The Murky Future of Nuclear Power in the United States
I like to assess energy sources by the numbers, and by the numbers nuclear power is safe enough (<i>far</i> safer than continuing to burn fossils). By the numbers, new reactor builds are also slow and expensive, with the one notable exception of South Korea&#x27;s KEPCO. (China and Russia sometimes also get cited as examples of countries that can still do nuclear power &quot;right,&quot; but neither is particularly transparent with domestic projects nor particularly inexpensive&#x2F;quick with projects they offer to build abroad.) Ten years ago Japan and France looked like they did nuclear right also. Then Fukushima tanked the Japanese nuclear industry and the ongoing disaster of EPR construction took France off the list.<p>France&#x27;s fame as a country that did nuclear right is also a bit tainted by recent revelations of problems with component quality and forged quality control reports: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.powermag.com&#x2F;frances-nuclear-storm-many-power-plants-down-due-to-quality-concerns&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.powermag.com&#x2F;frances-nuclear-storm-many-power-pla...</a><p>I should probably also mention falsified nuclear documentation in South Korea that surfaced a few years ago, in fairness to France: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.world-nuclear-news.org&#x2F;RS-Indictments_for_South_Korea_forgery_scandal-1010137.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.world-nuclear-news.org&#x2F;RS-Indictments_for_South_K...</a><p><i>Maybe</i> small modular reactors will make nuclear power attractive again. Or <i>maybe</i> even big, expensive, slow reactors will seem relatively attractive some decades from now after national grids are already saturated with as much renewable electricity as they can reasonably use. (Though even that is subject to receding horizons if bulk electricity storage gets cheaper over time.) It&#x27;s really hard to see anything that will make nuclear power more competitive over the next 10 years in Japan, the Americas, Oceania, or Europe. (South Korea, China, and the Middle East and North Africa -- I expect to see continued if not particularly fast nuclear growth in these regions.)<p>I had thought that the AP1000 looked like a pretty incrmental, conservative, easy-to-build choice for new reactors. Builds are well behind schedule in both the US and China, and the costs are escalating too. My personal guess is that the 4 reactors now under construction in the US will not make the 2020 deadline to qualify for the new-reactor tax credits that have been available since 2005. My guess is also that all the institutions that got burned building these 4 will dissuade new US orders, so any lessons painfully learned on this first wave will not ease the construction of another wave of reactors; the lesson learned will just be &quot;don&#x27;t try to build reactors.&quot;<p>China&#x27;s leadership can plan for the long term because there are no electoral politics nor elections. The same goes for Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt where I also expect to see nuclear growth. In the heyday of France&#x27;s nuclear build-out, there was something similar offering stability: EDF was a state owned electricity monopoly for all of France, and didn&#x27;t have to worry about competition or the short term. Since the monopoly ended in 1999 France has only started building one new reactor, the disastrously late and over-budget Flamanville-3. With a monopoly I could imagine this being a painful lesson that nonetheless eases construction of more EPRs. Without a monopoly I think that this expensive education will be wasted, like the skills relearned from the current AP1000 projects will be wasted in the US.<p>Just add these nuclear industry woes to the very long list of reasons that the world is not on track to stabilize the climate with emissions cuts alone, and will need active carbon dioxide removal measures later this century or sometime in the 22nd, assuming that industrial civilization remains intact.