4 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Cannot Save Us From Climate Change

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4 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Cannot Save Us From Climate Change
By: Erich Pica - The Messenger Opinion - 09-02-23
Re: https://themessenger.com/opinion/4-r...m=more_opinion

This summer, the devastating impacts of the climate crisis — scorching temperatures baking the Southwest, wildfires raging in Hawaii and Canada, catastrophic flooding in Vermont — have never been clearer.

Unfortunately, many in Washington are using this as justification to bring nuclear power back from its well-deserved grave. Tens of billions of dollars in subsidies — including a $6 billion effort launched last year by the Biden administration —are being given to prop up an industry that has never proven its economic viability, let alone its safety.

To actually save our climate from careening off a cliff, it’s essential we do what’s 1) cheapest, 2) fastest, 3) safest for people and the planet, as well as 4) most reliable. Nuclear power is a distraction that fails to hold up on all four.

1. Cheap:

Wind and solar are the cheapest energy sources by far. Texas now produces more renewable energy than any other state and lowered its cost of electricity by $11 billion — $423 per customer — last year.

Energy efficiency measures — such as helping customers insulate homes and install heat pumps — are a second, vastly unexploited strategy. In New York, one study predicts such measures could save ratepayers $3 billion in just over a decade and cut electricity usage enough to fully replace the state’s uneconomical nuclear plants.

Building new nuclear projects and keeping the aging fleet alive comes with an enormous price tag that has only gotten higher over the last five decades. A new study shows it would cost $45 billion to keep California’s Diablo Canyon reactors open past its original shutdown dates, with ratepayers coughing up the funds through higher utility bills. Georgia Power customers have already been paying an extra $100 each year for over a decade in order to fund the new Plant Vogtle, which is a whopping $17 billion over budget.

The affordability of renewable energy and efficiency is rightfully pushing our aging nuclear fleet further into retirement.

2. Fast:

We need better sources of energy to replace fossil fuels globally, and we need them now. Texas and California prove that rapidly building out wind and solar can reliably replace nuclear power plants.

For each of the past six years, Texas has increased wind and solar by as much as a large nuclear reactor can generate. This year, it will add more solar and wind capacity than all other states combined.

California’s San Onofre plant closed in 2012 and was replaced by solar power in under three years, which grew more than five times by 2016.

Meanwhile, Plant Vogtle took 14 years to complete due to construction delays. New nuclear reactors are typically slower to build than renewables, averaging more than nine years, versus new solar and wind power plants that only take between a few months and two years to be up and running.

In the decade following Plant Vogtle’s approval in 2009, Americans witnessed four of the five most costly climate disasters ever. If we want a 100% carbon-free power grid by 2035, the glacial pace of building more Plant Vogtles domestically will do no favors.

Some argue developing nations deserve nuclear power. What they really need is urgent electrification in order to avoid incurring endless debts to northern banks.

3. Safe:

Although a lower-carbon energy source, nuclear power poses enormous risks to people and the environment.

All of us are familiar with tragic disasters like Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 — and the radioactive water from this meltdown was released into the Pacific Ocean starting last week. Lesser known is the recent history of “close calls” and safety violations. Davis-Besse experienced near-catastrophic corrosion in 2002. A radioactive leak shuttered San Onofre in 2013. Diablo Canyon currently operates near several fault lines, as did Indian Point before its full closure in 2021.

Despite being 80 years into the nuclear age, there is still no solution in the U.S. for the expensive mountains of radioactive waste that can poison our water, land and air. Spent nuclear fuel will remain radioactive for thousands of years. Uranium mining, needed to operate nuclear reactors, will keep causing major pollution and extreme harms to wildlife, ecosystems and public health. Future generations will have to deal with these consequences.

4. Reliable:

Repeatedly, renewables are keeping the lights on during extreme weather events, while nuclear power plants have failed in the face of climate change.

When a historic heat dome ravaged Texas last month, wind, solar and batteries kept the air conditioning flowing while natural gas and coal plants failed. Wind and solar also saved Texas from blackouts during last summer’s heat wave.

A recent study shows that electricity blackouts from severe weather — such as the 2021 freeze that killed nearly 250 Texans — could be avoided by switching to 100% renewable power.

Extreme flooding, heat and droughts all impact nuclear power plant reliability. Because the inside of reactors becomes extremely hot and water is used to cool then down, most are built near bodies of water. As waters increasingly warm or dry up altogether, power plants are harder to cool and more likely to shut down on hot days, as is already happening across Northern Europe and in France, which is scaling back nuclear power production because its cooling waters are too warm. Flooding caused Nebraska’s Fort Calhoun to close for three years. Reactors in Florida and Louisiana have shut down several times in anticipation of hurricanes.

Nuclear power is inherently dangerous and increasingly unreliable — wind turbines, solar panels and energy efficiency are not.

July was Earth’s hottest month on record. As United Nations Secretary General António Guterres recently stated, “the era of global boiling has arrived.” The dying nuclear power industry is the wrong answer for this urgent moment. So is the fossil fuel industry, whose empty net-zero pledges and marketing tricks should not distract from the damaging climate change driven by its pollution.

When it comes to the rapid, large-scale decarbonization we desperately need, renewables and energy efficiency are the cheapest, fastest, safest and most reliable path forward.

Nuclear power is not, and never has been, the cure for humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels.

About this writer: Erich Pica is president of Friends of the Earth, a non-profit environmental organization that strives for a healthier and more just world.
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Personal note: "There still is the question where do we bury the spent nuclear waste!?"
And life span of nuclear waste? We need solar power and yet our atmosphere is still
warming up each 3-5 years or so. More hurricane's - maybe?
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Lot's we must not overlook - we could result in killing the planet entirely!
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