Michael D. Campbell, Chairman of the AAPG Energy Minerals Division's Uranium (Nuclear & REE) Committee indicated during a virtual international conference in late 2020 that there is a big move on nuclear power again these days. This is based on the Committee’s monitoring of energy developments over the past few years, but added that the general public must re-evaluate their perceptions of earlier problems now that industry has grown technologically, emerging with greater abilities to lower risks and better manage nuclear incidents, such as at Three-Mile Island in Pennsylvania (1979) and Fukushima in Japan (2011).” Campbell stressed that despite excessive media coverage and agenda-driven anti-nuclear groups pandering the fear of radiation, combined with a few members of the political left who claim renewables are the sole panacea to our climate-friendly energy needs of the future, nuclear power plants, however, have safely generated electricity 24/7 over some 40 years of operation to customers throughout the U.S. and the world, contrary to the poor yearly safety records of coal, natural gas, and renewables (wind and solar).
Campbell indicated that the Committee has concluded that nuclear power is a sustainable, reliable, climate- and business-friendly source of energy to be fueled by new discoveries that will provide hundreds of years of available uranium resources from a variety of secure sources.
Incidents of the Past
The incidents of the past did not involve any radiation injuries or fatalities. (The Chernobyl disaster in 1986, he reminded, was a result of expedient Soviet-era designs and mismanagement of operations not solely to generate electricity but also plutonium for nuclear weapons). Over the past decades, uranium mining and some 95 nuclear power reactors in operation today in the U.S., and some 441 in operation worldwide (plus 54 under construction in China, Russia, India, etc.), all together have demonstrated safety records far exceeding those of natural gas (line explosions, methane emissions, and climate-unfriendly from burning and adding CO2 to the atmosphere), coal (underground mining accidents and also climate unfriendly from burning, and renewables (wind and solar) in terms of injuries and fatalities during construction and repairs and inherent failings of the technologies), Campbell emphasized during the recent conference. Even two new reactors are expected to be in operation in the Georgia-South Carolina area over the next few years.
Competition for the Power Grid
Serious competition is now underway to determine which energy source will dominate the power-grid of the foreseeable future. With coal declining rapidly, only natural gas, uranium (and nuclear power), hydroelectric power and renewables (wind and solar) are in the running. Both natural gas and nuclear power are providing back-up to the power grid because of the inherent drawbacks of wind and solar (where the former does not blow all the time and the latter is intermittent because there are cloudy days and the sun only shines during the day, of course). Because California has retired many of their nuclear power plants, natural gas has taken their place in the power grid in supporting California’s renewable energy systems.
Inherent Failings
Renewables’ inherent failings have been made even more apparent recently by their need for back-up batteries during zero or low-power output, which are unusually expensive to buy and maintain. Furthermore, as recently constructed wind and solar projects mature, the cost of the electricity they are producing is going up rapidly, not only because of low energy conversion production efficiencies, but also because the costs of operation and maintenance of these projects have been overlooked and underestimated during the economic evaluations in the project design stages. Their O&M costs are just recently becoming evident in many such projects, such as in California, Germany, Japan, etc., where these countries are experiencing increased consumer electricity costs but also blackouts and power interruptions because their renewable systems cannot produce sufficient power at critical times when needed. As far as claims that competition is driving down the capital costs of wind and solar projects, it also follows that the quality of the equipment is decreasing. With this decrease in quality of the wind turbines and gearboxes, etc., operation and maintenance needs are also likely to rise, causing increased costs to the consumer. But only one nuclear power plant remains in operation in California. It is located many miles from the San Andreas Fault Zone, leaving un-climate friendly natural gas to back-up the power grid.
Uranium Imports
Over the past 40 years, uranium typically has been imported from countries such as Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Niger, Namibia, etc., but efforts are currently underway to produce more of the fuel locally for utilities from more secure sources, such as in the U.S. and if necessary, from Canada and Australia, Campbell said. Just after the Soviet Union fell apart, the Russian Federation arranged a friendly deal with the U.S. in the 1990s to sell us uranium from their old nuclear warheads. Bomb-grade uranium was dismantled from thousands of Russian nuclear warheads and was recycled into
low-enriched uranium used to produce fuel for American nuclear power plants.
[Read on ... fear of radiation is discussed in some detail and well referenced, see list at end of article]
[The WNN also provided comments on the subjects discussed in this summary article].
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