No Nukes Are Good Nukes

A feature story in the current issue of Wired magazine has received surprisingly little attention in the blogosphere, though it seems to be a topic of conversation at recent conferences and meetings I’ve attended.

The article -- Nuclear Now! How clean, green atomic energy can stop global warming -- was written by Peter Schwartz and Spencer Reiss. Schwartz is well-known as founder of Global Business Network and a bestselling author on books on societal trends (The Art of the Long View, Inevitable Surprises, others); Reiss is a features editor at Wired.

The piece is, essentially, a Valentine to nuclear power, which Schwartz and Reiss maintain is climate friendly, safe, and gaining in popularity -- assertions that are (in order) true, false, and, at best, optimistic. A sampling of the giddy prose:

. . . nuclear energy realistically could replace coal in the US without a cost increase and ultimately lead the way to a clean, green future. The trick is to start building nuke plants and keep building them at a furious pace. Anything less leaves carbon in the climatic driver's seat.

Schwartz’s and Reiss’s arguments might be deemed credible but for the obvious disdain they have for efficiency and renewable energy and their advocates:

The granola crowd likes to talk about conservation and efficiency, and surely substantial gains can be made in those areas. But energy is not a luxury people can do without, like a gym membership or hair gel. The developed world built its wealth on cheap power -- burning firewood, coal, petroleum, and natural gas, with carbon emissions the inevitable byproduct.

Wind, biomass, and other renewables are “capital- and land-intensive, and solar is not yet remotely cost-competitive,” claim the authors, while nuclear power is -- well, not quite “too cheap to meter,” a hollow promise the industry made back in the 1950s, but mere pennies a kilowatt-hour, they swear. That’s true . . . if you don’t count the high security costs of protecting nuclear plants, the environmental damage of uranium mining, and the incalculable costs of safely storing nuclear wastes -- something we haven’t yet figured out how to do. It’s like saying that the real price of gas is whatever we pay at the pump.

Schwartz’s and Reiss’s arguments that nuclear power is nothing less than our energy savior would be easy to laugh off if they didn’t play directly into the hands of the nuclear industry, whose advocates have been licking their chops at the potential spoils of a nuke-friendly Bush-Cheney administration -- and of the lucrative potential of dozens of new nuclear power plants in China and elsewhere. It’s a future that promises more of the same: large, centralized power plants creating security risks and environmental damage, feeding electrons into a grid that’s barely holding its own.

There may be a role for nuclear power, but it’s hardly the energy source of our dreams. The promise of a renewable energy future is not, as Schwartz and Reiss maintain, “attractive but powerless.” It’s real and it is coming on strong.

Say the authors about their beloved nukes:

The best way to avoid running out of fossil fuels is to switch to something better. The Stone Age famously did not end for lack of stones, and neither should we wait for the last chunk of anthracite to flicker out before we kiss hydrocarbons good-bye. Especially not when something cleaner, safer, more efficient, and more abundant is ready to roll. It's time to get real.

Ironically, it’s one of the best arguments for solar I’ve heard.

Comments

[John]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/mg18524864.100
Maybe they'll try to force us all to have one. Oh, you cute little nuke, you.

[ecopreneur]

Schwartz and Reiss also seem to ignore the huge startup capital costs to build nuclear plants. The marginal costs of producing nuclear energy is no longer that attractive when startup costs levelized into the marginal costs. I agree that we can be hopeful about nuclear as we learn to address its shortcomings, but right now, the shortcomings are many and serious. Nuclear is not the answer just this yet.

[Jacqui]

The thing that gets me about nuclear advocates is that they are always claiming that some new technology, such as pebble bed reactors, will jump in and prevent all the problems with nuclear power. Maybe it will, but they are totally deaf to the fact that serious advances are being made in solar, and that a major technology will be available next year for $1/watt. And that there are some good storage options that are ready for use now that can overcome the major problems of renewables: intermittant coverage.

The other major problem with nuclear is the long lead time of plants. It can easily take 10 years or more for them to be installed. Solar can be designed in a few months and installed in a day. Storage can be added to the grid as the need arises.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but it felt good to get that out ;)

[Mikhail Capone]

The question we must ask about any energy source we plan to massively invest in is: "Is it sustainable?"

Otherwise, we'll just get back to where we are now; short-term thinking is what got us in this mess in the first place.

Sure maybe Nukes could make things better for 50-75-etc more years, but what after that? What about when our "modern" centrals start to get old and dangerous, what about when we need lots and lots of Uranium and many countries fight over it? etc.