Countering More Propaganda

Eric sent me a link and asked my opinion about an article quoting a few people with an antinuclear agenda saying that the heat wave in Europe is evidence that nuclear plays no part in combating global warming. My short answer is "hogwash." My long answer is below.

It doesn't matter if you're burning uranium, coal, oil, or cow dung, anything that uses a steam cycle has the potential problem of exceeding discharge limits if temperatures are excessively warm. Since only about 1/3 of the heat is usable to turn a turbine, the waste heat has to go somewhere. To not have this problem you can:

--Not make the environmental regulations overly conservative
--Build a bigger heat sink
--Build a smaller plant
--Invent a thermodynamic cycle better than the ones the world's best minds have come up with in the past two centuries or so (and be sure to include my name on the patent).

Now, I'm not advocating a reduction in environmental protection, but it's true that many environmental regulations are over-conservative and not based on today's best available science. In some cases, with proper analysis, it might make sense to revisit those limits or allow periodic exemptions. The whole hubbub with the proposed North Anna Unit 3 in Virginia was over a potential rise in temperature of I believe 1-2 degrees (Eric, would you check this out for me and provide the link?). Now Dominion's license application states that they will build a cooling tower--they're adding to their heat sink. They also get some extra MWs out of it.

Economics play a role in the size or rated capacity of the plant. If you never ever want to have the kind of problem stated in the article, you design the plant assuming the highest ever recorded temperature of your cooling water source. So instead of assuming, say, a mean maximum summer temperature and building a 1000 MW plant for which you MIGHT have to reduce power to 80% now and then, it means you'll build an 800 MW plant that you know you can always operate at 100%. But does that make sense when there are maybe 10 days every few years that exceed your thermal assumptions? The bean counters will tell you "no."

To me, it all goes back to 1)having a diverse energy portfolio and 2)having adequate supply margins. If you have five 1000 MW units operating at 80%, that's the equivalent of losing one unit. I say that if losing one unit causes that much heartburn, the problem is with our overall generation capability, not with the nuclear plants. The very hottest days of summer are what peaking units are for, and nukes don't make good peaking units anyway.

And consider the other extreme. When the Northeast U.S. gets hit with several blizzards and the trains carrying fuel can't get through (it happened a few years ago) and natural gas prices are through the roof, and all the while the nukes are humming along better than ever, don't try to tell me that solar, wind, corn and biomass are going to save the day. Just like nuclear power, they all have their place in a diverse energy portfolio, they all have their pros and cons, but none alone is the answer to our energy and environmental problems.

EDITOR'S UPDATE: The post concerning North Anna that Lisa refers to can be found here.

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