Thursday, August 04, 2022

Experts at odds over nuclear power's role in fighting climate change

Melissa Rossi
·Contributor
Tue, August 2, 2022 at

One key provision in the Senate's draft Inflation Reduction Act — the first-of-its-kind climate bill in the U.S. that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change — is an improved tax credit for American nuclear power plants and funding for next-generation nuclear fuels.

The role nuclear power can or should play in helping the world reduce these emissions is hotly debated, however. Many climate hawks see nuclear, which generates about 19% of electricity in the U.S., as a necessary bridge to helping the global economy transition to renewable sources of energy. John Kerry, President Biden’s special envoy for climate, has indicated that the construction of new nuclear plants needs to be a global priority.

"Secretary Kerry has repeatedly spoken about the role that existing and new nuclear can play in tackling the climate crisis," a State Department official told Yahoo News. "The United States stands ready to provide support and partnership to those countries around the world that have prioritized nuclear in their clean energy and climate plans to address the global climate crisis and bolster energy security."

Microsoft founder Bill Gates also supports expanding nuclear power.

"It’s hard to imagine a future where we can decarbonize our power grid affordably without using more nuclear power," Gates, who has started a company to build small modular nuclear reactors, told the Nuclear Energy Assembly last summer.


The cooling towers of a nuclear power plant in Winfield, W.Va. (Getty Images)

In much of Europe, however, nuclear power is seen as "an old way of thinking about energy systems," Raphael Hanoteaux, a senior policy adviser at the climate change think tank E3G, told Yahoo News. Embarking on more nuclear plants requires huge startup costs and a conservative time frame of a decade or more between ground breaking and electricity delivery, he added.

"It doesn't make sense to invest in new nuclear power plants," he said. "They cost a lot of money compared to the current price of renewables, energy efficiency investments or batteries."

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm told Yahoo News at last year’s United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, that the Biden administration was "very bullish" on helping build the next generation of nuclear reactors. The U.S. Department of Energy also recently made $6 billion in funding available to struggling nuclear companies.

While acknowledging that every country must make its own energy decisions, multinational electric utility Iberdrola, the second biggest in Spain, has entirely ditched nuclear and is directing €150 billion ($153 billion) over the next eight years to wind and solar, smart networks, storage solutions and green hydrogen.

"In our view, renewable energy is the main answer to decarbonizing the economy," Xabier Viteri, Iberdrola’s director of renewable energy, told Yahoo News. Strictly speaking, only solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower are considered renewable, as they do not require additional fuel sources to provide energy.

While issues like energy storage and a fine-tuned electrical grid still need to be hammered out, "on paper, technically speaking, it's doable to have electricity generated by a 100% renewable system," Paris-based Phuc-Vinh Nguyen, research fellow at the Jacques Delors Energy Center, told Yahoo News. "But with nuclear, it would be easier."


U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm speaks at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in 2021. (Leonhard Foeger/Reuters)

An entirely renewable electrical system, he said, would require some sacrifices from consumers, including not charging their electric vehicles at peak times, such as evenings.

In Germany, which had 17 nuclear plants in 2011 when the Fukushima disaster in Japan prompted the government to begin dismantling them, only three nuclear plants remain, generating 11% of the country’s electricity. Those remaining plants, however, are scheduled to be decommissioned in December, a move that has earned Germany criticism, since the country is suffering an energy shortfall thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In apparent retaliation for Europe’s imposition of sanctions on Russia, that country's gas giant Gazprom has cut natural gas flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to 20% of normal capacity, forcing Germany to scramble to make up the shortfall.

Joachim Bühler, managing director of Germany’s safety inspection association TÜV, told the German broadcaster Die Welt this weekend that not only are the three existing plants safe to continue operations, but three plants decommissioned last December are perfectly fine to bring back online. That information "puts more pressure on the government to do so," noted Thorfinn Stainforth, policy analyst at the Institute for European Environmental Policy.

Belgium, where nuclear power provides almost half the country's electricity, also planned to shut down its last seven nuclear reactors by 2025, but given Europe’s natural gas shortages, it decided to extend the lifetime of two of the facilities for another decade.

In the same way that firing up shuttered coal plants has angered environmentalists, the decision to continue relying on nuclear power has rankled some analysts. "We are advocating for a clean energy revolution," Esther Bollendorff, a senior energy analyst at the NGO coalition Climate Action Network Europe, which represents over 1,500 European NGOs, told Yahoo News. "For us, nuclear is not a clean energy. Nuclear is not a cheap energy. It cannot be built up quickly and doesn't respond to the challenge of acting quickly. And it [creates] significant problems with managing waste."


A nuclear power plant in Gundremmingen, Germany, whose last unit was shut down at the end of 2021. (Lukas Barth/Reuters)

Others, however, have applauded the reappraisal of nuclear power.

London-based energy consultancy firm LucidCatalyst in June released a report titled "Beautiful Nuclear," which argued that "no other electricity generation technology can match [nuclear’s] diversity of beneficial impacts." It pointed out that countries such as Sweden and Finland have combined renewables with nuclear to effectively decarbonize.

In the U.K., where nuclear power provides 15% of electricity, an additional eight reactors are planned. In May, prior to his resignation, Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised that his country would "build one [new nuclear plant] every year, powering homes with clean, safe and reliable energy."

No leader, however, has been more supportive of nuclear energy than French President Emmanuel Macron. In February, Macron called for a "rebirth of France’s nuclear industry," announcing plans to build up to 14 new-generation reactors to battle climate change.

But it's precisely the underperformance of France’s power plants this summer that, for some, is the final nail in the nuclear coffin. With France's fleet of 56 reactors, nuclear power normally provides 70% of its electricity. This year, however, as high temperature records were toppled in much of the country, nuclear power has made up only some 30%. Over half of French reactors are down, some for maintenance, others because cooling waters from nearby rivers, such as the Rhône, are too warm this year. Normally a summer electricity exporter, France was forced this summer to purchase it from Germany.

When people question the reliability of wind and solar, Hanoteaux suggests they "look at the French example. Nuclear is not as reliable as people would like to think."

Nevertheless, the Paris-based International Energy Agency in June issued a report that encouraged more investment in nuclear power. "Building sustainable and clean energy systems will be harder, riskier and more expensive without nuclear," an agency press release accompanying the report stated.

French President Emmanuel Macron speaks at the GE Steam Power System main production site for its nuclear turbine systems in Belfort, France. 
(Jean Francois Badias/AFP via Getty Images)

American climatologist Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, doesn’t buy that argument. In his book "The New Climate War," he dismisses the idea of investing in new nuclear power to address climate change as "a fallacy."

"We can decarbonize our economy with existing — and cheaper — renewable energy, such as wind, solar and geothermal," he told Yahoo News, pointing at studies by Mark Z. Jacobson, director of Stanford's Atmosphere/Energy Program, showing that the U.S. doesn't need new nuclear plants as part of the transition. "Investing in nuclear would crowd out investment in cheaper, safer renewable energy. So why would we do it?" Mann also regards the great hope in small modular reactors as misguided, calling them "likely another false promise" and "a costly option that comes with the same risks, including proliferation and an even worse potential waste problem."

But for all the ongoing debate about the role nuclear power should play in order to transition away from fossil fuels, most analysts underscore that almost every country needs to move quickly to build more wind and solar facilities. What's important isn't to what extent nuclear plays a role or doesn't in the energy transition, Elisabeth Cremona, energy and climate data analyst at the think tank Ember, emphasized to Yahoo News. "Accelerating wind and solar deployment remains the central challenge of the next decade," she said.

Georgia nuclear plant gets OK to load fuel at new reactor


JEFF AMY
Wed, August 3, 2022 

ATLANTA (AP) — A nuclear power plant being built in Georgia can begin loading radioactive fuel into one of its two new reactors, federal regulators said Wednesday, a key step toward generating electricity at the first new nuclear reactor built in decades in the United States.

The Southern Nuclear Operating Co. hopes in October to begin loading fuel into its third reactor at Plant Vogtle, near Waynesboro, Tom Fanning, CEO of Southern Nuclear's parent company, Atlanta-based Southern Co, said last week.

Andrea Veil, director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, said inspectors “independently verified that Vogtle Unit 3 has been properly built and will protect public health and safety when it transitions to operation.” She said they will keep “a close eye” on the unit moving forward.

A third and a fourth reactor were approved for construction at Vogtle by the Georgia Public Service Commission in 2012, and the third reactor was supposed to start generating power in 2016. Now, the schedule calls for that to happen by the end of March 2023. The cost of the third and fourth reactors has climbed from an original cost of $14 billion to more than $30 billion.

The operating company will operate the plant on behalf of owners including fellow Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power Co., Oglethorpe Power Corp., the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and the city of Dalton. Oglethorpe and MEAG would sell power to cooperatives and municipal utilities across Georgia, as well in Jacksonville, Florida, and parts of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.

Approval of the third reactor was hung up in recent months because much of its wiring had to be redone after federal regulators found major flaws in it. Southern Co. also had fallen behind on inspection documents that had to be completed before the NRC could sign off.

Fanning and Southern Chief Financial Officer Daniel Tucker said July 28 that before fuel could be loaded, the company also needed to remove scaffolding, temporary lighting and other construction equipment and get the nuclear containment unit into “pristine condition” before loading fuel.

Georgia Power said Thursday that fuel is already on site. After it's loaded, operators will test to make sure that the reactor can operate at the extreme temperature and pressure needed to split atoms. Once those tests are done, operators will link up the plant to the electrical grid.

Georgia Power customers are already paying part of the financing cost and state regulators have approved a monthly rate increase of $3.78 a month as soon as the third unit begins generating power. But the Georgia Public Service Commission will decide later who pays for the remainder of the costs.

The milestone comes as the other owners of Vogtle seek to shift costs onto Georgia Power. Both Oglethorpe and MEAG sued Georgia Power in June, claiming the company was trying to bilk them out of nearly $700 million by unilaterally changing a contract.

Georgia Power owns 45.7% of the two reactors, compared to Oglethorpe’s 30% and MEAG’s 22.3%. The city of Dalton’s utility owns the remaining 1.6% and hasn’t sued.

Under a 2018 deal, Georgia Power agreed to assume all cost overruns above a certain level. In exchange, the co-owners would sell part of their ownership shares to Georgia Power. Oglethorpe and MEAG say projected overruns have reached that level, but Georgia Power claims the threshold is $1.3 billion higher than the level claimed by the co-owners.

If Georgia Power loses, the shareholders of Southern Co. would most likely have to absorb more losses.

Vogtle is the only nuclear plant under construction in the United States. Its costs and delays could deter other utilities from building such plants, even though they generate electricity without releasing climate-changing carbon emissions.

“These new units remain a strong long-term investment for this state, and, once operating, are expected to provide customers with a reliable and resilient, clean, emission-free source of energy for the next 60 to 80 years," Georgia Power CEO Chris Womack said in a statement. "That’s why we’ve been so committed to getting this project done right — it’s about serving our customers today and for decades to come.”

This Tiny Modular Nuclear Reactor Just Got the Green Light From U.S. Regulators

Caroline Delbert
Wed, August 3, 2022 

Photo credit: Nuscale

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has awarded approval to nuclear leader NuScale for its small, modular reactor design.


These reactors will be built offsite and installed onsite at nontraditionally small nuclear plants.


The energy industry faces huge challenges before it can decarbonize.


In a major step forward for the burgeoning modular nuclear reactor movement, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved all but the final formalities on a tiny reactor design put forth by industry leader NuScale. The July 29 announcement comes after six years of steady work toward regulatory approval.

The combination of small and modular is new for nuclear energy. Decades ago, the first nuclear plants were small because that was simply the limit of the emerging technology at the time. Modular design concepts were in the mix back then because, honestly, what wasn’t in the mix? There were even nuclear-powered concepts for family sedans as far back as the 1950s.

NuScale, based in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, has been working on its small, modular reactor concept for over 15 years. The company began in the early 2000s with funding from the United States Department of Energy that merged the interests of multiple universities and government laboratories—something very common in the energy sector and in scientific fields like physics. Then, in 2007, NuScale went solo and took its show on the road to begin the long slog toward nuclear regulatory approval; the process began formally in 2016 with NuScale’s initial application for its modular reactor design.

“The NuScale team spent over 2 million labor hours to develop the information needed to prepare the design certification application, which included 12,000 pages, 14 topical reports, and had over 2 million pages of supporting information,” Diane Hughes, vice president of marketing and communications for NuScale, tells Popular Mechanics by email. “In turn, the NRC spent over a quarter-million staff hours reviewing the application. That said, the NRC review process took 42 months, which was the fastest design review in the NRC’s history.” Hughes attributes this feat to NuScale’s simple design.

In its announcement, the NRC explains that NuScale’s small, modular reactor is just the seventh reactor design ever to be approved for use in the U.S. It’s also the first design to be modular. To understand what a big deal that is, we have to take a step back and consider how other nuclear power plants have been built.

I grew up in the shadow of the Byron Nuclear Generating Station outside Rockford, Illinois. Construction of the plant took a decade on a site that is about a mile-and-a-half square feet. The plant was planned around the site, not vice versa—where can we put a plant that is far enough outside of town, that has naturally flowing water, with enough room for over 700 employees and all the safety equipment and redundancies we need? What reactor can we build there?

That giant power plant has run for nearly 40 years and has supplied consistent power to about two million homes in northern Illinois. Even so, it’s embroiled in a licensing and renewal controversy, at least partly because the future of nuclear energy, and of energy more broadly, is a big question mark right now. Nuclear energy is considered unfavorable by many people around the world, and not without reason: several high-profile disasters hurt public opinion for decades, and now many of the plants from the “nuclear boom” of the 70s and 80s are aging out of service, becoming albatrosses.

But advocates say that there is simply no other way to replace the bulk of the world’s current fossil-fuel energy. If we’re going to stop burning coal and natural gas at power plants, we need something else, and renewable energy simply can’t account for everything. Renewables aren’t right or accessible for every community that is in need of a decarbonized energy solution. This is the market in which small, modular nuclear reactors have arrived.


Photo credit: NRC.gov/NuScale

“Especially while the global community is suffering from crises like volatile energy prices and climate-driven extreme weather events, the need for carbon-free energy solutions like NuScale’s small modular reactors has never been greater,” Hughes says. “While European gas futures have soared to new records, nuclear fuel prices are and have been much more stable as compared to natural gas prices. Achieving climate goals simply cannot be done without nuclear energy as part of the equation.”

NuScale is certainly not alone in the marketplace of ideas when it comes to small, modular nuclear reactors, but it’s had one special advantage all along: its design is revolutionary in some ways, but still built on the basics of water-cooled, nuclear power generation. Like Byron, a NuScale power plant will be cooled by a pool of fresh water. But that water will circulate and be cooled and reused rather than flushed out in quantity; NuScale says the reactors can still run almost indefinitely without pumps.

With the regulatory approval in hand, NuScale will finally be able to plan its first plants in the United States. These are still subject to location-based approval, especially because nuclear plant regulations are still based on huge sites like Byron. But NuScale’s reactors won’t be made on site. They’ll be made in factories and brought onsite in pieces for final installation and activation.

“Potential customers from numerous countries have expressed interest in our technology, and we currently have 18 signed and active memorandums of understanding with customers in 11 countries interested in, and considering, a deployment of a NuScale power plant,” Hughes says.

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