Good article posted by Sudsmaster. I had been exposed to this article previously and found it does a factual job of demonstrating economic advantages of nuclear power over fossil fuelsand doing it without a lot of hype. Other Google searches will yield many additional supporting articles like this.
Note 10 out of 12 countries, per data presented in the article, generate electricity from nuclear power at a cost below that of coal. This data is based on a load capacity of 85% from their slightly dated 2003 data. This had risen to 89.6 in 2005 and is continuing to rise in 2006. This is an average, with some below and some above, with many nuclear now operating in the mid-to high 90 percentiles, with one (Limerick, as mentioned previously) operating beyond design capacity at 100.6%)
In many areas of the U.S., depending on coal costs in that area, nuclear plants are now producing electricity at a cost below that of coal-fired power plants.
Due to reliability records and material degradation falling below expectations, the NRC is now reviewing licenses for current nuclear power plants to operate past the original 40 year limit. Extension of up to twenty years may be given for a total 60 year plant operating life.
This will further reduce operating cost by spreading the initial capital outlay over a longer period of time.
The new advanced reactor designs (ABWR and APWR's) are expected to have operating plant lives of 80 years.
Costs for electricity from nuclear generation are dropping. Cost from fossil-fuel generation are increasing. These cost increase, passed on to the consumer, are not only from the cost of the fuel itself, but increasing standards of air quality mandated by the EPA are requiring plants be retro-fitted with pollution mitigation devices.
This is money well spent; however. Even though fossil plants can never compete with the zero particulate and zero greenhouse gas emissions of nuclear plants, they can be made a lot cleaner than they presently are.
Being an environmentalist, I would rather pay a little more on my electric bill each month to pay for scrubbers on a fossil -fueled plant and have a reduced worry about the witch's brew of chemicals (benzo-pyrene, poly aromatic hydrocarbons), radiation (radon gas inherent in coal) greenhouse gases (CO2) and particulates (flyash)that are released from a coal-fired plant.
The positive economics of nuclear power are well noted among the critics and noncritics and are really no longer an issue. They are still very interesting to study, however.
Not all costs are monetary costs.
The potential cost to society in general, and to the individual, of fossil fuel electrical generation include global warming, smog, increase lung cancer and luekemia (radiation from radon exposure) and well as acidification of lakes (with ensuing killing of aquatic life, and defoliation of trees caused sulfur dioxide combining with moisture in the air and forming acid rain. These are not potential dangers but actual dangers that are occuring right now and are directly traceable to their source of fossil fuel combustion.
Tolivac mentioned the differences in turbines between nuclear plants and fossil fueled (conventional combustion) plants. This may have been in regard to my statement that from the steam pipes on, electricity from a nuclear plant and a fossil fueled plant are generated identically.
Many people think nuclear plants convert atoms directly into electricity (like a giant nuclear fuel cell). They are often surprised to find that steam from the reactor (or in the case of a PWR, the heat exchanger) turns the blades in a turbine which turns a generator just as steam from a boiler, in a conventional fossil fuel plant, turns the blades in a turbine which turns the generator. So the point is that the turbines and the generators are not nuclear devices, and are termed "conventional" for the benefit of the layperson.
It's amazing the misconceptions many have about nuclear power.
We have 103 operating nuclear power plants in the United States and 20% of our electricity comes from nuclear. It's the number two source of power generation in the U.S. behind coal, so you would certainly think we would educate our students about it.
Even college students often have very little idea of how nuclear power operates. I have found, much to my amazement, that they are very open and seem to enjoy learning about it.
When I do find the occasional one who has a fear of nuclear power, I first try to find out why.
Normally, they can't tell me why, exactly, or can't verbalize it. So then I say let's start with you telling me how electricity is generated in a nuclear power plant. Once they fail at this or flounder there way through it, I then ask them to at least point out to me the specific part of the nuclear cycle that they are scares them. By this time they start to smile and get my drift that they are afraid of something they don't know anything about.
When they can tell me something about nuclear power that bothers them, I can ususally trace it back to a science fiction movie, the Simpsons TV cartoon, or something as simple as a mushroom cloud drawn on the placard of a protester.
(In the case of the latter, which actually happened, the student was delighted and relieved to know that a nuclear plant could never explode like a bomb, and could not be made to even if someone wanted, as it only contains uranium enriched to 2-3%, a nuclear bomb requires 100% enriched uranium. 97% of the material needed for a nuclear explosion is absent from a power reactor.)
There has long been speculation that the roots of the anti-nuclear (nuclear power, not nuclear weapons) movement in the late 1960's were begun by the petroleum industry.
In the late 1950's and the 1960's nuclear power plants were the hot item and orders from utilities companies were coming in faster than plants could be built. This was just at the time that the oil industry was trying to convice utilities to switch from coal to oil fired power generation. They lost a lot of business, and correspondingly money, when power companies opted to switch to nuclear over oil.
In response to this, the petroleum companies countered by providing funding to Sierra Club to initiate and promote anti-nuclear activities as well as distribute anti-nuclear materials among the public.
This is somewhat unsubstantiated and, I hope, not true. I would be very dissapointed in the oil industry if it were true.
