In 2007, The Economist reported that “America’s nuclear industry is about to embark on its biggest expansion in more than a generation. This will influence energy policy in the rest of the world.” Safety, management and regulatory improvements, it predicted, would lead to an “atomic renaissance” for a nuclear energy industry hobbled for decades by the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
The nuclear industry itself anticipated that soaring electricity demand in fast-growing developing countries and rising concerns about climate change would drive countries to take a fresh look at an industry whose safety practices appeared to have improved considerably since the 1980s.
But a decade later, the amount of electricity generated by nuclear power has actually dropped slightly, even as electricity demand in developing countries has grown. In the United States and other countries with nuclear power, utility companies have retired plants before the end of their useful lifetime, terming them uneconomic. Countries like Vietnam, which has planned to develop nuclear power for years, and South Africa, which has one reactor, have either scaled back grand plans to build several power plants, or abandoned them altogether.
The impact is clear: Two decades ago, nuclear energy provided the power for nearly one-fifth of the world’s electricity. Now it generates only about half that share. ……
nuclear energy would be facing strong headwinds even if the Fukushima accident had not occurred, because of the market forces of supply and demand. On the supply side, nuclear energy’s competitiveness in generating electricity has been undermined by the revolution in natural gas production, particularly hydraulic fracturing, or fracking; the increasing appeal of alternative renewable sources like solar and wind power; and the peculiar economics of nuclear energy. Meanwhile, efficiency gains, slow economic growth and the lack of strong incentives against fossil fuel use have curtailed demand for nuclear power in many rich and poor countries alike.
The results can be seen from California to Vietnam, from Finland to South Africa. ……..
In the recent past, utility companies have been able to compensate for the staggering upfront costs for new nuclear power plants by the relatively low cost for uranium, which fuels nuclear power, compared to those for fossil fuels. And they boosted these advantages further by increasing the percentage of the time that nuclear reactors operate and extending the years they are in service. The Economist even touted them as “virtual mints—as long as the bill for construction has been paid down or written off.”
But in the U.S.—home to 100 reactors, or more than a quarter of the world’s nuclear power—those cost advantages have been turned on their head. Maintenance costs for some aging reactors have become so steep that it no longer makes economic sense to operate them. And the rising tide of gas output from fracking and steady increases in wind and solar energy capacity have meant that these other forms of energy have increasingly squeezed out nuclear power in competitive electricity auctions. In the past three years alone, American utility companies have announced the shutdown of 14 U.S. reactors…..
Nuclear power’s doldrums have even affected China, which has emerged as the major bright spot for nuclear power in recent years, given its voracious appetite for electricity. Eight new reactors were connected to China’s grid in 2015 alone, and another 21 reactors are under construction. But even in China, a glut of wind and coal power plants is dampening demand for nuclear power, while delays plague construction. Observers anticipate the country falling short of its goal of 58 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity by 2020……
, dozens of governments and companies have been touting the development of a new wave of small and modular reactors, or SMRs. While employing widely varying technologies, SMRs typically are smaller-scale and largely mass-produced reactors intended to substitute for today’s one-of-a-kind large-scale models. They attempt to make reactors more competitive with other energy sources and more appropriate for the fragile electricity grids of developing countries. However, these reactors have yet to be deployed on a commercial basis and also are likely to require government regulators to develop a whole new set of standards. Any effort is likely to require sustained regulatory support from the U.S. and other governments.
Such efforts to rejuvenate the nuclear industry received a potential death blow with last month’s U.S. elections that solidified the Republican Party’s control of U.S. energy policy. Given Republicans’ skepticism about climate change and government intervention in markets, nuclear power may more likely be entering its dark ages than seeing a renaissance.
Miles Pomper is a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington, D.C. http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/20595/what-future-does-nuclear-power-have-in-an-era-of-cheap-energy
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