Sovacool and Cooper opined in 2010 that nuclear power plants are a poor choice for addressing energy challenges in a carbon-constrained, post-Kyoto world. Nuclear generators are prone to insolvable infrastructural, economic, social, and environmental problems. They face immense capital costs, rising uranium fuel prices, significant lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, and irresolvable problems with reactor safety, waste storage, weapons proliferation, and vulnerability to attack. They claim that renewable power generators, in contrast, reduce dependence on foreign sources of uranium and decentralize electricity supply so that an accidental or intentional outage would have a more limited impact than the outage of larger nuclear facilities.
[Interupting here to set the stage for your review of this paper. The themes posited in this paper have been popularized by the anti-nuclear and pro-wind & solar pundants for decades. This paper is a fine example of how such pundants, most of whom had no science or even industrial backgrounds, while many are attorneys, where missinformation and out-of-date information get packaged within such a paper, fully referenced (and footnoted), lead the reader to false conclusions, albeit to confused views on the various subjects. You will read exaggerations, untuths, and misrepresentations throughout this paper. We did note that there were historical accounts that seemed to be of interest, but with all the missinformation present, we found it difficult to accept any claims in the paper. It is a study of errant propaganda.
To the details now, notice that the fuel sources are challegeded. All such claims are untrue. Minining is no real problem, and much will be produced via in situ mining using only CO2 and O2 as oxidizers, not sulfanated acids as claimed. The matter of safety is also misrepresented, just look at the Appendix ....no deaths over past 40 years. Note their emphasis on Chernobly, which was a Soviet era management error. Both Three-Mile and Fukushima were well managed, no deaths and no irradiations. Concerning costs, nuclear plants are built to last for more than 5 decades, where the lifespan of wind and solar plants are measured in terms of a couple of decades. Nuclear plants are more like hydro-electic dams. Their economics are similar. Long-term matters of investment. And then we come to the reliability matter. Germany panicked when the Fukushima incident occured. So did a few other countries.....but because their rush to wind and solar resulted in a failure to provide the needed energy, all of the countries are now returning to nuclear power, being especially attracted to the new SMRs, due to come to the market in a few years.
Here are a few references concerning ....the rest of the story (here), (here), and (here), among many others (here) and (here), and speaking of used-nuclear fuel (more) and the future (more). ]
The facts indicate that nuclear power has surged back to the forefront over the past few years simply because the hopes for wind and solar have not been realized. There is one simple reason for this. Both wind and soalr provide extremently low-density energy, which translates as not being reliable or sufficiet to power a robust grid today. Now notice carfully the subtle and and not so subtle claims (with footnotes) the authors provide in presenting their pro-wind and solar views at the expense of nuclear power......]
Most significantly, renewable power technologies have environmental benefits because these technologies create power without relying on the extraction of uranium and its associated digging, drilling, mining, transporting, enrichment, and storage. As a result, renewable energy technologies provide a much greater potential for substantial carbon emissions reductions than significant investments in new nuclear power generation.
After some 117 pages of text,the authors concluded that nuclear power generators cannot be mass produced. nuclear plants take much longer to build, and are therefore exposed to escalating interest rates, inaccurate demand forecasts, and unforeseen labor conflicts. Their centralization requires costly and expansive T&D systems. The nuclear system is thus subject to highly uncertain projections about uranium availability, is centrally administered by a technocratic elite, and is vulnerable to the ebb and flow of international politics, requiring garrison-like security measures at multiple points in the supply chain.
Renewable power technologies, in contrast, reduce dependence on foreign sources of fuel, and therefore create a more secure fuel supply chain that minimizes exposure to economic and political changes abroad. Renewable technologies decentralize electricity supply so that an accidental or intentional outage affects a smaller amount of capacity than an outage at a larger nuclear facility. Renewable energy technologies improve the reliability of power generation by conserving or producing power close to the end-user, and minimizing the need to produce, transport, and store hazardous and radioactive fuel.
Unlike generators relying on uranium and recycled plutonium, renewable generators are not subject to the volatility of global fuel markets. They can also respond more rapidly to supply and demand fluctuations, improving the efficiency of the electricity market. Most significantly, renewable power technologies have enormous environmental benefits since their use tends to avoid air pollution and the dangers and risks of extracting uranium. They generate electricity without releasing significant quantities of CO2 and other greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change as well as life-endangering nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxides, particulate matter, and mercury.
They also create power without relying on the extraction of uranium and its associated digging, drilling, mining, leeching, transporting, storing, sequestering, and polluting of land, and in some cases can restore degraded ecosystems.
Our choice of an energy future thus boils down to a simple
question: Do we want a nuclear economy, centrally administered by technical specialists, completely reliant on government subsidies, dependent on future breakthroughs in research, sure to promote international proliferation and worsen inequity and vulnerability, which requires draconian security measures, wastefully generates and distributes electricity, remains based on highly uncertain projections about theoretical nuclear designs and available fuel, fouls the nations water and land, and trashes the planet for many future generations?
Or do we want a small to medium scale, decentralized electricity system that is more efficient, independent from government funding, encompassing commercially available technologies, that operates with minimal harm to the environment, remains resilient to disruptions and terrorist assaults, is equally available to all future generations, and highly beneficial to all income groups?
When the true costs of nuclear energy are compared to the true benefits of renewable technologies, the answer is almost too obvious. In a carbon-constrained world, continued investment in nuclear technologies still on the drawing board makes little sense, especially as such technologies rely on diminishing stocks of usable uranium that will require more and more energy inputs to enrich to fuel-grade status.
Why invest in nuclear energy as a solution to global climate change when by the time such systems come online, enriching the fuel for them will require emitting as much carbon as today's fossil fuel systems? Any rational investor, regulator, and citizen would choose instead to invest in the deployment of technologies that require little to no energy inputs to harness free and clean fuels widely available in the
United States and throughout the world.
Policymakers should peek beyond the smoke-and-mirrors used to obscure the obvious advantages of renewable technologies and the obvious costs of nuclear systems. Any effective response to electricity demand in a world facing climate change involves enormous expansion in our use of renewable technologies and a steady abandonment of nuclear power.
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