Nuclear energy has always been unprofitable in the private economy, according to a new report from one of Germany’s leading economic research institutes, DIW Berlin. Its historical analysis explains that large state subsidies have been provided in cases where private capital financing has been used for the nuclear industry in the past, and goes on to further examine the current and future profitability of nuclear power plants.
The report, High-priced and dangerous: nuclear power is not an option for the climate-friendly energy mix, undertook an empirical survey of the 674 nuclear plants that have ever been built to demonstrate that private economic interests were not the motive, but instead have been driven by military interests.
“Nuclear power was never designed for commercial electricity generation; it was aimed at nuclear weapons. That is why nuclear electricity has been and will continue to be uneconomical,” says Christian von Hirschhausen, coauthor of the study.
In its Monte Carlo simulation model developed for the net present value of a 1 GW nuclear plant, the study found that expected loss of revenues range between 1.5 and 8.9 billion euros. The model built in a variety of factors including the wholesale cost of electricity (20-80 euros/MWh), specific investment costs (4,000-9,000 euros/kW) and the weighted average cost of capital (4-10%). In the Monte Carlo analysis, researchers argue that, in all cases, nuclear investment would generate significant financial losses.
Expanding beyond lacking economic sustainability, the report goes on to further undermine international debates and policies which support nuclear as a part of climate action strategies. “Nuclear energy is by no means clean. Its radioactivity will endanger humans and the natural world for over one million years,” says von Hirschhausen.
The report calls out the International Energy Agency for recently suggesting nuclear energy in a clean energy system and for its encouragement of subsidies to the technology and its suppliers. Policies and frameworks around the world have incorporated nuclear power into the mix of future energy production. The EU Clean Energy Package built to support climate protection contains service life extensions for a number of nuclear plants and also recommends building more than 100 new plants by 2050.
“Describing nuclear energy as “clean” ignores the significant environmental risks and radioactive emissions it engenders along the process chain and beyond,” the report concludes.
Despite DIW’s warnings against costs and dangers, nuclear power capacity is increasing worldwide, even though solar and wind are taking front-runner positions as the cheapest grid-connected sources of energy. According to the World Nuclear Association, there are currently 50 reactors under construction, with more than 100 nuclear power reactors are on order or planned, and more than 300 additional plants proposed.
Editor's note: This article was update on July 25, 2019 to include a link to the report.
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Discredited as soon as “nuclear” and “German” are placed in the same sentence, as the bias precedes the study. Many other global economic studies tell a different story. And PV – no subsidies to make it economic? And a supply chain of polluting tailings dams for rare-earths and other component mining, is “clean”? Clean energy speaks to emissions during energy production, and all of solar, wind, and nuclear emit no pollution to the atmosphere while powering our homes. Even hydro has a footprint if you want to dig that deep!
It’s so sad that we hear the nuclear industry recognizing the value of renewables and wanting to facilitate their development by making up for their shortcomings (renewables need clean baseload to back them up when off and be considered clean), yet all the renewables people ever seem to want to do is bash nuclear and be backed up by coal and fossil fuels. Ridiculous proposition – by that logic, building a solar plant or driving an electric car becomea backed by coal, and it’s hardly “clean”.
There are plenty of other sources that arrive at the same conclusion. Nuclear is too expensive, abd there isn’t a long-term disposal repository.
One problem with this articles main argument is it relies of circular logic. Of course without investment in a technology to develop it to the point where it becomes viable on its own, it will NEVER become economically feasible that is market economics 101. By this logic we would never have developed modern transistors, solar panels, microwave ovens or really any technology we use. You need to develop a infrastructure and supply chain that reaches a critical market value before anything will be viable. By this logic we should never develop any new technology because it isn’t going to be self sufficient. Had our ancestors followed this rationale we would still be hunter gathers.
The other issue to address is nuclear waste primarily the relatively long lived radioisotopes produced by nuclear reactors most prominently Strontium-90 and cesium-137 with 30 year half lives but other longer lives one s such as Plutonium with a 24000 year half live are produced. The real crux of the issue is currently that there is no real driving use for these radioisotopes but as technology develops particularly in aerospace these could be quite useful for enabling the exploration and eventually perhaps colonization of the outer solar system beyond Jupiter where Solar panels are no longer viable. Most issues with waste all come down to the human tendency to just toss byproducts aside rather than trying to find a use for them. One saying that summarizes the issue is “There is no such thing as waste only misappropriated resources”.
I was linked here to look at the cons of nuclear power and honestly I’m quite disappointed in how shallow this study is. There assessment of risks for nuclear disasters failed to account for the cause of nuclear disasters which have been in all cases primarily driven by poor design and human error all of which have potential solutions. For instance the main touted example Fukushima was found by internal investigations to be driven by human errors with governmental corporate and cultural components.
Like any technology it is all about how it is used the current state of nuclear energy is largely driven by the larger nuclear weapons issue rather than any unsolvable problem. Just like going to the moon it can be part of the solution if the motivation and drive are there to develop the technology but right now nuclear power is politically unpopular because of the perceived risks having prevented the development of the infrastructure needed to make the technology viable. So long as it remains politically unfavorable with short term goals driving political and corporate investment into research this will sadly remain the case.
Unfortunately this will be to our detriment as renewables such as biofuels, Wind, Solar and Hydropower all have fundamental scaling issues that will prevent them from ever replacing fossil fuels as a viable commercial grade energy source without converting the majority of the Earths surface to unreliable power generation. The only other viable energy dense fuel sources known are space based solar arrays concentrating and beaming back light or nuclear fusion. Hydrocarbons reached their high energy densities as organic mater was compressed over millions of years. Ultimately all that energy trapped came from the sun as millions of years of a significant fraction of the planets solar budget were stored by photosynthesis. All our renewable technologies will never be able to match that quantity of energy density without violating the first and third laws of thermodynamics.
Personally, I would love to see an expansion of nuclear power. Both wind and solar farms use up a lot of land, land that is often times natural habitat. Second, wind turbines kill a lot bats through direct strikes and from barotrauma. They also take out some large raptors. I’m all for an “all of the above ” solution to address climate change, but relying too heavily on renewables disregards the shortcomings of the technology.
In the UK New Nuclear is still being created to facilitate the UK’s WMD & hide its true costs.
PWR are inherently unsafe and too expensive. We should abandon it and look for a design that is inherently safe and cheap. My suggestion would be to explore the Thorium MSR.
“Nuclear energy is by no means clean. Its radioactivity will endanger humans and the natural world for over one million years,” says von Hirschhausen.
After just 300 years, the fission products in a tonne of used reactor fuel emit 0.865 watts. All of the rest of it is fissionable in fast-neutron reactors, for 30X the clean energy that was originally produced from the same tonne of fresh fuel.
Missing from this article was any mention of nuclear power nations to deal with the final disposal of the highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. In the U.S. a promise was made to deal with it over a half-century ago and still we aren’t even close to a repository that can sequester that fuel for well over 10,000 years. Accountability, on that issue, has been nil because the nuclear energy was considered too important to be hindered by waste disposal accountability.
During the last 50 years nuclear power plant designers never paid any attention to global warming warnings. Now pro-nuclear advocates see the issue as one that can revive their dream child. Anyone, who has paid close attention to abrupt climate change should realize that it is far outpacing the hoped for nuclear Renaissance that will take at least 30 years to come up to full scale.
The pro-nuclear advocates never mention that when industrial civilization rapidly collapses from Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD) effects that the spent nuclear fuel in cooling pools around the world will be consumed in zirconium cladding fires and the radioactive plumes will travel downwind from those reactor sites.
The earth has held onto it’s vast store of Uranium and transuranic elements for billions of years without trouble. The waste issue is not one that should hold any political merit. We can deeply bury the “waste”, and expect it to stay put for billions of years.
The majority of this “waste” is unused fuel (Uranium). We can get much more energy from this unused fuel in the future, so it’s best to store on site since it’s such a small quantity.
The cooling pools are only used temporarily, until the material is put into dry cask storage. I do not see anything exciting happening at nuclear power plants in an end of the world scenario.
Some believe Germany retired their nukes because they have a passionate environmental community but behind this particular passionate community is a powerful coal lobby funneling them money. The same can be said of the anti-nuclear movement in the UK where coal promoters posing as environmentalists characterized nuclear power as “the most serious agent of pollution of the environment and the greatest threat to man’s survival on earth.” Surely the Great Smog of London which killed 12,000 showed that coal was a more serious agent of pollution. The blind spot environmentalists continue to have for the dangers of coal power is astounding.
Profitability in a world that cares about the climate, and doesn’t implement a carbon-tax is a perverse way to evaluate energy production. The entire profitability aspect of fossil fuels is what has gotten humanity into the climate mess it has.
Nuclear power is already among the cheapest power sources when you look at what consumers pay for it, it needs to be properly compensated for being carbon-free and reliable.
Nuclear power still has the potential to become profitable, but it would require the same enthusiasm and investment that solar and wind power has. Small modular reactors hold promise to deploy electricity in certain areas, in a more cost effective way than diesel generators.
I think the major flaw in these types of publications, is the blind faith that the future of renewable power and conservation will continue to become cheaper. In many areas, renewable have already hit a saturation point. There is the problem of excess electricity during certain times and a need for massive energy storage for long periods of time. Energy storage is an incredibly expensive problem that makes nuclear look far more economical once you commit to weaning off of cheap and plentiful fossil fuels.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25/18018820/solar-panel-waste-chemicals-energy-environment-recycling