McCain's French kiss

Financial Post ^ | May 13, 2008 | Lawrence Solomon

[Delacon]

The Republican nominee backed nuclear this week, but the U.S. shouldn't try to imitate the French disaster

                                    By Lawrence Solomon
"If France can produce 80% of its electricity with nuclear power, why can’t we?,” asks U.S. presidential candidate John McCain. Nuclear power is a cornerstone of Senator McCain’s plan to combat climate change, which he is unveiling this week.
McCain thinks he is asking a simple rhetorical question. As it turns out, he is not. His question is technical, with an answer that will surprise him and most Americans. Nuclear reactors cannot possibly meet 80% of America’s power needs — or those of any country whose power market dominates its region — because of limitations in nuclear technology. McCain needs to find another miracle energy solution, or abandon his vow to drastically cut back carbon dioxide emissions.
Unlike other forms of power generation, nuclear reactors are designed to run flat-out, 24/7 — they can’t crank up their output at times of high demand or ease up when demand slows. This limitation generally consigns nuclear power to meeting a power system’s minimum power needs — the amount of power needed in the dead of night, when most industry and most people are asleep, and the value of power is low. At other times of the day and night, when power demands rise and the price of power is high, society calls on the more flexible forms of generation — coal, gas, oil and hydro-electricity among them — to meet its additional higher-value needs.
If a country produces more nuclear power than it needs in the dead of night, it must export that low-value, off-peak power. This is what France does. It sells its nuclear surplus to its European Union neighbours, a market of 700 million people. That large market — more than 10 times France’s population — is able to soak up most of France’s surplus off-peak power.
The U.S. is not surrounded, as is France, by far more populous neighbours. Just the opposite: The U.S. dominates the North American market. If 80% of U.S. needs were met by nuclear reactors, as Senator McCain desires, America’s off-peak surplus would have no market, even if the power were given away. Countries highly reliant on nuclear power, in effect, are in turn reliant on having large non-nuclear-reliant countries as neighbours. If France’s neighbours had power systems dominated by nuclear power, they too would be trying to export off-peak power and France would have no one to whom it could offload its surplus power. In fact, even with the mammoth EU market to tap into, France must shut down some of its reactors some weekends because no one can use its surplus. In effect, France can’t even give the stuff away.
Not only does France export vast quantities of its low-value power (it is the EU’s biggest exporter by far), France meanwhile must import high-value peak power from its neighbours. This arrangement is so financially ruinous that France in 2006 decided to resurrect its obsolete oil-fired power stations, one of which dates back to 1968.
France’s nuclear program sprung not from business needs but from foreign policy goals. Immediately after the Second World War, France’s President, Charles de Gaulle, decided to develop nuclear weapons, to make France independent of either the U.S. or the USSR. This foreign policy goal spawned a commercial nuclear industry, but a small one — France’s nuclear plants could not compete with other forms of generation, and produced but 8% of France’s power until 1973.
Then came the OPEC oil crisis and panic. Sensing that French sovereignty was at stake, the country decided to replace oil with electricity and to generate that electricity with nuclear. By 1974, three mammoth nuclear plants were begun and by 1977, another five. Without regulatory hurdles to clear and with cut-rate financing and a host of other subsidies from Euratom, the EU’s nuclear subsidy agency, France’s power system was soon transformed. By 1979, France’s frenzied building program had nuclear power meeting 20% of France’s power generation. By 1983 the figure was about 50% and by 1990 about 75% and growing.
Despite the subsidies, the overbuilding effectively bankrupted Electricite de France (EdF), the French power company. To dispose of its overcapacity and stay afloat, EdF feverishly exported its surplus power to its neighbours, even laying a cable under the English Channel to become a major supplier to the UK. At great expense, French homes were converted to inefficient electric home heating. And EdF offered cut-rate power to keep and attract energy-intensive industries — Pechiney, the aluminum supplier, obtained power at half of EdF’s cost of production, and soon EdF was providing similar terms to Exxon Chemicals and Allied Signal.
These measures helped but not enough — in 1989, EdF ran a loss of four billion French francs, a sum its president termed “catastrophic.” The company had a 800-billion-franc debt, old reactors that faced expensive decommissioning, and unresolved waste disposal costs. To keep lower-cost competitors out of the country, France also reneged on an EU-wide agreement to open borders up to electricity competition.
France’s nuclear program, in short, is an economic disaster, and a political one too — 61% of the French public favours a phase-out of nuclear energy.
“Is France a more secure, advanced and innovative country than we are?,” McCain also asked. “I need no answer to that rhetorical question. I know my country well enough to know otherwise.”
But McCain does not know France well enough to know why nuclear power’s negative record over there says nothing positive about what it can do for people over here, on this side of the Atlantic.

                                                            Financial Post
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud. E-mail: LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com. Fourth in a series.

[SierraWasp]

I guess you missed the very beginning of reply #58. Sorry!!!

[Castlebar]

This sounds odd to me...i was on nuclear subs...i’m pretty sure you can adjust the output of a reactor by the rods.

The following is NOT Classified; applies to virtually all saturated steam pressurized water reactors.

Power level in such reactors is adjusted with marveloulsly elegant simplicity.

Opening the throttles wider (and thus demanding more power to the turbines) lowers the steam pressure, and thus lowers steam temperature (saturated system) this lowers the temperature of primary water returning to the reactor; cooler water => more dense=> better moderation => drives up fission rate.

[DannyTN]

"My take though from the article is that nuclear power is only economically efficient and competitive when plants operate at maximum power"

They made it sound like that, but I don't believe it. I always thought that the fuel costs were minimal and that the real cost of operating a Nuclear plant was the cost of compliance with regulations and up front cost of the facility which also has a lot of compliance load to it. Both of those go down the more you do them. And the more the public is open to the plants.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The off peak sale objection is ridiculous. By the time 10 or 15 new nukes are on line, there will be just that many fewer coal and oil plants taken off line.

[AndyJackson]

At great expense, French homes were converted to inefficient electric home heating.

First, if you have nuclear and don't have gas, then nuclear it is whatever the efficiency. Second, with heat pumps electricity is not that inefficient any more.

[SierraWasp]

Everybody’s jumpy these days and McMistakes mouth and all the stupid US Senators are makin all of us crazy!!!

[Plutarch]

By 1974, three mammoth nuclear plants were begun and by 1977, another five.

1974 was 24 years ago. Technology advances, but Solomon's article does not mention, nor does he appear interested in finding out, whether modern nuclear reactors might have solved some of the problems associated with the mammoth plants from the disco era.

[DoughtyOne]

I just didn’t see it in time. You don’t need to be sorry. I was the one who didn’t percieve your post the way I should have. I appologize. I am sorry that I reacted the way I did, when I shouldn’t have.

You and I agree here. I think your post made sense too, once I understood it, so there’s no need for you to appologize at all.

[DoughtyOne]

Isn’t that the truth!

[wolfpat]

Well, as is usually the case, there were few facts in that article.

I don’t blame the author or any of the readers. I only know this stuff because I lived it. The author has been watching too much television.

Fun facts: Extremely radioactive stuff does NOT glow green. It glows blue. If you ever get radioactive enough to glow, you will have been dead for a while.

Also, a “critical” reactor is not a bad thing. The term “critical” only means the reactor is operating at a steady state, neither increasing power nor decreasing power.

[Boiler Plate]

Nobody but this idiot author thinks having 80% of our generating capacity in nuclear is a bad idea. The reason nukes are run flat out is because they are the cheapest most economical source of power except hydro. Unlike hydro you don't have to pray for rain. Hoover dam is running about half capacity for obvious reasons.

Nukes can and ARE throttled back all the time. However to counter this moron's complaints there are so many excellent ways to use the off peak power such as back bay hydro plants, water desalination, ice storage for city chiller loops, hydrogen production and on and on.

This knucklehead is totally speaking out of his ass, and clearly has an agenda other than what is best for America

[wolfpat]

There’s lots of uranium around. For example, about 20 years ago, there was talk of a uranium mine being opened near Danville, VA. But then Three Mile Island happened, and the bottom dropped out of uranium prices.

As for the waste, we have Jimmy Carter to thank for that problem. Chem-Nuclear had a reprocessing plant ready to be licensed, but Carter nixed all reprocessing of fuel. When the fuel is removed from the reactor, about 60% of the original Uranium 235 is still in it. It just needs to be re-concentrated, and the nuclear poisons removed.

[wolfpat]

There’s lots of uranium around. For example, about 20 years ago, there was talk of a uranium mine being opened near Danville, VA. But then Three Mile Island happened, and the bottom dropped out of uranium prices.

As for the waste, we have Jimmy Carter to thank for that problem. Chem-Nuclear had a reprocessing plant ready to be licensed, but Carter nixed all reprocessing of fuel. When the fuel is removed from the reactor, about 60% of the original Uranium 235 is still in it. It just needs to be re-concentrated, and the nuclear poisons removed.

[wolfpat]

Sorry about the double post. How’d that happen?

[SierraWasp]

I’m pingin “snopercod” just in case he’s still out there in North Carolina somewhere. This was his favorite subject here on FR and I miss him bein here!!!

[willgolfforfood]

Crap article. We could TRADE Mexico for electricity for oil. We'll always need oil, even if the internal combustion engine is superseded. Same with Canada.

Plus, even on a crash basis, with environmentalists shot on sight, it would take a couple of decades, maybe 3 even, to get the US to 40-50% generating capacity supplied by nuclear. Doesn't this guy think we may have more electrical load connected to the grid by then?

When we mothball our older plants, regardless of what they burned (coal, gas, oil, taking down hyrdro generating dams, etc.) many of those could be replaced with nuclear. Does this guy think we won't de-commission any generating plants in the next 30 years?

Finally, the heat from the nuclear pile heats water to steam, and the steam turns a turbine. To "turn down" the reactor from 100%, you just vent off some steam prior to feeding it to the turbine.

Crap article.

[Nuc1]

Just keep Tave in the green band. LOL.

[hinckley buzzard]

I wouldn't base a decision on this kind of narrow analysis. The author can quibble about the 80% number but the fact remains that there is major room for 24/7 power generation to be taken over by nuclear. The concept of vigorously adding to nuclear generation is sound. In addition, there are operating plants reaching the end of their life cycle and needing to be replaced-- if not by new, more efficient and safer nuclear plants, then by something else.

[DoughtyOne]

He’s still active, but hasn’t posted since June 2005.

[Popman]

The real wet blanket is the reality that hits when people realize that we can’t build a single oil refinery let alone hundreds of nuke plants.

Bingo!