The Green New Deal Needs Nuclear Energy
James Conca and Judith Wright
Congressional members rolled out their “Green New Deal” (GND) in February 2019 that calls for a rapid shift to carbon-free energy. As laid out by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Markey (D-MA), the GND calls for drastic measures to cut carbon emissions across the economy, from electricity generation to transportation to agriculture to building efficiencies.
But the roll-out hiccupped a bit on the role of nuclear energy. Realistically, renewables alone cannot meet the goal of decarbonizing the world economy. Nuclear needs to be part of the energy transition story. Even the Union of Concerned Scientists recently said we need nuclear to address global warming.
Clearing Confusion on Nuclear Energy
At first, the proposal called for phasing out all nuclear plants and not building any new ones. They also released a fact sheet nixing the possibility of building new nuclear power plants. Then they backed off and referred to future energy sources as clean, renewable, and zero-emission, which allows nuclear back in.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, the UN Sustainable Solutions Network, the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate and most leading climate scientists, argue for a tripling of nuclear energy, requiring over 1,000 new reactors, or 10,000 SMRs, to stabilize global anthropogenic carbon emissions at near-zero.
Presently, America is 64% fossil fuel in electricity generation, but 87% fossil fuel if you add in transportation which is dominated by petroleum. After 14 years of carbon emission decline as we replaced coal plants with gas plants, our emissions began to rise again in 2018 because of increased gasoline and diesel use, as well as just increased economic output.
What Would a Plan of Action for Nuclear Look Like?
To begin with, we should stop closing existing nuclear power plants that have been relicensed as safe by the NRC, which includes almost all remaining reactors in the United States. Every time we close nuclear, carbon emissions go up.
Second, we should build new small modular reactors as fast as possible to load-follow, or buffer, the renewables, instead of building new natural gas plants. SMRs cannot melt down and all the other scary things have been fixed. We haven’t been idle in the last 30 years.
In America, an achievable GND will require some version of the following: over 200 new nuclear reactors (or 2,000 small modular reactors that are especially ideal for load-following, able to ramp up and down in seconds), 500,000 additional MW wind turbines, 800 billion kWhs from new solar, and 600 billion kWhs from hydro. For the World, multiply these numbers by seven.
The Political Challenge for Nuclear
The hurdles to new nuclear power, and to nuclear waste disposal, are political and ideological, and stem from the media frenzy over 50 years. TV serials such as Chernobyl only accentuate the unease over nuclear. Many point to Fukushima as an example why GND should ignore nuclear energy. While Fukushima plant was not properly managed, the Fukushima disaster was a result of a massive Tsunami and a weak regulatory agency. Indeed, the Japanese government has, or has begun, restarting over a fifth of their nuclear power plants.
New nuclear designs, like NuScale’s SMR out of Oregon, are as safe as one can make any generator, even wind. We know what to do with nuclear waste, we just aren’t allowed to do it. This is where GND sponsors should strive for consensus. New legislation on nuclear power and nuclear waste are before Congress with varying degree of success.
In the 1970s and 80s, incorrect predictions of energy needs in the coming decades, cost overruns from continual changes in regulatory and manufacturing requirements, the inability to standardize reactor designs, warped market forces from the deregulation of the most energy markets, and the rise of anti-nuclear ideologies, all led to the halt of new nuclear builds in America. Even though nuclear has been the overwhelming source of clean power for the last 40 years.
In order to achieve a successful GND, the public has to decide what they fear most – the anti-nuclear mythology or the existential threat of global warming.
Nuclear is Easy to Build
Some might say that this is false choice, that one should focus on renewables only. In reality, the amount of wind and solar required by GND should be put into perspective. We presently have about 90,000 MW of wind turbines that generate about 260 billion kWhs per year, and we have been building them as fast as possible for over ten years.
To build 500,000 more MW of turbines over the next 10 to 20 years, is really pushing our manufacturing side and will take more steel than we could possible produce over that time frame. Wind turbines take 450 tons of steel per MW. Solar takes 1,600 tons of steel per MW. To emplace the amount of wind and solar in the GND described above, would take 1.6 billion tons of steel. And for the world to achieve the same level of decarbonization, it would require about 11 billion tons. Since the total annual global output of steel is only 1.6 billion tons, we would be very dependent on China, India and Japan for that much steel, and would require them to either produce many times as much as they do now, or use less than half of what they use now.
Of course, we should aggressively push for renewables, especially given the falling costs. But renewables alone cannot achieve the goals set out in GND. Plus, nuclear has another big advantage: much of the equipment and hardware is manufactured in America. Hence, a vast increase in nuclear capacity can create domestic jobs, which is an important objective for the GND.
A successful GND has to seriously consider nuclear energy. Because the environmental community emphasizes science and evidence, the safety of nuclear energy should be evaluated on a scientific basis. Without such careful analysis, nuclear energy will not be able to contribute to a quick decarbonization of the economy.
James Conca is the Chief Technical Officer of UFA Ventures, Inc and a weekly contributor to Forbes.com on energy and nuclear issues.
Judith Wright is the President and CEO of UFA Ventures, Inc.