Contrary to industry propaganda, nuclear power plants are not an essential tool in the fight against climate change, but an increasingly dangerous drag on the deployment of more practical renewables and energy efficiency, Rocky Mountain Institute Chair and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins declares in a recent post for Forbes.
Though the recent World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2019 shows the global nuclear industry clearly âdying of an incurable attack of market forces,â writes Lovins, American support for the technology remains tenacious, with proponents across the political spectrum promoting nuclear as indispensable in the effort to lower carbon emissions.
And yet, âbuilding new reactors, or operating most existing ones, makes climate change worse compared with spending the same money on more climate-effective ways to deliver the same energy services,â Lovins says.
The critical mistake among climate-focused supporters of nuclear generation is to look solely at the matter of carbon, he explains. The problem with that approach is that, with so much ground to catch up in so little time, âwe must save the most carbon at the least cost and in the least time, counting all three variablesâcarbon and cost and time. Costly options save less carbon per dollar than cheaper options. Slow options save less carbon per year than faster options. Thus even a low- or no-carbon option that is too costly or too slow will reduce and retardachievable climate protection.â
Lovins makes clear that nuclear fails resoundingly on both cost and turnaround time: âBeing carbon-free does not establish climate-effectiveness,â he declares.
Well-intentioned nuclear proponents aside, Lovins writes scathingly of industry magnates who âmilkâ the system, taking âmulti-billion-dollar bailouts from malleable state legislatures for about a tenth of the nuclear fleet so far, postponing the economic reckoning by shooting the market messenger.â He warns that âsuch replacement of market choices with political logrolling distorts prices, crowds out competitors, slows innovation, reduces transparency, rewards undue influence, introduces bias, picks winners, invites corruption, and even threatens to destroy the competitive regional power markets where renewables and efficiency win.â
Lovins cautions against accepting the findings of a late May report by the International Energy Agency, which claimed that abandoning nuclear power would make climate action âdrastically harder and more costly,â as well as the still widely-held assumption that the climate emergency âdemands every option, including preserving nuclear power at any costâ. Invoking the âbedrock economic principle of âopportunity costâ,â he notes that âyou canât spend the same money on two different things at the same time. Each purchase foregoes others. Buying nuclear power displaces buying some mixture of fossil-fueled generation, renewable generation, and efficient use.â
At an estimated cost of US$118 to $192 per megawatt-hour in 2019, he adds, nuclear stands no competitive chance whatsoever against utility-scale solar power at $32 to 42/MWh, onshore wind power at $28 to 54/MWh, or energy efficiency at $0 to $50, but typically around $25/MWh. âEfficiency, being already delivered to your meter, also avoids roughly $42/MWh of average delivery cost that all remote generators incur,â he adds.
With new U.S. nuclear development off the table, Lovins adds, âtodayâs hot questionâ concerns the fate of âthe 96 existing reactors, already averaging about a decade beyond their nominal original design life.â Operating costs exceed $40/MWh for the costlier half of the grouping, and $50/MWh for the âcostliest quartileâ, while wind farm maintenance costs come in âas low as $11/MWhâ in 2018.
All the operating cost data swirling around the energy marketplace points to âan important climate opportunityâ, Lovins observes. âCustomer efficiency costs utilities only $20 to 30/MWh on averageâless if they shop carefully. Therefore, closing a top-quartile-cost nuclear plant and buying efficiency instead, as utilities could volunteer or regulators require, would save considerably more carbon than continuing to run the nuclear plant.â
Those calculations show that âwhile we close coal plants to save carbon directly, we should also close distressed nuclear plants and reinvest their large saved operating cost in cheaper options to save carbon indirectly. These two climate-protecting steps are not alternatives; they are complements.â
And that doesnât even address the glacially slow pace at which conventional nuclear plants are sited, approved, and built.
Even as the World Nuclear Association touts its product as âthe fast track to decarbonizationâ, real-life experience shows that ânuclear plants take many years to build, typically around a decade, while renewable projects can take a year or lessâeven months or weeks,â he writes. âFurther, national nuclear power programs need three times as much lead time for institutional preparations as modern renewables need. For both reasons, renewables can start saving carbon many years sooner.â
None of which has stopped the U.S. nuclear industry from pushing a new federal tax subsidy on nuclear fuel and maintenance costs, in a bid to âhelp level the playing field with other clean energy sourcesâ. The legislation would cost $22 to $26 billion in the first decade, or $33 billion âcounting the crowding-out of cheaper competitors,â Lovins notes. And âevery billion dollars thus bilked from taxpayers is unavailable to provide more electrical services and save more carbon by cheaper means.â
Meanwhile, âunlike renewable credits that have helped to mature important new technologies, the nuclear credit would elicit no new production, capacity, or innovation,â but rather âsimply transfer tens of billions of dollars to the owners of uncompetitive nuclear assets bought decades ago.â
This kind of âanti-market monkey business cannot indefinitely forestall the victory of cheaper competitors,â Lovins concludes. âBut it can delay and diminish climate protection, while transferring tens of billions of unearned dollars from taxpayers and customers to nuclear owners.â
Which means the climate emergency and market health both demands vigilant attention, ânot only to carbon but also to cost and time,â in tandem with a vigorous defence of âmarketsâ ability to choose climate solutions that can save the most carbon per dollar and per year.â Ultimately, Lovins says, âour best climate strategy would be to start taking economics seriously.â
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