Nuclear Facts

The Balance Sheet for New Nuclear Power

• Very low emissions of carbon and other combustion-related air pollutants (but still some, from uranium mining, milling, enrichment, reactor construction-decommissioning and waste management activities).
• Large, concentrated source of round-the-clock base-load power.
• Low fuel costs compared to fossil alternatives.
• If carbon emissions are effectively “taxed” at $100-$200 per ton under a carbon cap-and-trade system, nuclear might compete effectively with large coal-fired central station power plants.

• It's expensive low carbon power ($0.9-$0.10/kWh delivered) compared to $0.025-$0.030 for end-use efficiency improvements; $0.06-$0.07 for wind; and $0.026-$0.04 for recovered heat co-generation).
• Long gestation/construction period and huge capital costs increase risk of market obsolescence and “stranded costs” (i.e., costs that cannot reasonably be recovered by continuing to operate the plant for its planned life).
• Subject to infrequent, but prolonged and costly planned and unplanned shutdowns (a recent study by the Union of Concerned Scientists documents 12 year-plus reactor outages since 1995, 11 of them “safety-related).
• Large “lumpy” increments of nuclear capacity require expensive overall power system excess capacity to ensure grid reliability. Any nuclear power investment may at any moment become hostage to the conduct of the worst performer—or even the average performer on a bad day—in the event of a reactor accident or near-accident anywhere on the globe.
• No licensed path (yet) to opening first long-term geologic repository for safely isolating spent fuel, and nuclear “renaissance” will require either additional expensive and hard-to-establish geologic repositories, or even more expensive and hazardous spent-fuel reprocessing.
• Nuclear security concerns and risks are heightened in an age of transnational terrorism.
• Acute proliferation concerns arise if advanced fuel cycles are used, or if uranium enrichment capability spreads to additional countries that are not already nuclear weapon states.
• All stages of the nuclear fuel cycle involve potentially harmful, or in some cases disastrous environmental impacts (e.g., Chernobyl), requiring continuous and vigorous regulation, with significant financial penalties exacted for poor environmental and safety performance to ensure compliance.
• Huge heat dissipation requirements demand either large evaporative cooling withdrawals and/or thermal discharges into already overburdened lakes and rivers, or massive and expensive fan-driven air-cooling towers.
• Climate change in the direction of hotter, drier summers spells trouble for reactors that rely primarily on cheaper once-through or evaporative water cooling.
• Offer little prospect of increasing “energy independence,” as the bulk of world uranium resources are located outside the United States.