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IEC Shines Spotlight
Popularity of Wind Power Puts Greater Emphasis on Wind Turbine Gearbox Standards |
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Come join us at these upcoming events: Aug. 27-29 Sept. 17-20 Sept. 30-Oct. 2 Oct. 21-26 Oct. 29-Nov. 2 Nov. 6-9
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A Nuclear Renaissance: Fact or Fiction?
CERA Senior Director Jone-Lin Wang, lead author of the CERA report “Is the Nuclear Renaissance Real?” released in February, attributes the flurry of proposals for new nuclear facilities in the United States in part to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which provides a number of incentives for building new reactors, including loan guarantees and production tax credits. How the new reactor licensing process will work is critical as well. Established in 1989 by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the licensing process may not seem to be new, but because orders for new reactors came to a halt after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, it has yet to be fully tested. Because of this, nobody knows for sure how successful the process will be. “We’ve tested some modules of it, but the whole process has not been tested. In particular there are two very important modules. One is the process of applying for and the granting of the combined construction and operating license. The other is the verification of whether criteria have been met at the end. Neither has been tested. So there are potential issues,” says Wang. Unlike the old process, which awarded an operating license only after the facility had been built, the new one awards a combined construction and operating license (COL) before construction starts. Afterwards, the plant owner must verify that the facility that it has built meets the criteria established at the beginning of the process. This way, says Wang, “you won’t be building the plant and spending $3 billion and then discovering that you can’t get through some of the basic site safety issues.” The NRC’s new licensing process could help make it less risky for companies to build nuclear facilities in the United States, but until it’s fully tested it’s too soon to tell. In the meantime, other countries such as the United Kingdom are watching to see how effective it will be as they redesign their own processes. Of course, even a streamlined process doesn’t remove all the barriers to building new nuclear facilities. Wang points out that just getting the COL can cost $50 million. “The new plants cost a lot, so to get through to the license, and then have the COL on hand is more like developing an option. Once you get the COL, you can decide if conditions still are right for nuclear power,” says Wang. “Now, from start to finish, from selecting technologies and preparing for a COL, then going through the process and building the plant and getting it started, can take 10 years or longer. In any 10-year period, there’s usually at least one economic recession and at least some period of time when inflation and/or interest rates are high. And all these will hurt nuclear more than other types of power plants. So to get through the long process requires substantial staying power and financial backing. With these long lead time projects, we will see some casualties.” Another factor that may hinder the development of new nuclear plants and the expansion of existing ones is the limited supply of components needed to build the facilities. “If the supply side does not expand fast to meet the demand, it can be a limiting factor, but it is not a show stopper. It will limit the speed that nuclear can grow and it can also increase the cost,” Wang says. Because of this, CERA recently increased its estimate of how much it expects a new nuclear reactor to cost. Even so, Wang says that until building owners begin signing contracts and sourcing materials, it is too soon to tell exactly how expensive these projects will be. Currently, there are proposals for approximately 40 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the next 15 years. But how much will actually be built depends on a number of factors. “When we look at things that far out, we use scenarios. With the base scenario, we see quite a few casualties, but still some plants get built—10 to 15 gigawatts by 2020,” Wang says. “But if there is a serious incident, like a terrorist event involving nuclear materials, we could end up with very little or nothing. This is a low-probability but high-consequence scenario. There is another scenario where climate change continues to receive the utmost attention and we have a very stringent climate change policy at the federal level, which will stimulate the building of new nuclear power plants. In that case we could see substantially more than 10 to 15 gigawatts. But I think we are comfortable saying that barring any low-probability, high-consequence events such as an accident or incident of nuclear terrorism, we expect 10 to 15 gigawatts to come online by 2020.”
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Inverness Way East • Englewood, CO 80112-5776 • USA |
Concerns about global warming and the rising price of oil continue to fuel interest in alternative sources of energy. But none are as controversial as nuclear power. Still, the leading energy advisory firm, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Inc. (CERA), an IHS company, is forecasting what it calls a nuclear renaissance. CERA says an upsurge of proposed nuclear plants may lead to a major nuclear power expansion over the coming decades.