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Cites

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	1	+Coal/Shift DA
	2	+Link
	3	+Nuclear power will be replaced by coal construction and natural gas.
	4	+Beillo 2013 - David Biello. “How Nuclear Power Can Stop Global Warming,” December 12, 2013.http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-nuclear-power-can-stop-global-warming/. SD
	5	+As long as countries like China or the U.S. employ big grids to deliver electricity, there will be a need for generation from nuclear, coal or gas, the kinds of electricity generation that can be available at all times. A rush to phase out nuclear power privileges natural gas—as is planned under Germany's innovative effort, dubbed the Energiewende (energy transition), to increase solar, wind and other renewable power while also eliminating the country's 17 reactors. In fact, Germany hopes to develop technology to store excess electricity from renewable resources as gas to be burned later, a scheme known as “power to gas,” according to economist and former German politician Rainer Baake, now director of an energy transition think tank Agora Energiewende. Even worse, a nuclear stall can lead to the construction of more coal-fired power plants, as happened in the U.S. after the end of the nuclear power plant construction era in the 1980s.
	6	+
	7	+After a ban on nuclear power, coal consumption would rise dramatically. Nakata 2002
	8	+Toshihiko Nakata Professor at Tohoku University, “Analysis of the impacts of nuclear phase-out on energy systems in Japan” April 2002
	9	+Fig. 3 illustrates the changes in the electric power generation under the nuclear phase-out case. The total energy consumption and the carbon dioxide emissions for four scenarios in the year 2041 are shown in Table 4. We can see three ways in which the system has adjusted to make up the nuclear boiler after its phasing out: ∂ The use of coal boiler and coal IGCC rise and the total coal consumption rises by four times. The use of gas combined-cycles and gas boiler rise gradually, and the total gas consumption grows by three times. The renewables are not seen in the electricity market.
	10	+
	11	+Germany proves that ending the production of nuclear power results in the increased use of coal.
	12	+Abrams 2013 - Lindsay Abrams (Staff Writer at Salon on sustainable energy), "Germany’s clean energy plan backfired", Salon (web), July 30, 2013. www.salon.com/2013/07/30/germanys_clean_energy_plan_backfired/
	13	+When a nuclear power plant closes, a coal plant opens. At least, that’s the way things are shaping up in Germany, where the move away from nuclear energy appears to have backfired. For the second consecutive year, according to Bloomberg, the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions are set to increase. German Chancellor Angela Merkel made headlines back in 2011 when, in the wake of the reactor meltdown in Tokyo, she announced the impending closure of Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors. Up until then, nuclear-generated energy contributed to a full quarter of the nation’s electricity. At the time, the closings were framed as a positive effort to increase the country’s use of clean energy. As an expert then predicted to the New York Times: “If the government goes ahead with what it said it would do, then Germany will be a kind of laboratory for efforts worldwide to end nuclear power in an advanced economy.” But predictably, when nuclear plants began to shut down, as eight immediately did, something else had to take its place. And coal, which according to Bloomberg is favored by the market, did just that. In the absence of a strong government plan to push natural gas and renewable forms of energy, the share of electricity generated from coal rose from 43 percent in 2010 to 52 percent in the first half of this year, according to the World Nuclear Association.
	14	+Impact
	15	+Fossil fuels cause air pollution that harms humans.
	16	+IAEA 2013 – International Atomic Energy Agency, “Climate Change and Nuclear Power 2013,” Vienna, 2013. AT
	17	+NPPs emit virtually no air pollutants during their operation. In contrast, fossil fuel power plants are among the major contributors to air pollution. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution is a major human health risk factor. Outdoor air pollution due largely to fossil fuel burning causes over one million premature deaths worldwide each year. Air pollution also contributes to health disorders from respiratory infections, heart disease and lung cancer 46. New evidence indicates that the adverse health effects of air pollutants occur in some cases at lower air pollution concentrations levels than previously thought. The range of health effects is also broader. They now include impacts on neurodevelopment and cognitive function. Air pollution is increasingly linked to chronic diseases such as diabetes 47.¶ A recent joint study from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University’s Earth Institute examined the historical and potential future role of nuclear power in preventing air pollution related mortality. The study estimates that globally, nuclear power has prevented over 1.8 million air pollution related deaths that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning between 1971 and 2009. The largest shares of prevented fatalities are estimated for European OECD Member States and for the USA. Furthermore, the calculations show that the deployment of nuclear power can make an even higher contribution to reducing air pollution related deaths in the future. Projections from a simulation model assess hypothetical scenarios in which all nuclear capacity would be phased out and substituted by fossil fuels. If all nuclear electricity production projected by the IAEA in 2011 (that is, after the Fukushima Daiichi accident) 48 for the period 2010–2050 were to be delivered by coal fired power plants, the number of premature air pollution related deaths could increase by 4.4 million for the low IAEA projection and by 7.0 million for the high projection. The large scale expansion of natural gas use would likewise cause far more deaths than the expansion of nuclear power. In the all gas case (generating the projected nuclear electricity by gas fired power plants instead), the resulting additional human deaths are estimated at 0.4 million (low projection) and 0.7 million (high projection). The overall conclusion of the study emphasizes the importance of retaining and expanding the role of nuclear power in the near term global energy supply 49.
	18	+Fossil fuels are more dangerous than nuclear power because of persistent dangers involved in the supply chain.
	19	+Saletan, William. “Nuclear Overreactors.” Slate March 14, 2011. MO. Web. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2011/03/nuclear_overreactors.html
	20	+If Japan, the United States, or Europe retreats from nuclear power in the face of the current panic, the most likely alternative energy source is fossil fuel. And by any measure, fossil fuel is more dangerous. The sole fatal nuclear power accident of the last 40 years, Chernobyl, directly killed 31 people. By comparison, Switzerland's Paul Scherrer Institutecalculates that from 1969 to 2000, more than 20,000 people died in severe accidents in the oil supply chain. More than 15,000 people died in severe accidents in the coal supply chain—11,000 in China alone. The rate of direct fatalities per unit of energy production is 18 times worse for oil than it is for nuclear power.
	21	+The use of coal leads to detrimental health issues and is largely responsible for global warming.
	22	+Keeting 2001 - Martha Keating (Policy Advisor at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), “Cradle to Grave: the Environmental Impacts from Coal”, Clean Air Task Force, June, 2001 SD
	23	+The electric power industry is the largest toxic polluter in the country, and coal, which is used to generate over half of the electricity produced in the U.S., is the dirtiest of all fuels.1 From mining to coal cleaning, from transportation to electricity generation to disposal, coal releases numerous toxic pollutants into our air, our waters and onto our lands.2 Nation- ally, the cumulative impact of all of these effects is magnified by the enormous quantities of coal burned each year – nearly 900 million tons. Promoting more coal use without also providing additional environmental safe- guards will only increase this toxic abuse of our health and ecosystems. ∂ The trace elements contained in coal (and others formed during combustion) are a large group of diverse pollutants with a number of health and environmental effects.3 They are a public health concern because at sufficient exposure levels they adversely affect human health. Some are known to cause cancer, others impair reproduction and the normal development of children, and still others damage the nervous and immune systems. Many are also respira- tory irritants that can worsen respiratory conditions such as asthma. They are an environmental concern because they damage ecosystems. Power plants also emit large quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2), the “greenhouse gas” 2 largely responsible for climate change.
	24	+Marginalized groups are especially vulnerable to ecological disruption. According to Professor of Economics Edward Barbier in 2013:
	25	+Barbier 2013 - Edward Barbier Prof of Economics, U. of Wyoming, “Environmental Sustainability and Poverty Eradication in Developing Countries,” Getting Development Right: Structural Transformation, Inclusion, and Sustainability in the Post-Crisis Era. Ed. Eva Paus. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2013), pp. 173-194. AT
	26	+As noted above, the livelihoods of one-quarter of the population in developing countries- almost 1.3 billion – are particularly vulnerable to ecological disruption, and they account for many of the world’s extreme poor who live on less than US$2 per day (see also box 1.2). These populations live in regions with no access to irrigation systems, farm poor soils or land with steep slopes, and inhabit fragile forest systems. By 2015, despite a decline in the share of the world population living in extreme poverty, there are still likely to be nearly 3 billion people living on less than US$2 a day. As indicated in box 3.1, many low- and middle-income economies fall into a persistent pattern of resource use characterized by chronic resource dependency, the concentration of large segments of the population in fragile environments, and rural poverty.
	27	+
	28	+Coal is mined in largely poor and minority communities and poses severe health risks to residents.
	29	+Keating 2001 - Martha Keating (Policy Advisor at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), “Cradle to Grave: the Environmental Impacts from Coal”, Clean Air Task Force, June, 2001
	30	+Children living in the vicinity of power plants have the highest health risks. Adults are also at risk from contaminated groundwater and from inhaling dust from the facility. The poverty rate of people living within one mile of power plant waste facilities is twice as high as the national average and the percentage of non-white populations within one mile is 30 percent higher than the national average.51 ∂ Consequently, there may be other factors that make these people more vulnerable to health risks from these facilities. These include age (both young and old), nutritional status and access to health care. Also, these people are exposed to numerous other air pollutants emitted from the power plant smokestacks and possibly to air pollution from other nearby industrial facilities or lead paint in the home. Similar high poverty rates are found in 118 of the 120 coal-producing counties in America where power plant combustion wastes are increasingly being disposed of in unlined, under-regulated coal mine pits often directly into groundwater. ∂ Mineworkers and their families also often reside in the communities where the coal is being mined. Some of the additional health risks and dangers to residents of ∂ coal mining communities include injuries and fatalities related to the collapse of highwalls, roads and homes adjacent to or above coal seams being mined; the blasting of flyrock offsite onto a homeowner’s land or public roadway; injury and/ or suffocation at abandoned mine sites; and the inhalation of airborne fine dust particles off-site.
	31	+
	32	+
	33	+Coal mining has hurt indigenous communities, specifically the Navajo community in Arizona, and has met opposition by Native groups.
	34	+Dattaro, Laura Columbia Journalism Masters, Major in Science and Health. "Here's What Coal Mining Is Doing to Communities in the Navajo Nation | VICE News." VICE News RSS. Vice, 18 Mar. 2015. Web. 18 Sept. 2016.
	35	+For sixty years, the billions of tons of coal found beneath Arizona's Black Mesa have powered the cities of the Southwest. But getting at all that coal has meant the displacement of more than 12,000 people of the Navajo Nation, one of the largest removals of Native Americans since the 19th century. For those that have remained, the mining process has compromised their health and their environment.
	36	+The mesa rises up from the dry Arizona landscape a few miles south of Kayenta Township, where Peabody Energy operates a mine that in 2013 produced nearly eight million tons of coal. The company proposed in May 2012 to expand its excavation, a plan that needs approval from the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation, and Enforcement (OSMRE). Locals are concerned because that would add 841 acres of land to the Kayenta Mine complex — which would displace even more Navajo and ensure continued air and water contamination for decades to come.
	37	+A VICE News crew traveled to the Black Mesa area to document the effects of coal mining on their health, the environment, and the local economy.
	38	+The conflict between the company and locals extends beyond health and environmental concerns, though. The Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has threatened many Navajo with arrest if their sheep graze on company-owned land, Marsha Monestersky of the grassroots Navajo organization Forgotten People told VICE News. As many as 200 families, she said, remain on land the company has eyed for expansion.
	39	+In October, the agency sent SWAT teams to detain Navajo elders for owning too many sheep. Many in the region believe the BIA is using concerns about overgrazing as an excuse to intimidate the Navajo into abandoning their land, leaving the way clear for Peabody Energy to expand.
	40	+The Navajo obtained in December a US Department of Justice moratorium on BIA efforts to terminate their permits to keep sheep and other grazing animals. The moratorium expires this month.
	41	+"We're not sure what's going to happen," Monestersky told VICE News. "We haven't heard anything at all. It's the uncertainty that really is traumatizing for the people."
	42	+The situation in Kayenta isn't the only conflict over coal in Navajo Nation. Across the border, in New Mexico, tribal authorities purchased the Navajo Mine, which powers the Four Corners Generation Station in Fruitland. But not everyone was on board with the purchase, which cost millions of dollars that some residents say could be used for better purposes.
	43	+"They shouldn't have done that," Joe Allen, a lifelong resident of the Fruitland area, told VICE News. "It's just more pollution."
	44	+Earlier this month, a US District Court judge in Colorado ruled against a planned 714-acre expansion of the Navajo Mine, calling OSMRE's analysis of environmental and health impacts of the expansion insufficient.
	45	+"We don't need the mine. The pollution, we don't need," Allen told VICE News. "Are they going to keep on going until they get the last bit of the coal?"
	46	+
	47	+Coal by-product bad
	48	+The by-product of coal is more radioactive than the byproduct of nuclear energy.
	49	+Hvistendahl ’07 - Mara Hvistendahl Correspondent for Science magazine, Pulitzer Prize finalist “Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste,” Scientific American, December 13, 2007. SD
	50	+Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy. * See Editor's Note at end ofpage 2 At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels. Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6- kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas.
	51	+
	52	+NC – Shell
	53	+Text: __Aff Actors__ will substantially expand investment in small modular reactors and ban all other forms of nuclear power.
	54	+Competition: Mutual exclusivity – SMRs produce nuclear power so the aff requires banning them
	55	+
	56	+Net Benefits:
	57	+First is Power Supply
	58	+SMR’s are cost-effective and safe, providing more stable access to grid-scale power than any technology currently in use.
	59	+Kessides and Kuzznetsov ’12 - Ioannis N. Kessides and Vladimir Kuznetsov 12, Ioannis is a researcher for the Development Research Group at the World Bank, Vladimir is a consultant for the World Bank, “Small Modular Reactors for Enhancing Energy Security in Developing Countries”, August 14, Sustainability 2012, 4(8), 1806-1832
	60	+SMRs offer a number of advantages that can potentially offset the overnight cost penalty that they suffer relative to large reactors. Indeed, several characteristics of their proposed designs can serve to overcome some of the key barriers that have inhibited the growth of nuclear power. These characteristics include 23,24: * • Reduced construction duration. The smaller size, lower power, and simpler design of SMRs allow for greater modularization, standardization, and factory fabrication of components and modules. Use of factory-fabricated modules simplifies the on-site construction activities and greatly reduces the amount of field work required to assemble the components into an operational plant. As a result, the construction duration of SMRs could be significantly shorter compared to large reactors leading to important economies in the cost of financing. * • Investment scalability and flexibility. In contrast to conventional large-scale nuclear plants, due to their smaller size and shorter construction lead-times SMRs could be added one at a time in a cluster of modules or in dispersed and remote locations. Thus capacity expansion can be more flexible and adaptive to changing market conditions. The sizing, temporal and spatial flexibility of SMR deployment have important implications for the perceived investment risks (and hence the cost of capital) and financial costs of new nuclear build. Today’s gigawatt-plus reactors require substantial up-front investment—in excess of US$ 4 billion. Given the size of the up-front capital requirements (compared to the total capitalization of most utilities) and length of their construction time, new large-scale nuclear plants could be viewed as “bet the farm” endeavors for most utilities making these investments. SMR total capital investment costs, on the other hand, are an order of magnitude lower—in the hundreds of millions of dollars range as opposed to the billions of dollars range for larger reactors. These smaller investments can be more easily financed, especially in small countries with limited financial resources. SMR deployment with just-in-time incremental capacity additions would normally lead to a more favorable expenditure/cash flow profile relative to a single large reactor with the same aggregate capacity—even if we assume that the total time required to emplace the two alternative infrastructures is the same. This is because when several SMRs are built and deployed sequentially, the early reactors will begin operating and generating revenue while the remaining ones are being constructed. In the case of a large reactor comprising one large block of capacity addition, no revenues are generated until all of the investment expenditures are made. Thus the staggered build of SMRs could minimize the negative cash flow of deployment when compared to emplacing a single large reactor of equivalent power 25. * • Better power plant capacity and grid matching. In countries with small and weak grids, the addition of a large power plant (1000 MW(e) or more) can lead to grid stability problems—the general “rule of thumb” is that the unit size of a power plant should not exceed 10 percent of the overall electricity system capacity 11. The incremental capacity expansion associated with SMR deployment, on the other hand, could help meet increasing power demand while avoiding grid instability problems. * • Factory fabrication and mass production economies. SMR designs are engineered to be pre-fabricated and mass-produced in factories, rather than built on-site. Factory fabrication of components and modules for shipment and installation in the field with almost Lego-style assembly is generally cheaper than on-site fabrication. Relative to today’s gigawatt-plus reactors, SMRs benefit more from factory fabrication economies because they can have a greater proportion of factory made components. In fact, some SMRs could be manufactured and fully assembled at the factory, and then transported to the deployment site. Moreover, SMRs can benefit from the “economies of multiples” that accrue to mass production of components in a factory with supply-chain management. * • Learning effects and co-siting economies. Building reactors in a series can lead to significant per-unit cost reductions. This is because the fabrication of many SMR modules on plant assembly lines facilitates the optimization of manufacturing and assembly processes. Lessons learned from the construction of each module can be passed along in the form of productivity gains or other cost savings (e.g., lower labor requirements, shorter and more efficiently organized assembly lines) in successive units (Figure 6). Moreover, additional learning effects can be realized from the construction of successive units on the same site. Thus multi-module clustering could lead to learning curve acceleration. Since more SMRs are deployed for the same amount of aggregate power as a large reactor, these learning effects can potentially play a much more important role for SMRs than for large reactors 26. Also, sites incorporating multiple modules may require smaller operator and security staffing. * • Design simplification. Many SMRs offer significant design simplifications relative to large-scale reactors utilizing the same technology. This is accomplished thorough the adoption of certain design features that are specific to smaller reactors. For example, fewer and simpler safety features are needed in SMRs with integral design of the primary circuit (i.e., with an in vessel location of steam generators and no large diameter piping) that effectively eliminates large break LOCA. Clearly one of the main factors negatively affecting the competitiveness of small reactors is economies of scale—SMRs can have substantially higher specific capital costs as compared to large-scale reactors. However, SMRs offer advantages that can potentially offset this size penalty. As it was noted above, SMRs may enjoy significant economic benefits due to shorter construction duration, accelerated learning effects and co-siting economies, temporal and sizing flexibility of deployment, and design simplification. When these factors are properly taken into account, then the fact that smaller reactors have higher specific capital costs due to economies of scale does not necessarily imply that the effective (per unit) capital costs (or the levelized unit electricity cost) for a combination of such reactors will be higher in comparison to a single large nuclear plant of equivalent capacity 22,25. In a recent study, Mycoff et al. 22 provide a comparative assessment of the capital costs per unit of installed capacity of an SMR-based power station comprising of four 300 MW(e) units that are built sequentially and a single large reactor of 1200 MW(e). They employ a generic mode to quantify the impacts of: (1) economies of scale; (2) multiple units; (3) learning effects; (4) construction schedule; (5) unit timing; and (6) plant design (Figure 7). To estimate the impact of economies of scale, Mycoff et al. 22 assume a scaling factor n = 0.6 and that the two plants are comparable in design and characteristics—i.e., that the single large reactor is scaled down in its entirety to ¼ of its size. According to the standard scaling function, the hypothetical overnight cost (per unit of installed capacity) of the SMR-based power station will be 74 percent higher compared to a single large-scale reactor. Based on various studies in the literature, the authors posit that the combined impact of multiple units and learning effects is a 22 percent reduction in specific capital costs for the SMR-based station. To quantify the impact of construction schedule, the authors assume that the construction times of the large reactor and the SMR units are five and three years respectively. The shorter construction duration results in a 5 percent savings for the SMRs. Temporal flexibility (four sequentially deployed SMRs with the first going into operation at the same time as the large reactor and the rest every 9 months thereafter) and design simplification led to 5 and 15 percent reductions in specific capital costs respectively for the SMRs. When all these factors are combined, the SMR-based station suffers a specific capital cost disadvantage of only 4 percent as compared to the single large reactor of the same capacity. Thus, the economics of SMRs challenges the widely held belief that nuclear reactors are characterized by significant economies of scale 19.
	61	+
	62	+Second is Environment
	63	+The counterplan results in global SMR exports and helps get rid of coal–massively reduces emissions.
	64	+Rosner 11
	65	+Robert Rosner, Stephen Goldberg, Energy Policy Institute at Chicago, The Harris School of Public Policy Studies, November 2011, SMALL MODULAR REACTORS –KEY TO FUTURE NUCLEAR POWER GENERATION IN THE U.S., https://epic.sites.uchicago.edu/sites/epic.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/EPICSMRWhitePaperFinalcopy.pdf
	66	+As stated earlier, SMRs have the potential to achieve significant greenhouse gas emission reductions. They could provide alternative baseload power generation to facilitate the retirement of older, smaller, and less efficient coal generation plants that would, otherwise, not be good candidates for retrofitting carbon capture and storage technology. They could be deployed in regions of the U.S. and the world that have less potential for other forms of carbon-free electricity, such as solar or wind energy. There may be technical or market constraints, such as projected electricity demand growth and transmission capacity, which would support SMR deployment but not GW-scale LWRs. From the on-shore manufacturing perspective, a key point is that the manufacturing base needed for SMRs can be developed domestically. Thus, while the large commercial LWR industry is seeking to transplant portions of its supply chain from current foreign sources to the U.S., the SMR industry offers the potential to establish a large domestic manufacturing base building upon already existing U.S. manufacturing infrastructure and capability, including the Naval shipbuilding and underutilized domestic nuclear component and equipment plants. The study team learned that a number of sustainable domestic jobs could be created – that is, the full panoply of design, manufacturing, supplier, and construction activities – if the U.S. can establish itself as a credible and substantial designer and manufacturer of SMRs. While many SMR technologies are being studied around the world, a strong U.S. commercialization program can enable U.S. industry to be first to market SMRs, thereby serving as a fulcrum for export growth as well as a lever in influencing international decisions on deploying both nuclear reactor and nuclear fuel cycle technology. A viable U.S.-centric SMR industry would enable the U.S. to recapture technological leadership in commercial nuclear technology, which has been lost to suppliers in France, Japan, Korea, Russia, and, now rapidly emerging, China.

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