Fukushima USA

When I'm not busy being an environmental activist and an unrepentant liberal,I actually attempt to have a life, which I must admit is a whole lot easier to do since I retired out here on the central coast.  Last weekend I was out at one of my favorite wineries, Sculpterra, listening to music from my friend Steve Key, a local music promoter, performer and songwriter who performed a new song which was so completely perfect for what I wanted to write about that I requested and got his permission to include his lyrics in this post.

The song is called Fukushima USA and you can hear him perform it on his Web site by clicking on this link. In the song Steve is referring to the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California which is located not only right on top of a geological fault line, but just 20 miles from the city of San Luis Obisop, here in the wine country.  Here's a bit of the lyrics:

Local wines by the bottle or taste
Pools filled up with nuclear waste
Nowhere to send it, so it’s here to stay In Fukushima USA
The sunshine and the skies so clear
How could anything bad happen here?
That’s what the Japanese used to say Now it’s Fukushima USA

They had reactors built by GE
All the latest technology
A nineteen foot high seawall
Wasn’t much protection at all

But don’t think about that distant land
Things are safer here than in Japan
Relax and sip a little chardonnay
In Fukushima USA

At a time when the rest of the more or less sane world is running away from nuclear power like it was, well radioactive, the United States appears headed in the opposite direction. Last week the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) voted 4-1 to allow Atlanta-based Southern Company to build two new nuclear power reactors at its existing Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia. This represents the first approval of a new nuclear power plant in the U.S. in over 30 years.

The one silver lining in the vote was that it was the Chairman of the NRC,Gregory Jaczko , who cast the dissenting vote.  Jaczko said "I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima never happened. I believe it requires some type of binding commitment that the Fukushima enhancements that are currently projected and currently planned to be made would be made before the operation of the facility." Sounds like common sense to me, too bad the rest of the commission didn't show any.

The timing of this announcement also strikes me as completely out of step.  The Obama administation has just gone through a year of getting beat up about providing loan guarantees to Solyndra, a solar energy company.  And so just when they are being scrutinized about the economics of their energy policy they approve the first nuclear plant in 30 years.  Good gracious, nuclear plants are practically the poster children for cost overruns! They are guaranteed to cost the public exorbitant amounts of money even if there isn't a nuclear accident.  (And by the way nuclear accidents are not exactly cheap. Experts estimate the Fukushima accident will end up costing Japan over $257 billion dollars!).

If you want to see proof of this you need to look no further than this handy little table provided by the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO). It shows a chart of the cost overruns at nuclear plants to date. The data is not pretty!

Cost Overruns for Nuclear Plants

Year Begun	Number of Plants	Projected Costs(thousands per MW)	Actual Costs (thousands per MW)	Cost Overrun %
1966 to 1967	11	612	1,279	109%
1968 to 1969	26	741	2,180	194%
1970 to 1971	12	829	2,889	248%
1972 to 1973	7	1,220	3,882	218%
1974 to 1975	14	1,263	4,817	281%
1976 to 1977	5	1,630	4,377	169%
Overall Average	13	938	2,959	207%

There is a reason we stopped building nuclear plants and it wasn't the one most people think. It wasn't 3 Mile Island, or nuclear waste disposal, or nuclear accidents, it was the fact that nuclear energy plants proved to be ridiculously expensive. So here we are in the middle of the worst recession since the great depression, at a time when wind and solar energy have never been cheaper, and our government wants to support the development of more nuclear plants?

We have often been very supportive at EB of the progressive energy policies of the Obama administration, but on this one they just got it wrong, very wrong! Nuclear energy is too expensive and we still have no solution on how to handle nuclear waste! Moreover, there should be a complete moratorium on nuclear plants until we fully understand the implications from Fukushima. Now is not the time to build Fukushima USA!

True Costs

The last twelve months have been a critical and hopefully enlightening period in the energy world. It has been a period when the true costs of our current energy policies became abundantly clear. Let's take a quick look back at three events that occurred in the last 12 months which should impact our thinking about energy policy:

The Gulf Oil Spill

On April 20th in 2010 the BP oil platform called Deepwater Horizon which was drilling a well at about 5000 feet under the water erupted in a huge explosion which killed 11 men and seriously injured 17 others. Within a couple of days the well platform had melted and collapsed into the ocean. However, a piece of equipment called a blowout preventer which was supposed to cut off the oil flow in the event of a catastrophe such as this failed to work and oil began to spew from the wellhead. The preventer had never been tested at these depths.

For weeks, then months, the world was transfixed by videos showing oil pouring from the wellhead into the ocean. The amount of oil leaking from the well became a topic of much contraversy with BP, for obvious reasons, radically underestimating the true amount of the spill. At a minimum, according to the Department of Energy, the well was probably leaking around 2,600,000 gallons of oil per day and this went on from April until July 15th when the well was finally capped. The spill devastated the gulf fishing industry and covered more than 320 miles of coastline with oil slicks and tar balls. The cost of this spill is impossible to determine. To BP alone the combination of payouts, law suits and stock leases is estimated to be over $50 billion dollars. The impact on gulf fishing and tourism is estimated to be at least $4 to 10 billion dollars. Its hard to put a price tag on the ecological impact of the spill but millions of plants and animals were killed and hundreds of miles of coastline massively impacted.

San Bruno Pipeline Explosion

The 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion occurred at 6:11 p.m. PDT on September 9, 2010, in San Bruno, California, a suburb of San Francisco. The accident occurred when a 30inch diameter steel natural gas pipeline owned by Pacific Gas & Electric exploded in flames in the Crestmoor residential neighborhood 2 mi (3.2 km) west of San Francisco International Airport near Skyline Boulevard and San Bruno Avenue. The death toll was eight people. It took more than 200 fire fighters to bring the fire under control. The ensuing fire destroyed more than 38 homes and seriously damaged many others. The fire damage was estimated at in excess of $38 million dollars. PG&E will probably be in court for years to come with law suits.

The Fukishima Nuclear Accident
On March 11, 2011 a devastating earthquake struck northern Japan followed by an even more devastating tsunami. The combination of the two caused massive failures at several of Japan's nuclear plants, particularly the coastal Fukushima nuclear plant. As of this writing four of the plant's nuclear reactors have experienced significant damage. At this time reactor number #3 is leaking significant amounts of highly radioactive water into the ocean and into the atmosphere. The radioactivity has already impacted food supplies in the region and has the potential to spread to huge populations in Tokyo. The Japanese nuclear program is one of the most well established in the world. The plants were built with a knowledge that earthquakes are frequent in the area and Japanese nuclear experts said the plants were built with multiple backup systems and could withstand anything nature could throw at it. The nuclear experts were wrong!

Considering True Costs

At Energy Bible we are constantly working to find accurate data which will allow consumers to make intelligent decisions about energy policy. It is often a frustrating process. Nearly all the data comes from some type of energy lobby and is designed to show that their form of energy, whether it be oil, gas, nuclear energy, solar energy, wind energy, etc. is the cheapest. Probably the most accurate data comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration which has some good charts comparing different types of fuel for home heating, but the data is still pretty limited in scope.

The challenge is that understanding the real costs of energy alternatives is not simply a matter of looking at fuel pricing charts and traditional cost comparisons. Even the best government or industry data on energy costs doesn't begin to scratch the surface of the true costs of our addiction to non-renewable forms of energy. One of the images that has stuck in my mind from the recent nuclear disaster in Japan is from an interview NBC news did of a woman pouring through the rubble of what used to be her home town in Japan. The interviewer asked her what she was most afraid of, and despite the fact she was sitting in the midst of immense devastation, her fear wasn't another earthquake, it wasn't another tsunami, it was the fear of the unseen radiation coming from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

How do we put a price on that kind of fear? How do we put a price on the millions of plants and animals destroyed in the BP oil spill? How do we put a price on the fear of millions of homeowners in California who live near a PG&E gas line? I really have no idea but it seems to me we have to try. We have to find some way to take these things into account when we make practical decisions on energy policy both locally and nationally. We have to look at the true costs of continuing our current dependence on non-renewable energy!

The Real Problem with Nuclear Energy

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision which struck down the existing laws limiting contributions from corporations is bound to have some immediate impact. Look for lots of campaign commercials from the Nuclear lobby promoting your friendly neighborhood nuclear power plant (along with continuing absurd commercials about the mythical "clean coal"). The doors are now wide open for big corporate energy interests to campaign and we doubt that they will waste any time beating down our virtual doors. However, it is my fervent hope that the public will think twice about buying the pitch for more nuclear plants. Increasing our use of nuclear energy would be very bad policy, though not necessarily for the reason most citizens think.

When most people think about nuclear energy the first thoughts that come to mind probably have something to do with Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, or other glow-in-the-dark scenarios. Nuclear waste also frequently rears its head as a concern given that nuclear waste is dangerous for thousands of years. However, it may be that the biggest thing we should be worrying about (though it doesn't make for a good movie of the week) is the whooshing sound of dollars leaving our wallet, because when looked at carefully it quickly becomes clear that nuclear power plants are just too darn expensive.

An excellent explanation of this provided yesterday by Elliott Negin, the media director for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. in an article that appeared recently on the GreenTechMedia web site. Negrin points out that there have been no new nuclear plants built by utility companies since 1973. The energy companies don't want them because they know how expensive they are. A bit of history is in order. As Negin points out "In the 1960s and 1970s, the industry proposed to build some 200 plants, but as construction costs escalated, only about half were finished. Taxpayers and ratepayers were left footing the bill -- about $300 billion in today's dollars -- for abandoned plants, cost overruns for completed plants, and stranded investments that were higher than the wholesale market price for power. "

The Nuclear lobby has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to approve the building of 26 new nuclear power plants. The cost of these plants would be extraordinary, probably in the range of $7-9 billion dollars apiece. What makes this a bigger concern is that the nuclear power companies are asking for taxpayers to finance these risky investments despite the fact that prior investments led to hundreds of billions of dollars of loss. The Nuclear Energy Institute, which is the lobbying arm for the nuclear industry has petitioned the commission to provide over $100 billion in loan guarantees so they can build the nuclear plants. Folks, this is not chump change. We are talking Iraq war kind of dollars here. Moreover, we are looking at loan guarantees that the nuclear companies could very easily default on. The GAO, the Government Accountability Office estimates that the risk of the nuclear companies defaulting on these loans is at least 50%. I can't imagine any business guaranteeing loans with a 10% risk, much less 50% risk. This is just bad business!

The argument put forward by the nuclear industry is, of course, that the demand for electricity is growing and nuclear plants do not contribute to global warming. Both arguments are true, but what they are not telling us is that there are far better alternatives for getting the renewable energy we need, lots of alternatives.

Let's start with solar energy, for example. As of January 2010 solar has rapidly emerged as an increasingly competitive way of generating commercial electricity. The current cost of a kilowatt-hour of solar energy is hovering around 19 cents per kilowatt hour which is still a bit above nuclear energy costs. However, the cost of photovoltaic panels has dropped by half in 2009 while at the same time the efficiency of the panels went up. Once commercial electric plants begin incorporating these cheaper panels most experts believe PV electricity costs will drop to around 9-11 cents per kilowatt hour which would make them very competitive if not cheaper than electricity from nuclear power plants.

Solar energy can also be generated using solar heat, particularly if the plant is built somewhere in the southwest US where temperatures are high. Solar thermal plants have become far more efficient as the technology becomes refined. There are many solar thermal plants in development that rival nuclear plants in scale. Many of these plants will also address one limitation of solar energy which is its intermittent nature. Recent breakthroughs in the storage of solar thermal energy using molten salt now allow the solar thermal energy to be stored overnight so that the plants can generate energy 24 hours per. This will make them even more viable alternatives to nuclear power plants.

Wind energy is yet another alternative to nuclear power. Large utility scale wind turbines are being manufactured in increasing numbers and as a result are becoming bigger and more cost effective. Over the last 20 years, the cost of electricity from utility-scale wind systems has dropped by more than 80%. In the early 1980s, when the first utility-scale turbines were installed, wind-generated electricity cost as much as 30 cents per kilowatt-hour. Modern wind farms are now producing energy at closer to 4-6cents per kilowatt-hour when you account for the Production Tax Credit. In turn most nuclear power plants are producing energy at somewhere between 11-14 cents per kilowatt-hour when you account for the cost of storing depleted nuclear fuel. Wind farms produce electricity at far less cost and do this without generating any carbon emissions, no radiation risks and without the long-term problem of disposing of nuclear waste. When you look at the whole picture wind energy becomes a no brainer!

Despite these economic hard times are choices for generating cleaner and less expensive energy have never been better. That makes it all the more important that we choose wisely. Give it some thought!