Are the wheels falling off the nuclear renaissance?

There’s a lot of rethinking going on in the utility sector these days. Utilities once intent on building new nuclear plants are now scrapping those plans and focusing instead of refurbishing existing  reactors. Last week Canadian nuclear operator Bruce Power announced it was withdrawing two new-build site licensing applications from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. The company said it would concentrate resources instead on refurbishing several reactors at its site northwest of Toronto. Then Russia’s state nuclear company said it would cut back its new-build program by half. Exelon, the biggest nuclear owner and operator in the United States, has said it would halt all new-build efforts for at least three years (and possibly as much as 20) and instead move toward uprating the capacity of its existing 17 reactor units.

The common theme is simple: the economic downturn has reduced electricity demand and with it the need for new reactors. (more…)

I have a story in today’s Toronto Star that pegs the price of two 1,200 megawatt ACR 1000 reactors from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. at $26 billion, including all balance of plant costs. That would put the cost at $10,800 (Canadian) per kilowatt, far beyond previous projections. Really far. The story was based on information supplied by sources close to the bidding, including one directly involved on a bidding team. It also found that the Areva bid — involving two 1,600 EPR reactors — came in at $23.6 billion, or roughly $7,400 per kilowatt. It was deemed non-compliant, however, likely because Areva wouldn’t guarantee the price (which explains the lower price, maybe?).

I can understand the Areva price (apparently it’s based on a similar bid for a plant being planned in Maryland), but like many I’m personally shocked at the high amount of the AECL bid. Yes, I wrote the story but like many have a difficult time believing such a high number. My sources, however, are quite credible.

I’ve yet to get any reply from the government or industry that denies or confirms these numbers. Premier Dalton McGuinty was scrummed by reporters earlier this morning and he didn’t refute the numbers, saying only that the process is confidential. McGuinty could have said something general like “The numbers are far off” or “Not even close” to dispute the article, but he didn’t. The $26 billion figure, by the way, almost completely consumes the budget for Ontario’s 20-year nuclear expansion strategy, as estimated in 2007 by the Ontario Power Authority. That budget was to cover a new build at Darlington and at least two refurbishment projects.

Perhaps Ontario doesn’t have to worry as much because it sits along Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, but I’m surprised that in other jurisdictions there hasn’t been more discussion related to the water requirements of thermoelectric power plants.

Water scarcity, after all, is considered one of the biggest negative outcomes of climate change, but not many people realize just how much water is required for a nuclear or coal (fossil fuel) power plant. The World Resources Institute estimates that nearly two out of every three gallons of fresh water drawn from the U.S. Southeast Southwest is used to cool power plants. One can draw similar conclusions for other regions. Nuclear plants, of course, are the biggest water hogs. You’ll recall that during the heat waves in Europe a few years back France had to ratched down nuclear output because it didn’t have enough water for cooling. It makes one wonder whether it makes sense to build hundreds of new nuclear plants, each with a life of more than 50 years, if a couple of decades down the road we find them crippled by water shortages.

Think about it: If a massive coal plant or nuclear plant had to pay for the amount of water it consumes, the same way individual homeowners must pay, the power would be prohibitively expense. So emissions aren’t the only thing not currently priced into power generation. Water use is a huge externality, and it’s just one more reason to favour renewables and distributed generation, particularly as part of any climate-change adaptation strategy.

Food for thought.

My feature in the Toronto Star today is about General Fusion, a Vancouver-area startup that believes it can build a prototype of a nuclear fusion reactor for $50 million within four years. While the multibillion-dollar ITER and U.S. fusion programs are using costly lasers and electromagnets to achieve “net gain” — that is, creating a fusion reaction that releases more energy than put it — the folks at General Fusion are cleverly pursuing a mechanical approach that uses concentrated sound waves to compress a deuterium-tritium plasma and trigger a fusion reaction. The key, as you’ll see, is the use of precision digital controls that simply didn’t exist back in the 1970s when the idea of magnetized target fusion was first explored.

You can read the article for more details and a deeper explanation of how it works. General Fusion recently secured $13.9 million from Sustainable Development Technology Canada so it can pursue its prototype development, contingent on the company raising another $30 million or so from private investors. SDTC’s average deal size is around $3 million so the fact it’s giving General Fusion nearly five times that amount speaks to the credibility of what it’s doing. (more…)

Sustainable Development Technlogy Canada just completed its 13th funding round, this time putting $53 million into 16 cleantech projects and bringing its total funding to $376 million. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, SDTC only invests if private consortia come to the table with two-thirds of project funding. In total, 154 project have been funded with $1.3 billion in public-private funds.

Here are, in my opinion, some of the more interesting projects that got funded in this round: (more…)