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Nuclear Power Is On Its Deathbed
A new report from a University of Vermont researcher says the cost of the safety measures needed for nuclear energy will eventually make the power source economically unviable
After the Fukushima power plant disaster in Japan last year, the rising costs of nuclear energy could deliver a knockout punch to its future use in the United States, according to a researcher at the Vermont Law School Institute for Energy and the Environment.
“From my point of view, the fundamental nature of [nuclear] technology suggests that the future will be as clouded as the past,” says Mark Cooper, the author of the report. New safety regulations enacted or being considered by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission would push the cost of nuclear energy too high to be economically competitive.
The disaster insurance for nuclear power plants in the United States is currently underwritten by the federal government, Cooper says. Without that safeguard, “nuclear power is neither affordable nor worth the risk. If the owners and operators of nuclear reactors had to face the full liability of a Fukushima-style nuclear accident or go head-to-head with alternatives in a truly competitive marketplace, unfettered by subsidies, no one would have built a nuclear reactor in the past, no one would build one today, and anyone who owns a reactor would exit the nuclear business as quickly as possible.”
That government backing of nuclear energy is starting to change after the Fukushima meltdown. Even the staunchest nuclear advocates say that with new technologies, nuclear power can always be made safer, but nothing can offer a guarantee against a plant meltdown.
“In the wake of a severe nuclear accident like Fukushima, the attention of policymakers, regulators, and the public is riveted on the issue of nuclear safety,” the report says. “The scrutiny is so intense that it seems like the only thing that matters about nuclear reactors is their safety.”
Although several reports by nonpartisan groups have reinforced the perception that America’s nuclear reactors aren’t in danger of a meltdown, the public is wary. Earlier this month, an analysis of Fukushima by the American Nuclear Society blamed Japan’s regulatory oversight and reaction to the meltdown for magnitude of the disaster. According to Michael Corradini, a co-author of that report, “things are acceptable going forward in the States.”
“I don’t think anything coming out of Fukushima would imply we aren’t prepared,” Corradini says.
Steven Kerekes, a spokesperson for the Nuclear Energy Institute, says that new safety measures are being placed in a new reactor set to go online in Georgia in 2017.
“There’s some safety enhancements they’re undertaking, despite the fact they’re already safe,” Kerkes says. “These enhancements will increase the margin of safety by another order of magnitude.”
[Experts on Fukushima: It Can’t Happen Here]
But according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, 80 percent of America’s nuclear reactors are vulnerable to at least one of the factors involved in the Fukushima disaster, including vulnerability to earthquakes, fire hazard and elevated spent fuel.
Retrofitting existing reactors with the latest safety equipment is extremely expensive, Cooper says.
“Regardless of what Congress does, the NRC has put on the table very serious and important changes in how we look at safety after Fukushima,” Cooper says. “There was one permit [for a new reactor] issued recently, and there’s a second one expected in the near future. Frankly, that’s about it. I don’t see any other reactors moving forward. The economics are so unfriendly that I don’t think the rest of the [proposals] are very active.”
That could be problematic for consumers, considering that the Environmental Protection Agency wants to limit carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. People in the nuclear power industry point to the fact that coal pollution kills many more people than nuclear disasters, with some putting the ratio as high as 4,000 to 1.
Cooper says the very different natures of nuclear disaster versus coal pollution rightly makes people worried.
“Sometimes the industry says ‘If people understood it better, they wouldn’t be as concerned,'” he says. “It’s a different kind of disaster, and the industry has to start accepting it is different. There’s a very wide impact in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster—you’ve got large dead zones, large exclusion zones. These problems you create, they strike a chord in human beings that is very deep-seeded and real. It’s the nature of the technology.”
9 Comments on "Nuclear Power Is On Its Deathbed"
DC on Sun, 1st Apr 2012 4:52 pm
Even with all the massive hidden subsides the amerikans have lavished on the for-profit nuclear industry for decades, they STILL skimped on safety at every turn. If you read between the lines, the allready over-price nukes would have been even MORE expensive had the operators not cut corners everywhere they could in the first place.
There’s some safety enhancements they’re undertaking, despite the fact they’re already safe,” Kerkes says. “These enhancements will increase the margin of safety by another order of magnitude.”
Well guy, if nukes were allready safe, then there wouldnt be any need to add any ‘enhancements’ now would there? Unless of course the enhancement in question is the statement you just released and nothing more…
The greatest single factor that makes nukes so dangerous, is that every single pound of radioactive waste ever produced, is being store on site. In many cases, above ground and or in leaky or poorly engineered containers built by corrupt and incompotent contractors of the Mil-indus complex. The only thing stoping 120+ Fukishima is a 30day supply of diesel in the cooling ponds in every single plant in N.A. That is what makes them so dangerous. 100,000 years of poison held at bay in leaky containers and a months worth of diesel fuel.
Kenz300 on Sun, 1st Apr 2012 5:09 pm
Quote — ” The disaster insurance for nuclear power plants in the United States is currently underwritten by the federal government, Cooper says. Without that safeguard, “nuclear power is neither affordable nor worth the risk. If the owners and operators of nuclear reactors had to face the full liability of a Fukushima-style nuclear accident or go head-to-head with alternatives in a truly competitive marketplace, unfettered by subsidies, no one would have built a nuclear reactor in the past, no one would build one today, and anyone who owns a reactor would exit the nuclear business as quickly as possible.”
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Nuclear energy is too dangerous and too costly.
It is time to transition to safe, clean alternative energy.
Bob Owens on Sun, 1st Apr 2012 6:58 pm
The onsite nuclear waste needs to be moved to Yucca Mountain and stored there or we will have a super disaster. The American public needs to accept this solution and move forward. We could then continue using the current reactors until their lifespan is over. Some reactors on earthquake faults should be run at say 80% power to increase the speed and reliability of a shutdown there. In short it is the end of the road for nuclear and we need a safe way to dis-engage from it.
Kenz300 on Sun, 1st Apr 2012 11:07 pm
The cost of dismantling all the reactors, storing all the waste (FOREVER)and cleaning up the sites will be astronomical.
pete on Mon, 2nd Apr 2012 12:10 am
just before fukushima happened israel unleashed the stuxnet virus on Iran and the world.
Stuxnet affects seimans plc controllers by having them keep right on doing the everyday ordinary things, but not responding to out of ordinary. So it would be hard to know if you had the virus untill the SHTF, then it’s too late.
Fukushima was full of siemans controllers and Germany quite, quickly shut down all of their nuke plants within days of fuku, odd.
dc is right about cutting corners, I read an article that stated that all of those GE ? nuke plants were based on the design for subs. they just retrofitted them for land saving $$$$.
Please don’t search: stuxnet fukushima
BillT on Mon, 2nd Apr 2012 2:33 am
There are maybe a thousand or more sites in the world that are nuclear plants, nuclear refining, nuclear research, etc. ALL are time bombs waiting to go off. Power down the Us with a Hemp blast over Kansas and all of them lose power and when the emergency generators run out of fuel, assuming that they were hardened against EMP, the meltdowns begin. This is only one of many ways that most of the Us could be radiated and unlivable for thousands of years. Look at where these places are and then look at the radiation spread from Fukushima.
Marv on Mon, 2nd Apr 2012 3:26 am
/yawn… disasters of nature are going to happen, we have no idea how destructive they can be.. but we do know that anything can happen, who knows maybe a giant fault will split north america in half…
Woof on Mon, 2nd Apr 2012 9:52 am
Then the Chinese will have & we will have not.
Don Richardson on Mon, 2nd Apr 2012 7:53 pm
Past “deathbed,’ now on a cold steel table being zapped with paddles. Some muscular contractions from the shock, but still a corpse. The PR machine from the desperate nuclear priesthood is the only thing producing much heat. Even an Apollo program to reignite the industry would not be able to complete nukes in 15-20 years fast enough to keep up with the decommissioning, after which the REAL COSTS of split atoms will kick in. And nukes DELAY rather than help addressing global warming. We are morbidly obsessed with this rotting corpse.