(April 23, 1993) Little by little the market mechanism seems to be pushing a number of American reactors into an early retirement. Antinuclear activists even dream of euthanasia. Despite the efforts of the nuclear lobby, the decline of the industry seems to be speeding up in its country of birth.
(390.3803) WISE Amsterdam - There are two main reasons for this:
- administrative decentralization and possibilities to take legal steps have given the opposition something to fight with.
- the private character of electricity production has quickly shown the very high cost of this form of energy.
Recently, the premature closure of the Trojan nuclear plant (built by Westinghouse) has been announced. Like the San Onofre and Yankee Rowe plants, it has fallen victim to a cost-benefit evaluation, which showed its inefficiency. After being pressurized by ecologists, the state of Oregon had imposed the evaluation on the plants management.
The last construction order for a nuclear plant in the U.S. has been placed in 1974, almost 20 years ago! Cost-benefit evaluations have played a key role in what has in fact become a long moratorium. Today, American anti-nuclears are taking the offensive, demanding such evaluations for all working reactors. Ecologists of the Environmental Defense Fund have developed software capable of simulating- and calculating the price of different scenarios of electricity supply and efficient use of energy. Big electricity companies have ended up buying this software and are drawing inspiration from it.
This is how nowadays the director of SMUD, which furnishes electricity for the Sacramento region is going around the country, explaining to other plant owners why and how the reactor of Rancho Seco has been shut down. This plant used to furnish half of the electricity for Sacramento and has been replaced by a less expensive gas installation. Demand increases will be covered entirely by a program of energy efficiency until 2007, after which year any new demands will be covered by solar- and wind energy.
Despite successful efforts of the nuclear lobby to influence the federal government in its favour, it is unlikely that this outdated industry will come back to life. More and more information is contributing to its decay. Dismantling costs, for example, multiply themselves as a reactor's date of expire approaches. The provisions for the dismantling of Yankee Rowe used to be $ 72 million. Today, the real costs are estimated to be $ 247 million. At this rate the dismantling of reactors is going to be as expensive as their construction.
Greenpeace has drawn up a balance-sheet of the costs of construction and functioning of nuclear plants (also including the numerous subsidies of the federal government). According to their calculations each KWh produced by nuclear power costs 10 cents, against 4 to 5 cents for coal and 6 cents for gas. At these prices even electricity produced by photovoltaics will soon cost less than nuclear electricity. On top of this, with the new president in power, the support of the federal government might dwindle. As Bush was still part of the petrol-uranium consortium, Clinton and Gore have spoken out in favour of alternatives. This is a promise they could be able to keep.
Source: ContrAtom (Geneva), March 1993, page 22.
Contact: We do not have the current address of the Environmental Defense Fund, but if you write to ContrAtom (Case postale 65, CH-1211 Geneve, Switzerland, Tel: 22-3204567, Fax: 22-3204567) they should be able to provide it for you.