The Nuclear Option: European Gas Dispute Gives Nukes Fresh Legs
Just when it seemed the Russia-Ukraine natural-gas dispute was solved, tempers flared again Wednesday. Europe is still the big loser, as Russian gas still isn’t flowing across Ukraine and to the West. The big winner? Nuclear power.
After two weeks of tension and shuttle diplomacy, Wednesday’s dustup finally galvanized European officials into action—sort of. European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said EU countries should sue Russia and Ukraine for toying with their energy supplies.
But in their quest to bolster energy security, many European countries aren’t waiting for lawyers or Brussels to act—or are openly flouting the European Union altogether.
Eastern countries like Slovakia and Bulgaria have been among the hardest hit by the crisis, because they are nearly totally dependent on Russian gas. Both have restarted Soviet-era nuclear reactors they mothballed as a condition to join the European economic bloc. Slovakia’s president openly said that, faced with a “cold and dark” winter or a wrist slap from Brussels, he’s prepared to power up the nuclear reactors and deal with the consequences later. Poland, which isn’t in the EU, just said that nuclear power will be a cornerstone of its new energy policy.
Even Western European countries long leery of nuclear power are rethinking it. Italy’s large gas reserves kept it insulated from the latest crisis, but it still sparked government officials into a call for more nuclear power to boost Italy’s energy security.
Even in Germany, where Green Party politicians hold a nuclear moratorium sacred, the debate is getting fresh legs. Power sector executives said today they are pretty confident that the double whammy of climate change and the need for more energy security will force Germany to reconsider its current nuclear policy.
The European hand-wringing holds lessons for the U.S. as well. Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton told the Senate yesterday that energy security has to be a vital part of U.S. foreign policy, both to reduce dependence on foreign oil and to fight climate change. She called for more nuclear power in the mix.
Which could explain why one hyperactive European country has been largely quiet throughout the two-week gas crisis: France. It went nuclear decades ago to ensure domestic energy supplies, and gets about 80% of its power from nuclear plants.
Isn’t Poland in the EU?
Well, even by the most optimistic estimates, even if they wanted it to, Nuclear energy wouldn’t be available for atleast 5 years. (And that’s at the low end)
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So that really doesn’t do much for a short term political battle between Russia and Ukraine.
Poland joined the EU in 2004.
But where is all the Uranium going to come from with essentially the whole world going nuclear. Plants will have to lock up supplies years in the future to justify the huge construction costs.
The U.S. should step up and build as many nuke plants as physically possible. It is a vital step for our future and can carry us over for decades while we find sustanable alternative energy sources.
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Too bad the enviro-nazis and intense govt regulation have discouraged nuke plants. In fact there hasn’t been a nuke plant build in 30 years because of them.
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Hope this helps.
re: get real
==The U.S. should step up and build as many nuke plants as physically possible. It is a vital step for our future and can carry us over for decades while we find sustanable alternative energy sources.==
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No the reason they haven’t been built is that they don’t work in capitalist markets.
http://greyfalcon.net/nuclear
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Virtually every Nuclear power plant on earth was built with gigantic federal support.
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France for instance, is entirely a Federal Monopoly payed for with taxpayer fueled deficit spending.
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That said, it’s also because the market doesn’t want to shoulder the costs of decommissioning, waste, and non-proliferation.
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Especially when those costs keep going up and up and up as we start to look at the details.
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(It’s actually kinda funny to have the right wing clamoring for blatant socialism, instead of market driven innovations)
“Market-driven” innovations???
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If you want market-driven energy, then it would be 100% coal. Coal is the cheapest and most abundant thing the U.S. has. Next is natural gas.
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However, the enviro-nazis and the fed govt are standing in the way of our energy independence and are against coal energy. The fact is energy independence is the pressing need today, not carbon emissions or any crackpot theory of human induced global warming.
Slovakia and Bulgaria have said that they would restart nuclear reactors but have not done so yet. As I understand it, it can take months to fire up one of these reactors after the process is initiated. Some basic Google research would have been nice.
It’s not 100% accurate to say “No new nuke in 30 years.” We’ve put some pretty fancy nuke plants with much newer technology in aircraft carriers and continue to do it on a regular basis.
Sincerely,
Robert H. Galloway
re: Get Real
==Coal is the cheapest and most abundant thing the U.S. has==
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1. No, Not even close:
http://greyfalcon.net/solarenergy.png
http://greyfalcon.net/geoenergy.png
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2. “Coal Power Plants” on the other hand are rather pricey.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/1/9/10108/00582
“Poland, which isn’t in the EU”
Poland IS a EU member
The most hilarious part of al this is watching some anti-nuke dinosaurs campaign in favor of carbon-emitting natural gas rather than clean nuclear power. Who said that logic is a dirty word for the greenies? I note that for the first time in 40 years, a majority of germans approve of nuclear power and to reject silly legislation they passed years ago to become a “nuclear-free zone.” France leads the way and germany is looking stupid after losing tons of money on solar and wind powered junk.
Apparently the WSJ no longer feels any need to fact check its reports.
1) The four closed Kozloduy reactors in Bulgaria remain closed. And while the Bulgarians are keen to re-open unit 4, the EU has clearly said “no” and is unlikely to grant the request, nor is Bulgaria likely to move unilaterally.
2) In Slovakia, the second V1 block of the Jaslovske Bohunice nuclear power plant will not be put into operation, though the Slovaks threatened to, because emergency gas supplies have been promised from the west. See tinyurl.com/iht-slovak
3) Poland is part of the EU.
As for plans for reducing carbon emissions without new nuclear power plants, there are numerous ones from T. Boone Pickens, Google, Al Gore, the Rocky Mountain Institute and more.
I took the trouble to register here so I could comment on the mistakes in this article - glad to see others have beaten me to it! Poland NOT in the EU!??! We in Northern and Eastern Europe, especially those of us formerly dominated by the Soviet Russian Empire and still threatened by Russia expect much better of the WSJ.
I thank all who took the time time to register & bust their balls a bit on the facts. don’t start goin all sloppy on us over here, wsj!
All those pointing out the need for subsidizing nuclear
plants don’t seem to have a problem with ethanol (a bust) and wind (may soon be a bust) and solar (ditto).
Wind is a bust because it’s unreliable and expensive. Same is true for Solar (a cloudy day and everyone’s lights go out). Ethanol is a bust because we haven’t found a way to cheaply produce it without using too much water (which we need to grow the crops), crops (which isn’t doing us any good in the markets) or power (a bit oxymoronic eh?). The reason Nuclear didn’t work as well as we thought 30 years ago was because (a) we were still figuring things out and (b) we haven’t thought of a way to dispose of nuclear fuel.
New nuclear technologies could fix both (a) and (b) but a previous commenter was right about France’s nuclear grid mostly being a creation of the state. With the IAEA, I’m not sure if anyone would be comfortable with a private entity having their hands on nuclear material.
Thorium reactors are the future of nuclear power. They are much safer, leave only low-grade waste, and can even burn up nuclear waste from conventional nuclear plants. India has committed to Thorium reactors in a big way. Check it out:
Heartening to see how many people know that Poland is in fact in the EU. There’s a lot of sloppiness in the good ol’ MSM today…a report on the downed plane in the Hudson said that while air temperatures were in the low 20’s, water temperatures were surely much lower. Interesting phenomenon, that.
Eventually we will come to the realization that Nuclear Power is the only practical approach to energy independence, reduction of CO2 and environmental protection. Wind and Solar are costly (although we could simply decide to waste the money) and are incredibly resource and land-intensive (the space required is mind-boggling), and since they are not constant sources of power must be backed up by fossil-fuel-based plants (natural-gas fired is the most practical) with a capacity nearly as great as the wind/solar.
Nuclear power is safe, cheap and virtually without limit. The incredible energy density of uranium means initial environmental impact is very small (the mines and the plants are really tiny). The fears and misconceptions regarding nuclear power are based on factual errors (I know ALL of the arguments). This infrastructure investment will provide immediate jobs, the acquisition of advanced skills (that we will need) and will provide good jobs and cheap electricity for at least 60 years. The coming development of the electric car will mean that we will have a huge need for additional electric power, that we can free ourselves from dependence on foreign-supplied fossil fuels and that we can REALLY make a difference on the climate-change front.
Nuclear Power, plus electric cars can bring a bright future to the world. Nuclear power will be the worlds primary energy source at some point. There is too much evidence for climate change for the world to ignore it (hopefully we are rational in the aggregate). The alternatives are simply not practical (wind, solar) especially in countries without vast expanses that they could sacrifice to wind or solar farms. We must increase education efforts on nuclear power to dispel the widespread myths regarding the technology (e.g. Gwyneth Cravens — ‘Power to Save the World’).
We must encourage the development of safety regimes and the training of nuclear engineers. It appears that the UK will be one of the countries leading the way, along with India, China, and probably Italy (and hopefully the US). I believe that as the benefits become more obvious there will be a rapid acceleration in the development of nuclear power around the world, which will not only bring great economic benefits, but may avert an ecological catastrophe.
In the more distant future there are dozens of very interesting ideas for advanced nuclear designs (Thorium reactors, high-T gas reactors, etc.) but for the present we can not wait for these technologies to be sorted out and developed but should go ahead with the proven designs we have today.
gas does not belong to any country just because it is found in the country. If you can get it by fighting you should go get it.
In response to various comments:
With respect to the current, specific crisis, the issue was about restarting some old nuclear plants that the EU had forced these countries to close. As for building new nukes, there the issue is whether it’s wise to depend on Russian gas for power generation (along with many other things) over the long run. About 80% of the world’s remaining reserves of natural gas lie in Russia and the Middle East. In other words, it’s not about today’s crises, but all the ones that will happen down the road.
We have enough uranium to last over a century, even without reprocessing or breeders, and assuming a large increase in nuclear power use. That’s more than enough time to develop breeders, renewables, fusion, or some other combination of inexhaustible sources.
All plant decomissioning and waste (treatment and disposal) costs are already fully paid for and included in the price of nuclear
electricity. They amount to less than 0.5 cents/kW-hr. US nuclear plants have absolutely no impact on proliferation, and there are no costs associated with this.
The only thing nuclear has ever not been able to compete with, in “the free market” is fossil fuels, and that’s only because they are allowed to pollute the environment for free. This article shows the geopolitical costs of relying on (dwindling) natural gas supplies. With coal, there is the matter of air pollution (25,000 annual deaths in the US alone) and global warming. If these costs were accounted for, nuclear, as well as renewables, would have no trouble competing.
Renwables have never been able to compete in any “free market” either. In fact, they are much more subsidized than nuclear, on a per kW-hr basis. They also have outright mandates for their use, on top of all those subsidies.
As for the relative economics of various energy alternatives, the best way to sort it out is to just limit or tax air pollution, global warming, and oil/gas imports from unstable/unfriendly parts of the world, and then let the market figure out how to respond.
Despite all the (dubious) studies and references they present, which claim that renewables are highly competitive economically, you will find that anti-nuclear “environmentaliests” never seem interested in such a fair, open competition between clean sources. Instead, they insist on outright renewables mandates (and nuclear bans) as well as renewable subsidies that are much larger than those for other sources. If renewables were as economic as they say, utilities would not be persuing anything other than renewables right now, and no such policies would be necessary.
Myself (as well as other nuclear supporters) on the other hand, are eager to throw down the glove and have a free and fair competition on a level playing field. I will be happy to abide by the result. All nuclear power needs, or wants, is for hard limits to be placed on CO2. With that, we’d be happy to do without subsidies (e.g., loan guarantees, etc..). Something to think about when you hear about studies that show renewables to be cheap.
In a few more years, we will start building nuclear power plants!
And the reason is very simple, the available supply of power in the U.S.A. will equal the demand. When this happens, and there are rotating blackouts affecting most of the U.S.A. then building more power plants will become an absolute must. Now the renewable people will just in and say that their source of power is the best, and all that will be left to do, is prove it. Show how twenty cent (generated, not delivered) power is cheaper than 2.5 cent nuclear power. Meanwhile the whole nation will be going through rotating blackouts.
This does assume that Obama doesn’t do anything stupid and get Coal power plants to shut down, in which case we lose about 45% of our nation’s electricity in a single law.
It should be interesting in the next few years!
Environmental Capital provides daily news and analysis of the business of the environment. It tracks how growing green concern, particularly over climate change, is roiling established industries and spurring new ones – and how that shift is affecting investors, consumers and the planet. The Journal's Keith Johnson, who spent the past decade reporting from Europe, increasingly on energy issues, is the lead writer. The Journal’s Jeffrey Ball, who has covered the auto and oil industries and now covers the business of the environment, is the blog’s editor and a contributor. Environmental Capital also includes contributions from others at the Journal, WSJ.com, and Dow Jones Newswires. Write us at 
