Over time I have noticed that as a story or trend continues the quality of journalistic reporting tends to rise. This trend is due to the fact that “generic” journalists who just try to tell a fact-based story with the human element thrown in learn about the subtleties of the situation that are not apparent on first glance, and the relations between complex topics that are not obvious. Sunday’s Chicago Tribune moved forward on these fronts today.
The first article is titled “New Energy In Nuclear Power Supply Battle“. This article had a cool graph showing the construction start dates for our nations’ nuclear power plants, which started in the late 60’s, spiked in 1968, and then had a smaller peak in the mid 70’s, before dying out utterly in 1978. Our installed base of power went up until it reached 98,000 MW in the early 1990’s, from where it has stayed fixed (since no new power plants have come on-line since that time).
While this graph is cool, the article totally missed another trend – that the “effective” capacity of these nuclear plants has grown immensely across this time period. 98,000 MW means that you have built reactors that could theoretically generate this much power; but this only happens if the reactors are fueled, on-line and continuously functioning (not breaking down). In the 70’s and 80’s, it would typically take weeks or even months to refuel the reactor; during those times, the reactors were down and not generating power. The utilities didn’t really care, however, since the cost of “purchased power” from other utilities (most companies had interconnections with other utilities and there was spare power around) was just passed on to customers in the form of an immediate rise in monthly rates. The utilities only made money on the capital invested on the plant, a “rate of return” of usually 12-15% / year.
As power became more valuable, however, utilities really picked up the ball and increased the “effective” power capacity by speeding refuelings and limiting down times. Utilities that had maybe 1-2 nuclear power stations sold them off to other operators that ran them far more efficiently – no where more so than Illinois and Pennsylvania where Exelon now runs a whole fleet across two major ex-utility holding companies including plants they bought from others. It is this “effective” power capacity that has been holding the US supply (barely) in line with demand, and operators like Illinois should get credit for this.
