Nuclear power’s new debate: cost (CS Monitor)

[bananas]

http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/13/nuclear-power%E2%80%99s-new-debate-cost/">Nuclear power’s new debate: cost
Issues of safety and waste make way for a focus on funding.
By Mark Clayton | Staff Writer for The Christian Science Monitor/ August 13, 2009 edition



<snip>

Today, the US has 104 nuclear reactors, providing about 20 percent of the nation’s power. No new nuclear plants have been ordered in the US since 1978. This is not because of protestors, but because of a lack of investor funding and Wall Street remembering the ghosts of nuclear power’s past – massive construction cost overruns, utility defaults, and bankruptcies. Yet these no longer seem to haunt the nuclear industry or its supporters.

<snip>

ALTOGETHER, NUCLEAR-INDUSTRY BAILOUTS in the 1970s and ’80s cost taxpayers and ratepayers in excess of $300 billion in 2006 dollars, according to three independent studies cited in a new nuclear-cost study by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

<snip>

“You want to talk about bailouts – the next generation of new nuclear power would be Fannie Mae in spades,” says Mark Cooper, senior fellow at Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment. Dr. Cooper is among several economic analysts who contend that – waste and safety issues aside – nuclear energy is too costly.

<snip>

Even if no loans were defaulted on, nuclear would be too expensive, Cooper says. The multitrillion-dollar cost eclipses most energy sources, such as wind power, which also has a sizable up-front capital cost. But wind’s lifetime cost is roughly one-third less than current estimates for nuclear, Cooper’s and others studies show. So who would want to invest in such costly electricity? Not Wall Street – at least not without loan guarantees.

<snip>

In June, using unusually strong language, a Moody’s Investor Service report called new nuclear power plants a “bet the farm” credit risk for the 14 utilities pursuing them.

<snip>

What worries some even more than lack of a cap is how the Senate’s CEDA plan would operate with little oversight – due to a proposed exemption from the Fair Credit Reporting Act that would otherwise subject such loan guarantees to the congressional appropriations process, says Autumn Hanna, senior program director for Taxpayers for Common Sense.

<snip>

[jtrockville]

1. Florida OK's plan to build nuclear plant... (LINK from Aug 12th 2009)

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/5min/story/1181898.html

I guess that dispells the CSM myth that no nukes have been ordered since '78 in the US.

[bananas]

3. Nope, It still hasn't been ordered, it hasn't even been completely approved yet.

It still hasn't gotten approval from the NRC yet.

[NNadir]

2. Yeah, as Amory Lovins predicted in 1980, nuclear power is dead, for

economic reasons.

That's why his fellow highly paid (off) dangerous natural gas salesmen have to write thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of specious selective attention posts of the type that claim for instance, that http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table27.xls">2,660.26 < 684.38 and of course, that great fundie mathematical representation direct from the mouth of the sun god (who is irrefutable even when he says 2 + 2 = -823040.3775025) that, classically, http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_3.html">10.04 is greater than
20.04.

This post will be followed by the usual list of bourgeois brats complaining about name calling, each one less able to pass third grade math than the previous one, making statements like "NNadir is delusional" because each one of them whistles louder and louder and louder and louder in the dark in the theory that 2,660.26 = 0 on the grounds that Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips all pay Amory Lovins oodles and oodles and oodles and oodles of money to drag out every stupid ass anti-nuke shibboleth produced over the last 3 decades of unrestricted dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping in the atomosphere.

I note that since 1980, neither coal, nor oil, nor dangerous natural gas have proved "too expensive" except of course, for those poor little brown people in places like Nigeria, Lesotho, Bengladesh and all of the other places that dumb fundie anti-nukes couldn't care less about.

[bananas]

4. It died long before then, for economic reasons.

I had friends and colleagues in the nuclear industry back in the 1970's.
A lot of them had to change careers in the mid-70s, as a career path it turned into a dead end.
This chart from the article sidebar shows how reactor orders came to a halt in 1974,
the industry had a financial melt down five years before the meltdown at Three Mile Island:

[glitch]

34. Don't be sad. Take a break!

http://www.freespeech.org/node/1148

[Nederland]

5. Question

Is there any evidence that nuclear opponents made nuclear power more expensive than it would be absent their efforts?

[kristopher]

6. Is there any evidence

Is there any evidence that Republicans (the people who have historically supported both coal and nuclear while denying support for renewables) have made wind and solar more expensive than it would be absent their efforts?

[Nederland]

7. Yes

But you didn't answer my question...

[kristopher]

8. Define "nuclear opponent".

I'm sure you'd label me a "nuclear opponent" but I wouldn't, so you'll have to help me out and clarify the group you are referring to.

[Nederland]

10. A nuclear opponent...

...is a person opposed to nuclear power.

[kristopher]

11. Your same useless games...

Most reasonable discussions benefit from clear identification of terms. As banana's post aptly points out, that is an ambiguous question. Obviously you just want a set up for some canned Hannity style inanity; therefore, please feel free to piss off.

[bananas]

17. You're right. nt.

[Imperfect World]

37. Wind power

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/californias-wind-slowdown/

January 29, 2009

California’s Wind Slowdown



The chart at the top shows the top five wind power states and how their capacity has grown over the two years between 2006 and 2008. Iowa’s wind power capacity grew by 198 percent, Texas by 157 percent, and Minnesota and Washington grew quickly, too.

The outlier is California, which saw just 7 percent growth in capacity over the same period.

Mark Tholke, the director of the Southwest region for EnXco, a renewables developer, said that the cost of getting permits in California is “more expensive than any other state by significant amounts.”

[bananas]

9. The answer to your question is...

First, you ask for "any evidence" but that can be almost anything, for example "hearsay evidence" isn't considered very good evidence, but it's still evidence, and is admissible in court under certain circumstances.

Second, what does "nuclear opponents" mean? When the National Academy of Sciences said that Yucca should contain the waste for 1 million years, did that make them "nuclear opponents"? When the judge ordered the EPA to follow the NAS recommendation, did that make the judge a "nuclear opponent"? When whistleblowers from inside the nuclear industry raised important safety issues, did that make them "nuclear opponents"?

What I think you're really asking is, were the cost overruns due primarily to protests and lawsuits?
The answer to that is NO.

I remember I was visiting a friend in Seattle, an engineer at Boeing, shortly before the WPPSS referendum. TV and radio were inundated with ads by WPPSS urging people to vote against killing the nuclear plants. I said to my friend, "Wow, with this much media bombardment, they'll probably convince people to vote their way." My friend chuckled and said, "Oh no, they're not fooling anybody." And to my surprise, the people voted against WPPSS, despite all the pro-WPPSS commercials.

Fighting the referendum is not what made the plants so expensive.

The nuclear industry pretty much destroyed its own credibility, and not just on economic issues - whistleblowers would reveal problems that were being covered up, "Smiling Buddha" destroyed the credibility of "Atoms for Peace", etc.

[Nederland]

12. Another question then

Duke Power finished construction on its Oconee plants in 1973-74 for $181/kW, on its McGuire plants in 1981-84 for $848/kW, and on its Catauba plants in 1985-87 for $1,703/kW. The same utility oversaw construction of three similar nuclear plants, and yet over a fourteen year period it's costs increased nearly ten-fold, an increase well beyond the rate of inflation for materials or labor during the time period.

Can you explain that?

[Massacure]

13. The answer to that question is an obvious yes.

Anti-nuclear activists did a good job at pointing out nuclear energy's external costs. Its a shame that it is taking so long for people to also point out the external costs of coal, oil, and natural gas.

[kristopher]

14. Is that really an opponent?

If a person selects tool A because it does a better job than tool B that doesn't mean they "oppose" tool B. The reason a claw hammer gets used more often than a sledge hammer is rooted in the relationship of the tool to the function; it isn't an arbitrary personal preference.

The innate characteristics of the energy system are the reason the costs increased. To say it is "the opposition" places blame on humans for recognizing the difference between tool A and B.

[Nederland]

15. Thank you

At least you didn't avoid answering the question.

I would also agree with you.

[bananas]

16. Get real.

I didn't "avoid answering the question",
I don't always have time to respond to all the idiocy here.
I note, with contempt, that you avoided answering my questions.
Get real, or get off it.

[Nederland]

19. I answered your questions implicitly

I responded with facts in post #12, itemizing how the cost of building nuclear plants increased tenfold over a fourteen year period, during which labor and material did not increase by anywhere near that much. I then asked, what was the cause? You claim that the cause was something other than protests and lawsuits. Fair enough, but the burden is on you to explain why a company that was perfectly capable of building cost effective plants in the early 70's became total unable to do so fourteen years later. We can be sure that the cause of those increases were not increases in labor or material costs, because those things are known. The only remaining explanation is that increased regulation led to lengthening construction times and higher costs. I believe there is no other explanation. If you have one, by all means offer it.

[kristopher]

20. So "opposition" is the basis for the increased regulation

and
increased regulation is the basis of increased construction time,
and
increased construction time resulted in increased labor and materials costs;

SO
Increased costs are a direct result of "opposition".

Have I stated the classic nuclear industry canard properly?




Using a totally new technology company A produces product X.

Initial consumer acceptance of product X is high.

However, as time goes by, characteristics related to the functionality of product X that were previously not generally known by the consuming public become common knowledge.

Public acceptance for product X and trust in those who responsible for releasing product X drops.

In an attempt to regain consumer acceptance, changes are made in product X.

The changes are applied to both future versions of product X and to those in production.

Over time it becomes clear that efforts to product X in a way that addresses consumer concerns are, at best, only marginally successful.

Over time it also becomes clear that problems associated with the life-cycle of product X cannot be solved.

The marginally successful attempts to make product X acceptable have resulted in pricing it out of the market.



The problem isn't public opposition; the problem is a product that is DEFECTIVE in the judgment of those who count - consumers. The essence of the way the public reacted to nuclear energy was no different than how they reacted to the Chevy Citation or any one of a dozen other problem plagued products that lost their confidence.

**Nuclear had its chance in a generally high level of public acceptance when it initially rolled out. The characteristics of the energy system itself lost that acceptance, and THAT is the root where your story begins.**

As consumers became aware of the scale of damage associated with potential failures they demanded efforts to minimize the frequency of these potential failures and the scope of damage of those particular problems. In an effort to satisfy the complaints of consumers the product became an economic white elephant.

Attempting to shift the blame to the "opponents" rather than the characteristics of the energy system itself is nothing more than sour grapes; for ultimately consumers are the final judge all economic endeavors must answer to.

[Nederland]

21. That would be a pertinent reply

...if you could demonstrate that the plants built in the late 1980's were significantly better than the plants built in the early 1970's. That is your argument, correct? That the increased regulations were aimed at producing a "product" that didn't suffer from all the "defects" discovered during the initial roll out.

If this is indeed what you are arguing, I'd be interested to hear you list the ways in which the late 1980's reactors were superior to the early 1970's reactors. In particular, I'm curious if all those alleged improvements that made those later reactors cost 10 times as much resulted in a superior product with a superior safety record.

I'm all ears.

[kristopher]

22. All ears? Must be uncomfortable...

Previous post:

So "opposition" is the basis for the increased regulation

Edited on Sat Aug-15-09 06:42 PM by kristopher
and
increased regulation is the basis of increased construction time,
and
increased construction time resulted in increased labor and materials costs;

SO
Increased costs are a direct result of "opposition".

Have I stated the classic nuclear industry canard properly?




Using a totally new technology company A produces product X.

Initial consumer acceptance of product X is high.

However, as time goes by, characteristics related to the functionality of product X that were previously not generally known by the consuming public become common knowledge.

Public acceptance for product X and trust in those who responsible for releasing product X drops.

In an attempt to regain consumer acceptance, changes are made in product X.

The changes are applied to both future versions of product X and to those in production.

Over time it becomes clear that efforts to product X in a way that addresses consumer concerns are, at best, only marginally successful.

Over time it also becomes clear that problems associated with the life-cycle of product X cannot be solved.

The marginally successful attempts to make product X acceptable have resulted in pricing it out of the market.



The problem isn't public opposition; the problem is a product that is DEFECTIVE in the judgment of those who count - consumers. The essence of the way the public reacted to nuclear energy was no different than how they reacted to the Chevy Citation or any one of a dozen other problem plagued products that lost their confidence.

**Nuclear had its chance in a generally high level of public acceptance when it initially rolled out. The characteristics of the energy system itself lost that acceptance, and THAT is the root where your story begins.**

As consumers became aware of the scale of damage associated with potential failures they demanded efforts to minimize the frequency of these potential failures and the scope of damage of those particular problems. In an effort to satisfy the complaints of consumers the product became an economic white elephant.

Attempting to shift the blame to the "opponents" rather than the characteristics of the energy system itself is nothing more than sour grapes; for ultimately consumers are the final judge all economic endeavors must answer to.

I'm afraid your logic is faulty. I neither said not implied that the product was in any significant sense "better" as a result of the attempts to regain public trust. What I was saying was that nuclear's problems were intrinsic to the energy system itself and as such these "improvements were little more than an attempt to create a silk purse from a sows ear. In fact, the actual example I chose was meant to illustrate the very point you raise, however; the Citation was a fine automobile and failed largely because of public perception.

The thing that distinguishes your perspective from that of the public is, in my opinion, that the public have choices and those choices allow them to assign different values to risks than you think are justified.

Your argument is that listening to the public in this instance has been a waste of money and has resulted in terminal economic damage to an otherwise acceptable technology. That if the public risk assessment were disregarded and scientific measures of risk were allowed to prevail, nuclear energy would be the technology of choice going forward.

The public seems to disagrees. That doesn't mean they don't accept the fact that your risk assessment is built on science and statistics. But behind those statistics there are long-term tangential threads of risk that score very low in the statistical model, yet very high in much of the public's mental model.

Things like nuclear proliferation and waste disposal are valued by the public (I think) in terms more of whether they are worth rejecting alterntives like coal, natural gas, or renewables.

I've pointed out before how one nuclear proponent likes to compare the externalities of nuclear to coal while avoiding comparisons of how much nuclear costs in relation to coal or the amount of energy coal has generated over the years. Yet, when arguing against renewables and their significantly lower external costs, this person then switches tack and argues that the most important consideration is aggregate historical production numbers.

The reason the argument is framed that way is that when the totality of factors related to procuring a long term sustainable energy supply most economically are examined nuclear can't compete. We are aiming for the best long term strategy for sustainable energy production and some of these important factors are:
Renewability of the resource
Gross potential of the resource
Technology for converting resource to usable energy
Known external costs of the resource
Potential of low probablity/high damage external costs of the resource

There are more but you get the idea.

When nuclear is evaluated with all the variables considered nuclear can't over come the total competitive advantage that renewables offer the consumer. Yes your supporting technical risk evaluations are low, but when confronted by other scientific methods of assessment they suffer from too short of a historical timeline to accurately predict the type of low incidence - high consequence risks posed by nuclear.

[Nederland]

23. Response

Your argument is that listening to the public in this instance has been a waste of money and has resulted in terminal economic damage to an otherwise acceptable technology. That if the public risk assessment were disregarded and scientific measures of risk were allowed to prevail, nuclear energy would be the technology of choice going forward.

The public seems to disagrees. That doesn't mean they don't accept the fact that your risk assessment is built on science and statistics. But behind those statistics there are long-term tangential threads of risk that score very low in the statistical model, yet very high in much of the public's mental model.

I believe that this is an accurate description of what has happened. The public has made an assessment of nuclear power and rejected it based upon perceived risks. It is not fair however, to treat those assessments as subjective opinions that cannot be incorrect or criticized. For example, observing public behavior one can only conclude that they believe that living next to a nuclear power plant is undesirably risky, while driving in a car is not. Objectively speaking, this conclusion is wrong. In the US alone, automobile accidents cause over 40,000 deaths a year. Even if you include the Chernobyl accident, nuclear power has not caused anywhere near that number of deaths globally.

One must ask therefore, how has public perception of nuclear power become so warped? My answer is simple: nuclear opponents have engaged in decades long misinformation campaign that consistently lies about the risks of nuclear power.

[madokie]

24. Your last statement about caused me to choke on my mountain dew

"One must ask therefore, how has public perception of nuclear power become so warped? My answer is simple: nuclear opponents have engaged in decades long misinformation campaign that consistently lies about the risks of nuclear power."

Gimminie crickets man, where does a person even begin to make a sane argument after that?

[kristopher]

25. "Objectively speaking this conclusion is wrong"

Well sure it is, that's why you selected an argument I didn't make to to rebut. The specifics I mentioned were nuclear proliferation and waste disposal; which would make your statement a straw man. Using an irrational fear to respond to the topics I presented is itself either irrational or dishonest. Which has been the hallmark of nuclear propaganda since day one.

Nuclear proliferation.

Nuclear wastes and contamination.

Extremely complex systems are more prone to failure than simple systems.

These are the drawbacks of the energy system that have resulted in the nuclear industry's failure to maintain its initial high level of public acceptance. They aren't false issues created by economically motivated actors trying to derail a competing technology. They are real, life threatening aspects of the system required to extract energy through the process of nuclear fission. People who do not accept the Frequentist's risk assessment of the potential consequences of these aspects of nuclear power aren't being irrational nor are they distributing misinformation.

Picking one sliver of my argument to answer with a strawman, however, that is misinformation, irrationality or dishonesty.

[Nederland]

26. The same argument applies to both

The specifics I mentioned were nuclear proliferation and waste disposal.

Yes, but neither of those things have caused anywhere near the damage and death that the automobile has, and yet the public happily embraces their cars while shunning nuclear power. Again, why?

The issues of nuclear proliferation and waste disposal are longtime canards of the anti-nuclear crowd. Waste disposal is an issue that the nuclear industry takes very seriously, and compared to other industries that handle dangerously toxic materials, the nuclear industries record is stellar. Nuclear proliferation has virtually nothing to do with nuclear power. Yes, 30 years ago India was able to take advantage of some US and Canadian civilian nuclear program to help itself acquire a nuclear weapons. However, that hen has long left the henhouse. Nuclear weapons are 60 year old technology, and nothing can stop any reasonably well funded group from obtaining them if they really wanted to.

[kristopher]

27. Now you are totally ignoring the timeline and type of risk analysis involved.

As long as you are still falling, the safety record of jumping off a building is stellar also. However, when it comes to where the meat meets the concrete that stellar record just goes all to hell, doesn't it?

Your remarks about nuclear weapons are why the nuclear industry has no credibility. Not only is your denial of the link between the spread of nuclear power and nuclear weapons technologies not credible, but basically you are saying that since the problem is bad (and I don't agree with your assessment of current conditions) then it is just fine to not only leave the problem unaddressed, but to actually make it worse.

I can understand the lure of nuclear power, but I can't understand otherwise rational people disregarding the alternative of renewable energy sources. In the face of the facts established by physics, economics and known technologies it is poppycock to argue, as nuclear proponents routinely do, that it is necessary to accept the risks of nuclear to meet our energy needs.

To me, the perspective that nuclear is the preferred energy source is only supportable when some element beyond the resource/technologies themselves enters the decision-making process. Whether it be ideological, habitual thinking or economic self interest, something outside the relevant energy related criteria is required to reach the conclusion that nuclear is preferable to renewables.

[Nederland]

28. I don't disregard renewables

I don't disregard renewable energy sources. In fact, I'm all in favor of wind, solar and all sorts of forms of renewable energy. I just don't get the knee jerk reaction against nuclear that completely dwarfs the response to coal, oil and gas that are far, far worse forms of energy.

[kristopher]

29. Who isn't responding to the problems with fossil fuels?

Who the hell are you kidding? Promoting centralized thermal, fossil fuel generation has been the hallmark of the nuclear industry for 35 years.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[Nederland]

30. Greenpeace for one

Compare the effort they have put into fighting nuclear power to the effort they put into fighting coal, oil and gas and I think it's clear they are irrational in their priorities.

[kristopher]

31. That's a good example

...of perceptual vigilance. I think if you review history you'll find Greenpeace active on climate change efforts as early and as often as anyone. Your comment again assigns irrationality to the view of risk held by other rational actors.

Perhaps what you are keying on is the different types of actions that are involved in policy activism. In one case there is the goal of limiting growth in reliance on an ultimately unacceptable alternative to a bad dominant technology. In the other case you are attempting to create a coalition willing to take dramatic action to alter the global use of that bad dominant technology. They were/are heavily involved in both.

You simply keyed to the actions most directly related to your field of interest while the actions outside of your immediate interests failed to penetrate your sensory flappers.

It is also not a very good argument since it relies on the agenda of one agency to make the much broader point that people haven't been concerned about fossil fuels.

Why not take responsibility for the failings of nuclear power and be done with it. You sound like a whiny teenager that is unable to accept responsibility for very poor personal decisions.

...
In the early days of the Atomic Era, nuclear power was heralded as a panacea—a cheap, abundant energy source that would spur economic growth, cut dependence on foreign oil, and enable every imaginable human endeavor. President Dwight Eisenhower gave voice to this sentiment in 1954, when the United States broke ground on its first commercial reactor in Shippingport, Pennsylvania—part of an ambitious, government-funded program to develop a viable nuclear energy sector. "In thus advancing toward the economic production of electricity by atomic power," the president enthused, "mankind comes closer to fulfillment of the ancient dream of a new and better earth." He then kicked off the ground-breaking celebration with space-age flair by waving a "neutron wand" over a special neutron detector, signaling a robotic bulldozer to scoop up a pile of dirt. Days later, Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, declared that future generations would enjoy electricity "too cheap to meter."

By December 1957, residents of western Pennsylvania were brewing coffee and vacuuming carpets with power from the Shippingport plant. The project’s success set off a chain reaction. Beginning in the early 1960s, utilities—lured by promises of cheap electricity and growing concerns about air pollution—were lining up to purchase new reactors, a phenomenon historians have dubbed the "great bandwagon market" for nuclear power. Between 1965 and 1967, sixty plants with 40,000 megawatts of generating capacity were ordered.

By the mid-1970s, more than 100 nuclear power stations were being planned or built. But the manic enthusiasm was fading as reactor projects ran aground amid soaring inflation, shrinking energy demand, bungled construction, and regulatory delays. Perhaps the most infamous boondoggle was the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant on the Long Island Sound. The Long Island Lighting Company spent twenty-five years and $6 billion—eighty times the original estimate—trying to get it up and running. But it was never licensed to operate. The debacle saddled Long Island residents with some of the nation’s highest electricity rates and pushed the regional economy to the brink of ruin.

As problems piled up, the market for new reactors collapsed. Between 1973 and 1978 the number of annual orders dwindled from thirty-eight to two. Some utilities began canceling reactor plans or abandoning half-built projects. In the mid-1980s, the Washington Public Power Supply System walked away from two unfinished reactors and $2.25 billion in bonds, the largest municipal bond default on the books. Another major utility was forced into bankruptcy. In 1985, Forbes magazine surveyed the wreckage of the nuclear power industry and described it as "the greatest managerial disaster in business history."

Although public opposition and safety concerns played a role in the industry’s undoing—especially after the partial meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island plant in 1979—the primary stumbling blocks were economics and an unworkable business model. Most first-generation plants were custom designed and built, and in many cases design plans weren’t finished before construction began. This opened the door to construction errors and endless regulatory delays. In the hopes of rescuing the industry, in 1985 the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry-funded think tank, aided by executives from nuclear utilities and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials, came up with a set of principles for next-generation reactors with simpler, standardized designs, fewer moving parts, and more modular components. The goal was to make them not only safer than their predecessors, but also faster and less expensive to build than coal-fired power plants. Four years later, the NRC overhauled its regulatory process to help this effort along. Reactor vendors were invited to submit a limited number of designs for precertification, so utilities could simply pick one and apply for a permit to build it as a specific site. "The idea was to commit to just a few designs, and set those designs in stone to create a more efficient process," explains NRC spokesman Scott Burnell. ...

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0901.blake.html

[Nederland]

That's a great article

It pretty much sums up the fact that the problem with nuclear power has nothing to do with the technology itself, but problems resulting from politics and inefficient bureaucracies managing construction.

[kristopher]

33. That's a strange take-away message

I seriously doubt most who read the article would draw the same conclusion.

The problems with "politics and inefficient bureaucracies" are very nearly universal across time, geography and culture. The last time there was a move to build plants it happened and now it is happening again. It doesn't happen with other mainstream power systems. Doesn't that cause you to ask what are the underlying characteristics of nuclear power that cause it to be an apparently* inevitable second order consequence?

These issues are a result of attempts in the real world to deal with the complexity and risks posed by fission.

*There are exceptions but it is difficult to use them as evidence of your position as they may show either that the issues aren't inherent to the technology (as you think), or that there is inaccurate data available (such as might be available from totalitarian political regimes), or they may be cases of a Chernobyl waiting to happen. That too is part of the problem associated with evaluating low incidence/high consequence risk over too limited a period of observation.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0901.blake.html

[bananas]

38. Technology is the #1 problem

The Office of Technology Assessment issued a report in 1984:

Nuclear Power in an Age of Uncertainty (Washington, D. C.: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, OTA-E-216, February 1984).
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 84-601006

The PDF is at http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_4/DATA/1984/8421.PDF

Right after the table of contents it says:

OVERVIEW AND FINDINGS

Without significant changes in the technology, management, and level of public acceptance,
nuclear power in the United States is unlikely to be expanded in this century beyond the reactors
already under construction.

Technology is the first item listed.

A few paragraphs down it says:

It is also possible, however, that even greatly improved LWRs will not be viewed by the public
as acceptably safe. Therefore, R&D on alternative reactors could be essential in restoring the nuclear
option if they have inherently safe characteristics rather than relying on active, engineered systems
to protect against accidents. Several concepts appear promising, including the high temperature gascooled
reactor (HTGR), the PIUS reactor, and heavy water reactors. Such R&D should also be directed
toward design and developing smaller reactors such as the modular HTGR.

25 years later, after all the R&D thrown at it, the technology hasn't developed past LWR's.

And we still don't have a solution for the waste - another technology problem, which countries around the world have been trying to solve without success, including Britain, France, Germany, and Russia.

[bananas]

18. So the anti-nuclear activists were right?

Is that what you're saying?
Thank you.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[glitch]

35. Great article, thanks for posting. nt

[Imperfect World]

36. Nuclear power gives France the CHEAPEST electricity in Europe.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/06/60minutes/main2655782.shtml

April 8, 2007

France Is Becoming The Model For Nuclear Energy Generation

Nearly 80 percent of the country's electricity comes from 58 nuclear power plants, crammed into a country the size of Texas.

Because nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases, France has the cleanest air in the industrialized world, and because the price of oil is now around $60 a barrel, it has the lowest electric bills in Europe. In fact, France has so much cheap electricity, it exports it to its European neighbors. French nuclear plants supply power to parts of Germany, Italy and help light the city of London.