Nuclear power should remain an important part of our energy mix. Despite a worst-case scenario, the older generation Fukushima reactor has held up remarkably well. And yet, serious obstacles remain, not the least of which is the public’s irrational fear of nuclear disaster.
Such were some of the conclusions from a PPI Policy Briefing on the future of nuclear power, held today in the Rayburn House Office Building. The panel featured: Dr. James Conca, Director of the Waste Sampling and Characterization Facility (WSCF), U.S. Department of Energy’s Hanford Site; Margaret Harding, President, 4 Factor Consulting; and Micheal A. Levi, Director of Energy Security and Climate Change Program, Council on Foreign Relations.
PPI’s Scott Thomasson moderated, and Mitchell Baer, of the Office of Policy and International Affairs, U.S. Department of Energy, introduced the panelists.
Conca kicked off the discussion making the case for a 2040 energy mix that is the one-third fossil fuels, one-third renewables, and one-third nuclear, as laid out in his recent PPI Memo, “Getting Real About Energy: A Balanced Portfolio for America’s Future.”
“This mix decreases carbon dioxide emissions by half, costs 20 percent less than the baseline, and it’s achievable, though it takes strong political will,” Conca said.
As the discussion moved to the future of nuclear, the first issue was the legitimacy of the old fears raised again by the Fukushima collapse.
“One of the things about radiation is that it’s very scary,” explained Conca. “That was the whole point of the Cold War – to scare everybody about nuclear weapons. But we forget to distinguish between weapons and energy. Weapons are bad. Energy is good.”
But, Conca noted, just because we can detect radiation in the air it doesn’t mean that it is harmful.
Harding noted that there has not yet been a single radiation death from the Fukushima plant, and all 128 people with reported contamination are now fine.
But while safety is obviously an important issue, Levi added that the real barrier to nuclear gaining ground in the U.S. is not safety, but cost. In short, nuclear requires an increasingly insurmountable upfront investment that takes decades to recoup.
“The price of building a plant has steadily risen,” Levi said. “The bottom line is that without a significant incentive on carbon emissions, and with natural gas prices where they currently are, you will not expect to see a large number of nuclear power plants built.” (Levi’s guess was five by 2035).
“It’s not clear that Three Mile Island killed nuclear,” he added. “Costs were already going up when it occurred.”
But, on a more optimistic note, Conca said that “The longer you run the plants, the more cost-effective they’ll become. You’re going against the short-term investment of certain groups. We need to decide where we want to be in 2040.”
“Humans are very good at engineering things,” he added. “But we don’t do the social and political stuff as well.”
The panelists also discussed improvements in technology that have made nuclear plants much safer and more effective. New Generation 3 reactors probably could withstand a similar stress with even less damage.
“The next generation of reactors have significant passive safety systems, and the reactor could not have any other support for three days and be okay,” said Harding. “The whole event would have played out differently if one of these had been installed.”
But Levi cautioned that innovations in safety could actually slow the regulatory approval process because it will take a long time for regulators to become familiar with the new technologies.
“With new technologies we have to redo our regulatory assessment and the first few times we don’t know what will happen,” he said. “It introduces regulatory uncertainty and increases financing costs. We need managed innovation.”
Harding reminded the audience that, “In the 1970s, each plant was unique, and that adds to complexity in the regulatory space. The goal should be to make the next generation plants more like cars.”
Despite notes of caution, the panelists overall were optimistic about the future of nuclear power. Conca re-emphasized the need to get started now, because things take a while to get moving.
“If we start now with something ambitious, we will make a significant change,” he said. “But if you wait, you move that 30-year window out and out. You have to come up with a plan that gets you where you want to go.”