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Growing up, I lived 12 miles away from Indian Point Energy center, a nuclear power plant
that supplies one quarter of New York City’s energy, which is a massive amount of power
when you consider that over 10 million people live in the city and its metropolitan area.
But despite the plant’s huge energy output, residents constantly worried about pollution
and safety surrounding the 57 year old power plant. My mom would often lay out an emergency
escape for me and my siblings in case Indian Point failed and there was a disaster on par
with Chernobyl, Fukushima, or Three Mile Island. These three disasters have persisted as spectres
in the imaginations of the world, including many New Yorkers, and as a result, have led
to a backlash big enough to decommission the Indian Point Nuclear center for good in 2021.
But considering that this nuclear power plant has provided ¼ of all of New York City’s
energy for over fifty years, is this actually good thing? What I really want to know is
what role does nuclear power play in a full transition away from fossil fuels and towards
a zero-carbon future?
As I came to realize while researching this video, the debate behind nuclear power is
complicated, and in order to really analyze the value of nuclear power as an energy source,
it’s important to look at emissions, waste, cost, and safety.
Let’s start with emissions, which are a huge factor when trying to understand whether
nuclear power is a serious option for mitigating climate change. Many proponents of nuclear
point to the lack of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants as a major reason to increase
nuclear energy production. While this is true for the actual nuclear fission process that
creates energy, the processes surrounding nuclear, like uranium mining and refining,
demand emissions. A life cycle assessment of various fuels conducted by the IPCC reveals
that the average greenhouse gas emissions of nuclear power production is relatively
the same as renewable counterparts. But, when compared to natural gas and coal, nuclear
emissions are drastically lower. So as an alternative to gas and coal, nuclear power
is certainly less emissions heavy, and could be a viable low-carbon energy option.
But waste also comes hand in hand with emissions. This is big sticking point for the anti-nuclear
movement, and rightfully so. No one has really implemented a viable long term solution for
nuclear waste storage. There are currently three main options right now: onsite storage,
long term deep storage, or reprocessing fuel for use in other nuclear energy plants. Reprocessing
spent fuel sounds like a perfect solution, but it’s not. According to the Union of
Concerned Scientists, one consequence of reprocessing spent fuel could be the proliferation of nuclear
weapons. The by-product of this recycling process is more plutonium, which can be easily
used to build weapons. In addition, only a little bit of the reprocessed waste can be
used again, and you’re still left with a host of other radioactive materials. And on
top of all of that, recycling this waste has a substantial cost tied to it. So, ultimately,
the only answer right now to our current nuclear waste is long-term storage. Unfortunately,
the only country that is currently setting up a facility is Finland. The rest just stockpile
their waste onsite, with no options or outlooks for long term storage.
The other two main elements that really hold back nuclear are cost and safety. Combined,
the drawbacks of these make nuclear an infeasible solution to a swift decarbonization of our
global electrical grid. “The cost of nuclear power is extremely prohibitive and it's very
slow to build.” That’s Arjendu Pattanayak, a professor in the Carleton College physics
department, who teaches a class on sustainable energy policy. And this cost is in the range
of an average cost of $9 billion per plant in the U.S., with the possibility of the plant
taking up to “I don't think $30 billion in 30 years is an unusual number to hear for
a single plant.” With that kind of price tag, nuclear energy production becomes almost
twice that of other fuels, all while needing someone with deep pockets to finance the whole
operation. Once a nuclear power plant is built, the energy may seem low cost in part due to
the small amount of physical fuel needed to be shipped to the plant, but the actual construction
and decommission costs of these plants are huge financial burdens, especially when you
consider that they often run over budget and way past schedule. At this point, you might
be thinking, “Hey, but what about a country like France?! Doesn’t it support 75% of
its energy consumption with nuclear power, and hasn’t done so for many years.” Unfortunately,
France is an outlier, not the norm. Partly, this is due to France’s strong nuclear initiatives
and top-down political approach: “France is top-down political system...the bureaucrats
called their friends and said what should we do? And they said let’s go nuclear, and
they said 'okay' and they just kept on going.” In the U.S. and other countries lacking clear
plans for nuclear power, however, the opportunity to use Nuclear as a transitional fuel to solar
and wind has passed. "It would take so much momentum that doesn't seem to exist for nuclear
power to have legs." Indeed, if we are trying to rapidly decarbonize an energy grid like
the U.S.’s within the next 10-30 years, Nuclear power just isn’t the answer in terms
of cost and time.
Part of the prohibitively slow and expensive nature of Nuclear comes from safety concerns,
which when you look at death tolls, seem to be more a product of the public perception
than an actual occurrence. "Nuclear power per capita is actually the least harmful."
According to a tally accumulated by Forbes, deaths caused by nuclear energy are much less
when compared to coal, natural gas, or even wind and solar. But, this low death rate could
be due in part to the heavy safety regulations put on nuclear power plants, already.
Ultimately, Nuclear power is a contentious source of energy. As a result of both the
public imagination and the complexity of its system, nuclear requires a large chunk of
initial capital and time to become a feasible source of “clean” fuel. A fact which professor
Pattanayak agrees with, “I personally don’t see nuclear roaring back.” A transition
away from fossil fuels will definitely involve current nuclear power plants, but renewables
like solar and wind have nowhere near reached their potential, especially once we’ve sorted
out battery storage. Not only are renewables cheap compared to nuclear, but they can also
be produced quickly and spread widely across the globe in a decentralized fashion. While
nuclear does have the benefit of a massive power output, it is a slow and cumbersome
beast. If we are to swiftly and effectively transition away from a fossil fuel reliant
energy grid, we have to explore other energy options.
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