Nuclear plants do not shut down coal plants

[kristopher]

All they do is strengthen the economic system that is designed around the coal plant.

This is a couple of years old, but it is worth revisiting.

Proponents for nuclear constantly advocate for building more nuclear on the basis of its supposed ability to replace coal. So please tell us how it is they force the owners of the coal plant to give up their place in the energy market.

Since there is no market mechanism by which nuclear can shut down a coal plant (which last >50 years); and since these nuclear plants prevent markets from investing in new zero-fuel cost renewables that actually have a market mechanism to shut down coal plants (merit order pricing); nuclear is a form of expenditure that does nothing but lock in the market position of coal plants. Perhaps even worse, building nuclear plants drive policies intended to increase electricity consumption since their economic justification is always based on inflated estimates of increased future demand - a situation that creates a self fulfilling prophecy.

This is reality:

Nuclear Revival is Ruining Climate Protection Efforts and Harming Customers, says Watchdog Group
Report shows Southeast utilities plan not to replace coal-fired power, but to add nuclear capacity despite falling demand – while jacking up rates and blocking clean energy advances

DURHAM, NC – Despite a six-year public relations blitz touting nuclear power as essential for a low carbon future, five southeastern utilities trying to license and build reactors have no intention of using them to replace coal-fired power plants. Instead, because captive state governments have forced financial risks onto customers, the “Southeast Five” are pursuing costly and unneeded nuclear and natural gas projects while blocking the measures that could retire coal – energy efficiency programs along with solar and wind power.

That’s according to watchdog group NC WARN, which today released an unprecedented analysis of utility practices in the Southeast. The Durham-based group also called on the CEOs of the Southeast Five to shift their enormous resources toward clean-energy measures. Such a transition, NC WARN says, would allow the phase-out of coal units, a move that is critically needed to help avert runaway climate disruption. The shift is also essential because of a regional economic triple-threat posed by worsening climate disasters, eye-watering rate hikes caused by massive expansion of generation capacity, and the high risk of nuclear project failures.

“For years the nuclear industry has told the public that, despite financial and safety hazards, new nuclear plants are needed so coal plants can be replaced,” said the report’s author, Jim Warren, during a press conference today. “The reality is that the Southeast Five CEOs have no intention of phasing out coal – even though accelerating climate changes are already hammering our national, state and local economies, while harming people and our environment. Skyrocketing power bills are an added assault on businesses and the public.”

See the report, New Nuclear Power is Ruining Climate Protection Efforts and Harming Customers
http://www.ncwarn.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/NCW-NuclearClimate_web.pdf



Read Clinging to Dirty Energy in the South – a by-the-numbers look from the Institute of Southern Studies
http://www.southernstudies.org/2011/10/institute-index-clinging-to-dirty-energy-in-the-south.html

Percent by which the big Southeast Five utilities (Duke Energy Carolinas, Florida Power & Light, Georgia Power, Progress Energy and South Carolina Electric & Gas) plan to reduce their coal generation capacity over the next two decades:
16

Percent by which Duke Energy Carolinas plans to reduce its coal generation during that period:
3.6

Size in megawatts of the new coal-fired power unit that Duke Energy is building at its Cliffside plant in western North Carolina, scheduled to begin operating next year:
825

Tons of carbon dioxide that the Cliffside plant will emit to the atmosphere each year:
6,000,000

Amount by which Progress Energy is planning to increase its reliance on natural gas in the coming years:
25

Percent by which greenhouse gas emissions from drilling for natural gas in shale formations actually exceeds such emissions from coal-fired electricity over time:
20

Average percentage of the Southeast Five's generation capacity expected to come from wind and solar over the next couple of decades:
0.25

That figure for Duke Energy, the Southeast Five's leader in planned wind and solar power:
0.77

That figure for Progress Energy Florida, SCE&G and Georgia Power:
0

Average percentage of the Southeast Five's generation capacity expected to come from energy efficiency over the next couple of decades:
1.9

That figure for SCE&G, the Southeast Five's leader in planned efficiency:
5.09

Percent of Georgia Power's and FP&L's total generation capacity expected to come from energy efficiency:
0

Total amount by which the Southeast Five are planning to increase their generation capacity over the next two decades, in megawatts:
23,188

Percent of that capacity increase represented by planned nuclear reactors:
38

[kristopher]

1. Here is what that looks like

More Wind Means Less Baseload Generation
In a big chunk of the country, the rise of wind power is reducing the need for baseload generation from coal and nuclear.

EARTHTECHLING, PETE DANKO: SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

...The government’s official energy analysts said the rise of wind power in what’s known as the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) -- all of Kansas and Oklahoma, plus parts of New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Nebraska -- has led to a steady reduction in the use of baseload capacity in the past three years.



Baseload resources -- things like coal and nuclear plants that usually operate around the clock -- tend to have the highest capital costs among grid power sources, while peaking resources generally cheaper. So while wind can increase the need for peaking resources that operate more expensively, more wind could in the long run reduce the need for new baseload plants.

(T)he use of baseload capacity, which includes units that run near full capacity at all times, is…the minimum of the hourly difference between total demand and wind output. This value has come down in each of the last three years in SPP, as wind generation has supplanted baseload generation, typically from nuclear and coal units.

What’s especially remarkable about what’s happening in the Southwest Power Pool is that baseload has been falling even as demand for energy has been rising in the region. That’s right: even as more power has been needed, the amount of required baseload has dropped...

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/more-wind-means-less-baseload-generation?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=Headline&utm_campaign=GTMDaily

[Union Scribe]

2. Tell it to Japan.

They kill all the reactors and boom: 9 Trillion yen to import fossil fuels to burn. Canceled emissions targets. Power shortages. Who knows how many deaths by cardiovascular and respiratory ailments. Imagine that. No nuclear and yet the market didn't magically turn to renewables. There goes that bogeyman eh?

[kristopher]

3. "There goes that boogeyman"?

No, Japan's case doesn't refute the premise of the OP. In fact, it doesn't even address it except as noted below. What the events in Japan show most clearly is how reliance on nuclear brings with it the problem of one accident resulting in a dramatic social upheaval including but not limited to dramatically increased carbon emissions and the severe economic turmoil associated with a requirement for a massive, unplanned infrastructure makeover. Five, I repeat 5 past Prime Ministers of Japan have gone on the record rejecting continued dependence on nuclear power. That includes Nakasone, who was instrumental in helping to establish the policy in the first place.

Monopolized utilities and nuclear plant do not fit into these developments, which is one major reason for the frenzied politicking of Japan’s nuclear village utilities and their allies in finance. Centralized power’s income streams are drying up, and they are desperate to defend their privilege. In the EU, for example, the 20 largest utilities have lost half their value over the past few years due specifically to the growth of distributed (and especially renewable) power.15 That is a major reason the German energy shift is so often misrepresented even in ordinarily careful mainstream publications. - http://www.japanfocus.org/-Andrew-DeWit/4049

WE have a well developed market based system that provides a set of rules for producing, buying, selling, transmitting and distributing power. As the OP shows, that system is not challenged by nuclear power, it is strengthened by it. Renewables on the other hand, have an effective path to shutting down coal.


The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 11, Issue 50, No.3, December 16, 2013.

Just Gas? Smart Power and Koizumi’s Anti-Nuclear Challenge
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Andrew-DeWit/4049

Andrew DeWit

Japan’s former Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro has repeatedly called for current Prime Minister Abe Shinzo to make an explicit decision to get out of nuclear power. Koizumi’s full-scale press conference on this matter, held on November 12 in front of 350 journalists, shook up the Abe cabinet. It continues to do so, judging by the tendentious commentary it continues to attract. Koizumi forced the cabinet to address an item they clearly wanted to finesse for the time being.1 But the substance of Koizumi’s over hour-long event has not yet received the attention it merits. This article puts Koizumi’s talk in context, showing that his position is shared by all the former Japanese prime ministers, including Nakasone Yasuhiro. Most important, contrary to the claim that Japan’s choice is either gas or nuclear, Koizumi highlighted the ongoing deployment of radical efficiency and renewable energy as the proper path forward. And the accelerating rollout of smart cities across Japan suggests that Koizumi and his colleagues are standing on the right side of history.

Koizumi’s motives for speaking out continue to be the subject of speculation in the Japanese media, including a paranoid claim that he must be in hock to the US shale gas lobby.2 But one of Koizumi’s most fervent supporters is PM Abe’s own wife, Abe Akie, a significant political figure in her own right and one very knowledgeable about energy alternatives.3 Koizumi’s anti-nuclear position is also not a sudden development or apparently one driven by pecuniary self-interest. Koizumi has been publicly mooting his concerns about nuclear power since at least 2012, and during early August of 2013 went on a fact-finding mission (with the nuclear engineers of Hitachi, Toshiba and Mitsubishi) to Germany and Finland.4 Koizumi also alienated the 80 establishment firms, including prominent members from the nuclear village, grouped in the Centre for International Public Policy Studies set up in March of 2007 with YEN 1.8 billion of their funding and Koizumi as chairman.5

Nor is Koizumi the odd-man-out, at least in the league of present and former PMs. Rather, Abe is: former Prime Ministers Nakasone Yasuhiro, Hatoyama Yukio, Noda Yoshihiko, and Kan Naoto have all also expressed opposition to nuclear power and declared that that Japan must pursue alternatives. Nakasone's statement was especially surprising, because he was one of the father's of Japan's nuclear effort. Yet at a June 26, 2011 "Solar Economy Kanagawa" conference held in Yokohama, Nakasone declared that "nuclear power damages humankind" and called for a large-scale cultural shift to harvesting energy while co-existing with nature.6

So Koizumi's opposition to the nuclear village’s agenda is consistent with the mindset of other former prime ministers once they were out of the bubble of policymaking dominated by vested interests and concerns about their income streams. What makes Koizumi’s position stand out is the fact that he is enormously popular, even though he left the office of Prime Minister seven years ago. PM Abe is indeed Koizumi's protegé, and leads a party in which there are already widespread misgivings about the commitment to restarts and talk of new reactor construction.7

One core argument of the narrative that would dismiss Koizumi’s intervention as “emotional” is that it offered no alternatives. This assertion is nonsense. ...

See also:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112759049#post26