By Anna Turnage, 12/2006
- 1: Introduction
- 2: Nuclear Power Today part 2
- 3: North Carolina’s electric cooperatives’ interest in nuclear energy
- 4: How a nuclear generator plant works
- 5: Learning about nuclear energy at Catawba Nuclear Station
- Download the full article
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The life of nuclear power in the United States has come full circle over the past 30 years. In fact, today’s “renaissance” of nuclear energy is strangely reminiscent of its rise to popularity in the early to mid-1970s as a cheaper, cleaner energy source. Despite lingering reservations among some groups, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) could begin the licensing process for 20 new nuclear plants over the next five years.
According to experts, the bottom line value for this particular source of energy still rests on its cost-efficiency and environmental benefits.
“Global warming, dependence on unstable nations for our oil and some of our natural gas supply, and economics are the main reasons for the resurgence of interest in nuclear power,” says Dr. Paul J. Turinsky, a professor of nuclear engineering at N.C. State University.
Nuclear power first became a popular alternative for the nation’s energy demands as a result of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. Today, with continuing unrest in the Middle East and environmental concerns related to global warming, the United States again finds itself searching for ways to reduce its reliance on oil. Add that to the strong economic and safety performance of nuclear plants in the U.S. and an increasing demand for energy, and it adds up to a recipe for success that the industry has not seen since the 1980s.
But the road to this point has not been easy. As James A. Lake, associate director for the nuclear program at the Idaho National Laboratory, wrote in a State Department newsletter, “Nuclear power in the United States was born in the 1950s and 1960s to unreasonable and, as it turned out, unachievable expectations of being so inexpensive that it was ‘too cheap to meter.’”
According to Lake, the first plants to come online experienced difficulties with rising construction costs and safety performance that eventually led to the accident at the Three Mile Island in 1979. The “fallout,” so to speak, from this accident resulted in much tighter restrictions on construction from the NRC to increase plant safety. But the new regulations also led to delays and increased costs for the plants under construction. Progress Energy’s Harris Nuclear Plant and Duke Energy’s Catawba Nuclear Station were both caught in this wave of cost increases, and, as a result those plants cost much more than was originally anticipated.
“These higher fixed costs partially offset the lower energy cost of nuclear output,” explains Joe Brannan, chief operating officer and senior vice president for power supply at North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation (NCEMC), the power supply cooperative owned by North Carolina’s Touchstone Energy cooperatives. “But, there are three primary advantages to nuclear generation when compared to many other available sources of energy: nuclear generation generally has highly dependable output (high capacity factor); the generation process releases none of the greenhouse gases associated with fossil fired generation; and the energy price is stable and among the lowest of all sources of generation.”
The Three Mile Island incident has become better known over the years as a safety success story rather than a disaster since there was little or no radiation leakage and no threat to the people living near the plant. Particularly when compared to the 1986 accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine, it became abundantly clear that nuclear plants in the United States were some of the best constructed and safely run in the world.
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