By MATTHEW RICH

The future of electricity production is being questioned as advances in nuclear power technology are being more widely researched.

While the ability to produce electricity cleanly and inexpensively is becoming difficult, alternatives to traditional electricity production are being examined. Currently coal is Utah’s most used resource for electricity generation. As of 2005, the U.S. Department of Energy stated that 93 percent of Utah’s electricity comes from coal.

At a recent conference local scientists constructed a strong case for using nuclear power to meet Utah and the country’s future electricity needs.

The following advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power were discussed:

Advantages

“What’s nuclear advantage? It produces an incredible amount of power with a very small amount of fuel,” said Gary Sandquist, a retired nuclear and mechanical engineer who taught at the University of Utah.

He helped the forum understand the differences between coal and nuclear power. He also identified the relationship between greenhouse gas production and volume of fuel material needed for electricity generation.

Sandquist said Rocky Mountain Power produces about five-gigawatts of electricity daily to keep cities lighted and homes warm.

One gigawatt is enough electricity for about 600,000 people. However, it takes 10,000 tons of coal to produce one gigawatt of electricity daily. Burning those 10,000 tons of coal emits around 30,000 tons of green-house gases into the atmosphere—about the air volume of the Joseph F. Smith building.

Nuclear reactors use a complicated process involving fission reactions to create steam. The pressurized steam is then run through turbines that turn the heat—created by the nuclear reaction—into electricity.

“Nuclear reactions are roughly one to a million times more energetic, from the amount of fuel involved as any other reaction,” Sandquist said.

To create one gigawatt of electricity eight pounds of uranium-235, which is about the size of a salt shaker, is needed. No greenhouse gases are expelled during the fission process and the contaminants within the cooling water are nullified.

While the initial cost when building a reactor is quite high, the operating costs will be significantly cheaper than the coal power currently depended on.

“Once we build that plant, nu-clear is about a third as expensive as coal… so we want to keep that plant running because we want low cost electricity,” said Bernell K. Stone, a BYU Marriott School of Finance economist.

Coal prices are rising steadily as the demand increases. The uranium required to fuel a reactor is available, abundant in the U.S. and relatively cheap.

“The plants will be extremely expensive, but I do know that fuel costs will be very stable,” Sandquist said.

Disadvantages

The obvious disadvantage is the transportation and storage of hazardous waste material. While the immediate environmental impact of radioactive waste is less hazardous than greenhouse gas emissions, the long-term storage and protection of the material will become a problem. However, some say the process of storing hazardous waste is more straightforward than cleaning the atmosphere.

“I say from an engineering point of view this is easier to cope with [than greenhouse gases],” Sandquist said,

“[We’ve] got to handle it care-fully, we have the engineering to do it and [we] can handle it.”

The cost of nuclear reactors and their accoutrements has skyrocketed in the last decade due to high labor and material costs. This has caused some confusion as to the actual cost of construction, making estimates and actual costs differ from one another,

“The real cost of building nuclear plants is going up, continuing to go up, that’s why I’m skeptical of the industry numbers… getting data on solar, or nuclear cost is difficult—most people have a vested interest and it’s not trustworthy,” Stone said.

“To build nuclear power plants is 63 percent more expensive to build than coal pants, due to materials.”

Cement and steel are used in large quantities. In referring to the containment vessel alone, Stone said, “In terms of the volume of cement, it’s like four [LDS] church [headquarters] office buildings.”

Another drawback is the amount of water needed to cool the reactor. Large amounts of water are required to create enough steam to turn the electricity-producing turbines,

“A nuclear power plant will use about 50 percent more water than gas or coal burning plants. That becomes an important issue in a place like Utah, where water is precious,” said Kent Udell, chairman of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Utah.

Another point that was stressed by all three scientists was the fact that these drawbacks can be overcome through modern engineering and forethought.

Perhaps the largest difficulty will be obtaining public support. With the nightmarish event of Chernobyl just 20 years ago and the near miss of three mile Island almost thirty years past, a stigma has developed concerning the safety of nuclear power. However the stigma may be departing, “Three mile Island was the acid test America needed. It proved we could achieve containment and maintain safety in the event of crisis,” Stone said.

Senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Harry Reid, D-Nev., are supporting legislation that would push money toward new nuclear power programs.

Even though a case can be made for nuclear power, it remains unclear whether public opinion, and therefore policy makers, will find it an acceptable option.

mrich700@gmail.com

Copyright Brigham Young University 7 Jan 2009