NPR’
s Marketplace broadcast Nuclear Power Redux on March 27, 2007, a predictable piece on nuclear power. Marketplace interviewed an industry spokesman, a business lobbyist who said “It’s ok, we only worry sometimes,” and a environmental activist who used to work for the nuclear industry but became disillusioned when she realized that nuclear power is “a crappy way to boil water.”
The industry spokesman repeated the same tired old fallacies about solar and wind power “that there is insufficient capacity to make a meaningful difference. Marketplace didn’t challenge him, but he’s wrong. Just about any house in New Jersey can be retrofitted with enough solar panels to meet its needs for electricity and hot water. Similarly, much of the power needs for single family homes in every state, except Washington and Oregon, could be met through solar power.
Solar panels don’t produce power or hot water at night. That’s where wind power comes in. VestasGeneral Electric and Airtricity built and installed on the Arklow Bank of Ireland, if installed in sufficient number off the coast of New Jersey, could also take care of much of the state’s power needs. If installed along the Gulf Coast, up the Atlantic Seaboard, along the Pacific, in the Great Plains, in West Texas, wind power could provide much of the nation’s electricity needs. harnesses the wind to produce 33% of Denmark’s electricity. Today. The kind of wind turbines that
Solar and wind provide power with no pollution: no greenhouse gases, no mercury, no radioactive wastes. There is no fuel so there are no fuel costs. No mines, no mills, no wells, no spills. Unlike nuclear, evacuation plans and extraordinary security measures are not necesssary. There are none of the external costs that are associated with nuclear, coal, or oil.
Land based wind costs about $1.5 million per megawatt of generating capacity, offshore wind costs about $3.5 million per mw, rooftop solar costs about $7 per watt, $7 million per mw. At $6 Billion for a 1,167 mw plant, Watts Barr cost about $5 million per mw. So when you look at the hard costs to build, forgetting the externalities and the massive government subsidies for nuclear power, the technologies cost the same.
When you factor in those externalities: the costs of safety, security, waste management, and fuel for nuclear, versus practically nothing for wind and solar; when you factor in the 23 years to build Watts Barr versus a few months to build the Arklow bank wind facility; you realize that wind and solar can be brought on line faster and cheaper and without the kinds of public relations challenges or government subsidies nuclear requires.
So what’s the best answer for tomorrow’s power needs today? The answers, to juxtapose Bob Dylan and Otis Redding, are Sittin’ in the morning sun and Blowin’ in the wind.
