Renewable energy gives way to natural gas.

But US regulators want perfectly safe nuclear power.

This post continues on from the initial article,
Why does the US lag the world in nuclear power?
No commercial nuclear plants are under construction in the US.

The recurring co-incidences of low wind and dark skies have dashed German hopes for an electric grid based on ‘renewable’ energy. Germany’s energy still comes largely from burning imported natural gas, local lignite coal, and imported coal.

Economies need low-cost, reliable electric power to compete. Germany GDP and exports declined. Volkswagen closed three factories. Imported LNG (liquified natural gas) is expensive.

The graphic illustrates that peak power demand is 80 GW. German engineering talent could have built 80 GW of nuclear power plants at the ‘should-cost’ of $2/watt, or $160 billion, a quarter of their wasted expenditure. [We’ll address should-cost later on.]

China manufactures most of the world PV panel supply. The PV panels’ power must be converted from DC to AC and sent over long transmission lines to cities from the dispersed collection sites. These can supplement power on an existing grid and reduce generation from robust, fossil fuel burning power plants. The solar PV industry has yet to develop and deploy the high power grid electronics necessary to supply varying grid demand at precisely 60 Hz (or 50 Hz).

The drawback is that the intermittent power is generated about a third of the time, not at night nor in cloudy weather. Solar power plants now require duplicate, dependable power plants to provide the other two thirds of power demand.

US EIA reports electricity from photovoltaic panels historically costs 8 cents/kWh. A utility scale battery to store that one kWh costs $250 (plus as much for installation). So storing 24 hours of 1 kW power requires $6,000. But cloudy winter weather lasts can last a week, which would cost $42,000 for batteries to occasionally run so long.

Land area of 1 nuclear plant vs 1000s of wind turbines

Even this illustration spaces the wind turbines too close together. Power generated is proportional to the CUBE of the wind speed. An efficient wind turbine slows down the air by a factor of three, requiring spacing for the bloom of slower, wider downstream air. In a large array, each MW of turbine power requires nearly a square kilometer of area.

The modern wind turbines planned for sites off the US east coast are huge. Capacity factors of 40% are achieved. Costs have risen and suppliers have lost billions of dollars so are exiting the market to supply large offshore wind turbines.

The green energy transition, if possibly achieved, might cost the world $2 trillion a year. For a half century of ‘transition’ the world might burn more and more natural gas, because it’s needed to provide the reliable power that intermittent wind and solar sources can’t guarantee. CO2 emissions will be rising, not falling for years.

US electricity from burning natural gas is replacing electricity from burning coal, which emits double the CO2 of natural gas. This substitution is the principal reason US CO2 emissions have diminished. Wind and solar power together contributed less of the CO2 reduction.

Fracking shale rock has dramatically lowered costs of US petroleum and natural gas, which is now expensively liquified and exported to Europe, selling for nearly $1 per kWh(thermal) to generate electricity at about 50 cents/kWh.

This is a lot of annual, new generation capacity. For comparison, a single nuclear power plant generates roughly 1 GW of power.

Why natural gas? Natural gas simple turbine generators can be started up quickly enough to replace erratic wind and solar power sources in changeable weather. Combined cycle natural gas plants generate much less CO2 per kWh, but take hours to start up. Natural gas is inexpensive, especially in the US. Tech companies are installing private natural gas generation systems to power expanding data centers that serve the electricity demand of the growing AI market .

New York City shuttered its nuclear power plant and replaced it with three natural gas power plants, not ‘renewables’. Much of the US is transitioning to a power grid supplied chiefly by natural gas power plants, with solar and wind power sources intermittently coming online and reducing the fuel consumption of the normally operating natural gas generators.

Natural gas costs roughly triple when liquified to LNG and shipped to ports to be gasified and injected into pipelines. This also permits LNG to be an energy source to countries served by broken pipelines from sanctioned Russia.

Robert Bryce published this graphic. Over two decades the world spent nearly $5 trillion on intermittent wind and solar electric power sources. As world energy consumption grew by 31%, wind and solar added 8% as electricity while coal, oil, and gas grew 27% as heat from combustion. Wind and solar energy is not replacing fossil fuel combustion; it’s not even keeping up with its growth.

US regulators want perfectly safe nuclear power.

We all take death risks every day in everything we do. We all know perfect safety is impossible. Of course no regulator wants to be liable for saying “yes” to an activity that later on leads to harm. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is chartered to keep the public safe from radiation, but with insufficient guidance to balance potential harm against benefits of reliable, CO2-free, low-cost electricity.

Both NRC and EPA fail to acknowledge the observational science revealing that nuclear power radiation is benign, even in most accident conditions. They state there is no safe level of radiation, so it must be minimized. Regulators also try to set rules that prevent any radiation releases at all, for millions of years of nuclear power plant operation, even though history reveals more frequent releases, without measurable harm.

The S-curve represents the typical relationship of dose to observed response. The dose might be aspirin, or sunlight, or sugar. The response is the number of observed events for each subject at a dose. The response might be death, or reddened skin, or diabetes.

The S-curve exhibits a threshold, a dose below which no effect is observed. Suppose the dose is aspirin and the observed response is death. Perhaps at the threshold death occurs 1% of the time for subjects who ingest 10 aspirins at once. Perhaps death occurs 50% of the time for 100 aspirins. The S-curve is standard in pharmacology, noted 500 years ago as “The dose makes the poison”.

To the regulator, less is always safer.

The NRC and EPA engage in groupthink with NGOs such as the International Council on Radiation Protection (ICRP), who claim the S-curve is a straight line to zero response at zero dose, but harm is not observed because there is not enough data. Regulators claim any radiation at all is potentially deadly.

It’s politically expedient to ignore the nuances of dose-response S-curves and simply banish a potential hazard. The Center for Disease Control and the American Dental Association recommend that public water supplies include 0.7 milligram of fluoride per liter to strengthen teeth against decay. Studies, including this recent one, are reported as claiming 1.5 mg/L causes low IQ in children. A savvy politician sees an opportunity to be a hero by leading an effort to banish any dose at all. There is no need for cost-benefit analyses nor water supply monitoring. Banish fluoride to gain popularity!

Reality is a bit different. The published paper draws a conclusion from a survey of other papers. The guilty doses are not 1.5 mg/L but some unstated amount higher than that. The last sentence is particularly galling to me because it does not say “no problem” but only claims “uncertainty”, as if the effect were true at lower doses, but not yet observed. This sort of language is typical for academic papers to be used in future grant applications. This is exactly the sort of claim radiation regulators make of unobserved harm from absorbed radiation below 100 mSv or below 20 mSv/day.

Radiation from nuclear power plants is benign, but regulators do not state so. Politicians are free to warn otherwise. Vermont governor Peter Shumlin was elected partly on the basis of campaigning to shut down Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to save citizens from cancer-causing tritium radiation. The common enemy power plant was neither Republican nor Democrat and did not vote. Today Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Ed Markey similarly claim they must protect citizens from any trivial radiation from the now-shuttered Pilgrim nuclear power plant.

‘Forever chemicals’ have long lives because they don’t react much, so I’m not sure what is the harm mechanism. The EPA claims to do cost-benefit analyses of its regulations, but says “every life saved … is priceless”. EPA materials claim a 5-step process (in blue blocks) starting with “What are the best available, peer-reviewed science and supporting studies?”. I found no references to them, and they wouldn’t matter much since the cost-benefit balancer is “priceless”.

EPA sets the PFAS contamination goal to zero. Modern chemistry can detect PFAS as low as 4 parts per TRILLION (a milllionth of a millionth) so EPA set that as the maximum contaminant level.

There is not repeatably observed evidence for radiation harm to health below intensive radiation exposures up to 100 mSv, nor ongoing exposure of 20 mSv/day. Yes, lower exposures do localized damage to cells, similar to that of free radicals from metabolism, but normal biological processes efficiently replace cells and repair DNA.

Over the years, NRC has reduced regulatory limits for radiation exposure, now at 1 mSv/day, or less. In addition, NRC claims all radiation, even below 1 mSv, creates a risk of cancer or other harm to health. Thus NRC proclaims ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable), where the non quantitative “reasonable” attribute is whatever NRC says it is.

This is regulators’ safer-and-safer radiation limits progression. NRC has tightened limits on radiation exposure by five orders of magnitude (100,000x) without evidence of reducing harm. If radiation workers receive over half of the lowest 0.03 mSv/year limit the plant operator must take corrective action and file a report with NRC.

Lauriston Taylor, first president of the National Council on Radiation Protection, wrote in 1980 that, “No one has been identifiably injured by radiation while working within the first numerical standards set by the NCRP and then the ICRP in 1934.”

If a nuclear power plant disperse radioactive materials to the surroundings, regulators say people must be evacuated if radiation levels exceed 5 mSv/year. Eight states have average natural background radiation exceeding 5 mSv/year.

NRC raised nuclear power costs to unprofitability.

Congress passed this law in 2019. Five years later NRC staff has issued a draft of its Part 53 licensing regulation, supposed to be an alternative to the complex current rules for obtaining a license to build and operate a commercial nuclear power plant. It’s opposed by the industry and under review.

Congress tried again, passing the 2024 ADVANCE Act, requiring the NRC to balance safety with wider benefits of reliable, CO2-free, affordable nuclear power. The NRC general counsel refuses. Senator Capito, who headed the committee drafting the legislation, is upset with the intransigence.

Will NRC implement the will of Congress?

Does the US need an NRC? There’s no such commission for other energy sources. Insurance and the tort system keep people safe and costs in bounds.

To be continued. Please subscribe.