Radio - Is Nuclear Power Poised for a Comeback? | Podcast

Diplomacy | Washington, U.S. As concerns grow over climate change and high oil prices, the U.S. and Europe are starting to build new nuclear power plants, after decades of favoring other energy sources. WSJ's Matthew Dalton explains why those nations have lost some of their expertise in building nuclear plants, causing significant delays. FULL TRANSCRIPT This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated. Kate: Hey, it's Kate. Today, we're doing something a little different. Our colleague Amara Omeokwe, who you've heard as a reporter on our show, will be guest hosting today's episode. Here she is. Amara Omeokwe: For years, many in the U.S. and Europe have been skeptical about nuclear energy. Now, that's changing. Matt Dalton: On paper, it looks great. It doesn't generate carbon dioxide emissions, no other kinds of greenhouse gases, or almost none. It doesn't rely on fossil fuels. So all of those things made nuclear look very good. Amara Omeokwe: That's our colleague Matt Dalton. He's been looking into the return of nuclear energy, and he says that over the last decade power companies around the world have broken ground on dozens of nuclear power plants, investing billions of dollars. And now. Speaker 4: Gas prices have once again climbed to a record high. Speaker 5: Russia has cut off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria as the economic fallout of the war in Ukraine takes a new turn. Speaker 6: The Russian oil and gas embargo imposed yesterday is already making a difference here at home. Matt Dalton: Russia invades Ukraine and Europe really said we're going to need to fast forward on nuclear power because we can no longer depend on Russia, our biggest energy supplier for fuel. So that stoked the sense of urgency. First, the problems with climate change, and then very recently the invasion of Ukraine. Amara Omeokwe: But after decades of turning away from nuclear power, the industry is struggling to get reactors up and running. Matt Dalton: What happened in the more than three decades that has passed since the U.S. and Europe really were building nuclear power plants is that the entire industry lost its expertise. A lot of the people who were involved in previous projects either retired or they died. And so there was a big generation gap that the industry is now realizing cannot be easily fixed. Amara Omeokwe: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Amara Omeokwe. It's Wednesday, June 29th. Coming up on the show, the complicated return of nuclear power. Nuclear energy began in World War II with the development of nuclear weapons. Speaker 7: First in a test in the United States New Mexico desert, then 5,000 miles away at Hiroshima, and then again at Nagasaki came the world-shaking explosions of the atomic bomb. Amara Omeokwe: After the war was over, the U.S. government looked to harness nuclear power in a different way. Matt Dalton: President Eisenhower said we need to figure out a way to use this amazing technology not for destruction, but for peaceful ends. Amara Omeokwe: In a 1953 speech to the United Nations, President Eisenhower called for the development of new uses for nuclear science, in medicine, in agriculture, and in making electricity. President Eisenhower: It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace. Matt Dalton: So it was kind of channeling the destructive force of nuclear weapons into something that could be constructive and peaceful and was part of his attempt to allay global fears about the spread of nuclear technology. Amara Omeokwe: So it was almost like a rebranding. Matt Dalton: Right. Right, it was a rebranding, but it also went along with a major technological and an industrial development that was very substantive. Amara Omeokwe: Matt, can you give us nuclear energy 101? How do nuclear power plants produce energy? Matt Dalton: So almost all the world's nuclear power plants run on uranium. And once you put enough uranium together in one place, there's a chain reaction that begins and that produces heat. And that heat is used just like the heat from burning coal or burning natural gas to heat up water that turns into steam, that is put through a steam turbine that generates electricity. The trick of nuclear energy is to manage the radioactivity so it doesn't get out of control, so it doesn't get too hot so that the core doesn't melt down. Amara Omeokwe: Radioactive waste is another thing to deal with. Matt Dalton: When you're generating electricity using nuclear power, eventually the cores, the uranium fuel gets depleted and gets spent. So it doesn't have enough radioactivity to generate the heat, to generate electricity properly anymore. But on the other hand, that waste is still radioactive. You have to find a place to put it and to store it, and it can remain radioactive for centuries. Amara Omeokwe: Despite that, the U.S. took a leading role in pushing nuclear energy forward. America's first nuclear power plants came online in Pennsylvania, and dozens of other plants followed and not just at home. Throughout the 50s and into the 70s, America helped its allies build power plants too. Matt Dalton: Little by little, the technology was spreading to many countries around the world. Amara Omeokwe: But then in 1979. Speaker 9: A government official said that a breakdown in an atomic power plant in Pennsylvania today is probably the worst nuclear reactor accident to date. Amara Omeokwe: There was a serious incident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania. Matt Dalton: The accident at Three Mile Island occurred partly due to an equipment failure that was exacerbated by human error in which the operators nearly drained the reactor core of cooling water before realizing that they shouldn't do that. Speaker 10: Engineers and scientists are working to solve the problems inside the containment building where the nuclear reactor core is overheated. Matt Dalton: This incident caused a large amount of damage to one of the reactors at Three Mile Island. It didn't in the end result in significant releases of radiation into the environment, but it grabbed headlines across the country and across the world. And it completely changed the public's perceptions of nuclear power. Speaker 11: People are afraid of what they can't see, radiation. And they've heard so much contradictory technical jargon from officials that the first casualty of this accident may have been trust. Amara Omeokwe: The accident at Three Mile Island wasn't so serious, but it freaked everybody out. And that meant trouble for nuclear power programs in the U.S. and around the world. Matt Dalton: Dozens of nuclear power plants that had been planned, those projects were canceled sometimes with the concrete already poured, half built. Others that were on the drawing board never got off the drawing board. In Europe, countries across the continent slowed or stopped their nuclear reactor programs. Amara Omeokwe: Things only looked worse for nuclear after another accident in 1986. This time in Europe. Speaker 12: One of the atomic reactors at the Chernobyl atomic power plant near the city of Kyiv was damaged. And there is speculation in Moscow that people were injured and may have died. Matt Dalton: The Chernobyl accident was a much more serious accident than what happened at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. It sent a radioactive cloud drifting across much of Europe. A number of people died directly responding to the accident. It was the worst accident in the nuclear industry's history. And so those two events together, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, largely brought a halt to any new nuclear power plant construction in the U.S. and Europe. Amara Omeokwe: So on the back of these two major accidents, did it look like nuclear was dead essentially? Matt Dalton: It looked like nuclear was dead. It looked like the public's perception and sentiment towards nuclear was quite negative at that point. Amara Omeokwe: After the break, nuclear energy makes a comeback. In the 90s and early 2000s, fossil fuels were cheap and global warming wasn't a top priority yet. Matt Dalton: It wasn't until you started getting later on in the 1990s when people started to understand the science of global warming better and understand that actually, no, you cannot burn fossil fuels unabated without destroying the environment. And so those kind of concerns laid the groundwork for a nuclear renaissance, at least on paper. Amara Omeokwe: Some climate change activists saw nuclear energy as a key part of combating global warming. Matt Dalton: It's green in certain aspects. It's green because it produces very little air pollution. Without any of those pollutants, you've got energy technology that's as clean as wind and solar. However, nuclear still uses uranium. It's not a truly renewable resource. Amara Omeokwe: Okay. So then what are the benefits of nuclear over wind and solar? Why not just embrace wind and solar given that you have some of these challenges with nuclear? Matt Dalton: Well, nuclear has the big advantage that it's steady and predictable. Wind and solar only generate electricity when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. And nuclear is a predictable and steady source of electricity. Amara Omeokwe: As utility companies started thinking about the future of oil and coal plants, nuclear power plants seemed like a natural replacement. In 2008, for the first time in about 30 years, two utility companies in the U.S. began planning to build a set of nuclear reactors. And Matt decided to take a closer look at how the projects were panning out. Matt Dalton: Utilities in Georgia and South Carolina both decided to order new reactors. These were regions that had a lot of coal-fired power plants, both Georgia and South Carolina. We're going to need to replace this electricity at some point, and we think we can do this at a reasonable cost and not too long. Amara Omeokwe: Part of the plan to keep costs down was to build some components of the reactors off site in a Louisiana factory run by a company called Shaw Group. Matt Dalton: They did not have a lot of experience building nuclear reactors, but in fairness nobody did in the U.S. Amara Omeokwe: And things didn't go as expected. Matt Dalton: One of the quality assurance executives at Shaw, a guy named Christopher Hartz, went to visit the factory and saw the work that they were doing. And he came away fairly horrified at the quality of what they were doing. He told me that the first pieces they welded looked like pretzels, meaning they were completely warped. When you're welding two pieces of pipe together, they're not supposed to be deformed and cracked and blackened and all that stuff. They're supposed to be kind of shiny and metallic. And the pieces that he saw were terrible is what he told me. Amara Omeokwe: That was a big problem because welds in nuclear plants have to withstand a lot of heat and pressure. If they can't, the results can be disastrous. Matt Dalton: Because you're talking about the components that are containing the reactors fuel and its radioactivity. The welds on these components have to be absolutely flawless or very close to flawless. Amara Omeokwe: In 2010, Hartz and power company officials audited the factory, and the welds had gotten so bad they decided to stop work at the plant. After it became clear that the factory wasn't meeting the strict standards of the nuclear industry, government regulators opened an investigation. They found more quality control issues. They even found some workers had cheated on their qualification tests. Shaw, which is under new ownership and management, declined to comment. Their owner in 2013 settled with the government and told regulators it had improved worker training, fired the employees involved, and took other steps to improve quality control. All these problems have impacted the plants in Georgia and South Carolina. Both are millions of dollars over budget and South Carolina actually canceled its project altogether. Matt Dalton: You know, one of the big problems for both the South Carolina project and the Georgia project is that the companies building these things have been much too optimistic about how quickly they could build in retrospect. Amara Omeokwe: The issues facing the Georgia and South Carolina nuclear power plant projects are not entirely unique. Construction projects around the world face similar dilemmas. Reactors in France and Finland have also been delayed because of bad nuclear welds. Matt Dalton: We do not have enough people who know how to weld according to the nuclear industry's requirements. That's the kind of skill that cuts across the entire industry that is in short supply. And then just the general loss of expertise that we're seeing as a result of the hiatus that the... It's just a generation gap in the skills that the industry has to build reactors. Amara Omeokwe: Despite that, the pressures of climate change and the desire for energy independence are still pushing Western nations toward nuclear energy. The UK, Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands have all announced plans to build new reactors. France has committed to build 14 new reactors. And in the U.S., last year's infrastructure law authorized $3.2 billion for the development of advanced nuclear plants. So if the entire industry is facing this same problem, lack of skilled workers, lack of workers with the expertise, how does the industry push nuclear forward? Matt Dalton: Well, there's a catch-22, right? The only way to get the skills to build these reactors is to actually have projects to work on and to build. But of course, those early projects are going to turn out as they have. And they've turned out to be full of technical problems and delays and cost overruns. Amara Omeokwe: The U.S., France, and China are backing a new generation of reactors that are intended to be easier to build and safer than earlier designs. But some critics say that with advances in wind, solar and other clean energy sources, nuclear power is no longer necessary. Matt Dalton: You've got wind energy. You've got solar power. You've got geothermal. You've got storage, batteries to store the electricity for renewables that come and go with the elements. These technologies, okay, 20 years ago, they weren't ready for prime time. Now, they're ready. Amara Omeokwe: So with all that you're talking about, some of the challenges facing the nuclear industry itself, the advance of other kinds of clean energy, is it really going to be a comeback for nuclear? Is that really going to happen? Matt Dalton: There's grounds for skepticism. And I think if we can do wind and solar at the scale needed for the energy transition along with other things, like improving energy efficiency, using energy more wisely, cutting demand for electricity, that's a big resource. And you talk to a lot of environmental groups and they say, yes, we don't need nuclear. Why are we as governments throwing all of this support to nuclear when we could be doing that support for truly renewable energies which don't have the nuclear waste issue, which are much cheaper, which are easier to build, and which also can provide a lot of jobs. There's a lot of jobs out there in installing solar panels. There's a lot of jobs in building wind turbines. Why not do that instead of relying on this old technology? ______ ______

🗞 The world's most free-thinking e-newspaper. 🌿🌞 Discover photos, videos, audios and fresh visual content, as well as evergreen content-articles that aren't new to the web, but are new to you. 🧠 Feed your mind anytime, anywhere!!

[Help support our independent journalism] Worldwide ______ #Photodollar #Russia-UkraineWar #Radio #Listen #IsNuclearPowerPoisedForAComeback #Podcast #HypersonicWeapons #ArmsRace #WhoIsWinningTheWarInUkraine #WillTheRaceToDevelopHypersonicWeaponsSparkTheNextGlobalArmsRace #Russia #Diplomacy #NATO #Brussels #Belarus #Ukraine #Diplomacy #GermanyBracingForGasPriceSpikesAmidRussianRetribution #WarZone #LukashenkoSaysBelarusInterceptedAttemptedMissileStrikesByUkraine #MykolaivExplosion #ExplosionsRockUkraineCityOfMykolaivADayAfterDeadlyStrikesNearOdesa #OdesaMissilesAttack #SnakeIsland #BlackSea #Ukraine #PrepareForWinter #Russia #Pentagon #Washington #USAnnounces820MillionDollarInUkraineAidIncludingMissileSystems #RebelMoscowTheatreShutsDoorsAfterFinalShow #IDontTakePartInWar #GogolCentre #Moscow #KremlinMilitary #Ukraine #WatchHowSnakeIslandBecameSoStrategicInTheUkraineWar #Russia #WarZone #Bastions #NikolaiGogolDramaTheatre #Entertainment #Digital #Drama #SocialMedia #SnakeIsland #Kyiv #UkraineAccusesRussiaOfUsingPhosphorusBombs #ValeriiZaluzhnyi #ArmedForcesOfUkraine #MissileKills21InOdesa #MissileKills10InOdesaAfterUkraineRetakesSnakeIsland #BioWar #Moscow #SpainSaysNATOWillDemoteRussiaFromStrategicPartnerToTheBlocMainThreat #RussianMissilesRainDownOnUkraineAsWestPledgesEnduringSupport #G-7Summit #Kyiv #Politics #WarCrimes #EmmanuelMacron #TerroristAttacks #Government #Politics #PDTopNews #WorldNews #Russia #Kremenchuk #Ukraine #RussianMissileStrikeHitsCrowdedShoppingMall #Sanctions #HistoricDefaults #NewsShowcase #RussiaPushedIntoHistoricDefaultBySanctions #BavarianAlps #G7Summit #BRICSSummit #Russia #China #ZelenskiyMeetsG7LeadersViaVideoLink #RussiaPoundsKyiv #Elmau #Germany #DiplomacyForum #Munich #India #SouthAfrica #Indonesia #Senegal #Argentina #PutinAndLukashenkoDiscussSituationWithGlobalSupplyOfFertilisers#G7Summit #Russia-UkraineWar #G7LeadersPledge600BillionDollarForDevelopingCountriesAmidUkraineWar #RussianMissileStrikesCentralKyiv #Elmau #WeHaveToStayTogether #BidenOnAllianceBehindUkraine #BidenBansRussianGoldImports #Munich #Russia-UkraineWar #Germany ##G7Summit2022 #G7SummitKicksOffUnderShadowOfUkraineWarAndStagflationRisk #OlafScholz #Kyiv #WorldNews #Government #Politics #PDTopNews #VitaliKlitschko #RussiaStrikesKyivAsTroopsConsolidateGainsInTheEast #RussiaStrikesKyiv #BidenAndG7LeadersToAgreeOnImportBanOnRussianGold #RussianGold #G7Leaders #Washington #Diplomacy #Sievierodonetsk #MunichProtestsG7Summit #NATOSummit #Europe #G7SummitMunich #France #India #RussianForcesOccupyAllOfSievierodonetsk #Luhansk #Kyiv #Donbas #Poland #Belarus #Britain #UkraineReportsMassiveBombardmentFromBelarus #BelarusBombardsUkraine #Chernigiv #MassiveBombardment #UkraineForcesOrderedToWithdrawFromKeyBattlegroundCity #News #Video #Romania #RomaniaPortStrugglesToMoveUkraineGrain #USLong-rangeRocketSystemsArriveInUkraine #BlackSeaPort #ComvexOperator #RomaniaBlackSea #Diplomacy #Business #Finance #ForeignPolicy #EasternEurope #HIMARSMultipleRocketLaunchers #UkraineHIMARSRocketLaunchers #WatchRussianOilRefineryIsSetAblazeByDroneCrash #RussiaOilRefineryDroneCrash #DroneCrashRussia #RussiaOilRefinery #Russia-UkraineWar #NewsShowcase #Russia-UkraineWar #NATO #EuropeanUnion #Kyiv #NATOWarnsOfLongUkraineWarAsRussianAssaultsFollowEUBoostForKyiv #Politics #Germany #Romania #EUBacksUkraineMembershipBidAsWarBringsHugeShift #NATO #OlafScholz #MarioDraghi #EmmanuelMacron #France #PDTopNews #WorldNews #KlausIohannis #Italy #Russia-UkraineConflict #Sievierodonetsk #NuclearWeapons #Russia #SpreadingMineMenaceInUkraineIsTakingLives #EuropeanOfficialRaisesAlarmAboutRussiaFlyingWestern-madeAirplanes#NoWayOutForUkrainiansInEmbattledCityAsRussianForcesDestroyLastBridge #GlobalNuclearArsenalToGrowForFirstTimeSinceColdWar #China #NuclearWeapons #Shangri-LaDialogue #Singapore #China #Russia #AsiaPacific #Korea #ChineseDefenceMinisterSaysCountryNuclearArsenalForSelf-defence #Cross-borderBridge #Russia-UkraineConflict #BattleOfDonbas #Ukraine #UkraineTheFightForTheDonbasPodcast #ExplosionsRockUkrainianCapitalKyiv #Photodollar #Nikolaev #Paris #France #Diplomacy #Business #Finance #Government #Politics #EuropeanUnion #France #ForeignPolicy #Russia #AfricanUnion #Diplomacy #ForeignPolicy #Europe #UkraineConflict #FoodCrisis #WesternEurope #100DaysOfWarInUkraineATimeline #TimelineOfWarInUkraine #WarInUkraineTime #RussiaWarInUkraineTimeline #RussiaUkraineWarTimeline #AfricanUnionHeadTellsPutinAfricansAreVictimsOfUkraineConflict #USAndGermanyAgreeToSupplyAdvancedWeaponsToUkraine #Berlin #Brussels #Diplomacy #ForeignPolicy #Europe #Belgium #PhotodollarEuro #EuroMediaNetwork #EuroDigitalNews #EuroPhotodollarNetwork #PhotodollarWesternEurope #RussiaSaysItCompletedTestingOfHypersonicZirconCruiseMissile #Russia-UkraineWar #VladimirPutin #Moscow #Government #Politics #MacronUrgesTurkeyToRespectSovereignChoiceOfFinlandAndSwedenOnNATO #EmmanuelMacron #Turkey #Finland #Sweden #NATO #Brussels #EuropeanUnion #StopPlayingWithRussiaEndWarZelenskiyTellsWest #UkraineSaysRussiaShellsMoreThan40TownsInDonbasPush #Russia-UkraineWar #Donbas #Timeline #SorosSaysUkraineMayBeStartOfWorldWarThree #GeorgeSoros #HungaryAnnouncesStateOfDangerOverWarInUkraine #HungarStateOfDanger #Europe #Diplomacy #Budapest #ForeignPolicy #Business #Oil #RussiaLaunchesAll-outAssaultToEncircleUkraineTroopsInEast #RussiaInvasionOfUkraineEntersFourthMonth #Russia-UkraineWar #VolodymyrZelenskyy #Poland #Warsaw #AlexanderLukashenko #Belarus #Government #Politics #PDTopNews #Russia-UkraineWar #VladimirPutin #Kyiv #Business #AlexanderLukashenko #IndependencePalace #Minsk #Belarus #NuclearWeapons #NATO #PDTopNews #Moscow #Belarus #Europe #BelarusBeginsSnapCombatReadinessDrills #Minsk #Belarus #Diplomacy #ForeignPolicy #EasternEurope #UkraineWar #GermanyBracingForGasPriceSpikes #Russia #UkraineWillWinUKPMJohnsonTellsUkrainianParliament #RussiaLooksToAvoidDefaultAfterBondPaymentsSentToCreditors #IgnoringPutinThreatsUSBoostsSupportForUkraine #Europe #GasDiplomacy #EUEnergyMinistersHoldCrisisTalksAfterRussianGasCuts #CanEuropeAffordToWeanItselfOffRussianGas #WhatsTheImpactIfEuropeCutsOffRussianOil #PutinTellsForcesNotToStormUkraineHoldoutInMariupol #RussiaChernobylSeizureSeenAsNuclearRiskNightmare #RussiaIntensifiesAttacksInEasternUkraine #NewsShowcase #Photodollar #BattleOfDonbas #PresidentZelenskyyCallsSituationInMariupolInhuman #UkrainianForcesInMariupolRebuffRussianUltimatumToSurrender #UkraineWarForcesGermanyToBurnBridgesWithRussia #USIntelligenceSatelliteLaunchedFromCalifornia #MK-Ultra #TheCIASecretPursuitOfMindControl #CIA #IntelligenceServices #UnitedStates #MindControl #RussiaHas8-mileMilitaryConvoyColossalAmountOfEquipmentReadyForNewBlitz #RussiaStartingToReinforcePositionsInEasternUkraine #DenmarkStocksUpOnIodinePillsToBolsterNuclearEmergencyPlan #Denmark #NuclarEmergency #NordicCountry #RussiaSuspendedFromUNHumanRightsCouncil #UkraineSaysOver70RussianSoldiersExposedToRadiationAtChernobyl #UkrainianRefugeesFindRouteToUSGoesThroughMexico #ZelenskiyTellsUnitedNations #AccountabilityMustBeInevitable #SatellitePhotosAppearToContradictRussianDenialsOverBuchaAtrocities #UkraineAccusesRussiaOfCivilianMassacre #Bucha #TheKremlinPowerInStagingFalseNarratives #BuchaMassacre #USDefenseContractorsSeeLongerTermBenefitsFromWarInUkraine #WarInUkraine #LatestDevelopments #ExplosionsRockOdesa #WestAndRussiaMullNuclearStepsInAMoreDangerousWorld #RussianAirStrikesAirfieldAndFuelDepotInCityOfMyrhorod #USProvidingUkraineWithSuppliesInCaseRussiaDeploysChemicalWeapons #PDRadio #InsideMariupol #PhotodollarNewsNetwork #Podcast #PhotodollarPodcasts #ListenRadioOnPhotodollar #InsideUkraine #RussiaPraisesIndiaNeutralStanceOnUkraineFighting #RussiaAllyChinaTellsEUItWillPursueUkrainePeaceInItsOwnWay #EUToUrgeChinaToRethinkItsStanceOnRussiaOverUkraineWar #IEAToHoldEmergencyMeetingToTackleSoaringOilPrices #PDTVRadio #TrendingPodcast #PDTopNews #WhatImpactWouldARussianDebtDefaultHave #TrendingNews #OilAndVodkaRussiaResilientEconomy #RussiasLavrovToVisitIndiaOnThursday #UkraineWarFoodCrisisIsWorstSinceWWII #TheUkrainianExodus #Putin-ZelenskiyMeetingNeededOnceSidesCloserOnKeyIssues #WarInUkraine #LatestDevelopments #TopNews #HeinekenSees400MillionEurosInChargesOnExitFromRussianOperations #TheHague #Amsterdam #TrendingNews #Netherlands #Brewer #Beverages #Business #Russia-UkraineWar #Diplomacy #Finance #Politics #CouldPutinBeProsecutedForWarCrimes #PDTVRadio #PDTopNews #NewsShowcasePodcast #RocketsHitLvivInWesternUkraine #ShelledCityInNorthUkraineFearsBecomingNextMariupol #Russia-UkraineWar #ProgressiveDiscrimination #CancelCulture #Moscow #Diplomacy #ForeignPolicy #UkrainianForcesAdvanceEast #EmergencyNATOSummit #BidenPledgesNewUkraineAid #BidenInEurope #WesternAllies #Europe #France #Britain #UnitedKingdom #Diplomacy #NATO #ForeignPolicy #NewsShowcase #EasternEurope #Ukraine #Russia #UkrainePutsPutinPlaybookToTheTest #UkraineForeignLegion #PDRadio #PhotodollarPodcast #RussiaMustNotBeHumiliateDespitePutinHistoricMistake #WebPages #Internet #www

Discover all our exclusive content