Before leaving, the Joe Biden administration continues to “burn with environmental napalm.” Plans to expand environmentally friendly power plants in the country are striking in their scale. During the UN climate conference in Baku, the White House announced plans to triple the capacity of US nuclear power plants in 25 years, by 200 GW. To do this, the country needs to build and operate at least eight large standard reactors per year. At the same time, two reactors have been commissioned in the United States in recent years, each taking more than 12 years to build. Experts doubt the plans.
“From day one, the Biden-Harris administration has taken historic steps to combat climate change and invest in America. “The Administration has carried out the most ambitious clean energy program in our nation’s history and has taken key steps to ensure that nuclear power is ready to play a key role in the clean energy transition.” – says the White House statement, made during the UN climate conference COP29 in Baku.
The White House stressed that US nuclear power plants supply around 20% of the country’s electricity and their capacity will increase in 2050 by 200 GW, up to 300 GW.
“The net addition of new capacity is expected to come from several sources, including the construction of new nuclear power plants, increasing the capacity of existing reactors, and the restart of reactors that have been taken out of service for economic reasons.” – said the White House. They clarified that the intermediate stage will last ten years and by 2035 the country’s nuclear generation capacity will increase by 35 GW.
“These plans reflect ambitious but achievable goals that serve as a call to action for the nuclear energy industry and a signal that the United States government is and will continue to work to promote the safe and responsible deployment of nuclear energy and related infrastructure and create jobs. ”said the White House.
The White House statement is in line with plans previously released by the US Department of Energy in its report. It predicts that by 2050, the capacity of all the country’s environmentally friendly power plants will increase by between 700 and 900 GW.
Director of the AtomInfo-Center Alexander Uvarov believes that the White House administration is talking about unrealistic plans.
“This is a public relations measure to convince other countries to sign promises to significantly increase their nuclear parks. There will be very little construction in the United States; The main increase will come from the reactivation of previously closed units and the increase (boost) in the capacity of existing units. But in the best case it will not exceed 10 GW. If readers knew how many times in my life I hear slogans like that…” – says Alexander Uvarov.
He also doubts plans to triple global nuclear energy capacity, the declaration of which has already been signed by 26 countries, including the United States.
“Today there are approximately 370,000 energy units in the world with a capacity of 370,000 units. Tripling means building approximately another 740 thousand ton blocks. The cost of a thousand-ton block can be estimated approximately at 5-10 billion dollars (somewhere more expensive, somewhere cheaper). Therefore, the tripling plan corresponds to between 3.7 and 7.4 trillion dollars in money, and this is the minimum estimate.” – says Alexander Uvarov. He doubts that the global economy can support that expense.
“And most importantly: why is this necessary in our times?” said the director of the AtomInfo-Center.
