Nuclear security
Nuclear: Carbon Free, but Not Free of Unease
Next
week, if all goes as planned, the 42-year-old nuclear reactor at theVermont Yankee generating station will be shut
down for the last time. The steam turbine at the plant, which at its peak could
make enough electricity for about half a million homes with virtually no
greenhouse gas emissions, will grind to a halt.
Vermont
Yankee, in the river town of Vernon near the Massachusetts border, had been the
target of years of protests and lawsuits by state officials, environmentalists
and others concerned about safety and radioactive waste.
But
in the end, the antinuclear movement didn’t kill the plant. Economics did.
“People
are always surprised when we say that really wasn’t the driver in shutting it
down,” said Bill Mohl, the president of a division of Entergy Corporation that operates Vermont Yankee and
four other nuclear plants, including Indian Point north of New
York City. Although Vermont Yankee produced power inexpensively, was upgraded
recently and was licensed to operate until 2032, the plant had become
unprofitable in recent years, a victim largely of lower energy prices resulting
from a glut of natural gas used to fire
electricity plants, Mr. Mohl said.
Photo
Workers building a nuclear reactor in Waynesboro, Ga.,
one of just five under construction in the United States, where nuclear energy
is waning.CreditJohn
Bazemore/Associated Press
To
its advocates, nuclear power is a potent force for fighting climate change, combining the
near-zero emissions of wind and solar energy with the
reliability of coal and gas. And nuclear power, which provides about 19 percent of all
electricity in the United States and 11 percent worldwide, could
be a greater source.
But
as Vermont Yankee illustrates, the nuclear industry in the United States is
having trouble maintaining the status quo, much less expanding. “It’s going
nowhere quickly,” said Sharon Squassoni, who studies energy and climate change
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Overseas, the outlook is not much better.
In
addition to market forces, enormous design and construction costs, questions
about new federal emissions rules, uncertainty about the long-term storage of
waste fuel, and public perceptions about safety after the 2011Fukushima disaster in Japan have
all had an effect on the American nuclear industry.
Of
the roughly 100 reactors in operation in the United States, four others have
been permanently shut since 2012 because of market economics or the costs of
repairs or safety improvements, and half a dozen or more are in jeopardy,
industry analysts say. Safety concerns may eventually scuttle others close to
large populations, including Indian Point.
Beyond
five reactors under construction, few if any others are likely to be built
anytime soon. And progress on a new generation of smaller, less expensive and
potentially safer reactors has been slow.
Given
that most of the still-profitable plants will reach the end of their useful
lives by midcentury or sooner, it appears likely that nuclear power will play a
diminishing role in the United States. “We’re going to be hard pressed just to
replace those,” Ms. Squassoni said.
All
of this is encouraging to opponents of nuclear power, who are concerned about
the costs, the potential for a major accident — despite the industry’s
relatively good safety record — and the hazards of storing spent fuel.
“These
things are extremely expensive and prone to cost overruns,” said Grant Smith,
the senior energy policy analyst with the Civil Society
Institute, a Massachusetts research group that advocates
solutions to climate change. “The high-level nuclear waste issue has never been
addressed. You’re talking about indefinite costs into the future.” But the
outlook for nuclear power dismays the industry and its supporters, including
some environmentalists, who point out that replacing the lost electricity from
Vermont Yankee and the other recently closed reactors with power from natural
gas could result in the release of as much carbon dioxide as is produced yearly
by two million cars or more.
“We
can’t take a carbon-free source of energy off the table,” said Carol M.
Browner, a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency who is now with Nuclear Matters, an industry-backed
group.
Overseas,
some nations have retrenched from nuclear power, out of necessity or by choice.
Japan only recently has brought some of its 50 reactors back online after
shutting them for inspections and safety improvements after Fukushima, and not
all are expected to reopen. Germany will eventually close all 17 of its
reactors as part of an ambitious transition to renewable energy.
Even
China, with more than two dozen nuclear plants under construction, faces
uncertainties. If the country is able to exploit its abundant reserves of shale
gas, its nuclear plans may be derailed, Ms. Squassoni said.
An
even bigger question is whether China’s current rate of economic growth is
going to continue. “If it doesn’t, what is that going to do to its energy
demand?” she said. The impetus for developing more nuclear power may dissipate.
To
people in the American nuclear industry, reactors do not get the respect they
deserve for being both virtually emissions-free and a source of
around-the-clock electricity for the grid. Experts point to the spell of
extreme cold weather across much of the country last January, when nuclear
plants kept working while many gas and coal plants had to shut down as the cold
affected equipment and fuel supplies.
About
half of the nuclear plants sell their electricity in competitive wholesale
markets, which are relatively new and complex. Electricity from generators
fueled by low-cost gas is priced so low that nuclear plants cannot compete,
industry analysts say, and the markets also offer advantages to new power
sources, especially wind turbines, over existing
sources like nuclear and coal.
Photo
Nuclear fuel storage units at the Vermont Yankee
plant, which is to shut down next week. Industry opponents cite the hazards of
storing spent fuel. CreditToby Talbot/Associated
Press
“The
markets are quite simply not working,” said Richard J. Myers, the vice
president for policy development at the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group.
The
industry is pushing for changes that would help marginal plants stay in
operation. Federal price supports would be one, perhaps temporary, solution.
Another would be to grant a premium to power sources, like nuclear, that can
keep running under almost any circumstances.
“All
of this is fixable,” Mr. Myers said. “The question is: Do the fixes come
quickly enough?”
Other
help could come as the federal government and the states develop policies under
new carbon-emission rules for the power industry that were proposed by the
E.P.A. in June in its Clean Power Plan. They could lead to
the development of new programs, and expansion of existing ones, that put a
price on greenhouse gas emissions as a means of limiting them.
“The
biggest thing that is going to drive people to clean solutions is going to be a
cap on carbon,” said Christine Todd Whitman, a former New Jersey governor and
E.P.A. head who is now an industry advocate.
The
industry’s recent struggles represent something of a reversal from the previous
decade, when there was talk of a nuclear revival in the United
States after nearly 30 years without any new reactor construction permits being
issued. Even then, however, some experts questioned just how much nuclear power
could grow in the United States and abroad, and how much it could contribute to
the effort to reduce carbon emissions.
In a report she prepared in
2009, Ms. Squassoni wrote that in light of steep construction costs, only a
handful of new reactors would come on line by 2015, even in the best of
circumstances.
“If
you really wanted to reduce carbon emissions through nuclear, it was going to
be incredibly expensive,” she said. “You’d have to build an incredible number
of power plants.”
Now
plants are even more expensive, in part because of new safety requirements in
the wake of Fukushima. So-called small modular reactorshave been proposed as
a lower-cost alternative. There are many different designs — at least one is
meant to run on waste fuel — but the federal Department of Energy has provided
significant development money only for two
designs that are smaller variations of the most common kind of reactor.
Ashley
Finan, an analyst with the Clean Air Task Force, which focuses on
technologies to fight climate change, said that the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission had not made it easy for alternative designs to win backing from
private investors.
“There’s
a lack of a clear and predictable regulatory pathway,” Ms. Finan said. “You’re
really not able to attract funding without a clear regulatory process.”
As
a result, small modular reactors are many years from reality in the United
States. Overseas, there are only a few isolated small-reactor projects
underway, including one under construction in China.
Most
modular designs have features that are intended to make them safer than
existing reactors. Safety, as always, looms large in the debate about nuclear
power. Although some watchdog groups point to incidents like leaks of
radioactive water from some plants, the industry in the United States promotes
its safety record, noting that events like unplanned reactor shutdowns are at
historical lows. And the American industry’s one major accident, at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, pales in
comparison with Fukushima or the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet
Union.
But
Peter A. Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said
that in discussions of adding more nuclear power to help curb emissions and fight
climate change, the issue of safety takes on a new dimension.
“You
can’t rationally bet a big part of your climate change abatement plan on a
technology that you may suddenly find you don’t want to use anymore,” Mr.
Bradford said. A major accident, for example, might force the entire industry
to shut down, at least temporarily. “There’s no other low-carbon alternative
with the potential to develop a large hole like that.”
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