NRC sees "nuclear renaissance" in coming years (27+ new reactors)

[Dogmudgeon]

An article based on an interview with Luis Reyes, the executive director of the NRC.

NRC sees "nuclear renaissance" in coming years (Reuters at Yahoo!)

Energy companies plan to file permit requests in the next two years to build 27 new nuclear reactors in the United States, according to a U.S. regulator who said Tuesday his agency expects a "nuclear renaissance."

...

He attributed the renewed interest in nuclear power partly to rising prices for oil and natural gas and concerns about importing those fuels from nations not always friendly to the United States.

There also have been significant improvements in safety and reliability in the newest generation of nuclear reactors used overseas, said Reyes, who was headed to Finland to examine one. The new designs have fewer parts and are simpler to operate, he said.

...

The United States has 104 nuclear reactors that provide about 20 percent of the nation's electricity. If power demand keeps growing at the current rate, the United States will need 50 more reactors to maintain that percentage by 2050, Reyes said.

It is good to see that somebody is finally getting to work and building low-emissions AND low-externality energy generators of some kind.

--p!

[madrchsod]

1. my uncle worked for com ed in northern il during the 60`s and 70`s

and he was told by the engineers that they made a big mistake in building large plants. they figured out it was more cost effective to build more smaller plants across the area.

[NNadir]

2. If that is the number of reactors we build, we will fall short of what we need.

Actually it will fall far short.

The immediately available thing that nuclear power can accomplish is the replacement of coal. Coal accounted for about 25 exajoules of the primary energy used in the United States, roughly a quarter, in 2004. This coal produces about 9 exajoules of electricity.

A modern 1500 MWe EPR type reactor runs at about 38% thermal efficiency IIRC. Thus to ban coal at 90% capacity utilization with nuclear power, we would need about 175 reactors.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablee4.xls

One hundred at seventy-five reactors would reduce US carbon dioxide emissions by about 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide or by 40%.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/excel/tbl_statefuel.xls

The United States built more than 100 reactors in about 20 years.

[papau]

3. I agree - I thought 100 new reactors in 15 years would be reasonable with 200 in 25 yrs

Of course the switch to plug in electric cars/trucks for most transportation would also be needed.

Indeed nuke reactor building would not stop until we had algae bio-mass power plants as an alternative.

Of course the small fusion reactor experiments make grow into a real power source - making the power source mix more interesting in 2040! :-)

[NNadir]

4. The electrification of transportation is, I think, a good idea, but it is not the only one idea.

An easier transition to a post fossil fuel world might involve the electrochemical or physical reduction of carbon dioxide. In this case it may be possible to capture dangerous fossil fuel waste from coal plants and use it to phase out oil before we phase out coal. Since the ash component of dangerous fossil fuel waste contains considerable uranium, this would offer an option to recover that uranium for use as nuclear fuel. I am preparing a rather detailed overview of this option that I will be publishing at another website, probably this weekend.

Mixed strategies could be employed.

However much baseload electrical power is demanded in the future should all be provided by nuclear reactors. If electrical demand subsumes a greater and greater portion of total energy output, we may wish to have hundreds more reactors than I indicated. Using nuclear energy we could cut our greenhouse gas output by better than half - maybe by as much as three quarters - in twenty years time if we were extremely serious and dedicated to achieving this.

[papau]

5. I look forward to your article :-)

:-)

[Systematic Chaos]

8. Me as well.

Very impressed with what I have seen so far.

[jpak]

6. Only a handful of those proposed reactors will be built (if any)

There are only 6 GW of goodies in the 2005 GOP Energy Bill for new nuclear plants.

Without those subsidies (or a signifcant tax on carbon emissions), most of those plants will not be built.

Furthermore, some of these utilities are already having cold feet...(thanks Bananas for posting this)...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=98409

Progress Energy is delaying the construction on a potential new reactor at the Shearon Harris power plant by at least two years, the company said Wednesday.

If the Raleigh utility decides to build an extra reactor at the Harris site in Wake County - a choice that hasn't yet been made - the reactor will not come online until at least 2018. That's two years later than originally planned.

Instead, the company said it hopes to displace 2,000 megawatts of power generation - equivalent to the capacity of several plants - by boosting efficiency and reducing energy use. It said it would do so by "greening" existing and new facilities, asking commercial and industrial customers to reduce energy use, and offering a series of programs through which residential customers can cut use.

Progress also will not propose any new coal plants in the next two years, it said.

<snip>

The company's announcement comes on the heels of a similar declaration by Duke Energy, the Charlotte-based utility that provides service to much of the western Triangle. Duke announced earlier this month an efficiency plan that it hopes will offset about 1,700 megawatts of power.

<end>

[NickB79]

7. I guess I'll copy my response from the post you linked to, since my questions were never answered

"I think it's great that they're saving energy through conservation, but this is the usual "picking the low-hanging fruit" scenario. You get the easy energy savings first, but from there on out it becomes much more challenging to conserve anyways near the amount conserved in the first round of utilities greening, as you now have to start reaching for the higher-hanging "fruits". It only gets harder from here on out.

While this plan will reduce the per-person amount of fossil-fueled electricity consumed by the area residents, it doesn't reduce the TOTAL amount of fossil fuels burned. The energy conservation plan is to provide power to the 25,000-30,000 NEW residents expected to live in the area over the next decade. No coal or natural gas fueled power plants will be closed by this plan, and in case you still haven't understood the seriousness of the situation we're in, we need to CUT greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% in the next few decades to prevent catastrophic disaster. Simply maintaining the current status quo of 75% of our electricity generated by coal or natural gas will KILL us.

Why not enact the conservation measures to save several thousand MW's of power, AND build nuclear reactors to replace coal-fired plants?"

As I stated before, relying only on conservation of conventional power-generating sources in the face of a growing population simply maintains the status quo for using coal and natural gas.

"Without those subsidies (or a signifcant tax on carbon emissions), most of those plants will not be built."

It's only a matter of time before carbon emissions are taxed, and once a Democrat is elected president in 2008 it will come about even faster. So that would imply that yes, many of these reactors WILL be built even after the GOP is out of power.

[bananas]

9. Al Gore explained it pretty well when he appeared before Congress.

Al Gore explained it pretty well when he appeared before Congress.
These time-marks are approximate:
2:04:00-2:07:00 With Hastert (R-TX), he discusses why the TXU coal plants were cancelled and how that applies to nuclear.
2:07:00-2:12:00 With Butterfield (D-NC), he discusses some other issues.
2:12:00-2:24:00 With Ingles (R-SC), he goes into more depth about nuclear.
http://boss.streamos.com/real/science/scitech07/032107.smi

[philb]

10. Biggest risk from nuclear is nuclear proliferation, terrorism, dirty bombs,disposal,etc.

Its unlikely that the nuclear cycle can be protected from terrorist who could easily get access to nuclear material to use in dirty bombs, etc. Also the more nuclear here, the more elsewhere and the more proliferation and nuclear bombs in the wrong hands (which might be any hands).
Also its not clear that nuclear material can be stored safely or cost effectively for 50,000 years.
Or that it could be transported safely to a storage facility if one existed. The materials have have levels of radiation,
so how could it be transported safely? And its easy to cause an accident to rail or trucks carrying such. Is it obvious no one would