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US keeps nuclear going - for 80 or more years

‘We are not going to be able to achieve our climate goals if nuclear power plants shut down. We have to find ways to keep them operating,’ US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said before a House Appropriations subcommittee. She added that the Department of Energy ‘has not historically subsidized plants, but this is a moment to consider to make sure we keep the current fleet active.’

To that end, President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure deal included $6bn to establish a new Civil Nuclear Credit programme to help keep some of the existing reactor fleet of 93 reactors operating safely as long as technically possible. Owners or operators of commercial U.S. reactors can competitively apply for and bid on credits to help support their continued operations and avoid premature retirement due to financial hardship. Each credit will last for four years. Applicants must prove the reactor will close for economic reasons and demonstrate that closure will lead to a rise in emissions. They must ensure the unit is certified safe to operate and provide a detailed plan to sustain operation once the credit expires.

Dr. Kathryn Huff, from the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, noted that ‘12 reactors have retired since 2013 due to challenging market conditions, and an additional seven units are slated to shut down by 2025’. And, she said, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration ‘we will lose 16 GW of nuclear capacity by 2050. That’s roughly a quarter of the U.S. fleet and would negate all of the solar capacity installed in the U.S. this past year. That loss would be roughly three times greater if you consider nuclear’s high capacity factor, which operates at full power more than 92% of the time’. 

So, unless something was done, the nuclear contribution to US power supply, currently near 20%, would fall: only one new plant (Vogtle in Georgia) is being built, although some SMRs may yet emerge. Unless a lot of remedial/upgrade work is needed, life extension can be cheaper than new build. But there are huge safety issues with old plants and the cost of keeping plants going may further undermine their competiveness. So they need a subsidy to upgrade and survive- if only for 4 years.        

However, Huff was confident that they could go on longer. She said ‘decades of research have shown that a well-maintained reactor can operate 80 years or longer’ and the Department has reported that ‘to date, 20 reactors, representing more than a fifth of the nation’s fleet, are planning or intending to operate up to 80 years. More are expected to apply in the future as they get closer to the end of their operating licenses.’ 

She was very upbeat: ‘As our country shifts to a clean energy economy, these once at-risk reactors could soon be profitable again by using their heat & electricity to generate clean hydrogen, drive industrial processes, or even support a new fleet of electric vehicles. Their most impactful years may still be ahead of them as policies continue to prioritize a net-zero economy, and that will ultimately result in new jobs, better health, and more opportunities for American workers’. 

The US Union of Concerned Scientist, who have in the past been very critical of nuclear, has been arguably a little sanguine on this use. Somehow keeping old plants going was less worrying than building new ones. That is is debatable. You might argue that new plants would be safer, although both options have their problems.  UCS has depicted the profile of risk over the lifetime of a reactor as a ‘bathtub’ curve. New reactors start out as high-risk as they are ‘broken-in’. In the middle of their life, reactors should be in peak health where the risks are at their lowest. Then as reactors get older they enter a ‘wear-out’ phase with a high risk that components will fail. But the risks can be reduced if money is spent in the right way  and in some cases that might be money well spent in environmental terms, since otherwise recourse might be made to coal fired plants to fill the gap. That seems to be the slightly slippery argument in the 2018 UCS study the Nuclear Dilemma. 

The UCS report found that ‘more than one-third of US nuclear plants are unprofitable or scheduled to close’ and said that ‘without new policies, natural gas and coal will fill the void, possibly resulting in a 4 to 6 percent increase in US power sector emissions.’ Steve Clemmer, director of energy research for UCS, said ‘losing a low-carbon source of electricity like nuclear power is going to make decarbonisation even harder than it already is. Nuclear has risks, it’s not a perfect technology, but there have to be trade-offs.’ So UCS looked at the case for public subsidies to keep some going a bit longer. 

That idea was not well received. Philip Warburg a senior fellow at Boston University's Institute for Sustainable Energy said ‘Bailing out old, financially shaky nuclear plants is a short-sighted response to a huge challenge that requires much bigger, much more transformative thinking. Instead, we ought to invest big in our leading zero-carbon alternatives — solar and wind — which offer far cheaper electricity and, unlike nuclear,  have life-cycle costs that have steadily dropped over the past several years.’

Prof. M.V. Ramana, from the University of British Columbia, said, ‘the question in essence is how to deal with a dying source of electricity generation in the United States’. However, ‘the economic basis for subsidies is uncertain at best; more likely, it is flawed. Either way, it may be best to get onward with the transition from fossil fuels and nuclear power to renewables’. He did add though that ‘many others have demanded that states subsidize nuclear plants, and there is even a tool kit to help plant owners to continue profiting at public expense. It is the imposition of various requirements that distinguishes the UCS report from the rest of the chorus.’ 

Well, yes, the UCS report had concluded that other low carbon options were clearly preferable, but, when push came to shove, ‘policymakers considering temporary financial support to avoid the early closure of nuclear plants should couple that support with strong clean energy policies, efforts to limit rate increases to consumers, and rigorous safety, security, and performance requirements’.  And some of that seems to included in what we now have with the new policy- continued safety assurances are a requirement for life extension payments.  But there is still the issue- is that the best use for $6 billion?

As in most places, nuclear power is a divisive issue in the USA. A Gallup opinion poll in the US in 2016 found that 54% of respondents were opposed to nuclear energy, but that may be changing, with for example, Grist magazine reporting on what it saw as growing public support for nuclear and Time magazine recently coming out pro-nuclear on the basis of SMRs like Oklo’s micro reactor. Times really do change. Or do they? See my next post. 

 

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