The State of Nuclear Energy
Once lauded as the future of green energy, the prominence of nuclear power has declined steadily over the past half-century. The U.S. now operates 93 reactors—down from 104 in 2013. Germany, under continuous pressure from its grassroots Green Party, decommissioned its last plant in 2023. With a looming climate crisis creating record high demand for cleaner energy, why are developed nations still committed to this decades-long shift away from nuclear energy, and is it time to make a return?
Policy
U.S. public attitudes towards nuclear energy have suffered tremendously due to past catastrophes. At the mention of "nuclear energy," Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima quickly come to mind.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) sets its largest radius of exposure in the case of a nuclear emergency at 50 miles.
This radius would place 20 million New Yorkers in harm's way should an accident ever befall Indian Point Energy Center (IPEC)—the state's premier nuclear plant which once provided New York City with a quarter of its power. In 2021, after decades of activism calling for the decommission of the plant, I.P.E.C. retired its third and final reactor. Activists insisted that the plant was polluting the river; that facilities were falling into disrepair; that it posed a possible target for large-scale terrorist attacks; and that its water intake system was grinding up over a billion fish and fish larvae each year.
These claims, although contested, are nonetheless relatively well-founded in data. But the motivations that ultimately mobilized millions to shutter IPEC were fears of catastrophe. Nuclear advocates are quick to mention that when risk to life is measured in deaths per unit of electricity produced (e.g. TWh), nuclear energy is safer than wind, 43 times safer than hydropower, 94 times safer than gas, and orders of magnitude safer than coal. But be they mishaps in mines and supply chains or the ever-present collective health costs of air pollution, distal causes and avoidable casualties are not as motivating to voters as the threat of sudden nuclear meltdown. The tragedy of this policy is seeing supposed environmentalists take low-emission plants off the grid—only for fossil fuels to pick up the multi-megavolt slack; a strict, persistent net decline in renewables is observed after retiring most plants worldwide.
Perhaps more determinative than public pressure, required facility modernizations (earthquake protection, closed-cycle cooling) can be too costly. In 2025, when its 40-year license expires, a public, profit-seeking company will be retiring Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP), California's single active nuclear plant. The plant produces 15% of California's green electricity and is crucial in meeting the state's emission targets this decade.
Economics
DCPP is not alone. More than a third of existing U.S. plants are unprofitable, and this is in part due to the time and cost that must be sunk into building one. With construction times at least twice as long and costs many times that of conventional plants, it often takes decades for lenders to see a return on their investment (including interest). All else held equal, it is rarely in politicians' interest to approve funding for such long-term strategies, since shorter terms incentivize plans that are fruitful before re-election.
For perspective, Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) estimates the price a plant must charge for its energy to recoup sunk costs over its expected lifetime. The takeaway: other renewables have dropped in price precipitously while nuclear has only grown more costly, in large part due to aforementioned safety policies.
The Future
To overcome the reputation of systems past, future reactors must be made abundantly safe and many times more affordable. Some potential areas of forward growth follow:
Recycling nuclear waste, which was first explored in the 1950s, remains a novel solution to the growing nuclear waste problem. Due to the possibility of extracting Plutonium from the process, the technology was dealt a brief but fatal blow by President Carter’s antiproliferation plans. Though no longer banned, nuclear waste recycling is a less attractive prospect to businesses than the planet’s naturally-abundant uranium deposits.
Both molten salt reactors and small modular reactors (SMRs) can passively regulate their temperatures and are therefore significantly less likely to meltdown. Both are plausibly mass-producible and promise lower costs, though they've yet to prove commercial viability as of 2024.
Co-opting old coal plant transmission lines, switchyards, and basic infrastructure for use by new nuclear reactors could shrink construction costs by 15-35%.
It is uncertain whether new, safer designs can curb nuclear skepticism before ever-cheapening renewables corner the market. But as we race to meet emission targets, Germany and the United States may once again come to recognize nuclear energy as the bedrock of green power. Should we take the risk?
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