Is Nuclear Power Immune to Extreme Weather?

I enjoy reading articles from Forbes, as the publication often publishes very thought-provoking material, and its recent article focused on the virtues of nuclear power in the face of extreme weather is no exception.  As the article correctly points out, when extreme weather like a polar vortex or hurricane prevents the efficient generation of power from certain sources, nuclear, like the Energizer Bunny, keeps on going and going and going…

How Nuclear Holds Up to Extreme Weather

Traditional fossil fuel plants are susceptible to outages during extreme weather for a variety of reasons.  For example, in extreme cold, coal stacks could freeze, gas lines could choke, and diesel generators may simply fail to operate properly.  Further, as you can probably guess, clean energy sources like wind and hydro do not perform optimally in extreme cold.  Thus, supply is reduced precisely at the time when demand is high.  Not a good combination.

Nuclear power, on the other hand, has no such issues, and does not require any special maintenance or protocol to operate efficiently during extreme weather.  Simply put, nukes perform better during the extremes – they can typically operate at 100% capacity during extreme weather with relative ease.  In fact, during the first polar vortex in 2014, the PJM Interconnection warned of the risk of “deadly blackouts without a diverse energy mix that includes nuclear.”

For this reason, the Forbes article advocates always including nuclear in the generation mix, as this is a source of power that can be relied upon when other sources cannot.  This provides a boost to grid reliability, and promotes cost-effectiveness by avoiding the need to buy incremental power on the open market. 

The bottom line is this: With the threat of global warming becoming increasingly dire, nuclear power could be our saving grace during periods of extreme weather.