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Warming Up to Nuclear Power
Comparatively, Constellation Energy is running the nuclear power plant at Calvert Cliffs efficiently and power generation there looks relatively cheap.
(By James A. Parcell -- The Washington Post)
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Today, power generation at Calvert Cliffs looks relatively cheap. After investing substantially in the plant, Constellation is running it much more efficiently than BGE did. With deregulation of prices, Constellation should earn more. The company's acquisition of two other nuclear plants also looks smart today.
Nationwide the story is similar. The 103 U.S. nuclear plants run at around 90.5 percent of capacity, up from 56.3 percent in 1979, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. They account for 20 percent of the nation's electricity. (Their output has kept pace with growing U.S. demand. So has coal-fired electricity, while hydropower hasn't kept pace and oil is rarely used.)
But taking over an existing plant is better business than building one from scratch, many say.
That has been less of a problem in other countries. There are more than 30 nuclear plants under construction around the world. China, which has nine plants, might build as many as 30 more over the next 15 years.
Countries with existing nuclear plants have done little to pare them back. France gets three-quarters of its electricity from its 56 nuclear plants and emits much lower quantities of greenhouse gases than the United States. Even Sweden, which planned to shut down all of its reactors after Chernobyl, has shut down only one. Russia hasn't needed any new plants; its economy contracted after the Soviet Union collapsed and it has plentiful coal, oil and natural gas reserves.
The biggest costs of Chernobyl came in Ukraine, where the reactor was, and neighboring Belarus. Both have borne costs for treating illnesses, decontaminating the plant and surrounding towns and resettling people, in addition to losing industrial output. The International Atomic Energy Agency says that Belarus alone spent $13 billion dealing with the aftermath of Chernobyl from 1991 to 2003. The toll in lives, while hard to measure, has been big, too. The IAEA estimates the accident will have caused 4,000 deaths from radiation and radiation-induced cancers when all is said and done. Greenpeace puts the number closer to 200,000, and there are others in between.
Many nuclear defenders say that such a disaster couldn't happen again, blaming the Soviet reactor model and pointing to more recent improvements in reactor designs.
"People say reactors can't blow up, but Chernobyl blew up," said Victor Gilinsky, a consultant who served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 1975 to 1984. "It was a real explosion." He said people were "too quick" to blame Soviet design and procedures. "There's a tremendous worldwide PR campaign" for new nuclear power plants, he said, "but I guess the acid test will be whether electric companies buy them or not. We can only wait and see."
