Republicans push nuclear energy to lower costs

[ray245]

AP

Sat Apr 25, 6:11 am ET

WASHINGTON – The U.S. should build 100 more nuclear plants rather than spend "billions in subsidies" for renewable energy if it is truly committed to lowering electric bills and having clean air, the Republicans say.

In the party's weekly radio and Internet address, Sen. Lamar Alexander said the United States should follow the example of France, which promoted nuclear power decades ago. Today, nuclear plants provide 80 percent of France's electricity, and the country has one of the lowest electric rates and carbon emissions in Europe, he said.

In contrast, renewable electricity provides roughly 1.5 percent of the nation's electricity, according to Republicans. Double it or triple it, and "we still don't have much," the Tennessee Republican said.

"There is a potentially a dangerous energy gap between the renewable electricity we want and the reliable electricity we must have," he said.

In contrast to Democrats, Alexander said Republicans:

_Start with conservation and efficiency. "We have so much electricity at night, for example we could electrify half our cars and trucks and plug them in while we sleep without building one new power plant."

_Seek to keep bills down. "Democrats say, put a big new national sales tax on electric bills and gasoline."

_Wish to find more natural gas and oil offshore. "Farmers, homeowners and factories must have the natural gas. And more of the oil we'll still need should be ours, instead of sending billions overseas."

While it is no surprise that Obama is not against nuclear power himself, I find it interesting that the Republicans finally agree on one idea that is somewhat sensible.

[General Zod]

_Seek to keep bills down. "Democrats say, put a big new national sales tax on electric bills and gasoline."

Exactly how do they expect to pay for all these nuclear plants without some form of extra taxes?

[SirNitram]

_Seek to keep bills down. "Democrats say, put a big new national sales tax on electric bills and gasoline."

Exactly how do they expect to pay for all these nuclear plants without some form of extra taxes?

How Republicans pay for everything: Cut taxes and increase spending. Nothing could POSSIBLY go wrong.

[MKSheppard]

Standardize the plants, and exempt them from environmental reviews, and actually open Yucca mountain -- which Obama terminated -- yeah, good job following "science based policy" there barry -- you'd rather keep nuke waste in a billion cooling ponds within 20 miles of suburbia rather than in a geologically safe depository in the middle of nowhere. But no, we gotta kowtow to the greenie wing of the democrat party.

[MKSheppard]

Exactly how do they expect to pay for all these nuclear plants without some form of extra taxes?

That's easy. Terminate "renewable energy" subsidies and grants. MAKE THE FUTURE ATOMIC.

[General Zod]

Exactly how do they expect to pay for all these nuclear plants without some form of extra taxes?

That's easy. Terminate "renewable energy" subsidies and grants. MAKE THE FUTURE ATOMIC.

If renewable energy consists of only 1.5% of the nation's energy, exactly how is getting rid of subsidies and grants supposed to pay for all the plants that are being proposed in the OP? I seriously doubt you'd get that much money as a result.

[Shroom Man 777]

I am slightly surprised that a Republican politician is using France as a favorable example.

[fnord]

Seems tailor-made for the LFTR. This sort of Manhattan Project is almost ideal for a Gen-IV reactor design that has around 90% less labour costs and 75% less capital costs than a comparable LWR.

What's with the brain-lock against reprocessing so-called "spent" nuclear fuel, anyway?

[MKSheppard]

2007 Federal Renewable Energy Subsidies: $4.87 billion

Price of one AP-1000 reactor (1.1 Gigawatts) $2 billion.

Two AP-1000 reactors a year, possibly growing to three; as economies of scale kick in; the Chinese want 100 AP-1000s by the way.

[Jaepheth]

Seems tailor-made for the LFTR. This sort of Manhattan Project is almost ideal for a Gen-IV reactor design that has around 90% less labour costs and 75% less capital costs than a comparable LWR.

What's with the brain-lock against reprocessing so-called "spent" nuclear fuel, anyway?

If I remember correctly, reprocessing spent fuel makes it exceedingly easy to hide the production of weapons grade plutonium and thus has been frowned upon by the non-proliferation crowd.

[Patrick Degan]

Standardize the plants, and exempt them from environmental reviews, and actually open Yucca mountain -- which Obama terminated -- yeah, good job following "science based policy" there barry -- you'd rather keep nuke waste in a billion cooling ponds within 20 miles of suburbia rather than in a geologically safe depository in the middle of nowhere. But no, we gotta kowtow to the greenie wing of the democrat party.

Standardising reactor design would go a long way to simplifying the environmental review process (no way politically to eliminate that), as that factor would already be accounted for. And if on-site fuel reprocessing is incorporated, you solve the problem of waste storage and transport. No need to truck the stuff to Yucca when you can simply turn it into burnable fuel again, and what waste is left over from the reprocessing can be maintained until it's final disposal can be arranged.

If I remember correctly, reprocessing spent fuel makes it exceedingly easy to hide the production of weapons grade plutonium and thus has been frowned upon by the non-proliferation crowd.

Argonne Labs has the solution to that problem: pyroprocessing.

[fnord]

Someone better tell that to Urenco and AREVA, who have been merrily processing "spent" fuel from multiple countries (AU included) for a decade or three now.

Ex-LWR Pu is of crappy isotopic quality for device use, especially after multiple recycles. A CANDU design would be very amenable to covert DG-Pu production, but I'm having problems figuring out how to do that with an LWR in commercial operation.

The LFTR concept incorporates pryoprocessing, to whatever amount desired, and lends itself readily to mass production.

[Sea Skimmer]

Any Pu-239 produced by reprocessing could just be blended back into MOX reactor fuel and eliminated (well so contaminated purifying it would be like making new Pu-239). We already do this with surplus weapons grade plutonium bought off of Russia under a 1990s deal, though currently only three reactors have been modified to use that fuel.

Unsurprisingly the anti nuclear idiot brigade has been raising a stink about the program, since it torpedoes so much bullshit they spew. Some of the ‘better’ criticisms include claims that MOX fuel will make reactors able to explode like atomic bombs, and that selling plutonium is immoral because it’s a weapon.

[sketerpot]

Exactly how do they expect to pay for all these nuclear plants without some form of extra taxes?

Through your electric bill. Don't have the government build the plants, just get the government the fuck out of the way (standardize on a pre-approved design, like Shep said) and let the market do its thing from there.

Nuclear plants are great cash cows once you get them built, but building them is more risky. Because of the enormous capital cost of building today's giant nuclear plants, as well as the risk that some well-intentioned dumbass will get the government to stop construction, some amount of government assistance would help. Right now the big thing is loan guarantees: essentially, the US government co-signs on the nuclear industry's loans when they borrow money to build a plant. If the plants pan out, of course, the government doesn't pay a cent, and we all benefit.

Another problem here is that nuclear plants compete with coal plants, and often the same companies own both. When people say that they like free markets, what they usually mean is that they like competitive markets. Unless the capital cost of building a profitable nuclear plant goes down, the free market is not going to be very competitive here.

What I'd love to see happen is for someone to start cranking out smaller, cheaper reactors with a standard design. For this to work, the NRC would have to stop their asinine policy of charging the same licensing fees for all reactors regardless of size or complexity, and start regulating the factories where the plants are produced. There are so many good Gen-IV reactor technologies that could do this with flying colors.

[Sea Skimmer]

One of the big problems is deregulation. Deregulation means a power company servicing an area can buy cheaper power (say hydro) from distant areas and ship it in when it needs it. What’s more even individual customers are now sometimes given the choice of whose power they buy through various complicated schemes.

They used not to be allowed to do that, a utility had to have sufficient power to meet demand within its own resources, or through firm long term contracts with other utilities. The customer got his power from local resources and that was it. This all means power companies are highly reluctant to invest in new power plants of any kind, let alone one with all the costs up front. They just have no firm means of ensuring they can recoup the investment, no matter what the economical advantages of a nuke might be. If someone else can just hop in at random and sell cheaper power in bursts the local power company just gets kind of screwed

If market regulation was tightened back up (and taxes added on Co2 emissions, the power industry seems like the best place to start with those), then utilities would have no choice but to invest in new plants, and they’d be much more open to building nukes since they’d have a clear profit potential that could be justified in long term planning. Fossil fuel plants are way easier… most of the cost is the fuel so you just don’t buy fuel if you don’t need the power.

[SirNitram]

Skimmer hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately, barring a radical sea-change, not even a sudden stop in the 'Filibuster everything' attitude in the Senate, it'll take alot of effort to restore the regulation.

[phongn]

Skimmer hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately, barring a radical sea-change, not even a sudden stop in the 'Filibuster everything' attitude in the Senate, it'll take alot of effort to restore the regulation.

If you want major renewable power generation you'll have to go with a distributed grid that works on this sort of deregulated model.

[Master of Ossus]

Skimmer hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately, barring a radical sea-change, not even a sudden stop in the 'Filibuster everything' attitude in the Senate, it'll take alot of effort to restore the regulation.

Sorry, but what's wrong with the regulations that Sea Skimmer mentioned? If you can get power into your area from far away for less than it would cost you to generate it locally, why wouldn't you want to do that? I'm a huge proponent of nuclear power, but in areas where it competes with established hydro it's pointless. I'm not in favor of building nuclear plants just for the hell of it--I'm in favor of building nuclear plants to replace or substitute for other forms of power against which they are comparatively more efficient.

Nuclear is not a competitor to hydro power--they're complements. Nuclear is a competitor with coal, and with CCGT's. With current environmental regulations, it's about $.02/kilowatt hour more expensive than those competitors (and about $.08-$.16/kilowatt hour LESS expensive than renewables). That's why new nuclear plants aren't being built: they're costlier than coal and CCGT. It's also why we should be going to them instead of renewables: they're massively less expensive.

[SirNitram]

Skimmer hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately, barring a radical sea-change, not even a sudden stop in the 'Filibuster everything' attitude in the Senate, it'll take alot of effort to restore the regulation.

Sorry, but what's wrong with the regulations that Sea Skimmer mentioned?

Nothing. At all. I think the regulations should be restored.

I said it'd be damn hard to get them back. This is just from observation of the fight brewing to restore regulations onto student loans and credit cards. The mindset of deregulation has sunk in deep, and it will not be quick or fast to put it back into place in the Congress.

Naturally, this means I support throwing all the current bums out and finding new, regulation-supporting bums.

[Master of Ossus]

Nothing. At all. I think the regulations should be restored.

I said it'd be damn hard to get them back. This is just from observation of the fight brewing to restore regulations onto student loans and credit cards. The mindset of deregulation has sunk in deep, and it will not be quick or fast to put it back into place in the Congress.

Naturally, this means I support throwing all the current bums out and finding new, regulation-supporting bums.

Perhaps you misunderstand: WHY should we restore those regulations? If all they do is require people to local power generation, that's stupid if it's more efficient to generate it elsewhere and transport it to where it can be consumed.

[SirNitram]

Ah, I see. Yea, I misunderstood.

I see no real lasting objection to long-range power transmission(Though given the cascade of outage that hit the Northeast a while back, we shouldn't really look to it until the grid is checked to be in much better shape), but the biggest incentive for nuclear will be a steady flow; negated pretty easily if your competitors can just dance around you offering cheap power from afar.

We shouldn't build nuke plants where hydro does the job; but planned improvements to the grid will make long-distance transmission real and that means excess hydro can be dumped on competitors to continue the chase of low cost now, not low cost after it's built.

[Master of Ossus]

I see no real lasting objection to long-range power transmission(Though given the cascade of outage that hit the Northeast a while back, we shouldn't really look to it until the grid is checked to be in much better shape), but the biggest incentive for nuclear will be a steady flow; negated pretty easily if your competitors can just dance around you offering cheap power from afar.

You completely misunderstand the nature of the power network. Nuclear power stations are only efficient if they're always on, and hence supply baseline power--power that's always needed. Hydro is used as a peaking station in virtually all markets, except during the spring time when it effectively doesn't even have an opportunity cost (the water would otherwise just be dumped) and so they're used as baseline while the normal coal and nuclear plants are taken offline and maintained. Hydro and nuclear are not competitors; they're complements. Nuclear competes with coal and some CCGT's. Nuclear and hydro interact quite nicely in every geographic area that I am aware of.

[Edit: Moreover, even if this weren't true, why would we want to prevent competitors from offering cheap power from afar? Wouldn't that be a better use of resources?]

We shouldn't build nuke plants where hydro does the job; but planned improvements to the grid will make long-distance transmission real and that means excess hydro can be dumped on competitors to continue the chase of low cost now, not low cost after it's built.

Nonsense; hydro availability is and always will be insufficient to constitute any significant fraction of the baseline US demand. It's great during peak demand periods, but because of limited availability no one would ever replace base plants with hydro.

Moreover, provide evidence that electric utilities are so concerned with capital costs as opposed to lifetime costs: they happily build, upgrade, and maintain coal and CCGT's which don't even pay for their initial capital outlay for more than a decade. Moreover, in many states (including CA--at least for the three regulated utilities), they were guaranteed returns on their power plants until very recently and yet did not construct nuclear plants. Nuclear was out-competed by coal because of its lifetime cost disadvantage; not because it was hard to finance. Today, it's outcompeted because the main sources of those cost disadvantages: high regulatory costs, political difficulties, and the negative externalities of coal but especially natural gas plants (and their associated pollution) aren't internalized by utility companies. Financiers are wary of building nuclear plants, but that has more to do with their historic cost disadvantage. If it were reasonably expected that nuclear plants would be less expensive than coal, they would happily switch over.

[Edit: Furthermore, provide evidence that hydro is currently outcompeting nuclear. The US hasn't had any major dams projects in decades because all of the big, dammable rivers are already being used for hydro--there's just nothing left to tap, at this point.]