Why James Hansen might be underestimating nuclear energy’s growth potential and why Joe Romm is wrong
Joe Romm, an energy industry and climate change pundit who was once mentored by Amory Lovins at the Rocky Mountain Institute, recently sat down at his keyboard to produce a piece providing the basis for his opinion that James Hansen, Ken Caldeira, Tom Wigley and Kerry Emanuel — and hundreds to thousands of other nuclear energy proponents — are wrong about nuclear power and overestimating its potential contributions to our future clean energy needs and wants.
This piece is designed to respond to some of Joe’s interpretations of atomic energy history and to provide the basis for my opinion that Joe is seriously underestimating nuclear energy’s potential to grow to become a much larger source of clean, reliable electricity, heat and motive force for transportation.
Author backgrounds
Joe’s interest in energy production with a national security slant has lasted as long as mine has. We are separated by a year or less in birthdate, college graduation, and advanced degree completion. After he completed his PhD in Physics from MIT, he went to work in Washington as a congressional fellow and then as an advisor at the Rockefeller Foundation.
He’s done assessments of energy systems, written a number of books on energy and national security issues, and served in roles of increasing responsibility in the Department of Energy from 1993-1998. He served as Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy in 1997 in charge of Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy while also serving as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary from August 1995 through June 1998.
He’s been a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and the primary blogger at Climate Progress since 2006.
Regular Atomic Insights readers probably know a bit about my background, but here is a quick summary. After earning my undergraduate degree, I entered the Navy Nuclear Power training pipeline and then served in a variety of jobs with increasing responsibility and technical knowledge requirements. I took a short break from submarine service to go to the Navy Postgraduate School to earn an MS in Systems Technology. I finished my 8 years of active nuclear training and submarine operations with 40 months as the Engineer Officer of a 1960s vintage strategic missile submarine.
I founded and operated a small atomic engine design firm, worked as the General Manager of a small manufacturing firm that produced both moderate and high volume products, earned a diploma in national security affairs, taught at the Naval Academy and worked as a technical advisor and financial analyst at Navy Headquarters. I’ve been publishing Atomic Insights since 1995, but have never published any books.
Nuclear skeptic versus atomic optimist
Joe and I agree that energy production is a technology and an industry that plays a major role in our environmental footprint, our economy and our geopolitical position. His education, experience, and choice of mentors has made him a nuclear energy skeptic. Mine has made me optimistic about the potential of the technology while also giving me what I consider to be a clear-eyed understanding of some of reasons why the nuclear industry has, by many measures, has “failed to launch” so far.
As Joe would agree, it is wrong to simplistically blame that failure on the influence of the organized and open antinuclear movement. There are many factors, influences and attitudes that have contributed to our current situation. Many of them have originated in “the nuclear industry” itself while some have been imposed from outside.
My optimism comes from a recognition that the things that have slowed atomic energy development until now have been the result of human actions and choices, not technical limitations. That means the challenges can eventually be solved by humans and do not require a deus ex machina intervention.
Over the next few decades, there will be plenty of opportunities to gather evidence showing whether Joe’s nuclear skepticism or my atomic optimism is closer to the mark.
Same facts, different spin
Here are some of the specific topics where his interpretations of current and historical facts as documented in his Jan 7, 2016 piece differ from mine.
He began by pointing to a 2015 report from the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) and told his readers about its “…in the best-case scenario…” conclusions. The report makes no claim of producing a best [or worst] case scenario for nuclear energy. It provides the output of a model fed with inputs from today’s experiential knowledge base about costs and schedules to produce a prediction for what the contribution of nuclear energy might be in a 2050 energy system that limits greenhouse gases to achieve a maximum increase of 2 degrees C.
Later in his piece Romm backed away from portraying the NEA/IEA report as describing a “best case” scenario and more accurately referred to it as a “plausible though challenging” pathway. I agree with that phrasing, but my experience has given me plenty of opportunities to see how well select groups of people address challenges and often achieve more success than skeptics expect.
Romm seems to have misunderstood why Hansen, Caldeira, Wigley and Emanuel have chided environmentalists and suggested that they take a fresh look at nuclear energy. They have not said that opposition from the Environmental Movement is the only or even the primary reason that nuclear has failed to launch. They have not suggested that nuclear energy will be the only contributor; they have said that their calculations show that it is a necessary tool, one that cannot be abandoned in any serious clean energy program.
It is an example of false modesty for Romm to claim that the antinuclear movement’s openly acknowledged effort to slow progress in order to drive costs up has been unsuccessful. It has played a role in helping the industry achieve its poor market performance–especially in landing new orders and completing projects on schedule and within budget.
One of the primary pillars of Romm’s argument is that the history of nuclear power plant cost performance proves that it unique among other industries. He points to a frequently used graph of initial capital costs to imply that nuclear is destined to achieve negative learning curves where experience leads to higher costs and slower task completion.
What he overlooks or purposely dismisses is the evidence that nuclear plant completion costs started to fall during the period when industry participants were applying the usual kinds of “learning” that result as new technologies are developed and deployed commercially. There is nothing magical about learning how to manufacture and build industrial equipment better and more cost effectively. It’s not easy, but the methods are well-understood.
Nuclear plant construction cost trajectories changed with a disruptive transition period at the regulatory agency, a change in expectations about electric power industry growth, a low priority assigned to cost awareness among many vendors serving monopoly customers, a period of high inflation, interest rates that approached 20% APR, a disproven assumption that bigger is always better, and an understandable tendency in the construction industry to “milk” a job when there are no new opportunities in the pipeline.
Update: (posted Jan 10, 2016 at 4:56 pm) Charles Komanoff, author of Power Plant Escalation: Nuclear and Coal Capital Costs, Regulation and Economics mentioned below, did some analysis to quantify the anecdotal observation about delaying project completion. He published an op-ed in the March 9, 1084 edition of the Wall Street Journal titled Nuclear Crews Stretch Work, Up Costs describing what he called “the last plant effect.” End Update.
Cost increases shown in the graph were at least partly due to decisions made by project leaders who did whatever they could to avoid losing money and to retain skilled employees. Utility companies that had already spent huge sums on partly-completed plants were unable to effectively resist regulatory ratcheting when they were desperate to finish work, obtain operating licenses and put plants into revenue generating service. Many nuclear industry participants mistakenly thought that dramatic price increases in fossil fuels meant they could relax their own efforts to produce a more cost-effective product.
Organized opponents trained in the Ralph Nader-led school of the Critical Mass Energy Project learned how to take advantage of public hearings to effectively slow projects, increase requirements and drive up costs, especially when interest rates on borrowed money were high. Some of the opponents were more motivated to eliminate nuclear energy as an economic competitor than by concerns about nuclear power plant safety and security.
When the dramatic fall in energy prices occurred in 1986, the 15-year-long disinterest in any new capacity led to the virtual disappearance of the nuclear construction industry and the loss of most of the cost-saving “learning” that had been achieved.
There are a number of excellent references including Power Plant Escalation: Nuclear and Coal Capital Costs, Regulation and Economics (2 MB PDF) by Charles Komanoff (1981) and Light Water: How the Nuclear Dream Dissolved by I.C. Bupp and Jean-Claude Derian (1978) that describe how and why nuclear costs increased.
There has also been recent work pointing to the first few nuclear projects undertaken after a long hiatus, but those projects are handicapped by the costs of having to build a new component supply chain and train a new workforce from top to bottom. After a 20-40 year hiatus, no one in the industry is doing the same job for a second time.
Looking forward
Romm seems unaware or dismissive of the fact that there are people who have been studying the available history with a critical eye and a learning attitude. They are planning different choices that should produce better results. He does not take much note of the proof that nuclear professionals have proven in their operational performance that they can learn how to reduce costs and improve performance.
People like Jose Reyes, Danny Roderick, Jack Devanney, David LeBlanc, Jacob DeWitt, Caroline Cochrane, Leslie Dewan, and Bob Hargraves–to name just a few–are focused on keeping cost as an important metric.
Current interest in manufacturing smaller reactors with interchangeable parts for series production shows that many new nuclear leaders have learned that the “economy of scale” doesn’t mean that biggest individual units are always the most cost effective. Experience from other successful industries has shown them that there are better ways to achieve the economies associated with larger production and enterprise “scale” compared to aiming for the “world’s largest” of everything.
An important aspect of choosing to build smaller units is the possibility of building first of a kind (FOAK) units as demonstration, test and training platforms that don’t pretend to be commercial products. Like the Navy’s prototypes, demo plants will improve customer confidence because they will be able to know much more about the machine they are ordering before they have to make a firm commitment. They will see that there are established procedures, training systems, component suppliers, and an understanding of maintenance requirements.
The ability of vendors to build order books of firm commitments bring economies associated with supply chain management, logistics, predictable revenues and workforce development.
Demonstration plants should also enable their developers to perform realistic physical testing to avoid the requirements creep that tends to add more equipment to respond to “any imaginable risk.” Plants can be made safer at a lower cost by eliminating systems that do not improve emergency response or operational performance.
Like many nuclear energy skeptics, Romm is a catastrophist who believes that nuclear plant accidents are always disasters that result in “the poisoning of thousands of people, the long-term contamination of large areas of land, and $100 billion in damages.” What he and his fellow skeptics fail to recognize is that there are safe doses of radiation that do not harm people. When the artificially constructed “no safe dose” assumption is declared obsolete, a major barrier to public acceptance to nuclear energy will fall. That will, in turn, make it less onerous to achieve permission to build and to complete projects in a reasonably timely fashion.
Romm makes fun of the possibility that the world-wide nuclear industry could achieve a plant construction rate of as many as 115 plants per year. He dismisses the historical examples of Sweden and France by pointing out that Sweden achieved its nuclear energy production requirements with just 10 reactors and France met theirs with just 58, with each program lasting about 20 years from start to finish.
What Joe didn’t mention was that both of those countries have small populations and were able to provide essentially all of the necessary components for the program without much dependence on imports. Sweden, for example, had a population of less than its current 9 million people, while France’s population was much lower than its current 70 million. The U.S. also achieved a rather substantial build rate, starting more than 200 projects and completing well over 100 reactors in about 25 years, despite having to overcome the issues and obstacles noted above.
Aside: Another piece of evidence about the industrial potential comes from knowing that the U.S. Navy completed about 100 ships powered by small modular reactors in the 1960s before slowing the build rate for reasons having little to do with difficulty building power plants. End Aside.
When some of the most populous and richest countries in the world get into the business of building nuclear power plants, it is entirely possible to arrive at a time when building 115 plants per year is a rear-view mirror achievement on the way to even greater productivity. Recently, Stafan Qvist and Barry Brook produced a paper using per capita build rates to demonstrate how the proven achievement can be scaled to a much larger number by including more countries.
Subsidies and enabling policies
Romm includes a statement that irritates me every time I see in in one form or another.
Nuclear power remains a highly subsidized energy source that benefits from a myriad of favorable policies in this country, including taxpayer-backed disaster insurance and loan guarantees.
I spent a lot of years trying to find a way to finance and build small atomic power plants. I’d heard a lot about subsidies, but could never find any. The days of providing direct assistance to people building nuclear power plants ended before 1974. The production tax credit promised by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 will not provide a single dime to a nuclear power plant customer until sometime after 2018. The often touted loan guarantee program is supporting exactly one project and it took 5 years of negotiation to “close” that deal.
The Price-Anderson insurance “subsidy” has never cost taxpayers any money and its liability limitations are not a unique concept among large productive industries.
On the other side of the ledger, the government charges nuclear plant licensees about $5 million per year in annual license fees plus $274 per professional staff hour for any additional regulatory services or license application interactions and reviews. Operating nuclear plants pay property taxes, income taxes, and various additional fees that produce government revenue that long ago made up for the investment made in helping the technology get started.
A lot of good can come from establishing favorable government policies to enable the deployment of a technology that has proven it can provide large amounts of steady, clean electricity with comparatively few material inputs. Here are quotes from the Key Findings section of the same NEA/IEA report that Romm referred to as proving that nuclear energy will be limited to making a modest contribution to our future energy supplies.
Nuclear power is the largest source of low-carbon electricity in OECD countries, with an 18% overall share of electricity production in 2013 and second at global levels with an 11% share. The updated vision for the 2014 Nuclear Roadmap – based on the 2 degrees Celsius (°C) scenario (2DS) of Energy Technology Perspectives: Scenarios and Strategies to 2050 (IEA, forthcoming 2015) – sees nuclear continuing to play a major role in lowering emissions from the power sector, while improving security of energy supply, supporting fuel diversity and providing large-scale electricity at stable production costs.
…
Governments have a role to play in ensuring a stable, long-term investment framework that allows capital-intensive projects to be developed and provides adequate electricity prices over the long term for all low-carbon technologies. Governments should also continue to support nuclear research and development (R&D), especially in the area of nuclear safety, advanced fuel cycles, waste management and innovative designs.
…
Nuclear energy is a mature low-carbon technology, which has followed a trend towards increased safety levels and power output to benefit from economies of scale. This trajectory has come with an increased cost for Generation III reactors compared with previous generations, but this should also lead to better performance and economics for standardised Nth-of-a-kind (NOAK) plants, although this has yet to be confirmed.
…
Small modular reactors (SMRs) could extend the market for nuclear energy by providing power to smaller grid systems or isolated markets where larger nuclear plants are not suitable. The modular nature of these designs may also help to address financing barriers.(Emphasis added.)
It is disingenuous for someone like Romm, who strongly supports “renewable” energy incentive programs that provide things like mandated market access, tradeable renewable energy certificates, and 30% of project cost cash assistance from taxpayers, to complain that government programs have benefitted nuclear energy.
It is also disappointing to note that someone with Romm’s education and background in the national security implications of energy production would fall for the 100% renewable energy fantasy advocated by the Precourt Institute for Energy’s Mark Z. Jacobson. That is a “theory” without basis whose pursuit can cause grave damage to our energy strength, cleanliness and security.
Additional Reading
DecarboniseSA – Jan 21, 2016 Time and cost: End-game for nuclear opposition?
Ben Heard provides strong, evidence-based analysis of the weakening arguments from nuclear opponents while reminding the nuclear industry that they must take action to address real cost and schedule issues.
Let’s be clear about Joe Romm. He is an investor in and cheerleader for renewable energy companies,and a colleague of former VP Al Gore who is a partner in a venture capital firm that invests in renewable energy technologies. Gore has widely praised Room’s columns and a book on climate change.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/19/2969521/invest-divest-renewable-investment-fossil-fuel-stocks-risk/
http://www.kpcb.com/partner/al-gore
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/04/how-bad-is-climate-change-dont-ask-expert-joe-romm/
Investors in solar and wind have long seen themselves as being in competition with nuclear energy for capital to build their infrastructure. They see the money needed for a 1000 MW plant, $6-7 billion at current prices, as pulling funding out of the available supply of capital and raising the cost of borrowing as a result.
Al Gore’s venture capital firm needs pundits like Joe Romm to drive investors to put their money on the solar and wind companies funded by the firm. It’s a mutual back scratching relationship.
A few graphs that might be useful, either here or in further posts:
Non-fossil build rates, 7-year averages:
https://flic.kr/p/zpQF5J
Non-fossil build rates, 4-year averages:
https://flic.kr/p/B6WgzJ
US electricity subsidies by generation type:
https://flic.kr/p/rw6pNw
Just to summarize the build-rate graphs: given similar levels of national commitment, nuclear power has been built at rates about three times faster than wind, and about ten times faster than solar.
I also see that Joe continues the old anti-nuke habit of being unwilling (or unable) to divide. Nuclear plants are expensive because they cost $10 billion!!! … while failing to mention that the nuclear plant will provide about 10 times more energy during its lifetime than a solar farm or wind farm of the same nameplate capacity. Can you find a 1 GW windfarm or solar plant anywhere in the world built for $1 billion? I don’t think so.
I’m not jesting, just an honest question to pros here since it’s how SpaceX is building rockets in-house at considerable savings: Can compact super-automated nuclear power plants ever be “3-D printed”?
James Greenidge
Queens NY
My history with Joe Romm began with an appreciation for Romm’s presentation for Romm’s defense Climate Science and The Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis. But his critic of Nuclear power put him firmly on the anti-science side as far as nuclear power is concerned. I must say t never bought into Romm’s anti-lWR arguments, but I also tried to do an end run around Romm’s arguments by offering the MSR as an example of of a nuclear technology which could meet all of romm’s objections including costs. Romm dismissed the MSR arguments on falacious grounds. He argued that MSRs could not become commercial within a generation, because the technology was not developed. Eight years later, Transatomic Power, Terrestrial Energy, and ThorCon are all on the rode to building commercial MSRs, with products expected to go on the market within ten years. Needless to say, Romm has never admitted that he was wrong.
In the end, after I bluntly pointed out that my arguments had been based on science, which Romm had ignored when he dismissed them, Rom started censoring my comments. Later An internet discussion identified several other pronuclear bloggers who Romm also systematically censered. Romm along with So called “Environmentalist, David Roberts is an Amory Lovins, anti-nuclear lacky. All three offer factua;lly flawed arguments, that often rest on formal and informal errors in logic.
Yes … just as soon as they come out with a UO2 printer cartridge.
Of course, the cartridge will cost a fortune, but that’s how the printer companies get you.
Great analysis Rod. It explains a great deal as to Joe Romm’s biases and why he poo-poos Hanson’s support of nuclear.
The clouded head’s Blog has published an excellent direct rebuttal of Romm’s “Why James Hansen is wrong about Nuclear Power” article: http://tinyurl.com/grpyyo7
Theoretically anything can be 3-D printed, but some things (like pipe and wire) are so cheap to make the standard way, it’s not worth it. It’s also a lot more expensive if what you’re printing requires multiple materials. Gains are found where their is complexity of structure made with a single material.
@Keith Pickering
3D printing is exciting for those who think in terms of producing small sets of complex, single material products.
In a former life, I ran a small injection molding company that provided me with a deep understanding of the line about plastics from The Graduate.
Our products could come out of the continuously cycling machines every 15-90 seconds. The production molds had as many as 12 cavities at our rather primitive shop. I’ve seen others with molds that make 32-64 parts at a time.
We had a small warehouse full of individual molds that could be installed on multi-purpose machines.
I’ve watched some sophisticated 3D printers in production; it’s a much slower per unit process, though each machine can produce a different product each time it runs.
There are hybrid schemes too, like 3-D printing the molds, then using standard techniques for mass production.
Except for the tax payers. Per ton of payload delivered to the ISS, the Falcon9/Dragon is a lot more expensive than the Space Shuttle. And we still don’t know how much Elon subsidizes his launches with all of the tax payer money (hundreds of millions of dollars) he’s been given by the Federal government for all of his franchises.
Marcel
Rod –
Do you have a link to the actual data behind that “frequently used graph of initial capital costs?” Figures like that (log-log plots) can be very deceptive if you don’t know what you’re looking at. In particular, comparing rates of change during different portions of the curve is nearly impossible. I think that data would look very different on a more user-friendly (linear) plot.
I just wonder how much would be saved in nuke plants if they scrapped a lot of the customization. How many items are actually over specified? A few years back I did some commercial grade dedication paperwork. It astounded me how much more these companies paid for the same gadgets that were class 1E. I think the extra paper often did not guarantee better quality. Other industries that used the same gadgets also need high quality and the conventionally sold items work for them.
The exception would be for safety related items. You want to be able to safely shut down.
In Joe Romm, we have someone who has spent his whole life in government and foundation work. He is opposed to using nuclear power.
In Rod Adams, we have someone who has operated a nuclear reactor, worked with plastic injection molding, run this own atomic engine company, etc. He supports the use of nuclear power.
Being a (now retired) engineer who likes getting his hands dirty, I always put more trust in people who actually do or have “done the work.”
It really bothers me to see people use political power and the power of their own ulterior motives to block our progression towards a cleaner future with a higher availability of energy.
If you’re ever in South Australia I would love to show you my factory, Rod.
Was there anyone else struck by the similarities in background between Joe Romm and Gregory Jaczko? Both Ph.D.-types in physics, both eschewed continuing their careers in their chosen field of study to go into government work and public policy with an obvious political bent, both anti-nuclear, even though neither had actually worked in the industry or had any formal training in the science. And both spend a lot of time in the public eye cultivating relationships in the media and making public pronouncements (i.e., a lot of words). Anecdotal, perhaps, but sometimes I have to wonder about ex-scholars who choose to leave their field of training and work at jobs that, at their basis, are government-supported.
Gmax137, A liner plot with discussion for the escalation in US plant construction from ’67 to ’88 is here: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html
Note the primary driver for escalation is labor costs, e.g. pre-76 labor costs were substantially less than those of materials, while by 1988 they were more than twice the materials cost.
Note well: “While there is little difference in materials cost, we see from Fig. 1 that the difference in labor costs between M.E. and B.E. plants is spectacular. The comparison between these is broken down in Table 1. We see that about half of the labor costs are for professionals. It is in the area of professional labor, such as design, construction, and quality control engineers, that the difference between B.E. and M.E. projects is greatest. It is also for professional labor that the escalation has been largest — in 1978 it represented only 38% of total labor costs versus 52% in 1987. However, essentially all labor costs are about twice as high for M.E. as for B.E. projects. The reasons for these labor cost problems will be discussed later in this chapter in the section on “Regulatory Turbulence.””
It ain’t rocket science; NRC actions post TMI2 drove the cost into a financial risk category buyers were no longer willing to take. And also there sat another data point staring Board Room decision makers in the face, Shoreham… finished, licensed, abandoned… because of “external forces” beyond the control of the Utility.
The cost numbers are real. And yes, it defies what happens in other industries as experience is gained. But it is not because the cause is not understood, rather it is nothing is done about the cause. And now that same cause is threatening the current operating fleet.
Also worth noting that said 1 GW nameplate capacity windfarm will output on average a real figure around 270 MW/h (if dry land) to 380 MW/h (if seaward) annualised.
Eh … I remember these types from my school days in physics. I recall the type quite well.
They’re typically rather bright, but lazy, and they’re almost always consummate brown-nosers. Some of the faculty love that, others hate it, so these folks quickly learn who to latch on to as a sponsor and who to avoid. It becomes an instinct to them.
I have a friend who knew Jaczko during his days as a graduate student at U. of Wisconsin. He was policy-bent and anti-nuclear even back then. He never really wanted to continue on into physics as a professional. In hindsight, it’s not all that surprising where he ended up.
Interesting that you should have a similar experience to mine. Not as an undergraduate, because I was more or less the big fish in a small pond, but in grad school, where you either competed or died. There were those lazy types who did the bare minimum and got by through schmoozing and knowing who to say “yes” to. I always did more than the minimum and while that earned me some points, it also got me more work (which I did). The best advice I got then was to pick my advisor based on two things: someone who was doing something I was interested in, and also had the reputation of being the toughest in terms of demanding the best of hard work and effort. Did that and never regretted it. Romm and Jaczko may indeed be very smart, but I always wondered about the motivations of those who put in 4-5 years of graduate study but seem to use that not as a scholarly career builder, but as a ticket to political influence at high levels of government.
Thanks for the link, MJD that’s very interesting.
Wayne – It’s good for you. It teaches you that hard work is the reward for hard work, and that makes you a better person because of it.
Folks like Romm and Jaczko never learned these lessons.
Both are also New Yorkers. Romm is from NYC suburbs; Jaczko grew up in Albany. It’s entirely possible that they chose to earn their physics PhDs in order to establish credibility for careers in antinuclear policy development.
Gmax137, Don’t know what your actual plant construction experience is during that era, but one would about have to see this effect actually happen for it to soak in. A few participants here have, and let me tell you, it is ugly. Mr. Cohen does a great job crunching data and showing numbers, but nothing drives it home like seeing it happen in a “nearly finished” plant. For example, NRC held the Davis Besse license “hostage” over a new “rule”, High Energy Line Break (TMI2, later license didn’t have to do it). This required a totally new “Safety System” to protect the plant from the effects of mainly steam or feed water ruptures (“Leak before break” is apparently a text book myth concept?). At this time, our main steam and feed water systems were essentially built. Thus the new Safety System must be back-fit into the existing plant.
All stop…first the Design Requirements, then engineering… civil, electrical, mechanical, structural, blah, blah. Then translate to drawings, and procure (with delivery dates), work plans, eventually to the trades to do the work. And there is stuff in the way, must be removed first (and reinstalled). I’m an operator, not construction guy, so probably missed stuff, but the point is the clock is ticking and the interest on the construction loan is growing.
How do you get this done? Enter the Cohen data… you throw thousands of Engineer Professionals at it to design, oversee, verify, etc. Remember this plant is almost done, working from previous experience of AEs and past builds. It’s like a total re-do in this one area.
Jump to 1980; the post-TMI2 “fixes” start down the pike…. and it starts again, on a lot of running plants. Some in competition for the same new “parts” (which are being developed).
This back-fitting on these huge complicated projects just flat costs huge amounts of what Cohen calls “professional” labor in order to get them done when you are fighting a schedule. The original design “grew” over several years, and much experience, and mostly NOT during an actual construction crisis. These changes become a “crash course” to get done, because if the plant doesn’t run, it doesn’t make money. Cohen’s pure numbers don’t show this, but it is why the professional engineering costs ballooned out of proportion during this ’80s time fame.
And it kinda answers the question about why the costs don’t come down as experience is gained in all aspects of these projects. The design is never “done”, even today, as the NRC arbitrarily just keeps expanding the Design Basis of these “never completed” plants. That is the piece that is missing when you try to compare it to experience in other industries.
Off the subject… but what was the actual cost/benefit… is it even really measurable? (No thanks on PRA textbook stuff). Maybe it’s simple…. they drove the cost so high, the US will likely go without the benefit of nuke power.
@Keith, excellent charts and data, very informative.
What I see is two wasted lives. Here you have two people who have the brains to obtain a Ph.D. in physics, but who did not use their knowledge to do constructive work.
While there are many ways of making money (and both Romm and Jaczko certainly have done that), not all ways of making money also make a positive contribution to society.
Just a quick anecdotal note about growth rates for different technologies.
Currently nuclear in the US is dealing with retirements as well as a minor amount of new construction. At the current time, it is fair to say the new plants are essentially replacement, or will help achieve nuclear’s attempt to maintain it’s share of the electricity pie. So nuclear is dealing with replacement and all new plants do not result in growth.
In contrast, there is very little retirement of wind and solar, so their entire supply chains are channeled towards growth. Based on design lifetimes, this could change in about 10 to 15 years. The supply chains for wind and solar will then be partially, if not completely, redirected toward replacement. In other words, if the solar and wind supply chains do not increase their volume, going forward they will have to deal with the same issues that nuclear currently deals with, that is maintaining their share of electricity generation. It is possible the supply chains for these technologies can maintain existing market while still supporting some growth, but the likelihood is that once replacement begins, that growth will drop off significantly.
@Rod In the popular figure you present how is inflation handled? Is it a real dollar graph? or actual costs? While inflation would not explain everything, 1972 to 1996 is a long time.
The effect of inflation on US plant construction costs is shown and discussed in Fig 2, at the reference given at my Jan 10 11:04 comment. Interesting reading, and complicated.
I was born in NYC and grew up half way between Indian Point NPP and Manhattan…and I turned out pro-nuclear!
David Walters
…Eventually. 🙂
@Keith @NickR
In some cases in can be even worse than you mention. It is not only about the amount of electricity produced, but when it is produced. Here in Michigan, the data shows that the wind tends to blow when it is cold, and at night. In the southern part of the state, where most of the population is, our demand peaks with heat, in other words a hot summer afternoon.
This means that wind’s contribution to peak demand is not very good here. This is reflected in our local independent system operator, who only allows a 15% contribution for wind on a capacity basis. Back to your 1GW wind farm example, this farm would only be credited for 150MW of capacity on a capacity planning basis.
For those who like contrast, solar is allowed to use 45% of its’ nameplate capacity for capacity planning purposes. Why? Because statistically it is more likely to be available on that very same hot summer afternoon.
@David Walters
Both Romm and Jaczko attended colleges that I would consider “Eastern Establishment” institutions. (MIT and Cornell respectively.)
As I have tried to document on Atomic Insights, the prospect of moving from an economy enabled by energy from hydrocarbon combustion to one where a growing portion of the economy runs as a result of atomic fission is scary for Establishment types.
Even if people are not involved in actual production, transportation, refining or sales of hydrocarbons, there are many in media, banking, and finance who stand to lose a lot if hydrocarbons lose their vital importance both politically and economically.
Gmax137. If you are familiar with “70s/’80s nuke plant construction, I apologize, if not Cohan’s numbers can look sterile, as it might be hard to imagine how something like professional labor costs can escalate so rapidly, over a 10-15 year time frame. I worked as an operator at a ’70s PWR build. These designs “evolved” over several years, as things were learned. And on the design end, at a moderate pace, using professional labor costs of the earlier time of development by several available A&E firms. A utility would buy, construction would proceed, the end would seem in sight, and then the unplanned surprise.
In our case, about 1 year before scheduled license and fuel load (’77) the NRC “required” we install a completely new Safety System, called the Steam/Feed Rupture Control System, before we could get a license. The “requirement” was a new High Energy Line Break Rule. It required an automatic system to protect against Steam Line or Feed Water line breaks.
Basically, 4 logic Channels of instrument cabinets added to the Control Room, process variable sensors for inputs to the cabinets, field wiring, hardware additions to the systems, etc. Plus additions to the plant Technical Specifications, Operating Procedures, Surveillance Tests, Training etc. We think we are a year from fuel load.
How do you get it done with the least impact on your schedule (while you pay interest on the construction debt)? You throw hundreds of professional engineering types on the job. Remember at this time the affected systems (of the new Safety System) are already built. Briefly nothing can even start, until Design Requirements, Engineering, 100s of drawings, Procurement, Work Plans, QA, etc. It’s a huge amount of work, requiring a huge amount of money, before the craft ever touch anything in the field.
Something as simple as adding a valve switch to a control room panel, eventually to the valve in the field, can become an engineering nightmare. You need “space”, what if the cable trays and conduits are full? Run new ones, maybe through 10 fire walls (protection required), with seismic requirements, etc. This is all real engineering work, and being done in crisis mode.
Add five years to ’77… the TMI2 required back-fitting is coming down the pike, for everybody (get in line). It all starts over, but now it’s almost everybody operating and under construction. Begin to see the pattern, thousands of new professional labor is required. And that labor cost goes crazy.
This is why that “saving cost with experience” comparison (to other industries) is a myth, that needs to be squelched. You are never building the same plant a second time with a new plant, the Design Basis (from what was already considered “safe” and licensed), is constantly being expanded by NRC to a more complex and inherently more expensive design. If you were building identical plants, the learning experience would no doubt show. But you never are, and also even when “finished” they are never DONE. Now it’s the Fukushima FLEX requirements (the list is long, last biggie was Security).
If NRC lays a “due by” date on you, all the Utility long range capital improvement planning is out the window. There is only so much money, and so much time.
Of course it always comes down to “is it worth it” (money spent for perceived safety improvements) for the actual benefit, and that depends on who you ask and what their motives are.
Your words express my feelings as well. We need more use of scientific principals (what worked, what failed in the real world — experiments) in government policy. Instead, whoever can grab an office, like a prize, stuffs it with their prejudice monger.
When I was deciding on a major, I was at U of Chicago, which has no engineering school but many Nobel winners in various branches of science. So my choices were biology, chemistry and physics. I thought biology had too much memorization, so I was left with chemistry and physics. I loved physics. Einstein! Fermi! Cool stuff!
But I didn’t see how I could contribute to physics. Physics was all “breakthroughs” as I saw it. Could I come up with a breakthrough? Seemed unlikely.
On the other hand, chemists seemed to “advance” the art one step at a time. I figured that if I worked hard, I could contribute as a chemist.
I admit to having been in awe of people who chose physics.
FWIW, I was also in awe of mathematicians and I married one. Most of the mathematicians seemed more fun loving than the physicists, especially in terms of lots of time involved with music. Looking back, I dated mathematicians and chemists and an economics major. I don’t think I ever dated a physics major. But I did admire them, a lot.
Romm immediately loses all credibility when he cites MZ Jacobson’s WWS all-sector (not just electricity but also transportation) primary energy fantasy at the end of the vary same article in which he criticizes the comparatively modest electric sector fission-build projections of Hansen et al.
Jacobson’s WWS vision involves a mix of ~50/50% wind & solar. Currently wind turbines — now the most economically viable “renewable” technology currently generating ~4% of US electricity — require a $23 per MW/hr production tax credit. “According to AWEA, in 2013, after the renewable energy tax credits were allowed to expire even briefly, installations of new wind farms fell 92 percent, causing a loss of 30,000 jobs across the industry that year.” (CS Monitor 7-29-2015). These government subsidies now cost taxpayers ~$3.5 billion/yr.
All forms of solar thermal or PV electricity generation are now an order-of-magnitude more expensive than wind turbines. PV electricity also has a far larger “carbon footprint” than nuclear fission, comparable to natural gas in fact, especially when those solar cells are manufactured in China (PRC), the cheapest world manufacturers; those PRC solar cells are manufactured under a far more carbon intensive coal driven economy than the US.
Jacobson recently published a 50 state 100% renewable roadmap energy plan by 2050:
http://thesolutionsproject.org/infographic/
Romm & Jacobson should demonstrate their theories on just one state such as Hawaii where electricity prices are already the highest and electricity consumption the lowest in the US. In fact they should pick just one island — I suggest Kauai, far smaller than populous Oahu yet still large enough to require extensive baseload transmission and/or storage — to demonstrate their 100% WWS theory.
As Hansen et al write “Some have argued that it is feasible to meet all of our energy needs with renewables. The 100% renewable scenarios downplay or ignore the intermittency issue by making unrealistic technical assumptions, and can contain high levels of biomass and hydroelectric power at the expense of true sustainability.” And they note “Large amounts of nuclear power would make it much easier for solar and wind to close the energy gap.” Specifically what they are calling for is “an all-of-the-above approach that includes increased investment in renewables combined with an accelerated deployment of new nuclear reactors.”
Fission electricity generation has already displaced more carbon (60 GtCO2) than all other technologies combined (current annual world emissions: ~36 GtCO2). Current world electricity demand is ~3500 GW/hr annum with fission supplying ~10% and carbon intensive coal ~40%. By 2050 world energy demand driven by needs of developing nations could double. The developing economies of the PRC, India, & Indonesia are largely driven by coal; to displace this future coal demand ~80GW(e) of new fission energy per year would be required over the next 35 years. The world economy is now ~400 times larger, in real terms, than the economy of Sweden in the 1970s. It took Sweden less than 20 years to build ~10GW(e) of fission capacity, the modern worldwide equivalent would be 200GW(e) year. Well within the future roadmap projections of Hansen et al.
Coal fallout routinely shortens the lives (kills) of a million people per annum according to research published by both the Lancet and Harvard School of Public health, far more than any conceivable nuclear accident, or series of nuclear accidents, even accepting unscientific LNT radio-carcinogenesis estimates. The mass of radionuclides in burned coal released to the biosphere far exceeds nuclear reactor discharges.
I should emphasize the obvious needed correction in my 2nd to last paragraph above: average world electricity demand is ~3500 GW(e); total world annual electricity production (8766 hours per year) is approx. 30 million GW/hrs per year.
It should also be noted that of the 2-3000GW(e) of fission driven electricity that would be required to displace coal by mid-21st century probably no more than 1000GW(e) should be generated by LWRs. 200k tons of annual uranium production would likely stress the extractive capacities of in-situ mining and require large open-cast ore bodies.
Contrary to the opinion of Energy Sec. Ernest Moniz now is not too soon to develop thermal & fast breeder reactors in order to avoid late 21st century fissile bottlenecks.