Nuclear and Fossil Fuel Costs

My previous post shows U.S. energy use by type and notes that nuclear fuel costs are so low that they don’t show up in the chart in my earlier post that depicts fuel costs as percent of GDP. Above is a chart that shows the wholesale cost per million Btu of fossil fuels and nuclear fuel. The dramatically lower cost of nuclear fuel explains why electric utilities that have nuclear plants try to run them at maximum capacity. Nuclear power also produces very little carbon dioxide compared to other sources, even when all emissions from the entire operation such as mining and processing uranium ore, decommissioning a plant, and waste disposal are included.

One can wonder why the U.S. doesn’t utilize nuclear power to a greater extent, like France, which gets 76% of its electricity from nuclear, or Belgium, which gets 54% from nuclear, or Sweden, which gets 42%, and why expansion of nuclear capacity has not, so far, been the main tactic in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. On this subject, James Lovelock, in his book The Vanishing Face of Gaia, says “I think we fail to welcome nuclear energy as the one good and reliable power source because we have been grievously misled by a concatenation of lies. Falsehood has built on falsehood and is mindlessly repeated by the media until belief in the essential evil of all things nuclear is part of an instinctive reaction.” In this book, Lovelock goes on to refute what he considers the major untruths surrounding nuclear power. I hope to expand on this subject in future posts.

U.S. energy use

The chart shows U.S. energy consumption by type of source based on data available from the USDOE/EIA. The Btu total for electricity generated by nuclear power and by renewable energy, which is mostly hydropower, is derived by the EIA. It is the product of the KWh produced times the amount of Btu consumed per KWh generated by the average U.S. fossil fuel plant. It is thus the amount of energy from fossil fuels that would have been required to produce the equivalent amount of electricity.

Notice that nuclear makes up a significant portion of the U.S. total energy consumption, but that, in my post of 12/13/09, which has a chart that shows fuel cost as a percent of GDP, the percentage for nuclear doesn’t show up. This is because the cost for nuclear fuel is so small that it represents a slice no thicker than the line in that chart between the costs of the fossil fuels.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per Capita

The long-term growth of wealth (at least in monetary terms) of the U.S. can be tracked by looking at GDP per capita. The chart shows the trend since 1949. The value for 2009 is estimated. Notice that there's been a drop recently; we're in a recession. There have been drops before though, and then the upward trend has resumed. If energy costs continue to rise, however, the decline may continue. Should GDP per capita enter a long period of decline, we can expect major changes in our way of life.

Fuel Cost as Percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

One aspect of the current economic difficulty that argues that the future may not be like the past is the cost of energy. The chart below shows U.S. fuel cost as a percent of GDP. Historically, fuel cost has been in the range of 3 or 4% of GDP. This percent spiked to nearly 10% in the late 70s, and times were somewhat hard then. For several reasons, including oil discoveries in the North Sea and Mexico, nuclear power coming on line, and some energy-intensive industry leaving the U.S., this percent dropped back down. Now it is rising again. If global petroleum production has peaked and begun to decline as some argue (see, especially, writings of Ken Deffeyes, Colin Campbell, David Goodstein, and Jim Kunstler) the price of oil will rise, and the percent of GDP spent on fuel will grow. Obviously, we cannot spend 100% of GDP on fuel. Can the economy function normally if we're spending 6%, 10%, 15%? Stay tuned.