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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Worst years

By Jim Green
July 18, 2017

Two of the nuclear industry’s worst-ever years have been in the past decade. There will be many more bad years ahead as the trickle of closures of ageing reactors becomes a flood the International Energy Agency expects almost 200 reactor closures between 2014 and 2040. The likelihood of reactor start-ups matching closures over that time period has become vanishingly small.

In January, the World Nuclear Association anticipated 18 power reactor start-ups this year. The projection has been   revised down  to 14 and even that seems more than a stretch. There has only been one reactor start-up in the first half of the year according to the IAEA’s Power Reactor Information System, and two permanent reactor closures.

The number of power reactors under construction is on a downward trajectory 59 reactors are under construction as of May 2017, the first time since 2010 that the number has fallen below 60.

Pro-nuclear journalist Fred   Pearce wrote  on May 15: “Is the nuclear power industry in its death throes? Even some nuclear enthusiasts believe so. With the exception of China, most nations are moving away from nuclear existing power plants across the United States are being shut early; new reactor designs are falling foul of regulators, and public support remains in free fall.          Now come the bankruptcies. … The industry is in crisis.  It looks ever more like a 20th century industrial dinosaur, unloved by investors, the public, and policymakers alike.   The crisis could prove terminal.”

Pro-nuclear lobby groups are warning about nuclear power’s “rapidly accelerating crisis“, a “crisis that threatens the death of nuclear energy in the West“, and noting that “the industry is on life support in the United States and other developed economies“.

USA:   The most dramatic story this year has been the bankruptcy filing of US nuclear giant Westinghouse on March 29. Westinghouse’s parent company Toshiba states that there is “substantial doubt” about Toshiba’s “ability to continue as a going concern”. These nuclear industry giants have been brought to their knees by cost overruns       estimated at US$13 billion building four AP1000 power reactors in the US

The nuclear debate in the US is firmly centred on attempts to extend the lifespan of ageing, uneconomic reactors with state bailouts. Financial bailouts by state governments in New York and Illinois are propping up ageing reactors, but a proposed bailout in Ohio is meeting stiff opposition. The fate of Westinghouse and its partially-built AP1000 reactors are much discussed, but there is no further discussion about new reactors other than to note that they won’t happen.

Six reactors have been shut down over the past five years in the US, and another handful will likely close in the next five years. So how far and fast will nuclear fall? Exelon the leading nuclear power plant operator in the US claims that ‘economic and policy challenges threaten to close about half of America’s reactors’ in the next two decades. According to pro-nuclear lobby group ‘Environmental Progress’, almost one-quarter of US reactors are at high risk of closure by 2030, and almost three-quarters are at medium to high risk. In May, the US Energy Information Administration released an analysis projecting nuclear’s share of the nation’s electricity generating capacity will drop from 20 percent to 11 percent by 2050.

There are different views about how far and fast nuclear will fall in the US but fall it will. And there is no dispute that many plants are losing money. More than half of the country’s reactors are losing money, racking up losses totalling about US$2.9 billion a year according to a recent analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. And a separate Bloomberg report found that expanding state aid to money-losing reactors across the eastern US may leave consumers on the hook for as much as US$3.9 billion a year in higher power bills.

 

This article has been excerpted from: ‘Nuclear Power’s Annus Horribilus’.

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org