Nuclear logic is simple —and dead wrong
Editor’s Note: Neither national DSA nor California DSA has taken a position on nuclear power as a viable power source in the transition to a sustainable green economy. The following article is offered without endorsement. California Red welcomes alternative points of view.
2,000 people occupied the Seabrook construction site in 1977 to protest nuclear power and to demand development of renewable energy instead. Over 1400 were arrested.” PHOTO CREDIT: Eric Roth
The prospect of Climate Apocalypse has led some socialist and progressive icons to give nuclear power a fresh look. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won’t rule nukes out, Bill McKibben offers grudging support, and Oliver Stone is now a full-throated nuclear champion. Carbon emissions are frying the planet, therefore we need nuclear plants.
The logic is simple—and dead wrong. Building new nuclear plants cannot help solve the climate crisis, and would impede real solutions that are cheaper, safer and faster to deploy.
Nuclear plants cannot be built fast enough to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions. The only new nuclear reactors approaching commercial operation are Vogtle units 3 and 4, approved in Georgia in 2009. After long delays, these units should be fully on-line in 2024, producing about 1.2 gigawatts (GW) each. These units are the only survivors of George Bush’s nuclear initiative in 2005. Thirty other units were cancelled before construction even began.
Bill Gates and others are touting so-called small modular reactors (SMRs). A company called Nuscale has been working on a prototype since 2001. In 2008, NuScale said its first SMR would be online by 2016, but later pushed that date back to 2026. The Institute for Energy Economic and Financial Analysis now says NuScale’s SMR project “will not begin commercial operations before 2029, if ever.”
Nuclear plants are too expensive to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions. The two Vogtle units cost over $17 billion each. Likewise, SMRs are experiencing huge cost overruns, with one GW of power now expected to cost roughly $18 billion.
Wind and solar, which can be brought on-line quite quickly compared to nuclear plants, are already achieving large reductions in carbon emissions. The US added 13.4 GW of wind capacity in 2021, the equivalent of about a dozen conventional nuclear plants. Total US wind capacity reached 141 GW in 2022. To build wind turbines capable of generating two GW of power costs about $3 billion, roughly one-tenth the cost of generating two GW at the Vogtle nuclear plant.
The US added more than 13 GW of utility-scale solar capacity in 2021, added nearly 12 GW in 2022, and is on track to add another 29 GW in 2023. An analysis by Lazard, an asset management firm and the world’s largest independent investment bank, estimates the cost per kilowatt (KW) for utility-scale solar at less than $1,000. The comparable cost from the Vogtle nuclear plant is estimated at $10,300 per KW—ten times more expensive.
Wind and solar have lower operating costs than nuclear. The wind and sun are essentially free, so fuel costs are negligible. Nuclear fuel is expensive. Furthermore, most calculations of nuclear operating costs simply ignore the cost of nuclear meltdowns like those at Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. The cost of storing and guarding radioactive waste for thousands of years is also simply ignored.
The wind and sun are reliable sources of energy when combined with storage. The standard criticism of wind and solar power is that they are “intermittent.” But today, steady advances in batter storage technology are solving the intermittency problem. According to the US Energy Information Administration, battery storage capacity in the US is expected to reach 19 GW in 2023 and 30 GW by 2025.
Energy efficiency is a huge but mostly untapped resource. A watt of electricity saved is a watt that doesn’t have to be generated in the first place. Energy efficiency measures instituted from 1990-2016 saved more energy in 2016 than was produced by burning oil that same year. Most energy efficiency measures remain untapped, including huge savings from the integrative design of buildings, appliances, equipment, vehicles and industrial processes.
Some argue that nukes must be part of an “all of the above” strategy, as if there is an endless supply of money—and time—to throw at the carbon problem. But the fact is, we are running out of time. Diverting financial and human capital to nuclear construction drains resources from renewable technologies that are faster, cheaper and safer.
Renewable energy is driving a technological and social transformation that is already well underway. Salvation by nuclear power is a siren song that can only distract us from genuine solutions.