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Nuclear energy is in our future GUEST COLUMN By ROLF E. WESTGARD
The continued presence of Congressman Jim Oberstar as chairman of the U.S. House Transportation Committee suggests the Central Corridor and North Star light rail projects will move ahead. The St Paul City Council has approved seven University Avenue stops on the Central Corridor line, resolving a dispute over station locations.
More than 100 U.S. cities now have similar urban rail programs. From Albuquerque to Winston-Salem and from Boise to Tucson, the U.S. is attempting to catch up with Europe and Asia in using energy efficient urban electric rail. These programs, coupled with the coming move to plug-in electric hybrid cars, will add substantially to the demand for base load electric power.
Fueled by coal and uranium, base load power plants run round the clock, supplying about 70 percent of our electricity. Most of the rest comes from natural gas fueled "peaking plants." They are turned on when demand rises in the evening hours, or on those sultry summer days when all air conditioners run, and there isn't a "breath of air."
Environmental concerns are restricting construction of new coal plants. Burning coal produces particulate matter like sulfur (acid rain), mercury, lead, and arsenic. This can be controlled with expensive modifications to the plant.
But burning coal also produces green house gases like carbon dioxide (CO2). A large 1000 megawatt (MW) coal plant burns a 100-car train load of coal (10,000 tons) every 24 hours. During combustion, each carbon atom in the coal unites with a pair of oxygen atoms to form the heavier CO2 molecule. This is why that coal plant puts 20,000 tons of CO2 into the air daily.
There are future plans to capture the CO2 (Carbon Capture and Storage) and store it in underground formations like saline aquifers. Saline aquifer is a fancy name for waterlogged porous rock. Studies show that CCS can add about 50 percent to the cost of a coal based power plant. And to bury a significant portion of the 7 billion tons of CO2 that we in the U.S. emit yearly, could require about 100,000 new injection wells. They would cost at least a trillion dollars, plus more dollars for extensive pipelines. New wells are constantly needed in CCS, as the buildup of CO2 causes the aquifers to resist more injections. There are two or three small CCS projects in the world, but no large scale program. CCS may never work.
The problem of replacing coal for base load power generation is illustrated at Canada's huge 4000MW coal plant in Nanticoke, Ontario on Lake Erie. Scheduled to close in 2007 for environmental reasons, the closing is now set for 2014 for lack of substitute energy. Bruce Power Company is proposing 3300MW of new nuclear facilities at Nanticoke.
Wind power is being proposed by environmentalists. Denmark's electric grid is widely reported to get 20-30 percent of its fuel from wind energy. It doesn't. Denmark's 5300 turbines do produce about 20 percent of Denmark's total electric demand. Then Denmark has to look around for somebody to buy the power, as the grid can't use most of the wind power at the time it is generated. The buyers are Norway, Sweden, and Germany who pay less than Denmark's cost. Countries like Germany, Denmark, and Spain have seen massive subsidized investments in wind power. but they are finding that achieving more than 5-10 percent wind in a large electric grid is very difficult, as wind tends to blow when least needed. Unlike other fuels, wind turns itself on and off, whether the grid needs it or not.
Large wind farms also need natural gas plant backup of 50 to 80 percent of the installed wind to cover the times when wind is too light or too strong for the turbines to function. As a result, the U.S. Energy Information Administration is forecasting that erratic wind will only provide about 2-3 percent of our electric grid power by 2020.
Our trend to urban electric rail and electric autos is well underway. Nuclear power plants, which have a 90-plus percent availability factor, may be the only practical way to provide the increased capacity to power it.
ROLF E. WESTGARD is a professional member of the Geological Society of America and an associate chair with the Crow Wing County DFL.
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