Nuclear Energy Around the World

Many countries around the world are pursuing nuclear power. Should the US consider increasing it's percentage of electrical energy generation from nuclear power?

The U.S. should increase it's percentage use of nuclear energy because for decades we have overused and abused oil for own use and heavily contributed to greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention created a large global footprint. The U.S. needs to consider future needs and different energy sources instead of focusing on a few past energy sources.

There are 40 reactors now under construction in 11 countries around the world, however, none of them are located in the United States (Miller 2012). There are only two reactors in Western Europe, one in Finland and the other in France, both built by Areva, a French company (Lehr 2010).
 

France gets 80 percent of its power from nuclear, has the cheapest electricity in Europe, and is the second-lowest carbon emissions. France sells $80 billion worth of electricity to the rest of Europe each year. In addition, the country barely felt the recession due to the nuclear power helping to keep their whole economy afloat.
 

Japan has 55 reactors and gets 35 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy, almost double the 19 percent we get here. The Japanese have two reactors under construction and plans for ten more by 2018.

South Korea gets nearly 40 percent of its electricity from nuclear and is planning another eight reactors by 2015. So far they've bought their reactors from the Japanese but now they have their own Korean Next-Generation Reactor, a 1400-megawatt giant evolved from an American design. They plan to bring two of these online by 2016. Taiwan also gets 18 percent of its electricity from nuclear and is building two new reactors (Lehr 2010).

Countries are finding they can build a reactor, start to finish, in less than four years. That's less time than it is taking to get one American reactor through licensing at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Much of China's $586 billion stimulus package is going toward developing nuclear power to focus on environmental issue (Lehr 2010).

India is embracing thorium; a technology a lot of people think may eventually replace uranium as nuclear fuel. Thorium is twice as abundant as uranium and it doesn't produce the plutonium that everybody worries will be used to make a bomb. There's a lot of enthusiasm for thorium among scientists in this country. But it's India that's going ahead, with six reactors under construction and ten more planned (Lehr 2010).

By the reviewing the above information, the U.S. has a lot to learn from what other countries have accomplished.

The U.S. has spent $300 billion a year importing 2/3rds of its oil from other countries (Robinson and Robinson 2008). That is not sustainable, cost-effective, or independent from relying on other country for its energy source. The U.S. is losing its edge on technology. We used to be the major leader for the telephone, the electric light, the automobile, the assembly line, radio, television and the computer.

The U.S. should double its production of nuclear power by building 100 nuclear reactors in 20 years to insure we have enough cheap, clean, reliable electricity in this country to create good high-quality, high-tech jobs.

Today, nuclear provides 70 percent of our carbon free electricity and the plants operate 90 percent of the time. Wind and solar provide 4 percent of electricity and operate about one third of the time.

The Obama Administration's mentions it will require building 186,000 fifty story turbines, enough to cover an area the size of West Virginia, plus 19,000 miles of new transmission lines to carry electricity from remote to populated areas producing 20 percent of electricity from wind. Hundred new nuclear plants could be built mostly on existing sites.

It will cost roughly the same to build 100 new nuclear plants (which will last 60 to 80 years) as it would to build 186,000 wind turbines (lasting 20 to 25 years).

There will be twice as many "green jobs" created building 100 reactors as there would be building 186,000 wind turbines.

According to the introduction and press release from U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander's website (Lemar Alexander 2009), Americans should fear that while the rest of the world, such as Russia and China, are using nuclear energy the U.S. is ignoring it. This will cause a ripple affect for America's history. We won't be able to compete with countries that have cheap, clean, reliable nuclear power while we're stuck with a bunch of wind and solar farms producing expensive, unreliable energy or, worse yet, rely on dirty energy as oil (Miller 2012).

The Chinese sent nuclear scientists to tour the Idaho National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and visited General Electric and Westinghouse back in the mid 2000s trying to decide which technology to choose for their nuclear program, as the U.S. used to be the leader of technology. The Chinese are in the nuclear business and plan to build over 132 reactors.

By 2007, Toshiba bought Westinghouse, which made Westinghouse a Japanese company. In meantime, the Chinese wanted the design specification for the reactors to do 'reverse engineering' and see how the reactors were made. Japan became the leader in steel strong enough to make reactor vessels, instead of the U.S., while China became the new wave of 'Chinese Technology'. This means by the time the U.S. decides to construct nuclear reactors, we will need to rely on Japan for steel because our steel isn't strong enough and we will need to import. Russia, France, Britain, South Korea and India are all following in China's footprint for building nuclear plants.

Since then General Electric, the only American company left on the field, partnered with Hitachi and sold five reactors to American utilities but fared poorly in the competition for federal loan guarantees. Two other utilities have cancelled their projects.

On the positive side of the U.S., we know how to run, protect, and regulate reactors better than any one else in the world (Lehr 2010).


References:

Lehr, Jay. 2010. U.S. sitting on sidelines of global nuclear renaissance. June 5. http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2010/06/05/us-sitting-sidelines-global-nuclear-renaissance (accessed July 18, 2012).

Lemar Alexander. 2009. Alexander on what the U.S. should really fear about nuclear power. http://www.alexander.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=a7f5ad06-f0af-4c37-82f4-b394f3caa98e&ContentType_id=778be7e0-0d5a-42b2-9352-09ed63cc4d66&Group_id=80d87631-7c25-4340-a97a-72cccdd8a658&YearDisplay=2009 (accessed July 17, 2012).

Miller, Mark. 2012. Nuclear power as part of our energy surety. http://www.beyondfossilfools.com/nuclear-power-as-part-of-our-energy-surety.html (accessed July 18, 2012).

Robinson, Arthur, and Noah Robinson. 2008. Energy for America: we can achieve energy independence for the 21st century without destroying the environment. There's no need to deindustrialize or sacrifice our standard of living. The New American. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Energy+for+America%3A+we+can+achieve+energy+independence+for+the+21st...-a0173421365 (accessed July 17, 2012).