A BRIGHT FUTURE

Reviewed 6/20/2019

A Bright Future, by Joshua S. Goldstein

A BRIGHT FUTURE
How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow
Joshua S. Goldstein
Staffan A. Qvist
Steven Pinker (Fwd.)
New York: PublicAffairs, January 2019

Rating:

5.0

High
ISBN-13 978-1-5417-2410-5
ISBN-10 1-5417-2410-0 276pp. HC/BWI $26.00

An Accounting of Harms and Benefits from Various Energy Sources

There is a lot of data out there on the benefits and dangers of the various energy sources we have available today With a little research, we can easily determine average costs in $/kWh of coal vs. natural gas vs. solar vs. wind vs. nuclear in our area (because it is highly dependent on area.) Similarly, mortality rates for the various types of power can be readily discovered. While costing your own installation — say a personal solar array for your house — will be a lot more complicated, the broad-scale numbers are what's needed for the political choices we need to make on a statewide or nationwide basis.

Here I aim to provide some of those broad numbers in easy-to-digest form.

Deaths from accidents and air pollution

Based on a paper in The Lancet, here are the casualties for six types of energy source, normalized to number of deaths per Terawatt-hour (TWh.) In these figures, air pollution dominates, and hence coal dominates, because coal combustion releases large amounts of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, implicated in smog and acid rain, as well as particulates which cause respiratory diseases. Heavy metals and radioactives come out as well, but for the most part are captured and thus present more of a danger from the slurry ponds where they are stored.

Coal is responsible for the majority of accidents: mine explosions and cave-ins, black lung disease in miners, and the rare but devastating collapse of a coal-slurry pond.

Brown Coal Hard Coal Fuel Oil Biomass
(Incl. Air Pollution)		 Natural Gas Nuclear
(Markandya & Wilkinson (2007))		 Wind Hydropower Solar Biomass
(Excl. Air Pollution)		 Nuclear
(Sovacool et al. (2016))		 Biofuels
32.72 24.62 18.43 4.63 2.821 0.074 0.035 0.024 0.019 0.016 0.01 0.005

Source: What are the safest sources of energy? (Hannah Ritchie, Our World in Data, 10 February 2020)

Closing nuclear power plants

Work in progress

As Wikipedia points out, support for nuclear power increased during the 2000s due to promising new reactor designs and concerns over climate change. However, the advent of cheap natural gas freed by fracking made this fossil fuel, cleaner than coal or oil, a bargain compared to nuclear. As a result, the great majority of the new reactors planned in 2009 were canceled by 2013, and many of the existing plants whose licenses had been extended closed early. Nuclear energy production in the U.S. peaked in 2007 and has been declining ever since.

Not always was the plunging price for plentiful natural gas the sole reason for shuttering a nuclear plant; many required costly repairs that reached the point of being untenable. However, persistent local protests were and are a significant factor. Often based on misunderstandings of radioactivity and nuclear power, they nevertheless influenced local and state politicians — an influence the purveyors of natural gas were happy to bolster. Disasters such as the March 2011 meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan also hurt the acceptance of nuclear power, even though no one died as a result of radiation from the leaking reactors.

Thus, the situation we have in the U.S. today: nuclear plants that are working well are being shut down by state mandate as a way to reduce risk, or by their operators as a way to cut costs. In many cases these closures are being sold as an opportunity for renewables to take up the slack. However, while renewables may contribute, natural gase is often the major part of the replacement. As Brad Plumer notes in Vox (Ref. 9), a large amount of carbon-free power will be replaced by fossil-fuel plants. A report by the Rhodium Group estimates 24 GW of clean power will be lost, with natural gase taking up three-quarters of the slack.

Plant
Name		 Location Rated
Output (MWe)		 Status Online
Since:		 License
Expires:		 Rationale Energy
Replaced by:
Pilgrim Plymouth, MA 75 Closed 31 May 2019 1963 2032 Economics Natural gas
Enrico Fermi 1 Monroe, MI 69 Closed 11/29/1972 8/07/1966 N/A Partial meltdown Natural gas
Dresden 1 Morris, IL 197 Closed 10/31/1978 7/04/1960 N/A Economics Dresden 2 & 3
Hallam Hallam, NE 75 Closed Sept. 1964 July 1963 N/A Economics Natural gas
Fort St. Vrain Platteville, CO 330 Decommissioned 1992 1979 N/A Economics, repair cost Natural gas
Connecticut Yankee Haddam Neck, CT 582 Closed 12/05/1996 1/01/1968 12/05/1996 Economics Natural gas
Big Rock Point Charlevoix, MI 67 Closed 8/29/1997 3/29/1963 N/A Economics Natural gas
Crystal River 3 Crystal River, FL 860 Closed 2/20/2013 3/13/1977 N/A Costly repairs Natural gas, coal
Kewaunee Kewaunee, WI 556 Closed 5/07/2013 1973 2033 Economics Coal, natural gas
San Onofre 2 & 3 San Clemente, CA 2,150 Closed 6/12/2013 1983 & 1984 N/A Costly repairs Natural gas
Vermont Yankee Vernon, VT 620 Closed 12/29/2014 1972 3/21/2032 Economics Natural gas
Fort Calhoun Blair, NE 482 Closed 10/24/2016 8/09/1973 8/09/2033 Economics 5,200,000
Oyster Creek Oyster Creek, NJ 636 Closed 9/17/2018 12/23/1969 2029 5,200,000 5,200,000
Three Mile Island 1 Middletown, PA 819 Closed 9/30/2019 9/02/1974 4/19/2034 Economics; state bailout failed 5,200,000
Clinton Clinton, IL 1,069 Extended 11/24/1987 9/29/2026 State bailout Slack
Palisades South Haven, MI 805 Extended to 2021 12/31/1971 3/24/2031 State mandate Slack
Quad Cities 1 & 2 Cordova, IL 1,871 Extended Feb-Mar, 1973 12/14/2032 State bailout Slack
Indian Point 2 Buchanan, NY 1,020 Closed 4/30/2020 8/01/1974 Sept. 2013 Reason Slack
Davis-Besse Oak Harbor, OH 894 To close 5/31/2020 7/31/1978 2037 Reason Slack
Duane Arnold Palo, IA 601 To close Sept. 2020 2/01/1975 2034 Economic Natural gas, wind
Indian Point 3 Buchanan, NY 1,040 To close 4/30/2021 8/30/1976 4/30/2025 Reason Slack
Perry North Perry, OH 1,256 To close 5/31/2021 11/18/1987 2037 Reason Slack
Beaver Valley 1 Shippingport, PA 921 To close 5/31/2021 10/01/1976 1/29/2036 Reason Slack
Beaver Valley 2 Shippingport, PA 905 To close 10/31/2021 11/17/1987 5/27/2047 Reason Slack
Diablo Canyon 1 Avila Beach, CA 1,138 To close 11/02/2024 5/07/1985 N/A Reason Slack
Diablo Canyon 2 Avila Beach, CA 1,118 To close 8/26/2025 3/13/1986 N/A Reason Slack
Nine Mile Point 1 & 2 Scriba, NY 1890 To close by 2027 1969, 1988 2029 Gov. Cuomo bailout N/A
Fitzpatrick Scriba, NY 813 To close by 2027 7/28/1975 2029 Gov. Cuomo bailout N/A
R. E. Ginna Ontario, NY 580 To close by 2027 6/01/1970 2029 Gov. Cuomo bailout Slack

Seven reactors have been closed well short of the limit of their extended license; they contributed a total of 4,987 MWe. Ten more are slated to close in the near future (by 2025), losing us a total of 9,712 MWe of clean power.

So let me say it again: With climate change coming on apace, it makes no sense to replace properly working sources of clean power with fossil-fuel sources. Nuclear plants may well be unprofitable compared to a natural-gas burner, but this in my view is a good argument for subsidizing the nuclear plants. Do not forget that fossil fuels get massive subsidies. The state of New York understands. It's time for the rest of the nation to catch on too.

Sources:

  1. Reactors Are Closing (Beyond Nuclear)
  2. U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Already Closed or Closing (Power Engineering)
  3. Nuclear Energy in the U.S.: Recent Plant Closures and Policy Decisions
  4. U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Continue To Close (Nick Cunningham, OilPrice, 12 January 2017)
  5. Nuclear Power Phase-out: United States (Wikipedia, 26 April 2019)
  6. Nuclear plant shutdowns a crisis for small towns across the USA (Thomas C. Zambito, Lohud, 12 July 2017)
  7. U.S. Nuclear Power Plants are Shuttering. Why? And what's replacing them? (Institute for Energy Research, 3 November 2016)
  8. Nuclear power and renewables don't have to be enemies. New York just showed how. (Brad Plumer, Vox, 2 August 2016)
  9. The US keeps shutting down nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal or gas (Brad Plumer, Vox, 3 November 2016)
  10. The simple argument for keeping nuclear power plants open (David Roberts, Vox, 5 April 2018)
  11. Natural Gas — Not Renewables — Is Replacing Nuclear Power (James Conca, Forbes, 16 May 2016)
  12. Message To Ohio Electricity Customers: Stop Closing Nuclear Plants (James Conca, Forbes, 14 June 2019)
  13. U.S. Electricity Generation Fuel Shares (Nuclear Energy Institute, June 2019)
  14. U.S. Nuclear License Renewal Filings (Nuclear Energy Institute, March 2019)

Energy source life-cycle costs

Consumer choices in the here-and-now depend on present-day costs of energy sources, which vary — sometimes widely — over time, and with location. The majority of consumers will no doubt choose familiar fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. But the interests of society depend on the relative costs of different energy facilities from beginning to end: the Life-Cycle Cost. James Conca explains:

"By life-cycle costs, I mean the total costs of building, operating, maintaining, fueling and decommissioning a thermal power plant, a solar array, a wind farm or hydroelectric dam over its life, that is, 15 years for a wind turbine, 40 years for a fossil fuel plant, 60 years for a nuclear plant, or 80 years for a large hydroelectric dam. Dividing those total costs by the amount of energy actually produced, not theoretically possible or installed capacity but actually produced, gives a life-cycle cost in ¢/kWhr. How we finance this cost is a totally different issue, one at which we generally fail as a society.

"To calculate these costs, each source must be normalized to the capacity factor and the life span and a specific total energy production, such as 0.5 trillion kWhrs. Although it is cheap to build a gas-fired plant, the fuel costs become more important as time goes on, even with the present gas surge. While it is expensive to build a nuclear plant, the fuel costs are low and the capacity factor high, so the longer it operates the cheaper it becomes. Similarly for wind and solar, expensive to build but no fuel means the longer they are operating the cheaper they become. On the other hand, the longer fossil fuel plants operate the more expensive they become because it is all about the fuel."

– James Conca, from Reference 1
2011 Life-Cycle Costs for Various Power Sources
Coal Gas Nuclear Wind Solar Hydro
4.1 5.2 3.5 4.3 7.7 3.3

Sources:

  1. The Naked Cost of Energy — Stripping Away Financing and Subsidies (James Conca, Forbes, 15 June 2012)
  2. Energy Subsidies (Chris Edwards, Downsizing the Federal Government, 15 December 2016)
  3. Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2016 (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 24 April 2018)
  4. Cost of electricity by source (Wikipedia, 8 June 2019)
  5. Energy Subsidies (Wikipedia, 17 June 2019)
  6. Solar electricity vs. fossil fuels: how do they compare? (Luke Richardson, EnergySage, 14 November 2018)
  7. Energy Subsidies (World Nuclear Association, February 2018)
  8. Subsidizing American Energy: A Breakdown By Source (Mary Hutzler, Institute for Energy Research, 30 July 2008)
  9. How effective are renewable energy subsidies? (Neil Schoenherr, WUSTL, 23 December 2013)
  10. Federal coal subsidies (Sourcewatch, 9 June 2019)
  11. ENERGY SOURCES: SUBSIDIES, EXTERNAL COSTS, PROS, and CONS (Solar Action Alliance, undated)
Errata for A Bright Future
Valid CSS! Valid HTML 4.01 Strict To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.
Copyright © 2019-2024 Christopher P. Winter. All rights reserved.
This page was last modified on 1 August 2024.