by Robert Bryce
Exactly how many new wells will be needed is not yet clear, and it will likely take several years before the industry figures out how to manage the huge quantities of gas available in the various shale deposits.
FIGURE 37 U.S. Natural Gas Wells, Average Productivity
Source: Energy Information Administration, Table 6.4, “Natural Gas Gross Withdrawals and Natural Gas Well Productivity, 1960–2008,” n.d., http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0604.html.
But as the number of gas wells increases, and those production facilities get closer to people’s homes and businesses, the costs of developing U.S. natural gas will be felt by more people. Concerns about water—both in terms of the quantity of water used during the fracturing process, and the allegations that fracturing may have negative effects on surface and groundwater supplies—will almost surely increase.
Although some of those concerns may be valid, many of the complaints about water usage are clearly overblown. For instance, if the gas industry is able to ramp up its operations in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania to the point where it is drilling and fracturing 3,000 wells per year, the industry expects water consumption to total about 30 million gallons per day. For comparison, the Pennsylvania electric utility sector uses about 5.9 billion gallons of water per day, or about two hundred times more than the projected needs of the natural gas sector.12
Furthermore, the gas industry is continually improving both its seismic monitoring and its ability to perform drilling that has a small footprint. The industry’s ability to extract hydrocarbons from reservoirs that are miles away can be seen by the November 2009 news that Chesapeake Energy had drilled a gas well inside the city limits of Fort Worth. That’s not overly uncommon, given that the Barnett Shale underlies much of the city. What was newsworthy was that the target zone for the well was underneath the north end-zone of Amon G. Carter Stadium, the home venue of the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs football team. But visitors to the stadium, and students, faculty, and university administrators, will never notice the well, because the drilling site for the well is about 1.5 miles southeast of the stadium.13
Though critics of the industry will claim that the costs of natural gas development are significant, in reality those costs are not new, and they aren’t unusual. For decades, drillers have been sinking tens of thousands of wells all over the United States in their search for more hydrocarbons. And they have found them in huge quantities. The development of shale gas causes some disruption—in the form of traffic, noise, big drilling rigs, temporary fluid tanks, and generators—no question about it. But once the gas wells are in place, there is virtually no more disruption, and those wells can remain productive for decades.
Natural gas is not a perfect fuel. But natural gas is the greenest of the hydrocarbons. Once we move beyond hydrocarbons in the search for something that is yet greener, there is only one choice that can provide the scale of energy we need and provide it in a way that is both affordable and environmentally friendly. That choice, of course, is nuclear power.
CHAPTER 26
Nuclear Goes Beyond Green
NUCLEAR POWER IS BEYOND GREEN.
Of course, that’s not the message you’re going to hear from the media darlings and mainstream environmental groups. For them, nuclear power has become a rallying point around which they can raise money and continue pushing their message that the only options for the future are renewable energy and efficiency. They insist that nuclear power is too expensive—and too dangerous—for use in the modern world.
That message, particularly the part about danger, evokes a strong response among the population. Some of the fear is understandable. The enduring image that marks the beginning of the nuclear age is, of course, the mushroom cloud. By unlocking the forces inside the atom, humans unleashed the most fearsome weapons the world has ever known, and the United States has used that knowledge twice, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to devastating effect. More recently, the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, along with movies such as Silkwood and The China Syndrome, have stoked fears about what might happen in the case of a nuclear accident. And environmental groups continue to use fears about nuclear proliferation as the reason to fight nuclear power.
In short, for many people, nuclear power’s future has not yet overcome its past. But progress on the issue is being made. Perhaps the best single rebuttal to these fears comes from James Lovelock, the British scientist who proposed the Gaia theory, which posits that the Earth is a self-regulating organism. In 2004, Lovelock wrote an opinion piece for the Independent in which he made it clear that nuclear power is the only viable option for large-scale reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. “By all means,” he wrote, “let us use the small input from renewables sensibly, but only one immediately available source does not cause global warming and that is nuclear energy.” Lovelock went on, writing,Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywoodstyle fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources.... I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy. ... We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources.1
Other leading environmentalists have also endorsed nuclear, including Patrick Moore, who was a founder of Greenpeace, and the late Anglican bishop Hugh Montefiore, who was a trustee of the United Kingdom’s Friends of the Earth for two decades. Despite the growing support for nuclear power, some of the most established members of the Green/Left continue their opposition. Among the most strident—and consistently wrong—of the nuclear opponents: Amory Lovins.
In 1986, when asked about the future of nuclear power, Lovins declared flatly, “There isn’t one.... No more will be built. The only question is whether the plants already operating will continue to operate during their lifetime or whether they will be shut down prematurely.” Since then, Lovins has repeated one of his favorite lines: “Nuclear is dying of an incurable attack of market forces.”2
In 2007, when I interviewed Lovins, he declared that “a huge and capable propaganda campaign by the [nuclear] industry and its political allies is spinning an illusion of a renaissance that deceives credulous journalists but not hard-nosed investors.”3
How did Lovins do on his prediction back in 1986? According to data from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), about 130 new reactors with nearly 123,000 megawatts of generating capacity have been brought online over the past two decades or so. Those reactors represent nearly one-third of global nuclear capacity, which in late 2009 included 436 reactors with 370,000 megawatts of capacity.4 As for his 2007 claim about the “illusion of a renaissance,” the numbers, once again, have proven him wrong. By the end of 2009, more than four dozen new reactor projects, representing nearly 48,000 megawatts of new nuclear capacity, were under construction.5 And many more were on the way. Japan, the third-biggest producer of nuclear power (after the United States and France), plans to construct 11 new reactors over the next decade or so.6 And the country plans to be getting 60 percent of its electricity from nuclear power by 2050—double the current percentage.7
The International Energy Agency (IEA) sees nuclear power as an essential part of the effort to stabilize global carbon dioxide levels. In its 2009 World Energy Outlook, the agency said it expected global investment in nuclear power to total some $1.3 trillion over the next two decades.8 More importantly, the IEA’s latest report makes it clear that nuclear power is competitive with conventional power plants. “New nuclear power plants can generate electricity at a cost of between $55 and $80 per MWh [megawatt-hour], which places them in a strong competitive position against coal- or gas-fired power plants, particularly when fossil-fuel plants carry the burden of the carbon cost associated with the cap-and-trade system” that is in place in Europe, and proposed for the United States.9
The IEA projects that for power plants that begin operations between 20
15 and 2020, nuclear will be among the cheapest options, even when compared to wind power and coal-fired power plants that use high-efficiency ultra-supercritical combustion. The agency estimates that nuclear power plants will be able to produce electricity for about $72 per megawatt-hour, whereas onshore wind costs will be about $94 per megawatt-hour.10
Despite the data, Lovins continues singing from his same tired hymnal. In 2009, he said that nuclear is “continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded and obsolete.”11 Lovins may be wrong, but at least he’s been consistently wrong—for nearly three decades. The same can be said of the major environmental groups. Consider this line from Greenpeace International: Nuclear power is “an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power,” and, says Greenpeace, to begin “the shutdown of existing plants.”12
Here’s the Sierra Club’s position on nuclear, a position it has held since 1974: “The Sierra Club opposes the licensing, construction and operation of new nuclear reactors utilizing the fission process.” The club plans to continue its opposition, pending “development of adequate national and global policies to curb energy over-use and unnecessary economic growth.”13
FIGURE 38 International Energy Agency’s Projected Costs for Commercial Electricity Generation Plants That Begin Operations from 2015 to 2020, in Dollars Per Megawatt-Hour
Source: International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2009, 381.
Unfortunately, neither Greenpeace nor the Sierra Club explains how they plan to replace nuclear power, which now provides about 15 percent of the world’s electricity needs and about 5 percent of its total primary energy.14 And while the Sierra Club may be opposed to “energy over-use and unnecessary economic growth,” there haven’t been many countries in Africa—or anywhere else—that have expressed concern about using too much energy or about too much economic growth.
Nuclear power is the only always-on, no-carbon source that can replace significant amounts of coal in our electricity generation portfolio. If the United States is serious about cutting carbon dioxide emissions and reducing the harmful environmental side effects of coal-fired power while keeping the lights on and the beer cold, nuclear has to be an integral part of the plan. Indeed, when all factors are considered, nuclear power may be the most environmentally friendly form of electricity generation.
That’s not to say that nuclear doesn’t come with environmental costs. It does. But then, so do renewable sources such as wind and solar, which require hundreds—or thousands—of square miles of land for power generation and transmission. The same problems of energy sprawl hamper the development of hydropower and biofuels.
Thanks to their super-high power density, nuclear reactors require small amounts of land. When operational, they emit no carbon dioxide, and the volume of their solid waste production is minuscule. For instance, a 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor produces about 20 cubic meters of solid waste per year.15 Every year, the entire fleet of U.S. nuclear reactors produces about 2,000 tons of spent fuel. Over the entire history of the U.S. nuclear power industry, it has produced about 60,000 tons of high-level waste.16 That volume of material, if stacked to a depth of about 15 feet, would cover an area the size of a single football field.17
The key, of course, is proper waste management. Other countries, including Russia, Japan, and France, are actively and responsibly handling the nuclear waste produced by their reactors. The same can be done in the United States. And it can be done because the volumes of waste being produced are relatively small, particularly when compared with the amounts being produced by the coal industry. In 2007 alone, coal-fired power plants in the United States generated 131 million tons of coal ash—and much of that material is contaminated with heavy metals.18 Thus, in one year, the U.S. coal industry produces nearly 2,200 times as much solid waste as the U.S. nuclear industry has produced in more than four decades.
By nearly any metric that the environmental groups choose—footprint, solid waste production, neurotoxin releases, or carbon dioxide emissions—nuclear power is beyond green. The main problem facing nuclear power is the environmental groups themselves. Mainstream environmental groups continue to oppose nuclear energy despite the fact that the existing global fleet of reactors prevents the emission of about 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year—that’s about 7 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.19
TABLE 5 Estimated Construction Cost of Various Electric Generation Plants
Source Construction cost per kilowatt of capacity
Nuclear $4,000 to $6,700
Offshore wind $5,000
Coal $2,300
Natural gas $850
Sources: Rebecca Smith, “The New Nukes,” Wall Street Journal, September 8, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204409904574350342705855178.html. The wind figure is for the Sheringham Shoal offshore wind farm in the United Kingdom. Estimated cost is 1 billion British pounds. In mid-September 2009, that was equal to about $1.7 billion. See “Onshore Construction Begins for Sheringham Shoal Wind farm,” NewEnergyFocus.com, September 7, 2009, http://www.newenergyfocus.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=1&listcatid=32&listitemid=2978§ion=Wind.
While nuclear power’s green credentials are obvious, critics bring up valid concerns about its cost. Building a large nuclear plant in the United States will cost billions of dollars. Utilities are understandably nervous about committing $10 billion or more to a project that could be delayed and cost more than expected. And over the past decade or so, the costs associated with building new reactors have increased substantially. For instance, a reactor being built at Olkiluoto, Finland, by the French nuclear giant, Areva, has been hampered by repeated delays, with the price tag for the project reportedly increasing by about 50 percent. Another Areva reactor project in Flamanville, France, is also over budget and running behind schedule.20 In May 2009, Areva officials in Paris admitted to me that the company was having problems with the deployment of its latest reactor design, the European Pressured Reactor, in Olkiluoto and Flamanville. But Areva is confident the problems will be worked out over time.
Some U.S. utilities are shying away from nuclear power over cost concerns. In April 2009, resistance from Missouri legislators led the state’s biggest electric utility, Ameren UE, to drop its plan to hire Areva to build a $6 billion copy of the European Pressured Reactor.21 A few months later, in October 2009, the San Antonio city council delayed a vote on $400 million in bonds that were to be sold to support the municipal utility’s plan to invest in two additional reactors at the South Texas Project. The vote was suspended after reports surfaced that the two new reactors, with a total capacity of 2,700 megawatts, were going to cost a total of $13 billion, or about $3 billion more than previously expected.22 At the $13 billion price, that works out to about $4,800 per kilowatt.
Obviously, the relatively high cost of nuclear power presents a barrier for both utilities and consumers. But comparing the initial construction costs of a nuclear power plant with those of coal and natural gas is misleading, because the long-term operating costs of the nuclear plant are lower than those for coal and natural gas plants. The reason: The fuel for nuclear reactors costs a fraction of what utilities pay to fuel their coal- and gas-fired plants. But the higher operating costs of coaland gas-fired plants appear to be acceptable in the current marketplace, particularly given the recent declines in U.S. electricity consumption and the general nervousness about the future health of the economy.
Although the high initial costs of nuclear power are substantial, the per-kilowatt construction costs of nuclear power plants are similar to the per-kilowatt costs of constructing offshore wind projects. In 2009, Norwegian energy giant StatoilHydro began building the 315-megawatt Sheringham Shoal offshore wind farm. That project, located in British territorial waters about 120 miles northeast of London, carries a price tag of about $1.7 billion, which works out to about $5,000 per
kilowatt of installed capacity—a sum that puts it in the same ballpark as a nuclear power plant.23 And unlike nuclear plants, which usually have a capacity factor of 90 percent, those offshore generators will likely only produce power about 30 to 40 percent of the time.
The high capital costs and low power density of offshore wind means higher costs for consumers. In November 2009, a Rhode Island electric utility rejected a proposal from a company called Deepwater Wind, which wanted to sell electricity. Deepwater Wind had proposed a $200 million array of wind turbines off the Rhode Island coast. According to the Providence Journal, Deepwater wanted to sell electricity to the utility at a cost of $0.253 per kilowatt-hour. And, as the newspaper reported, “that price would increase by 3.5% annually.” The Journal went on to report that the local utility currently pays an average of $0.092 per kilowatt-hour for electricity produced from conventional generators. Thus, for the luxury of buying wind generated by offshore wind turbines, Deepwater Wind wanted Rhode Island consumers to pay more than twice as much for their electricity as they would from conventional generators. Nevertheless, the company’s chief development officer, Paul Rich, was unabashed, declaring that the expected price of electricity from Deepwater Wind’s offshore project was “in line with major European wind farms in an established market with an established supply chain.”24