Renewable Revolution

Old Reactors v. New Renewables: The First Nuclear War of the 21st Century

 Mark Cooper, Senior Fellow for Economic Analysis, Institute for Energy and the Environment 
 June 06, 2014 

Within the past year, a bevy of independent, financial analysts (Lazard, Citi, Credit Suisse, McKinsey and Company, Sanford Bernstein, Morningstar) have heralded an economic revolution in the electricity sector. A quarter of a century of technological progress has led to the conclusion that over the course of the next decade a combination of efficiency, renewables and gas will meet the need for new resources and more importantly, render the antiquated baseload model largely obsolete.

The academic debate over whether we could get to an electricity system that relies entirely (99 percent) or mostly (80 percent) on renewables late in this century is largely irrelevant compared to the fact that over the next couple of decades we could see a rapid and substantial expansion of renewables (to say 30 percent of 40 percent), if the current economic forces are allowed to ply out and policies to advance the transformation of the electricity system are adopted.   

Political revolutions tend to follow economic revolutions, which is where we stand in the electricity sector today.  The dominant incumbents, particularly nuclear utilities, have recognized that they face an existential threat and they have launched a campaign to eliminate it.  Utilities, who loudly announced the arrival of a “nuclear renaissance” less than a decade ago, are desperate to save their fleet of aging reactors from early retirement and “stay relevant to the game going forward” (as the CEO of Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear utility put it) because they cannot compete at the margin with renewables or gas.

This nuclear v. renewables debate is not just “déjà vu all over again, a lot more than the fate of nuclear power at stake.  The fundamental approach to delivering electricity in the 21st century, while meeting the challenge of climate change, is on the table.  Nuclear power and the alternatives are so fundamentally different that a strategy of “all of the above” is no longer feasible.  Nuclear power withers in an electricity system that focuses on flexibility because it is totally inflexible, but renewables cannot live up to their full potential without opening up and transforming the physical and institutional infrastructure of the system.     

Nuclear power has failed because it has never been able to compete at the margin with other resources — coal in the 1980s, gas in the 1990s and renewables in the 2000s.  Renewables have become competitive, not only because technological progress lowered the resource costs of supply dramatically, but also because the growth of information and control technologies have made it possible to integrate decentralized generation technologies into a dynamic two way system that achieves reliability by actively managing supply and demand.

The ongoing efforts of Exelon and Entergy to change the rules in the regions of the U.S. that have relied most on market forces epitomizes the political conflict.  Unfazed by the fact that the nuclear industry has been the recipient of ten times as much subsidy as renewables on a life cycle basis and continues to receive massive subsidies in the form of socialized the cost of liability insurances and waste management, underfunded decommissioning, inadequately compensated water use, federal loan guarantee and production tax credits for new reactors, continuing R&D funding for small modular reactor technology, and advanced cost recovery for nuclear investment in a number of states, the nuclear industry launched its campaign for survival with an attack on the production tax credit for wind.

However, the campaign quickly moved beyond that small subsidy to demand much more pervasive changes in regulatory policy. Precisely because the economics of renewables have improved so dramatically, nuclear power needs to prevent the development of the physical and institutional infrastructure that will support the emerging electricity system.

Putting a price on carbon will not solve the fundamental problem because it picks losers (fossil fuels) not winners and that is what nuclear needs because it is at such a huge economic disadvantage.  It will give aging reactors a little breathing room, but it will not make them more competitive with renewables at the margin and it will certainly not address the need for institutional reform.

Economic dispatch, net metering, bidding efficiency as a resource, demand response, all of which are being fought by the utilities, are not about subsidies; they are about economic efficiency.  The regulated physical and institutional infrastructure supported baseload power and retards the growth of the efficiencies of decentralized generation and system management. Nuclear power needs to jerry-rig the dispatch order so that they are guaranteed to run, create capacity markets that guarantee they win some auction, and redefine renewable portfolios to include nuclear.

Ironically the current terrain of resource choice and the attack on renewable reflects the fact that renewables have succeeded in exactly the way nuclear has failed.  Relatively small subsidies unleashed powerful forces of innovation, learning and economies of scale that have caused dramatic reductions in costs, yielding a much higher return on social investment.

Renewable technologies are able to move rapidly along their learning curves because they possess the characteristics that allow for the capture of economies of mass production and stimulate innovation. They involve the production of large numbers of units under conditions of competition. They afford the opportunity for a great deal of real world development and demonstration work before they are deployed on a wide scale. These is the antithesis of how nuclear development has played out in the past, and the push for small modular reactors does not appear to solve the problem, as I showed SMR advocates have proposed.

The challenge now is to build new physical and institutional infrastructure. In fact, the growing literature on climate change makes it clear that the cost of the transition to a low carbon sector will be much lower if institutional change precedes, or at least goes hand in hand with pricing policy.

(some graphics at link):
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/06/old-reactors-v-new-renewables-the-first-nuclear-war-of-the-21st-century

My comment: 

 A. G. Gelbert   
 June 7, 2014 

Patrick O'Leary said, " Mr. Cooper is right to point out the details and the devil therein. "

HEAR! HEAR!

However, Patrick, these Nuclear power advocates have been double talking from the get go in the 1950s. They KNEW that the claim "too cheap to meter" was a lie when they pushed it on an unsuspecting public. The trail of accidents, deaths and cancer clusters from radionuclide pollution in the USA have been consistently suppressed for well over half a century. And no Patrick, we did not need all those power plants to make weapons. That is a myth, and a cruel one at that. The "favoring" of the nuclear industry was not justified on the basis of weaponry or energy. That has been documented. The reason they got away with it is because of the government undemocratic secrecy provided to these subsidy queens for their free ride on the taxpayer dollar.

And it's not over, Patrick. We-the-people are the designated sucker to pay for the clean up of decommissioned power plants and baby sitting of used fuel rods for the next few centuries while the "market forces" (all manipulated and totally UNfree) that made nuclear power profitable for a some conscience free investors conveniently disappear when the government is handed a used poison factory. This is not a benign situation or the effect of capitalism "free market" winners and losers; This is corruption, embezzlement, grand larceny and criminal negligence and massive environmental damage rolled into one elite, predatory oligarchic mess. We must strive to get those investors that made so much money off nukes to PAY for the clean up. We-the-people do not owe the nuclear power advocates anything but contempt for their brazen mendacity.

The devil in those details you mentioned doesn't just distort energy policy to favor wasteful parasites like the nuclear power industry, it threatens our very democracy by perpetually claiming they must keep what they do secret for "national security". The nuclear parasites are only concerned about their subsidy security, not national security.

Renewable Energy is the sine qua non energy source required in our finite world in order to have a viable biosphere. Anything else is profit over planet nonsense.

And for Daniel Seddon, who falsely claims to know anything about engineering, I suggest he look up Amory Lovins, Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute to learn about the FLAWS taught in present engineering texts in regard to the design of machinery (reynolds number erroneous data on turbulent and laminar flow friction losses in gasses and liquids) have contributed to a bunch of energy wasteful designs that are pushed as the "most efficient" engineering of machinery possible.

Mark Cooper KNOWS of what he speaks. Amory Lovins,a scientist and engineer, backs him up all the way as to the wasteful and polluting folley of nuclear power.

Nuclear Nonsense

AUTHOR: Lovins, Amory

DOCUMENT ID: E09-10

YEAR: 2009

DOCUMENT TYPE: Journal or Magazine Article

Stewart Brand's book, Whole Earth Discipline, features a chapter claiming that new nuclear power plants are essential and desirable, and that a global "nuclear renaissance" is booming. In this book review, Amory Lovins' review finds fatal flaws in the chapter's facts and logic.

Download 63KB


Nuclear Power: Economic Fundamentals and Potential Role in Climate Change Mitigation

AUTHOR: Lovins, Amory

DOCUMENT ID: E05-09

YEAR: 2005

DOCUMENT TYPE: Report or White Paper

In this presentation, Amory Lovins provides evidence that low and no-carbon decentralized sources of energy have eclipsed nuclear power as a climate friendly energy option. He argues that new nuclear power plants are unfinanceable in the private capital market and that resource efficiency provides a cheaper, more environmentally viable option.

Download 2099KB


Four Nuclear Myths: A Commentary on Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline and on Similar Writings

AUTHOR: Lovins, Amory

DOCUMENT ID: E09-09

YEAR: 2009

DOCUMENT TYPE: Journal or Magazine Article

Some nuclear-power advocates claim that wind and solar power can't provide much if any reliable power because they're not "baseload," that they use too much land, that all energy options including new nuclear build are needed to combat climate change, and that nuclear power's economics don't matter because climate change will force governments to dictate energy choices and pay for whatever is necessary. None of these claims can withstand analytic scrutiny.

Download 592KB



Nuclear Power: Climate Fix or Folly?

AUTHORS:

Lovins, Amory

Sheikh, Imran

Markevich, Alex

DOCUMENT ID: E09-01

YEAR: 2009

DOCUMENT TYPE: Report or White Paper

This semi-technical article, summarizing a detailed and documented technical paper (see "The Nuclear Illusion" (2008)), compares the cost, climate protection potential, reliability, financial risk, market success, deployment speed, and energy contribution of new nuclear power with those of its low- or no-carbon competitors.

Download 4867KB



Nuclear Power and Climate Change

AUTHOR: Lovins, Amory

DOCUMENT ID: C07-09

YEAR: 2007

DOCUMENT TYPE: Letter

This 2007 e-mail exchange between Steve Berry (University of Chicago), Peter Bradford (former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner and senior utility regulator), and Amory Lovins illustrates the cases for and against nuclear power in relation to climate and the environment.

Download 658KB


Nuclear Power: Competitive Economics and Climate Protection Potential

AUTHOR: Lovins, Amory

DOCUMENT ID: E06-04

YEAR: 2006

DOCUMENT TYPE: Presentation

In this presentation to the Royal Academy of Engineering, Amory Lovins explains the economic and environmental impacts of nuclear power. By showing that companies and governments have cut energy intensity without the use of nuclear power, Lovins shows that nuclear power is not a necessary step in the fight against climate change.

Download 3742KB

http://www.rmi.org/pid257

http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/nuke-puke/nuclear-power-industry-mendacious-propaganda/msg697/#msg697


NY Times Editorial Board Delivers a ‘Prudent’ Message of Nuclear Abandonment

Harvey Wasserman

http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/nuke-puke/nuclear-power-industry-mendacious-propaganda/msg1054/#msg1054


The Nuclear Lie Machine: Part 1 of 2 Parts

http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/nuke-puke/nuclear-power-industry-mendacious-propaganda/msg484/#msg484


Please Pass it on; the planet you save may be your own.