The Great Nuclear Revival that Never Was

The First Nuclear Age

Wow. Here it is November, 2029; and I'm coming up on my 90th birthday. With all the beer and beef, should never have made it. My life has pretty much spanned the nuclear age. Nuclear fission was discovered only a year before I was born. First sustained fission happened three years later. I was 12 the first time electricity was generated by nuclear power, and 18 when the first nuclear power plant was connected to the grid in 1957.

There was a pause; and then in the 1960's nuclear power came of age, about the same time as I did. In the early 1960's, nuclear power was cheaper than coal when coal power was as cheap as it has ever been. America was building nuclear plants in less than 4 years. Nuclear's combination of incredible energy density and no pollution was going to lead to a new level of prosperity.

Then came the building boom of the late 1960's as oil priced itself out of the power market, and coal faced mounting regulation and out of control unions. A growing trickle of orders in the early 60's blossomed into the bandwagon market of the mid-late 60's. In 1966 and 1967, US utilities ordered 49 nuclear power plants, totaling 40 GW of capacity. At the time, the US was consuming about 170 GW.

But in the boom, nuclear lost control of its costs. This happens in every cyclic market. Much worse, American regulators adopted ALARA. ALARA is the regulatory philosophy that no amount of radiation exposure is acceptable if the plant can afford to reduce it further. ALARA guaranteed that regulatory costs would escalate as rapidly as real world costs. Regulation is a ratchet; it only works one way. In 1979, when the Iranian revolution and another tripling of oil price sent the world into recession. American nuclear was stuck with top of the boom costs, and could not recover. Ordering stopped in 1975; and many plants ordered earlier were cancelled.

The 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown soured the US public on nuclear. The release of radiation was a non-event health wise; but it showed the nuclear establishment's claim that there would be no releases was a lie. These people cannot be trusted. American nuclear was dormant for the rest of the 20th century.

The story elsewhere was similar with a few notable exceptions. France has almost no petroleum reserves and by the 1960's had largely exhausted her coal resources. In 1974, the French government made a strong top down commitment to nuclear power. They gave complete control of this massive project to EDF, the state owned utility. It was essentially a form of self-regulation. Between the late 1970's and the late 1980's , France was able to largely decarbonize her grid. But EDF is a monopoly, beset by strong unions. As the initial momentum wore off, all the standard monopolistic inefficiencies set in. After 1995 things completely fell apart.

The 1986 explosion at Chernobyl spread measurable amounts of radiation across Europe. Although any detectable health hazards were confined to the immediate vicinity of the plant, and almost completely to first responders and the clean up crew, known as liquidators, most European countries elected to shun nuclear. A 2019 study by Harvard Medical School found that the cancer rates in the Ukrainian districts closest to Chernobyl were not statistically different from the rates in the rest of Ukraine. Japan and Korea continued to build nuclear plants. But elsewhere nuclear was a dead duck at the end of 20th century.

There was a bit of renewed interest in nuclear in the US in the first decade of the 21st century, but the regulatory and legal system resulted in prohibitive costs and endless build times. Only 4 plants started construction, two of which were cancelled at great cost; two of which were finished at even greater cost.

A triple meltdown at Fukushima in 2011 demonstrated

1) the health risks associated with even a very large release were so low as to elude detection,

2) despite industry and regulator claims, we could expect a sizable release about once every 4000 reactor years.

The politicians in Japan panicked and took perfectly good nuclear plants offline for 10 years or more. Germany, a country addicted to auto-genocide, decided to shut down all its nuclear power plants prematurely. Korea elected an anti-nuclear administration in 2016. Except in Russia and China, nuclear power was anathema. Thus ended the First Nuclear Age.

The Great Revival

But at about the same time, the body politic decided that global warming required we stop using fossil fuels. Trillions of dollars was spent on wind and solar. Immense rural areas were industrialized. But the impact on overall CO2 emissions was marginal to nil.

Worse, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, and the abrupt cut off of Russian gas to Europe demonstrated that you cannot power a modern economy with diffuse, intermittent sources. It also sent fossil fuel prices soaring. The only scalable, low CO2 source of electricity was nuclear; and fossil fuel prices were so high, that nuclear at three and four times its should-cost suddenly did not look all that expensive. Once again a bright future was predicted for nuclear.

Poland led the way ordering 6 new plants in late 2022. This was followed by a slew of orders from Romania, Czech Republic, Hungary. France recommitted to nuclear and initiated a ten plant program. Buyers were assured that these new plants were so safe that they need not worry about a release.

The vendors found themselves overwhelmed. Supply chain problems developed and stretched out build times. Instead of costs going down, as the learning curve predicted, costs went up. The contract prices rose to $10,000/kW --- more than four times the should-cost --- and kept going up with each new order.

In 2024, the Americans elected a right wing government which immediately went to work to promote fossil fuels. Regulations were relaxed, red tape dispensed with, leasing returned to 2018 levels, permits were quickly issued. The Canadians followed much the same path. By 2026, North American oil production was up 3 million BPD, and gas up 4 trillion cubic feet over 2022 numbers. Pipelines and LNG terminals were expedited,

The Ukraine War had settled down to an uneasy, bloody stalemate with the Russians occupying the southeast portion of the country. In July 2026, Putin mysteriously died. His successors quickly negotiated a settlement with the Ukrainians which was basically a return to the 2014 boundaries. Part of the settlement was lifting the embargo on Russian oil and gas. Fossil fuel prices plummeted. By Fall, 2026, oil was down to $40/barrel; and Henry Hub gas down to 3 cents/MBtu. Gas at the Dutch TTF hub was 4 cents/MBtu.

Then in December of 2026, there was a major release of radioactive material from the Flamanville 3 European Power Reactor (EPR). The problem started in 2014 when it was discovered that the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) heads and bottoms made at the Le Creusot Forge had problems with carbon migration. Localized areas with high carbon concentrations meant reduced steel toughness and possible fast crack propagation. But the Flamanville 3 reactor pressure vessel had already been installed. There was really no way of determining how bad the problem was for this component. After vacillating for two plus years, the French nuclear regulator, ANS, accepted the Flamanville RPV with the proviso that the head be changed out at the first fuel reload. There was no way to change out the bottom.

On December 15th, just over a year after grid connection, the RPV bottom head failed, dumping the reactor coolant, and leaving the core uncovered. The EPR has multiple redundant systems for handling this Loss of Coolant Accident. But they all depended on water from the Incontainment Refuelling Water Storage Tank (IRWST). At some time in the 18 year construction period, a leak had developed in one of the safety system sumps that draw water from this tank. The IRWST was nearly empty. The level alarms that should have alerted the operators to this precarious situation had been disconnected. No one knows why.

The core overheated and melted down, boiling the the reactor coolant. The steam sent the containment pressure over design. The operators correctly vented to atmosphere to prevent a containment rupture. By the time, control was re-established, the plant had released 800,000 TBq of Iodine-131, 45,000 TBq of Cesium-137 and 40,000 TBq or Cesium-134. This was about five times the release at Fukushima and roughly half the release at Chernobyl

The winds were from the southwest. The plume moved over London and then swept across the Low Countries and northern Germany. Authorities, using the discredited Linear No Threshold model, predicted over 10,000 eventual radiation induced deaths from cancer. Voices that pointed out the dose rates in England were well below background in many parts of the planet, and far below those at which any harm has been detected were ignored. Above background doses were confined to the tip of the Cotentin peninsula, which had been evacuated early in the release.

The combination of the now prohibitive cost and the recognition that releases are part of nuclear power, regardless of what the proponents claimed, was the death knell for the revival. Almost all the 2022-2024 contracts were cancelled. Europe returned to expanding wind and solar while depending on gas and coal. Just about everywhere else opted for fossil. Only Russia and China continued to build nuclear power plants. The great nuclear revival had lasted less than 5 years. The planet keeps getting warmer. Happy birthday, Jack.

Author's Exegesis

This little fable has already been posted on Gordian Knot News; but this is the first time it has been inflicted by email on the subscriber list. The piece has failed to make the intended points. The reaction so far has been either:

1) Flamanville 3 won't have the release you have prophesied.

2) We could have a release similar to the prophecy; but not if we switch to molten salt, or liquid pool, or fill-in-blank-with-your-favorite-technology reactors.

Of course, I don't have the ability to predict when nor how the next release will occur. But I can say with certainty it will. New technologies may or may not change the release frequency. We won't know until we have sufficient operating experience. But either way it is simply a matter of time; and that time will drop drastically if nuclear is truly successful. A fully nuclear, decarbonized planet will require at least 20,000 large nuclear power plants. Based on actual experience to date, about one substantial release every 4000 reactor-years, releases will be roughly as frequent as major commercial airplane crashes.

The piece unsuccessfully tried to make two points:

1) The learning curve will not reduce nuclear costs. The technical skills required to build a nuclear plant are the same as those required to build a coal plant. We do not see any learning curve in coal plants, nor have we ever seen any in nuclear plants. Please check out Nuclear is Too Slow, if you haven't already.

2) Public support for nuclear power will evaporate as soon as we have the next release. The only way to avoid this is to stop telling the Two Lies. Airlines do not claim there will be no more crashes. They do the opposite. They put a plastic placard in front of every seat with instructions on what to do in a crash. They make us sit through a safety demonstration before every take off. They say ``We are so certain there will be more deadly casualties that it's worth installing two expensive orange boxes on every commercial aircraft. These boxes are designed to survive a crash that kills everybody on board. The only purpose of these boxes is to help us figure out what caused the horrific casualty so we can make intelligent fixes." The public applauds this attitude. Nuclear must take the same approach.