[NukeNet] [no-new-nukes-yall] The limits to nuclear: McCain shouldn't try to follow French disaster

[Mark Haim]

Hello Kay and all,

While Solomon makes some important points, there are two flaws, as I see it,
to his argument that pro-nukers will jump on. I hope y'all won't mind me
playing devil's advocate for a minute.

First, while taking the nuclear sector to 80% of our electric mix may be
impractical, if not impossible, it would certainly be possible to take the
nuclear sector up to 40% or more w/o running into the sorts of constraints
Solomon describes. Since this would involve at least doubling our current
nuclear sector (perhaps more, to account for expected demand growth and at
least some retirements) it would take decades and more than half a trillion
in investment. So there is no reason--based upon Solomon's argument--to put
the brakes on new nukes.

Second, many would argue that if we are serious about getting off oil, this
will involve EVs &/or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs). What better time to charge
these than overnight? This would significantly flatten utility demand curves
and make having lots of baseload generation capacity far more desirable and
cost-effective. One could thus make an argument that by the time the new
nukes started to exceed our need for baseload capacity, that need would grow
rapidly as we switch over our transport sector to electricity and charge up
generally overnight.

It seems to me that the best counters to this are offering a far more
credible and cost-effective energy plan based upon rapid improvement in
energy efficiency and the installation of renewable capacity, which is
cheaper and much faster to install than building new nukes.

We need to be aware, however, that some of the same arguments Solomon uses
can be turned on our clean, sustainable renewable sources. For years critics
of renewable energy have pointed to its "intermittency" or what
pro-renewable folks like to call its "natural variation."

We have countered that this doesn't become a problem until renewables become
a much larger portion of the mix than they are today, and that it can be
addressed in part through having a diverse mix of renewable technologies and
thorough linking up a geographically dispersed set of generators.

The rest of our argument, however, is that some forms of storage are
probably going to be needed. Whether this is in the form of hydrogen,
compressed air, pumped storage hydro, or perhaps charged EVs and PHEVs that
can be used in a grid-to-vehicle/vehicle-to-grid configuration. I love the
idea of solar PV roofs for every parking lot, having your car charge up
while you're at work, and providing you with enough juice to get home,
provide you house's power needs overnight and still have enough charge left
to get you to work in the morning. We have to acknowledge, however, that if
storage can be proposed by renewable advocates, it's also fair game for the
pro-nukers.

And then the discussion will inevitably come back to cost and what risks are
acceptable.

I appreciate Solomon's insights into the French situation and his points are
well taken and point out definite problems with the simplistic notion that
we can simply apply a "French solution" to our energy/climate dilemma. On
the other hand, we should be conscious of the sorts of counterarguments this
will likely engender.

Finally, I'm pasting in below a excerpt from our last local newsletter on
the French nuclear situation. It includes some good links that most of you
might be familiar with, but some might find useful.

All the best,
Mark Haim
Missourians for Safe Energy



WHAT ABOUT THOSE FRENCH NUKES?:



There are few nuclear critics who haven't been asked this question:  Sure,
we've had problems with nuclear power, but haven't the French got it down?
Isn't their nuclear program a success story that we should emulate here?



The answer in a word is "No" (or is that "Non"?).



 Those who have looked closely at the French experience have found that the
costs and environmental impacts have been great. There have been many
technical failures, including their attempts to commercialize breeder
reactors. Their reprocessing program has been phenomenally expensive and has
seriously contaminated the English Channel and neighboring waters.



France, like the rest of the world, has still to come up with a way to
successfully isolate nuclear waste, and they have created vast inventories
of lethal wastes. They currently are stockpiling 81 tons of separated
plutonium. (Just ten pounds of Pu is sufficient to make a Nagasaki-type
bomb.)



French nukes have proved unreliable in hot weather and droughts, due to
their cooling water needs. There also are serious security concerns, as
French nuclear plants would be vulnerable to 911-style attacks by passenger
planes. Moreover, nukes are very unpopular with the French citizenry, with
recent polls showing fewer than 31 percent viewing nuclear positively, as
many as 61 percent favoring a nuclear phase-out, while fully 84 percent of
the French population favors renewable energy.



If you'd like to understand better why the reality of France's nuclear
program hasn't matched the industry rhetoric or the media hype, there are
several excellent sources to check out:



"France's Nuclear Fix?" by Arjun Makhijani , PhD .

http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/15-2.pdf  (Note: this link will open a PDF of
the January 2008 issue of Science for Democratic Action. The article on
France is on pages 5-8.)



"Nuclear Power and France: Setting the Record Straight" a six-page Beyond
Nuclear fact sheet.
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/files/beyondnuclear/Nuclear_France_Fact_Sheet_F
INAL%5B1%5D.pdf



"French Nuclear Reprocessing -Failure at Home, Coup d'Etat in the United
States"
by Shaun Burnie
http://www.citizen.org/documents/BurnieFrenchReprocessing.pdf



If you are interested in sharing information on this topic with the general
public, there's an excellent three-panel leaflet "Nuclear Power in France:
Setting the Record Straight," that can be printed at:
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/files/beyondnuclear/French%20pamphlet%20FINAL.p
df




-----Original Message-----
From: no-new-nukes-yall at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:no-new-nukes-yall at yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of Kay Cumbow
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 4:47 AM
To: no-new-nukes-yall at yahoogroups.com; Nukenet
Subject: [no-new-nukes-yall] The limits to nuclear: McCain shouldn't try to
follow French disaster


http://energy.probeinternational.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-economics/the-lim
its-nuclear-mccain-shouldn-t-try-follow-french-disaster

Nuclear Economics

The limits to nuclear: McCain shouldnt try to follow French disaster
Lawrence Solomon
13 May 2008
National Post

The U.S. doesnt have a market for the nighttime power surplus that nuclear
inevitably produces.

"If France can produce 80% of its electricity with nuclear power, why cant
we?, asks U.S. presidential candidate John McCain. Nuclear power is a
cornerstone of Senator McCains plan to combat climate change, which he is
unveiling this week.

McCain thinks he is asking a simple rhetorical question. As it turns out, he
is not. His question is technical, with an answer that will surprise him and
most Americans. Nuclear reactors cannot possibly meet 80% of Americas power
needs -- or those of any country whose power market dominates its region --
because of limitations in nuclear technology. McCain needs to find another
miracle energy solution, or abandon his vow to drastically cut back carbon
dioxide emissions.

Unlike other forms of power generation, nuclear reactors are designed to run
flat-out, 24/7 -- they cant crank up their output at times of high demand
or ease up when demand slows. This limitation generally consigns nuclear
power to meeting a power systems minimum power needs -- the amount of power
needed in the dead of night, when most industry and most people are asleep,
and the value of power is low. At other times of the day and night, when
power demands rise and the price of power is high, society calls on the more
flexible forms of generation -- coal, gas, oil and hydro-electricity among
them -- to meet its additional higher-value needs.

If a country produces more nuclear power than it needs in the dead of night,
it must export that low-value, off-peak power. This is what France does. It
sells its nuclear surplus to its European Union neighbours, a market of 700
million people. That large market -- more than 10 times Frances
population -- is able to soak up most of Frances surplus off-peak power.

The U.S. is not surrounded, as is France, by far more populous neighbours.
Just the opposite: The U.S. dominates the North American market. If 80% of
U.S. needs were met by nuclear reactors, as Senator McCain desires,
Americas off-peak surplus would have no market, even if the power were
given away. Countries highly reliant on nuclear power, in effect, are in
turn reliant on having large non-nuclear-reliant countries as neighbours. If
Frances neighbours had power systems dominated by nuclear power, they too
would be trying to export off-peak power and France would have no one to
whom it could offload its surplus power. In fact, even with the mammoth EU
market to tap into, France must shut down some of its reactors some weekends
because no one can use its surplus. In effect, France cant even give the
stuff away.

Not only does France export vast quantities of its low-value power (it is
the EUs biggest exporter by far), France meanwhile must import high-value
peak power from its neighbours. This arrangement is so financially ruinous
that France in 2006 decided to resurrect its obsolete oil-fired power
stations, one of which dates back to 1968.

Frances nuclear program sprung not from business needs but from foreign
policy goals. Immediately after the Second World War, Frances President,
Charles de Gaulle, decided to develop nuclear weapons, to make France
independent of either the U.S. or the USSR. This foreign policy goal spawned
a commercial nuclear industry, but a small one -- Frances nuclear plants
could not compete with other forms of generation, and produced but 8% of
Frances power until 1973.

Then came the OPEC oil crisis and panic. Sensing that French sovereignty was
at stake, the country decided to replace oil with electricity and to
generate that electricity with nuclear. By 1974, three mammoth nuclear
plants were begun and by 1977, another five. Without regulatory hurdles to
clear and with cut-rate financing and a host of other subsidies from
Euratom, the EUs nuclear subsidy agency, Frances power system was soon
transformed. By 1979, Frances frenzied building program had nuclear power
meeting 20% of Frances power generation. By 1983 the figure was about 50%
and by 1990 about 75% and growing.

Despite the subsidies, the overbuilding effectively bankrupted Electricite
de France (EdF), the French power company. To dispose of its overcapacity
and stay afloat, EdF feverishly exported its surplus power to its
neighbours, even laying a cable under the English Channel to become a major
supplier to the UK. At great expense, French homes were converted to
inefficient electric home heating. And EdF offered cut-rate power to keep
and attract energy-intensive industries -- Pechiney, the aluminum supplier,
obtained power at half of EdFs cost of production, and soon EdF was
providing similar terms to Exxon Chemicals and Allied Signal.

These measures helped but not enough -- in 1989, EdF ran a loss of four
billion French francs, a sum its president termed catastrophic. The
company had a 800-billion-franc debt, old reactors that faced expensive
decommissioning, and unresolved waste disposal costs. To keep lower-cost
competitors out of the country, France also reneged on an EU-wide agreement
to open borders up to electricity competition.

Frances nuclear program, in short, is an economic disaster, and a political
one too -- 61% of the French public favours a phase-out of nuclear energy.

Is France a more secure, advanced and innovative country than we are?,
McCain also asked. I need no answer to that rhetorical question. I know my
country well enough to know otherwise.

But McCain does not know France well enough to know why nuclear powers
negative record over there says nothing positive about what it can do for
people over here, on this side of the Atlantic.


This article is fourth in a series:
Apocalypse now
Warmed-over nukes
Burning in the dark


Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The
Deniers.




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