{"id":7263,"date":"2013-12-26T15:50:05","date_gmt":"2013-12-26T20:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=7263"},"modified":"2013-12-26T15:53:21","modified_gmt":"2013-12-26T20:53:21","slug":"the-nuclear-renaissance-is-dead-somebody-tell-the-georgia-legislature-the-wind-is-blowing-towards-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/12\/the-nuclear-renaissance-is-dead-somebody-tell-the-georgia-legislature-the-wind-is-blowing-towards-the-sun.html","title":{"rendered":"The nuclear renaissance is dead: somebody tell the Georgia legislature the wind is blowing towards the sun"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSombody should tell Georgia Power and Southern Company\r\nthey’re still pushing a dead power source.\r\nIt’s time to go from far-too-expensive nuclear directly\r\nto solar onshore and wind offshore.\r\n

\r\nRemember in the last year or so\r\n\r\nfive U.S. nukes have been shut down and five more have been cancelled<\/a>\r\nwhile in Canada two more have been cancelled, plus maybe two more,\r\n\r\nand maybe as many as six are to be shut down<\/a>.\r\nDr Jim Green wrote for Ecologist yesterday,\r\n\r\nThe nuclear renaissance is stone cold dead<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nPerhaps the most shocking developments have been in the United\r\nStates, where the industry is finding it increasingly difficult to\r\nprofitably operate existing reactors—especially ageing\r\nreactors requiring refurbishments—let alone build new ones.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAlmost half of the world’s reactors have operated for 30 years or\r\nmore, so the problem of ageing reactors will increasingly come into\r\nfocus in coming years.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nPeter Bradford, a former member of the US Nuclear Regulatory\r\nCommission, notes that by 2009, applications for 31 new reactors in\r\nthe US were pending. “The 31 proposed reactors are down to four\r\nactually being built and a few others lingering on in search of a\r\nlicence, which is good for 20 years”, Bradford writes.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“Those four are hopelessly uneconomic but proceed because their\r\nstate legislatures have committed to finish them as long as a dollar\r\nremains to be taken from any electric customer’s pocket. Operating\r\nreactors are being closed as uneconomic for the first time in 15\r\nyears.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nTwo of those four are in South Carolina and the other two\r\nare Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle 3 and 4, eating up ever more\r\nratepayer dollars and resources that should be going to solar and wind.\r\n

\r\nEven nuclear proponents are catching on that nuclear is\r\n\r\nlike burning $20 bills to generate electricity<\/a>, in Bill McKibben’s phrase.\r\nOn the demand side,\r\n\r\nreplacing lighting with LEDs and smart controls could displace the entire\r\nU.S. nuclear fleet<\/a> at far less cost than building more nukes.\r\nOn the supply side,\r\n\r\nhttp:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/solar-and-wind-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-more-evidence.html”>\r\nevidences continues to mount that solar and wind are cheaper than\r\nany fossil fuel<\/a> and have been cheaper than nukes for some time now.\r\nOn top of\r\nplummetting solar prices there’s that\r\n\r\nfast solar learning curve<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nWhile the costs of renewables are falling—and in the case of\r\nsolar PV, plummeting—nuclear power is subject to a ‘negative\r\nlearning curve’. Economic boffins at Citigroup explain:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“The capital cost of nuclear build has actually risen in recent\r\ndecades in some developed markets, partly due to increased safety\r\nexpenditure, and due to smaller construction programmes (i.e. lower\r\neconomies of scale).\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“Moreover the ‘fixed cost’ nature of nuclear generation in\r\ncombination with its relatively high price (when back end\r\nliabilities are taken into account) also places the technology at a\r\nsignificant disadvantage; utilities are reluctant to enter into a\r\nvery long term (20+ years of operation, and decades of aftercare\r\nprovisioning) investment with almost no control over costs post\r\ncommissioning, with the uncertainty and rates of change currently\r\noccurring in the energy mix.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThat’s right:\r\nCiti GPS dismissed nuclear in a single page<\/a>\r\nof a hundred page report.\r\n

\r\nAnd nuclear corruption is not just for\r\n\r\ndocument-forging Doosan anymore<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nAcademic Richard Tanter noted that 2012 was a “busy year for nuclear\r\ncorruption”. The same could be said for 2013. South Korea is one of\r\nfour countries that is supposedly driving the nuclear renaissance\r\n(along with China, India and Russia).\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBut plans to expand nuclear power to 41% of electricity supply by\r\n2035 have been reduced to a 29% target in the wake of a major\r\nscandal involving bribery and faked safety certificates for\r\nthousands of reactor parts, and another scandal involving the\r\ncover-up of an accident that sent the temperature of a reactor core\r\nsoaring.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nOne hundred people have been arrested including a former chief\r\nexecutive of Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP), a vice president\r\nof Korea Electric Power Corp., and a former deputy minister in\r\ncharge of energy.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nIn September, the chief executive of KHNP issued a public apology,\r\nsaying “our domestic nuclear project is facing the utmost crisis”\r\nand noting that public trust has “hit the ground” because of the\r\nFukushima disaster and the corruption.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe proportion of South Koreans who consider nuclear power safe fell\r\nfrom 71% in 2010 to 35% in 2012, while a 2011 survey found 68%\r\nopposition to new reactors in South Korea (and 69% opposition across\r\n24 countries).\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThere’s a lot more in the article about Germany, Australia, and of course\r\nFukushima.\r\nThe writer’s conclusion:\r\n

\r\nThe nuclear renaissance is dead … stone cold dead.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThe Economist\r\n\r\nsaid that a year ago<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

\r\nWhat to do instead?\r\nAs Greenpeace pointed out in March 2012 in\r\n\r\nLessons Learned from Fukushima<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nMature, robust and affordable renewable energy technologies are\r\navailable and up to the task of replacing hazardous nuclear\r\nreactors. During the last five years, 22 times more new power\r\ngenerating capacity based on wind and solar was built (230,000MW)\r\ncompared to nuclear (10,600MW). Renewable power plants built in just\r\nthe one single year of 2011 are capable of generating as much\r\nelectricity as 16 large nuclear reactors.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd solar and wind are replacing nuclear even faster in the\r\nalmost two years since then.\r\n

\r\nSomebody should tell Southern Company and Georgia Power.\r\nAnd the Georgia legislature, which meets again in January,\r\nthat the wind is blowing towards the sun.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sombody should tell Georgia Power and Southern Company they’re still pushing a dead power source. It’s time to go from far-too-expensive nuclear directly to solar onshore and wind offshore. Remember in the last year or so five U.S. nukes have been shut down and five more have been cancelled while in Canada two more have […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,8,18,2,19,104,23,24,36],"tags":[8704,8701,8708,8699,8709,8702,12,7,8737,7349,8713,8714,108,6,8716],"class_list":["post-7263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-history","category-nuclear","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-wind","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-government","tag-history","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-nuclear","tag-nuclear-renaissance","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-southern-company","tag-valdosta","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1T9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7263"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7265,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7263\/revisions\/7265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}