Tesla's Game Changer
/Historians will look back at 2015 as the turning point for producing electricity during the 21st century. The data is in: building new nuclear power plants is too expensive and takes too long. Global climate change can be prevented with a renewable electric grid that will become the new normal. The forecast is simple: dirty forms of energy like coal, nuclear, oil, and fracked gas are no longer cheaper and certainly not cleaner or safer then renewable alternative power like solar, wind, wave, and geothermal.
As Victor Hugo once said, “All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”
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Hi I’m Arnie Gundersen from Fairewinds Energy Education
Historians will look back at 2015 as the turning point for producing electricity during the 21st century. The data is in: building new nuclear power plants is too expensive and takes too long. Global climate change can be prevented with a renewable electric grid that will become the new normal.
In the United States and Europe, August is usually a slow news month with so many families either on vacation or preparing for a new school year. However, in Japan, August 2015 has been a time of great sadness and remembrance during the 70th commemoration to the victims of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Japan’s figurative leader, Emperor Akihito, broke new ground in his address to the memorial service held Aug. 15 to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II expressing “feelings of deep remorse over the last war, I earnestly hope that the ravages of war will never be repeated”.
Akihito’s statements are an important balance in Japan to elected Prime Minister Abe’s push to restart nuclear power and remilitarize Japan. Remilitarization is frightening for the world because Japan’s existing nuclear power plants have produced many tons of plutonium that could produce 100s of nuclear bombs, if the Japanese chose to build them. Even though more than 70% of Japan’s citizens objected to the restart of any of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors that were shut down after the Fukushima Daiichi triple meltdown, the Abe regime started up the Sendai reactor August 11, 2015. Sadly, the reactor is only 30 miles (50 kilometers) from a very active volcano, which has people in Japan even more distressed.
Does the start up of this old nuclear power plant mean that Japan and the world have reached a renaissance for nuclear power? Absolutely not!
News headlines should have read, “Only one nuclear reactor out of 54 is allowed to start up” or maybe, “28 out of Japan’s original 54 reactors will never operate again due to safety risks”, rather than the worldwide headlines touting that the Japanese government pushed a single reactor to restart.
Actually, for the nuclear industry, the future of nuclear power remains bleak, not just in Japan but worldwide. Why? Historians will see 2015 as a turning point in the world’s energy paradigm because viable renewable energy is now cheaper and more reliable than nuclear power will ever be.
Let’s make a brief comparison:
- In the United Kingdom, the new Hinckley Point nuclear power plant is projected to produce power at 16¢ per kilowatt-hour,
- while in the United States the North Anna 3 reactor in Virginia is expected to produce power at 19¢ per kilowatt-hour.
Nuclear costs continue to skyrocket upward at every plant throughout the world.
At the same time the cost of renewables continued to plummet in 2015. Solar now costs less than 4¢ per kilowatt-hour, while wind now costs less than 3¢ per kilowatt-hour.
But the real game changer is that the cost to store electricity has plummeted as new storage technologies are burgeoning worldwide. By thinking outside the box and starting from scratch, Elon Musk and his Tesla corporation created battery storage in which electricity costs will end up somewhere between only 2¢ and 5¢ per kilowatt hour.
For years the nuclear industry has claimed that only nuclear power could generate fossil-free energy when the wind was not blowing and the sun was not shining. Engineering ingenuity has created incredible advances, so that solar electricity plus storage cost less than 9¢ and wind electricity plus storage now is less than 8¢. Compare these consumer friendly costs to nuclear power that is now at least twice as expensive.
Nuclear power still has a horrendous legacy of toxic radioactive waste that humankind and its nuclear industry still cannot figure out how to store for 250,000 years. Yet, Musk and Tesla have clearly shown that humankind can store solar electricity overnight.
You may have heard me say before that building new nuclear power plants will make global climate change worse. First, designing and building each new nuclear plant will take between 15 and 20 years, just look at the Areva nuclear design failures in Finland and in France leading to at least a decade long delay. Vogtle in GA has been under construction for the past three years and is now three years behind schedule. And, such a waste of money on nuclear power will take that money away from the renewables that can come to market more economically and cleanly. Why would anyone want to spend 16¢ for electricity generated by a power plant that takes so long to build when electricity produced for less than half that price could be available in less than one year?
Lastly, whether one believes in climate change or not, higher ocean, lake, and river temperatures are shutting down nuclear power plants because cooling water is too hot to cool the reactor fuel.
In 2015 the forecast is simple: dirty forms of energy like coal, nuclear, oil, and fracked gas are no longer cheaper and certainly not cleaner or safer then renewable alternative power like solar, wind, wave, and geothermal.
As Victor Hugo once said, “All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”
I am Arnie Gundersen from Fairewinds. We’ll keep you informed.
