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Nuclear Tide
by Richard Karn 27-07-2006 |
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
American culture is utterly dependent on cheap, abundant energy.
The price of oil, however, has risen relentlessly for the last seven years to the point we now send one-half billion dollars abroad each day to pay for our needs[1]. We spend at least another ten billion dollars each month to ensure access to it.
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Natural gas burns more cleanly and is more thermally efficient than oil or coal. But like oil, our reserves are finite, and natural gas is found in countries whose interests are not necessarily aligned with our own.
Coal is plentiful and has been our primary workhorse for base load electrical generation for more than a century and will continue to play a significant role for decades to come. But coal is also filthy; it can be cleaned, indeed will be cleaned, but it is a difficult and expensive process.
Emissions from these fossil fuels are threatening climate changes we try not to imagine.
Renewable energy sources’ promise will remain as secondary, additive sources of power.
Nuclear energy is perceived to be expensive, inefficient, hazardous, and fraught with danger.
…and within two generations will become America’s primary source of energy.
The march of thermal efficiency, defined here as the ratio of usable energy output to energy input, has improved consistently from coal to oil to natural gas, with each producing fewer emissions of carbon dioxide and the like than its predecessor[2]. The next evolutionary step that will be taken in the decades ahead will be the development of dual-use nuclear power: base load electrical generation coupled with the electrolysis of water to produce either hydrogen, a carbon-neutral fuel posited as the clean replacement for fossil fuels, or potable water. There will be a dire need for both in the years ahead.
A changing, threatening world seems to be conspiring against us. Even the weather seems increasingly antagonistic.
Aging power stations near the end of their operational lives: hard choices must be made.
A groundswell is gathering momentum and awaits but the right catalyst to unite Americans behind the idea of being fed up with the stranglehold imported fossil fuels has on our lives. We will demand that something be done.
Energy Security.
Global Warming.
Nuclear energy: because it is time to end our reliance on imported fossil fuels.
With a third of the world’s power stations being more than 30 years old[3], a number of countries, principally those in eastern Asia, have arrived at this very conclusion. They are choosing to shoulder the higher capital costs of building nuclear power plants today, in effect fixing the price of electricity for decades to come, in order to lessen the impact of higher energy costs tomorrow. Over the next 25 years, it is estimated the number of nuclear power plants worldwide will increase by about forty percent.
[4]
A year ago when we began compiling research for this report, there were no reactors planned in the United States. We did not think this situation could last and said so in our October report, “Coalescence.[5]” As we go to press, 18 utilities have notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions of their interest in building new nuclear reactors.
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The Emerging Trends Report (ETR) believes this is but a hint of what is to come, and the ensuing nuclear build-out will exceed the Manhattan Project in urgency, the Apollo Program in scope-- and both in cost. It will involve a generational reshaping of major aspects of the American economy, and it will prove prodigiously profitable for those who recognize the turn of the Nuclear Tide.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Certain technical aspects of this paper would not have been possible without the patience and guidance of the following people: George S. Stanford, PhD., reactor physicist (ret.) at the US Argonne National Laboratory; L. John Perkins, PhD. at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and Glenn Catchpole, M.S., P. Eng. Thank you.
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