A proposed agreement among nine Northeast states to cap greenhouse gas emissions from power plants casts a new light on arguments in New Jersey and Vermont about whether the licenses of two aging nuclear plants should be extended.The agreement Wald is referring to is one that readers of NEI Nuclear Notes will be familiar with -- the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI. Back in June, we told you about a study by Polestar commissioned by NEI that said point blank that RGGI didn't have a chance to reach their targets for emissions reduction without keeping the region's nuclear capacity online:
Community groups in both states are opposing the extensions of the licenses beyond their 40-year terms, but environmentalists are generally supportive of the proposed agreement among the governors to reduce these greenhouse gases, which contribute to global climate change. Shutting down the two reactors would mean immediate, substantial increases in the emissions, because it would increase reliance on fossil fuel plants, probably tripling emissions in Vermont and doubling them in New Jersey.
"This assessment shows that continued operation of the region's 15 nuclear power plants and construction of new nuclear power plants will be needed to achieve the 2020 CO2 reduction targets under consideration by RGGI," said Polestar's Stephen Allen, the report's principal author. "Even the most modest goal considered in this analysis holding CO2 emissions constant at the 2005 level while preserving fuel diversity for electricity production requires renewal of the operating licenses for the region's nuclear plants."When he talks about economic and security risks, he's talking about generating electricity with natural gas when the price is at record highs, and building a massive number of liquefiedified natural gas terminals in the region in order to meet increased demand.
"Retirement of a typical nuclear power plant would require construction of four natural gas plants and the early closure of two coal/oil plants just to keep CO2 emissions at current levels," Allen said. "Without nuclear energy, the only way to reduce CO2 emissions in the Northeast involves relying on natural gas generation for more than half of the region's power. Moving above this threshold will likely create economic and security risks."
When you take a closer look at the numbers, the scale of the challenge becomes all the more apparent when you remove nuclear energy from the equation. Again, here's a passage from Wald's piece:
Vermont Yankee, in Vernon, near the border with Massachusetts and New Hampshire, began commercial operation in November 1972, and its license expires in March 2012. Its capacity is 535 megawatts. In 2004 the reactor produced 3.9 million megawatt hours, which was about 71 percent of the electricity produced in the state. (That production was only about one-third of the electricity consumed in the state, because Vermont is a chronic importer of power.)For a copy of the study, click here. For our other posts on RGGI, click here and here.
Just how much carbon dioxide the two reactors are saving depends on what the replacement power source would be. A megawatt-hour from a coal plant produces about one ton of carbon dioxide. In the long run, power companies could build natural gas plants, which produce only about half a ton per megawatt hour.
The governors' draft agreement gives Vermont a limit of 1.35 million tons of carbon dioxide, approximately equal to its current emissions. But if the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant's output were replaced with coal, Vermont's emissions would increase by nearly four million tons. If natural gas were used, the increase would still be nearly two million tons.
The agreement gives New Jersey a cap of 23 million tons, but if Oyster Creek's output was replaced with coal, the state's output of carbon dioxide would more than double.
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