Guest column: Ohio’s solar, wind, hydropower are cheap, clean, and ready - nuclear is not
Following the recent nuclear power bribery conviction and 20-year prison sentence for disgraced former Speaker of the Ohio House of Representative Larry Householder, Ohioans are wisely wary of costly nuclear reactors bailout and subsidy schemes. However, ignoring such prudent concerns and marketplace realities, two still-conceptual twin reactors are being considered for the Buckeye State.
Nevertheless, as the climate crisis worsens, by working together, Ohio’s communities can and must make smart, essential and timely energy technology choices that actually cut greenhouse gases.
To obtain true energy independence, cut atmospheric CO2 and avoid expensive, ever-dangerous unproven reactors, wise investments include a hybrid of grid-flexible widely-distributed renewable power options (like solar and wind), dramatically improved efficiency and high-tech power storage. Unlike the proposed Ohio reactors, a renewable/efficiency/power storage strategy affordably reduces greenhouse gases and provides good-paying jobs while bolstering our local economies.
If you doubt this, but prefer air conditioning to sweating through power outages, listen to Texas businesses and household ratepayers now singing praises for their country-leading solar and wind installations. Solar power just saved their electric grid from likely collapse during the intense heat wave over the long, record-breaking sweltering July 4 period.
Says new reactors are 'fool's approach' to climate crisis
Some schemes not only can’t reduce climate gases in time, but pursuing them wastes precious time and money and are, in fact, counterproductive. The two new reactors proposed for southern Ohio are a fool’s gold approach to the climate crisis and Ohio’s energy needs. This push in the Buckeye State parrots the industry’s hype for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). Much ballyhooed, SMRs are technically unproven – the first U.S. prototype won’t even be built until 2029, if then.
Ohio electric customers can’t afford the staggering cost of uncompetitive SMRs or other “new” untested reactor concepts. According to Lazard (April/2023), the world’s premier energy financial analytic firm, their ‘best case’ for new reactors is five (5) times more expensive than utility-scale solar and wind power – industries thriving today in Ohio. The leading SMR concept is now seven (7) years late and, in 2022, its price estimate jumped from $55/MWHr. to over $100/per MWHr., including the federal subsidy.
Despite dismal economics, in an attempt to resuscitate this dying industry, vast taxpayer subsidies have been lavished on aging and untested reactors via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and annual federal budget – totaling up to more than $150 billion. Historically, nuclear has sucked up nearly 50% of all federal taxpayer energy R&D funds, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service, despite providing only about eight (8%) of our energy supply (19% of electricity).
Natural heritage at risk with plans for new reactors
Ohio’s natural heritage also is at risk with plans for new reactors that will create more radioactive waste. Stanford University research concluded that, contrary to new small reactor promoters, SMRs will create even more highly dangerous radioactive waste per unit of electricity generated than large reactors, like the existing Davis Besse and Perry reactors in northern Ohio. Despite seven decades of industry assurances, there is still no proven method to permanently isolate and store these toxic isotopes, some poisonous for hundreds of thousands of years.
This year, the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that society is dangerously close to exceeding the global warming “tipping point.” July 3 was the hottest day ever recorded on the planet. In April, the IPCC reported renewable energy resources (like solar, wind, and hydro – all abundant in Ohio) are 10 times more efficient than nuclear in mitigating CO2. Indeed, we can fully meet our climate and clean energy goals without new nuclear.
Ohio’s families and businesses can’t afford nuclear power’s notorious cost overruns and interminable delays. A U.S. Department of Energy review found the final costs and construction times for 75 reactors built between 1966 and 1977, on average, were three times higher than the original estimates and took twice as long to build. Of 30 new reactors ordered in the mid-2000s, all except two were canceled.
In South Carolina, the failed V.C. Summer project burned through $9 billion before the twin reactors were prudently scrapped in 2017. In Georgia, the same design Vogtle Reactor Units 3 and 4 are seven years behind schedule and at least $20 billion over budget. Westinghouse went bankrupt trying and failing to build those four reactors. As a result, Georgia households are facing sticker shock with looming $45 per month electric bill hikes.
Buckeye voters are smart and will vote for legislators and support utility regulators who protect family and business checkbooks. Ohio’s politicians should take note. Affordable, truly clean energy in Ohio is available now. Don’t get sold on techno-fantasies like “new & improved” nuclear reactors, we can’t pay the price.
Editor's note: Scott Denman is a graduate of Wooster High School and College of Wooster who now lives in Maine. He directed the Safe Energy Communication Council, a national energy and environmental coalition, from 1983 to 2003. For the past 14 years, he has directed a national philanthropy supporting nonprofits and initiatives to develop solar, wind, hi-tech battery storage and other renewable resources and phase-out dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: Opinion: Improved nuclear reactors are fantasy; Ohio can't pay price
