We currently have 104 nuclear-power plants in the United States that run more than 90 percent of the time, day after day, month after month.
As improbable as it might seem, given the continuing political debate over nuclear power, the performance of U.S. nuclear plants, including the Shearon-Harris, McGuire and Brunswick units in North Carolina, is outstanding.
Nuclear plants operate nearly all the time at rated power, producing the maximum amount of electricity that could be produced during a given time period. Coal plants run about 70 percent of the time, wind and hydro 30 percent and solar 20 percent. This is known as capacity factor. U.S. nuclear plants achieved a capacity factor of 91 percent in 2008, and the plants have been operating near this level on a sustained basis for the last 10 years.
All this reflects an enormous improvement in plant management and maintenance compared to the performance of nuclear plants back in the 1970s. The average capacity factor for nuclear plants in 1979 was 56 percent.
Because so many nuclear plants were operating at full capacity year-round in 2008, total electricity generated by the U.S. nuclear power plant fleet was 805.7 billion kilowatt-hours. That's more than three times the amount of electricity generated by nuclear plants 30 years ago.
In other words, without spending a penny on the construction of new nuclear plants, Americans were benefiting from the improved operation of existing plants that produced substantially more power with no air pollution or greenhouse-gas emissions. Much of the credit for this goes to improved efficiency in plant refueling and maintenance. Instead of taking months to complete, refueling and maintenance are now done in a few weeks.
With the increase in nuclear plant-capacity factors, the cost of producing nuclear-generated electricity has dropped. Nationally, in 2007, it was 1.76 cents per kilowatt-hour. This is cheaper than coal, which costs 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour, and one-quarter the cost of natural gas-fired generation. It's considered likely that nuclear power's cost advantage over fossil fuels increased in 2008, a year that saw sharp increases in the cost of coal and natural gas.
But what about the future? By any measure, the nuclear industry has made remarkable progress in starting down the path toward new nuclear plants. The current hope is for a number of nuclear-plant orders in the next few years. In 2008, companies submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 13 new-plant license applications for 19 reactors totaling almost 27,000 megawatts of potential new capacity. Next-generation plants can be built to standardized designs, four of which have been certified for licensing by the NRC.
If the United States is to have a secure and affordable supply of electricity, more nuclear-power plants need to be built. That would help solve several problems at once.
First, with less dependence on fossil fuels, there would be less air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions. Moreover, by building nuclear plants, the United States moves closer to energy independence, reducing the trade deficit and creating thousands of new jobs.
Nuclear power is clean, safe and affordable. The waste produced is very small in volume and can easily be stored. It is also possible to build different types of reactors that can use some of this material as fuel for a further source of nuclear power. The amount of radioactive waste is thus decreased, and, after a few years of storage, the long-lived material which is non-fissionable can be separated out chemically and stored safely.
In short, nuclear power is not a problem but is part of the solution.
■ William D. Walker is the James B. Duke professor of physics, emeritus, at Duke University.
The Journal welcomes original submissions for North Carolina Voices on local, regional and statewide topics. Our e-mail address is:
Letters@wsjournal.com. You may also mail a typed essay to: Letters to the Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102. Please include your name and address and a daytime telephone number.
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