China, the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases continues to bring more and more coal fired plants online. The New York Times reports that an astounding 155 planned projects received a permit this year alone, with the total capacity equal to nearly 40 percent of that of operational coal power plants in the United States. (1)

Providing equipment and know-how to build China’s nuclear energy industry is big business in the US. Under the renewed agreement, NEI estimates that, during the next 5 years, 45,000 US jobs and between $70 billion and $204 billion in business will be created in the US by working to build Chinese nuclear power stations, reports Arthur Robinson. (4)

Not discussed in the US media is that China will substitute its coal with nuclear, while the US government substitutes our coal with wind and solar. American industry will go up against Chinese nuclear-powered industry—with windmills and solar. Also not mentioned in our media is that much of the Chinese nuclear technology will be built in the United States and shipped to China—the US government preventing its use in the Untied States. (4)

Germany has tried to replace nuclear by wind and solar, and failed. They had to build additional coal fired power stations to keep the lights on in periods without wind or sunshine. And the rest of the time, these thermal plants are needed to regulate variable wind or solar energy, otherwise numerous blackouts would occur. As a result, Germany’s use of fossil fuels has increased. (5)

Thorium

Nuclear fission has done and is still doing a great service to mankind. However, uranium still has several disadvantages. The waste products remain radioactive for thousands of years. And the world’s reserves of uranium are only enough to cover less than a century of mankind’s energy consumption.

Thorium avoids both of these problems and a few others. China has started a new program to develop a molten salt reactor based on thorium.

China has announced that its researchers will produce a fully functional thorium reactor within the next 10 years. India, with one of the largest thorium reserves on the planet but not much uranium, is also charging ahead. Norway is currently in the midst of a four-year test using thorium fuel rods in existing nuclear reactors. Other nations with active thorium research programs include the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Japan and Israel. (6)

The great hope for thorium is that it could restore faith in the safety of nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster. In can be done on a much smaller scale, at atmospheric pressure without the need of the vast structures that encase uranium reactors. (7)

At the same time, the west risks being left behind, still relying on the old uranium reactor technology that was originally designed for US submarines in the 1950s. The nuclear dream in the United States stalled in the 70s and 80s. Promising research into thorium powered reactors that reaches as far back as the 60s was shelved because, at the height of the cold war, we needed uranium reactors, which produce plutonium for bombs. (8)

Comparing Nuclear With Wind and Solar

Nuclear power plants, which run at about 90% capacity, avoid almost four times as much CO2 per unit of capacity as do wind turbines, which run at about 25%; they avoid six times as much as solar arrays do. If you assume a carbon price of $40 a ton (way over most actual prices), nuclear energy avoids over $400,000 worth of carbon emissions per megawatt of capacity compared with only $69,500 for solar and $107,000 for wind. Seven solar plants and four wind farms would this be needed to produce the same amount of electricity over time as a similar sized coal fired plant. And all that extra solar and wind capacity is expensive. (9)

Jack Dini

Livermore, CA

References

1. Edward Wong, “A glut of coal fired plants raises doubt about China’s energy policies,” The New York Times, November 11, 2015

2. “Nuclear power in China,” World Nuclear Association, October 29, 2015

3. “China plans for nuclear growth,” world-nuclear-news.org, November 20, 2014

4. Arthur B. Robinson, “Nuclear hypocrisy,” Access To Energy, September 2015

5. Matt Duchamp, “Wind, better than nuclear?”, Canada Free Press, August 11, 2015

6. David Warmflash, “Thorium power is the safer future of nuclear energy,” discovermagazine,com, January 16, 2015

7. Ambrose Evans, “Chinese going for broke on thorium nuclear power, and good luck to them,” blogs.telegraph.co.uk, March 19, 2014

8. Derek Mead, “China is using US research to take the lead on thorium reactor development,” motherboard.vice.com, March 12, 2013

9. Charles R. Frank, Jr., “The net benefit of low and no-carbon electricity techniques,” Brookings Institution, Global Economy & Development Working Paper 73, May 2014