In quick succession, the Obama administration has dealt a near-death blow to new civilian nuclear reactors in the U.S.
First, the Yucca Mountain Project, a waste storage facility in Nevada, was “zeroed-out” of the 2009 budget. Second, the administration has just ended U.S. participation in a new nuclear fuel recycling project, one that would extract more energy from existing fission energy sources, and reduce sharply the high level nuclear waste from nuclear power.
Presiding over both of these decisions–that effectively terminate the feasibility of new nuclear power plants for the U.S.–is Dr. Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy, Nobel Laureate in Physics, and former director of the Lawrence Berkeley Energy Laboratory.
In contrast to the crowing of Senator Harry Reid about “killing” the Yucca Mountain Waste storage project, Dr. Chu described nuclear fuel recycling as an essential element of nuclear power for the U.S.,…
Continue ReadingAs I posted last week, conventionally sized nuclear power (?750–1,250 MW) is dramatically uncompetitive with coal- and gas-fired electricity generation in light of the huge increase in construction costs recently estimated by various utilities. A typical new coal-fired plant may cost on the order of $2,000/MW compared to new nuclear estimated to cost as much as four or five times more. The lower operating costs of nuclear compared to fossil-fired plants cannot erase this capital-cost premium.
Micro-nuclear, with capacity in the 5–100 MW range, while exciting as a new technology, is no panacea. Actual installed costs are yet to be published. But operating cost estimates of less than ten cents a kilowatt-hour have drawn attention to the designs. But are the scale economies in construction, operations, maintenance, and the fuel cycle considered in these preliminary estimates?…
Continue ReadingAt the G8 summit held in L’Aquila Italy last week, the G8 nations came up with a climate master plan aimed at keeping the total rise in global temperatures (above pre-industrial conditions) at a value of 2ºC or less. A cursory reading of the plan makes it seem as if the G8 nation’s are reaching out to the rest of world by agreeing to take on the harshest emissions cuts themselves, leaving the world’s developing nations with only a bit of mop-up duty in order to make all the final numbers work out. The opposite is true.
A close look at how the plan must actually work reveals a great semantics play by the G8. They know that they alone do not hold the power to substantially alter the projected course of future global warming through their emissions reductions.…
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