The World Is A Reality Check, CO.Exist ADELE PETERS 03.23.16

There are fewer nuclear reactors than you may realize. And by the time more are financed and built, the Arctic ice will be all gone anyway. Seventy years ago, some experts were convinced that nuclear power would change the world for the better. “Here was the power that would do all work…of a veritable Utopia,” the editors of a book on the Atomic Age wrote in 1945.

They also thought it would quickly grow. In the mid-1960s, one estimate predicted that by the year 2000, nuclear power would supply more than half of all the electricity in the U.S. As of 2016, it’s at a little less than 20%; globally, it’s only about 14%.

New nuclear power would be a real setback in terms of trying to solve the climate problem,” says Mark Jacobson, an engineering professor at Stanford who has researched how renewable power could meet all energy needs in the U.S. “Even if there were no issues like meltdown or waste proliferation—which are serious issues—it’s just so costly and it takes so long to put up new nuclear reactors that by the time the next set of nuclear reactors are planned, permitted, constructed, it takes 10-19 years. The Arctic ice will be gone.”

Nuclear power isn’t entirely “clean,” in terms of greenhouse gas pollution, because the large amount of energy used to refine uranium often comes from fossil fuels.Even keeping old reactors running may not make financial sense. In California, for example, extending the life of the Diablo Canyon plant will require new cooling towers that cost around $8 billion. It may also need billions in earthquake retrofits, because engineers realized after the project was built that it’s on a fault line.”For $8 billion, you can replace the entire Diablo Canyon with the same power produced by a combination of on-shore wind and utility-scale solar PV,” says Jacobson.

There’s also the inherent risk of even the “safest” nuclear reactors, and the problem of what happens when a plant is decommissioned. “You can’t do anything with the property for at least 60 years,” he says. “Probably there’s enough radioactivity for thousands of years.”

Instead, Jacobson says, it’s possible to produce cost-effective, reliable power from solar, wind, and hydroelectricity. It’s also possible to provide that power around-the-clock, as recent projects like a 24-hour solar farm near Las Vegas proves.

“People who are pushing nuclear aren’t driven by science or logic, but idealism and passion,” he says.http://www.fastcoexist.com/3058064/this-map-of-all-the-nuclear-reactors-in-the-world-is-a-reality-check

March 25, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general