Unfortunately, nuclear energy and regulation is beyond my ken, so I asked Ed
Fenstermacher, who has written a few guest columns before, who is a friend and classmate of mine from the M.I.T. Class of
1973, about 45 years back, to write this column. Ed is a former Air Force officer, but more importantly nuclear energy is his business, as he is currently a
nuclear engineering consultant (and a husband, and proud father of three.) Ed can be reached at efenster@alum.mit.edu.
_ _ _
There are several main factors that will determine the
viability of nuclear power in the near future, the same factors that affect all its competitors for
generating electricity: coal, oil, natural gas, hydroelectric, wind, solar and
other “renewable” power sources. These
are the cost of generating power, the availability of the energy source, the
environmental impact including waste disposal, and safety. All of these are also shaped by government
regulatory conditions, both at the national level and local level. All of these fold back into the cost.
As far as availability is concerned, nuclear fuel is widely
available. We are reaching the point
where it can be economically extracted from seawater, making it effectively a
renewable resource, like hydroelectric power, wind and solar. Unlike hydroelectric, it is widely
available (nearly all possible hydroelectric
sources in the US are already in use.)
Unlike solar, it is available at all times of the day; and unlike wind,
it is available in all weather conditions. Nuclear fuel is far more comparable in availability to fossil fuels, such as coal (about 400 years’ worth at present
consumption levels). Fracking has greatly
increased the availability and decreased the price of both oil and natural gas,
and consequently decreased the price of these fuels as well.
Regulation of nuclear power is done at the federal level for
safety and environmental reasons. Nuclear plants need to comply with a plethora
of Federal Regulations issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the
EPA, and others. Fortunately, the NRC
and Congress realized some time ago that their regulations had to be more
rationally applied, or they would not have an industry to regulate. Thus, NRC regulations now make it easier to
build a nuclear plant than it was 40 years ago.
At that time you had to get a Construction Permit to build a plant, and
a separate Operating Permit to run it.
If rules changed in the years it took to build the plant, though, well, tough! You would then either have to do costly
modifications after the plant was built, or never get to operate it at
all.
This is what happened to the
Shoreham Plant on Long Island, which operated at low power just long enough to
test and to ensure that the equipment was radioactive, and then shut down
before producing a megawatt hour of commercial electricity. The licensing process is now a single
step: if a utility gets a permit to
build the plant, and builds it as planned (meeting all of the quality standards
needed), it will be allowed to operate it.
At the state and local level, the regulation is largely
economic, and there are rules which require that any new facility be used and
usable in order to be included in the rate base. Unlike Apple, which can use the profits from
the iPhone 6 to finance development of the iPhone 7, a public utility has the
profit from Nuclear Plant 2 regulated to keep its profits from being excessive,
and can’t use them to finance Nuclear Plant 3.
These rules nominally apply equally to all forms of power, but end up
having an impact proportional to how long it takes to build a plant, because
interest is accruing during that period that can only be paid off after the
plant is operational. Nuclear power
plants take about six years to build under good conditions, while gas-fired plants take only about
a year. Thus, the used and usable
provisions hurt nuclear more than other types.
Another type of regulation requires utilities to buy back
excessive solar power from rooftop residential generators. Similarly, they may have wind generation
facilities that generate power unsteadily.
Unfortunately, this power may be available when it is not needed. If the remaining power is nuclear, the excess
power is wasted, because nuclear plants cannot change their power quickly. If that power is gas generated, the plant
generation can be easily adjusted to accommodate these changes.
Despite the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents, any new
plants in the United States will be safe.
The Chernobyl design would never have been licensed here, while the
Fukushima plant had not had upgrades that are required in the USA. The designs of new nuclear plants being built
now have passive cooling systems that avoid meltdowns under any conditions,
short of a nuclear war. With Fukushima,
there were no radiation-related deaths or injuries, but considerable and costly
environmental damage. This will not
happen with the new designs, because the nuclear industry has an unequaled
record of learning from its own safety issues.
Another environmental issue, of course, is disposal of
nuclear waste. The Obama Administration
and Harry Reid colluded to kill the Yucca Mountain Waste Repository, with Obama
appointing Gregory Jaczko, formerly of Reid’s staff, to chair the NRC. Jaszko was eventually
replaced, after the NRC’s Inspector General found he had been withholding
information from the other commissioners, in order to stop Yucca Mountain from
being licensed.
This led all the other
commissioners, including the Democrats, to complain about him to Congress. He was replaced, but that damage had been
done. This is one thing the Trump
Administration could, and needs to, reverse.
Objectively, the repository should have been licensed. Bringing it back would improve the outlook
for nuclear power.
What doesn’t help, however, is that the nuclear supply chain
has been shut down for decades. Just as
we can no longer build a Saturn V rocket, we have lost the capability to make a lot of
the parts required for plants, and we have to tool up to do that. The parts need to be of the highest
quality. This has become an issue particularly
in recent weeks with supply problems with Toshiba’s Westinghouse subsidiary -- causing a precipitous drop in Toshiba's valuation -- and with the discovery of quality problems being covered
up by the French nuclear supplier Areva. These supply line issues raise the
possibility that schedules cannot be met, costs will increase, and plants may be abandoned partially completed.
The net result of all of these factors is that right now,
the short-term costs of natural gas make new nuclear plants, and even some
existing plants, non-competitive. I
would love to see people start thinking about the long-term impacts of their
decisions, but the decisions of utilities are driven by the interests of their
stockholders and by the Public Utility Commissions that regulate their
prices.
The chances that either group
will have a planning horizon of several decades or more is about the same as of
the AARP worrying about the viability of Social Security several decades hence. As much as I would like to believe otherwise,
I don’t see a lot of new nuclear construction in the near future, even if Trump
adopts policies more friendly to it -- Ed Fenstermacher.
Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here? There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist." Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.
No comments:
Post a Comment