Myth or Fact: Renewables are replacing retiring nuclear power plants
FACT: A typical nuclear reactor produces 1 gigawatt (GW) of electricity. That doesn’t mean you can simply replace it with a 1-gigawatt coal plant (or renewable power plant).
The capacity factor of a coal plant is almost 50% less than a nuclear power plant. Think of the capacity factor as a measure of downtime. You would need almost two coal or three to four renewable plants (each of 1 GW size) to generate the same amount of electricity onto the grid.
Nuclear, our most powerful and scalable source of clean energy, is mainly being replaced by natural gas. The reality is: we are using fossil fuels more than ever. Nuclear plant closures are driven mostly by the declining prices of natural gas.
The bottom line? We need renewables, geothermal, hydro and nuclear to prevent air pollution (yes that is still a problem with natural gas) and a drastic increase in greenhouse gases from natural gas plants. Having a diversity of clean energy options is critical to our health and environment.
If the U.S. doesn’t maintain and update (there is new technology waiting to be leveraged) its reactor fleet, natural gas will fill the gap at a much larger scale than renewables.
According to the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, “Expanding and improving the set of firm, carbon-free energy resources would make it much more affordable and feasible to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants. That’s something Americans of all political stripes could get behind.”
We are literally throwing away 20th-century technology for fossil fuels - contributing to our climate change woes.
Want to know more? There is a video explainer down below. Here are also a few articles to get you started: