Nuclear Nonsense from Sovacool and Cooper: Part II

The big message of anti-nuclear fanatics at the moment is the costs of new nuclear facilities. Sovacool & Cooper jump right in:

Nuclear plants are grotesquely capital intensive and expensive at almost all stages of the fuel cycle, especially construction, fuel reprocessing, waste storage, decommissioning, and R&D on new nuclear technology. These exceptionally high costs are connected, in part, to the history of nuclear power itself, as neither the United States nor France—two countries largely responsible for developing nuclear power—pursued nuclear power generators for their cost effectiveness.

Now current reactors produce electricity is at a very low cost. These arguments are usually quite superficial and do not engage in good faith efforts to compare nuclear costs with other with the cost of producing electricity from other post-carbon electrical sources. Indeed advocates of all renewable generation systems almost never discuss the current or future costs of those systems. Indeed they often ignore the current price of renewable facilities, and usually ignore the cost of redundancy and energy storage, as well the cost of building new grid extensions. For example California plans a

$3.3 billion initiative aiming to install 3,000 MW of new grid connected solar capacity over the following decaide

That means that for every 1000 MWs of solar generating capacity added to the California electrical system the state will be spending $1100 million. Renewables advocates often speak of a smart grid, without saying what a smart grid system will cost. While a smart grid will undoubtedly enhance the current grid system, it will not compensate for the limitations of renewables geneerating systems, and impliminting a smart grid system will carry substantial costs.

I have attempted at Nuclear Green to report on current renewables cost, with some systamatic attemptes to estimate the cost of building a reliable base power or a reliable peak power source given the cost of current renewable technology. I have also indicated that future costs arevery uncertain because of the sudden and drastic economic crash of 2008, a crash whose magnitued we are just now beginning to appreciate.

Sovaciool and Cooper offer us the following statement on nuclear costs:

New evidence suggests that the estimate of $2000 per installed kW reported by the industry is extremely conservative and woefully out of date. Researchers from the Keystone Center, a nonpartisan think tank, consulted with representatives from twenty-seven nuclear power companies and contractors, and concluded in June 2007 that the cost for building new reactors would be between $3600 and $4000 per installed kW, with interest.167 Projected operating costs for these plants would be remarkably expensive: 30¢/kWh for the first thirteen years until construction costs are paid followed by 18¢/kWh over the remaining life-time of the plant.168 Just a few months later, in October 2007, Moody’s Investor Service projected even higher operating costs, an assessment easily explained by the quickly escalating price of metals, forgings, other materials, and labor needed to construct reactors.169 They estimated total costs for new plants, including interest, at between $5000 and $6000 per installed kW.170 Florida Power & Light informed the Florida Public Service Commission in December 2007 that they estimated the cost for building two new nuclear units at Turkey Point in South Florida to be $8000 per installed kW, or a shocking $24 billion.171 Most recently, in early 2008, Progress Energy pegged its cost estimates for two new units in Florida to be about $14 billion plus an additional $3 billion for transmission and
distribution (“T&D”).172

Note that this discussion notes that overnigh costs in 2007 were estimated to run perhaps $4000 per kw of generating capacity. The assumption is that it would be outrageous to pay so muchy money for electrical generating capacity. But is it? Consider the cost of solar thermal power. In a small solar thermal facility under construction in Spain 2008 was reported by the Guardian to cost 80 Millions Euros, ($108 Million) and to produce a maximim of 20 MWs of power. Now it would take a facility that was 50 times larger to produce the same power output as a typical reactor. How much would it cost to produce reactror size outputs? If we uped the output of our solar facility to 1000 Million watts the resulting building cost would be $5.4 billion. If we tacked on the grid connection cost of $1.1 Billion, our costs now run runs to$6.5 billion. But such a facility would have a capacity factor of around .20 verses a capacity factor of .92 for the reactor. That means that the solar facility produces only 22% of the electricity the reactor does on an annual basis. In order to produce the same amount of electricity we will have to enlarge our solar field to 4 1/2 times times the size of the original facilityfacility and add some form of over night storage for the extra heat. This would cost somewhere between 20 and 25 billion dollars, and does not include the S1.1 billion extra for the grid hookup. Now that is grotesquely capital intensive.

We see that even without inflation that duplicating the power output with some solar thermal technologies will be far more expensive than nuclear. I as of yet have not written off all solar thermal technologies, but some are clearly extremely expensive, and likely to become for so if the 2002 to 2007 inflation in power generating facilities construction costs emerges again in a few years. It should be noted that no solar thermal technology has yet been proven to be cost competitive with nuclear on the basis of actual construction costs for actual rather than theoretical capacity. Nuclear facilities produce over 90% of their rated power over a year while solar facilities produce power, 18% to 22% of their rated power annually. Thus in order to produce as much power as a nuclear facility, the power gathering field has to be enlarged by at least a factor of 4, and expensive heat storage technology has to be added to the solar facility. Thus while solar technology is cheaper by rated capacity, but rated capacity is highly deceptive. Solar facilities only produce at rated capackty for a short period a day, and generate no electricity at all for most of the day. It is not cheaper if measured by actual power output to build solar facilities rather than reactors.

Sovacool & Cooper devote most of their discussion of cost to a discussion of cost over runs in reactor discussion, that is remarkably devoid of insight into the cause of those over runs. Reactor construction costs drop with serial production of reactors. Also the purchaser's familiarity with reactor construction is important. Finally, a large construction project like building a reactor, requires great managerial skills. In order to control shus a large and complex process, managers themselves need specialized training.

In fact, during the first nuclear era, relatively unskilled managers, were overwealmed with their assignments. No less that four reactor manufacturers vied for sales of evolving reactor designs. In many cases the detailed construction design was incomplete when the reactor construction began, and the design was revised during construction, requiring that completed parts of the facility already completed be torn down and rebuilt. After Three Mile Island, changing safety regulations required major design changes to facilities already under construction. Often this ment that much of the reactor and its facilities had to be torn down and rebuilt for a second time. Prolonging the construction project meant that interest was accruing without any revenue, thus money had to be borrowed to pay interest.

There are of course lessons from the experience that could be learned. Sovacool & Cooper who only talke the most superficial of looks learn none. But the French, the Japanese, and the South Koreans did. They used mature reactor designs, which already contained advanced safety features. Construction managers were well trained, and reactor construction projects were completed on time or sooner and at or under budget. thus contrary to Sovacool & Cooper the pattern of cost over runs appears to be be a localized problem in North America.

Is it possible then for American reactors be built on time and within their budgets? Certainly, but the reactor builders need to larn the lessons. One of the roles of scholars in studying the history of technology is to point out useful lessons to be learned. However, anti-nuclear fanatics like Sovacool & Cooper refuse to even consider the possibility that cost management lessons are available from the history they recite. Hidden in their argument is a profound contempt for history and the possibility that human practices can evolve and change as people face problems and overcome them.

Sovacool & Cooper commit a second intellectual failure, they ignore the construction cost inflation that occurred between 2002 and 2007. During that time, enoumous construction projects in Asia, drained huge amounts of resources from the construction industry, doubling the cost of energy related construction during those years. This effected not only the price of nuclear power plans, but also the price of coal fired power plants, and wind generators as well. Reactor construction cost estimates from 2008 usually assumed a continuation of the similar inflation patterns out to 2012, the earliest date which new reactor construction could begin in the United States. The same inflation pattern that was projected to effect the cost of nuclear construction would have undoubtedly effected the cost of solar and wind projects as well, and at least to the same degree. Thus the cost differential for unit of power produced between nuclear renewables would still hold.

However, the great economic crash of 2008 has already greatly impacted the pace of new construction world wide. The following chart illustrates the dramatic economic drop that occurred during the last year:

It would appear that the crash of 2008 will require sometime before complete recovery commences. It is not clear how long the period of negative or depressed economic growth will last, but one impact of any economic downturn as drastic as the one we just experienced, will be a lowering of the cost of all new electrical generating facilities, including the cost of reactors. I will not fault Sovacool & Cooper for their failure to notice this, since I made assumptions of continued cost inflation until recently.

Sovacool & Cooper point to factors such as "operational learning" which they describe as

a feature not well suited to rapidly changing technology . . .

But it is far from clear how much a factor "operational learning" will be in new reactor costs. Recent changes inb reactor technology are evolutionary rather revolutionary in nature. The Light water reactor is a mature technnology, that is not rapidly changing. Furthermore, new American reactors will be based on designs that will be built elsewhere first. Thus much of the cost of "operational learning" will be born by the Chinese, the Japanese, the Fins, and the French. Sovacool & Cooper also note

difficulty in standardizing new nuclear units

A problem which I already touched on, but that problem may well be a thing of the past. First Many power producers appear to be focusing on a relatively few designs. The Westinghouse AP-1000 is particularly attractive, and China has already standardized the Ap-1000 as its standard reactor design. Numerous American power producers are considering the AP-1000 and it is also under consideration in England.

Sovacool & Cooper also focus on the cost of fuel reprocessing. The principle economic argument against reprocessing nuclear fuel is that it is cheaper to mine new uranium, enrich it, and run it through a once through cycle, and then designate it nuclear waste. But in terms of power production cost, recycling nuclear fuel would add very little to final electrical costs. Sovacool & Cooper do not understand this. They assert,

Researchers have recently proposed a newer method of reprocessing called uranium extraction plus (“UREX+”), which keeps uranium and plutonium together in the fuel cycle to avoid separating out pure plutonium. This method, however, is both unproven and absurdly expensive. The DOE estimated in 1999 that it would cost $279 billion over a 118-year period to fully implement a reprocessing and recycling program for the existing inventory of U.S. spent fuel relying on UREX+.

Is $279 billion spread over 118 years absurdly expensive? We have an annual expense of 2,364,000,ooo a year which seems like a lot of money, but the total sum is less than what the United States paid for imported oil in 2007. But the energy return on the investment in nuclear fuel recycling would be many times higher than the energy return on dollars spent for imported oil. Further more dollars spent on recycling American nuclear fuel are not spent on imported fuel. Money spent on energy producing industrial process in the United States is money that is not lost to the American economy. Economic multipliers would come into play, further lowering the real economic cost of fuel reprocessing.

Reprocessing is also economically rational because it is cheaper and safer to recycle used nuclear fuel than to treat it as nuclear waste than to place it into long term storage. U-235 and plutonium found in nuclear fuel can used to fuel two types of Generation IV reactors, The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, and the Intrigel Fast Reactor. Contrary to Sovacool and Cooper's claim that

Generation IV reactors entailed much higher reprocessing and disposal costs compared to conventional recycling and fuel disposal . . .

the LFTR reprocesses fuel internally, and can be used as a means of disposing of nuclear waste from other reactors. In fact, as I note elsewhere on this blog, uranium and plutonium from nuclear waste can be used as a starter charge, for new LFTRs. Used this way, the cost of reprocessing "spent nuclear fuel", which Sovacool & Cooper also state to be $5 billion a year, would far more than pay for itself in terms of the energy reprocessing would return to the economy. This is one of the many instances in which the Sovacool & Cooper analysis goes completely astray by its failure to put the facts into context.

Sovacool & Cooper and make the cost of long term storage of "nuclear waste" an issue. i personally would regard the disposal of spent reactor fuel a tragedy, since 99% of the potential energy in uranium goes unused in reactors. Sovacool & Cooper, obcessed as they are in demonstrating their case against nuclear power at every turn fail to compare the cost and benefits of reprocessing with the cost and benefits of long term storage.

Sovacool & Cooper raise and misrepresent the question of nuclear decommissioning. First Sovacool & Cooper misinform us on the lifetime of nuclear plants:

Nuclear plants often have an operating
lifetime of forty years.Iin fact it is at least 60 years with another 20 opening up as a possibility. Thus the statement that

In most cases, the decommissioning process takes twice as long as the time the reactor is actually in use

is inaccurate no matter what its source. Their statement that reactor decommissioning

costs anywhere from $300 million to $5.6 billion.

reports fact but ignores that nuclear decommissioning costs are set asside during the 60 to 80 years that a reactor is operated, and thus does is already paid for when decommissioning begins. Paying decommission cost does not pose a serious burden on rate payers, because decommissioning costs are only a very tiny fraction of each cent paid for electricity. Sovacool & Cooper appear to feel uncomfortaboe withtheir cost od decommissioning in the united States, because they includ a discussion of the cost of decommissioning, for British zreactors, and a second discussion of the cost of decommissioning K-25 a World War II era, weapons related industrial facility in Oak Ridge.

Sovacool & Cooper also provide a wholly wrong headed analysis of nuclear research and development. Thus their assessment of Generation IV nuclear technology simply groups all generatiohn IV together as a group and characterized them. This is most unfortunate in the case of the LFTR because of its radical difference from other reactor technologies. Thus many things that Sovacool & Cooper say about GenerationIV Nuclear technology are not true of LFTR technology. This is especially hard to explain becaus Ben Sovacool is familiar with my blog, Nuclear Green afnd has commented on it on a number of occasions. Ben is also aware of Energy from Thorium, a blog that has what can only be described as a tremendous factual basis. Asside form category errors, Sovacool & Cooper offer the argument that sinceGenerationIV Reactors need to be researched before they aree built, they shouldnot be researched. Is there an explanation for this circular conclusion? yes, It is clear that Socacool & Cooper regard any reactor belonging to the generation IV reactor class as bab, bab, bad.

Finally we have the matter of subsidies. First I should note a distinction between the civilian nuclear industry and the civilian nuclear power industry. The Civilian nuclear Industry is a refers to all research conducted to on topics deemed to be of use to civilians. This might include everything form the peaceful uses of nuclear explosions, to the use of radioisotopes in medicine, the use of radiation to trigger genetic mutations in plants, the study of Carbon-14 inthe atmosphere, and many other research issues not directly baring on nuclear power. Secondly, it should be observed that many of the so called civilian research projects had secret military purposes. The distinction between civilian and military research was nearly as hard and fast as it would appear. For example the first civilian nuclear power plant, the Shippingport Reactor, was actually a Naval Reactor. During its history the Navy used the Shippingport reactor for expeeriments. The Navy exercized a great deal of controlover the USAEC during the 1950's, 60's and 70's. and many of what might appear to be civilian research decisions were actually made for military purposes. Thus for example the decision to research the liquid Metal Fast Breeder reactor rather than the safer and largely waste free molten salt reactor, appears to have been made with an eye to the production of plutonium for military purposes. Plutonium is a relatively unsatisfactory thermal reactor fuel, but PU-239 is a preferred weapons material.

Direct research in support of the civilian power industry has been quite small. The Federeal government spent about 5.8 billion dollars developing the civilian version of the light water reactor. This was the largest single subsidy which it provided the civilian nuclear power industry. A second significant subsidy will come into force during the next decade when the Federal government is committed to cosign loans worth 18 Billion Dollars for the Nuclear power industry. It is frequently argued that the Anderson-Price Act is a subsidy to the nuclear power industry. But in fact the the Anderson-Price Act indemnifies the nuclear Industry for at least$10 Billion in the event of a nuclear accident, and leaves open the possibility of an even higher bill to reactor owners, if the total recovery costs exceeds $10 Billion.

Unlike the renewables, the nuclear power industry does not get any tax breaks on its power production. Nor does federal government pay part of the capital costs of nuclear projects. Where then is the huge subsidy to the nuclear power industry that Sovacool & Cooper go on and on about. The huge nuclear subsidy is an urban myth perpetuated by anti nuclear fanatics. the truth is that high priced, low performance renewables can't cut it in the open market where nuclear is doing just fine. With out their subsidies renewable owners would simply fold their tents and slip into the night.

Nuclear Nonsense from Sovacool and Cooper: Part i

I have followed Ben Sovacool's escapades as an anti-nuclear scholar and/or pseudo-scholar for sometime, and recently noted an improvement in his scholarly discipline in a review on one of his recent papers. But alas the improvement may turn out to be a fluke. David Sella-Villa, the Editor-in-Chief of the William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review, has kindly provided me with a copy of Sovacool's most recent paper, “Nuclear Nonsense: Why Nuclear Power Is No Answer to Climate Change and the World’s Post-Kyoto Energy Challenges,” which Sovacool coauthored with Chris Cooper. The paper is long, but unfortunately contains numerous flaws that mare its conclusions. My usual approach in reviewing long books or long papers is to focus on a section or sections that contain material that I am most familiar with and examine how well the author or authors treated their subject. I also attend to rhetorical strategies including the selection and use of authority, and the selection of information.

Since I am familiar with some basic concept of nuclear safety I will first review the Sovacool & Cooper account of nuclear safety. i first searched the Sovacool & Cooper text for indications that they understood three basic nuclear safety concepts: Safety culture, defense in depth and passive safety. Neither term appears in their 119 page paper which devotes. Indeed most of the 11 page discussion of nuclear safety is devoted to accounts of two major nuclear accidents, the 1986 Chernobyl accident and the 1979 Three Mile Island. A final subsection on on Nuclear safety is titled, "Newer Reactors are the Riskiest". I will return to this astonishing assertion shortly. First I should note a difference between the treatment of the difference between the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents in nuclear safety literature, and the Sovacool & Cooper treatment of the accidents. In nuclear safety literature, for example the Presidential Report on the Three Mile Island accident, contributing factors are noted, and mitigation approaches are suggested. In the case of Chrynobyl, nuclear safety literature is harshly critical of Soviet Reactor design, and the lack of safety culture in the design and operation of Soviet reactors. Among problems noted in RBMK reactor design was a positive coefficient of reactivity, that it the tendency of the nuclear process to accelerate with rising reactor heat. Alvin Weinberg reported that danger of a positive coefficient of reactivity in similar reactors was known to the first generation of American reactor designers. The American NRC would not certify a civilian power with a positive coefficient of reactivity. A negative coefficient of reactivity is considered a highly desirable nuclear safety characteristic, because it tends to shut down reactors as they start to overheat without operator intervention. American Light Water Reactors are characterized by their negative coefficient of reactivity.

The RBMK lacked the outer defensive barriers that characterized Western Light Water Reactor. In the Chrynobyl accident. Thus even in the unlikely event that a LWR's massive pressure vessel were destroyed by a steam of hydrogen explosion, an even more massive containment dome still blocked the release of radioactive fission products. In contrast once the RBMK's positive coefficient of reactivity lead the reactor's power production top run away and it began to overheat a rapid build up of steam pressure inside the reactor collant system lead to a steam explosion. This explosion blew the top off the reactor which meant that all barriers to to the release of of radioactive fission products was removed. In RBMK lacked the outer defensive barriers that characterized Western Light Water Reactor.

Soviet reactor culture tended to disregard nuclear safety to a truly astonishing extent. Thus the RBMK reactor control design allowed operators to override safety features despite the evidence from the Three Mile Accident that operator error was a major factor in that accident. The choice of the Chrynobyl operators to override safety controls was also a reflection of the absence of safety cultures. it appears that the reactor operators were not fully aware of the dangers posed by the RBMKs' design flaws, and were not aware of the possible consequences of operating the reactor while disregarding its safety limits.

It is no wonder that subsequent reviews of the safety of Soviet RBMKs concluded that they were "accidents waiting to happen"

In contrast, the system of nuclear safety barriers in place in the Three Mile Island reactor prevented the escape of most of the radioactive fission products contained in the reactor. The fission products that did escape were biologically inactive gases, that were quickly diluted to the atmosphere and appeared to have dissipated without any detectable long term effects on the health of people who lived in the Three Mile Island area. Numerous safety flaws, and lax safety practices contributed to the the TMI accident, and any account of nuclear safety ought to note how lessons learned from Three Mile Island effected reactor design, NRC regulation of safety practices, and the actual safety culture of reactor operators.

Sovacool & Cooper fail to take any notice of safety lessons that might be learned from the two major accidents they mentioned, or the effect of those accidents on reactor design and safety practices. The the function of the Sovacool & Cooper account of Three Mile Island and Chrynobyl seems to be as material evidence in an argument that reactors break, not to provide insight into nuclear safety, its evolution and challenges. A further example of the Sovacool & Cooper reactors break approach is the long list of reactor accidents appended to the Sovacool & Cooper article. While I believe that that nuclear safety requires a careful and detailed study of reactor accidents Sovacool & Cooper simply list accidents without providing the detailed information that might give insight into accident causes, thus rendering their list useless as a source of information that would help improve nuclear safety.

Further issues emerge about data set used to compile the accident list. The listing of the Chernobyl accident indicates that there were 4056 dearths associated with the accident, but all accounts report about 57 deaths. Where did the extra 4000 deaths come from? After the accident, UNSCEAR reported that up to 4,000 additional of thyroid cancer might have been by radiation exposures associated with the accident. Thyroid cancer can be successfully treated in most treatment, with a 97% cure rate in children diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Thus Sovacool & Cooper appear to have made a very large and obvious error in reporting the fatalities of the Chernobyl accident, or to have deliberately padded their data.

Some of the accidents listed by Sovacool and Irwin are not reactor accidents at all. For example a March 6, 2006 accident in Erwin, Tennessee did not involve a reactor. Other accidents in nuclear facilities, for example the July 18, 2007 leak of tritium laced water from the Japanese Kariwa reactor, did not involve any damage to the actual reactor.

A further flaw in the list would be the failure to report Soviet reactor accidents. For example, it is known that there were a large number of Soviet submarine reactor accidents. A comparison of the safety cultures of the Soviet Navy and the American Navies might yield interesting data if linked to accident histories. But tis is impossible of Soviet Naval reactor accidents are ignored.

This nor brings us to the most astonishing aspect of the Sovacool & Cooper account of nuclear safety, their assertion that

Newer Reactors are the Riskiest.

They add:

Unfortunately, safety risks such as those at Chernobyl and Three
Mile Island are only amplified with new generations of nuclear systems.

This is the topic sentence of a paragraph that continues:

Nuclear engineer David Lochbaum has noted that almost all serious nu- clear accidents occurred with recent technology, making newer systems the riskiest.500 In 1959, the Sodium Research Experiment reactor in California experienced a partial meltdown fourteen months after opening.501 In 1961, the Sl-1 Reactor in Idaho was slightly more than two years old before a fatal accident killed everyone at the site.502 The Fermi Unit 1 reactor began commercial operation in August 1966, but had a partial meltdown only two months after opening.503 The St. Laurent des Eaux A1 Reactor in France started in June 1969, but an online refueling machine malfunctioned and melted 400 pounds of fuel four months later.504 The Browns Ferry Unit 1 reactor in Alabama began commercial operation in August 1974 but experienced a fire severely damaging control equipment six months later.505 Three Mile Island Unit 2 began commercial operation in December 1978 but had a partial meltdown three months after it started.506 Chernobyl Unit 4 started up in August 1984, and suffered the worst nuclear disaster in history on April 26, 1986 before the two-year anniversary of its operation.507

Thus Sovacool & Cooper attempt to prove the risk of post-Chernobyl reactors by citing the Chernobyl and pre-Chernobyl accidents. This is a notable lapse of logic, that might be described as down right crazy.

The rest of the argument shifts rather aimlessly between discussing rather vague dangers associated with clustering reactors on a limited number of sites. Sovacool & Cooper appear to believe that nuclear accidents can be contagious, jumping from reactor to reactor on a single site. They worry about all Generation IV technology because one type of Generation IV reactor uses liquid sodium as coolant. They worry about future qualified reactor staff persons, failing to note that at least 25 American Universities and Colleges have degree programs that would qualify graduates to serve as reactor operators, and the United States Navy trains a large number of officers and enlisted personnel in reactor operations every year. Even if these problematic facts were true, how much support do the lend to the assertion that "newer reactors are riskier?" The answer is absolutely none, The passive safety features of Generation III+ reactors make them almost meltdown proof even were they to be staffed by poorly trained operators.

Thus the Sovacool & Cooper discussion of nuclear safety, far from offering us insights into nuclear safety issues, simply resort to an absurdly illogical parody of scholarship. They indeed offer us nuclear nonsense on nuclear safety.