Nuclear Power an Option in Switch From Fossil Fuels

by Milos Bezanov

As demand for energy is set to tripe by 20150, governments face challenges to reduce CO2 emissions. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Eastern Europe and China all set to increase spending on new nuclear plants, reveals the BBC.
“China’s banks are ready to finance [nuclear power plants]” says Cecilia Tam at the International Energy Agency. However, financial challenges are pressing, with the Hinkley Point plant in the UK costing up to $36 billion according to EU estimates. The U.S. Vogtle plant’s two reactors are also running above budget, according to U.S. News.
Despite being behind schedule, senior director of business policy at the Nuclear Energy Institute Matt Crozat believes a step forward has been made, “there was recognition that if you could find energy sources that weren’t reliant on oil and gas and the geopolitics that came with it, you would be in a much more favourable position going forward”

Along with the aforementioned countries, Poland and Turkey are new investors in nuclear energy.

Technology and Prices

In the U.S. the number of operational reactors has either “declined or remained constant since 1993”, not indicating a large spike, not to mention the recent Fukushima disaster providing negative press. However, technological advances have “improved capacity that has cancelled out plant closures, summer capacity remained between 97 and 102 million kilowat hours since 1998, according the Energy Information Administration.
Even with these technological advances nuclear is still costly, with doubts as to weather high upfront costs can be justified in the long term. In Britain, EDF only committed to invest after the U.K. government promised fixed prices which might be higher than market value. On the flip side, new technology has made other renewable technologies more cost effective, with solar panels going from $76.7 per watt in 1977 to 73 cents in 2012. Such “stiff competition” from other sources will make it difficult for nuclear to overcome its costing difficulties.