Ideas today about what to do about global warming go in several different directions

Should we build new nuclear power plants?

• is it safe?
• do you have a logical site to build it
• how does it affect the community?
• environmental impact
• cost
• how did we get where we are?
  

Some of the scientists who had built the first atomic bomb put their energy into the arms race, others saw the only way to make it all worthwhile to be to develop peaceful uses for atomic energy

• power was most promising, although a variety of other schemes were discussed
• the only interest of the Atomic Energy Commission was more bombs until about 1947, and even after that military needs were first priority.  The AEC was worried about shortage of uranium.  However, they did develop some reactor technology to produce plutonium, as at the Savannah River Plant.
• When the AEC first started planning for nuclear power in 1948 they stressed breader reactors: produce both power and plutonium.  Dec. 20, 1951, a fast breeder reactor became the first reactor to generate significant power. 
  

 Lightbulbs lit by first US reactor to supply electricity

• Meanwhile more practical reactor technology was being developed for the Navy.  Admiral Hyman Rickover was assigned by the Navy to Oak Ridge to study reactors.  He became a true believer and in 1948 became head of a joint Navy-AEC project to develop a nuclear submarine.  He singlehandedly pushed the project through, and the first nuclear powered submarine was tested in prototype by Nov. 1952

 first nuclear submarine

• light water uranium reactors were picked for the submarine project because they took advantage of existing facilities for uranium separation and had features (such as lack of exotic or dangerous cooling fluids) particularly useful for submarines
• Westinghouse, who was working on the Navy project, proposed using the same kind of reactor as a power plant--the first reactor for commercial power generation was a 60 MW plant built by Westinghouse with AEC funding in Shippingport, Pennsylvania.  It began operation in 1957, at an operating cost ten times the standard for electricity generation at the time.  The best reactor for a submarine wasn't necessarily the best for power plants.
• A number of experimental reactors were built, including liquid sodium breeder, boiling water, pressurized water.  By the end of 1957 the AEC had 7 experimental reactors and 11 cooperative or independent industry projects.

 Experimental Breeder Reactor

• The problems of developing nuclear power were legal as well as technological.  In 1954 changes in the Atomic Energy Act (in response to a call by Eisenhower for peaceful uses in 1953) for the first time allowed private industry to owner reactors under AEC license and allowed AEC to exchange technical data on nuclear power.
• Industry found that private insurance company would only come up with $60 million in insurance for commercial nuclear power plants--not nearly enough.  The federal government stepped in with the 1957 Price-Anderson Act, to allow the industry to get off the ground.  The Price-Anderson Act solved the insurance problem by releasing everyone involved in building and operating a nuclear power plant from liability.  Damages up to a specified amount would be paid from a pool first provided by the federal government and insurance companies and then funded by the industry.  That meant that in the case of an accident all damages above the limit--set initially at $560 million--would not be compensated (unless the federal goverment decided to provide more disaster aid).
• the AEC started subsidising private industry construction of reactors--which did not look economically feasible without subsidy.  The Democrats and the scientists pushed the AEC to do more through the 50s, and the AEC by the 1960s did more promoting than regulating of atomic power
• But private industry was worried about whether costs could be brought low enough.  At the time coal powered generation was becoming more efficient--the average cost of coal in 1964 was $5 per ton, delivered, so the lower fuel cost for nuclear power wasn't that big an advantage.
• worries about safety were also growing:
• An Experimental Breeder Reactor in Idaho had a core meltdown in 1955.  The accident was contained, but since EBR-1 was a breeder it could have turned into a nuclear bomb (unlike conventional reactors).
• It led to the first important outside safety study, WASH-740, which estimated that a serious accident was no more likely than one chance in 100,000 per reactor year.  However, it also estimated that a serious accident at a planned breeder reactor in Detroit would cause 3,400 deaths, 43,000 injuries, and $7 billion in property damage.  (This was not the most negative prediction--another scientific study of the same breeder accident scenario estimated 133,000 prompt deaths, 181,000 likely or possible long-term fatalities, and 245,000 massive somatic and genetic injuries).
• The reactor near Detroit was built and quickly suffered an accident whose seriousness is debated--one journalist wrote a book titled We Almost Lost Detroit with some fairly convincing evidence.
• progress was maintained by concentrating on less ambitious designs.
• By the end of 1962, the AEC had spent $1 billion and private industry $500 million.  The operating costs had dropped from 50 mills/kwh or 10 mills/kwh, and was expected to drop quickly to 5 mills/kwh, compared to 4.1 to 6.2 for conventional power generation (they also predicted that costs would drop to 3.8 mills/kwh by 1980--in fact the cost in 1980 was 2.3 cents).

 1971 Robinson plant near Hartsville SC

• Glen Seaborg, the chairman of the AEC, predicted that nuclear power would be the leading energy source in most of the world by the end of the century.
• the companies that built nuclear power plants offered fixed cost deals, probably the first six of which were priced below cost.  Large numbers of orders were placed based on optomistic assumptions about how costs would continue to fall.
• Arab oil embargo of 1973 and the resulting 600% increase in oil costs (between 1970 and 1973) gave a further boost, but even with low fuel and operations costs nuclear power was still not very competitive because of the very high and unpredictable construction costs (in which interest rates played a key role, and the oil crisis led indirectly to higher interest rates).
• By Dec. 1976 60 reactors were completed

 image source

• Only six new reactors were started between 1975 and 1980, and there were 50 cancellations of previous orders and about 100 deferals.  Many of these were caused by cost issues even before the accident at Three Mile Island, March 28, 1979.
• public perception was increasingly negative
• after Three Mile Island many new regulations were issued, increasing the cost of plants

• Oconee Nuclear was the second nuclear power plant in the U.S. to be given an extension of its operating license for an additional 20 years
• very little opposition
• zone map
• South Carolina Energy Sources
  

• Design life
• old technology (eg. welds containing copper and nickel)--cracks were discovered a few months after relicensing

• Oconee already has over 1500 metric tons of radioactive waste on site
  
• financial: what are the different kinds of costs to be considered?
• construction costs (and how accurately those can be predicted)
• operating and maintenance costs
• changing costs of alternative approaches
• regulatory costs
• increasing costs due to public pressure for increasing safety standards
  
• decommissioning costs

• There are currently 103 reactors in the U.S. generating about 20% of the nation's electricity
  
• six U.S. companies are proposing to build new nuclear power plants
• on March 16, 2006 Duke Power proposed two at a site in Cherokee County next to where earlier plans to build a nuclear power plant had been abandoned in the 1980s
  
• they have also considered Oconee Nuclear for an additional reactor

• reduce global warming and acid rain (the most economical fuel for electrical generation is coal)
• less dependent on foreign oil
  
• all other alternative power sources would be more expensive
  
• improved technology (failsafe nuclear power plant design is possible)

• accident risk is of large accidents causing long term contamination
  
• potential terrorist targets
• nuclear waste problem is not solved--Yucca Mountain is supposed to open in 2017
• Yucca mountain has been costing $500 million a year but when construction begins in ernest will go over $1 billion a year
  
• strong political opposition in Nevada
  

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This page written and copyright Pamela E. Mack
Hist 124
last updated 4/13/09

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