Wind Versus Plutonium: A Comparison

By Arjun Makhijani¹

Based on the 1999 IEER report by Marc Fioravanti, Wind Power Versus Plutonium

In theory, wind or plutonium could provide a long-term energy source for humanity. Plutonium has evident proliferation and environmental liabilities, which have been documented in many IEER publications.2 Long-term economics therefore would seem to be the only factor favoring plutonium. In order to examine this factor in detail, IEER prepared a study comparing plutonium and wind as energy sources, which included a case study on Japan. We chose Japan because it has a relatively low potential for land-based wind energy and a high-population density. If we leave aside the question of consequences of accidents, the land requirements of wind energy are considerably larger than for a plutonium economy. Hence, if the economic comparison turned out favorably for wind, the conclusion could be generalized to many other countries and areas relatively easily. IEER used offshore wind power technology in its comparisons because placing turbines offshore addresses many of the environmental issues that have been raised with wind power. Specifically, this option can be used in countries and areas with severe land constraints, such as Japan. Offshore wind power plants have been successfully operated in Denmark, Germany, and Sweden, starting in 1991. Over the past half a century, huge amounts of resources have been spent worldwide in developing plutonium as an energy source while the efforts to develop wind power have been far more meager. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent on breeder reactors alone. These reactors convert non-fissile uranium-238, which is relatively plentiful in nature but not a useful reactor fuel, to fissile plutonium-239, at a rate that yields a net increase supply of fissile material due to reactor operation. Additional tens of billions of dollars have been spent on reprocessing, a technology used to separate and recover plutonium from irradiated reactor fuel. Yet, plutonium is nowhere near commercialization. Even its most ardent supporters, Electricité de France, the world's largest customer for reprocessing services, and British Nuclear Fuels Limited, the British reprocessing company, attribute a zero value to their plutonium stocks. There is no commercially viable plutonium breeder reactor program in any country. The two largest operating breeder reactors in the world are in the former Soviet Union and they use uranium, not plutonium as a fuel. Breeder reactor programs have been stopped in many countries, including the United States, due to technical problems, cost, and proliferation concerns. One dramatic example of the failure of breeder reactor was the December 1995 accident at the Monju breeder reactor in Japan, which was shut down due to a large liquid sodium leak and fire. The reactor first achieved criticality in April 1994. Another major example relates to the Superphénix, once the world's largest fast breeder reactor. On June 19, 1997, the operator of Superphénix announced that the facility, located in France, would be permanently shut down. Superphénix operated only 278 days of full-power equivalent between 1986 and 1997. Total costs of the Superphénix project were estimated at 60 billion francs (1994 francs), or about $9.1 billion, in 1996 (before the shutdown was announced).3 The decommissioning and post-operation costs of Superphénix alone, estimated at 9.5 billion francs (about $1.4 billion), would be enough to pay the capital costs for about 825 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind power capacity. Further, given the history of the two energy sources, if the money devoted to the construction of Superphénix had been devoted to wind, the total generation of electricity would have exceeded that reactor's output by a factor of ten or more by this time. Development of offshore wind energy resources offers the prospect of avoiding the most severe impact of land-based wind power: the use of large stretches of land for placement of wind turbines. Although offshore construction involves additional costs, these are at least partly offset by more constant winds and higher wind speeds, as well as elimination of land acquisition costs. Less turbulent winds result in less turbine wear and therefore longer turbine life. Visual impacts can be reduced or eliminated by offshore wind turbine siting. However, offshore wind turbine siting is not free of possible adverse impacts. These include potential impacts on shipping lanes and on marine ecosystems. Assessment of such impacts needs to be made an integral part of demonstration projects. The cost of electricity from offshore wind farms has decreased over time, from about 8.8¢ to 9.9¢ per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for the first projects, to about 5.5¢ per kWh for the 1997 Bockstigen project in Sweden. The offshore wind turbines have performed well and their costs have declined substantially during the 1990s. They have also proved reliable. By comparison, the costs of breeder reactors have not declined with time or experience, even though the very first electricity ever to be generated from a nuclear reactor was from a breeder reactor (the Experimental Breeder Reactor I at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory in 1951). The table below shows a comparison of wind electricity costs with plutonium fuel use in light water reactors and in breeder reactors. The detailed assumptions underlying these calculations can be found in IEER's report. Wind Versus Plutonium: Electricity Costs Cost Component Offshore Wind Mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel - light water reactors Breeder reactors Capital cost 4.2 ¢ / kWh 3.8 ¢ / kWh 7.6 ¢ / kWh Fuel cost (exclusive of reprocessing) Not applicable 0.9 ¢ / kWh 0.9 ¢ / kWh Reprocessing cost Not applicable 0.7 ¢ / kWh 1.0 ¢ / kWh Operating and maintenance costs 1.2 ¢ / kWh 1.5 ¢ / kWh 1.5 ¢ / kWh Nuclear waste disposal costs for MOX spent fuel Not applicable 0.2 ¢ / kWh 0.2 ¢ / kWh Decommissioning costs 0.14 ¢ / kWh 0.1 ¢ / kWh 0.1 ¢ / kWh Total 5.54 ¢ / kWh 7.2 ¢ / kWh 11.3 ¢ / kWh One disadvantage of wind energy is that it is intermittent. While lower capacity utilization - that is, a smaller number of hours of operation at full power equivalent - is factored into the costs calculated above, wind energy cannot be used as the only or main source of energy without storage devices or a complementary supply from other sources (such as solar energy and biomass fuels). Further, wind energy cannot be used in road transportation without additional investment, but same is true of plutonium (see below). Assuming for the sake of argument that self-sufficiency in energy is a sound goal for a country's energy policy, the most crucial aspect of the goal is having enough fuel for transportation. This is because oil is the most vulnerable to price fluctuations and supply instability, while at the same time being very difficult to replace in the short and medium term. However, replacing oil with either wind or plutonium requires major changes in the transportation system so that neither energy source holds an a priori advantage with respect to the goal of automotive sector energy self-sufficiency. There are two ways to use electricity -- whether from wind, plutonium or any other energy source -- in automotive transportation. It must either be used to power electric vehicles or converted to hydrogen for use in vehicles powered by fuel cells (see Science for the Critical Masses). As a result, the use of either plutonium or wind energy in vehicular transportation would also require massive changes either by conversion to electric cars or by the use of fuel cells. Such changes are likely to be desirable in any case for reasons of efficiency, reduction of urban air pollution, and/or reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, it appears that fuel cells, which use hydrogen as a fuel, would likely be the most efficient and least polluting way to achieve the transformation of automotive transportation (see table on vehicle emissions). Hence we compared the cost of using wind with that of using plutonium as the energy source for a fuel cell based road transport sector. The cost of wind-derived hydrogen, based on 5¢ per kWh electricity, would be about $33 per gigajoule (GJ) for a fuel cell powered vehicle, equivalent to $1.66 per gallon for a gasoline-powered vehicle. The comparable cost of hydrogen from breeder reactors would be almost twice that ($60 per GJ), possibly more. Our evaluation of the long-term issues associated with both wind energy and breeder reactor technology indicates that, even considering additional costs for energy storage to compensate for the intermittent nature of the wind, wind energy is more attractive than breeder reactors. Recommendations Plutonium should have been written off as an energy source long ago in favor of renewable sources. The Paley Commission appointed by President Truman concluded that renewables were far more promising than nuclear power in 1952, before the era of commercial nuclear power had even begun. Plutonium fuel and breeder reactors have been the largest aspect of the failure of the nuclear power dream from every point of view. Now that wind energy, and especially offshore wind energy, is economical and available, there is no conceivable argument for continued public investment in plutonium energy technology. It should be stopped forthwith. For energy technologies that are close to commercialization and are desirable on environmental and/or energy security grounds, public monies should be invested in a manner that encourages both performance and investment of private funds in research and development to lower costs. The installation of substantial amounts of wind power in the short-and medium-term as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve other environmental and non-proliferation goals is highly desirable. The question is how taxpayer and ratepayer resources should be invested so that the cost of achieving these desirable objectives is minimized. A review of the past record of government policies to encourage wind power indicates that purchase each year by public authorities and/or utilities of pre-specified amounts of capacity by open bid would achieve the desired goals of stimulating a transition to an energy future that is environmentally sound and does not pose proliferation risks. The government would specify the areas, including offshore regions, in advance and private parties would bid to supply electricity over a 15 to 20 year period at specified prices. This would encourage private research and development and performance-based competitive bidding that would efficiently use public resources and systematically lower costs. For the United States, we propose the government purchase 1,000 megawatts per year of wind capacity at least until the year 2010 at which point a major evaluation should be completed. Sites could be selected based on a number of criteria such as nature of the wind resource, regional energy needs, sites with minimal land impacts, and ecosystem impacts. The bids should require guaranteed performance over a specified period of time. This would be somewhat analogous to the way in which leases for petroleum exploration are put up for bid in the United States, with the difference that in the case of wind the approximate size of the resource is already known. Hence contracts would be for actual delivery of wind-generated electricity (rather than exploration, which is the objective in petroleum leases). The US Department of Energy has announced a goal of having 10,000 megawatts of wind energy on line in the United States by the year 2010. This would be achieved mainly through tax breaks and a federal program to purchase wind energy sufficient to supply 5 percent of the federal government electricity use by the year 2010. While the goal of large increases in wind capacity by 2010 is sound, the method chosen may not result in as much cost reduction as the one suggested by IEER (see IEER's wind report for a discussion). Also available on this website: Wind Energy Update: Japan