And in assessing a US future where electric cars are a focus, the demand for electricity will increase. Green energy - renewable or perpetual sources such as wind, hydro, and solar are options where scaling up will be a factor and where each has drawbacks and uncertainties. Drought, inconsistent winds, and cloudy rainy days can happen and can last. Gusting and storm damage can affect any power plant, but wind turbines are sensitive to exceptional wind levels exceeding operating ranges.
The nuclear option has problematic dimensions of its own - fuel cycle management, fuel reprocessing, and waste management dimensions on technical and time scales that other options do not pose.
The triggering for this post is NY Times reporting of the latest French expansion of its commitment to nuclear power as the core of its energy generation and consumption (for non-transportation needs - although electric trains are in wider use in Europe than we envision). The French have relied on nuclear power and for them it has been reliable and largely accident free, so far. They do not simply store old fuel rods as we do, they reprocess them. The reprocessing step holds both threat and promise. Years ago a US "breeder" reactor program was a congressional football, with differing states wanting the local economy boost and the Savannah River proposal from South Carolina having clout as a favored project. It never left planning stages, because of highly publicized accidents at operational power plants here and in Russia at the time, which caused a reevaluation of enthusiasms.
The basics of the nuclear power option are straightforward even with technological details being quite complex - uranium has two main isotopes, the lighter one being present in a fraction of a percent in natural mined uranium and having three less neutrons in the nucleus while being fissile. The heavier isotope captures neutrons without immediate fission. Fission produces highly radioactive pairs of isotopes along with the release of energy. Some energy is high energy radiation, and shielding is needed along with containment to prevent human and environmental harm. The energy that is utilized is thermal, heat from the fission, via steam turbines as in conventional coal fired plants. Natural uranium cannot be used in reactors, the centrifuges and enrichment reported regarding Iran is a needed step to convert it to reactor fuel with the lighter isotope concentrated and where further concentration effort will produce weapon grade material. In the fuel rods the enriched uranium fissile fraction is consumed while the neutron concentration in the reactor has a secondary effect, neutron capture by the heavier uranium isotope yielding in short times plutonium, another fissile material, produced in a reactor.
Depending on the reactor engineering, the range of neutron energies and concentrations can be such that more usable plutonium fuel is produced than uranium fuel is consumed, so that a practically unlimited fuel supply for power generation is feasible without any further mining of uranium, merely from the stocks available. There are two problems with this "breeder" scenario, first, plutonium is more easily separated (chemically, not by physical isotope concentration) into a purified bomb-grade material via fuel reprocessing, with weapon proliferation being the worry, while the second problem is that reactor operating parameters for producing more fuel than consumed are more risky than for regular power reactors, with a substantially greater threat of catastrophic accident.
For weapons purposes since WW II until late in the twentieth century, a plutonium production effort was run by the government at Hanford, Washington, but presently there is an excess of weapons-grade plutonium "around" with our nation exchanging economic aid for the material during the break-up of the Soviet Union, and with both Russia and the US scaling back the number of deployed weapons with the surplused plutonium then stockpiled and guarded more closely than the gold in Fort Knox.
I have seen reporting of fuel rod construction involving plutonium oxide pellets aggregated into fuel rods, and presumably when fuel is reprocessed by the French they produce plutonium based fuel rods of a geometry and make-up that can be used in the same reactors that they initially operated with enriched uranium fuel only. According to nuclear treaties, Russia, China, Japan, the US, France, and England control the fuel and plant construction markets, while restricting proliferation that way. Other nations must either buy, or enter the market, as North Korea and Iran are poised to do. India and Pakistan hold weapons, but the extent of their nuclear power engineering plans and capabilities is something I have not researched. Nuclear energy presently is globalized as a highly-regulated cartel among government and private sector entities within existing highly-industrialized nations. There are safety and anti-proliferation reasons to support this as an ongoing arrangement, as well as economic prosperity and corporate balance sheet and income statement motives in support of such a status quo.
Because of widely reported accidents in Russia and the US, and because of uncertainty in nuclear waste handling and storage - where long-term radioactivity is the problem - the nuclear power industry in the US had fallen into disfavor and became non-expansive, domestically. Add to that a higher capital cost per amount of energy produced and longer construction ramp-up times for new nuclear plants, and we have opted to largely cap things in the US and add peak demand power options at a lower capital cost but higher operating cost, such as gas micro-turbine siting for the already highly-developed mature US power grid. With carbon combustion limits now being a treaty matter, and curbing global warming being a championed cause, (with skeptics), it appears that our nation, besides looking at green or renewable energy, might also turn again towards nuclear power generation in expanding its base grid capacity.
A google of the words "nuclear" "fuel" "reprocessing" can provide an entry into reports and policy papers on that part of the industry, whereas the engineering literature is more specialized and much of it was done paper-only, before the Internet came of age. Plus much of the engineering detail is proprietary, and generally less accessible. There is the patent literature, but the industry has trade secret expertise held for advantage within the various corporate players, so the policy and summary reporting is more accessible.
The reader can pursue that avenue as far as wanted. Reprocessing is being done now, by the French and others, so feasibility is not the question. Rather risk and policy issues predominate, as with the waste disposal question, as the major uncertainties. Moreover the cost and scale of an efficient and safe reprocessing operation are such that present capacity worldwide might suffice and new entrants into that market are deterred by regulatory and economic barriers.
With all of that as background, the Times reports, here, about France and it latest efforts:
FLAMANVILLE, France — Here on the Normandy coast, France is building its newest nuclear reactor, the first in 10 years, costing $5.1 billion. But already, President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced that France will build another like it.
Flamanville is a vivid example of the French choice for nuclear power, made in the late 1950s by Charles de Gaulle, intensified during the oil shocks of the 1970s and maintained despite the nightmarish nuclear accidents of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
Nuclear power provides 77 percent of France’s electricity, according to the government, and relatively few public doubts are expressed in a country with little coal, oil or natural gas.
With the wildly fluctuating cost of oil, anxiety over global warming from burning fossil fuels and new concerns about the impact of biofuels on the price of food for the poor, nuclear energy is getting a second look in countries like the United States and Britain. Even Germany, committed to phasing out nuclear power by 2021, is debating whether to change its mind.
France is way ahead. Électricité de France, or EDF, is in talks to buy British Energy, for about $24 billion, to renovate Britain’s nuclear plants and build new ones. The French have already contracted to build a third-generation European Pressurized Reactor of the Flamanville type — the world’s safest and most powerful — in Abu Dhabi and China.
There is pride in French exceptionalism and in the technical skill that has produced an industry with no major accidents. In a recent op-ed article in Le Figaro, for example, Yves Thréard boasted: “France hasn’t any oil, but she knew how to exploit a rich idea. In the whirlwind of globalization, civil nuclear power became a weapon, commercial and political, that allowed the country to remain at the avant-garde in the concert of nations.”
A senior aide to Jean-Louis Borloo, the minister of ecology, sustainable development and planning, said that France “sees a wide trend developing” toward more use of nuclear energy.
“A lot of countries realize that with the rising price of fossil fuels and energy, and the climate emergency, nuclear can be part of the solution,” said the aide, who spoke anonymously under the rules of his ministry.
He said that France’s choice for a “closed fuel cycle” — reprocessing used nuclear fuel to recover plutonium made in the reactors so it can be reused — was safer. “This way, nuclear energy can bring a lot — it’s CO2-free energy.”
Mr. Sarkozy said that each European Pressurized Reactor that “replaces a gas-powered electricity plant saves two billion cubic meters of gas each year, and each E.P.R. replacing a coal plant means cutting 11 million tons of CO2.”
France generates half of its own total energy, up from 23 percent in 1973, despite increased consumption.
Electrical power generation accounts for only 10 percent of France’s greenhouse gases, compared with an average of 40 percent in other industrialized countries, according to EDF.
France has 58 operating nuclear reactors, the highest number of any nation besides the United States. In America, where nuclear construction has been moribund, there is also new interest. At the moment, 19.4 percent of the electricity generated in the United States is from 104 nuclear plants, according to the Department of Energy.
The Nuclear Regulatory Agency has in hand or expects applications to build 34 reactors, of which seven are European pressurized water reactors of the Flamanville type — and, unlike current American reactors, allow output to vary to meet fluctuating demand.
The Flamanville reactor is based on a French-German design, which itself is based on an earlier Westinghouse design. EDF has an American partner, Constellation Energy, to sell the new model as a joint venture called UniStar Nuclear, which has already ordered some of the larger parts for one reactor. Ironically, its main competitor is Westinghouse, now owned by Toshiba.
[... Recent minor accidents have happened.] The government, Areva and EDF have played down the accidents. Mr. Borloo said there were 86 category-one nuclear incidents in France in 2007 and 114 in 2006. Mr. Borloo’s aide, pointing to the Authority for Nuclear Security, said the Tricastin “microevent” showed that “our system of security is extremely responsive and transparent, and that the media and public opinion needed a training period to understand how the system of nuclear security works in France.”
Still, there is continuing nervousness. Sales of bottled water increased, and even a nearby appellation of local wine, Côteaux du Tricastin, is exploring whether to change its name, according to Henri Bour, who runs the local wine council.
A prominent French anti-nuclear lobby, Sortir du Nucléaire, is pressing to phase out nuclear power, which it considers too dangerous and too expensive because of the need to manage nuclear waste. The group wants a “sustainable transition” to renewable energy options like solar, hydro and wind power. Last year, on the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl meltdown, 30 protesters at Flamanville blocked entrances and chained themselves to cranes.
There have also been some construction issues. In April, the Authority for Nuclear Safety criticized some of the welds and the quality of the concrete work at Flamanville, but work resumed in June. Philippe Leynié, the site manager here for EDF, said the problem involved missing pins on the metal rebar and was not serious.
Nonetheless, an IFOP opinion poll conducted for Le Monde after the Tricastin leaks showed that 67 percent of the French considered it vital to keep nuclear power in the country’s energy mix, compared with 52 percent in 2002. Only 27 percent judged the risks of nuclear energy to be the most worrying, compared with 50 percent who thought global warming was the predominant risk. In 2002, 33 percent worried most about nuclear risks and only 20 percent about global warming.
For Flamanville, though, a village of 1,780 people, nuclear power has re-energized the town. There are no pretty beaches here, just granite cliffs above a cold sea. For hundreds of years, the village lived off the granite, cutting and selling it, shipping it first by boat, then by railroad. Flamanville granite, said Mayor Patrick Fauchon, was used to pave the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
But by the middle of the 19th century it became too expensive compared with other sources, and the village survived by digging iron from an undersea mine, said Mr. Fauchon, who has been mayor since 1983. “It was always a company town,” he said.
But the mine closed in 1962, and the population of the village dropped to 1,150 people. When the idea of a nuclear plant arose, in 1975, there was considerable debate. But residents voted for the nuclear plant, which meant new jobs.
The excerpt is lengthy, but the article has more detail. It sounds as if the siting was equivalent to putting something like that in Minnesota's Iron Range, where paranoia over tomorrow's job base generally outweighs worry over risks and consequences.
"Atoms for Peace," is what the nuclear power industry in its infancy was called, when first envisioned during the Eisenhower years, and promoted by the government then to counter the prior history of the industry as entirely for war-ending and cold war military purposes.
Finally, if you care to see what part of a multi-billion dollar power plant construction site looks like, in the process of being built, the Times provides this photo (click it to enlarge):
_________UPDATE__________
Of the Google returns on nuclear fuel reprocessing, two promising links are here and here; with an interesting PBS Frontline item, here; and Heritage Foundation weighing in with opinion, here.