There has been increasing talk of a rebirth of nuclear power generation. In the US, this idea is often termed a “nuclear renaissance.” America has not had a new reactor connect to the power grid since 1996 when Watts Bar I did so, and very little activity has been seen by way of new plants coming on line since the late 1980s. Furthermore, there has not been much growth in nuclear power in the past couple decades globally either. (There are exceptions such as France, which has been steadfast in its development of nuclear power generating capacity.)

The disaster at Chernobyl that occurred in 1986 is often credited with sounding a death knell for the nuclear power industry. This was not only the case in the US, but, perhaps even more so in the geographically vast portion of the world that was directly affected by the event. The radiation release created due to the Chernobyl event was huge and had international effects. The contaminated area, as published by IAEA, was about 93,000 square miles, which is roughly the size of Minnesota or Michigan. Of course, there were effects across a far broader area than that. Perhaps most famously, Sweden got a considerable dose of cesium radiation and is still trying to determine what effects this will have on its national cancer rates.

However, there is a renewal of interest in nuclear power for several reasons. First, nuclear is one of the few sources of energy that is free of greenhouse gases and can generate electricity on the kind of scale needed to meet demand. Solar and wind are not yet economically competitive and face many challenges in becoming so. (Most notably, the further one puts generation capacity from the end user the more electricity is lost in the process, and the fact that ”not in my backyard” (NIMBY) sentiments run high is a problem for these still relatively feeble energy sources.) As global climate change becomes an increasing concern, the environmental benefits of nuclear may become more of a driving force.

Second, there are many concerns about continuity of supply of fossil fuels is motivating consideration of new approaches. Of course, after the oil shocks of the 1970’s, many of the uses that could be relatively easily shifted from petroleum to other energy sources were, and this has left the transportation sector largely unswayed as a huge consumer of oil.

There are several alternatives to fossil fuel for transportation that are in consideration, but most of those that could benefit from nuclear power are probably many years down the road technologically. One that does not really benefit greatly from nuclear is bio-fuels. Work is being done to make more fibrous materials with lower opportunity cost more useful in this regard, and this may have an effect on diminishing petroleum use. However, until such advances are made, there is a considerable challenge with respect to the fact that material like corn has high value alternative uses. This is underscored by The Economist’s  cover-story this week on “the end of cheap food.” Though perhaps if we (not only the US but also Europe) were to reduce subsidization, and accept that there are some food products for which we do not have comparative advantage and we would do better to import, we might find that global production of both food and bio-fuels might be less damaging to welfare than we think. Other alternatives can be seen in coal gasification, tar sands, and oil-shale. However, these have always suffered from the problem that it is an easy task for OPEC to make sure prices do not stay high long enough for there to be an incentive to invest in plant capacity for these, relatively more expensive, forms of energy.

However, with advances in battery and fuel cell technology, nuclear could play a role in reducing transportation’s reliance on petroleum. Often what is missed when people talk about the “pollution-free” hydrogen fuel cell that emits only water is that it takes a lot of energy get the hydrogen into a form usable by the fuel cells. If the electricity that is employed for this purpose is generated by coal, then it certainly is not emissions-free in any meaningful sense, and this may be where nuclear power can be of value. Should electric vehicles every become practical for a large segment of the population, nuclear could be part of the solution on this end as well. While we may not see the day when such technologies are useful for our heavy cargo hauling vehicles (which can be run on bio-diesel), it may yield great benefits to get passenger vehicles off petroleum.

The question is whether these factors will lead to increased nuclear power plant construction as many power utilities and national governments around the world are proposing. There are many emerging nations that are experiencing rapid growth, and have not yet built up their electricity generating capacity sufficiently  to meet these needs. Countries like Indonesia are looking at nuclear as one part of a plan to answer the rising demand. Of course, the high upfront expenses involved with nuclear power is likely to keep it much of the developing world from pursuing this path. A $1-1.5 billion dollar investment for one plant is beyond the means of many nations.  However, there are countries such as Turkey, VietNam, and Egypt that theoretically have both the resources and the intent to enter into nuclear power generation. The question is how big they will enter the playing field. Egypt has discussed the possibility of nuclear power generation for a long time, as have many other countries who choose not to devote resources to it.

Of course, an important thing to be worked out is the disposition of spent fuel. France has been an ardent proponent of recycling spent fuel so as to greatly reduce the amount of waste. This has not been widely practiced because it has not proved cost-effective enough to motivate its pursuit. In the US reprocessing of spent fuel was prohibited for a time during the Carter Administration, but, even after that regulation was overturned, the incentive was not there. This may come down to a problem of externalities (a dislocation between those accruing the benefits and those incurring the costs.) In other words, if the cost of storage and management were fully assigned to those who produced the spent fuel, they might find it more cost-effective.  At any rate, the current US plan of storing the fuel on the plant site in casks is not a sustainable strategy in the long-term, but resistance to facilities such as Yucca Mountain prove challenging to the provision of a solution. Reprocessing (or recycling) spent fuel is of concern because the standard processes by which it is done separates out plutonium that could become a nuclear weapons proliferation risk. The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) has supported work on spent fuel recycling that would not result in the separation of bomb usable material.   

In the US a lot of work has gone into streamlining the process to cut back on some of the expense in time and money involved in going from concept to completed construction of a nuclear power plant, and France and Japan may provide many lessons learned from building up their nuclear generating capacity. However, it remains to be seen whether the second coming of nuclear power will come to fruition.