The debate over nuclear power doesn’t usually appear on the front pages, but when it does, it tends to be swamped by mythology and fact-free politics.
One of the many things Americans take for granted is the cheap and plentiful supply of electricity. How long our electricity supply remains so will probably depend on the future of nuclear power generation in America. But what Americans may not realize is that nuclear power itself is as sustainable and inexpensive as any power source.
So why isn’t America investing in nuclear energy?
Our country uses about 25 percent of the electricity used in the world. Today, 99 nuclear power plants operating in 30 U.S. states generate just under 20 percent of America’s total electricity supply.
And yet, as many as 25 of the 99 reactors may be shut down in the next five years. Moreover, the federal Energy Information Administration predicts that about 20 percent of our coal-fired electricity plants may also be closed down by 2020. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., says the coal closings could be replaced by 48 new 1,259 megawatt nuclear reactors. However, it’s very unlikely that those reactors will be built.
Advocates of nuclear power point out that as America’s population and economy grow, so must the electricity supply. They say that such growth must result in a renaissance in nuclear power because it’s safe, efficient and lacks carbon emissions. They say, correctly, that nuclear power is cheaper than renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. And they point to innovations such as those from the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works scientists and engineers who have produced a prototype of a small fusion reactor that they claim could power a city of 50,000 to 100,000 people and would fit on the back of a large tractor-trailer truck.
The opponents say there shouldn’t be an expansion of nuclear power because it’s not safe. They point to the 1979 Three Mile Island incident, to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and to the 2011 Fukushima incident in Japan to prove their case.
Opponents support sustainable power generation — by which they mean only solar and wind power — because those generation methods don’t burn fossil fuels or emit carbon dioxide (Under that definition, nuclear power is equally “sustainable”). Opponents of nuclear power also claim that the costs of wind and solar power are being reduced sufficiently to make them economically viable.
Before Japan’s Fukushima incident, many developed nations were betting heavily on nuclear power. In the Fukushima events, an earthquake and tidal wave resulted in a substantial release of radioactive gas when three reactor cores melted down because their supply of cooling water was interrupted. Although there were no deaths from radiation sickness, about 100,000 people were displaced for varying periods of time. In Fukushima’s aftermath, Japan began to shut down all of its nuclear power plants. The cost of electricity to Japanese consumers rose almost 60 percent. Now, Japan is reportedly trying to bring many of its nuclear power plants back online.
After Fukushima, German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to close all of her nation’s nuclear plants by 2022 and shift to sustainable or green power sources such as solar and wind.
But, simply put, the numbers don’t work for Germany or any other advocates of sustainable electric power sources. According to the World Nuclear Association, the cost of generating electricity in 2012 was about 23 cents per kilowatt hour for oil, 4 cents per kWh for coal and gas, about 3.5 cents per kWh for nuclear and about 0.85 per kWh for hydroelectric power. The federal EIA estimate the cost of wind power at over 8 cents per kWh (depending on how hard the wind blows). And, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the price of solar power is between 12 and 30 cents per kWh.
What about safety? Fears over public health and safety have caused politicians in many nations to block development of nuclear power, despite the fact that it is extraordinarily safe. The Soviet Union’s Chernobyl disaster caused at least 50 deaths from radiation poisoning and perhaps thousands more from long-term effects — contrast that with the only major nuclear accident in the United States, the 1979 partial meltdown of the Pennsylvania Three Mile Island nuclear plant. in which a quantity of radioactive gas was released.
An important distinction is that no people were injured by the Three Mile Island event. The Soviet reactors that melted down at Chernobyl were vastly less safe than those built in the West because the standards to which they were built were much lower than U.S. nuclear plants, including Three Mile Island. And in the nearly 30 years since Three Mile Island, U.S. nuclear safety standards have become even more stringent.
When you consider the example set by the U.S. Navy, America’s nuclear power safety record shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Since the first nuclear-powered ship, the submarine USS Nautilus, was launched in 1954, the Navy hasn’t had any significant accidents caused by its shipboard nuclear reactors. That record is the result of what retired Navy Rear Adm. Rich O’Hanlon says are the three pillars of Navy nuclear propulsion. O’Hanlon is the former skipper of the nuclear-powered USS Theodore Roosevelt and former commander of Naval Forces Atlantic.
The first pillar is engineering design. In simplest terms, O’Hanlon told the Washington Examiner, electronic and mechanical safeguards are designed into the reactor so that even if its human operators fail to follow established procedures, it will shut down before it can melt down. The second pillar is procedural compliance. The Navy demands and enforces — to the level of specifying the method in which every order is given — procedural compliance at every step of reactor operation. The third pillar is training.
O’Hanlon, like every other nuclear-qualified officer, had to take a 15-month course to qualify to operate a reactor or to command a nuclear-powered ship. That training is followed by continuous retraining and inspection.
The Navy’s practices boil down to the biggest difference between the Navy and the private sector’s nuclear power plants: The Navy is virtually self-regulating. In contrast, the civilian nuclear industry is regulated as a utility by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, state agencies and the most potent regulatory force: politics.
There should be a burgeoning effort to build new nuclear power plants — to which even the global warmists such as President Obama can’t object — because these plants don’t emit carbon dioxide. They’re entirely sustainable because they only have to be refueled about every five years or so.
So why isn’t there any foreseeable nuclear renaissance on the horizon? As Jack Spencer, vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity told the Examiner, the reason for a lack of enthusiasm for nuclear power is antiquated government laws and regulations that add up to a failed national nuclear power policy.
In fact, Spencer said that we really don’t even know how much nuclear power costs because of the overregulated and government-limited market policies.
Spencer pointed to the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which presumed that if a few new nuclear plants were subsidized, support within the private sector would take off and many more would be built. But, as Spencer said, the Act only served to spur the building of the five reactors that it subsidized. (They are two in Georgia, two in South Carolina and one in Tennessee.)
Are we, then, in an endless loop of government regulation, consuming both time and money, that will continue to prevent new nuclear power plants from being built? Spencer thinks the loop can be broken if the government’s legal and regulatory heavy hand is lifted, thereby removing the obstacles that block free market forces.
The problem boils down to this: If there was a strong political movement that demanded more nuclear power, the government’s stifling of market forces could be overcome. But there isn’t one. Until there is, the government’s heavy hand will continue to limit what the nuclear power industry can do. And the cost of electricity to industry and consumers will continue to rise.
Jed Babbin, former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration, is a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research.
