Nuclear plants, blackouts and carbon capture at FORTUNE conference

The U.S. must shore up its backup power infrastructure to avoid the electricity shortages that roiled Japan following the devastating earthquake and tsunami, a key federal energy official said Tuesday.

“We take electricity for granted in a lot of ways,” said Philip Moeller, commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, at a conference in Dana Point. “Right now, we’re vulnerable.”

In the case of a catastrophe, a bank of spare transformers or specially-designed substations could help prevent the rolling blackouts caused by idled nuclear plants in Japan, he said.

But even with public hesitation around nuclear power, Moeller’s fellow panelists at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference said it remained a valuable energy source. 

“Can we do without nuclear? Probably, but I’d hesitate to take it off the table today,” said Bill Weihl, Google’s green energy czar.  “The key is figuring out how to get over the next 20, 30, 40 years with very low emissions and nuclear is a big part of that.”

Panelists suggested ramping up government and private investor support of other renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. But smart grids -– sophisticated electricity information and metering systems that can help integrate clean power –- are still being developed around the country “in fits and starts,” Moeller said.

“It’s a very difficult process that’s going very slowly,” he said. “There’s no real place to share the lessons learned, the best practices.”

And without nationwide legislation or incentives to encourage carbon capture and storage technologies, dirty coal will likely continue to dominate electricity production, said Michael Morris, chief executive of the American Electric Power utility.

“If there’s no law that causes the states to tell companies like mine or others to spend millions of dollars retrofitting plants to capture carbon, it’s just not going to happen,” he said, adding that competitors in China, India, Russia and other companies are all continuing to build coal facilities.

Alan Salzman, chief executive of VantagePoint Venture Partners, which invests in companies such as electric vehicles service provider Better Place and solar developer BrightSource Energy, wasn’t pleased.

“You can make a strong argument that coal is the new tobacco,” he said. “There are lots of things that are plentiful and inexpensive but we manage to get by without them, like child labor.”

-- Tiffany Hsu

Photo: Nuclear power: The seaside San Onofre plant is designed to survive a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. Credit: Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Mark Goldes]

Solar flares can cause massive long-term blackouts.

See Green Light at www.aesopinstitute.org for an overview and a way to minimize the impact.

See Cold Fusion on the same site for a surprising safe alternative to Uranium fueled nuclear plants that has recently gone into production.

[James]

To "Public Advocate" Nuclear may not be green but suggesting coal is less toxic is not all that correct. The EPA has delayed setting emission standards for 20 years for a reason, the main one being mercury emissions. Another issue is the ash left over from burning can also be radioactive(radionuclides) as well. So much for coal being a great choice. Japan in it's early days used coal plants and had so many cases of their people being poison by mercury exposure. Mercury does not have a half life, it remains toxic forever.

Fukushima could have been prevented, but they were let to keep the plants running far past the safe life. The new pebblebed type reactors are what china is building and are light years safer than the old junk Japan has been running. There is also thorium which could have been used as a fuel in reactors which would also have made it safer.Thorium has been tried in the Canadian CANDU reactors. Plus at fukushima they are using MOX fuel which contains plutonium, it should be banned.

Gas plants are an option but not everywhere can get enough gas to run a plant.

Others keep talking about wind and solar, fine but the problem with them is storing the power. Are you going to use masses of batteries? If so batteries wear out. What about disposing the toxic chemicals when the batteries reach the end of their useful life.

[Robert]

The main problem with the ongoing energy debates, or insult excahnges, is the widespread assumption that we need to continually increase the amount of energy we consume. The reverse is true. Our long term survival as a species depends on our working aggressively to greatly reduce the amount of energy we consume, beginning with fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Does anyone really think all that energy wasted on Tokyo's neon jungle was worth what those folks are going through now at Fukushima? Is another, bigger television worth the cost of having "spent" nuclear fule rods piled up all over the country waiting for some maniac to try to blow them up? The only sensible course for humanity is to outlaw coal-burning, followed by oil and gasoline burning, followed by natural gas burning, on the most aggressive schedule possible. What we can't replace with safe, renewable energy, we need to learn to do without. No nuclear plant licenses should be extended or issued without the full cost of permanent disposal of all fuel rods included into the owner's license cost, and no public money should be invested in this dead-end technology.

That really needs to be our starting point if we want to leave a livable planet for our grandchildren. And yes, sacrificing wealth and senseless luxury now to make that possible really is necessary.

[Luca Semprni]

Right now, nuclear makes up for about 20% of the U.S. electricity supply. It's unfeasible to think of taking off an already stressed grid (see http://bit.ly/hxn98t ) in the short term.

However, increased investment in renewables is certainly the best way to diversify the current energy portfolio and make strides toward lower carbon emissions.

[Paul Taylor]

Enviros want to do away with nuclear energy. Enviro-groups are now leveraging the enviro-hysteria of “Fukushima” to stop the expansion of nuclear power in America and globally. Just as they have used the examples of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island as pejoratives against the U.S.’s current 104 nuclear power plants that provide about 18% of our electricity. President Obama, Senate Leader Harry Reid and their U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) have conspired to sabotage the licensing for the Yucca Mountain Nevada nuclear waste disposal site. For more than 20 years, the Yucca Mountain facility has been in the arduous process of multi-agency environmental reviews for approval to become the nation’s first nuclear waste facility. Such a facility would clear the way for rapid expansion of clean, green U.S. nuclear power that has been stalled by environmental activists for over thirty years.

Nuclear power supplies about 14% of the world’s electricity. The average age of the world’s approximately 443 nuclear power plants is 27 years. While today the U.S. leads the world in installed nuclear power generation capacity, the U.S. is behind the curve in planned capacity expansion. The U.S. has only two new nuclear reactors under construction. Prior to Fukushima, countries with planned or under-construction nuclear power plants by expansion capacity percentage were: U.S 10%, Canada 27%, U.K. 21%, France 4%, Finland 25%, India 115%, China 600%, Russia 75%, Japan 25% and South Korea 52%. (The Economist, March 26, 2011)

Nuclear power expansion is necessary in America for economic, security and environmental reasons. The energy from one pound of uranium is equivalent to 1.3 million pounds of coal energy. Nuclear power produces none of the greenhouse gases associated with global warming.

[Cindy Sage Santa Barbara, CA]

FERC is just not listening if any Commissioner believes that the public will stand for the multiple hits from smart meters and smart grid development (severe health problems, loss of use of private property and living space, privacy and hacking issues, security issues, incompatibility with medical and metal implants, fires and explosions of wireless smart meters, incompatibility with future solar installations, and excessive billing for normal electrical usage). There is absolutely no proof that smart meters and smart grid save any energy at all. What they DO is place the public at great risk.

The CPUC has told utilities to come up with opt-out plans for those who cannot tolerate these new wireless smart meters on their homes, or who choose not to risk having their monthly electric bills rise into the thousands of dollars for no good reason, or who think 'remote disconnection' gives the utility too much power over their lives and well-being.

Jockeying for position among companies with different carcinogen by-products is like watching a re-run of "Thank You For Smoking", that wonderful film that had the MOD Squad (self-labeled Merchants of Death alcohol, firearms and tobacco sales) sitting at a bar together laughing that each others' products were more harmful, making their companies look good by comparison. The electric utilities need to come up with something that saves energy but not by causing widespread health problems for its customers. Coal is not the new tobacco, smart meters are.

[Public Advocate]

Let's be clear about one thing. Nuclear is not clean or green. Although its "emissions" might be lower than fossil fuel generated electricity its toxicity is much higher. To think that nuclear waste can be managed for thousands of years is arrogant and wrong. To think that nuclear energy is a short term fix until something better comes along is a fatal mistake. To think that nukes are part of the solution to global warming is ignorant. Are you listening Al "Nuclear" Gore?