"A nuke in every garage" is the GOP nominee's energy and climate plan.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) made a stunning statement on the radio show of climate change denier Glenn Beck this week:
... the French are able to generate 80% of their electricity with nuclear power. There's no reason why America shouldn't.
Why can't we? Wrong question, Senator. The right question is -- Why would we? Let's do the math.
The U.S. has some one hundred nuclear reactors providing about nearly 100 Gigawatts of capacity (see here) and nearly 800,000 Gigawatt-hours of electricity, roughly 20% of total U.S. power. For the record, France has only 59 reactors, capacity of about 63 GW, generating 550,000 GW-hr (some of which is exported), covering nearly 80% of their usage (see here). [Note to Sen. McCain: France is a much smaller country than ours.]
What would it take for us to be 80% Nuclear?
We would have to quadruple the number of reactors to 400, which would take decades even if we could somehow return to -- and sustain -- the fastest decadal rate of U.S. nuclear plant construction. But that wouldn't mean just building 300 new nuclear plants, for several reasons.
First, by 2050, almost all of the existing plants would need to be replaced, so that is another hundred to build if we want to hit the 80% goal.
And then, since McCain is not a big booster of energy efficiency (his McCain-Lieberman climate bill has no substantive energy efficiency provisions in it at all), we have to deal with some 1.1% annual electricity growth, which means we'll need more than 600 nukes in 2050.
Third, McCain wants to switch much of our oil consumption to electricity (a strategy I endorse). As he said in last year's energy policy speech:
I'll work to promote real partnerships between utilities and automakers to accelerate the deployment of plug-in hybrids.... Fifty percent of cars on the road are driven 25 miles a day or less. Affordable battery-powered vehicles that can meet average commuter needs could help us cut oil imports in half.
Bottom Line: To satisfy McCain's odd desire to be like the French and get 80% of our electricity from nuclear power in the coming decades would require building more than 700 (GW-sized) nuclear power plants by midcentury -- more than one a month.
Although we have been unable as a country to agree on even one storage site for our existing nukes' radioactive waste (Yucca Mountain), the McCain plan would require seven such sites -- for a longer discussion of just what 700 GW would entail, see the Keystone Center's 2007 nuclear study discussed at "Nuclear Power No Climate Cure-All."
And remember that the Bush administration just signed a deal permitting all reactor fuel to come from Russia post-2020 (see here). McCain trusts the Russians so much, he wants to exclude them from the G-8 meetings. So where would we get all our uranium from?
Finally, in October, Moody's Investors Service said "new reactors would cost up to $6,000 per kilowatt of capacity to build" -- I'll be posting a longer review of nuclear costs soon, and suffice it to say, Moody's estimate is not the high end these days. Since $6,000 per kw is $6 billion per GW, 700 GW would require a cost of some $4 trillion, assuming there was no significant cost escalation from production delays and from the serious bottlenecks in the nuclear supply chain (see "Look up nuclear bottleneck in the dictionary....") -- and not even counting the cost of the uranium.
Dontcha think the country could find a better use for that kind of money in the effort to avoid catastrophic global warming and the harsh consequences of peak oil -- something better than committing this country to an ultimately unsustainable high-cost energy source for the entire 21st Century?
Apparently the GOP nominee thinks the answer is "no." Caveat Emptor!
For my fellow energy realists, I would add that it would take an astonishing effort just to have nuclear power in 2050 provide the same 20% of U.S. power it does today -- an outcome I am not inherently opposed to, but I certainly wouldn't devote yet more tens of billions of federal subsidies to, as McCain would, especially given the myriad flaws nuclear power has.
That's why I have little doubt that if we can move beyond the uninformed platitudes of people like McCain and ever really get serious about global warming and peak oil, then the realistic, affordable solution is at hand -- namely energy efficiency to avoid significant load growth, concentrated solar power to replace most coal, and wind power for plug-in charging. And yes, we'll still have some hydro and nukes and combined cycle natural gas turbines and/or cogen in 2050, and possibly even some coal with carbon capture and storage, assuming that industry ever gets serious about that possible solution.
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Whatever number is finally chosen, and whatever percentage of the electricity grid is chosen to be nuclear, there will always be a period in the early hours of the morning when demand will be low. When electrical batteries have been sufficiently well developed and have largely replaced internal combustion engines for automobiles, they can be recharged at an off -peak rate in very much the same way as hot water heaters use off-peak electricity now. It is unlikely that extra power stations, of any type, will have to be built, especially for battery recharging. If you were really smart, and used all the batteries that were connected to the electricity grid, to help cover peak demand periods, you might actually need many fewer power stations.
You have had a stab at putting some dollar figures, albeit much exaggerated, to the 80% nuclear option, or using "nukes" as you put it. What about some estimates for solar, wind and other alternatives? For instance, how much will each Megawatt hour of electricity cost if it is generated using "coal with carbon capture and storage" ?
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/
http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/climate/dirtyenergy/nuclear.cfm
and while we're at it, i'm with every other progressive, we should demand the democratic platform to leave off nuclear power too.
the only science that is pro-nuke power is coming from the nuclear industry and lobby. mccain should know better.
And where is France putting all their nuclear waste-probably shipping it to the US.
Why are they even wasting their time on this seems like more money and resources should go into nuclear FUSION research but of course in this country we're too short term interested to do anything like that.
I believe we haven't built a new reactor in 30+ years.
The next generation of nuclear plants will be more efficient and safer than any we have now.
Nuclear power is a key ingredient to energy independance, which should be our nations most pressing issue.
To acheive the NET energy production output, an increase of about 50 - 100% above your estimates is needed, depending on location.
Assuming a cost of 1.5 to 2.0 B$ per plant thats about 1 - 3 Trillion dollars, ignoring the potential for skyrocketing insurance and materials costs. Also generating that much capital in a country with tight credit and an outstanding public debt of approximately $9,351,703,631.929, increasing at about 1.45 Billion per day over each day of the 6 - 10 years need to build a single plant. This is just more McSame Old wishful thinking that sounds a lot like how well the surge in Iraq is going.
Although use of nuclear power must increase, its hardy the panacea it is painted to be, even ignoring the problems associated with waste storage. Conservation, solar, wind, and tidal, CO2 requestration, hydrogen fuel-cell and biofuels related energy initiatives will also be needed, but especially the first.
If I hear McCain advocating an an immediate 80% reduction in their personal travel and operating energy budgets as proof of their committment to an 80% reduction, I will then being to take such rhetoric seriously. Otherwise, its just more election season happy talk.
Nuclear plants cost about 12 billion to build (840 billion for the 700 plants).
Storage at Yucca (serving the 100 plus reactors in operation today) would cost 58 Billion.
Construct an additional 6 for 348 billion.
I'm not advocating any one technology over another but for less than 1.2 trillion dollars we could meet the nation's energy needs and have plenty left over. Too bad we didn't start this decades ago and get our light vehicles converted to electric.
The technology I find most intriguing is solar thermal. It causes alot less pollution (manufacturing) than photovoltaic and you can store the energy in a container of sodium and potassium chloride. You could even use the energy to create hydrogen and use it to power other plants.
Trucks and aircraft are going to need oil for the foreseeable future, but we could take our consumption of oil down to our domestic production.
McCain is on the right path, energy independence. If Obama and Clinton don't beat the drum even louder he's going to capture alot of votes.
I'm not opposed to nuclear as I believe it's part of the solution. And whether we like it or not so is coal. China and India run on coal and they're not going to stop anytime soon. So it's in our best interest to see if this clean coal technology really works and to do that we need to finish the plants we started. After that we need to license the technology to other countries.
We're so far behind the power curve on this it will take a massive mobilization like we had in WW2 to transform our nation from one dependent on oil and natural gas to run our vehicles to one plugged into the power grid.
We kicked this can down the road for 35 plus years and now it's a crisis. Unfortunately nothing is in our favor (10 trillion dollar national debt, the beginning of what I think will be a long recession, two wars, an industrial base that is a fraction of its past, and underfunded programs like social security and medicare).
We can overcome the hurdles but it will take a lot of sacrifice
…. and you’ll see a picture of Japan Steel Works Ltd — “the ONLY PLANT IN THE WORLD … capable of producing the central part of a nuclear reactor’s containment vessel in a single piece, reducing the risk of a radiation leak.”
The bottleneck: In a single year, they can currently only make “four of the steel forgings that contain the radioactivity in a nuclear reactor.”
Given Japan Steel’s limited capacity, the math just doesn’t work. Japan Steel caters to all nuclear reactor makers except in Russia, which makes its own heavy forgings.
“I find it just amazing that so many people jumped on the bandwagon of this renaissance without ever looking at the industrial side of it,” Schneider said.
Just for the record, to even be 10% of the solution to global warming would require about 25 nukes built a year for the next 40 years.
years. Fast neutron reactors (the type the Navy uses, causes the transuranics to fission, and the
waste only requires isolation for 300 years, and the radiation is much less dangerous. We should
go ahead with developing a standardized fast neutron reactor of an optimum size, where you use
multiple reactors if you need more power. The other thing is that steam driven electrical generators
are only 50% efficient, and we should keep in mind that one industry's waste heat, is another
industry's process heat. If use the waste heat efficiently, it means that much less, need for nuclear
fuel, and that much less waste to store. We need to make sure our standardized reactor are fail
safe under all conditions. I personally can't work up much enthusiasm for slow neutron reactors.