Realities: Nuclear Power
Welcome to this series of newsletters on the theme Net Zero by 2050: Technology for a Changing Climate.
In response to the climate crisis, many business and industry leaders have committed their organizations to a ‘Net Zero’ program. By this they mean that their organization will not be emitting greenhouse gases by a specified date — often the year 2050. The purpose of these letters and posts is to help these leaders by providing realistic and practical information to do with net zero technologies. The emphasis is on the word ‘realistic’.
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One of the themes of this series is that, when it comes to climate change, the world is awash in good ideas and proposed solutions. The question then becomes, “Which of these good ideas will actually work in the real world given the realities of time, resources and money?” It turns out that many of the supposedly good ideas are not, in fact, realistic. In particular, few of these ideas can be scaled up to have a world-wide impact within the next 28 years. In this post we use nuclear power to illustrate this quandary.
EXAMPLE — SCALE-UP OF NUCLEAR POWER
We frequently hear that we need to install more nuclear power plants in order to ameliorate the climate crisis. After all nuclear technology is proven, it provides a steady 24/7 baseload of power, and it has no greenhouse gas emissions. It is claimed, therefore, that we should be able to obtain sufficient clean energy simply by building more nuclear power plants. However, an evaluation of the nuclear power industry as it exists reveals serious difficulties with this proposal, as the following brief analysis shows.
The United States is a world leader in nuclear power. The number of operating reactors is about 101. (That number is declining as older facilities are retired.)
In the U.S. nuclear power currently provides for about 9% of the nation’s energy needs. Therefore, if nuclear were to provide say 50% of the nation’s needs about 400 new reactors would be needed.
Given that it takes at least 10 years to design, install and commission a nuclear facility this means that about 20 new reactors would have to be installed every year from 2030 to 2050. That translates to one facility every two weeks or so.
This is a massive commitment of resources that requires immediate and urgent attention if it is to have any chance of succeeding. A project on this scale would be formidable.
Needless to say, there are no signs that the United States, or any other nation for that matter, is even thinking about making such a commitment.
The above calculations assume that energy demand will not grow. If 2% growth is factored into the calculation then the number of new facilities required would have to be almost double the number just calculated.
If the United States were to commit to a more realistic goal of two new nuclear facilities per year starting in 2030, then 40 such facilities would be built and commissioned over the 20 year time period. This would be a useful addition to the supply of alternative energy, but it would be less than what we have now.
Note: this post is not about the merits or problems to do with nuclear power itself. That’s a topic for many other posts. The theme here is to do with the realities of radically changing our energy infrastructure in less than three decades. It’s not that it can’t be done — but there are no signs that we as a society are even thinking about making the extraordinary investment in time, resources, enthusiasm and money that would be required.