Speaker 1: From Bloomberg News in iHeartRadio, It's the Big Tig. I'm
Speaker 1: West Kasova. Today, nuclear power is back in the conversation
Speaker 1: as Germany's leaders say the country may need to extend
Speaker 1: the life of nuclear plants if it cannot replace all
Speaker 1: its gas imports from Russia. The French President Emanuel Macron
Speaker 1: has announced today new measures on increasing nuclear output. He
Speaker 1: wants at least six new reactors built in the coming decade,
Speaker 1: and I Governor Newsom just did his part to keep
Speaker 1: California's last nuclear power plant up and running. Or to
Speaker 1: Japan now, where the Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged
Speaker 1: to restart more nuclear power plants to provide energy as
Speaker 1: Japan struggles with its hottest summer on record. But eleven
Speaker 1: years on from the Fukushima disaster, high oil and gas
Speaker 1: prices have governments looking for cheaper, more plentiful alternatives of power.
Speaker 1: One possibility that's been around for decades about not so
Speaker 1: loved nuclear Fears about radioactive meltdowns still linger in a
Speaker 1: lot of people's minds, many years after disasters in Chernobyl
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty six and at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven. Now several countries, including the US, are
Speaker 1: taken another look. They're considering extending the life of aging
Speaker 1: plants and possibly building new ones. Bloomberg reporter Shokooda covers
Speaker 1: the energy industry, and she joins me now from Tokyo
Speaker 1: to explain the government's thinking and how people in Japan
Speaker 1: feel about turning the reactors back on. Shoko, has been
Speaker 1: many years since the Fukushima disaster, and I think the
Speaker 1: world's memory has faded somewhat. Can you remind us just
Speaker 1: how deva is stating this disaster was and really still
Speaker 1: is for many people in Japan. Sure? Really, the Fukushima
Speaker 1: nuclear disaster was an inflection point for Japan's energy strategy.
Speaker 1: Everything really changed after this disaster, which was the worsest
Speaker 1: Chernobyl in nineteen eighties. Oh March eleven, twenty eleven, a
Speaker 1: magnitude nine earthquake struck the northeastern coast of Japan, and
Speaker 1: what happened was massive tsunamis overwhelmed the Fukushima Daichi Nuclear
Speaker 1: Power plant, which led to power for cooling systems at
Speaker 1: the site to be shut off and then nuclear meltdown
Speaker 1: at the reactors so immediately after this accident, Japan took
Speaker 1: all of its reactors offline. At that point, we had
Speaker 1: fifty four nuclear reactors in the country. There was really
Speaker 1: big public backlash against the use of nuclear for the
Speaker 1: longest time, you know, nuclear was a very sensitive topic
Speaker 1: among the public. And now Japan currently for electricity relies
Speaker 1: heavily on a mix of natural gas and coal and
Speaker 1: also sub renewable like solar. And in the aftermath of
Speaker 1: that disaster, many people were displaced and had to stay
Speaker 1: away for a lot of years. Thousands of people still
Speaker 1: have not really put their lives back together to the
Speaker 1: way they were before. Yeah, so twelve years after the disaster,
Speaker 1: the effects are still here. We visited a town in
Speaker 1: Fukushima Prefecture up in the northeastern coast. But you know,
Speaker 1: even though some of the restrictions have been lifted and
Speaker 1: people are allowed to go back, many have decided to
Speaker 1: not return because they've already rebuilt their lives elsewhere. It's
Speaker 1: taken twelve years to get where we are today in Japan,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it's hard to kind of
Speaker 1: gauge how long we've come, especially when you come visit
Speaker 1: these towns and see that people are still having mixed
Speaker 1: thoughts about returning and now here we have a global
Speaker 1: energy crisis which is hitting Japan like it's hitting so
Speaker 1: many other places. Really something that you couldn't imagine happening
Speaker 1: just a few years ago, it is happening, which is
Speaker 1: people are starting to to think maybe it's time to
Speaker 1: turn nuclear back on. Yeah, I think like everywhere else,
Speaker 1: our bills and gas bills and Japan have been rising,
Speaker 1: and twenty twenty two really was almost like a year.
Speaker 1: It was a reminder for Japan how little resources we
Speaker 1: have and how exposed we are to global turboil. Japan
Speaker 1: imports almost all of its energy needs, so the country
Speaker 1: was really hit hard by natural gas and coal prices surging,
Speaker 1: and that's cut into the profits of utility companies, which
Speaker 1: in the end have also led to power bill has
Speaker 1: been rising for households and small businesses. So there's been
Speaker 1: pulling conducted by Japanese newspapers that do indicate that people
Speaker 1: are warming up to the use of nuclear again in
Speaker 1: the belief that by turning these reactors back on, the
Speaker 1: utilities don't have to procure expensive fuel from broad and
Speaker 1: thus lower power bills. So in August last year, Prime
Speaker 1: Minister Keshita commented that he wants Japan to consider developing
Speaker 1: next generation nuclear reactors, and that was a big shift
Speaker 1: because for the longest time, since twenty eleven, the government
Speaker 1: towed around the wording of what Japal will do with
Speaker 1: replacing nuclear reactors, out of being decommissioned or building a
Speaker 1: completely brand new ones, there was a lot of unclarity
Speaker 1: about where Japan will be with the future of nuclear.
Speaker 1: But Prime Minister Keishiita said that we need nuclear for
Speaker 1: energy security, but also decarbonization as carbon free power source,
Speaker 1: and he's kind of launched this platform to try to
Speaker 1: have a plan to build new next generation reactors. Not
Speaker 1: only that, but now the government has a plan to
Speaker 1: extend the lifespan of existing reactors. So the current rules
Speaker 1: are that utilities can operate nuclear reactors for forty years
Speaker 1: and then get one time lifespan extension and operated for
Speaker 1: sixty years. Now the government is saying that it should
Speaker 1: be operated beyond sixty if the reactors are safe. So
Speaker 1: that's a pretty big shift from where we were, you know,
Speaker 1: twelve years ago. And then with this global energy crisis,
Speaker 1: the government really kind of gearing up You mentioned that
Speaker 1: public polling shows that people are starting to warm up
Speaker 1: to this idea, but I imagine there's quite a lot
Speaker 1: of division and mixed feelings and strong emotions. Are people
Speaker 1: talking about this a lot. It's definitely popping up on
Speaker 1: local media, local newspapers, also social media spheres. It's really
Speaker 1: lingering in the minds of people, whether you're anti nuclear
Speaker 1: or pro nuclear, or maybe even conflicted, which I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people are conflicted. You have this surgeon,
Speaker 1: power bills and gas bills. At the same time you
Speaker 1: have memories of what happened twelve years ago. It was
Speaker 1: really traumatic event for Japan. You know, what do you do?
Speaker 1: Is nuclear really the answer? You spoke to you one
Speaker 1: man whose family has run a hotel near Fukushima. He
Speaker 1: left along with everyone else, but has since come back.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about his experience? Sure? So, we
Speaker 1: spoke with Tutomu Hirayama. He's from one of the towns
Speaker 1: affected by the Fukushiba Daichi nuclear power disaster. When we
Speaker 1: spoke to him, he sounded very conflicted and very mixed
Speaker 1: about the use of nuclear and he's basically seen both
Speaker 1: the economic benefits of having nuclear power stations in his
Speaker 1: neighborhood and his community, but also having been affected by
Speaker 1: the actual disaster, he's seemed like the worst of what
Speaker 1: could happen. In terms of benefits, He's talked about how
Speaker 1: the nuclear power plant provided employment for local community so
Speaker 1: people could work there, and because the government gives funding
Speaker 1: to municipalities that do host these nuclear reactors, that money
Speaker 1: could be used to build public infrastructure and building, so
Speaker 1: there are some benefits. At the same time, he's told
Speaker 1: me about having been evacuated from the hometown after the
Speaker 1: nuclear disaster and not being able to return for a
Speaker 1: few years, and being concerned about whether he's able to
Speaker 1: ever come back to his hometown. You know, it's really
Speaker 1: a horrible experience. Hidayama has been one of the first
Speaker 1: to be able to go back to the town, specifically
Speaker 1: because they needed the construction workers to be able to
Speaker 1: stay in hotel, but the duration of their stay. We actually,
Speaker 1: when we visited his hometown and spent a night their reporting,
Speaker 1: we stayed at his hotel. Not only at the hotel,
Speaker 1: but in the restaurants and other areas throughout the town.
Speaker 1: You could really see that it's really dominated by a
Speaker 1: lot of construction workers, and it speaks to I think,
Speaker 1: even twelve years after, the reconstruction process is still really ongoing.
Speaker 1: And you know, when I asked he Diama about this
Speaker 1: black or white debate around using nuclear power in Japan,
Speaker 1: he got really pensive and then told me that he
Speaker 1: could understand both sides and how they both feel. Are
Speaker 1: you nice? Look too much more? Walk on? But at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, he says he's against nuclear
Speaker 1: because of what to do with the spent nuclear fuels,
Speaker 1: which is another question that the Japanese government has to
Speaker 1: still kind of figure out where the nuclear fuels will
Speaker 1: go at the lifespan. But at the same time, he
Speaker 1: knows that by turning nuclear on, if power bills can
Speaker 1: be lowered, it could really help lower income people at
Speaker 1: lower income households and people who are affected by this
Speaker 1: inflationary pressure. Well, that raises another point, which is we're
Speaker 1: in the middle of an energy crisis now where prices
Speaker 1: are high and people are looking for alternatives. But how
Speaker 1: likely is it that even if they were to very
Speaker 1: quickly approve putting nuclear power plants back online and building
Speaker 1: new ones, that people would actually get that power. So
Speaker 1: in terms of building brand new reactors, I think there's
Speaker 1: question of whether Japanese power companies today have the risk
Speaker 1: appetite to want to invest in a completely new reactor
Speaker 1: or let alone replace a decommissioning one with a next
Speaker 1: generation reactor. I think that's a question to be asked
Speaker 1: whether the operators even want to do this today, especially
Speaker 1: you know, earthquakes are still very much a risk in Japan.
Speaker 1: It's a very earthquake pro own country. So you can't
Speaker 1: say that something like twenty eleven will happen again, or
Speaker 1: an earthquake that size will happen again. So I think
Speaker 1: there are some questions whether, you know, despite the government
Speaker 1: push to use nuclear again, how speedily can that be
Speaker 1: available or how readily that will be back online. Chokoda,
Speaker 1: thanks for speaking with me today. Thanks for having me
Speaker 1: when we come back. Japan isn't alone in taking a
Speaker 1: new look to nuclear power. Japan is just one country
Speaker 1: that's weighing new investment in nuclear power. Will Wade is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Power and Renewable Energy editor in New York, and
Speaker 1: he's here to tell us more. What are you looking
Speaker 1: for as someone who covers this industry, Well, I've been
Speaker 1: covering nuclear for several years now, and I would say
Speaker 1: in the past eighteen months twenty four months, there's been
Speaker 1: a really visible and obvious shift. I say there's a
Speaker 1: renaissance in nuclear energy these days, and it's because people
Speaker 1: are realizing they really need nuclear power to help achieve
Speaker 1: climate goals. There's just no other way you can reach
Speaker 1: our goals of cutting emissions without using nuclear. Wind and
Speaker 1: solar are great. You could build lots of it, but
Speaker 1: they don't run all the time. Only nuclear does that,
Speaker 1: and that's why we're seeing so much more support for
Speaker 1: nuclear from so many corners of the world. How is
Speaker 1: that playing out? So the thing about nuclear power is
Speaker 1: that it is clean energy. There's no carbon that comes
Speaker 1: out of nuclear reactors, and that's really good. But for
Speaker 1: the past many decades, environmentalists have been really opposed to
Speaker 1: nuclear power because of the waste that's created from reactors.
Speaker 1: And it's true, nuclear waste from the spent fuel rods
Speaker 1: is really really bad stuff. It'll stayed deadly for thousands
Speaker 1: of years, but there's not that much of it and
Speaker 1: the track record is pretty good for the industry. And
Speaker 1: now that climate change is becoming a very real, very
Speaker 1: tangible threat, people are starting to say that that real
Speaker 1: threat is more of an issue than the potential threat
Speaker 1: of a nuclear accident. So we're seeing a lot more
Speaker 1: interest in nuclear energy as a key part of the
Speaker 1: climate solution. And I guess people when they think about
Speaker 1: nuclear a lot of them focused on the big disasters
Speaker 1: three Mile Island in nineteen seventy nine, or Chernobyl in
Speaker 1: eighty six, or of course Fukushim in twenty eleven. But
Speaker 1: there are a lot of nuclear power plants around the world.
Speaker 1: What is the kind of balance between safety and advantage.
Speaker 1: So the thing about nuclear accidents is you just listed them.
Speaker 1: They've basically been about three in the history of the
Speaker 1: industry since we started using nuclear power back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. So the potential damage is significant, but there
Speaker 1: have not been a significant number of accidents. So if
Speaker 1: we look at say Europe, where if we were to
Speaker 1: take France, which has a fairly well developed nuclear program,
Speaker 1: how has that worked out? How are other countries looking
Speaker 1: at the examples of nations that use nuclear power as
Speaker 1: a model like what they want to do and what
Speaker 1: they don't want to do. Well, France is a good example.
Speaker 1: France is the most nuclear country in the world. They
Speaker 1: get about seventy percent of their electricity from nuclear power plants,
Speaker 1: and they're very committed to it. They've said that they
Speaker 1: want to advance their program even more. They announced last
Speaker 1: year a big program to expand their nuclear fleet. Other
Speaker 1: countries are sort of looking at at the same way.
Speaker 1: The UK gets about fifteen percent of its energy right
Speaker 1: now from nuclear power plants. They want to make that
Speaker 1: twenty five percent by twenty fifty. And again it's really
Speaker 1: comes down to climate goals. People are looking at nuclear
Speaker 1: as the only clean energy source that runs around the clock.
Speaker 1: The thing about France is last year they discovered that
Speaker 1: there were some significant problems. I think sixteen of their
Speaker 1: fifty six reactors were down for a significant amount of
Speaker 1: time last year. They're not all back up. It was
Speaker 1: a really big problem. France exports electricity throughout Europe, and
Speaker 1: at a time when all of Europe is saying we
Speaker 1: don't want natural gas from Russia, we don't want to
Speaker 1: get coal from Russia. We need electricity. Can we get
Speaker 1: some from France? And France was saying no, we don't
Speaker 1: have enough to go around right now. It's a big problem.
Speaker 1: I think nuclear generation in France was down about a
Speaker 1: third in twenty twenty two, and that, of course was
Speaker 1: happening at the same time that Europe was squeezed by
Speaker 1: dwindling gas supplies from Russia. Yeah, and not only that,
Speaker 1: Europe said we're going to stop importing coal from Russia.
Speaker 1: So there's no coal from Russia. They're trying to not
Speaker 1: use gas from Russia. They weren't getting nuclear power from France.
Speaker 1: That's why that Europe was worried about electricity Ville last year.
Speaker 1: Right next door in Germany, that country shut down it's
Speaker 1: nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster. What's happening there now?
Speaker 1: So Germany shut down most of their nuclear reactors after Fukushima,
Speaker 1: and they had a plan to phase them all out.
Speaker 1: The last three were supposed to shut down just in December,
Speaker 1: a couple months ago, but a few months before that
Speaker 1: they sort of realized, oh wait, we need that electricity.
Speaker 1: They've extended that until April, so a few more months.
Speaker 1: It's not huge. There's a lot of people that are
Speaker 1: looking that decision and saying, what are you nuts? You
Speaker 1: need the electricity? Why shut these down right now? I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want to shut them down eventually, you can,
Speaker 1: but right now probably isn't the best time. Building nuclear
Speaker 1: reactors new ones is one thing, and it takes a
Speaker 1: really long time, it costs a whole lot of money,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of the conversation is around extending
Speaker 1: the life of existing reactors. Can you get into the
Speaker 1: complications of that. When the nuclear power plants are built,
Speaker 1: they picked the life span of forty years, and they
Speaker 1: just said, all right, these things, we should run them
Speaker 1: for about forty years. We'll license them for forty years.
Speaker 1: Most of them have then been extended to sixty years.
Speaker 1: You can ask for a sixty year extension. A few
Speaker 1: of them have now got their second extension. I think
Speaker 1: about six of them in the US, so now they're
Speaker 1: approved for eighty years, and there's another couple dozen that
Speaker 1: we know that they're probably going to seek that second extension.
Speaker 1: So a lot of the US fleet now or soon
Speaker 1: will be approved to run towards eighty years. And I've
Speaker 1: even heard researchers are starting to study the question, could
Speaker 1: we extend them to one hundred years? Could we have
Speaker 1: a century year old nuclear power plant? So I'm a
Speaker 1: nuclear expert, but I don't know if anything that runs
Speaker 1: for a hundred years, is it the best idea to
Speaker 1: run a nuclear reactor for that long. That's a fair question.
Speaker 1: The thing to keep in mind is that the maintenance
Speaker 1: programs are really, really strict, so they shut down every
Speaker 1: eighteen months to refuel them, to put in new nuclear
Speaker 1: fuel rods, and at the same time they do a
Speaker 1: lot of maintenance. Most of the parts are not the
Speaker 1: original parts. Is it the same plant, yes? Or is
Speaker 1: it all the same parts? Mostly not so much. There's
Speaker 1: a couple of things that can't be replaced, like the
Speaker 1: concrete floor, the big pad underneath it, the giant containment vessel.
Speaker 1: Those things can't be replaced. So if you have a
Speaker 1: problem with that, it's not going to keep going. But
Speaker 1: they can keep going for a long time. And another
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind is so it is now
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, and the average age of nuclear plants
Speaker 1: in the US is about four decades forty years old.
Speaker 1: So coming upon that original forty year mark, right, so
Speaker 1: if we're talking about sixty years old, eighty years old,
Speaker 1: that'll take us into the twenty fifties and beyond. Who
Speaker 1: knows what's going to be available at that time. We
Speaker 1: may not even need them. Then you mentioned the waste problem,
Speaker 1: and that's always a problem because nobody wants that stuff
Speaker 1: near them. I remember a few years back there was
Speaker 1: this huge argument in the US about burying it in
Speaker 1: a mountain in Nevada, and there is no political appetite
Speaker 1: for them. We got shut down, and I don't know
Speaker 1: that they've ever really found a place for it. And
Speaker 1: so how does that issue get solved? How do you
Speaker 1: safely store the waste, which if we increase the use
Speaker 1: of nuclear energy, there's gonna be a lot more of it.
Speaker 1: And you're exactly right. There was a plan to store
Speaker 1: it and under a mountain and Nevada out in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere called Yuca Mountain, and the people in
Speaker 1: Nevada's kind of resisted that. So what happens now is
Speaker 1: basically every nuclear power plant out behind it in the
Speaker 1: back forty has a big concrete pad where they have
Speaker 1: these giant casks. They're about I don't know, about ten
Speaker 1: feet across and thirty feet tall, and that's where all
Speaker 1: the nuclear waste is and they just store them there,
Speaker 1: every single one of them. And even power plants that
Speaker 1: have been decommissioned and dismantled and there's nothing they're left
Speaker 1: except a nice field and the old storage casts because
Speaker 1: there's no place to put them. And that's a political
Speaker 1: question because the US government has sort of passed a
Speaker 1: law that says, yes, the government is responsible for the
Speaker 1: nuclear waste. They'll make it their problem, and now they
Speaker 1: don't have a place to put it, so they just
Speaker 1: leave it there. There are a couple of proposals now
Speaker 1: to build sort of centralized sites, one in West Texas
Speaker 1: and one in East New Mexico. They're actually pretty close
Speaker 1: to each other. They're probably going to get approved by
Speaker 1: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission soon, I think this year, so
Speaker 1: we may soon have a repository for all that nuclear waste.
Speaker 1: So if you look down the road five years, ten
Speaker 1: years from now, do you think we're going to have
Speaker 1: a significant increase in the amount of energy that comes
Speaker 1: from nuclear five to ten years. No. The thing about
Speaker 1: covering nuclear energy is that everything a nuclear moves really
Speaker 1: really slowly. In ten years, we might have the first
Speaker 1: small modular reactors in operation, but there's going to be
Speaker 1: a lot of activity pushing towards that. Fifteen years from now,
Speaker 1: I think there'll be a lot more nuclear energy. So
Speaker 1: people who are hoping that nuclear could be the solution
Speaker 1: for today's energy crunch. Are out of luck, but maybe
Speaker 1: by the time then next time we have a world
Speaker 1: energy shock, we'll have a solution at hand. We'll probably
Speaker 1: be working towards it. Yes, well, wait, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for talking with me. Happy to be here. Nuclear has
Speaker 1: its upsides, and it definitely has its downsides, as we've heard,
Speaker 1: So how do you weigh them? That's after the break.
Speaker 1: We've heard a lot today about the risks of nuclear power,
Speaker 1: so we thought it would be interesting to ask an
Speaker 1: unabashed nuclear booster to come on the show and make
Speaker 1: her case for the upside. Doctor Jessica Lovering is co
Speaker 1: founder and executive director of Good Energy Collective. That's a
Speaker 1: think tank that promotes pro nuclear policies with a climate
Speaker 1: change perspective. Our producer Michael Falro, talked to her about
Speaker 1: weighing the benefits and risks. So let's talk about where
Speaker 1: our energy mix is right now. How much US energy
Speaker 1: is renewable as like solar, wind, hydro, how much is
Speaker 1: nuclear right now and where could those numbers be going
Speaker 1: in the next decade or so. So in the US
Speaker 1: last year nuclear was about twenty percent of our electricity,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people don't know that nuclear makes
Speaker 1: up such a large share of our grid in the US,
Speaker 1: but it's been at twenty percent for a couple decades now.
Speaker 1: It's been pretty stable and is probably in the next
Speaker 1: ten years is going to stay at twenty percent. Fossil
Speaker 1: fuels are still producing about sixty percent of the electricity
Speaker 1: in the US, and renewables were at about twenty two
Speaker 1: percent last year. So most of the growth is coming
Speaker 1: from wind and solar, and really from wind. Wind was
Speaker 1: about ten percent of our electricity last year and that's
Speaker 1: only growing. And if you project kind of those current
Speaker 1: trends out, we might see renewables hit forty percent of
Speaker 1: US electricity generation by twenty thirty. But there are some
Speaker 1: serious obstacles and reasons why it might slow down. We
Speaker 1: might have some kind of friction in getting to higher
Speaker 1: penetrations of renewables. What are those obstacles with with renewables
Speaker 1: that maybe something like nuclear isn't going to phase so
Speaker 1: big wind is transmission. Renewables are geographically dispersed. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of our wind comes from the Midwest, solar
Speaker 1: tends to be in the Southwest, and we need to
Speaker 1: move it to where it's needed, and there are limits
Speaker 1: to how much you can move on the current grid infrastructure,
Speaker 1: the current transmission system, and it's really hard to build
Speaker 1: new transmission lines, especially the high voltage transmission lines that
Speaker 1: you need to move power for our distances. So that's
Speaker 1: one constraint. Another one that people don't think about but
Speaker 1: is actually a growing issue is local opposition. So renewables
Speaker 1: for the most part, when I'm talking, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: wind and solar, they take up a lot of land
Speaker 1: for the amount of electricity they produce. And you might think, okay, well,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of land in the US. Other
Speaker 1: countries like Japan don't, and they're much more constrained on
Speaker 1: where they can build renewables. But in the US, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of land. Is there really a
Speaker 1: big issue? But the reason that it is becoming more
Speaker 1: of a concern is that if a project takes up
Speaker 1: a lot of land, it also impacts a lot of communities,
Speaker 1: a lot of people, and there's much more chance that
Speaker 1: you're going to have local opposition. Nuclear has its own challenges,
Speaker 1: but having a diversity of options, particularly ones that are
Speaker 1: more land efficient like nuclear, which as a really small
Speaker 1: footprint and our lower materials requirement can be really helpful
Speaker 1: for balancing a clean energy system. So I live in California,
Speaker 1: and last summer we had a lot of concerns around
Speaker 1: power shortfall, particularly in the summer on really hot days
Speaker 1: when everyone's running their ac and that was a big
Speaker 1: motivator for why the governor of California, Governor Newsom, announced
Speaker 1: that he wanted to keep our last remaining nuclear power
Speaker 1: plant open a few more years. Are supposed to start
Speaker 1: closing down next year, so extending it another five years
Speaker 1: because we don't have enough power on those hot sunny days.
Speaker 1: Even though California has seen huge growth and renewables, we
Speaker 1: have grid scale storage coming online, it's just not enough.
Speaker 1: So talk more about this quote that you gave our
Speaker 1: reporter Will Wade. You said, the calculus is changing on
Speaker 1: keeping these plants open, talking about nuclear plants around the world.
Speaker 1: The economics haven't shifted, but the climate economics have shifted.
Speaker 1: What did you mean by that? So I want to
Speaker 1: make a point really quick that I think is counterintuitive
Speaker 1: to most people, which is nuclear is actually really cheap.
Speaker 1: And so I know that's a surprise to a lot
Speaker 1: of people, but that aside. When we talk about the
Speaker 1: economics of nuclear there's kind of two issues that get
Speaker 1: muddled together, so there's cost and value. In the last
Speaker 1: ten years, we've seen a lot of nuclear plants closing
Speaker 1: quote unquote for economic reasons, and that's really because natural
Speaker 1: gas is so cheap in the US. It's got a
Speaker 1: little more expensive in last year, but still pretty cheap
Speaker 1: compared to the rest of the world, and that's what
Speaker 1: replaces this last generation when nuclear closes, which is really
Speaker 1: bad from a carbon perspective, but for consumers it's not
Speaker 1: a big deal. So what's causing a rethink now is
Speaker 1: that governments and utilities are waking up to the fact
Speaker 1: that nuclear plants provide a lot of value because they
Speaker 1: are general electricity twenty four seven, they're very reliable, and
Speaker 1: they also just happen to be zero emissions. You know,
Speaker 1: when most of these plants were built, climate change wasn't
Speaker 1: a big concern. They were built for the fact that
Speaker 1: they just provide a lot of electricity pretty cheaply, and
Speaker 1: so you're starting to see that reflected in how governments
Speaker 1: and how utilities are valuing existing nuclear and you're seeing
Speaker 1: that with credits being provided in federal legislation in the US,
Speaker 1: but also a reinvestment or new investments in new nuclear.
Speaker 1: As we're looking towards planning for deep decarbonization or clean
Speaker 1: energy transition, we really need to start valuing the clean
Speaker 1: energy attributes of nuclear and not just treating them like
Speaker 1: fossil fuels, which is how they are done in a
Speaker 1: lot of countries. So I think it's safe to say
Speaker 1: you're a pro nuclear expert. You think about this all
Speaker 1: the time every day. When you tell people in your
Speaker 1: life what you do and why you're for nuclear power,
Speaker 1: what do you tell them. That's a good question, because
Speaker 1: I do talk about nuclear with people a lot, talking
Speaker 1: about what I do. I think the main way that
Speaker 1: I talk about nuclear is the truth, which is I
Speaker 1: got interested in nuclear because of climate change, and I
Speaker 1: think that's something people don't think about a lot. But
Speaker 1: you know, nuclear is the largest source of carbon free
Speaker 1: electricity in the US, it's the largest source in most
Speaker 1: countries unless they have really large stores of hydro and
Speaker 1: so if we're serious about taking action on climate change
Speaker 1: and getting to zero carbon in the shortest time possible,
Speaker 1: nuclear is just a critical tool to do that. It's
Speaker 1: not that I don't think nuclear has problems. I think
Speaker 1: nuclear has a lot of problems, but I want to
Speaker 1: work on policies that address those problems rather than say, Okay,
Speaker 1: we can't have nuclear because it has some issues. Because
Speaker 1: really all energy sources have pros and cons, and so
Speaker 1: we want to work to minimize the cons of every
Speaker 1: energy source and focus on the benefits, which are reliable,
Speaker 1: clean electricity. Doctor Levering, thanks for joining us on The
Speaker 1: Big Take. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to us here at The Big Take. It's a daily
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