Columnist Jim Fossel says nuclear energy is key to energy independence (“Nuclear power is the key to energy independence” March 20). On Dec 28, Richard Bedard wrote an interesting column advocating nuclear power plants from his standpoint as one who had worked on nuclear submarines. Evidently neither of these gents has had to pay for one, or wait for it to be built.
Back in the mid-’80s, with the Maine PUC, I was on a task force which shut down Seabrook Unit 2 and pulled the Maine utilities out of Seabrook Unit 1. A year later the lead utility, Pubic Service of New Hampshire, went bankrupt due to project costs. When finally completed, the capital cost of Unit 1, standing there, before being fueled and put into operation, was $6,000 per KW of generating capacity. That was not an anomaly. Units 3 and 4 of the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia, due to come online in 2022, have required billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees and will cost $14,000 per KW of capacity. This means the capacity to run a 1,000 watt hair dryer will have taken decades to build and cost $14,000.
Now, that’s an unfair statement since a hair dryer is only used for 10 minutes a day whereas a nuclear plant runs 24 hours a day supplying energy for all sorts of uses.
But as I have discussed in the past with my old professor (who was also Bedard’s professor) Richard Hill, the question arises, what about alternatives? Conservation has turned out to be far less expensive, much more timely, and capable of offsetting the baseload, high capacity factor characteristics of nuclear – at least to a point.
Solar and wind, particularly offshore wind, in combination with batteries and other technology and techniques can also do it, and again in a much more timely fashion. My own grid-tied 15 KW solar array cost me about $1,400 per KW to build. And, of course, the Carbon Fee and Dividend initiative currently in Congress puts a price on carbon emissions and pays out those fees to energy users with a net-zero effect to the population as a whole. We can all be assured such a fee would provide a dramatic change in energy use patterns based on the real societal and economic costs associated with various forms of energy production. And in any event would be far more timely and much less expensive.
All this has to be kept in perspective that the mere fact the Earth is generating heat within while revolving around a hot sun provides 90% to 95% of the energy needed to warm us from absolute zero (-460ºF) to a life-sustaining average +/-60ºF, so the next increment of energy needed to keep our economy going wouldn’t seem to need to bankrupt our life-sustaining systems.
Bedard is correct, though: We are going to need baseload capacity, and small or large nuclear could play a significant role. But those who advocate for nuclear need to step up and show by concrete demonstration that it can in fact be done. We’ve been waiting for decades and such a demonstration has yet to appear.
— Special to the Press Herald
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