Setting the Record Straight on California and Nuclear Energy

The California Energy Commission wrapped up two days of hearings on nuclear energy yesterday, and there was a passage from a story in today's Contra Costa Times that I think is worth examining.

Let's take a look at a claim about renewable sources of energy, and whether or not they could possibly replace the state's nuclear generating capacity:

Not everyone agreed, however, that nuclear power is a necessary component in the energy mix. Environmentalists and some state regulators say that renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, could replace the 4,000 megawatts [actually 4,324, EMc] of power produced by Diablo Canyon and San Onofre.

"There are superior ways to deal with global warming than nuclear power," said Robert Kinosian with the California Public Utilities Commission.

As it turns out, I've been working on a project with my colleague David Bradish on California's energy future, and we discovered some interesting data from the Energy Information Administration.

In 1977, California declared a moritorium on new nuclear plant construction until a permanent solution to spent fuel storage was developed by the federal government. Since that time, the amount of wind, solar and geothermal generating capacity built in the state combined –- that’s 115 plants in all -- still doesn’t provide as much electric capacity as the four reactors at Diablo Canyon and San Onofre.

So after 28 years of building plants, and we're counting plants that were built before San Onofre and Diablo Canyon opened in the 1980s, the vaunted big three in renewables still can't match nuclear energy in generating capacity. Yet the claims still get made.

Here's something else to think about. As we've said before, because nuclear energy has a higher capacity factor, it's referred to as a "high density" energy source. In other words, you can generate a lot of power and not have to use a lot of space to do it.

So what if you wanted to replace California's 4,324 megawatts of nuclear capacity with solar power? To do that, you would need a solar farm covering almost 850 square miles. That’s an area about one-third larger than the city of Los Angeles.

Wind? That's even more daunting, as it would require more than 2,500 square miles of turbines – about four times the area of Los Angeles. These calculations are based on figures from the NRC, which states that 1,000 megawatts of wind requires 150,000 acres of land, while solar capacity requires 35,000 acres for every 1,000 megawattts.

Keep it all in mind the next time you hear or read about renewables being able to completely replace nuclear energy.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy Environment Energy Politics Technology Economics