I argued in Chapter 4 that renewable energy from wind and solar is not sufficient to make a big dent in our dependence on coal for baseload power. So, is nuclear power able to replace coal? Let’s look at some numbers (again!). Coal currently produces about 41% of electricity in the United States. According to the EIA, the approximately 600 coal-fired power plants produced 18 quads in 2011, while the 104 nuclear power plants produced 8 quads from an installed capacity of about 100 GWe (see Chapter 2). Simple math shows that it would take about 230 new nuclear

reactors to replace coal if the reactors were the same average power as current ones. Since Generation III reactors are generally larger by 30-60%, the number could go down substantially to around 150-175. In addition, most of the current reactors would be at the end of their lifetimes in the next 20 years and would have to be rebuilt. Most of these reactors would probably be built at sites where reactors currently exist, minimizing the cost and construction time. There is nothing in principle that says this is impossible, but it would take a crash effort to do so.

The most critical time for new power plants is the next 20-40 years because many coal plants will be retiring by then, anyway. The question is: What will replace them? Could 175 or so nuclear reactors be built in the United States in that time frame? One way to look at it is to recognize that the current 104 reactors were built in about 30 years in the late twentieth century. This certainly is not a good model, though, because the construction was fraught with delays and ineffi­ciencies. The newer generation of more standardized reactor designs and modular components should cut the build time in half, as has already been done in Japan, for example, with the ABWR reactor. So, yes, it is possible, though it would take a huge national effort.

The 2003 MIT study mentioned above evaluated a nuclear growth scenario that would have 1,000 to 1,500 reactors worldwide by mid-century. For the United States, they projected a capacity of 300 GWe, or 200 new reactors, similar to my estimates above. If 1,000 of these reactors worldwide replaced gas-fired plants, they would reduce the production of CO2 by 800 million tons annually; if they replaced coal-fired plants, the reduction would be 1,600 million tons (1.6 Gt) (10). Actually, coal-fired plants in the United States currently produce about 2 Gt CO2, so if all coal plants were eliminated, the total reduction would be 2 Gt in the United States (see Chapter 2). Interestingly, the 300 GWe is about the same capac­ity that the DOE proposed to get 20% of electricity from wind, as discussed in Chapter 4. The big difference, of course, is that that amount of wind power would not reduce the consumption of coal by very much, while that capacity of nuclear power would virtually eliminate coal usage.

Another perspective is to look at what China is planning for nuclear power. China currently has 14 nuclear reactors, with 28 under construction and 53 others planned. Because China is even more dependent on coal than the United States (about 80% of its electricity comes from coal) and has surpassed the United States in generating CO2, it is planning major construction of nuclear power plants. It expects to have about 60 GWe from nuclear by 2020, 200 GWe by 2030, and 400 GWe by 2050. Most of the reactors planned would be Westinghouse AP1000s (31). So, if China can do it, can the United States? It is entirely possible, but it depends on the national will to do so.

A major problem is that the only places in the world with the capability to make the steel reactor pressure vessels are in Japan, China, and Russia (32). Clearly, the United States would need the capability to build reactor vessels here if it were to make an ambitious effort to build new reactors. To do that would require a large number of orders of nuclear reactors, and that will only happen if there is a carbon tax on coal so that it makes economic sense to build reactors.

It is highly unlikely that all coal plants will be retired and replaced by nuclear reactors. More likely, there will be a split between natural gas plants and nuclear plants, and of course renewable energy will make contributions to the energy mix. Various scenarios were discussed in Chapter 2, but they all involved a rather small increase in nuclear power. I believe that nuclear power should be increased by a much larger factor and that it could be done.

You might say that the cheapest energy is that which you don’t use—conserva­tion is the biggest bang for the buck. I certainly don’t disagree with that, but it is naive to think that conservation can solve the problem and that new power plants will not be needed. The previous discussion on replacing coal plants was just talking about replacing the current coal plants with no growth in total electri­cal energy. Even if we become more efficient, though, total electrical demand is expected to grow because of population growth and more electrical gadgets and electric cars (see Chapter 2). To the extent that conservation and efficiency can reduce the need for electrical power, though, the problems of reducing carbon dioxide become easier. Let’s be frank—there are no easy solutions. We will need to do everything—conservation, more nuclear plants, more wind and solar farms, and probably more natural gas plants—to reduce dependence on coal.