A New Nuclear Renaissance To decrease their dependence on oil, many developed nations are turning to nuclear power as a more reliable source of energy.
Most of the groundswell of activity in nuclear power is coming from Asia. According to the World Nuclear Association, east and south Asia currently have “about 100 nuclear reactors in operation, 20 under construction, and plans to build a further 40.”
On the other hand, today’s capitol of nuclear power, Western Europe, has firm plans to develop only one new reactor in Finland. Meanwhile, the U.S. is working on tentative proposals to develop a new generation of nuclear reactors, which we’ll discuss shortly.
In Japan, the government had been trying to diversify its sources of energy even before the recent war in Iraq. Over the past 30 years, it has slashed its dependency ratio on oil from 77 percent to just under 50 percent. However, 90 percent of that oil still comes from the Middle East, so Japan’s investment in nuclear energy is viewed as a way to protect its economy if terrorism or other events disrupt the flow of oil. For that reason, Japan plans to construct 12 new reactors with a total capacity of 14,400 megawatts.
Rapid growth is also occurring elsewhere in Asia. Currently, China is leading the way. It is ranked second among the world’s countries in the amount of energy it uses and in the CO2 it emits. China’s investments in nuclear power include nine reactors, with a combined capacity of 6,500 megawatts, supplying just under 2 percent of its electricity.
China is currently using Russian contractors to build two new reactors, each with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts, on its east coast. By the end of 2004, China’s leaders will solicit bids from companies around the world to help in the next stage
of its strategy, which involves building four new reactors. Each reactor will cost about $1.5 billion and will generate about 1,000 megawatts of power.
All of these steps will bring China closer to realizing its long-term plan to increase its nuclear power capacity to 40,000 megawatts over the next 15 years. To reach this goal, it will have to add two reactors each year, at a total cost of $30 billion.
Meanwhile, South Korea already has 19 reactors on-line, which generate about 16,000 mega-watts of power. But there’s more on the way. South Korea’s goal is to build eight more reactors that can crank out another 9,200 megawatts. This new capacity is needed in South Korea, where the demand for electricity has been growing by 9 percent annually for the past 15 years.
Another nation that offers a huge market for nuclear power is India. At the moment, it has 14 smaller reactors with a capacity of 2,500 megawatts. But it is building at an urgent pace. It has already broken ground for nine new reactors, and plans to add 24 more, which will ultimately bring India’s total capacity to 20,000 megawatts.
While all of this activity is underway overseas, the nuclear energy effort has all but stopped in the U.S. Currently, there are 103 licensed reactors in 31 states, and nuclear power generates about 20 percent of America’s electricity. However, there have been no nuclear plants ordered since 1978. More than 100 reactors have been canceled, including all of those ordered after 1973, according to the report “Nuclear Energy Policy,” by Mark Holt and Carl E. Behrens of the Congressional Research Service.
The report lists the nuclear power industry’s troubles as high nuclear power plant construction costs, public concern about nuclear safety and waste disposal, and regulatory compliance costs. The biggest obstacle to building new reactors is the high cost of construction, which ranges up to $6 billion.
At the same time, an effort by the nuclear industry to increase its output without building new reactors is coming under fire from safety experts. According to the New York Times, over the past 20 years, nuclear plants have won permits to add capacity to existing reactors.
By making these upgrades and increasing the number of working hours, the industry has been able to expand its production of power. If it continues, this added capacity will amount to the equivalent of three new reactors in the next few years. Safety experts contend that these changes have boosted the reactors’ output to a level that is potentially dangerous.
The building of new nuclear power plants in the U.S. has been suspended since a highly publicized accident at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania in 1979. Following Three Mile Island, opposition to nuclear energy grew as the country was gripped by irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies, and the media. Looking at the track record of nuclear energy safety since then, these fears appear unjustified. In fact, nuclear energy, from its start in 1952, has proven to be the safest of all energy sources.
And this now seems to be driving changing perceptions of nuclear power. In an October 2003 poll released by the Nuclear Energy Institute, 57 percent of Americans responded that if a new power plant was needed, it would be acceptable to add one next to the nearest operating one. That was up from the two previous year’s surveys, possibly because of power shortages in California two years ago and last year’s huge blackout in the Northeast.
In step with this new mood in America and elsewhere, President Bush recently called for a revitalized U.S. nuclear power industry, and asserted that nuclear energy is a key component of the nation’s energy supply.
A consortium of companies interested in nuclear energy development asked the government in May 2004 for $400 million over seven years to prepare applications to build new nuclear power plants. The consortium, announced March 31 and called NuStart Energy Development, would match the government contribution. It is made up of seven major utilities and two vendors to the nuclear industry.
NuStart is seeking the money under the Energy Department’s Nuclear Power 2010 program, which aims to help industry build a new plant by decade’s end. Exelon Nuclear, which is the country’s largest nuclear plant operator, has applied for a site permit in Clinton, Illinois, where it already has one plant, and Entergy Corporation has applied for a site permit in Grand Gulf, Mississippi. The consortium says other plant sites still might be considered.
Also, Toshiba Corp. and General Electric Co. have applied for permission with the U.S. Department of Energy for their planned feasibility study for building a nuclear plant with the most advanced reactors in the state of Alabama, company sources said in May 2004. The two electric giants plan to conduct the feasibility study in a bid to win a nuclear power plant deal in the United States.
In light of these recent developments, the Trends editors would like to offer three forecasts:
First, nuclear power development will continue and accelerate in India, China, and South Korea over the coming two decades. By 2020, China’s nuclear capacity will exceed 40,000 megawatts, while that of India and South Korea will each exceed 25,000 megawatts.
Second, while many of the new reactors built in the next two decades will reflect current Generation II nuclear power technology, others will incorporate safer, more efficient Generation III and Generation IV technology. These newer reactors will employ closed fuel cycles that use reprocessed waste from themselves as well as earlier generation reactors. This will dramatically reduce the need to transport and store dangerous nuclear waste. The development of these new technologies is being coordinated by a 10-nation consortium of government and industry known as the Generation IV International Forum. Its technology roadmap for commercialization of this technology stretches over the next 50 years, with most of it becoming deployable between 2015 and 2025.
Third, a shift to increased reliance on nuclear power will raise substantial concerns about nuclear proliferation, but new technologies will make this more manageable. In a world filled with terrorists and rogue nation-states willing to aid those terrorists, there’s an obvious problem with first- and second-generation nuclear power plants, like most of those operating in the U.S. and Europe. These older plants produce a great deal of waste that could be used in so-called “dirty bombs,” or reprocessed to extract weapons-grade fissionable material. Precautions must be taken to protect this material in the West as well as in developing countries. But until a new generation of proliferation-resistant technology is developed, this will continue to be the greatest problem facing the nuclear power industry.
References List :
1. Financial Times, June 2, 2004, "Nuclear Power Lights Way for China and India," by Andrew Taylor. ⓒ Copyright 2004 by The Financial Times Limited. All rights reserved.2. To access the report "Nuclear Energy in the United States," visit the Almanac of Policy Issues website at:www.policyalmanac.org3. The New York Times, January 27, 2004, "Nuclear Power Industry in U.S. Faces Battle Over Expanding Capacity," by Matthew L. Wald. ⓒ Copyright 2004 by the New York Time Company. All rights reserved.4. Chicago Daily Herald, May 2, 2004, "Nuclear Power Industry Seeks to Renew Its Image." ⓒ Copyright 2004 by Daily Herald. All rights reserved.5. To access the article "Bush Calls for Revitalized Nuclear Power Industry," visit the Webfin website at:www.forum.webfin.com6. Inside Energy, May 3, 2004, "Nuclear Power Group Asks Feds for $400M to Get Reactor Proposals off the Ground," by Daniel Whitten. ⓒ Copyright 2004 by Platts, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
