Wind vs. Nuclear Power

Dear Reader,

To divert from the usual flow of assignments, I am posting a response to a discussion on Linked-In in which I have recently taken part. The original post mentioned in the writing below refers to a CNN article entitled "Nuclear renaissance -- not dead yet" that can be found on cnnmoney.com. Please enjoy...

----------

Mr. Whealan,

To return to the topic at hand, I would like to consider the rent issue that you raised initially. In particular, let’s use the figures available in the article indicated in the original post. According to the article, the nuclear power plants in question would cost $10 billion ($10,000,000,000) to construct and would have a capacity of 5400 MW. If we consider that newly constructed nuclear facilities have regulated lifetimes before they need to be decommissioned for safety purposes, we can guess at a ‘rent’ for a nuclear facility. To keep the number simple, I will assume that the new facilities will have a lifetime of 50 year. Therefore, the ‘rent’ can be considered ($10,000,000,000 / 50 years =) $200,000,000 per year.

I realize that economist would argue that the money would be significantly reduced in value by the end of the 50 lifetime of the system due to discounting. However, given the assumption that the initial payment is made in the form of a loan (of some form or another) that will need to be paid with interest by someone (either tax payers in the case of subsidies or rate payers in the case of consumers) it seems reasonable enough to use the $200,000,000 per year figure, so let’s stick with that.

Now, we need to figure out the equivalent ‘rent’ for 5400 MW of wind-generated capacity. While I do not know what the size of the turbines you are referencing is, I will assume that we can use 2 MW turbines (to keep the math simple). This means that we will need (5400 MW / 2 MW =) 2700 wind turbines. Using your suggested rate of $10,000 per acre, and using an assumption of 1 turbine per acre, the cost of rent would be ($10,000 * 2700 =) $27,000,000 per year.

To be fair, we need to also include the construction/installation costs as we did in the nuclear case. According to windustry.org (http://www.windustry.org/how-much-do-wind-turbines-cost), an installed 2 MW wind turbine will likely cost about $3.5 million ($3,500,000). So our installation costs would be ($3,500,000 * 2700=) $9,450,000,000 in total. Or using a relatively short lifetime of 20 years, the installation portion of the rent would be about $472,500,000 per year. This means that the total ‘rent’ would be just under $500,000,000 per year.

Thus on the face of the issue, the wind turbine system would cost 2.5 times more per year. However, this disregards maintenance costs, fuel costs (and all cost associated with procuring fuel … none for wind, and substantial costs for nuclear), and decommissioning costs (and all costs associated with disposal … which I believe would actually be negative for wind since most if not all materials could be recycled, and which I believe would be very significant for nuclear if you consider that appropriate technologies for disposal or long-term storage have not really been developed and tested yet).

Thus, in my personal opinion, I believe that it is favorable to implement wind technologies where it is a possibility in place of nuclear technologies. Unfortunately, wind turbines suffer where nuclear power has an advantage in the phrase “out of sight, out of mind” on two levels. The first is that as you point out, wind turbines tend to be very visible, whereas nuclear power stations are much more compact. The second is that the users of the energy must suffer the environmental and financial drawbacks as they use them in the case of wind turbines, or the users may divert them for several generations in the case nuclear power.

In closing, thank you for prompting me to critically analyze the situation rather than simply go with what others have heard. I will be posting some form of this reply on a blog that I have had to create for a sustainable consumption course that I am currently taking. I hope that this has given you something to consider that you find digestible and not elitist. Also, if you find any trouble with my math or assumptions, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Sean Diamond