Conscious Choice: Renewable Versus Nuclear Debate

August 2005

Renewable Versus Nuclear Debate

By Robbie Harris

Decades after the last nuclear power plant was built in the U.S., nuclear energy is once again being promoted as a ready to go, stop-gap to global warming.

Nuclear advocates contend that since the clock is ticking on fossil fuels, in terms of both supply and emissions, there isn’t the time nor the technology to make renewable energy a viable alternative.

But the technology has been quietly growing and improving over the last 40 years. Now more than a million households generate their own electricity with no emissions. Businesses and governments are getting into the game. Utilities and even Wall Street are giving their blessing.

People who use energy from the sun or wind to power their houses or businesses will tell you, it’s real and it’s fabulous. But without the level of subsidies that go to conventional energy sources, it’s still relatively expensive to install. That’s the rub, because once it’s in place, it produces virtually free energy. What’s missing, renewable energy advocates say, are economies of scale and subsidies for start-up costs.

There are plenty of subsidies planned for the nuclear power industry, and more are in the works. According to a plan by the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, 50 nuclear plants would be built in the U.S. between 2010 and 2020.

Supporters are calling it a “nuclear renaissance.”

But others such as Alfred Meyer, executive director of the Madison Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, call it a “nuclear relapse.”

Meyer acknowledged that no greenhouse gases are emitted by nuclear plants in operation, but he pointed out, there are plenty of emissions in every other phase of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining and refining, to transport and storage of spent fuel. Insurance costs alone, he says, make nuclear a bad economic choice. Yet what most worries Meyer about this renewed embrace of nuclear energy is the highly toxic nature of both the process and the waste it leaves behind.

Meyer spent two weeks in Chernobyl last June with “Friends of Chernobyl U.S.” (www.focc.us.org), a group formed to deal with the psychological, health and economic impact of the disaster at the nuclear plant there in 1986.

Meyer said he was devastated by what he saw. He doesn’t buy assurances that the same thing couldn’t happen here.

“Air quality and global warming is of course important,” said Meyer. “But why take these risks if there are alternatives?”

The move toward nuclear energy is downright “crazy” when such clean, elegant solutions exist already and have been in use for decades, according to Joe Schwartz, CEO and technical editor of Home Power Magazine, a bi-monthly based in Ashland, Ore.

“Solar electric panels have no moving parts, they make electricity with no noise, no emissions,” said Schwartz. “In two to four years they recoup all the energy it took to make them.”

While solar power is still relatively expensive when compared to current average prices for electricity, wind power is becoming one of the least expensive forms of energy in the world.

At an average 5 cents per kilowatt hour, it’s competitive with conventional energy, with none of the price volatility and few external costs such as environmental clean-up.

Like solar power, wind power is relatively fast and easy to install. In Illinois, the Mendota Hills Wind Farm, about an hour west of Chicago, was built in less than six months. More are quickly going up all over the Midwest including a larger wind farm in Bloomington, Ill. that will generate 400 megawatts.

But the numbers don’t add up for John Rowe, chairman and CEO of Exelon Corporation, the parent company of Commonwealth Edison, headquartered in Chicago.

“If you’re looking for the free lunch in energy production you’ll get very hungry,” Rowe said. “To me the issue is always how do we make energy in a more acceptable way without imposing unacceptable costs on our customers … We don’t build power plants because we love them, but because we ned them to keep their lights on.”

He added that Exelon will be “mixing some wind in with the existing base of coal and nuclear and gas … [and] we can do that with reasonable economics. But we can’t bet the whole supply on greener sources, that won’t make an economic mix.”

Shwartz said he thinks that is the best possible approach.

“Renewable energy is part of the solution. We need to be realistic with our goals but we want to swing for the fence,” he said. “Even if we sold every solar panel that exists we right now we won’t replace a nuke plant, but over 20 years if production stepped up, you bet we could get rid of those plants.”

Shwartz pointed out that when energy is created 40 feet from where it is needed the process saves money by being more energy efficient.

Line losses average about seven percent nationwide, however, total energy losses in the production of electricity are about 75 percent, according to Randy Udall, Director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency (CORE), a non-profit organization in western Colorado. “A typical power plant in this country only converts 33 percent of the energy in its fuel into electricity,” said Udall. “So, we immediately lose about 66 percent of the available energy; that plus the line losses gets us to your 75 percent figure. So it is true to say that energy losses, including line losses, are about 75 percent in the production of electricity. “Some of the newer combined cycle natural gas power plants, it is true, convert 50 percent or a bit more of the energy in the gas into electricity. But the average plant, including all the coal plants, in the U.S. is around 33 percent efficient.”

Robbie Harris is co-founder of “Lucid Dream Productions.”

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