Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[robinson]

For reference, the nuclear plane down the road from me has been cranking out about 2.2 gigawatts for the past 20 years.

I didn't know New York had gone to nuclear planes. Amazing power output too. Before the nuclear plane, a top secret power generation down the road, New York only had, well, this - There are 6 licensed commercial nuclear reactors in New York. Half of the reactors are of the boiling water type (BWR), including the pair at Nine Mile Point and the lone reactor at the James A. Fitzpatrick power plant. Together, these total 2,468 (MW(e)capacity. The other three reactors, Indian Point 1 and 2 and the Ginna unit, are pressurized light water reactors (PWR) total 2,600 MW(e) capacity.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/states/statesny.html

Obviously we need more nuclear planes. Just one can equal the output of three Nuclear Power plants! Technology! Everybody should get one of them super cool nuclear planes.

Oh, and those dumb wind things, each one only powers 500 homes on a good day. Cost to build one, 1.5 million dollars. Income from each one, $600,000 to a Million dollars each year? (That figure is just an estimate) They sure must be built bad. If it cost so much to keep them running that you can't make a profit off of them. Ten years of wind power, 6 to 10 million dollars. Cost of tower - 1.5 million. Damn, they must be working on them all the time to spend that much on them. In ten years they spend at least 6 million dollars to just keep em running.

No wonder they only built 195 of them. Lets see, how about some math.

Cost to build, $550,000. Income each year, around 170 million. Low ball figure. It could be wrong, could be more, could be less.

Hmm... gosh, it seems almost like you could make money off of them things, if the service costs weren't so dang high and stuff.

[DRBUZZ0]

sorry. Nuclear *plant. And it's in Connecticut. Well first of all "On a good day"

And I detest this whole "X number of homes" bull. 500 homes would assume 3 kilowatts per home. Assuming the wind is blowing pretty damn good then that would be enough for 500 homes at 3kw each.

Of course, if it's summer, a good sized air conditioner could use a good kilowatt right there. Now if somebody has a well pump and they're watching TV... uh oh.... we could be past that 3kw.

I prefer to use a chart like this: http://www.depletedcranium.com/statsvis/energy.htm

Because it actually tells you what that power rating is equivalent. Considering that "homes" vary a hell of a lot and that residential is only one portion of the power usage.

Can you make money on wind? Possibly if you're sitting on 20,000 acres of land which is well suited for it. Considering subsidies and such as well.

I think that 600,000 dollar a year estimate is EXTREMELY large. I will do more research, but if wind power were actually so profitable they'd be popping up left and right without the need for extreme government subsidies.

[robinson]

I'm starting to suspect that there is some serious profit in alternative energy. You got Government tax credits, low interest financing, and quick return on the investment. Compared to some huge lag time with Nuclear Energy.

Not having to pay for fuel, that almost seems like a good deal. Money wise. How many people do you have to pay for a wind farm? Compared to a Power Plant?

Overhead might be real low. Put up another tower, you get more money. Now maybe the wind isn't all that great, the income is a lot lower. Even at a lower figure, say half a million a year, you still start making cash right away, as soon as the tower is up. Total cost of a tower, say 2.5 million, which obviously is profit for somebody right up front. It would only be five years before you pay for the capital outlay, another two years for interest, maybe less, then it is profit. I really doubt it cost half a million a year to service the towers.

So maybe the companies putting up all those wind towers actually know something about business. Same for the large scale solar plants being built. I'm just thinking out loud here. But it might be profit driving the alternatives.

Especially with France facing a trillion dollar debt to rebuild or refurbish all the Nuclear plants going off line in 2010.

Who knows.

[robinson]

Hey, I'm just going with what is published, It could all be a pack of lies. You know, like the ones about how cheap and safe Nuclear power plants are. Even at a much lower figure, say 200 homes for a tower, it is still a money machine, churning out profit.

I low balled all the figures, and have no idea what the costs are, after construction. But I know about loans and interest. If you can repay a huge loan faster, that is money in the bank. Nuclear Power Plants are very very expensive, and cost a lot for fuel, even though it is less than coal or oil, it still adds up each year. Overhead is high, and it takes a long time to repay the investment.

[Hindmost]

I didn't know New York had gone to nuclear planes. Amazing power output too. Before the nuclear plane, a top secret power generation down the road, New York only had, well, this -
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/states/statesny.html

Obviously we need more nuclear planes. Just one can equal the output of three Nuclear Power plants! Technology! Everybody should get one of them super cool nuclear planes.

Oh, and those dumb wind things, each one only powers 500 homes on a good day. Cost to build one, 1.5 million dollars. Income from each one, $600,000 to a Million dollars each year? (That figure is just an estimate) They sure must be built bad. If it cost so much to keep them running that you can't make a profit off of them. Ten years of wind power, 6 to 10 million dollars. Cost of tower - 1.5 million. Damn, they must be working on them all the time to spend that much on them. In ten years they spend at least 6 million dollars to just keep em running.

No wonder they only built 195 of them. Lets see, how about some math.

Cost to build, $550,000. Income each year, around 170 million. Low ball figure. It could be wrong, could be more, could be less.

Hmm... gosh, it seems almost like you could make money off of them things, if the service costs weren't so dang high and stuff.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3406.html

well, they are quite useful, but for a different purpose

glenn

[robinson]

I just KNEW somebody would post that. :D

[DRBUZZ0]

Hey, I'm just going with what is published, It could all be a pack of lies. You know, like the ones about how cheap and safe Nuclear power plants are. Even at a much lower figure, say 200 homes for a tower, it is still a money machine, churning out profit.

I low balled all the figures, and have no idea what the costs are, after construction. But I know about loans and interest. If you can repay a huge loan faster, that is money in the bank. Nuclear Power Plants are very very expensive, and cost a lot for fuel, even though it is less than coal or oil, it still adds up each year. Overhead is high, and it takes a long time to repay the investment.


Yes, there might be some profit in it. That doesn't actually mean that it has any hope of doing better than maybe 10% of baseload. Also, there's only so many places which are that good for wind power.

The cost of fuel for a nuclear plant is actually quite low. It's only about 25% of the opperating cost of the pant and I've seen it as being less than 20% of the cost of coal.

Building the plant tends to be expensive. That's really the problem. Once paid off and built they generate a lot of profit.

If you want to see how nuclear reactors can be built quickly, efficiently, relatively inexpensively and provide lots of energy, the US Navy would be the place to look.


Texas has built wind farms faster than any other state in the US. And they have plenty of land with good steady winds. Despite this, they still are building coal fired plants, because all that wind power is not enough to keep up with growth.

[robinson]

That isn't true. They need power plants for peak loads, not year round.

Tom Smith, director of environmental group Public Citizen's Texas office, said he would argue that studies show what the state needs most is peak power plants. Those are smaller plants that can be turned on to meet the power demand on the hottest days of the year, as opposed to big power plants that operate seven days of the week.

He added that when carefully analyzing the growth and demand of electricity, the cheapest way to provide the energy needed for the future is through energy efficiency, not more power plants. Smith says studies show that such measures cost two-fifths less than the cost of building a coal plant, not counting the environmental costs of operating a coal plant.
http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2007/04/02/daily22.html?t=printable

Of course he might be one of them Greens, and he just hates the idea of coal. But the figures on conservation are valid. It cost a lot less to spend on efficiency than on a big old Power Plant.

Looking at the current wind power in Texas, http://www.awea.org/projects/texas.html it becomes obvious that not only is there a lot of power in wind, but that Power Companies are putting up wind farms. Lots of them.

Look at Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, owned by FPL Energy, it puts out 735.5 MW??? WTF?? It isn't easy finding the facts on the money, but it really looks like wind is quick return high profit stuff. That goes against everything we have been told, how unpractical wind is.

What next? We find out solar is actually profitable too?

[luddite]

Let me just ask one question: Does anyone have any ideas for carbon-free energy that are not nuclear-based and which can provide the energy currently needed by civilization?

Define "need".

[robinson]

No need to. Solar can provide all the power "needed". It is the cost and storage problem that has been the obstacle. More sunlight falls on the roof of a house each day than the house can use. Add in the garage, the driveway, parking lots, there is far more energy than we could use. It is being able to afford it that is preventing solving the energy problem.

Nanosolar is doing a good job of solving one problem.

Yes, yes, northern climates that don't get sun is a real problem. But problems can be solved. There is way more energy coming from the sun than we need. No matter how you define "need".

[luddite]

And I detest this whole "X number of homes" bull. 500 homes would assume 3 kilowatts per home. Assuming the wind is blowing pretty damn good then that would be enough for 500 homes at 3kw each.

Actually, 3 kw per home is rather high. I've heard 1.5 kw before, but as I was looking for information about downtimes for Ontario nukes, I happened upon an article that stated that the average demand from an Ontario house is just 1 kW. Here's the link:

http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=businessNews&storyID=2007-10-09T133415Z_01_N09400066_RTRIDST_0_BUSINESS-UTILITIES-OPERATIONS-OPG-PICKERING-COL.XML&archived=False

[JoeEllison]

No need to. Solar can provide all the power "needed". It is the cost and storage problem that has been the obstacle. More sunlight falls on the roof of a house each day than the house can use. Add in the garage, the driveway, parking lots, there is far more energy than we could use. It is being able to afford it that is preventing solving the energy problem.

The bigger problem is that it is "ugly". The reality is that it would cost much less if it were mandatory and universal... but the people who can currently afford it think it is an eyesore, and brings down property values, so it is a no-go.

[robinson]

I don't find a roof top that is making me money every day "ugly". I call it beautiful. :D

[JoeEllison]

I don't find a roof top that is making me money every day "ugly". I call it beautiful. :D

I live in a suburban neighborhood where it is not uncommon for a person to buy 6-7 lots, and then put in a soccer field for the kids. You and I might find saing money and not polluting to be a beautiful thing... but if you don't have the minimum number of trees in your yard, or an ugly car, be prepared to pay huge fines to the city.

[robinson]

You have to pay a fine if you don't have an ugly car???

[Lonewulf]

You have to pay a fine if you don't have an ugly car???
If property values go up, your property tax goes up, I think.

Also, if a windmill can fuel 200 homes, or even 500 homes, how much industry can it fuel? And what about places where putting it out in open fields with high winds isn't really an option?

[luddite]

If property values go up, your property tax goes up, I think.

I think that's the opposite of what Joe Ellison was saying. He says people have ideas of beauty which include trees and cars, make regulations requiring them, and fine people who don't have them. Presumably, they want property taxes to be as high as possible. You make it sound like the property tax is a fine itself, which I don't think was the point.

It's an interesting perspective. Is that what you meant to say?

Also, if a windmill can fuel 200 homes, or even 500 homes, how much industry can it fuel?

Industry varies widely. A lot of modern industry is built up on a surplus of cheap energy, and depends on it, often for products like cars, that are in themselves energy intensive to operate. We've done some very stupid things, becoming dependent on a finite resource that we've used up in a few generations. Wind fuelled a great deal of industry in the past. The term windmill retains the industrial word "mill".

And what about places where putting it out in open fields with high winds isn't really an option?

Residential rooftop wind turbines are emerging. Some are penetrating into a niche market now. Historically, the challenge has been to overcome the vibration which penetrates the structure a turbine sits on. There are a variety of imaginative ways for addressing this. My current favourite is a model which is magnetically levitated to acoustically isolate it from the building it sits on:

http://www.mag-wind.com/mw1100.php

I don't think it's an economical way of generating electricity in today's market, but I would guess it's a lot closer to a market breakthrough than any of the advanced nuclear options.

[Lonewulf]

I think that's the opposite of what Joe Ellison was saying. He says people have ideas of beauty which include trees and cars, make regulations requiring them, and fine people who don't have them. Presumably, they want property taxes to be as high as possible. You make it sound like the property tax is a fine itself, which I don't think was the point.

It's an interesting perspective. Is that what you meant to say?

I got mixed up from Joe's post to the response:

You have to pay a fine if you don't have an ugly car???

My first thought was that you do have to pay the government if you don't have an ugly car (thanks to property tax), so that's what I responded to. I don't perceive upped tax as a "fine", per se, just that that's what leapt to my mind that someone may be referencing to.

[Modified]

If we want to deal with global warming, perhaps we should stop trying to air condition Arizona? If people had chosen to live in more amenable climates in the first place, they wouldn't find it a hardship.

I don't know exactly what the year-round climate is like in Arizona, but here in SW Florida, your heating and cooling costs for seven months of the year are minimal, and you can get free home hot water and/or free heat for a pool for a very low startup cost ($600 or so in materials for each, if you can do the install work yourself, lasts for many decades). Sure, for three months of the year the overnight low averages 75F and you need to have the AC cranking to survive, but year-round energy costs for a typical block-and-stucco house with attic insulation only here are lower than for a well-insulated frame house in lower Michigan, or anywhere else that I've lived (central Alabama - much higher, inland San Francisco area - slightly higher).

One thing that helps in a hot climate is not being overweight. In the summer we keep the house at 82F in the daytime and 78F at night with a ceiling fan on and are quite comfortable.

[Slimething]

I don't know exactly what the year-round climate is like in Arizona, but here in SW Florida,

Hot, really hot. If luddite wants to have people where I live move to cooler climes, he can damned well grow his own lettuce, asparagus, etc. However, I don't believe anyone gave him/her the right to make that call.

Sorry, luddite, the universe doesn't run by your rules. Find a different one, will ya? Come to AZ and show us how to live comfortably without AC, maybe some will follow your lead. The rest of us will be laughing.

[Lonewulf]

Hot, really hot. If luddite wants to have people where I live move to cooler climes, he can damned well grow his own lettuce, asparagus, etc. However, I don't believe anyone gave him/her the right to make that call.

Sorry, luddite, the universe doesn't run by your rules. Find a different one, will ya? Come to AZ and show us how to live comfortably without AC, maybe some will follow your lead. The rest of us will be laughing.
Why laugh?

If someone demonstrated a way to actually live comfortably without AC in Corpus Christi, Texas, I would have praised them as a savior and worshipped their feet. I would also save money by having lower energy costs.

I mean, I don't think it's possible, but I wouldn't laugh at them if they actually showed me how to live comfortably. :D

[Ziggurat]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3406.html

well, they are quite useful, but for a different purpose

glenn

As far as I'm aware, I think this x-ray induced fission hasn't panned out - I don't think anyone has reproduced those results.

More intersting that that, though, was Project Pluto, a plan to build a cruise missile powered by a conventional nuclear reactor. An unshielded reactor, I might add.

http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html

Never got built, though. Just as well.

[luddite]

Hot, really hot. If luddite wants to have people where I live move to cooler climes, he can damned well grow his own lettuce, asparagus, etc. However, I don't believe anyone gave him/her the right to make that call.

Sorry, luddite, the universe doesn't run by your rules. Find a different one, will ya? Come to AZ and show us how to live comfortably without AC, maybe some will follow your lead. The rest of us will be laughing.
Actually, I suspect the reason Arizona has only recently experienced a surge in population has more to do with low agricultural productivity than availability of air conditioners. It's an arid climate. People seem always to have figured out how to live moderately comfortably where they could feed themselves. Cheap energy just made it possible to feed yourself in previously uninhabitable areas, either by pumping water to areas where it had previously been inadequate or by trucking food in from more productive areas.

Okay, I just did a cursory search. The total value of Arizona's agricultural production is $6.3 billion and the source also pointed out that:

Most Arizona soils have very low levels of organic matter, usually less than 1% by weight.

Our top soils around the state average only about one-half inch.

http://www.agclassroom.org/kids/stats/arizona.pdf

By contrast, Ontario's agricultural productivity is $30 billion. So we actually do grow our own lettuce. In fact, we export $6.9 billion worth annually to the United States, more than Arizona's entire agricultural output.

So the real question is, when cheap oil is gone, will Arizonans still be able to afford to truck in lettuce from places like Ontario.

http://ogov.newswire.ca/ontario/GONE/2007/10/01/c7135.html?lmatch=&lang=_e.html

I don't want to tell people where to live. I'm only observing that the status quo cannot continue. So it is in the best interests of Arizonans themselves to get their house in order. I'm happy to leave you to your own solutions.

But let's be serious about the problem at hand. I'm going to quote my energetic friend Jeff Berg from a piece he published somewhere and sent to me directly. The only thing I have to add to this piece is that we are using more and more energy just to extract the energy we need. And that means more and more emissions just for the energy we "need". Where oil used to be extracted with a 100:1 rate of energy return, it's now economical in the Alberta tar sands to operate at an EROI (Energy Return on Investment) of less than 2:1 with some analysts observing that in some cases the EROI is actually negative. So getting the same productive energy is going to mean extracting and burning 50 times more fuel or more. I'm just saying, to me learning to live without an air conditioner is a worthwhile goal.

http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil+sands-tar+sands-peak+oil/508

When Confronting Problems of Scale

Never: Underline, CAPITALIZE, bold or Exclaim!

(North American consumption excepted)


The U.S. imports far more oil than any other country USES! 14 Mmb/d. (Mmb/d: Million barrels per day) In fact no country uses even half of what the U.S. imports. In order to get to the U.S. number you have to add together the consumption of Australia, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Spain, the U.K., Italy, Mexico, France, and Canada. Did I mention this is just what the U.S. imports? i.e. That which makes it highly vulnerable.

Aka. What, if it was denied, would cause its economy to drop like it was shot through the brain stem.

When you look at total U.S. consumption, about 20 million barrels a day, then what you are talking about is a sum that is greater than what is consumed by a 194 countries combined! That's right more than what is consumed by 194 countries of this our world, planet earth, the third rock from the sun. To put it another way, because redundancy is impossible with such a fact, the U.S. consumes more than the sum of every country in the world outside of the top 20.

Announcers Voice: “At half time for the Age of Oil and Gas:

The score is U.S. 20: Rest of World ( ROW) 19

(Mmb/d)

Is this not stunning? Does this not blow your brains to smithereens and make you wonder what rock this fact has been hiding under for all these years? Or is it we who have been under the rock? And is this not the kind of news that every last one of your countrymen and women should have on their memory speed dial? At first glance at the very least it does go some way towards explaining a few things.

Because after all energy not money is what makes the world go round. Money is a collective fiction that we use to facilitate barter. Energy on the other hand Matters. It is the foundation of all wealth in the modern age. Since 1905 it is also the sine qua non of military superiority. 1905 being the year the Brits switched their naval fleet over from coal to oil despite having no internal supplies. A move that launched the Great Oil Game that we still see being played out in the Middle East and around the world today and for the foreseeable future. Our own country being increasingly very much not immune to the stresses caused by America’s appetite for things liquid. [5] And don’t get me wrong I fully recognize that this is an appetite that we very much share though there are considerably less of us and we have yet to make our own supplies inadequate.

Oil is the source of much of the physical work that is done by a modern industrial economy. One barrel of oil doing the equivalent in the physics sense of the term of work as 23,200 man hours of labour. Just try pushing your average SUV 15 to 18 miles and you begin to get a sense of what a mere 1 gallon of gasoline does. Once you’ve completed this experiment as a side bonus for your efforts you can ruminate on the fact that herein lies a battle that North American society finally wins! A Japanese citizen after all would have to push their automobile 35 to 40 miles. And imagine if you can trying to dig the foundation for a house, much less an office tower or a subdivision, without a backhoe.

What 14 million barrels of oil can do is the equivalent of three, two, four, eight, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero man hours of work. aka 324.8 billion man hours of labor. This is what the U.S. imports DAILY. America thinks it has a problem with a dependency on Mexican labourers? They are well and truly but the most miniscule of drops in the supertanker by comparison. And this is day in-day out. No cigarette breaks, no chit chat, no office romances, no union, no vacation time, no health benefits, no insubordination and no rest for the wicked. (Oil being known as the Devil’s blood and/or tears. Would that make natural gas his breath?)

The entire work force of the U.S. is, oh let's call it for the sake of mathematical ease, 150 million people. In 8 hours 150 million people can do 1.2 billion man hours of labour. In other words. It would take the entire work force of the U.S. labouring 8 hours a day for 5 days a week for 3/4 of the year, and 6 days a week for the rest the rest of the year WITH NO WEEKS OFF, to do the same man hours of work as what imported oil alone does every single day. If you add in the rest of the oil America consumes in a single day and compare that to its labour force: Then every member of the labour force would have to work 6 days a week, 10.25 hours a day, 52 weeks a year, to equal ONE DAY of the work oil does every day of the calendar year without so much as a labour day off.[6]

And this is only the work that the oil is doing. America is also consuming 23 Trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year. (1% is LNG)[7] That's right trillion and 23 of them.

That's a 23 followed by 12 zeros or what looks like this: 23,000,000,000,000 This is the equivalent of another 11.19 million barrels of oil daily. And then of course there is the 1.112 billion tons of coal which is equivalent to about 10.9 Mmb/d. Now that I've got you started I'll let you do the rest of the math on what this means in terms of how much work will have to be replaced when this stuff goes the way of all flesh. If you really feel a need to add nuclear energy to this equation I leave you to your leg and math work. (One fact for free, there are 103 nuke plants in U.S.) I’ve belaboured this point enough methinks.

Though the above doesn’t even factor the things that oil and gas can do that no human can do no matter how many of them you enslave or liberate or how hard and/or smart they work. Petro, Agri and Pharma chemicals are all utterly dependent on these most malleable of molecules. The computer that I am typing this piece on being a rather good for example.

Without fossil fuel energy there is no modern life as we know it. Most especially terrifying for the gilded class is that without liquid fuels there is most certainly no high life. We as of yet not having surmounted the coal shoveling rate technical hurdle that 747’s present. Without liquid fuels there is no globalized corporate world economy much less just in time inventory and 'business class' seating. There is no American ‘superpower’ and super-reach and wars once again become a ground force game of attrition and once again labour is nowhere near as ‘offshorable’.

Furthermore there is no booming-stock-market-retire-by-the-time-you’re-forty meme and no thousands upon thousands of millionaires and hundreds of billionaires juicing it up and trickling it down on America. There is no breakfast in New York and dinner in Paris with a stopover in London for a spot of tea. None of this would exist in America or anywhere else without access to oil and gas. And for America this means increasingly OPOG. (Other People's Oil and Gas)[8]

Things were very much not always this way. Before the 20th Century oil stayed pretty much exclusively in the country where it was produced. And in 1901 just before the first great American discovery the largest producing well in the world was in Russia and producing a mere 4 to 5 thousand barrels a day. And this was the greatest producing well in the history of all of humankind! Well all that changed with the great discovery on January 10, 1901 in eastern Jefferson County, Texas. The discoveries at Spindletop quickly yielded several hundred thousands barrels a day and America and the world were changed. Though it is true to say that the jury is still very much out on the forever part. Fossils and geology having the tendency to cause one to pause over the ephemeral nature of all carbon based living things.

Spindletop and ensuing discoveries led to a 10.2 million barrels a day production capacity. This is what made America so "energetic" and power full. This and not "rugged individualism" or "entrepreneurialism" or "unleashing the power of the market" or "being the elect of god" was the single most important factor to America becoming the most dominant economy and military that this ole world of ours has ever seen.[9] The thing about oil and military dominance is of course that, like us and our reach, it is finite. The current administration in both Canada and the U.S. knowing a great deal about the value of the former while failing to understand the limitations of the latter.

America peaked at 10.2 million barrels a day in December 1970 and today produces but half that amount.[10] 1970 was also before America’s balance of payments and debt were stratospheric and before she became so wholly dependent on others for her energy. Coincidence? You decide. Canada on the other hand has never produced more oil and gas and our balance of payments and debt to GDP ratio are the envy of the world.

What is not up for debate is whether American production will continue to dwindle. It will.[11] Getting smaller and smaller while America tries to import more and more from an oil thirsty world. The laws of the market making ever more strident demands for the kind of price that unsubstitutable goods always command. Unsubstitutable in the medium term at least in the longer term this situation will be absolutely be remedied either by sagacity or geology. Still, in the near term how is this oil to be paid for? America's balance of payments is already so out of whack that the whole world trembles at the dread spectre of default.

And if this were not bad enough, yes, sorry to say we're not done yet. Soon, oh so very soon, the very same will be as desperately and incalculably and dangerously true of America's natural gas supply. The U.S. consumes 25% of the world’s natural gas and owns 3%. And according to Alan Greenspan and the former chairman of Exxon Lee Raymond and a whole bevy of geologists America’s production has passed peak. (Let us hope Alberta’s experience isn’t a perfect indicator of what’s to come)

And while we are on the subject of depletion and things liquid I could go on about the depletion rate of Ogallala[12], and the Colorado not reaching the ocean anymore and the insanity of a golf course in every desert and a swimming pool in every pot but I won’t. And I won’t not the least because we Canadians are NO BETTER on a per capita consumption and emission basis. In point of verifiable fact we are actually worse.

Sufficed to say there are more than a few ticking time bombs lying in the long grass like IED’s waiting for our children to come out and play. The point isn’t their number the point is that America’s people along with those that have been swept up in her economic wake (at this point this doesn’t leave out many of us) haven't exactly been well served by her and our business leadership. That's right business leadership. Politics being merely the shadow cast by big business over America. the world and our finances, wars, and children's future.

[robinson]

On a lighter note, the worlds first nuclear powered ferry (http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/10/09/transportation-tuesday-the-solar-sailor/) is in operation now. Amazing technology. Low fuel costs as well.

[Hindmost]

As far as I'm aware, I think this x-ray induced fission hasn't panned out - I don't think anyone has reproduced those results.

More intersting that that, though, was Project Pluto, a plan to build a cruise missile powered by a conventional nuclear reactor. An unshielded reactor, I might add.

http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html

Never got built, though. Just as well.

I was semi joking...just added the first link I found relevant to the plane issue..actually haven't studied the x-ray stuff--you've given me something to study now. However, it sounded good due to the radiation issue.

Back in my college days, I had a professor of Aerospace and Nuclear engineering. I asked him why the aerospace thing. Turns out he worked on the first Nuclear plane back in the 50s. He indicated that it was impracticle due to shielding. It would kill the pilots or the ground crew since one could not really approach the plane. Maintenance would just be a nightmare. But it could fly for a very long time.

In reviewing the NASA plans for the mars mission, I discovered many years ago that the plan is to use nuclear propulsion for sending cargo ships--and possibly manned ships from low earth orbit. The real reason is because of the thrust that can be developed.

http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/HumanExplore/Exploration/EXLibrary/docs/MarsRef/contents.htm

If you want to take a look. It would be a ton of first of a kind engineering.

glenn

[luddite]

If someone demonstrated a way to actually live comfortably without AC in Corpus Christi, Texas, I would have praised them as a savior and worshipped their feet. I would also save money by having lower energy costs.

If Corpus Christi has extended periods (weeks) where the temperature never gets comfortable, even at night, then it's probably not realistic to imagine going without air conditioning. If it has a few hours of cool weather at night to flush out the house, building materials, design features, insulation and shading can probably keep it comfortable during the day.

If it's a fire-pit 24-hours daily, all these features are still helpful, because they dramatically reduce the air conditioning load.

But I also think there is a close relationship between where people live and what they can make comfortable. While it's possible to survive in Antarctica today, it's not a popular place to set up house, and there's a reason for that. When energy becomes scarce and expensive (and it really is a question of when, not if), a lot of places that seem great today will become depopulated, and not just because of air conditioning. Because living near a major interstate is helpful for commuting to work, but totally useless if you can't afford the gas. Because if you're used to getting your parsley trucked up in refrigerated trucks, you're going to be disappointed when the price doubles, triples, or goes up 10-fold.

That's why I personally like the idea of a carbon tax. In many ways, dealing with global warming by taxing carbon means we scale down slowly rather than ending up with something like the 1970 oil shocks (except this time they'll be much worse). It also allows for a lot of individual freedom and retains much of the market we've all become used to. If we wait until we hit a brick wall, it's much more likely we'll have to turn to carbon rationing or other more intrusive measures.

[robinson]

Weather right now in Corpus Christi, TX
Mostly Cloudy
Wind: S at 20 mph
Humidity: 67%
Mostly Sunny
87°F | 76°F

What a horrible place to live.

[Lonewulf]

Weather right now in Corpus Christi, TX
Mostly Cloudy
Wind: S at 20 mph
Humidity: 67%
Mostly Sunny
87°F | 76°F

What a horrible place to live.
Yes, because you can tell something's general average climate by the temperature in a single day, in October no less. :rolleyes:

What a horrible way to think.

Seriously, have you never heard of "seasons"? Here, let me help you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasons

A little education goes a long way towards not making an idiot out of yourself. Of course, if you really think that Corpus Christi heat is no big deal, let me invite you to do some ditch digging during the day in the summer. Believe me, I know what THAT feels like, and if you think it's pleasant, then you're pretty damn deluded.

By the way, the temperature in Phoenix, Arizona:

78 °F / 26 °C
Partly Cloudy
Humidity: 25%
Dew Point: 40 °F / 4 °C
Wind: 4 mph / 6 km/h / 1.5 m/s Variable
Pressure: 29.84 in / 1010 hPa (Falling)
Visibility: 10.0 miles / 16.1 kilometers
UV: 7 out of 16
Clouds: Few 8500 ft / 2590 m
(Above Ground Level)

Guess by your logic, Phoenix is never hot at all, is it? :rolleyes:

[mhaze]

If Corpus Christi has extended periods (weeks) where the temperature never gets comfortable, even at night, then it's probably not realistic to imagine going without air conditioning.

That's why I personally like the idea of a carbon tax. In many ways, dealing with global warming by taxing carbon means we scale down slowly rather than ending up with something like the 1970 oil shocks (except this time they'll be much worse). It also allows for a lot of individual freedom and retains much of the market we've all become used to. If we wait until we hit a brick wall, it's much more likely we'll have to turn to carbon rationing or other more intrusive measures.

If there was no global warming, would you still favor luddititry?

[luddite]

The data selected is cherry-picked to present only one side of the equation. The statement about capacity factor is just not correct. True, there have been some older Candu plants that have had low capacity factors. Such things are common as a technology develops. The facts are that nuclear power plants have better capacity factors than coal or gas fired plants. Candu plants have a combined lifetime capacity factor of about 80% and the Candu 6 generation have CFs of close to 85% and are typically the highest in the world. In the US...nuke plants have a installed capacity of about 12-14% of the grid total but supply 20% of the electriciy due to their high capacity factor. The arguement is truly a non-starter as nuclear plants world wide have proven track records of supplying electricity. Now, one can single out a plant that is shut down longterm for design modification or refit and that plant will show a low CF. But that is not evidence. Us plants had low capacity factors while doing TMI retrofits. They improved after the changes were made.

As I've said before, it's almost impossible to get an unbiased assessment of nuclear. I've avoided Sierra Club, Greenpeace, WWF, the Suzuki Foundation and the Ontario Clean Air Alliance reports because they are fundamentally anti-nuclear. Similarly, things written by power worker unions or the nuclear industry are highly suspect for swinging the other way.

To my knowledge, the Pembina Institute is not anti-nuclear in principle, though Mark Winfield, the principal author of their nuclear assessment, would personally prefer not to see it in the mix, mostly because investing in new nuclear would in itself imply the largest budget item ever seen in Ontario, and would leave everyone with little appetite for additional spending in things that would have more immediate effects.

In addition a huge part of the objection is that nuclear plants are almost always supported by coal. That's certainly the objection of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, whose principal goal is to get rid of coal. They vastly prefer burning natural gas to building more nuclear plants.

Energy Probe is another organization that tries to balance a lot of things. They object to nuclear because it's expensive and unreliable. They are big into full-cost accounting, but find that the true costs of nuclear are incalculable.

Ralph Torrie has headed up the assessment of meeting Canada's Kyoto requirements for the Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. In personal communications with me, he and other members of the team (including Glen Murray, who heads the Round Table) stated that they had been instructed to include nuclear in the mix. I've seen his resulting wedge diagrams. You can see them here:

http://www.nrtee-trnee.ca/eng/publications/wedge-advisory-note/section4-ecc-wedge-advisory-note-eng.html

Nuclear is represented by the very thin dark blue line. According to Ralph Torrie, it's also one of the most expensive items in the mix. Neither Torrie nor Murray wanted it in there. They were following orders. So if Canada, with its history of developing nuclear and availability of uranium, can only achieve such paltry GHG reductions at high cost, what's the point for anyone else?

Now here's a site that sort of straddles the two sides. The Consumers Council of Canada has concluded that Ontario's CANDUs are potentially good reactors but suffer from poor management. So maybe that's how we reconcile your views with others.

http://www.consumerscouncil.com/site/Consumers_Council_of_Canada_69/pdf/candu.pdf

If you live in Ontario, you're constantly bombarded by threats of power outages from nuclear plants down. You're right, a lot of it is scheduled maintenance or retrofits, but it still requires running coal plants to the maximum and importing coal-generated power from Ohio. The climate doesn't care about the reason. So if that's the reason for the different interpretations of capacity factors, I'd say the Pembina assessment is more sensible than the one you sent me from the Canadian Nuclear Society. And to an Ontarian who pays attention to these things, an insistence that the CANDUs have a great performance record only makes me think "Well, how bad are the others?". It damns all nuclear.

Nor is it fair, I don't think, to trot out the fact that in the US, nuclear has 12-14% of the installed capacity but generates 20% of the electricity. The reason for this is not because nuclear is reliable but because it cannot easily be turned off. So any demand fluctuations have to be made up for by shutting off other sources.

So maybe that's how we reconcile the two versions of the capacity factors. One side counts the maintenance and retrofit times while the other doesn't. Nuclear plants being big and bulky, the closure of a plant has enormous implications. And if you want to maintain high demand while you retrofit, you burn a lot of coal. At least part of that demand could have been filled by investment in conservation and renewables instead. But nuclear plants require the demand to remain high. They are inherently hostile to conservation measures. And because they're so big, they require an alternate generation source that can be turned on at will. I mentioned in an earlier post that neither nuclear nor wind are dispatchable, but wind lends itself far better to storage backup, because it would be very unusual for 1/5 of the wind turbines in the Province to suddenly stop moving. By contrast it's not at all unusual for 1/5 of the nuclear plants to be off, so they need generation backup, not storage.

You've mentioned industry, and I sent a rambling response. In Ontario, 2% of the electricity customers consume 50% of the energy. Many of these users demand steady power 24/7 and are suited to nuclear. But the average Ontarian subsidizes them because they get the cheapest price on power by far. Which is part of the reason why it is not in the interest of industry to have residential and commercial customers attain 5-fold reductions in energy use. In order to support the industry to the same degree, they'd have to pay 5 times the cost for their energy, and they'd raise a stink. I think this is true for most of the world. I'm not sure it's a healthy model we want to continue with.

In a previous post you cited 6-year building plans for new nuclear plants.

I should point out that the buildout plan for Ontario anticipates at least a 10-year build cycle. They are really only expecting new reactors online by 2025. In addition, every nuclear reactor built in Ontario has been behind schedule and over budget. Some have been completed many years later than planned, so even these plans may be optimistic. Here's the quote from the OPA in their pitch to sell a nuclear component to their plan:

Nuclear plants can take anywhere from nine to 12 years to get approvals, build and start up. The long lead times and importance of nuclear power to our electricity future make it critical that we begin to plan for nuclear power now.

See the source here:

http://www.powerauthority.on.ca/Storage/41/3628_REv._IPSP_brochure_Feb._2007_for_Web_site.pdf

I would also dispute the idea that we can count on 6-year construction periods anywhere else, either. The only reactor in the Western world commissioned after Chernobyl was 18 months behind schedule at 18 months into construction. That's quite a feat. There's a whole list of others. The article below summarizes the situation, with the conclusion:

"The nuclear industry has put forward very optimistic construction cost estimates, but there is no experience that comes even close to backing them up,'' says Paul Joskow, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

http://www.tmia.com/News/FinnishNucFiasco.htm

The AECL states that even with cost overruns and stranded debt repayment it's still the cheapest energy available. But they don't include insurance, decommissioning and waste storage costs. And I've never seen an assessment of what it would cost to properly dispose of the tailings.

On a side note, recently our Prime Minister acquiesced to a US sponsored plan to return spent fuel to the country where it originated. As the number 1 producer of uranium worldwide, Canada would end up with a nuclear waste storage problem of enormous proportions. The result is a movement to stop any further expansion of uranium mining and export. That would raise the price of uranium substantially worldwide. I can only imagine that Australians have similar concerns and pressures.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/254159

[luddite]

If there was no global warming, would you still favor luddititry?

Not with anywhere near the same zeal.

I thought the off-grid house was cool long before I was really worried about global warming. But it's definitely global warming that gives ludditry some urgency.

By the way, thanks for the term ludditry. I like it.

[Slimething]

Actually, I suspect the reason Arizona has only recently experienced a surge in population has more to do with low agricultural productivity than availability of air conditioners. It's an arid climate.

Ah, yes, you truly are a luddite. You can suspect anything you want but that does not make it so.

Cheap energy just made it possible to feed yourself in previously uninhabitable areas, either by pumping water to areas where it had previously been inadequate or by trucking food in from more productive areas.

Nope. Sorry. Water is the currency of farming in seemingly inhospitable areas. The Imperial Valley, California; the Yakima Valley, Washington; and the small amount of arable land in AZ are all arid desert and were reclaimed long before the advent of electricity or fossil fuels.


By contrast, Ontario's agricultural productivity is $30 billion. So we actually do grow our own lettuce. In fact, we export $6.9 billion worth annually to the United States, more than Arizona's entire agricultural output.

Lettuce was an example. How are your dates?

So the real question is, when cheap oil is gone, will Arizonans still be able to afford to truck in lettuce from places like Ontario.

No. I suspect that, if Arizonans consume ONT lettuce, it's due to availability and seasonality. Transport of foodstuffs is relatively new. We used to put up with no fruit for the majority of the winter and can go back to that if need be. Frankly, I was wondering where some of the off-taste crap was coming from.

I don't want to tell people where to live. I'm only observing that the status quo cannot continue. So it is in the best interests of Arizonans themselves to get their house in order. I'm happy to leave you to your own solutions.

Not to worry. Just don't visit. We don't like luddites here.

[Belz...]

Let me just ask one question: Does anyone have any ideas for carbon-free energy that are not nuclear-based and which can provide the energy currently needed by civilization?

Getter Rays.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Let me just ask one question: Does anyone have any ideas for carbon-free energy that are not nuclear-based and which can provide the energy currently needed by civilization?

Depends what you mean by "can".

Solar, wind and wave power are all scalable, it's just a matter of building enough of them. They're as close to carbon free as you can get.

In any case, nuclear power is only carbon-free if you can miraculously mine, transport and refine uranium ore without burning fossil fuels, and good luck with that.

[RecoveringYuppy]

The components to build solar, wind and wave power can be obtained without burning fossil fuels?

[Kevin_Lowe]

The components to build solar, wind and wave power can be obtained without burning fossil fuels?

I didn't say that.

[Hindmost]

As I've said before, it's almost impossible to get an unbiased assessment of nuclear. I've avoided Sierra Club, Greenpeace, WWF, the Suzuki Foundation and the Ontario Clean Air Alliance reports because they are fundamentally anti-nuclear. Similarly, things written by power worker unions or the nuclear industry are highly suspect for swinging the other way.

To my knowledge, the Pembina Institute is not anti-nuclear in principle, though Mark Winfield, the principal author of their nuclear assessment, would personally prefer not to see it in the mix, mostly because investing in new nuclear would in itself imply the largest budget item ever seen in Ontario, and would leave everyone with little appetite for additional spending in things that would have more immediate effects.

In addition a huge part of the objection is that nuclear plants are almost always supported by coal. That's certainly the objection of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, whose principal goal is to get rid of coal. They vastly prefer burning natural gas to building more nuclear plants.

Energy Probe is another organization that tries to balance a lot of things. They object to nuclear because it's expensive and unreliable. They are big into full-cost accounting, but find that the true costs of nuclear are incalculable.

Ralph Torrie has headed up the assessment of meeting Canada's Kyoto requirements for the Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. In personal communications with me, he and other members of the team (including Glen Murray, who heads the Round Table) stated that they had been instructed to include nuclear in the mix. I've seen his resulting wedge diagrams. You can see them here:

http://www.nrtee-trnee.ca/eng/publications/wedge-advisory-note/section4-ecc-wedge-advisory-note-eng.html

Nuclear is represented by the very thin dark blue line. According to Ralph Torrie, it's also one of the most expensive items in the mix. Neither Torrie nor Murray wanted it in there. They were following orders. So if Canada, with its history of developing nuclear and availability of uranium, can only achieve such paltry GHG reductions at high cost, what's the point for anyone else?

Now here's a site that sort of straddles the two sides. The Consumers Council of Canada has concluded that Ontario's CANDUs are potentially good reactors but suffer from poor management. So maybe that's how we reconcile your views with others.

http://www.consumerscouncil.com/site/Consumers_Council_of_Canada_69/pdf/candu.pdf

If you live in Ontario, you're constantly bombarded by threats of power outages from nuclear plants down. You're right, a lot of it is scheduled maintenance or retrofits, but it still requires running coal plants to the maximum and importing coal-generated power from Ohio. The climate doesn't care about the reason. So if that's the reason for the different interpretations of capacity factors, I'd say the Pembina assessment is more sensible than the one you sent me from the Canadian Nuclear Society. And to an Ontarian who pays attention to these things, an insistence that the CANDUs have a great performance record only makes me think "Well, how bad are the others?". It damns all nuclear.

Nor is it fair, I don't think, to trot out the fact that in the US, nuclear has 12-14% of the installed capacity but generates 20% of the electricity. The reason for this is not because nuclear is reliable but because it cannot easily be turned off. So any demand fluctuations have to be made up for by shutting off other sources.

So maybe that's how we reconcile the two versions of the capacity factors. One side counts the maintenance and retrofit times while the other doesn't. Nuclear plants being big and bulky, the closure of a plant has enormous implications. And if you want to maintain high demand while you retrofit, you burn a lot of coal. At least part of that demand could have been filled by investment in conservation and renewables instead. But nuclear plants require the demand to remain high. They are inherently hostile to conservation measures. And because they're so big, they require an alternate generation source that can be turned on at will. I mentioned in an earlier post that neither nuclear nor wind are dispatchable, but wind lends itself far better to storage backup, because it would be very unusual for 1/5 of the wind turbines in the Province to suddenly stop moving. By contrast it's not at all unusual for 1/5 of the nuclear plants to be off, so they need generation backup, not storage.

The wedge graph that you indicate about reduction of greenhouse gases..I don't understand what it is trying to indicate--I will have to look at it more.

I am not insisting that Candu reactors have a great performance record...the capacity factors say so-- as it does in the US. Capacity factors can't lie.

Capacity factor includes all maintenance and retrofit items. Availability factor is different and accounts for units required to swing. So, the facts are that nuclear has better capacity factors than coal, oil, natural gas and hydro making it more reliable--any denial of this is just manipulation of the data. All plants are shutdown periodically for maintenance--when your coal plants are shutdown, then nuclear is picking up the slack and reducing greenhouse emissions. And since nuclear has a higher capacity factor in canada, the support is the other way around.

All grid systems need spining reserve. Typically, a utility needs as much spinning reserve as their largest unit in case that unit trips--on the largest possible load day. If you are having problems in Ontario, the utility doesn't have enough reserve and needs to install some capacity--and I would bet that is not just do to nuclear plants...it would involve all plants. A large plant tripping coal or nuclear will cause problems.

Nuclear plants and large coal plants are base loaded because they have the cheapest generation cost---especially nuclear since the fuel is very cheap. Now, gas turbines and co-gen plants along with smaller units are used to swing with the load. Gas turbines are inefficient, but easy to start up and shut down. In the US, boiling water reactors can swing with load if needed but PWRs are not as good at it. However, France had been load following with PWR nuclear plants for years. The demand does not need to remain high for nuclear plants to operate efficiently.

Base load is about 60% of daily load so most plants are used for base loading. So it is fair to say that 12-14% of nuclear power provides 20% of US electricity because it is a fact--if the installed capacity was over 60%, you would have a point. (canada has a similar nuclear capacity percent) During normal and peak loads, all the big nukes and big coal plants would be running full power 24/7. These plants are shutdown either for maintenance or refueling when the load drops--typically in the US during fall or spring--so it is standard for some nuke plants to be shutdown during these times--but they will be running full in the summer.


You've mentioned industry, and I sent a rambling response. In Ontario, 2% of the electricity customers consume 50% of the energy. Many of these users demand steady power 24/7 and are suited to nuclear. But the average Ontarian subsidizes them because they get the cheapest price on power by far. Which is part of the reason why it is not in the interest of industry to have residential and commercial customers attain 5-fold reductions in energy use. In order to support the industry to the same degree, they'd have to pay 5 times the cost for their energy, and they'd raise a stink. I think this is true for most of the world. I'm not sure it's a healthy model we want to continue with.

In a previous post you cited 6-year building plans for new nuclear plants.

I should point out that the buildout plan for Ontario anticipates at least a 10-year build cycle. They are really only expecting new reactors online by 2025. In addition, every nuclear reactor built in Ontario has been behind schedule and over budget. Some have been completed many years later than planned, so even these plans may be optimistic. Here's the quote from the OPA in their pitch to sell a nuclear component to their plan:


See the source here:

http://www.powerauthority.on.ca/Storage/41/3628_REv._IPSP_brochure_Feb._2007_for_Web_site.pdf

I would also dispute the idea that we can count on 6-year construction periods anywhere else, either. The only reactor in the Western world commissioned after Chernobyl was 18 months behind schedule at 18 months into construction. That's quite a feat. There's a whole list of others. The article below summarizes the situation, with the conclusion:

http://www.tmia.com/News/FinnishNucFiasco.htm

The AECL states that even with cost overruns and stranded debt repayment it's still the cheapest energy available. But they don't include insurance, decommissioning and waste storage costs. And I've never seen an assessment of what it would cost to properly dispose of the tailings.

Initial construction of next generation plants in the US will probably take about 10 years. However, that doesn't mean the time cannot be shortened in the future...experience is paramount and we don't have that now as much of is has been lost in retirement of engineers. The latest designs expect a 4 year construction cycle--but I don't expect that to occur. I expect cost overruns and other issues--but all large projects tend to have cost overruns..just look at the A380. This is still not a reasonable arguement for stopping nuclear power--again, the world needs long term solutions. The planet is running out of energy and there is not a single solution that will solve it. Burning natural gas or any petroleum product to make electricity is the most expensive method and a horrible waste of that natural resource.

When I was in Korea, the time from first concrete to full power was 6 years. There was 2-3 years of engineering done prior to first concrete. They are buiding standardized plants now and can build plants within schedules or with only short delays. I was impressed with their commitment and execution and they have continued with this type of success on about 6 more units. So it is obviously possible.

On a side note, recently our Prime Minister acquiesced to a US sponsored plan to return spent fuel to the country where it originated. As the number 1 producer of uranium worldwide, Canada would end up with a nuclear waste storage problem of enormous proportions. The result is a movement to stop any further expansion of uranium mining and export. That would raise the price of uranium substantially worldwide. I can only imagine that Australians have similar concerns and pressures.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/254159

The purpose of this agreement is to ensure that spent fuel and radioactive waste is carefully treated and accounted for. It does not mean that Canada will have to take spent fuel made from uranium that is exported. Canada only has to worry about their own plants and their own fuel.

glenn

[luddite]

I am not insisting that Candu reactors have a great performance record...the capacity factors say so-- as it does in the US. Capacity factors can't lie.

Then how do you account for the different capacity factors cited by Pembina and the reference you gave me? Not picking a fight here, just trying to understand. It's hard for me to believe the Pembina Institute makes stuff up. So if there's an accepted standard way of measuring capacity factors, then either my source or yours is lying. I trust Pembina. They are highly regarded, even (perhaps especially) in the energy industry.

In the US, boiling water reactors can swing with load if needed but PWRs are not as good at it. However, France had been load following with PWR nuclear plants for years.

I've been told by pro-nuclear energy specialists that nuclear has very little room to swing with load and cannot be the sole source. Are they wrong? Do you have a reference I can go to?

Base load is about 60% of daily load so most plants are used for base loading. So it is fair to say that 12-14% of nuclear power provides 20% of US electricity because it is a fact--if the installed capacity was over 60%, you would have a point.

I'm sure it is a fact. I didn't dispute that. I'm saying it's not fair to use that as an indication of the reliability of nuclear. It is equally an indication of the inflexibility of nuclear. If you need the power from a nuclear plant, you turn it on. Then you leave it on night and day and other things have to get shut off, even if they're safer or less expensive or closer to the load.

(canada has a similar nuclear capacity percent)

Ontario's is higher. It's made up for by the fact that Quebec and Manitoba have a lot of hydro. The nukes are concentrated in Ontario. Nuclear proponents point out that 50% of our installed generation capacity is nuclear, that we depend on it. Environmentalists point out that in the end only 32% of our electricity comes from nuclear. Which suggests that Canadian capacity factors for nuclear are worse, but again I'm glad to leave the discrepancy for you to resolve. I'd like to learn, too.

Our coal plants are critical for following load. We're only now installing natural gas. They provide some baseload power, but in Ontario the absolutely cheapest power is still from Adam Beck in Niagara Falls. As you say, cheapest power tends to run 24/7, as Adam Beck does most of the time.

The purpose of this agreement is to ensure that spent fuel and radioactive waste is carefully treated and accounted for. It does not mean that Canada will have to take spent fuel made from uranium that is exported. Canada only has to worry about their own plants and their own fuel.

Whatever the purpose, Canadians don't want that responsibility. Just because we have the resource doesn't mean we want to keep track of all the waste. I can't read the future, but I can tell you it is a potential political storm on the horizon.

[Hindmost]

Then how do you account for the different capacity factors cited by Pembina and the reference you gave me? Not picking a fight here, just trying to understand. It's hard for me to believe the Pembina Institute makes stuff up. So if there's an accepted standard way of measuring capacity factors, then either my source or yours is lying. I trust Pembina. They are highly regarded, even (perhaps especially) in the energy industry.

http://www.cns-snc.ca/nuclear_info/candu_performance.html This link shows the lifetime capacity factors of candu reactors. If you look at it, some of the older reactors show a poor capacity factor--not uncommon for any type of tecnology--early design issues. It also provides the definition of capacity factor in the first sentence. Using the formula outlined, there is no room for different interpretations. This is why I believe that Pembina cherry picked the worst data and didn't consider improvements over the last 40 years or the sucess of more modern designs. Capacity factors are standard over the industry and that is why I indicate they don't lie.


I've been told by pro-nuclear energy specialists that nuclear has very little room to swing with load and cannot be the sole source. Are they wrong? Do you have a reference I can go to?

First, I am not familiar with the operation of Candu plants and their ability to swing. I can only discuss PWR and BWR technology with essentially all of my hands-on experience being on PWR plants--both commercial and navy nukes.

In general, nuclear plants have been used for base loading due to fuel costs. And it is much easier to run a reactor at 100% power--however that applies to any large plant including coal, oil or natural gas. As I said, about 60% of electricity use is base load and therefore there is no reason to swing the nuke plants unless you have over 60% installed capacity. France has an installed capacity of about 80% nuclear. They have designs that can swing up and down in a day.

This is more of an engineering issue than a problem nuclear plants. Reactors can actually change power levels easy and can swing with the grid load. PWR plants typically have a negative temperature coeficient that makes them self adjusting to power change--as the power increases, so does the water temperature...this causes the plant power to turn down in power--self limiting. Navy nuke plants are designed to change power very quickly and do so--believe me--very quickly. Commercial reactors are designed to be able to change power to follow daily loads--typically 2-3% per minute, but that is much faster than needed. These are just control and small design issues. The facts are that nuclear plants can change power easier that fossil plants.

Actually, a modular design could be used for certain nuke plants--they would be easy to swing. I can't say that nuclear could be a sole source--just don't have any evidence. In France, there may be times when they are full nuclear in the spring and fall when the load is lower however. A modular design would make swinging easy. Four reactors connected to one turbine...shutdown and startup each as needed.

difficult to find links...I know the reactors can handle it from experience.

links I found:

http://www.electricitypolicy.org.uk/pubs/wp/eprg0710.pdf

This is the best one I found--it goes into reasonable detail. See page 7 through 9. This describe the design capability. Earlier pages go into the reactor physics.

http://www.iepa.com/ETAAC/ETAAC%20HANDOUTS%207-2-07/Lynn%20Walters%20nuclear.ppt

This is a power point, but from a group dedicated to renewable fuels. It does give a very brief overview of load following.

http://www.atomicinsights.com/Guests/Cuttler%20-%20Case%20for%20nuclear.pdf This relates to Canada, but is "lite" on details.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France OK, wiki is not the best, but it does give a reasonable overview of a program that really works well. It briefly indicates that capacity factors are lower due to load following in the technical section.

In addition, some reactor designs can take full load rejections and remain online. This exists right now as I have performed full load rejection tests on plants. This is something fossils systems cannot handle.

I'm sure it is a fact. I didn't dispute that. I'm saying it's not fair to use that as an indication of the reliability of nuclear. It is equally an indication of the inflexibility of nuclear. If you need the power from a nuclear plant, you turn it on. Then you leave it on night and day and other things have to get shut off, even if they're safer or less expensive or closer to the load.

I don't think there can be anything better than capacity factor in determining reliability of electrical power. It is literally the amout of energy that is produced divided by what is theoretically possible since the plant was declared commercial. For base load operation, the plants with the highest capacity factor have the highest reliability. I really don't see how this can be disputed. For units that swing, the availability factor can provide reliability numbers--as the formula account for swing operations. Again, with base load of about 60%, nuclear and coal are used for base load and nuclear comes up better. Base loading nukes will always be preferable from an economic view due to the fuel cost.

Ontario's is higher. It's made up for by the fact that Quebec and Manitoba have a lot of hydro. The nukes are concentrated in Ontario. Nuclear proponents point out that 50% of our installed generation capacity is nuclear, that we depend on it. Environmentalists point out that in the end only 32% of our electricity comes from nuclear. Which suggests that Canadian capacity factors for nuclear are worse, but again I'm glad to leave the discrepancy for you to resolve. I'd like to learn, too.

Our coal plants are critical for following load. We're only now installing natural gas. They provide some baseload power, but in Ontario the absolutely cheapest power is still from Adam Beck in Niagara Falls. As you say, cheapest power tends to run 24/7, as Adam Beck does most of the time.

I made a mistake. I wanted to point out that Canada's installed nuclear capacity is about 34% of the total, however, the contribution from nuclear is about 50% of the total electrical energy due to high capacity factors. This is similar to the US. Coal plants tend to have lower line times compared with nuclear plants.

Again, using natural gas to make electricity to me is a crime...such a valuble resource should be reserved for heating homes.

From this link that was in a previous post:

http://www.powerauthority.on.ca/Storage/41/3628_REv._IPSP_brochure_Feb._2007_for_Web_site.pdf

page 9 indicates that nuclear provide 50% of the electrical demand and page 8 shows that nuclear is 34% of the installed capacity.

Whatever the purpose, Canadians don't want that responsibility. Just because we have the resource doesn't mean we want to keep track of all the waste. I can't read the future, but I can tell you it is a potential political storm on the horizon.

The purpose is to ensure that enriched uranium and waste is not going to the wrong people. Essentially whoever enriches the uranium has to track the usage. It is really an issue for Russia and the US.

Finally, I don't consider this a fight--I hope you don't either. We are both presenting reasonable data and reasonable arguements. I never have intention to pick a fight nor do I intend to be harsh...it would serve zero purpose.


glenn

[cloudshipsrule]

PWR plants typically have a negative temperature coeficient that makes them self adjusting to power change--as the power increases, so does the water temperature...this causes the plant power to turn down in power--self limiting.

Gotta' love that resonance escape probability!

[Kevin_Lowe]

Just a quick observation - "base load" is to a significant extent a self-fulfilling prophecy. Consumers are encouraged to heat water and perform other high-energy tasks at "off-peak" times to spread the need for electricity out a bit, but this is precisely because it is more convenient to run conventional power plants all the time. Thus the "base load" is artificially high.

If the bulk of our electricity came from sources like solar and wind, we would adjust our usage habits so that we used more electricity when there was more electicity being generated.

Things like factories running 24/7 create a real base load which is insensitive to changes in how we supply power, but a lot of what pro-nuke spokspeople call "base load" is no such thing.

[JoeEllison]

I'm not sure where I fall on the pro/con nuke spectrum. What I DO know is that as an American, I don't trust American companies to build a nuclear power plant.

[robinson]

If America ever gets to build another Nuclear Power Plant, it will probably be made in China by then.

[JoeEllison]

If America ever gets to build another Nuclear Power Plant, it will probably be made in China by then.

For the sake of quality, that might be a good thing... someone will probably actually keep an eye on it if it is made in China.

[Lonewulf]

I'm not sure where I fall on the pro/con nuke spectrum. What I DO know is that as an American, I don't trust American companies to build a nuclear power plant.
But you trust them to run coal power plants?

So far, I've seen a lot of claims that wind and solar can somehow magically fulfill the majority of power requirements, and that it can replace coal or nuclear somehow.

I've yet to see any evidence for such a thing.

[JoeEllison]

But you trust them to run coal power plants?

Not particularly... except that a screwed-up coal plant won't spew radioactive material far and wide. It would probably just catch on fire or shut down.

[JoeEllison]

So far, I've seen a lot of claims that wind and solar can somehow magically fulfill the majority of power requirements, and that it can replace coal or nuclear somehow.

I've yet to see any evidence for such a thing.

There doesn't seem to be any magic involved at all. Wind and solar absolutely work. My understanding is that the only problems are scale and a willingness to make the initial investment.

[Lonewulf]

Not particularly... except that a screwed-up coal plant won't spew radioactive material far and wide.
Neither would a modern nuclear power plant.

Coal also would spew up all sorts of nasty material that wouldn't die down, ever. Nuclear radiation actually fades away.

It would probably just catch on fire or shut down.
Or spew up nasty chemicals such as mercury? I'm sure that's healthy and everything.

By the way, from the estimations I've seen, far more people have died of hydro-electric power than have died from nuclear power... and that's without taking in modern safety considerations.

So... why do you think that modern nuclear power plants are even close to being built the same as Chernobyl? Do you have evidence that they would "explode" in the same way?

By the way, if you really think that nuclear power plants are going to explode at any moment, maybe you should work to get rid of the plants that have been built all across the world, including the U.S., that have done no such thing.

[JoeEllison]

Do you have evidence that they would "explode" in the same way?Nope. I have a feeling that they might blow up in new and exciting ways! Or, you know, just crash and not work and cost billions on the clean-up and not give us any more power.:D

[Lonewulf]

There doesn't seem to be any magic involved at all. Wind and solar absolutely work.
Sure. Solar works alright. That 4 kw a year in the largest solar panel in Germany, equivalent to a train running it's motor, is REALLY efficient.

My understanding is that the only problems are scale and a willingness to make the initial investment.
My understanding is that there's this claim that if we just invest and scale it up, that it will automatically go from providing .4% of the world's electricity to not only surpass the 6.5% of nuclear, but also surpass that into 80%, or even somehow, magically, 100%.

(By the way, that .4% may not include hydroelectric, but it also includes geothermal, which can only be built in certain areas)

I'm sorry, but just claiming it won't make it so. But if you hope hard enough, maybe it will work.

[JoeEllison]

Sure. Solar works alright. That 4 kw a year in the largest solar panel in Germany, equivalent to a train running it's motor, is REALLY efficient.


My understanding is that there's this claim that if we just invest and scale it up, that it will automatically go from providing .4% of the world's electricity to not only surpass the 6.5% of nuclear, but also surpass that into 80%, or even somehow, magically, 100%.

(By the way, that .4% may not include hydroelectric, but it also includes geothermal, which can only be built in certain areas)

I'm sorry, but just claiming it won't make it so. But if you hope hard enough, maybe it will work.
You keep saying "magical", as though magic was actually involved. Why is that?

[JoeEllison]

http://www.scandinavica.com/culture/nature/wind.htm

Wind power is also important in Denmark because it is a green, clean and renewable energy. Scandinavians are known for their advanced environmental policies, and wind power has given the Danes a way to reduce their dependency on polluting fuels: 20% of Denmark’s electricity consumption is covered by clean electricity produced at Danish wind farms. At times, wind power supply is able to cover the total electricity consumption of the whole west of Denmark.

Which part of that is "magical"? Is Harry Potter somehow involved?

[Lonewulf]

You keep saying "magical", as though magic was actually involved. Why is that?
If you have evidence that wind energy and solar energy can go from .4% to 100% of energy usage, or even 20%, I'll be willing to drop the word "magical". As it is, 20% to 30% efficiency of solar panels, with the biggest solar panel built in Germany (costing mucho gild), gives an average of 4 kw an hour through the year. That's hardly anything.

Until then, I will always see a use for nuclear, and I see your claim as more a pipe dream than anything.

Of course, I'm sure you have hard facts to demonstrate otherwise, instead of just claims, right?

[JoeEllison]

Until then, I will always see a use for nuclear, and I see your claim as more a pipe dream than anything.

What claim did I make, besides not trusting American corporations to do it without screwing it up?

I can see that this is a religious and not rational position on your part, based on your need to make up my position in order to have something to attack.

[Lonewulf]

What claim did I make, besides not trusting American corporations to do it without screwing it up?

I can see that this is a religious and not rational position on your part, based on your need to make up my position in order to have something to attack.

So you really do have nothing to contribute? Even though nuclear energy has had quite a safe track record for decades, while coal has not? With your only evidence being Chernobyl and your general hatred for American companies?

Sounds pretty religious to me. All worship and fear Chernobyl.

Anyways, until you actually provide any actual meaningful posts, I'll be ignoring you now.

[JoeEllison]

So you really do have nothing to contribute? Even though nuclear energy has had quite a safe track record for decades, while coal has not? With your only evidence being Chernobyl and your general hatred for American companies?

Sounds pretty religious to me. All worship and fear Chernobyl.

Why don't we start over?

Here's what I originally posted:

I'm not sure where I fall on the pro/con nuke spectrum. What I DO know is that as an American, I don't trust American companies to build a nuclear power plant.

Your turn?

[JoeEllison]

Oh, here's a hint: you should have asked me what I think of Swiss or German engineers building and maintaining nuclear plants....

[Lonewulf]

I'm pretty sure where I fall, and I have yet to see evidence that American companies have botched the job.

It's not like we're going to hand them over some nuclear power plants that they've never run before.

So, are you retracting your claim that nuclear power plants will explode?

Oh, here's a hint: you should have asked me what I think of Swiss or German engineers building and maintaining nuclear plants...
Actually, here's a hint: I pretty much don't care what you think. At all.

[JoeEllison]

I'm pretty sure where I fall, and I have yet to see evidence that American companies have botched the job.

It's not like we're going to hand them over some nuclear power plants that they've never run before.

So, are you retracting your claim that nuclear power plants will explode?


Actually, I pretty much don't care. At all.Why don't you care about having an honest discussion? You are obviously emotionally invested... so why not go all the way and engage in a way that we can all gain from?

[JoeEllison]

Actually, here's a hint: I pretty much don't care what you think. At all.
Are you going to hold your breath, cry for your mommy, or report this post... after you've had your fun lying about my position?

[Lonewulf]

Why don't you care about having an honest discussion?
Ditto. You pretty much started out not willing to have an honest discussion. Just, "American companies can't get the job right, even though they have been for decades! Nuclear plants will a'splode!"

I'm convinced. :rolleyes:

You are obviously emotionally invested...
No, I just don't react well to people who post like you do.

so why not go all the way and engage in a way that we can all gain from?
Why don't you start? Or is this one of those "do as I say, not do as I do" things?

[JoeEllison]

Ditto. You pretty much started out not willing to have an honest discussion. Just, "American companies can't get the job right, even though they have been for decades! Nuclear plants will a'splode!"

I'm convinced. :rolleyes:


No, I just don't react well to people who post like you do.


Why don't you start? Or is this one of those "do as I say, not do as I do" things?

Here, for the last time:I'm not sure where I fall on the pro/con nuke spectrum. What I DO know is that as an American, I don't trust American companies to build a nuclear power plant.

[Lonewulf]

Are you going to hold your breath, cry for your mommy, or report this post... after you've had your fun lying about my position?
Welcome to my ignore list.

[JoeEllison]

Welcome to my ignore list.

So, you can't have a discussion about it? Fine, we'll carry on without you. :D


So, for everyone else: based on the current state of industry, with its recalls and breaking-down infrastructure, and "lead in the toys" screw-ups, why would we trust industry to build and maintain nuclear power plants on a large scale?

I have no doubt that safe plants can and have been built... I just don't know that I trust it if it becomes the sort of "race to the bottom" industry like so many other things have become in this day and age.

[Belz...]

Not particularly... except that a screwed-up coal plant won't spew radioactive material far and wide.

I think you underestimate the chemicals they do spew...

So, you can't have a discussion about it? Fine, we'll carry on without you.

So, for everyone else [...]

Hah! So you insult people until they decide to ignore you, and then declare them 'yella ?

What a fine debating tool.

[Hindmost]

I'm not sure where I fall on the pro/con nuke spectrum. What I DO know is that as an American, I don't trust American companies to build a nuclear power plant.

Not particularly... except that a screwed-up coal plant won't spew radioactive material far and wide. It would probably just catch on fire or shut down.

The fact of the matter is that coal plants actually spew more radioactive material than any nuke...even TMI. (don't compare with chernobyl...that plant didn't have a containment.) There is uranium in the coal along with carbon 14.

Having worked in the industry for a long time, I can say American workers to a good job. The nuclear industry is the most regulated industry in the US. (and should be) Considering all the regulations, testing and inspections a plant goes through, they are safe. I would rather work there than any other type of plant. And the safety record is great.

glenn

[Hindmost]

Just a quick observation - "base load" is to a significant extent a self-fulfilling prophecy. Consumers are encouraged to heat water and perform other high-energy tasks at "off-peak" times to spread the need for electricity out a bit, but this is precisely because it is more convenient to run conventional power plants all the time. Thus the "base load" is artificially high.

If the bulk of our electricity came from sources like solar and wind, we would adjust our usage habits so that we used more electricity when there was more electicity being generated.

Things like factories running 24/7 create a real base load which is insensitive to changes in how we supply power, but a lot of what pro-nuke spokspeople call "base load" is no such thing.


Customers are encouraged to conserve from the utilities. Building any kind of plant is risky and the utilities try to avoid it whenever possible. Electric plants don't cause demand--people buy stuff and demand increases. Plasma TVs are a perfect example. They use about 4 times the electricity of an ordinary CRT. The utility is not out there actively promoting people to buy them. Utilities are promoting compact flourenscent bulbs.

Utilities encourage using power at off peak time to smooth out the load curve. This would limit the amount of swing units that would have to change with that power--which is generally inefficient from an energy point of view. The utility has to have enough reserve for their largest plant to trip without taking down the grid. By encouraging people to shift things like laundry to the weekend and evenings, the utility needs less peak/expensive electricity.

"nuke people" didn't apply the concept of base load. Base load was around long before nuclear plants existed. There is nothing artificial about it. For base load to be reduced, hospitals would have to shut down in the evening. Refineries would have to stop producing petroleum products. Everyone would have to shut off their refrigerators, home heating, computers etc. 40% of the power use is industrial. As factories shutdown for the weekend, the load is reduced. However, it never goes below about 35-40% of the total. US comsumerism was in no way developed because utilities build power plants. Show me one utility advertisement that encourages people to buy energy wasting products.

I suggest you look up how much energy we use in the US alone and then see what it would take with solar and wind power and geothermal. With the exception of geothermal, solar and wind are just not reliable sources--in the past, they were never competitive.

The world needs to use a diverse source of power...we need it all.

glenn

[Hindmost]

double post...don't get coffee and post at the same time

[Lonewulf]

Wait, 40% of power use is industrial? Does that make the other 60% residential?

[Hindmost]

Wait, 40% of power use is industrial? Does that make the other 60% residential?

The rest is split between commercial and residential. This link shows what type of load comprises each sector. aobut a fourth of the way down the page.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/prim2/toc2.html

This link shows the distribution of energy in the US and it is different from what I said...rats a mistake...Have to find where I got the 40% number.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/infosheets/electricitysales.html

with residential at about 37%, industrial and commercial take up the bulk of power. In general, they get cheaper rates due to high usage.

glenn

[JoeEllison]

The fact of the matter is that coal plants actually spew more radioactive material than any nuke...even TMI. (don't compare with chernobyl...that plant didn't have a containment.) There is uranium in the coal along with carbon 14.

Having worked in the industry for a long time, I can say American workers to a good job. The nuclear industry is the most regulated industry in the US. (and should be) Considering all the regulations, testing and inspections a plant goes through, they are safe. I would rather work there than any other type of plant. And the safety record is great.

glenn

Hmmmm... interesting.

I can imagine the safety records are decent now, but in this age of deregulation, especially if a bunch of plants start going up really quick, I feel concerned about quality. And I don't doubt the American worker... I don't trust the guy he works for. :cool:

[Belz...]

I can imagine the safety records are decent now, but in this age of deregulation, especially if a bunch of plants start going up really quick, I feel concerned about quality.

So you admit it's okay... but speculate that it's not going to be in the future and thus justify your objection to it ?

[Hindmost]

Hmmmm... interesting.

I can imagine the safety records are decent now, but in this age of deregulation, especially if a bunch of plants start going up really quick, I feel concerned about quality. And I don't doubt the American worker... I don't trust the guy he works for. :cool:

With the growing pains the industry went through over the years, the regulations are reasonable at this time...10CFR50 is one big regulation and it is not going to be deregulated as there is no reason to reduce the requirements. So many of the retrofits performed are now standard in the plants and won't require construction delays and licensing delays which can be big drains on utility financing. The reactor designs are quite mature now...the next generation with interently safe fuel is just the ultimate safety feature. Education of the public is also needed...sooooooooooooo many people don't understand the first thing about a reactor and really have a fear of the unknown. I would venture to say that a query on whether or not a nuke plant can blow up like a nuclear weapon would result in at least half the US population saying yes. Hmmm...gotta see if any stats are available on that.

As far as quality, I never saw a company cut corners where safety was concerned. The consequence for not meeting the reg guides can be quite painful for the utility. Construction worker qualification is also intense...they don't let just anyone weld up the reactor components. Nuke welders can make a bunch of money with the skills they have. Other crafts have to be similarly proficient. What is most important is the testing...all safety related welds have to be x-rayed...hydro testing...every interlock must be tested...containment has to be leak checked...etc. That was the fun part for me.

Now, the fact that the US nuke industry was gutted by the problems of the past and lower demand due to conservation in the 70s and 80s and cancellation of plants, the industry will not be able to meet much demand quickly. Heavy vessels take a long time to make and the US doesn't have that capacity anymore. We would look to Japan and possibly Korea--where my old company sold its heavy vessel manufacturing equipment to. However, it is not possible to build 100 plants. Even the Japanese can't build more than a few vessels a year. Since fewer people are taking up engineering in the states, we have a problem with all energy production...not just nuclear. There won't be sufficient qualified engineers or crafts.

glenn

[luddite]

With the growing pains the industry went through over the years, the regulations are reasonable at this time.

Just a question, Glenn.

We're likely to see some serious upheavals in the next century. The US has had unparalleled growth largely due to cheap oil, which is about to end. Can you be confident that the same level of care will be maintained over the lifetime of a nuclear plant built today? More important, can you be confident of the level of care that will be required over the duration of the time required to secure nuclear waste? Let's even ignore the isotopes with long half-lives. Columbus discovered America just over 500 years ago. Since then whole empires have formed and died.

I watched the movie "Everything is Illuminated" where, at one point, the characters travel on a highway. The shot is taken off the highway, with a thin nuclear waste sign in the foreground, tilting over and rusted and barely visible in the dirt. I have no idea if this shot was real or set up, but I do know that the Russians have urban reactors even in cities like Moscow, and a fairly haphazard record of waste disposal, with hundreds of "low-hazard" sites scattered across the city. The worst part is that the locations are irregularly recorded and frequently forgotten. Here's a longish article on the issue, with the part I found most distressing:

Accurate records of locations and quantities were neither kept nor disclosed until recently. As the city expanded outward, these dumpsites were unearthed or built upon. In one case, radioactive waste was found buried under a thin layer of sand in the playground of a day-care center at Moscow's Kurchatov Atomic Energy Institute.

http://www.ce-review.org/99/20/szyszlo20.html

Now, I certainly hope we're doing better than that in the west, but the care that should be required will need to go on for hundreds of years. For some of the waste, thousands or even tens of thousands of years are required. Can you really be reassured by bills recently passed by Congress?

[tracer]

The fact of the matter is that coal plants actually spew more radioactive material than any nuke...even TMI. (don't compare with chernobyl...that plant didn't have a containment.) There is uranium in the coal along with carbon 14.


Only because the "spew" doesn't include the high-level and low-level radioactive waste that is contained and disposed of. I'll bet that if the high-level waste containment facility in a nuclear power plant were ever to be (say) blown up by some terrorists with dynamite, the amount of radioactive material released would be FAR in excess of what we experienced even at Chernobyl.

[Ziggurat]

I'll bet that if the high-level waste containment facility in a nuclear power plant were ever to be (say) blown up by some terrorists with dynamite, the amount of radioactive material released would be FAR in excess of what we experienced even at Chernobyl.

Why on earth would you think that? Chernobyl had an exposed and ongoing chain reaction, with radioactive isotopes being continually generated by that reaction and thrown into the air by a raging fire from the burning graphite moderator. Waste containment isn't undergoing any chain reaction. As such, other materials which come into contact with that waste will not get activated to any significant degree. Chernobyl was a perfect storm. Blowing up a waste facility wouldn't produce anything like that amount of contamination unless you spent days wiring up explosives directly to each spent fuel rod. And that's not a credible terrorist scenario.

[Belz...]

Only because the "spew" doesn't include the high-level and low-level radioactive waste that is contained and disposed of. I'll bet that if the high-level waste containment facility in a nuclear power plant were ever to be (say) blown up by some terrorists with dynamite, the amount of radioactive material released would be FAR in excess of what we experienced even at Chernobyl.

That's an interesting, if useless, hypothetical.

[Hindmost]

Just a question, Glenn.

We're likely to see some serious upheavals in the next century. The US has had unparalleled growth largely due to cheap oil, which is about to end. Can you be confident that the same level of care will be maintained over the lifetime of a nuclear plant built today? More important, can you be confident of the level of care that will be required over the duration of the time required to secure nuclear waste? Let's even ignore the isotopes with long half-lives. Columbus discovered America just over 500 years ago. Since then whole empires have formed and died.

I watched the movie "Everything is Illuminated" where, at one point, the characters travel on a highway. The shot is taken off the highway, with a thin nuclear waste sign in the foreground, tilting over and rusted and barely visible in the dirt. I have no idea if this shot was real or set up, but I do know that the Russians have urban reactors even in cities like Moscow, and a fairly haphazard record of waste disposal, with hundreds of "low-hazard" sites scattered across the city. The worst part is that the locations are irregularly recorded and frequently forgotten. Here's a longish article on the issue, with the part I found most distressing:



http://www.ce-review.org/99/20/szyszlo20.html

Now, I certainly hope we're doing better than that in the west, but the care that should be required will need to go on for hundreds of years. For some of the waste, thousands or even tens of thousands of years are required. Can you really be reassured by bills recently passed by Congress?

If I could predict the future that well, I would apply for the challenge. I can't guarantee anything for any industry. Can anyone guarantee the biochemistry industry won't accidently create a superbug that kills half the planet.

With oil in short supply, the world needs to develop and harness other forms of energy. If that is not done, the problems will be worse. If the transition is slow enough, then the upheaval will be mitigated to having economic recessions. Personally, I think the world is in trouble when it comes to energy...and nothing is being done to correct that in the US. 6.5 billion people will grow to about 8-9 billion by 2050. I read awhile ago that 3 billion people would be the most this planet could handle from a sustainable resource viewpoint. Sorry I don't have a source.

That article you posted is disturbing, but it is not fair to compare Russia with the rest of the worlds standards. The old USSR used to dump reactor cores from their subs into the ocean.

I hearby predict fusion power will become the available in 20 years making all other power sources obsolete...NOT.

glenn

This is starting to depress me a bit...

[Lonewulf]

Just a question, Glenn.

We're likely to see some serious upheavals in the next century. The US has had unparalleled growth largely due to cheap oil, which is about to end. Can you be confident that the same level of care will be maintained over the lifetime of a nuclear plant built today?
So we're supposed to give up on nuclear power altogether because "someday", someone "might" supposedly go ahead and become careless and get rid of decades of research and requirements?

I said that wind and solar entirely replacing coal and nuclear energy throughout the entire world was a pipe dream at best. This seems to be a "pipe" nightmare. While we're using hypotheticals, can you be confident that some mad scientist won't hijack solar energy and use it to power a death ray that could wipe out the entire U.S.?

[luddite]

Can anyone guarantee the biochemistry industry won't accidently create a superbug that kills half the planet.

I'm concerned about work done in many fields. The willing creation of hazardous materials worries me.

That article you posted is disturbing, but it is not fair to compare Russia with the rest of the worlds standards. The old USSR used to dump reactor cores from their subs into the ocean.

No, I specifically didn't compare Russia with any other country today. Though if you're serious about replacing coal with nuclear, you're going to have to put reactors in some pretty sketchy places.

My question was about the odds that the same sort of stability and order would remain in all places where nuclear waste was buried.

Of course, as we discussed, the uranium source countries may be responsible for making sure the waste is held properly. So imagine if Canada sells uranium to the Chinese to replace part of their coal program. Canada is in no position to make sure the Chinese do anything. So does that mean they don't get a nuclear programme? It's only for the currently wealthy and stable economies? Come to think of it, Canada is in no position to make sure the Americans do anything either. Oh sure, we'll play nice for now, but I'm not going to put any bets on how pushy governments can get when their economies are threatened. So maybe it's the opposite. Maybe we should sell uranium only to tiny developing countries which we can invade if they get ornery.

At this point I'm musing in my rambling way. These are not serious suggestions. They are random thoughts about what kinds of trouble we might have. It's unsettling.

[luddite]

So we're supposed to give up on nuclear power altogether because "someday", someone "might" supposedly go ahead and become careless and get rid of decades of research and requirements?

Well, yes. Your answer may differ.

I think you have to weigh the probability of the "might" and the potential dangers carelessness would cause against the advantages of nuclear power today and the alternatives available.

Surely we can agree that if we could get energy by banging rocks together, we wouldn't be playing with nuclear. It's the perceived lack of smarter options that makes us willing to take these risks.

What I was suggesting to Glenn was that he had incompletely weighed the total risks. He was talking about regulations for US power plants today. I was just pointing out that a lot of other risks would be involved.

I don't expect everyone to come to the same conclusions. I don't expect everyone to evaluate the risks in the same way. But I do think we need to have some common understanding about where the potential risks might be.

People who support nuclear power often highlight the few deaths in nuclear plants, for example. But that's not what the people who are against nuclear worry about anyway, so it's a moot point.

I said that wind and solar entirely replacing coal and nuclear energy throughout the entire world was a pipe dream at best. This seems to be a "pipe" nightmare. While we're using hypotheticals, can you be confident that some mad scientist won't hijack solar energy and use it to power a death ray that could wipe out the entire U.S.?

Funny you should mention that. There are serious proposals to get our energy from giant microwave beams. The risk is that if we lose control of them, they can start microwaving huge swaths of inhabited areas in unpredictable ways.

There are other pipe dreams, like mining the oceans with iron filings or sending back solar rays with giant arrays of mirrors to deal with global warming.

If we wait long enough, we may have to, in our desperation, resort to trying all these things. But they are desperate and uncertain methods. I advocate putting our energies in the tried-and-true low-tech methods. When I was a child, our emissions were a fraction of those we have today. Life was not so bad. If we add some innovations like insulation and triple glazing, we can reduce emissions even more.

http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/future_demand_for_microwave_power_from_space_in_ch ina_and_indonesia.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7014503.stm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0GER/is_2001_Summer/ai_76896195

But to answer your specific question. Yes. I am confident that solar panels are incapable of powering death rays. If solar technology changes, I'm prepared to change my mind. There are serious proposals for giant solar arrays in the Sahara, so maybe. But nuclear waste is hazardous now. I don't need a mad scientist. All I need is a seismic shift creating a leak in the containment facility. I've spoken to many engineers who say that it's impossible to build a containment facility to last for hundreds of years without considerable chance of failure.

Or consider the uranium tailings, none of which are contained to my knowledge, anywhere in the world. Whole subdivisions have been built with them in the United States by contractors who didn't realize what they were dealing with. Here's just the first article I found that refers to this:

In the Southwest U.S. and in Port Hope, Ontario, many homes and schools were built using the sand-like uranium tailings as construction material. As a result, some of the buildings ended up with levels of radon gas and radon daughters even higher than those permitted in the mines.

http://www.ccnr.org/uranium_deadliest.html

So, if this kind of thing happens in the United States today, what level of confidence can we have for the next few centuries?

I must also take issue with the first sentence of this paragraph. I agree that you've stated (more than once) that solar and wind can't replace nuclear and coal. But that doesn't mean everyone agrees with you.

To begin with, you're starting from a point where we need to replace x kilowatts with x kilowatts. That's wrong. Because the most economical way to address demand is conservation.

Every sane renewables program begins with conservation. Target at least 50% load reductions through conservation. Certainly if you look at the wedge diagram in a previous post of mine to Glenn, you'll see that in the emissions reduction program proposed for Canada (and this was not a renewables program), the largest chunk by far was attained through conservation. It's a huge resource. I should point out that the emissions reductions obtainable by moving to nuclear were the slimmest sliver of the lot.

Can solar/wind/biomass make up the balance? A lot of people on this site think so. You're looking at global numbers and coming up with .4% But you're ignoring the fact that many countries already have 5%, 10% or even 20%. The reason solar and wind have such low penetration in most of the world is that they're expensive compared to coal or, in some cases, hydro. Take away coal and wind starts looking pretty good. I have to say that for industries that have developed independently with little government input or support (and with hostility in some cases), the wind and solar industries are actually doing well.

As I said, in Ontario, the government recently introduced a program to pay people for energy generated through renewables. They targetted 100 MW of solar this way over the next decade. That target was reached in 6 months, with solar developers planning for more.

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=48336
http://www.thestar.com/article/215273
http://www.cansia.ca/solarcurrents/SolarCurrents_June_2007.html

Finally, the implication of your incredulity that renewables could replace nuclear and coal seems to indicate that you believe nuclear could replace nuclear and coal. And I'm pretty sure that using currently available technology (which is all we've got available at this juncture when emissions reductions are urgent), you're mistaken about nuclear potential.

It can reduce the need for conservation a bit. It can't just replace all our coal. There's not enough uranium, there aren't enough engineers, long lead-times are necessary and current nuke plants are dying.

[luddite]

This link shows the lifetime capacity factors of candu reactors. If you look at it, some of the older reactors show a poor capacity factor--not uncommon for any type of tecnology--early design issues. It also provides the definition of capacity factor in the first sentence. Using the formula outlined, there is no room for different interpretations. This is why I believe that Pembina cherry picked the worst data and didn't consider improvements over the last 40 years or the sucess of more modern designs. Capacity factors are standard over the industry and that is why I indicate they don't lie.

How can Pembina cherry-pick if it's a standard? I'm not trying to nit-pick here, just trying to understand. Pembina has a lot of credibility, even among my pro-nuke power worker associates. I don't think they make stuff up. I'd like to account for the discrepancy. All you're telling me is that you stand by your numbers.

Again, using natural gas to make electricity to me is a crime...such a valuble resource should be reserved for heating homes.

I completely agree. Only telling you what my government's idea is.

I made a mistake. I wanted to point out that Canada's installed nuclear capacity is about 34% of the total, however, the contribution from nuclear is about 50% of the total electrical energy due to high capacity factors.

Oh, on the contrary, I made a mistake. I think you had it right. I flipped my numbers. But you first quoted a percentage for Canada, which I think was correct. The source you list here is the OPA, which indicates that now you're talking about Ontario numbers. And I assume you're right.

Finally, I don't consider this a fight--I hope you don't either. We are both presenting reasonable data and reasonable arguements. I never have intention to pick a fight nor do I intend to be harsh...it would serve zero purpose.

Good. Trading information is good, even if we come to different conclusions.

[Ziggurat]

There's not enough uranium, there aren't enough engineers, long lead-times are necessary and current nuke plants are dying.

It's not clear how much uranium is out there. Known reserves are adequate for current plants for quite some time, and capacity hasn't been increasing for a long time for mostly political reasons. That also means nobody has really been doing serious prospecting for new reserves for quite some time as well, because there was no reason to do so (doing such exploration costs money, and even if they found new reserves, there'd be no payoff).

[luddite]

The fact of the matter is that coal plants actually spew more radioactive material than any nuke...even TMI. (don't compare with chernobyl...that plant didn't have a containment.) There is uranium in the coal along with carbon 14.

Again Glenn, I think you're missing the concern.

First of all, I doubt anyone is proposing that we expand our coal program.

Secondly, you're talking about emissions during normal operations. Whereas most people are concerned about radiation emitted in screw ups. There's also the radiation in tailings and spent fuel.

So we're not talking about the same things. It's more an argument about whether the lower fuels costs of nuclear justify public investment in the industry given the known hazards of tailings, the unknown but probably small risk of serious catastrophes and the unknown risks and costs of dealing with spent fuel. There are also risks in transportation.

I don't know how we measure these things, and honest men may disagree.

[DRBUZZ0]

Again Glenn, I think you're missing the concern.

First of all, I doubt anyone is proposing that we expand our coal program.



Are you kidding? Seriously, that's a joke right? There are coal plants under construction now. In Texas, where they have more wind power than any other state in the US they're popping out coal plants.

Coal is at the center of plans for gasification, carbon-capture, combined-cycle coal and all that other stuff that is about 90% fantasyu.


Secondly, you're talking about emissions during normal operations. Whereas most people are concerned about radiation emitted in screw ups. There's also the radiation in tailings and spent fuel.


Which is why nuclear plants have to be built to high standards of safety. pressure vessles, secondary containment vessles, containment domes, fuel rods made of high density ceramics packed in zirconium alloy tubes.

Nuclear energy would have an impeccable safety record if not for the cornor-cutting in the Soviet Union.



So we're not talking about the same things. It's more an argument about whether the lower fuels costs of nuclear justify public investment in the industry given the known hazards of tailings, the unknown but probably small risk of serious catastrophes and the unknown risks and costs of dealing with spent fuel. There are also risks in transportation.

I don't know how we measure these things, and honest men may disagree.


Honest men may disagree, and I disagree. I also think your assessment is a bit off on the dangers and costs long-term. However I find your argument respectable and I don't take issue with your views beyond strongly disagreing.


When I hear people saying that Bush is pushing for nuclear plants to kill babies and that nuclear waste is hurting the spiritual energy of mother earth and allowing the freemasons to mutate babies just to be evil. Or that every case of cancer within 50 miles of a reactor is necessarly the fault of the reactor...

That stuff I cannot "respectfully" disagree with.

[luddite]

It's not clear how much uranium is out there. Known reserves are adequate for current plants for quite some time, and capacity hasn't been increasing for a long time for mostly political reasons. That also means nobody has really been doing serious prospecting for new reserves for quite some time as well, because there was no reason to do so (doing such exploration costs money, and even if they found new reserves, there'd be no payoff).
I know that there are different assessments out there, but here's one from the Energy Watch Group which states:

The temperature of the earth’s climate is rapidly rising as the combustion of fossil fuels continues to heat up the atmosphere. Some experts have suggested focussing more heavily on nuclear energy to secure our future energy supply. However, this scenario does not offer us a viable alternative: as a group of independent experts recently discovered, our global uranium reserves will be depleted even before the end of this century. “Even if we take into account that uranium prices will rise dramatically and that this will raise interest in exploiting previously uneconomical uranium mines, our uranium reserves will be fully depleted in 70 years at the latest“, says Dr. Werner Zittel, energy expert at Ludwig Bölkow Systemtechnik GmbH in Ottobrunn. He is one of the key figures of the Energy Watch Group that has taken up the cause of conducting critical and politically unbiased analyses of our future energy supplies. “All suggestions to expand nuclear energy production overlook the fact that the raw material reserves needed for this technology are severely declining and don’t permit further expansion.”

http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Press_Uranium_29-11-2007.pdf

Uranium has quadrupled in price already over the last few years. I don't think we can rely on a steady supply to save us.

[luddite]

Are you kidding? Seriously, that's a joke right? There are coal plants under construction now. In Texas, where they have more wind power than any other state in the US they're popping out coal plants.

Coal is at the center of plans for gasification, carbon-capture, combined-cycle coal and all that other stuff that is about 90% fantasyu.

Sorry, of course you're right. I meant nobody on this thread. And honestly, people who oppose nuclear don't tend to be rooting for coal, even of the carbon-capture variety. In fact it's my pro-nuclear buddies who are all for clean coal as well.

When I hear people saying that Bush is pushing for nuclear plants to kill babies and that nuclear waste is hurting the spiritual energy of mother earth and allowing the freemasons to mutate babies just to be evil. Or that every case of cancer within 50 miles of a reactor is necessarly the fault of the reactor...

Well, that's a bit flaky. Remove the flaky language and hysteria and you have some reasonable concerns mixed with some misunderstandings.

People who worry about nuclear catastrophes can end up doing a lot of research about emissions from regular operations. These are not trivial, but I'll grant you that the deaths from coal-induced asthma dwarf the death rates from nuke-induced coal. I've mentioned this to them myself. The case against nuclear is not a health case from regular operations. It isn't if you look at the stats, and it isn't from the point of view of anyone who's against nukes. They all get involved for different reasons (living next to mines, concerns about terrorism, concerns about military uses, fear of accidents, etc) and just start reciting the risks of regular nuclear operations. It's especially interesting to me when anti-nuke friends who are smokers tell me about the cancer risks from living near a nuke plant.

[luddite]

Customers are encouraged to conserve from the utilities.

I can't speak for all the world, but in my experience, utilities promote conservation because they are paid to do so. That's true in Ontario. I also know that's true in California and in New York State.

At least in Ontario, the natural gas utility is particularly problematic because they collect public money for their conservation program:

https://portal-plumprod.cgc.enbridge.com/portal/server.pt?space=CommunityPage&cached=true&parentname=CommunityPage&parentid=5&in_hi_userid=2&control=SetCommunity&CommunityID=284&PageID=0

and then try to fill their capacity by encouraging new users and uses:

https://portal-plumprod.cgc.enbridge.com/portal/server.pt?space=CommunityPage&cached=true&parentname=CommunityPage&parentid=10&in_hi_userid=2&control=SetCommunity&CommunityID=521&PageID=0

I was particularly frustrated when I went to a presentation about the future availability of natural gas where the representative from the natural gas distribution company talked about their conservation programme, then segued right into the necessity of maintaining market share, and talked about how they were promoting natural gas for electricity generation.

[Pidge]

I know that there are different assessments out there, but here's one from the Energy Watch Group which states:

http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Press_Uranium_29-11-2007.pdf

Uranium has quadrupled in price already over the last few years. I don't think we can rely on a steady supply to save us.

The fuel rods for a fission reactor make up a tiny portion of the overall cost of the plant. The price would probably have to increase nearly a hundred fold (well, 25 fold now...) to actually have in impact on wholesale price of the electricity produced.

[Pidge]

I was going to post the following link last night, but gave up in disgust in trying to argue a point (which I didn't really seem to have!)

Greenpeace have a list of all the incidents in the nuclear industry Calendar of Nuclear Accidents and Events (http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob/rep02.html)

My observations of this lists:
- It includes a number of events that I would consider non-events (i.e. incidents that have zero to negligible impact, or where process/systems/technology were in place to prevent any external impact.)*
- There seems to have been a awful lot of incidents
- The lists provides enough information to be able to identify an incident, and provides casualty numbers if any, but seems to leave it to the readers imagination of how bad an incident is.
- When taken in isolation, it is hard to qualify how bad the events listed are compared with other industries/technologies.


* the first incident listed, a spill of 4 tonnes of heavy water, being one of the non-events - I am assuming that the heavy water was just nearly pure Di-Deuterium Oxide, with immeasurable amounts of Di-Tritium Oxide, and that the chemistry of D or D2O being indistinguishable from H2O, which I could be wrong about - I think spilling 4 tonnes of soda water would be more harmful.

[Hamradioguy]

I would venture to say that a query on whether or not a nuke plant can blow up like a nuclear weapon would result in at least half the US population saying yes. Hmmm...gotta see if any stats are available on that.
glenn

My guess is the percentage would be higher. I actually asked that question on a "nuclear poll" back when I was teaching Radiological Monitoring courses for the VT Emergency Management Office. (Other questions asked about the chances of nuclear war or nuclear terrorism in future years). Students were primarily firefighters, law enforcement people, Civil Air Patrol folks and local government officials. The question was, "What is the likelihood of a nuclear power plant blowing up like the atom bombs dropped on Japan in WWII?" Choices ranged from, "Very likely", to "Impossible". Not that many picked "Impossible." I have the results of several years of polling around here somewhere if anyone is interested.

To be fair, the poll originated with Jack Greene, an HP who co-wrote "Would the Insects Inherit the Earth? and Other Subjects of Concern to Those Who Worry About Nuclear War" His original poll may have been published in the Health Physics Newsletter back in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

BTW, the nuclear industry isn't helping matters by resorting to "nuke speak": Years ago a friend was appointed Social Welfare Department Liaison to the State's nuclear plant. As a non-scientist he was concerned about nuclear explosions and kept asking about the odds of the plant "blowing up". After correctly repeating several times that this was "impossible" to his persistent question, a plant engineer did allow that there could be a, "High pressure steam dissasembley". My friend said that sure as Hell sounded like an explosion to him.

[Ziggurat]

“Even if we take into account that uranium prices will rise dramatically and that this will raise interest in exploiting previously uneconomical uranium mines, our uranium reserves will be fully depleted in 70 years at the latest“

Here's the catch: the term "reserves" means known uranium deposits which are economical to extract at current prices and with current technology. The later is a very important consideration for oil, but the former is especially important for uranium. With current reserves that will last for decades to come, why would anyone bother to explore for more? They wouldn't, and they don't, because it doesn't make economic sense. So there's quite possibly a lot more uranium out there. And exploration won't really start until demand gets a lot larger than it is today.

[Ziggurat]

the chemistry of D or D2O being indistinguishable from H2O,

Turns out it isn't totally indistinguishable, though it's very close. If you feed purely deuterated food and water to an animal, it will die. BUT if you feed it only partially deuterated food/water, and up the fraction slowly, you can train them onto deuterium. And the animal will become deuterated itself. So it's not chemically toxic per se, but there is a slight difference, and the body can adjust to that difference over time.

[luddite]

The fuel rods for a fission reactor make up a tiny portion of the overall cost of the plant. The price would probably have to increase nearly a hundred fold (well, 25 fold now...) to actually have in impact on wholesale price of the electricity produced.

I wasn't worried about the price of electricity. I'd like to see higher energy prices. It would encourage wiser use. Proceeds could go to promote conservation to drive down the cost of your energy bill down below where it would have been if energy was cheap.

I only point this out as an indication that there is a shortage now.

[Pidge]

Turns out it isn't totally indistinguishable, though it's very close. If you feed purely deuterated food and water to an animal, it will die. BUT if you feed it only partially deuterated food/water, and up the fraction slowly, you can train them onto deuterium. And the animal will become deuterated itself. So it's not chemically toxic per se, but there is a slight difference, and the body can adjust to that difference over time.

Useful bit of knowledge, that, I'll keep it in mind.

If you spill a lot of heavy water, I'll go with the correct responses to be either to contain and recover the heavy water, or dilute it with ordinary water as soon as possible.

Then again, when you spill a modest swimming pool full of the stuff (18,000L), dilution could be problematic...

[Pidge]

I wasn't worried about the price of electricity. I'd like to see higher energy prices. It would encourage wiser use. Proceeds could go to promote conservation to drive down the cost of your energy bill down below where it would have been if energy was cheap.

I only point this out as an indication that there is a shortage now.

Oh dear. I'm spotting a disturbing trend here.

It has been repeatedly pointed out in this thread that the shortage of Uranium is a "shortage (70-years of supply at current demand) of uranium that is economic to extract at the current price".

Do you understand this?

And, as above, the cost of the fuel is a tiny fraction of the cost of the electricity generated.

Put those two factors together, when the cost of uranium increases, due to more costly extraction and refinement processes, the cost of the electricity generated will not increased significantly.

Do you understand this?

[luddite]

Oh dear. I'm spotting a disturbing trend here.

It has been repeatedly pointed out in this thread that the shortage of Uranium is a "shortage (70-years of supply at current demand) of uranium that is economic to extract at the current price".

Do you understand this?

And, as above, the cost of the fuel is a tiny fraction of the cost of the electricity generated.

Put those two factors together, when the cost of uranium increases, due to more costly extraction and refinement processes, the cost of the electricity generated will not increased significantly.

Do you understand this?

I understand this. People I trust disagree. And the article I pointed to disagrees. And they are not talking about a 70 year supply at current rates and current prices. They are talking about an outer limit of 70 years even if prices skyrocket and we turn the planet into swiss cheese looking for more.

I'll repeat the quote:

“Even if we take into account that uranium prices will rise dramatically and that this will raise interest in exploiting previously uneconomical uranium mines, our uranium reserves will be fully depleted in 70 years at the latest“, says Dr. Werner Zittel, energy expert at Ludwig Bölkow Systemtechnik GmbH in Ottobrunn. He is one of the key figures of the Energy Watch Group that has taken up the cause of conducting critical and politically unbiased analyses of our future energy supplies. “All suggestions to expand nuclear energy production overlook the fact that the raw material reserves needed for this technology are severely declining and don’t permit further expansion.”

The link goes on:

The Energy Watch Group has calculated that, even with steep uranium prices, uranium production will have reached its peak by 2035 and that it will only be possible to satisfy the fuel demand of nuclear plants until then. If we continue to expand nuclear energy production – as the IEA recommends that we do – then we will already start to run out of uranium fuel reserves before 2030. “The IEA’s atomic energy goals have been built on uranium sand that doesn't exist", commented Zittel. This means that the operators of new nuclear power plants – construction of which was encouraged by the IEA in its World Energy Outlook this autumn – will in any case be faced with a dramatic rise in prices.

The uranium content in the bedrock is an essential factor in development cost considerations and in determining the profitability of a mine. The current shortage of uranium has already caused the price of uranium to increase manifold to 130 dollars per kilogramme. “The fuel rods of nuclear reactors consume as much as 67 kilotons of uranium per year. Yet uranium mines can only supply 42 kilotons per year.” To fill the gap of 25 kilotons, uranium is largely obtained from the conversion of nuclear weapons and old deposits at present. These deposits stem from before 1980; they will be depleted within the next ten years. We would need to increase the annual production of uranium by 50 per cent until 2015 to cover our future needs. Yet the development of new mines is turning out to be extremely difficult.

This agrees almost word for word with the assessment that I received in a personal communication with David Hughes, who has positions with both Natural Resources Canada and the National Energy Board. With Canada being the number one producer and exporter of uranium as well as a serious centre of nuclear research, his positions with both energy and resource agencies here make him very well placed to make such determinations. The only thing he adds is that the uranium from weapons will end a lot sooner than 10 years, because most of it is of Russian origin and is sold under a contract set to expire in 2012, and which the Russians have already stated they will not renew.

I'm not sure where the very disparate numbers for availability of uranium come from. Perhaps people misunderstand the term "proven reserves". Canada, for example, has "proven undiscovered reserves of natural gas" to last for several decades. They don't help us much. We've quadrupled the drilling rate and we're still finding less and less each year. All that gas almost certainly is in there somewhere, and eventually we'll probably find it (If the earth warms enough, some of it may find us). But when people go around saying "Oh, we have 84 years of natural gas left", they neglect to realize that we have only 7 years of proven, discovered, economically recoverable and deliverable reserves. That's it.

And as I've stated above, my concern is not with rising prices. My concern is with expanding the nuclear program based on nonexistent fuel.

[luddite]

Well, actually, that's not my only concern, or even my primary one. But the focus on nuclear, if it prevents us from doing immediately helpful things will be especially frustrating if it isn't even technically possible.

I've just been looking at the World Energy Council site. There is a category of undiscovered reserves, but the definition of proven reserves is summarized by the sentence:

Proved reserves have a high assurance of existence.

http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/survey_of_energy_resources_2007/uranium/677.asp

In their assessment of the future reserves, they are reassuring that there's plenty of uranium around. But if you read closely, they identify serious challenges to meeting demand once uranium from weapons is no longer available, and they're only projecting for the next 2 decades. I think this is a reasonable summary:

Based on current, committed and planned additional mining capacities, the Red Book (NEA/IAEA, 2006) assesses a maximum annual production capacity of some 86 000 tU by 2025 (2006: 52 000 tU). This capacity would just meet the reactor requirements of IAEA's Low nuclear electricity projection but would fall seriously below the High projection of 129 000 tU by 2030. However, the Red Book estimates are based on the US$ 80/kgU resource category. At prices above the US$ 130/kgU production cost category and bright demand prospects, additional investments in new mining capacity can reasonably be expected.

http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/survey_of_energy_resources_2007/uranium/674.asp

This is not inconsistent with the assessments I've heard. Basically, it will be challenging and expensive, but we can keep the current nuclear fleet hobbling along for a few decades.

[DRBUZZ0]

The idea that we could run out of uranium seems very very very far-fetched to me. The energy density is enormous. Consider that the current mined deposits constitute something like 10% of known minable deposits.

On top of that, not reprocessing fuel ends up meaning that more than half of the U-235 gets thrown away. And forget about the possibility of using heavier isotopes. If you consider that uranium is better than 99% U-238 and that U-238 is fertile then by using plutonium as fuel you effectively multiply the potential material by 100 times.

Okay, you don't like plutonium? Too nasty? Weapons proliferation hazard? Fine. Go with the thorium cycle reactor system then. It's been proven effecient and workable and India is banking on it. There's three times as much minable thorium in the world as uranium.

And since natural thorium is almost entirely Th-232 it's nearly 100% fertile to the fissionable U-233, which is an excellent fuel for a reactor.


The current price of uranium has a lot more to do with speculation and current mining than it does with the world resources of uranium.

[Ziggurat]

They are talking about an outer limit of 70 years even if prices skyrocket and we turn the planet into swiss cheese looking for more.

That is precisely what it does not mean. Reserves means supplies we have already found. It explicitly does not include supplies which have not been found, not even supplies we expect to be able to find. So 70 years is not how long we have until uranium runs out. It's been like this with oil for decades too. I don't think we've ever had oil reserves that would last 70 years, but we've been drilling for oil for longer than that. But nobody is going to bother looking for more uranium when current reserves will last 70 years. That doesn't mean there isn't more out there. There almost certainly is.

[luddite]

That is precisely what it does not mean. Reserves means supplies we have already found. It explicitly does not include supplies which have not been found, not even supplies we expect to be able to find. So 70 years is not how long we have until uranium runs out. It's been like this with oil for decades too. I don't think we've ever had oil reserves that would last 70 years, but we've been drilling for oil for longer than that. But nobody is going to bother looking for more uranium when current reserves will last 70 years. That doesn't mean there isn't more out there. There almost certainly is.
Zig, you're argument is not with me. As I say, there are very disparate interpretations I've seen about just how much uranium there is. But the paper I referred to clearly indicates that they mean "outer limit". And the World Energy Council defined "proved reserves" (not even just "reserves" as you've called them) as having a "high assurance of existence" - which means that there's a small possibility that even these aren't there. You can argue that they're wrong about how much is in the ground. But you can't make the site agree with you. It says what it says.

[Pidge]

Gah! I think my head is going to explode...

It seems there we have a problem of semantics occurring over what uranium reserves there are.

To me, a "proven reserve" implies that the existence and extent of the ore in a location is known to a degree of confidence - i.e. samples have been extracted in a number of locations to determine the extend of the deposit and its quality.

And a counter argument - Google for uranium ore reserves, and this is the highest ranked page:
http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.html

In summary, the actual recoverable uranium supply is likely to be enough to last several hundred (up to 1000) years, even using standard reactors. With breeders, it is essentially infinite. Hundreds of thousands of years is certainly enough time to develop fusion power, or renewable sources that can meet all our power needs.

[DRBUZZ0]

If you think we're going to run out of uranium, then you have no idea what the energy density of the stuff is. It's huge... massive. More than you could fathom in chemical terms.


A few kg of u-235... we're talking a chunk of pure U-235 the size of a golfball is enough to run a massive nuclear submarine... hundreds of crew taking hot showers... air conditioning for the computers.. active and passive sonar... engines that cruse faster than most surface vessls under water, massive stills to make fresh water, electrolysis to make oxygen. Megawatts and megawatts of power. And you need to refuel it about every 20-40 years. It depends on the efficiency of the reactor and such. But literally decades. DECADES.

Compare uranium to coal. A coal fired power plant that produces 1 gigawatt will have at least one coal train deliver coal per day. The trains are about a mile long. On peak days it could be three our four trains. Literally hundreds of thousands of tons of coal PER DAY. Hundreds of thousands of TONS.

There is a 500megawatt coal plant a few cities over from me. They store the coal in a massive pit and on barges. The mountain of coal is massive. Truely massive. And they can only burn for about four days on the stored coal, if there is a delivery interruption.


There is also a nuclear power plant near me. It's spent fuel pool is about 80% full and they're talking about moving some to dry casks. It's nearly 80% full. The plant has been producing over a gigawatt of power since the mid 1970's. All the fuel they have ever used in those decades fits in a spent fuel pool the size of a small gymnasium. That might sound like a lot and in the sense of nuclear fuel, that is a sizable amount.

Compare that to the coal plant. The same volume of fuel is used in maybe an hour as the nuke plant used in all it's years of operation. The energy density is millions of times greater.

[Lonewulf]

Oh, but the waste from nuclear is SO much worse than all those tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of waste from coal, surely! And, unlike coal, you can totally not reuse nuclear waste, I'm sure!

[Belz...]

Funny you should mention that. There are serious proposals to get our energy from giant microwave beams. The risk is that if we lose control of them, they can start microwaving huge swaths of inhabited areas in unpredictable ways.

I guess humanity should've stayed in the caves, then. :rolleyes:

[Lonewulf]

From what I understand, the "energy from microwaves" is a poor source of energy. It costs about as much energy put into the microwave beam as you get from it...

If it's good for anything, I'd say that "beaming" power would be good for giving power to ships or space stations, and that's about all the use I can really see out of it. I'm willing to be proven wrong, of course.

[luddite]

To me, a "proven reserve" implies that the existence and extent of the ore in a location is known to a degree of confidence - i.e. samples have been extracted in a number of locations to determine the extend of the deposit and its quality.

Well, first of all what it means to you is not the issue. The issue is what it means to geologists.

But I believe your definition is correct for "proven, discovered reserves".

And as I said when I began, there are differing opinions about how much there is and how long it will last.

If you think we're going to run out of uranium, then you have no idea what the energy density of the stuff is. It's huge... massive. More than you could fathom in chemical terms.

Compare uranium to coal.

I'm not sure what to make of this. If you were arguing for reprocessing or using alternate fuels to say there's a lot of nuclear available, okay. But no resource lasts forever, no matter how dense. And whether they think it's 70 years at current rates or two centuries at expanded rates, everyone predicts that uranium will end.

When oil was discovered, the energy density led people to believe it was essentially forever too. Didn't turn out that way.

I know there are wildly different estimates out there. And I'm no expert. But pretty conventional and respected people are coming up with estimates that show uranium coming into decline within a couple of decades.

Oh, but the waste from nuclear is SO much worse than all those tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of waste from coal, surely! And, unlike coal, you can totally not reuse nuclear waste, I'm sure!

I never said that.

I apologize for any misunderstanding. My only comments on this narrow point were that

a) We have a huge climate crisis we have to start addressing now.
b) Using conventional reactors, there may be a severe limit to the fuel availability, and that's backed up by a number of assessments.

Go ahead and argue for thorium. Go ahead and say you're certain there's more uranium. You may be right.

But please understand what I said.

[Lonewulf]

I'm not sure what to make of this. If you were arguing for reprocessing or using alternate fuels to say there's a lot of nuclear available, okay. But no resource lasts forever, no matter how dense. And whether they think it's 70 years at current rates or two centuries at expanded rates, everyone predicts that uranium will end.
I'm pretty sure that 200 years' worth of energy is a Good Thing (tm), and gives us enough time to come up with better energy solutions.

From the most optimistic estimations, using breeder reactors and Thorium, it's not hundreds of years or decades. It's thousands, tens of thousands even. Now, I'm sorry, but if you think that a thousand years is insignificant, I suggest you get your brain examined. ;)

[Cuddles]

Nuclear energy would have an impeccable safety record if not for the cornor-cutting in the Soviet Union.

It's hardly fair to blame everything on the USSR. America and Britain have had some fun problems of their own, although are generally better now. Japan's safety record is an absolute joke, and shows no sign of improving. There's no doubt that the USSR was by far the worst offender, but there are enough problems still around for safety to be a legitimate concern, if not as bad as most opponents make out.

[cloudshipsrule]

There's no doubt that the USSR was by far the worst offender, but there are enough problems still around for safety to be a legitimate concern, if not as bad as most opponents make out.

The opponents not in the industry have no concept of the safeguards (Pun intended) in place long before ground is even broken on a new plant. We're fortuante in the US to have an excellent system of checks and balances which is continually improved.

Mistakes happen, and there is always room for improvement, but there is a system in place in the US where operational experience is shared among plants so each learns from the other. As plants age new problems will arise, and the challenge will be discovering and dealing with these issues before and after they occure.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Sure. Solar works alright. That 4 kw a year in the largest solar panel in Germany, equivalent to a train running it's motor, is REALLY efficient.

My understanding is that there's this claim that if we just invest and scale it up, that it will automatically go from providing .4% of the world's electricity to not only surpass the 6.5% of nuclear, but also surpass that into 80%, or even somehow, magically, 100%.

(By the way, that .4% may not include hydroelectric, but it also includes geothermal, which can only be built in certain areas)

I'm sorry, but just claiming it won't make it so. But if you hope hard enough, maybe it will work.

What, exactly, do you think is the problem that makes this a "magical" proposition?

You want more power, you build more of the things that generate power. If you build ten times as many, you get ten times as much power. If you build 250 times as many, you get 250 times as much power and hey presto, "magically" 0.4% becomes 100%.

Obviously you think I have just glossed over some kind of impossibility, but what exactly is it?

[sts60]

...For better or worse, most terrorists aren't dumb enough to try accessing high level nuclear waste. There are dozens of truly lethal chemicals around that any terrorist with an IQ of 80 and access to simple hardware tools could use to kill hundreds to thousands of people. And no, I'm not about to provide a list for the curious!
No need to... It's been a matter of public debate for a long time. Right now, I am thinking of the tank cars full of chlorine and other "ethyl-methyl-bad stuff" that roll, unguarded and unprotected, through my first-due area. A much more attractive target for terrorists than heavily reinforced transporters accompanied by bulky fellows with automatic weapons and itchy trigger fingers.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Customers are encouraged to conserve from the utilities. Building any kind of plant is risky and the utilities try to avoid it whenever possible. Electric plants don't cause demand--people buy stuff and demand increases. Plasma TVs are a perfect example. They use about 4 times the electricity of an ordinary CRT. The utility is not out there actively promoting people to buy them. Utilities are promoting compact flourenscent bulbs.

Utilities encourage using power at off peak time to smooth out the load curve. This would limit the amount of swing units that would have to change with that power--which is generally inefficient from an energy point of view. The utility has to have enough reserve for their largest plant to trip without taking down the grid. By encouraging people to shift things like laundry to the weekend and evenings, the utility needs less peak/expensive electricity.

I'm aware of all of this. If most of our power came from solar panels, utilities would encourage people to do their laundry and heat their hot water tank at midday instead.


"nuke people" didn't apply the concept of base load. Base load was around long before nuclear plants existed. There is nothing artificial about it. For base load to be reduced, hospitals would have to shut down in the evening. Refineries would have to stop producing petroleum products. Everyone would have to shut off their refrigerators, home heating, computers etc. 40% of the power use is industrial. As factories shutdown for the weekend, the load is reduced. However, it never goes below about 35-40% of the total. US comsumerism was in no way developed because utilities build power plants. Show me one utility advertisement that encourages people to buy energy wasting products.

I think you totally missed the point, because you are responding to claims I never made.

The percentage of power usage which is "base load" is inflated by utilities encouraging people to use power at times which (in your words) smooth out the load curve. When a nuke activist quotes a certain percentage of current electricity use as being the "base load", it's a dead certainty that a chunk of that "base load" could actually be shifted around to some other time of day or week with no drama.

Since I specifically said some of the base load is real, I have no idea why you think I said otherwise or why you think I said utilities encourage people to use more power overall.


I suggest you look up how much energy we use in the US alone and then see what it would take with solar and wind power and geothermal. With the exception of geothermal, solar and wind are just not reliable sources--in the past, they were never competitive.

The world needs to use a diverse source of power...we need it all.


Fossil and nuclear fuel facilities have their place, certainly. The question is what proportion of our power generating capacity in the future should come from them.

[luddite]

I'm pretty sure that 200 years' worth of energy is a Good Thing (tm), and gives us enough time to come up with better energy solutions.

Yes, but that's the most optimistic assessment. It involves some nuclear expansion, perhaps a doubling. It still doesn't replace fossil fuels. Not even close.

And at the other end, the most pessimistic projections say we're going to start feeling squeezed within a decade, and run out of uranium completely in 70 years.

The truth is likely somewhere in between. If the nuclear industry is anything like the oil industry, the truth is likely closer to the shorter end.

And if oil is any indication, we wouldn't use the 200 years if we had them to come up with smarter solutions. We'd use them to become even more wasteful and energy dependent while wreaking even more havoc with the planet. 200 years from now we'd be sitting around trying to figure out the next big energy fix to keep allowing us to commute halfway around the world in personal jets. Meanwhile our forests would be gone, our oceans would be dead, much of the world would be a desert and we'd be wondering why all children were now asthmatic and everyone had cancer. Not that I'm proposing any solution. Just pointing out that even if uranium could fuel anything we dreamed of, it would not necessarily be particularly reassuring.

I do wish we had more time to transition. But we'd really need to commit to transitioning to something sustainable. So far we've spent most of the time since 1990, when AGW was declared to be an immediate and dire threat, dithering and dreaming and coming up with clever new ways to use the energy that's killing us.

[Belz...]

And at the other end, the most pessimistic projections say we're going to start feeling squeezed within a decade, and run out of uranium completely in 70 years.

And what do the pessimists say about our oil reserves ?

[Lonewulf]

What, exactly, do you think is the problem that makes this a "magical" proposition?
Local solar conditions, space required, placement, costs, relatively low output (of solar panels, at least), etc.

You want more power, you build more of the things that generate power. If you build ten times as many, you get ten times as much power. If you build 250 times as many, you get 250 times as much power and hey presto, "magically" 0.4% becomes 100%.
Sure, if that 249 times are all in places that have the exact same output as the .4%. I somehow don't see all places all over the world as being all good for solar or wind or geothermal.

Obviously you think I have just glossed over some kind of impossibility, but what exactly is it?
You obviously have facts and data to support that setting up all of these solar panels and windmills are economically, technologically, and environmentally feasible, right?

[luddite]

I think realistically, we have to accept that our grid is going to be a lot leaner if we deal with GW.

Whether or not we maximize investment in nuclear now, we're going to have to drive down demand before any new reactors get built, and even from a construction standpoint, it will be a challenge to replace all the existing aging reactors within a 2-decade timeline.

I'll agree with Lonewulf that renewables won't expand 250-fold, primarily because it's cheaper to reduce what we use than invest in new generation of any type. So we'd be idiots to put in that kind of infrastructure, renewable or not.

The truth is, Lonewulf, that renewables are actually up now in mediocre areas. Europe has crappy sun. Germany's wind is nothing to brag about. And with DC cables, we can put solar panels in the Sahara, maybe even create a nice microclimate where camel caravans can rest under their shade.

Good news today, Ontario has lowered peak demand from last year through conservation measures:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071018.wenergydemand1018/BNStory/National/home

[Corsair 115]

If it's good for anything, I'd say that "beaming" power would be good for giving power to ships or space stations, and that's about all the use I can really see out of it. I'm willing to be proven wrong, of course.Professor Gerard K. O'Neill, in the wake of the Energy Crisis of the early 1970s, began writing a series of extensive proposals for the establishment of space-based solar power stations. Since in space the solar panels can capture 100% of the sunlight 100% of the time, they'd be much more useful and efficient than ground-based ones. The energy would then be beamed back, in the form of microwaves, to receiving stations on the Earth.

It's very interesting reading if nothing else. I'm not sure how the numbers he came up with in the late 1970s would compare to the current economic conditions though.

[DRBUZZ0]

It's hardly fair to blame everything on the USSR. America and Britain have had some fun problems of their own, although are generally better now. Japan's safety record is an absolute joke, and shows no sign of improving. There's no doubt that the USSR was by far the worst offender, but there are enough problems still around for safety to be a legitimate concern, if not as bad as most opponents make out.

The Japanese system ain't so bad compared to the USSR. The USSR wasn't just by far the worst. It's in a totally different league.

There's an excellent documentary "Disaster at Chernobyl" if you want to get your feet wet in what happened there. Deplorable the sheer disregard for the most basic safety standards.

The Soviets used kilocuries of Sr-90 in remote RTG's with poor shielding and containment. Some were lost in the 1970's and are missing to this day. Others contaminated large areas.

The US Lost two nuclear submarines, the Thresher and Scorpeon. Neither due to a nuclear reactor problem. One was a torpedo malfunction and the other a broken weld coupled with a balasting problem,

The soviets have had "at least 10" major accidents involving damage to the reactors of nuclear submarines. They've lost at least 6 boats completely.

The soviet union experienced other nuclear accidents besides chernobyl, including Tomsk-7. The Mayak Chemical Combine was a plutonium production facility that dumped huge amounts of waste into the enviornment. The Chelyabinsk facility released a hundred times more radiation than chernobyl, but over decades.

The soviet northern fleet currently has dozens of rusting hulks, some dating back to the 1960's and partially sunk which have not even had their reactors or spent fuel removed.


US nuclear tests have been accused of exposing civizens to unacceptable risk. The tests conducted in the nevada desert were only 75 miles from populated areas. In some tests soldiers were relatively close to the explosion and precatutions were limited to dust masks and basic protection.

The soviet nuclear tests were, in some cases, conducted so close to inhabbitted areas that a few citizens were killed by the blast wave collapsing homes.

The "Mayak" accident in the 1960's was a reactor explosion that killed at least 200 and possibly a couple thousand if later deaths from cancer are factored in.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Local solar conditions, space required, placement, costs, relatively low output (of solar panels, at least), etc.


Sure, if that 249 times are all in places that have the exact same output as the .4%. I somehow don't see all places all over the world as being all good for solar or wind or geothermal.


You obviously have facts and data to support that setting up all of these solar panels and windmills are economically, technologically, and environmentally feasible, right?

Hang on sport, your claim, your burden of proof.

You should be pointing to the facts and data to support that setting up all of these solar panels and windmills is not economically, technologically, and environmentally feasible.

I don't know whether it is feasible or not, not having any such data, but you were the one claiming the idea was magical. It's up to you to support that claim.

[Lonewulf]

Heh, nice job shifting the burden. I was responding the idea that we can do without nuclear power altogether, and use "green" energy purely as an alternative, and YOU are the one that claiming that I need to back up my "claim", even though I was responding to a claim.

So you don't have any evidence to demonstrate that nuclear power is entirely unnecessary on the energy grid, then? That was the original claim, after all.

[DRBUZZ0]

Alright. Solar power. I wrote a whole long thing about this some time ago.

http://depletedcranium.com/?p=86

Solar cell efficiency:

Current Commercial solar cells: <20%
Really really high grade solar cells (such as used on satellites) 30% tops
Highest efficiency achieved in a laboratory: ~40%
Highest reasonably possible efficiency <50% (past 50 you hit some major thermodynamic issues)

Solar cells will have a lifetime of up to a few decades. They are semiconductor devices. No technology has ever been demonstrated that has an "unlimited" lifespan. Organic dye solar cells and nano-technology may improve effeciency some, but there are limits. Also price has limits. You can't make solar cells out of just anything.

It's unlikely that organic solar cells will ever have the lifespan of silicon. They may be cheaper. Degridation starts within a few years. Even if the cost is cut by a lot there are still issues


The continental US receives about 200 watts per meter squared average solar power concentration. Do the math and you'll find problems.

Here's a real world example:

Waldpolenz Solar Park in Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldpolenz_Solar_Park_in_Saxony%2C_Germany


The Wikipedia article quotes it at 130 million euro. I've heard more than that, as it has gone way overbudget. Last figures i've heard were half a billion US dollars. That might not be acurate, but in any case: We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. It takes up 220 hectares of land

They say it's a 40 megawatt power plant. As power plants go, that's damn small. But that's it's maximum output. It produces 40,000MWh a year.

What we're talking is the equivelant of about 4 megawatts of continuous power.

Lets put that in perspective: ONE SINGLE LARGE DIESEL GENERATOR

This half-billion dollar plant is the equivelent energy savings of taking ONE SINGLE SOLITARY DIESEL LOCOMOTIVE OFF THE TRACKS AT ANY GIVEN TIME.

The backend costs may make it more energy to build than it ever produces.


Solar-Thermal power generation is even worse for effeciency. Spain is working on a three billion dollar solar-thermal power plant. Rated capacity is 90 megawatts. Puny.

THREE BILLION US DOLLARS. And the thing is HUGE

Wind power Somewhat better.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12654
http://ezinearticles.com/?Wind-Farms---Limitations-as-Energy-Platforms&id=200914


Massive land requirements. MASSIVE. Low energy density per land area. Only certain areas are suitable for wind in large scales. Therefore there's transmission if those areas are not near population centers.

Wind power is inherantly grid-destabalizing. You have more than about 4% wind power and you have a major problem: If the wind slows down then the grid is in trouble, because you could have major brownout problems. It takes time to start generators.

Thus, the energy must be stored if you want to use wind for anything more than a small amount. Dams can be opened. Boilers can be fired. These can be adjusted for demand. NOT WIND. It blows when it wants to.

Energy storage in flywheels, pumped storage, or even huge batteries is inherently VERY lossy.


The second article I linked to I severely disagree with, although it highlights the shortcomings of solar and wind. "Corporations bombarding everyone to consume like americans" is bull. America and other energy-intense countries have the highest standard of living in the world. I don't think it's ethical to demand that those who live in africa or southasia cannot live with modern safe transport, with refigeration, water treatment, television, street lamps and air conditioning.

It's bull because conservation can only get you so far. Living a modern, safe, comfortable life requires energy. And the more energy a society has the more it can do to improve life.

Conservation can only do so much. It may be able to decrease the amount of energy demand incrase, but it won't lower demand. Not with an incrasingly technology-driven world with an expanding population.

We need energy. In the US we need hundreds of gigawatts. Worldwide we need dozens of terawatts, maybe hundreds in the near future.

[Lonewulf]

Good post, Dr. Buzz0. I have copy/pasted it into a word document for future use.

[DRBUZZ0]

Good post, Dr. Buzz0. I have copy/pasted it into a word document for future use.

I would have fixed all the spelling and grammar errors if I had known that :-/

[Kevin_Lowe]

Heh, nice job shifting the burden. I was responding the idea that we can do without nuclear power altogether, and use "green" energy purely as an alternative, and YOU are the one that claiming that I need to back up my "claim", even though I was responding to a claim.

No. You were not responding to such a claim.

I refer to post #295. You were responding to a remark that JoeEllison didn't trust Americans to run a nuclear plant safely. Since there was literally no other content to that post I cannot see how you could have been responsing to anything else. You said:


So far, I've seen a lot of claims that wind and solar can somehow magically fulfill the majority of power requirements, and that it can replace coal or nuclear somehow.

I've yet to see any evidence for such a thing.


I am asking you to explain why you think it is a "magical" proposition that wind, solar and presumably other renewable sources can eventually replace coal or replace nuclear sources.


So you don't have any evidence to demonstrate that nuclear power is entirely unnecessary on the energy grid, then? That was the original claim, after all.

No it was not.

[Hindmost]

I'm aware of all of this. If most of our power came from solar panels, utilities would encourage people to do their laundry and heat their hot water tank at midday instead.

The sun is not predictable enough for people to adjust there schedules unfortunately. Solar still has efficiency issues...the most efficient cells cost a bunch.

I think you totally missed the point, because you are responding to claims I never made.

The percentage of power usage which is "base load" is inflated by utilities encouraging people to use power at times which (in your words) smooth out the load curve. When a nuke activist quotes a certain percentage of current electricity use as being the "base load", it's a dead certainty that a chunk of that "base load" could actually be shifted around to some other time of day or week with no drama.

No one inflates base load data and loads that can be moved to other time periods are swing loads. Base load varies only with seasonal changes. Utilities track their power usage constantly and can determine to very accurately. Utilities have online power graphs if you want to look at how the load change. There is nothing related to nuclear power or nuclear proponents about load variation with the exception of nuclear plants (along with large coal units) are cheaper to run at base load conditions.


Since I specifically said some of the base load is real, I have no idea why you think I said otherwise or why you think I said utilities encourage people to use more power overall.

Cut and pasted from your other post:

Things like factories running 24/7 create a real base load which is insensitive to changes in how we supply power, but a lot of what pro-nuke spokspeople call "base load" is no such thing.



I may have inferred something, however, you seemed to relate base load as having something to do with pro-nuke spokespeople and then stated there is no such thing as above. As I stated above, base load has got nothing to do with nuclear plants. Nuke plants can swing or provide base load quite well.

Fossil and nuclear fuel facilities have their place, certainly. The question is what proportion of our power generating capacity in the future should come from them.

I would like to see about 50% from nuclear in the US, however, It is not going to happen. We don't have the engineering capability or the industrial capacity to make it happen. It would take about 50 years to get there as it would mean building over 100 plants...that just won't happen. Oil and natural gas should not be used as they are just too valuble to use for electricity.

glenn

[Hindmost]

My guess is the percentage would be higher. I actually asked that question on a "nuclear poll" back when I was teaching Radiological Monitoring courses for the VT Emergency Management Office. (Other questions asked about the chances of nuclear war or nuclear terrorism in future years). Students were primarily firefighters, law enforcement people, Civil Air Patrol folks and local government officials. The question was, "What is the likelihood of a nuclear power plant blowing up like the atom bombs dropped on Japan in WWII?" Choices ranged from, "Very likely", to "Impossible". Not that many picked "Impossible." I have the results of several years of polling around here somewhere if anyone is interested.

To be fair, the poll originated with Jack Greene, an HP who co-wrote "Would the Insects Inherit the Earth? and Other Subjects of Concern to Those Who Worry About Nuclear War" His original poll may have been published in the Health Physics Newsletter back in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

BTW, the nuclear industry isn't helping matters by resorting to "nuke speak": Years ago a friend was appointed Social Welfare Department Liaison to the State's nuclear plant. As a non-scientist he was concerned about nuclear explosions and kept asking about the odds of the plant "blowing up". After correctly repeating several times that this was "impossible" to his persistent question, a plant engineer did allow that there could be a, "High pressure steam dissasembley". My friend said that sure as Hell sounded like an explosion to him.

As you probably know: When France put there program together, they took surveys and found people were not in favor of nuclear plants...so, they instituted a program to educate the population. It worked as now the majority of people are pro-nuke. I am a bit depressed now..

glenn:(

[Hindmost]

Professor Gerard K. O'Neill, in the wake of the Energy Crisis of the early 1970s, began writing a series of extensive proposals for the establishment of space-based solar power stations. Since in space the solar panels can capture 100% of the sunlight 100% of the time, they'd be much more useful and efficient than ground-based ones. The energy would then be beamed back, in the form of microwaves, to receiving stations on the Earth.

It's very interesting reading if nothing else. I'm not sure how the numbers he came up with in the late 1970s would compare to the current economic conditions though.

I remember that....It would cook a bunch of birds though. The concept had other environmental issues as well, but it still is very feasible.

glenn

[tracer]

Why on earth would you think that? Chernobyl had an exposed and ongoing chain reaction, with radioactive isotopes being continually generated by that reaction and thrown into the air by a raging fire from the burning graphite moderator. Waste containment isn't undergoing any chain reaction.


While the material in the Chernobyl reactor was certainly much "hotter" than the stuff in a reactor's waste-containment facility, a waste-containment facility contains many many times more radioactive material than the reactor does. Particularly if the reactor has been in operation for a few decades or more.

Note that I'm talking about the high-level waste (i.e. spent nuclear fuel) that has to be stored on-site at the reactor complex here, not the low-level waste.

As such, other materials which come into contact with that waste will not get activated to any significant degree.


Then why does equipment that's exposed to high-level waste have to be treated as "low-level radioactive waste" when it's disposed of?

[Hindmost]

Again Glenn, I think you're missing the concern.

First of all, I doubt anyone is proposing that we expand our coal program.

Secondly, you're talking about emissions during normal operations. Whereas most people are concerned about radiation emitted in screw ups. There's also the radiation in tailings and spent fuel.

So we're not talking about the same things. It's more an argument about whether the lower fuels costs of nuclear justify public investment in the industry given the known hazards of tailings, the unknown but probably small risk of serious catastrophes and the unknown risks and costs of dealing with spent fuel. There are also risks in transportation.

I don't know how we measure these things, and honest men may disagree.

When I see a statement that is incorrect, I have the need to correct it I guess. A large coal plant will burn 100 to 200 tons of coal an hour. About 20 percent of that is ash. Even with precipitators, it releases uranium, mercury and other junk. The ash is not exactly environmentally friendly. Coal yards spontaneously catch fire occasionally. And still it is needed world wide as it is still vitally needed and things can be engineered to make them better.

So many people do not understand what happens in heavy industries. They hear nuclear and associate it with nuclear weapons....so I am a bit zealous in my defense. A reactor about the size of a large bedroom can supply enough electricity for 1.5 million people for 24 months...assuminmg a US style PWR. That is just efficient.

Catastrophes have such low probabity...even a TMI accident won't be possible with inherently safe fuel. And TMI was truly and economic accident and proved the safety analysis was very conservative. Lets assume we do have annother TMI...which was very close to worst case. No one gets hurt and we have another economic disaster.

Reprocessing technology exists...we've been doing it for years.

Transportation of nuclear waste has been occuring for 50 years or so. The transport carriers have been subjected to fire, collisions from trains etc...A good track record and system exists.

I have to admit, I am not aware of the hazard from uranium mining...I do know that uranium is far more of a chemical poison problem than a radiation issue. Chemically it causes kidney failure.

It is possible to hypothesize just about any problem...but that hypothesis should be based within the parameters of what is possible.

glenn

[Hindmost]

How can Pembina cherry-pick if it's a standard? I'm not trying to nit-pick here, just trying to understand. Pembina has a lot of credibility, even among my pro-nuke power worker associates. I don't think they make stuff up. I'd like to account for the discrepancy. All you're telling me is that you stand by your numbers.

OK, need to clear this up. The Pembina link indicated that Candu plants had capacity factors as low as 40%--and only a couple early designs did. Their point was to indicate that the plants are unreliable. I consider that cherry picking data to falsely implicate Candu plants. It is a hasty generalization that doesn't tell the true story--and would immediately make me suspect of the report. That's why I provided data indicating the CF of candu plants--lifetime--is 80% and the candu 6 is about 85%.

I completely agree. Only telling you what my government's idea is.

I just found some data in the US where most of the installed capacity built in recent years has been natural gas fired plants...I am upset.

snip....

glenn

[luddite]

And what do the pessimists say about our oil reserves ?

The pessimists say we peaked 2 years ago and it's all downhill from here.

Actually, there's a bright spot to the pessimists. I saw a graph where they postulated that if we extract and burn all the coal, oil and natural gas as quickly as we can get our hands on it, we'll still come out well below the lowest emissions projections of the IPCC. Which is why a lot of peak oilers aren't worried about global warming.

But I'm cautious by nature. I wouldn't bank on the pessimists being right.

[robinson]

Not if you OWN the oil, it just gets more and more lucrative.

[luddite]

Not if you OWN the oil, it just gets more and more lucrative.
Especially if you've been telling people to go ahead and buy that gas guzzler 'cause there's plenty of oil left.

[Lonewulf]

I like how Kevin_Lowe had a choice to respond to me, Lonewulf, who didn't post up meaningful engineering information about solar or wind energy, and DrBuzz0, who did. Naturally, he went for the easy route.

Makes me wonder if he's really interested in learning a thing or two.

Either way, my "evidence" that thinking that solar energy and wind energy can take over the energy industry by force within a reasonable time limit is magical thinking (outside of DrBuzz0's post):

The long term future is anyone's guess but the short to medium term, this is more wishful thinking. There is ultimately a limit to how much power can be extracted from, say, a square metre of solar panel; that being the power incident upon it in the first place. The solar constant is about 1.3kW.m-2, which means that to generate 1GWe, assuming 100% efficiency, which would violate the laws of Physics anyway, 770,000m2 would be required. This also ignores the effect of night, which is also immutable. Currently, a 1GW nuclear or coal-fired power station would occupy a mere 100,000m2. This is an example of how even the greatest technological improvements would have their limits.

From a rhetorical standpoint, this argument is also a double standard because the same luxury of time to advance is not afforded to nuclear power. For example, fast reactor technology and accelerator driven systems can significantly reduce the amount of high level waste produced from the nuclear fuel cycle. Though because these technologies are not mature today, nuclear opponents, including those who insist we give renewables time to develop, say this means that nuclear is unacceptable.

http://www.freedomforfission.org.uk/deb/alternative.html

Also, geothermal takes up a significant portion of that .4%, so it may take up to 500 times the solar panels and wind mill energy capacity (which are dependent on location, as I said; some places aren't windy, some places aren't sunny).

If you deny any of the above, you're free to question the owner of the website. "He supports nuclear, so therefore he can't be trusted", like what Luddite's been saying, isn't very convincing to me. It's possible to support something because you find the research convincing.

Overall, we can use renewables no problem, but it's still going to cost money, it's not going to last forever either, and it can be unpredictable; and I heavily question it being "easy" to suddenly crank out more and more and more and take up all of energy production. If there isn't energy available to heat my house in the middle of the night in the dead of winter in northern U.S., I really wouldn't be that interested.

[DRBUZZ0]

The pessimists say we peaked 2 years ago and it's all downhill from here.

Actually, there's a bright spot to the pessimists. I saw a graph where they postulated that if we extract and burn all the coal, oil and natural gas as quickly as we can get our hands on it, we'll still come out well below the lowest emissions projections of the IPCC. Which is why a lot of peak oilers aren't worried about global warming.

But I'm cautious by nature. I wouldn't bank on the pessimists being right.


Psssshhh. Don't worry about running out of oil. For one thing we've got lots and lots and lots and lots of coal. We can burn coal for hundreds of years.

So our electricity is safe. You could move to a whole coal-based energy system and have plugin hybrids running on coal generated electricity 50% of the time.

Then the rest of the time you run them on gasoline. You can get the gasoline from any remaining oil. Oh? We're completely out of oil? Well that's no problem either. We can make the gasoline out of good 'ole coal too.



It's an energy intensive process and it can be dirty, but gasoline's just an hydrocarbon. Coal's got plenty of carbon in it. We can get the hydrogen from water. We just need to react the hydrogen under pressure with the coal and go through a few other steps.

Oh but how do we get the hydrogen? And the high pressure steam? And the heat and stuff for the forming and cracking?

Well, shucks that's easy. All we need is water and some energy... which we get from... YOU GUESSED IT! Burning some coal!

We can even make our own designer synthetic gasoline with lots of hydrogen and lite on carbon. Not much sulfur. Nice and clean. The only thing that is difficult is the energy needed for the chemical reformatting. (but we already covered that part. We burn COAL)

Now I suppose we *could* run low on coal... as in anthracite after a while. But that's okay, because we have bituminous coal. And when we run out of that then there's sub-bituminous (There's a hell of a lot of that stuff). Then there's brown coal... which kinda looks like dirt.... but it burns!

Okay, once we're done with the coal burning, which ought to take a good couple centuries at the very least, then no sweat. We've just gotten started!

After that then comes the peat. And the peat-clay, which is clay full of peat. You can burn it... you get a lot of left over burned greasy dirt.

Okay then we move on to the stuff which kinda strattles the line between coal/peat/oil. It's basically some greasy oily dirty muck.

BUT YOU GUESSED IT! IT BURNS!



So don't anybody worry. Oil is just the tip here. We've got plenty of filthy fuels ripe for the taking. We can make any kind of petroleum product out of them too with sufficient cracking/steam reformatting/gasification/distillation.

Now, the only problem with the synthetic fuel thing (aside from the energy you need)... Is... it tends to leave behind some stuff. Primary tar, creatien, coal tars... stuff tends to be very heavy in benzine and volatile organics.

But guess what!

IT BURNS!

[Lonewulf]

The problem with those alternative coal sources, though, is that they tend to be dirtier and more inefficient, isn't it?

Either way, I'd rather get us off dependence of fossil fuels. They give off too much waste, are inefficient (I.E., take trainloads like you said), are non-renewable, and are used for other things (plastic, for instance). Until we can run vehicles off of something else besides fossil fuels at an efficient rate, I'm dubious that we should keep trusting fossil fuel plants (where most of fossil fuels get used as far as I know). Then there's the whole Carbon thing. ;)

[Ziggurat]

While the material in the Chernobyl reactor was certainly much "hotter" than the stuff in a reactor's waste-containment facility, a waste-containment facility contains many many times more radioactive material than the reactor does. Particularly if the reactor has been in operation for a few decades or more.

And most of that is long-lived isotopes (which is why it has to be stored). But it's not the long-lived isotopes which pose the primary radiological health hazard, it's the short-lived isotopes like iodine which are biologically active and decay quickly (and hence do their damage quickly).

Note that I'm talking about the high-level waste (i.e. spent nuclear fuel) that has to be stored on-site at the reactor complex here, not the low-level waste.

I know that. It still doesn't pose anywhere near the risk that Chernobyl did.

Then why does equipment that's exposed to high-level waste have to be treated as "low-level radioactive waste" when it's disposed of?

Regulations. We're extremely cautious, and some of that stuff is in contact for long periods of time. There isn't zero activation from radioactive waste, sure, but it's many orders of magnitude less than from an active chain reaction.

[DRBUZZ0]

I had proposed an alternative energy plan before utilizing basic principals of chemistry and unlimited resources...

http://www.depletedcranium.com/ppl2gas.jpg

[Lonewulf]

Hmm... so people like Sylvia Browne can be put to some use. =D

[DRBUZZ0]

And most of that is long-lived isotopes (which is why it has to be stored). But it's not the long-lived isotopes which pose the primary radiological health hazard, it's the short-lived isotopes like iodine which are biologically active and decay quickly (and hence do their damage quickly).




This is a problem with the US proposals for disposal of waste, basically dumping it in Yucca mountain.

The disposal criteria must be able to:

A) Last for a very very very long time, because there are some long-lived isotopes

B) Withstand heat, because there are some high-energy particle emitters with reasonably short lifespans, but long enough to be of concern.

C) Deal with isotopes which are relatively short lived but are highly dangerous and biologically active, even in small amounts.


When you're dealing with the waste, some things require different acomidations than others.

Example: Cs-137 and Sr-90 are biologically active, highly radioactive, produce heat and so on. They need good containment in inert materials. But they only need it for decades to a few centuries at most. Then they'll basically be gone.


Stuff like Tc-99 and I-129 are long lived. They need geologically stable containment in formations which will be secure for a long time. However, they do not need as much imediate caution. They don't generate anywhere near as much heat. They're not as difficult to handle.

[DRBUZZ0]

Regulations. We're extremely cautious, and some of that stuff is in contact for long periods of time. There isn't zero activation from radioactive waste, sure, but it's many orders of magnitude less than from an active chain reaction.

Red an interesting story about low level waste on a bullitin board a LONG time ago. I've tried to find it.

At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory they had a large volume of low-level nuclear waste. This stuff is very low-level. Some of it might not be radioactive at all, but is considered waste by regulations because of it's use.

We're talking old lab coats that may have gotten a tracer on them. Some organic materials with various tracers in them. Low-level check sources.

Well, they can keep it on site and it's no problem, but they have to pay per federal guidelines to get rid of this stuff. The regulations state that once it's marked for "off site disposal" they have to have it inventoried, labeled, inspected by a radiological safety officer, sent to a monitored disposal site and so on.

So they had these barrels of lab coats and rags and test tubes and whatever other low-level stuff. They started painting them yellow and putting them in the roads as traffic barriers around construction and potholes and stuff.


God I have GOT to find that posting on an archive or something.

[Kevin_Lowe]

I like how Kevin_Lowe had a choice to respond to me, Lonewulf, who didn't post up meaningful engineering information about solar or wind energy, and DrBuzz0, who did. Naturally, he went for the easy route.

Makes me wonder if he's really interested in learning a thing or two.

Draw whatever conclusions you like.


Either way, my "evidence" that thinking that solar energy and wind energy can take over the energy industry by force within a reasonable time limit is magical thinking (outside of DrBuzz0's post):

http://www.freedomforfission.org.uk/deb/alternative.html


Okay, that's a start. Now we just need to show that as a matter of fact there is not enough space to put enough solar panels to provide the energy we need. The mere fact that solar has its downsides is inconclusive - coal, oil and nuclear have their downsides too.

That, incidentally, is the short answer to Dr Buzzo's points as well. Yes, every technology has its downsides. You have to compare the downsides of the two technologies to actually analyse the issue though, because merely listing the downsides of either solar alone (to pick one) or nuclear alone is inconclusive.


Also, geothermal takes up a significant portion of that .4%, so it may take up to 500 times the solar panels and wind mill energy capacity (which are dependent on location, as I said; some places aren't windy, some places aren't sunny).

If you deny any of the above, you're free to question the owner of the website. "He supports nuclear, so therefore he can't be trusted", like what Luddite's been saying, isn't very convincing to me. It's possible to support something because you find the research convincing.

Please don't put words in my mouth, and please don't try to stereotype me as a Luddite. I like technology, I just think you and Buzzo have gotten overexited about the positive aspects of fossil fuels and nukes and the negative aspects of renewables.


Overall, we can use renewables no problem, but it's still going to cost money, it's not going to last forever either, and it can be unpredictable; and I heavily question it being "easy" to suddenly crank out more and more and more and take up all of energy production. If there isn't energy available to heat my house in the middle of the night in the dead of winter in northern U.S., I really wouldn't be that interested.

If renewables cannot produce enough energy to meet minimum requirements we should not rely solely upon them. I'm still waiting for the evidence that should make us fix the belief that this is necessarily the case.

[Belz...]

Sure, if that 249 times are all in places that have the exact same output as the .4%. I somehow don't see all places all over the world as being all good for solar or wind or geothermal.

Hey, I've got an idea! Maybe we can turn the whole planet into a power plant: in every spot, we place either solar panels, wind thingies, etc...

Heh, nice job shifting the burden. I was responding the idea that we can do without nuclear power altogether, and use "green" energy purely as an alternative

That word really bugs me. Green. You still gotta build and operate the damn thing. And what's not green about nuclear ? I mean, all we gotta do is stack the damn waste on the moon. What could possibly happen ?

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/608047189650216ec.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=8852)

[Belz...]

Oil and natural gas should not be used as they are just too valuble to use for electricity.

I agree. When we talk about fossil fuels people often say "when we're out of oil we'll find something else."

And then how do we make plastic ? We kind of use it a lot.

[Belz...]

The pessimists say we peaked 2 years ago and it's all downhill from here.

And why should we trust the pessimists for nuclear OR oil ?

[Ziggurat]

And then how do we make plastic ? We kind of use it a lot.

You can make plastic out of corn. Nobody does it because it's energy inefficent (and therefore more expensive) compared to making it from petroleum, but it can be done.

[Lonewulf]

Okay, that's a start. Now we just need to show that as a matter of fact there is not enough space to put enough solar panels to provide the energy we need. The mere fact that solar has its downsides is inconclusive - coal, oil and nuclear have their downsides too.

That, incidentally, is the short answer to Dr Buzzo's points as well. Yes, every technology has its downsides. You have to compare the downsides of the two technologies to actually analyse the issue though, because merely listing the downsides of either solar alone (to pick one) or nuclear alone is inconclusive.
Okay. But it's a false dichotomy to pick one over the other, instead of having both technologies. You have to demonstrate that:

A) One technology is not worth having at all, and/or
B) The other can replace A.

As it stands, I fail to see why nuclear and renewables can't coexist.

If renewables cannot produce enough energy to meet minimum requirements we should not rely solely upon them. I'm still waiting for the evidence that should make us fix the belief that this is necessarily the case.
Good luck with that. If renewables can produce enough energy to meet all requirements, we should rely solely upon them if they are environmentally, technologically, or economically feasible within the short time span needed to erect them, and the long time span of keeping them running (nothing lasts forever). I'm still waiting for the evidence that should make us fix the belief that this is necessarily the case.

[Belz...]

You can make plastic out of corn. Nobody does it because it's energy inefficent (and therefore more expensive) compared to making it from petroleum, but it can be done.

Yeah, well I'm sure we can replace every petroleum product with something equivalent, but why would we want to get to that point ?

[RecoveringYuppy]

As it stands, I fail to see why nuclear and renewables can't coexist.
Or why nuclear with breeder technology isn't considered a renewable, since it is.

[Ziggurat]

Yeah, well I'm sure we can replace every petroleum product with something equivalent, but why would we want to get to that point ?

I'm not saying we want to (it's obviously preferable to make plastic out of something that's much closer to it already, namely petroleum), only that it's possible.

[Lonewulf]

In my opinion, we could work harder to get rid of over-creation of plastic products. In Germany, many containers are made of glass, and are easily recycled; you give it back to the people that sold it to you, they clean it out, and refill it. They do this with plastic too, I think.

[Belz...]

I'm not saying we want to (it's obviously preferable to make plastic out of something that's much closer to it already, namely petroleum), only that it's possible.

I know, I know.

[DRBUZZ0]

I agree. When we talk about fossil fuels people often say "when we're out of oil we'll find something else."

And then how do we make plastic ? We kind of use it a lot.

See post 386. You don't need oil to make anything that's made out of oil. We're talking hydrocarbons here. Hydrogen and carbons.

Oil contains the chain sizes and ratios already that are good for plastic/gasoline/diesel and such.

You can make it out of other stuff, such as natural gas, coal and water, peat, biomass or people.

It's just an issue of energy. You have to do stuff like hydrogenate and reformat (add hydrogen atoms to the molecules) do destructive distillation (Basically vaporize the organic material under high pressure and break it apart) shaping of the stuff, cracking (basically breaking apart hydrocarbon chains)...

That stuff generally takes a lot of energy. You could do it reasonably for plastics. Doing it for fuel is a bigger issue, because it's energy intensive and it leaves a lot of crap behind (coal is full of mercury, sulphur and other trace nasties).

It's been proposed for a long time to get the US self-suffecient. Oh it could be done, but doing it on the scale of national fuel production is a bit much. Generally, the end cost of energy and the chemical processes and refining make it more expensive than even $65 a barrel forign oil.

I had heard a while ago that if forign oil stayed at 75 bucks a barrell it would be competitive. But nobody wants to build a major operation because the market is volitile.

Imagine the price of oil goes down to $60 due to an economic slowdown or russia pumping more. Now you've lost the ability to make anything. Imagine you spend billions on a coal to gasoline plant and then China has a recession and the OPEC nations start cheating: Oil goes down to less than $50 a barrel: Now you're ruined!

[Hindmost]

Or why nuclear with breeder technology isn't considered a renewable, since it is.

Breeder technology can't really be considered renewable. A reasonable fast reactor--fueled with uranium 235 and uranium 238 blanket to breed with--will have a breeding ratio of about 1.25. For every uranium it fissions, it will breed 1.25 atoms of plutonium. However, eventually we would run out of fissionable fuel and uranium238 to breed into plutonium. Thorium232 can be used to breed uranium 233, however, the breeding ratio is very low almost non-existant.

Breeding can extend the useful life for fission technology for quite some time. Hopefully, fusion become feasible in the meantime...it just hasn't shown any real chance of working yet.

glenn

[Rob Lister]

That stuff generally takes a lot of energy. You could do it reasonably for plastics. Doing it for fuel is a bigger issue, because it's energy intensive and it leaves a lot of crap behind (coal is full of mercury, sulphur and other trace nasties).


which, ironically, ends up in the air instead of 50gallon drums nobody wants to deal with.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Okay. But it's a false dichotomy to pick one over the other, instead of having both technologies. You have to demonstrate that:

A) One technology is not worth having at all, and/or
B) The other can replace A.

As it stands, I fail to see why nuclear and renewables can't coexist.

We've moved well away from the claim that renewables cannot even in theory replace non-renewables. Now we seem to have transitioned into discussing whether nuclear and renewable technologies can coexist, which is an odd thing to discuss because they coexist right now.


Good luck with that. If renewables can produce enough energy to meet all requirements, we should rely solely upon them if they are environmentally, technologically, or economically feasible within the short time span needed to erect them, and the long time span of keeping them running (nothing lasts forever). I'm still waiting for the evidence that should make us fix the belief that this is necessarily the case.

Now I'm confused. Throughout this thread you have seemed to be strongly pro-nuclear, but now it seems like you have no idea whether or not renewables are actually a better idea or not.

You claimed earlier that it was "magical" to think that renewables could replace non-renewables. Suppose we decided that instead of spending money on new non-renewable power stations we would spend the same money on putting the best value-for-money solar installations on the roofs of buildings. I'm thinking about sufficient solar hot water systems for places that use hot water, and photovoltaics on the rest of the space. How far would that get us in terms of replacing non-renewable energy sources? How much money would we have to spend, to get x% of our energy needs just from solar this way, and what would x be for a reasonable investment? How much net carbon dioxide would this save (or cost)?

If you don't know the answers, don't bother trying to push the burden of proof back over my way. Just admit you have no idea whether or not renewables could actually replace non-renewables or not.

[RecoveringYuppy]

Breeding can extend the useful life for fission technology for quite some time.
I was under the impression that breeding ratios had exceeded that 1.25 rate you cite. I was also under the impression that, even though no reactor was even close to doing it, there was a conceivable cycle that could breed the feedstocks you cite from lighter elements. It was a very long cycle IIRC.

[luddite]

Psssshhh. Don't worry about running out of oil. For one thing we've got lots and lots and lots and lots of coal. We can burn coal for hundreds of years.

Before I start, I want to stress that this is not my opinion. I'm not a geologist, and among geologists there is vast disagreement. But I will explain the argument as I understand it.

As far as I can tell, there is very little difference between geologists in terms of how much stuff they believe is in the ground. The difference is in how quickly they believe it can be extracted and/or delivered.

The best resources are always mined first. When oil was discovered, there was a 10:1 energy return on investment in wood. At 100:1, oil looked great. It was very energy dense. It burned more cleanly than coal. The average for oil is now approaching what wood was. The EROI for tar sands oil is something like 2:1. President Bush and our Prime Minister want to expand tar sands production 5-fold. Meanwhile the Athabasca River is already down to 1/4 of its flow from current operations. There are ideas about how to use less water, but they involve using even more energy to extract the oil. I haven't seen the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if tar sands oil even now had a lifetime emissions value worse than coal. But the point is the cost and the rate at which it can be economically recovered and delivered.

In terms of coal, you run into similar problems. The best North American coal was Appalachian coal. It's gone now. The most productive seams now are plentiful but of much poorer quality. Whole rail lines are diverted to carry as much coal as possible. Can that be expanded? Perhaps. But it's instructive that investors are actually looking at things like offshore coal and the US is already a net importer. It's a good economic indication that it's getting hard to extract the stuff fast enough.

You start running into more and more hurdles to extract poor resources. Location, lack of running water, unstable soils, political instability, etc.

And eventually you hit a technological hurdle when the EROI falls below 1:1. At that point, either the extraction technology has to change or the resource cannot be economically recovered at any price (for the energy, that is -- David Hughes points out that a million years from now, we will always still have enough oil to lubricate our bicycle chains).

So, the optimistic geologists believe that price signals will spur the required technological breakthroughs that are required to push off the crisis for a while. Pessimists don't.

David Hughes is one of the pessimists. He's been assessing North American coal reserves for Canada for 37 years. He's also on the Canadian natural gas potentials committee with Natural Resources Canada. He is trained as a petroleum geologist. The Mackenzie Valley pipeline was dreamed up when he started. It's still not built today. He's seen "advanced oil recovery" techniques being introduced, and hoped they would improve the picture. What they've done is, at great expense, temporarily increase the flow. The total productivity is unchanged or lower. Other advances have only marginally improved the picture. So he thinks that technological breakthroughs have already done what they can. That doesn't mean there won't be further breakthroughs. But at this point, he thinks they will be slowing the slide rather than forestalling the peak.

There is a classic bell-curve to any resource extraction. Once you've passed the peak, it gets harder and harder to extract the resource. It also takes more and more energy. This is problematic enough when you're talking about granite or oak trees, but it can be crazy with energy resources. With copper, for example, you might get to the point where you're using 10 times the energy and 10 times the manpower to extract the same amount of copper. With oil, you only end up with a fraction of the resource at the end as well, because so much oil has been used in the extraction process.

So oil companies tend to portray the situation as "70 years at current rates". Well, that's nice. We could all keep using oil at the same rate for 70 years and then abruptly stop. Except that even that's wrong because we'd be using more and more of the oil just to extract more oil. And unfortunately the 70 years running till you stop abruptly is not how resources work. You peak somewhere around where 40% of the oil has been extracted, then you go down fast and level off to a long tail lasting hundreds of years. Oil will still be extracted for my great-great-great grandchildren, well past the "70 years" quoted, but in tiny amounts.

The petroleum geologists do not disagree on this fact. Optimists and pessimists alike understand this. The only difference between them is when they believe the peak will occur. The most optimistic say 2032, but there's reason to doubt their credibility. Looking at those whose work is not tied to oil companies, realistic estimates give us an optimistic outlook of about a decade.

This would change dramatically if we started addressing global warming, or otherwise interfered with the oil market as it stands. This is not written in stone.

My understanding is that there are over 200 years worth of coal remaining at current extraction rates. However, if we attempt to use coal to replace oil and North American natural gas as well, it will be a lot less. First of all because the amount of energy required is several times that which comes from coal now, and secondly because you lose some energy in the conversion process. Rather than convert coal to a liquid fuel, it's actually better if we make our cars electric. The emissions profile of electric cars, even when fueled by coal, is more favourable than the current engines.

In addition, that 200 years of coal will have the same bell curve I described for oil. It will not be extracted in 200 years.

As I said, I'm certainly not going to count on the pessimists being correct. However, it is clear to me that whether or not we deal with global warming, we're going to have an energy crisis in the near future.

I suspect Hindmost agrees with me on this.

[luddite]

I would like to see about 50% from nuclear in the US, however, It is not going to happen. We don't have the engineering capability or the industrial capacity to make it happen. It would take about 50 years to get there as it would mean building over 100 plants...that just won't happen. Oil and natural gas should not be used as they are just too valuble to use for electricity.

If demand goes down enough, you may get your wish :-)

[DRBUZZ0]

Breeder technology can't really be considered renewable. A reasonable fast reactor--fueled with uranium 235 and uranium 238 blanket to breed with--will have a breeding ratio of about 1.25. For every uranium it fissions, it will breed 1.25 atoms of plutonium. However, eventually we would run out of fissionable fuel and uranium238 to breed into plutonium. Thorium232 can be used to breed uranium 233, however, the breeding ratio is very low almost non-existant.

Breeding can extend the useful life for fission technology for quite some time. Hopefully, fusion become feasible in the meantime...it just hasn't shown any real chance of working yet.

glenn

If you want to take it as far as is theoretically possible then you can (in theory) get an energy return through the fission and decay of anything that starts off heavier than iron-57. If after a few million years we run out of uranium, thorium and such we could start neutron-bombarding other heavy things until they become heavy enough for fission.

But eventually I suppose we could run out of matter in general..

[DRBUZZ0]

Breeder technology can't really be considered renewable. A reasonable fast reactor--fueled with uranium 235 and uranium 238 blanket to breed with--will have a breeding ratio of about 1.25. For every uranium it fissions, it will breed 1.25 atoms of plutonium. However, eventually we would run out of fissionable fuel and uranium238 to breed into plutonium. Thorium232 can be used to breed uranium 233, however, the breeding ratio is very low almost non-existant.

Breeding can extend the useful life for fission technology for quite some time. Hopefully, fusion become feasible in the meantime...it just hasn't shown any real chance of working yet.

glenn

???????

Thorium-232 has a pretty decent neutron capture ratio in the thermal range.

Actually I'm all about the throium cycle reactors...

Now where's that PDF... I have a great article somewhere..

[luddite]

And why should we trust the pessimists for nuclear OR oil ?
I don't. As I said.

But I do think prudence would suggest we hope for the best and plan for the worst. And these are fairly mainstream people at the conservative end of the opinion spectrum among experts.

[luddite]

You can make plastic out of corn. Nobody does it because it's energy inefficent (and therefore more expensive) compared to making it from petroleum, but it can be done.
Not only that, when we run out of oil for energy, it may still be extracted economically for plastics (when it takes more energy to extract the oil than the oil contains, it may still be economical for plastic). If petroleum products were left in this relatively stable form (plastic) or recycled for other plastics, they wouldn't add to our emissions. They do add to emissions if they're incinerated.

[luddite]

If you deny any of the above, you're free to question the owner of the website. "He supports nuclear, so therefore he can't be trusted", like what Luddite's been saying, isn't very convincing to me. It's possible to support something because you find the research convincing.

I'd like to point out that that's not what I said. What I've said all along is that there is an enormous gulf between those who support nuclear and those who oppose it. So you can sometimes get data on the same thing which seem completely off scale. I don't doubt that there are a lot of honest people who support nuclear power who believe their numbers. I don't think that discounts the fact that when nuclear opponents say "Hey, your numbers don't include x, y and z" that they may have a point, too.

[luddite]

I've mentioned the net-zero movement before. Now California wants to make it standard for homes after 2020. For those who think conservation/renewables is impossible, it's something to think about:

http://www.thedailygreen.com/2007/10/19/california-aims-for-zero-energy-homes/7949/

[DRBUZZ0]

Yeah. They want to make it the standard and hell... I'd like a standard like that. Actually they ought to make it a standard that the houses not only produce as much energy as they consume but also a million billion times more. And that they cure cancer too.

That's all easy to set as a standard. State laws area easy to make. Just introduce a bill that says "all homes should be xxx by 2020" and if you get the votes there's your law.


But damnit! The laws of thermodynamics don't seem to work that way. I've been lobbying the the repeal of the second law for a year and I'm not getting anywhere! I don't even have any congressmen willing to introduce draft legislation.

Damnit. It's 2007! I PanAm promised express service to the moon by now!

[Lonewulf]

You claimed earlier that it was "magical" to think that renewables could replace non-renewables. Suppose we decided that instead of spending money on new non-renewable power stations we would spend the same money on putting the best value-for-money solar installations on the roofs of buildings. I'm thinking about sufficient solar hot water systems for places that use hot water, and photovoltaics on the rest of the space. How far would that get us in terms of replacing non-renewable energy sources? How much money would we have to spend, to get x% of our energy needs just from solar this way, and what would x be for a reasonable investment? How much net carbon dioxide would this save (or cost)?

Hey, Dr. Buzz0, can you help me out here? I did some of the math myself, based on some quoted figures, but as such I had to make some simplistic assumptions. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.

Okay, first of all, Dr. Buzzo says that, on average, we receive 200 watts per square meter with current solar technology. So I make the assumption that we cover every single roof in all of New York with these solar panels, and they have the same efficiency (they may have less, considering the weather in New York City). Then, I took the square kilometers of the Urban areas of New York City (not the overall Metropolis area, as there's less rooftops to factor in there, I believe).

So...

According to an article I found with google:

New York passed the 2005 record for peak energy usage at least twice on Monday afternoon as temperatures hit the 90s across the state.

The peak load for the summer of 2005 came on July 26, when energy users across the state consumed an average 31,741 megawatts of electricity during an hour-long period.

Between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. on July 17 the average peak load registered at 32,316 megawatts, while between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. the peak load was 32,519 megawatts of electricity.

As such, I'll use that peak load as a starting point. I'm not sure what the average energy requirements would be.

from: http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany/stories/2006/07/17/daily14.html

8,683.2 km^2 area for Urban Area of New York City

The continental US receives about 200 watts per meter squared average solar power concentration. Do the math and you'll find problems.
Assuming that this figure can be exported to New York City solar panels (not sure if it can be)...

31 741 000 000 watts needed for the state (okay, that's a big state, but I can't find energy use needed by city quickly enough; if someone else can find it, that would be lovely)

8 683 200 square meters for the Urban area of New York City

(That last one from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City)

*200 watts per square meter = 1 736 640 000 Watts created

That's significant, I'll admit. However, that's 1.7*10^9 watts vs. 31.7*10^9 watts needed. That cuts down on requirements for all of New York State (again, I'm not sure about New York City itself), but it's a far cry from replacing them. I'm not sure how much wind energy could help, though.

One thing is, New York City is very big and has a lot of energy consumption requirements... however, it's also very environmental in that it uses

New York City's dense population and low automobile dependence help make New York among the most energy efficient in the United States.[34] The city's greenhouse gas emission levels are relatively low when measured per capita, at 7.1 metric tons per person, below San Francisco, at 11.2 metric tons, and the national average, at 24.5.[35] New Yorkers are collectively responsible for one percent of the nation's total greenhouse gas emissions,[35] though comprise 2.7% of the nation's population. The average New Yorker consumes less than half the electricity used by a resident of San Francisco and nearly one-quarter the electricity consumed by a resident of Dallas.[36]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City

So this would lower the overall energy requirements of the state of New York. Something like San Francisco would get about as much bang for their buck, but need more bucks.

Now, for cost...

Meh, I'm giving up on looking up the details for cost. Some of it goes over my head, and I would rather an expert handle it.

However, I did find this link: http://www.dmme.virginia.gov/de/chap7c.html It seems that the more solar energy has to handle, the higher the costs per kilowatt hour rises.

The Table shows that it is difficult for even high-performance solar water heaters to be cost-effective when displacing inexpensive natural gas: systems must cost $25 or less per sq.ft. in residential applications, and $21 or less per sq.ft. in commercial applications. When displacing electricity, however, the situation is much different: even lower performance systems can be economical if costing less than $50-52 per sq.ft. in residential and small commercial applications (in Virginia Power's service area). The large general service rate case in Table 1 assumes that demand charges (costs for on-peak power) are not avoided. Where demand charges are paid by a facility, the solar system design should include a peak-load reduction strategy (including summer-daytime shutoff on the auxiliary heater), so that these charges can be avoided and system cost-effectiveness can be improved."

The three small to moderate scale systems that were evaluated in detail in the study had installed costs that ranged from $44 to $74 per square foot of collector, with an average of $59. Their average annual performance ranged from 550 to 770 Btu per sq.ft. per day, with an average of 650.

To use the Table as a decision guide, you read it from right to left. First, you must know the type and rate of energy saved. For example, let's say you have residential electricity at $.078 per kWh or $22.85 per million Btu. Second, you assume (or get a guarantee from the contractor of) the system's energy performance (let's say 600 Btu per day per square foot of collector area). Finally, you simply read from the first column the maximum cost of the system to be cost-effective. In our example, the maximum cost (or break-even point) is $67 per square foot of collector area. If a contractor bids a cost under the maximum (say $40 per square foot), the system should be cost-effective; if it is over the maximum, it will probably not be. It should be noted that this guide includes only economic benefits and not the other benefits provided by solar energy systems, such as reduced air pollution emissions, enhanced energy self-reliance, and conservation of non-renewable resources.

Now, the cost per kilowatt hour for nuclear energy... using this (http://goldpactpower.com/chart.jpg) chart, it seems that nuclear energy costs a little under $2.50 per kilowatt hour, including fuel costs, operation and maintenance, general overhead, system integration, carbon emissions (how do they factor that as a "cost"?), and capital expenditure.

As for energy itself for nuclear energy...

The remaining worldwide energy resources are large, with the remaining fossil fuels totaling an estimated 0.4 YJ (1 YJ = 1024J) and the available nuclear fuel such as uranium exceeding 2.5 YJ. Fossil fuel range from 0.6-3 YJ if estimates of reserves of methane clathrates are accurate and become technically extractable. Mostly thanks to the Sun, the world also has a renewable usable energy flux that exceeds 120 PW (8,000 times 2004 total usage), or 3.8 YJ/yr, dwarfing all non-renewable resources. Even that amount is also only a minute amount of the sun's total energy output, due to the small solid angle the earth's outline makes with the sun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption

Of course, this means that solar energy is quite significant; however, it costs quite a bit of money to export it over long distances, and would have to have methods of storing said energy when it's dark. The batteries required for such a thing would be extremely wasteful...

Also, factor in the 20% efficiency to 40% efficiency of the most top-notch (and thus much more expensive) solar panels... I think that cuts down on the usable energy actually usable, if that's not factored in anyways. I may have to retract my claim about solar energy powering the world being far fetched. The question is, is it economically or environmentally feasible? Can we create all of these solar panels, throughout the world, place them, and have little problems sustaining such a system economically or environmentally? Will exporting said power be easy over large distances?

If we store that energy into batteries, so we could use that energy even during the night time or for exporting, then that would definitely increase the amount of waste produced by such a system...

Hmm... found something rather interesting, about "low level waste":

The nuclear industry also produces a volume of low-level radioactive waste in the form of contaminated items like clothing, hand tools, water purifier resins, and (upon decommissioning) the materials of which the reactor itself is built. In the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has repeatedly attempted to allow low-level materials to be handled as normal waste: landfilled, recycled into consumer items, et cetera. Most low-level waste releases very low levels of radioactivity and is only considered radioactive waste because of its history. For example, according to the standards of the NRC, the radiation released by coffee is enough to treat it as low level waste.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power

Lol. Careful of that coffee!

I bumped into that last one quite by accident, and thought I'd share it. :)

[Lonewulf]

I just want to add that the last post is not definitive, and was just based on data that I could quickly gather; it's also not quite edited for purtiness. I'm rather pressed for time overall, so I'm not capable of giving a definitive extensive post. However, I feel that the last post is at least a way to start in on a reasonable discussion involving cost expenditure and overall energy efficiency of solar energy vs. nuclear energy.

[luddite]

Lonewulf, I think you're mistaken in one detail.

Dr. Buzzo claimed an average of 200 watts per square metre of solar panels on average. This was based on a solar panel that generated 1 kw, but only operated 20% of the time, or 40% of the time at reduced capacity. Then you compared that to peak capacity.

The beauty of solar is that it correlates almost perfectly with peak, especially for residential uses where air conditioning is involved. So at the peak, you'd be getting close to that full kilowatt of power. That's five times more power, delivered when electricity is most expensive and necessary.

You do have to counterbalance that with the times that solar produces nothing, like the middle of the night. It would be slightly more reasonable to compare Dr. Buzzo's 200 watts to the average load, which is about 2/3 of the peak. But that's not really fair either for residential solar, because the bulk of the baseload comes from industry which operates 24/7. Residential solar panels serve homes, where middle-of-the-night electricity demands are next to nothing. If you wanted to, you could even set your refrigerator to chill somewhat more when the panel was operating, and let things warm up a little overnight.

The big problem would be winter evenings when people are cooking warm soup in the dark. But the overall picture is a lot more favourable than you present.

The other beauty of solar is that it's delivered where it's needed as well. Apart from the giant solar farm projects, which I'm not especially enthusiastic about, most solar panels produce on site for the end user. So it effectively nullifies transmission losses and costs. A good assessment of solar should account for this cost reduction. It should also give fair credit for the fact that the environmental/health impacts from solar generation are much lower than the alternatives.

In Toronto, there is a movement of solar enthusiasts doing bulk buys. Given current incentives, payback times are about 10 years. Now, this is subsidized somewhat. But so is nuclear, and the payback times are much longer. And at least with solar, the risk is totally absorbed by the purchaser. See here:

http://www.ourpower.ca/portals/default/ourpower.aspx

The best part is that almost without exception, people who install solar panels start to watch their electricity use. Now that they're producers, they are much more interested in matching supply and demand. And there's a thrill when the meter starts going backwards and they're paid for producing. So they turn off anything that isn't needed. 1 kw is enough to power many homes even before that happens. That's easily doable on the average rooftop.

There are limitations. Silicon supplies are tight. The capital cost is significant. There wouldn't be enough installers currently to put solar panels on every roof without a lead time of a decade or so. Solar power is still inefficient.

But I sense a grumbling reluctance to admit even the potential. And that's troubling. You have, in the past, suggested that solar panels could be dangerous. Let's try to establish some realistic pros and cons.

Solar pros are that generation is safe, with few environmental and health concerns, well (but not perfectly) correlated with peak, well (but not perfectly) correlated with residential uses, and generated on site.

The cons are that availability is limited, costs are high, energy efficiency is low and there are always times when it does not match demand.

Any disagreements?

[Hindmost]

I was under the impression that breeding ratios had exceeded that 1.25 rate you cite. I was also under the impression that, even though no reactor was even close to doing it, there was a conceivable cycle that could breed the feedstocks you cite from lighter elements. It was a very long cycle IIRC.

In your second statement, I am not aware of any nuclear process in a reactor that could breed fissionable material from lighter elements. Slamming lighter elements together is difficult due to electrostatic repulsion of positively charge nuclei...it takes a bunch of energy to get the temps high...which is why fusion is so difficult. Essentially 10-20 million degrees is required to fuse hydrogen and it only as one proton. Nuclear weapons and super novas are the only methods I know of to fuse heavier elements.

If you want to take it as far as is theoretically possible then you can (in theory) get an energy return through the fission and decay of anything that starts off heavier than iron-57. If after a few million years we run out of uranium, thorium and such we could start neutron-bombarding other heavy things until they become heavy enough for fission.

But eventually I suppose we could run out of matter in general..

Proof of breeding in the thorium cycle was done at shipping port reactor before it was shut down. It was done under the Naval program. It achieved a breeding ratio of about 1.01 or so.

EBR I in idaho had a breeding ratio of about 1.27 if I recall from a tour I took about 30 years ago. This mean it produce 1.27 atoms of plutonium for every u235 it used...not bad for the first electric power reactor on the planet. EBR II operated successfully for 30 years...although I can't remember its breeding ratio, but was probably between 1.2 and 1.3 because that was the state of the design at that time. The goal was to build one breeder for every three or four light water plants and the breeder could produce enough fuel for the light water plants. Nice concept of course, but never came to pass...with uranium prices low, there was no real need to reprocess.

http://www.3rd1000.com/nuclear/nuke101g.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor This wiki article is "lite" but is ok to describe the process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II This is a good link on EBR II--it also describes the inherent fuel safety tests done back in the 90s...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_breeder_reactor shows the worlds fast breeders with some additional info.

Now, fissioning anything heavier than iron...for those elements, it would take more energy than it would produce, so it really isn't possible. Plus most of those elements will absorb neutrons before they will fission. I am not aware of any reaction that would fission something like lead and get any energy in return--plus the need for neutron multiplication. With all the accelerator work done in the world, if that were possible, it would have been discovered.

glenn

[Lonewulf]

Dr. Buzzo claimed an average of 200 watts per square metre of solar panels on average. This was based on a solar panel that generated 1 kw, but only operated 20% of the time, or 40% of the time at reduced capacity.
Even if they operated 100% of the time, that isn't quite that much. Multiple the result by five, and you get 8.1*10^9 watts of power, which still falls about 23*10^9 watts short. It lessens the load and is not bad overall, I admit, assuming that the weather in Manhattan (is it very sunny there?) is conducive for solar.

Then you compared that to peak capacity.
Yeah, I know. I already mentioned that. I'd rather have the average energy requirements, but peak capacity is still important here.

You do have to counterbalance that with the times that solar produces nothing, like the middle of the night. It would be slightly more reasonable to compare Dr. Buzzo's 200 watts to the average load, which is about 2/3 of the peak. But that's not really fair either for residential solar, because the bulk of the baseload comes from industry which operates 24/7. Residential solar panels serve homes, where middle-of-the-night electricity demands are next to nothing. If you wanted to, you could even set your refrigerator to chill somewhat more when the panel was operating, and let things warm up a little overnight.
There are ways to cut down on energy usage, but as it stands, Manhattan is much more energy efficient than many other major cities so it's already benefitted from that. Setting your fridge to chill, I can't see making a very significant difference in overall energy benefit. Yes, there are ways to cut down energy usage, and I'm just fine with that -- but it takes a lot to make a truly significant cut.

The big problem would be winter evenings when people are cooking warm soup in the dark. But the overall picture is a lot more favourable than you present.
I know it's probably more favorable. I listed some figures as I pulled them up, and then pointed out that they were probably not entirely accurate. I was hinting that maybe, just maybe, it's not as bad as it looked. However, some things don't change:

Solar is still very expensive per kilowatt hour.

Solar still has times where it doesn't work very well (overcast skies, so not very useful in Seattle or England, and nightfall).


The other beauty of solar is that it's delivered where it's needed as well. Apart from the giant solar farm projects, which I'm not especially enthusiastic about, most solar panels produce on site for the end user. So it effectively nullifies transmission losses and costs. A good assessment of solar should account for this cost reduction. It should also give fair credit for the fact that the environmental/health impacts from solar generation are much lower than the alternatives.

Except that to power businesses, you need to transmit the power. An industrial rooftop gives an industry about as much power as a house's rooftop gives a house.


There are limitations. Silicon supplies are tight. The capital cost is significant. There wouldn't be enough installers currently to put solar panels on every roof without a lead time of a decade or so. Solar power is still inefficient.
I agree.

But I sense a grumbling reluctance to admit even the potential.
You mistake my caution for reluctance.

And that's troubling. You have, in the past, suggested that solar panels could be dangerous.
Do you mean my "mad scientist" bit, or the bit about chemical pollution? The latter is more in response to those that think that "green energy" isn't an industrial process that doesn't create pollution, and the former was a bit of humor over people talking about terrorists supposedly exploding a bomb in stored low-level nuclear waste (which, honestly, isn't as bad as people think; like it's been stated, even a cup of coffee can be considered "radiated waste". ;))

If you want to suggest outlandish hypotheticals, then I can do it as well. As it stands, it's very hard to penetrate a nuclear building's thick concrete walls.

Let's try to establish some realistic pros and cons.
That is what I'm attempting to do.

Solar pros are that generation is safe, with few environmental and health concerns, well (but not perfectly) correlated with peak, well (but not perfectly) correlated with residential uses, and generated on site.

The cons are that availability is limited, costs are high, energy efficiency is low and there are always times when it does not match demand.

Any disagreements?
Nah, I don't disagree. The chemical waste in creating solar panels are honestly negligable compared to other energy sources.

It's correlated with peak only in hot climates, though. In cold climates, you tend to want to heat your house during the night. Then there's winter in many countries and states to think about. In Corpus Christi, you could away with not keeping your house warm in the winter as it doesn't really get THAT cold; the coldest it tends to get to is 50 degrees, for instance. However, further north, you run into problems.

Otherwise, I agree with you. However, the pros seem to suggest, to me, that solar is best used as a tertiary energy source (primary being nuclear, secondary being hydroelectric and wind, tertiary being solar). I'm more than willing to move solar up into secondary, and in fact think that I already consider it such. However, I can't move solar into primary. It's just too expensive and too inefficient. But that's not to say that it's not useful, and should be discarded.

Now, pros and cons for nuclear energy:

Pros: Very significant amount of power, potentially long-lasting energy source if new types of reactors are implemented (breeder reactors, thorium, etc.), relatively cheap source of energy, lower carbon emissions than coal.

Cons: Safety concerns, you *need* to implement thorium and breeder reactors to give it a very long life (as opposed to the 50 years and 200 years quoted), does involve waste and pollution albeit at a far lesser rate than coal.

I would also say that nuclear concerns are over-inflated, personally. You subject yourself to low-level radiation by going outside on a summer day, after all. ;)

When I most hear protests against nuclear reactors, it's almost always the side of fear, and safety concerns. One guy even suggested to me that nuclear energy would turn us all into mutants. ;)

[RecoveringYuppy]

In your second statement, I am not aware of any nuclear process in a reactor that could breed fissionable material from lighter elements. Slamming lighter elements together is difficult due to electrostatic repulsion of positively charge nuclei...it takes a bunch of energy to get the temps high...which is why fusion is so difficult. Essentially 10-20 million degrees is required to fuse hydrogen and it only as one proton. Nuclear weapons and super novas are the only methods I know of to fuse heavier elements.
I don't mean fusion. I mean neutron capture. And by "lighter" I mean lighter than uranium. It's possible to create the breeder feedstocks you mentioned from elements lighter than those feedstocks by neutron capture. And I was under the impression that there was conceivable, not demonstrated, method to do it with a breeder ratio above 1.

Doesn't really matter for this conversation. Current breeder technology is as you described.

[Schneibster]

I have some information to add to the conversation, and some opinions to express.

Here is the opinion: I see many points that are being made that I agree with and few I disagree with, so I've been pretty quiet on this thread. My personal opinion is that a variety of different technologies will be needed, and should be pursued, and in fact are being pursued, that will make a lot of difference in the way we view power generation, storage, and usage over the coming couple of decades. Among them is nuclear fission. I have doubts we can "make it" without severe economic and social disruption without nuclear, but I'm not sure even nuclear can answer the need alone, nor even in combination with conservation and/or increased efficiency.

Here are the points of information I'd like to add to the conversation:

1. I'm not clear on whether numbers for existing stocks of uranium in various reports (particularly that of the IAEA, which I'd put pretty high reliance on due to the nature of the organization) include unprocessed spent fuel rods, nor on how much uranium might be in them. Because fission efficiency drops radically in the presence of fission products, many of which are neutron absorbers, the majority of the enriched uranium that was originally put in them is still present, so this could represent a large source. The US currently doesn't reprocess spent fuel rods because it's more expensive than buying it and enriching it. I don't know what the situation is in other nuclear power user countries.

2. Silicon is extremely common; sand is silicon dioxide. The shortage isn't a matter of how much is easily accessible, it's a matter of industrial capacity, which can be rectified by building more foundries and production lines, assuming one uses silicon semiconductor solar cells. In addition, silicon cells are by no means the only method of using solar power, nor is semiconductor or even photoelectric effect technology.

3. Super/ultracapacitors are probably right on the horizon; a startup company in Texas has a contract to build ultracapacitors using thin film technology adapted from disk drive manufacturing to produce them for a Canadian electric car manufacturer, and the venture capital firm that is funding the Texas startup is one of the most successful technical sector VC firms in history; their former clients are household names like Google and Amazon, and Sun Microsystems and Compaq. Such power storage technology would revolutionize renewable sources by allowing extremely high efficiency storage with no chemical waste downside, and essentially permanent power storage arrays that would not need to be periodically replaced except on a timescale longer than a human lifetime.

4. Fusion may be closer than ITER. Robert Bussard, who recently passed away, was working on inertial confinement fusion, based on the general idea behind the Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor, called the Polywell, and claimed to have solved most if not all of the technical problems associated with it. He was being funded by the US Navy, and had sustained fusion on a timescale that is essentially forever on the timescale of atomic events at a rate 100,000 times greater than the fusor. The contract he was working under was defunded abruptly to find money for the Iraq war. At least some funding has been restored recently, and despite the fact that he is gone, the company he founded and the staff he trained is pressing forward with the next proof-of-concept design. Because a military contract is involved, there is some question as to what exactly is going on, because some of the information is contractually forbidden to be released, and Bussard may have passed away before he was able to complete scientific documentation appropriate for a peer-reviewed publication which he might or might not have been permitted to present in the scientific literature. If Bussard was right, and there's a significant chance he was because he was not only a nuclear physicist who had specialized in fusion physics, but also the Assistant Director of the Controlled Thermonuclear Reaction Division of the old US Atomic Energy Commission, which was the division of the AEC that promoted and directed the US Tokamak experiments of the 1970s and 1980s, which have led to ITER, and also the principal investigator for the Riggatron, which is still being experimented on at Princeton, there is a possibility that we will be producing gigawatt fusion plants by the middle of this century if not earlier.
The Riggatron is still under investigation as well, and there are a couple more efforts that might or might not wind up being worthwhile, even if ITER is delayed or fails completely.

5. There are also two other fusion efforts that I consider promising being worked on; both are "small" in the sense that if they work, reactors could be produced appropriate for a single family home or a few homes. One uses a plasma contained by a moving electron cloud whose physics are similar to those of a smoke ring, and causes two such rings to collide, producing momentary high pressures and temperatures in the two plasmas; the other uses an electrified tube with a spike electrode down the middle and a moving arc discharge very like a Jacob's Ladder to produce momentary high temperatures and pressures necessary to produce fusion. The first is based on something called "electron spiral toroids," and is being developed by Electron Power Systems; the second is called "plasma focus fusion," and is being developed by Lawrenceville Plasma Physics. Both are having trouble getting funding, although EPS claims to have partnered with an aerospace company, and Lawrenceville has a patent and has done some collaboration with the government of Chile, and has signed an agreement with a Swiss energy startup named CMEF. Both would produce pulses of power rather than continuous fusion; fortuitously, developments in power conversion in the 1980s have resulted in production of power supplies capable of converting pulses into the continuous streams that our appliances and other equipment use. In the absence of substantial funding, of course, these are not going anywhere quickly, but with the changes in the public attitude, the possibilities may expand if we can find the political will to follow up on them, and if they turn out to be viable. Furthermore, both appear to have at least some commercial funding, although it's not necessarily clear what will happen or even what's going on now. Both organizations have pretty technically credible descriptions, and appear to have convinced engineering firms that have the knowledge to evaluate their claims that there's something to them.

So (a little more opinion) there are some hopeful developments on the horizon, and some mitigations; but I think it's clear not only that we need something to replace fossil fuels, and that nuclear cannot fix everything, but also that conservation is going to become more important, and that we need to expect there are going to be some significant economic disruptions. Hopefully people in general will prove capable of comprehending that fusion research and renewables research are pretty much the most important things going, and elect representatives who will enact the necessary legislation to fund them. If not, it's going to get very dicey. Furthermore, I think it's clear that we need fission reactors to get us past the "hump." I don't think current oil prices are going down anytime soon, and I think that global warming puts a cap on how much fossil fuel generation people are going to tolerate even if they were.

Finally, I feel strongly that if both nuclear fission and other technologies including both fusion and renewables are not pursued aggressively, we may be in for some pretty hard times, and even if they are that may only mitigate them, not prevent them entirely.

[Lonewulf]

From what I understand of fusion, even the most optimistic predictions put it at a much much much higher price than any fission reactor. I'm just not sure if it's ever really going to become economically feasible.

As for supercapacitors, most reports I've heard of have been rather skeptical as to whether they really are as great as is claimed. I hope they are.

As for nuclear not being able to fix everything, I don't think anyone's really claimed that it could. However, from what I understand, nuclear is much more capable (economically) in replacing the majority of fossil fuel use for energy, especially for industrial and commercial concerns. However, solar definitely has it's place, as well as wind, geothermal, and hydro-electric. I'd love to see greater use of those technologies.

[Schneibster]

From what I understand of fusion, even the most optimistic predictions put it at a much much much higher price than any fission reactor. I'm just not sure if it's ever really going to become economically feasible.Well, the proof fusion works rises every morning. :D

As far as economically feasible, once you've built the plant, the fuel is abundant and incredibly cheap, and if any of the approaches other than ITER that I've detailed above works (and I recommend you do a LOT more research before you tell me they won't) the plants will cost less, potentially substantially less, than a fission reactor. Furthermore, none of them produces a substantial amount of high-level nuclear waste, and none of them can "run away" and create a huge radioactive mess (although with current safety standards fission reactors are substantially immune to this too). DP and DT fusion inherently produce neutrons, so shielding is required, and some radioactive waste will be produced, but the Polywell should be capable of PB11 fusion, which does not produce a substantial amount of neutrons, and the Polywell is both the best funded and most likely viable of the non-Tokamak approaches.

As for supercapacitors, most reports I've heard of have been rather skeptical as to whether they really are as great as is claimed. I hope they are.I'd make sure you know who KPC&B are; their track record is pretty impressive. I merely touched the tip of the iceberg; AOL, Electronic Arts, Genentech, LSI Logic, and about 300 others that are very well known and very successful are in their portfolio. These guys do not screw around, and they're "in." And the patent is granted, and the product in production; EEStor is the name of the company.

Maxwell (a well-known capacitor manufacturer- unless you are a total technophobe you almost certainly have a Maxwell capacitor in some piece of equipment in your home) already makes supercapacitors; distributors have them on their line cards, and they're supplying them to a number of different industrial and consumer product markets. Have fun in your basement. :D

To top it all off, China is running two supercapacitor buses on Shanghai route 11, and Germany has light rail running on supercapacitors in Mannheim. I think you're overly pessimistic.

As for nuclear not being able to fix everything, I don't think anyone's really claimed that it could. However, from what I understand, nuclear is much more capable (economically) in replacing the majority of fossil fuel use for energy, especially for industrial and commercial concerns. However, solar definitely has it's place, as well as wind, geothermal, and hydro-electric. I'd love to see greater use of those technologies.We'll see; fission plants have a long lead time, and there is residual resistance left over from the TMI/China Syndrome debacle in the 1980s in the US, and Chernobyl. A more unfortunate series of events for fission plant development is hard to imagine, and as a result we not only have to deal with the political aspects, but also the dearth of technical talent. The engineers and craftsmen who must be available to build and operate a significant number of fission plants in the US simply do not exist right now, and college tuitions are astronomical and funding options scarce. There is a great deal to be done, and little time to do it.

[Lonewulf]

Well, the proof fusion works rises every morning.

As far as economically feasible, once you've built the plant, the fuel is abundant and incredibly cheap, and if any of the approaches other than ITER that I've detailed above works (and I recommend you do a LOT more research before you tell me they won't)
Except that I never said that they don't work. If you look at my post, I never said once that fusion doesn't work. :boggled:

the plants will cost less, potentially substantially less, than a fission reactor.
Really? I haven't heard that before... do you have a quote or a source for that?

Maybe I'm thinking of different fusion types, because from what I've heard the process tends to be very expensive.

I'm no expert, though, and I'll admit that in a heartbeat, especially on fusion. I think I know far more about fission than I do on fission, and that's not saying much at all, since like I said, I'm no expert. :)

Furthermore, none of them produces a substantial amount of high-level nuclear waste, and none of them can "run away" and create a huge radioactive mess (although with current safety standards fission reactors are substantially immune to this too).
Aye, yes.

DP and DT fusion inherently produce neutrons, so shielding is required, and some radioactive waste will be produced, but the Polywell should be capable of PB11 fusion, which does not produce a substantial amount of neutrons, and the Polywell is both the best funded and most likely viable of the non-Tokamak approaches.
*nods*

I'd make sure you know who KPC&B are; their track record is pretty impressive. I merely touched the tip of the iceberg; AOL, Electronic Arts, Genentech, LSI Logic, and about 300 others that are very well known and very successful are in their portfolio. These guys do not screw around, and they're "in." And the patent is granted, and the product in production; EEStor is the name of the company.

Maxwell (a well-known capacitor manufacturer- unless you are a total technophobe you almost certainly have a Maxwell capacitor in some piece of equipment in your home) already makes supercapacitors; distributors have them on their line cards, and they're supplying them to a number of different industrial and consumer product markets. Have fun in your basement.

To top it all off, China is running two supercapacitor buses on Shanghai route 11, and Germany has light rail running on supercapacitors in Mannheim. I think you're overly pessimistic.
Yeah, I probably am, especially if they're already running.

So, from what I understand, super/ultracapacitors take a very short time to recharge and can store a buttload of energy for a long amount of time, assuming that that energy isn't drained through use?

If so, that would make them very very useful for renewable energy. Charge them up with wind, solar, geothermal, or hydro, and ship them out to people that need it.

We'll see; fission plants have a long lead time, and there is residual resistance left over from the TMI/China Syndrome debacle in the 1980s in the US, and Chernobyl. A more unfortunate series of events for fission plant development is hard to imagine, and as a result we not only have to deal with the political aspects, but also the dearth of technical talent. The engineers and craftsmen who must be available to build and operate a significant number of fission plants in the US simply do not exist right now, and college tuitions are astronomical and funding options scarce. There is a great deal to be done, and little time to do it.
But are there a lot of engineers and craftsmen available for fusion plants, relatively?

[Hindmost]

I don't mean fusion. I mean neutron capture. And by "lighter" I mean lighter than uranium. It's possible to create the breeder feedstocks you mentioned from elements lighter than those feedstocks by neutron capture. And I was under the impression that there was conceivable, not demonstrated, method to do it with a breeder ratio above 1.

Doesn't really matter for this conversation. Current breeder technology is as you described.

I wasn't sure what you meant..I should have asked for more info. Anyhow, I would have to look into the feasibility transmutting heavy elements into uranium...a blanket around just about any reactor would work if it is possible. It would really depend on the yield. As something transmutates into uranium...the reactor would have to be able to produce in large enough quantitis before it fissions and is then lost. It is one of the issues with breeder plants...they produce plutonium and also fission that plutonium. Gotta shutdown before it is used up.

glenn

[Dorian Gray]

Until there is a viable method for the proper disposal of nuclear waste, then I continue to have problems with nuclear energy.
Weren't you paying attention? Dr. Buzzo will store the waste at his house.

[Schneibster]

Except that I never said that they don't work. If you look at my post, I never said once that fusion doesn't work. :boggled:These aren't Tokamak or another "main line" technology; these are fusion methods that use techniques that are theoretically probable, but unproven. OTOH, they're all plausible, and in two of the three cases they have actually produced fusion, just not net power output fusion. There is considerable skepticism on many peoples' part due to the "cold fusion" debacle of the 1990s, and I'm never quite sure whether someone is skeptical on those grounds or not; I was just covering all the bases.

Really? I haven't heard that before... do you have a quote or a source for that?You could watch both Bussard's and Lawrenceville's presentations before Google, and evaluate the two technologies and the infrastructure required to support them. I'm sure I could dig it up if you really were skeptical, but if you're interested in this, I strongly recommend you go take a look at the thread on this forum (try searching on fusion) and google up the companies I named. If you're interested in more on the technologies involved, I'm up for a discussion but it's pretty technical. The long and short of it is, Bussard claimed to be able to build a functioning 50-100MW reactor for in the close neighborhood of $200 million, and both the focus and electron toroid devices are in that neighborhood or an order of magnitude below. We're not talking national government money here.

Maybe I'm thinking of different fusion types, because from what I've heard the process tends to be very expensive.That's tokamak; it requires an enormous amount of money and materials, and is incredibly sensitive to the slightest technical problem. If you have a problem, it just doesn't work; it doesn't blow up or anything, just no power comes out. Bussard points out why it's so unstable, and so expensive, in his Google talk.

I'm no expert, though, and I'll admit that in a heartbeat, especially on fusion. I think I know far more about fission than I do on fission, and that's not saying much at all, since like I said, I'm no expert. :)I figure I'm about as expert as an amateur is going to get; I'm no professional, but I'm very curious and pretty facile with physics. You might want to revive one of the fusion threads here if you want to discuss it; this one's kind of about fission, I think.

So, from what I understand, super/ultracapacitors take a very short time to recharge and can store a buttload of energy for a long amount of time, assuming that that energy isn't drained through use?Yeah. They store energy physically rather than chemically, like lead-acid and lithium and so forth batteries. There are some unexplored technical means of making them, too, that are under investigation in some materials and solid state physics labs in the research community. I think that we're very close (a few years) to a high-energy-density physical battery that will make chemical batteries obsolete in a decade or less. Of course, I could be overly optimistic, but my sense of it is that there are killer apps waiting and lots of people looking to get rich, and this isn't nearly as speculative a technology as net-power-output fusion. It's more an incremental improvement than a leap of technology.

If so, that would make them very very useful for renewable energy. Charge them up with wind, solar, geothermal, or hydro, and ship them out to people that need it.Well, currently implemented and near-term available units are on the order of hundreds of pounds for an appreciable amount of energy, so more likely on-site storage, but the potential for what you're talking about is there. I'd put that more than a decade out, though. As far as on-site storage, I'd look for that in a year or two. My impression is that the EEStor guys already know how to make what they need, they're just working the kinks out of the manufacturing process. This is something that had to get done to enable the manufacture of disk drives a couple-three decades back, and the guy doing it was there when they did that.

But are there a lot of engineers and craftsmen available for fusion plants, relatively?No more than for fission plants, but the skill sets are fairly similar; and if it's Polywell, you don't need as much special skills for the building as for fission. I can't speak to either of the other two, and ITER needs as much as fission, and different ones. From the operations standpoint, I'd say it's about equally technically complex for ITER and Polywell, and more like an appliance for the other two.

[luddite]

It's correlated with peak only in hot climates, though. In cold climates, you tend to want to heat your house during the night. Then there's winter in many countries and states to think about. In Corpus Christi, you could away with not keeping your house warm in the winter as it doesn't really get THAT cold; the coldest it tends to get to is 50 degrees, for instance. However, further north, you run into problems.

Peak load in Ontario is in the summer. In cold climates you don't heat your house with electricity. There's a secondary winter peak in the evenings, but that has more to do with people making nice warm dinners and lighting rooms so they can see each other. In Ontario, that secondary peak correlates somewhat with the best winds, but the correlation is a lot looser than the summer air-conditioning load. And I'm not sure it exists at all outside Ontario.

More importantly, a properly insulated house does not need to be heated at any particular time anyway. You can easily heat it when you've got the power. When people are all in bed and nobody is opening doors, the heat loss will be very slow and gentle, and studies show that people sleep better when it's cooler anyway.

So all we've got to do is retrofit all existing housing stock. That's all. :-)

The British recognize this challenge and the Germans have committed to retrofitting 5% of existing housing stock annually for 20 years until all houses have been upgraded to passivhaus standard, where they require no heating at all. Both countries have structures that are much more difficult to upgrade than North American homes:

Key environmental targets are "undeliverable" unless households cut the amount of resources they consume, a government-commissioned report warns.

The UK's 21 million domestic dwellings are responsible for 27% of CO2 emissions, consume half of water supplies, and produce 8% of all waste.

Retrofitting existing technologies is the most cost-effective way to reduce households' impact, the study says.

The report comes from the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC).

...At least 75% of existing properties are still expected to be in use in 2050, the year by which the government hopes to have cut carbon emissions by 60% from 1990 levels.

That is why there is a need to focus on today's dwellings, rather than undertaking a widespread rebuilding programme, the report's authors say.

"You cannot possibly deliver a 60% reduction in carbon emissions by doing nothing to the existing housing stock," said Professor Anne Power, a member of the SDC and one of the report's authors.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5194986.stm

KM: ...We're not yet at the point as other European countries are where we're committing to putting money into the existing housing stock. When a Government says this is the amount of money we're going to commit, and we're serious about this, suddenly industry gets serious about the technology, about delivering product. At the moment we have a housing stock on the one hand very needful of efficient retrofitting of efficient technologies to help reduce the environmental impacts of the buildings in use. And on the other hand we have a load of technologies which are designed for new builds, which don't very well suit retrofitting. So what we need to do is start thinking of very clever solutions whether that's micro-scale biomass boilers, or very clever double glazing systems which can be fitted to listed buildings, but we have to start working hard on efficient systems. I mean I live in an old house, it's listed, it's Grade 2, so what have we got? We've got thick curtains, we've got shutters, we've kind of adopted old fashioned technologies. We should be looking to be able to retrofit our existing buildings to a point where you don't need to heat the building, where passive heating and insulation and body heat and human body warmth actually does it all. And that's what Angela Merkel is about in Germany.

WWF: Interesting to pick up on that German example because they set the target that they would retrofit all the homes by 2025 up to these standards..

KM: ...to European passive house standards..

WWF: Indeed. And that was basically 5% of Germany's housing stock per year and as it turns out they are already significantly ahead of target.


http://www.wwf.org.uk/oneplanet/audio_0000003941.asp

[Lonewulf]

These aren't Tokamak or another "main line" technology; these are fusion methods that use techniques that are theoretically probable, but unproven. OTOH, they're all plausible, and in two of the three cases they have actually produced fusion, just not net power output fusion. There is considerable skepticism on many peoples' part due to the "cold fusion" debacle of the 1990s, and I'm never quite sure whether someone is skeptical on those grounds or not; I was just covering all the bases.
Naturally, I understand.

You could watch both Bussard's and Lawrenceville's presentations before Google, and evaluate the two technologies and the infrastructure required to support them. I'm sure I could dig it up if you really were skeptical, but if you're interested in this, I strongly recommend you go take a look at the thread on this forum (try searching on fusion) and google up the companies I named. If you're interested in more on the technologies involved, I'm up for a discussion but it's pretty technical. The long and short of it is, Bussard claimed to be able to build a functioning 50-100MW reactor for in the close neighborhood of $200 million, and both the focus and electron toroid devices are in that neighborhood or an order of magnitude below. We're not talking national government money here.

That's tokamak; it requires an enormous amount of money and materials, and is incredibly sensitive to the slightest technical problem. If you have a problem, it just doesn't work; it doesn't blow up or anything, just no power comes out. Bussard points out why it's so unstable, and so expensive, in his Google talk.

I figure I'm about as expert as an amateur is going to get; I'm no professional, but I'm very curious and pretty facile with physics. You might want to revive one of the fusion threads here if you want to discuss it; this one's kind of about fission, I think.
I'll do a search for threads on fusion, then, when I have time. :)

Yeah. They store energy physically rather than chemically, like lead-acid and lithium and so forth batteries. There are some unexplored technical means of making them, too, that are under investigation in some materials and solid state physics labs in the research community. I think that we're very close (a few years) to a high-energy-density physical battery that will make chemical batteries obsolete in a decade or less. Of course, I could be overly optimistic, but my sense of it is that there are killer apps waiting and lots of people looking to get rich, and this isn't nearly as speculative a technology as net-power-output fusion. It's more an incremental improvement than a leap of technology.

Well, currently implemented and near-term available units are on the order of hundreds of pounds for an appreciable amount of energy, so more likely on-site storage, but the potential for what you're talking about is there. I'd put that more than a decade out, though. As far as on-site storage, I'd look for that in a year or two. My impression is that the EEStor guys already know how to make what they need, they're just working the kinks out of the manufacturing process. This is something that had to get done to enable the manufacture of disk drives a couple-three decades back, and the guy doing it was there when they did that.
Ah, understood.

No more than for fission plants, but the skill sets are fairly similar; and if it's Polywell, you don't need as much special skills for the building as for fission. I can't speak to either of the other two, and ITER needs as much as fission, and different ones. From the operations standpoint, I'd say it's about equally technically complex for ITER and Polywell, and more like an appliance for the other two.
We need to train more folks, then, I think!

[luddite]

It's articles like these that make me doubt the safety of nuclear:

http://www.thestar.com/article/237577

A hole in a radiation containment system at Pickering generating station has not been fixed more than a month after detection, sparking concern Ontario Power Generation is dragging its feet on safety and keeping important information hidden from the public.

OPG spokesperson John Earl said an investigation is ongoing. "It's not something that is degrading the effectiveness of the safety system."

But some nuclear experts say OPG isn't taking the issue seriously enough and is simply taking too long to act. They argue that what can appear as a small leak can quickly turn into a larger problem when the system is put under high-pressure strains, such as during an accident that requires fast containment of large amounts of radiation.

The recent earthquake in Japan, for example, caused radiation leaks, burst pipes and fires at the world's largest nuclear plant, which has since been shut down. The operator of the plant has been accused of covering up past safety problems or being too slow to disclose accidents.

Nuclear safety expert David Mosey, a 30-year veteran of Canada's nuclear industry and author of the book Reactor Accidents, said OPG should know better.

"Something like this should be acted on very promptly," said Mosey.

"This doesn't give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. It may be a small leak, indeed, but do they know how big it is? And do they know what effect it would have on repressurization time after an accident? If they have no idea they should be finding out."

The Star became aware of the problem after an individual claiming to be a "concerned employee" of OPG mailed an anonymous letter complaining that a "hole" in part of the station's radiation containment system was allowing rain to leak in.

[luddite]

And it's articles like these that make Ontarians uneasy about the reliability of nuclear power:

http://www.thestar.com/article/247496

Several unexpected outages at Pickering nuclear station contributed to a 13 per cent decrease in Ontario Power Generation's second-quarter profits and triggered a heavier reliance on coal-fired power, the company said yesterday.

Chief operating officer Pierre Charlebois said the increased use of fossil-fuel generation — a jump of nearly 20 per cent compared with the same period a year earlier — will lead to a proportional increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

With an election two months away, emissions from coal are back on the rise and several nuclear reactors have proven unreliable. Had the summer been hotter, experts say, the reactor outages could have left Ontario in a difficult power squeeze.

The fact that both Pickering A units will be down for the rest of the summer likely means continuing reliance on coal plants and increased emissions during OPG's third quarter.

But the summer outages go beyond Pickering A. An 822-megawatt reactor at Bruce Power was unexpectedly shut down Thursday and won't be back online until later in the month.

Pickering Unit 5, which was out for three months between April and June and briefly in mid-July, was taken offline again for nearly a week this month because algae was blocking a water-intake system used for cooling. Unit 8, meanwhile, was powered down on Wednesday for a "brief" fix of a leaky valve.

As of yesterday evening, 2,300 megawatts of nuclear capacity — or 20 per cent of Ontario's nuclear reactor fleet — was offline for unplanned maintenance.

[Schneibster]

I've finally put my finger on what's been bothering me about this thread.

Here's the problem, luddite: if everyone keeps dissing nuclear power, none of the kids deciding what they want to be decides to be a nuclear engineer, and then we don't have any. And here we are. We now have a much larger problem with greenhouse warming than we'd have if TMI, The China Syndrome, and Chernobyl hadn't happened, and we'd built nuclear plants. Everyone's running around pointing fingers, jumping up and down and waving their hands about global warming, but the truth is, they should be pointing fingers at themselves, because they turned off the money for nuclear and that's how we got here.

And here you are making basically the same mistake.

Sure, conservation is a great idea. And that's neat and stuff. But the population is increasing, and it's not going to stop, and people do what they gotta do and that's not going to stop either. We need more power, and if we don't get it, a billion people are going to starve, and they're going to start wars to try to take what they need first. So, you want nuclear, or you want coal? Because that's how it is. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but the choices here are pretty stark. We're going to need everything we can get our hands on in the way of generating capacity, and even that may not be enough. When you're riding the tiger, don't let go of the ears.

[Lonewulf]

Well, the population increase will *eventually* drop in developed countries, at the least. The birth/death rate in developed countries tends to lean towards the death rate instead of the birth rate.

Regardless, it will take too long to place a bet on THAT trend, and I agree with you altogether, Schneibster.

[JoeEllison]

From my perspective, the issues break down into parts:

1) Nuclear power is always messy on some level
2) Alternates work if given a real chance
3) Nuclear power can POTENTIALLY produce power that outstrips the risks
4) There are ways to minimize the risks with nuclear power

does anyone legitimately disagree with my points so far?

[Schneibster]

From my perspective, the issues break down into parts:
<snip-n-paste>
does anyone legitimately disagree with my points so far?Well, yeah. But I wouldn't say they're wrong, just a couple are the result of incomplete information. I'll note where I think that, and why.

1) Nuclear power is always messy on some levelNot always. Polywell, at least, holds out the chance of "not messy" nuclear power. If you're talking about fission, there's really no way to do it without making something messy; so like I said, not wrong, just incomplete.

2) Alternates work if given a real chanceAgain, not wrong, just incomplete. Given current technology alternate sources simply can't provide what we need to live. It doesn't matter how much we conserve. On the other hand, they can help, and we'd be fools to ignore anything that can help.

3) Nuclear power can POTENTIALLY produce power that outstrips the risksIf you're speaking again of fission power, it can't fix all our needs for power without help. It can at least reduce global warming, and compared to that, high-level nuclear waste is a minor risk. The fuel supply may be limited using current methods of extraction; I will be making a post on this in a moment.

As far as fusion, if it's tokamak a la ITER, then it's going to be expensive to get rolling, and it might be expensive to maintain. If one of the other methods works, it could easily solve our problems with energy supplies for the foreseeable future; and if that happens we will have the breathing room to step back and take a look at the REAL problem, which is population. And that, my friends, is not a thread in SMM&T.

When you talk about nuclear power, Joe, make sure you understand there's more than one kind; one we can do right now, and know all about, called fission. The other we know works, because it's how the Sun works, but we don't know quite how to make it work at our behest to make power for us, and that one's called fusion. If we can get fusion going, it holds out the promise of just about limitless power, but it's hard to make it work. Fission, on the other hand, is messy, and might have limited fuel stocks, and because it can be very very messy, it is expensive despite the cheapness of fuel.

4) There are ways to minimize the risks with nuclear powerNo problem there, but remember that the risks with fusion are inherently far, far less than with fission.

Keep going, we'll get a good list happening. Despite my criticism, a good first cut at it.

[Schneibster]

Regarding fission fuel stocks, I intended to put this in my "questions" post above, and forgot.

During my research into fuel stocks, I came across the fact that uranium extraction from seawater has been demonstrated IIRC by the Japanese, and their results indicate that there is at least three orders of magnitude more uranium in the world's oceans than is currently known to exist in places we can mine it on land. And I'm curious about whether that's included in the estimates of usable uranium.

[JoeEllison]

Keep going, we'll get a good list happening. Despite my criticism, a good first cut at it.The thing is, I'm not attached to an ideology regarding this issue. My objections are all practical, and based on being "on the floor" in other industrial situations.

As on so many other issues, I wish that the debate was more reality-based. I know that there is a great potential for nuclear power, someday... and it needs to be balanced with a realistic understanding of the current and practical problems.

[Schneibster]

The thing is, I'm not attached to an ideology regarding this issue. My objections are all practical, and based on being "on the floor" in other industrial situations.I think I'll defer on what happens "on the floor" in a nuclear power plant to Hindmost. I think you should be prepared for the idea that it is a rather different environment than you might be used to, depending on what industries you have experience in.

As on so many other issues, I wish that the debate was more reality-based. I'm not sure what you think isn't. Could you be more specific?

I know that there is a great potential for nuclear power, someday... and it needs to be balanced with a realistic understanding of the current and practical problems."Someday" was thirty years ago. We were just getting ready to ramp it up when TMI and Chernobyl went, and Jane Fonda made that stupid movie. And it all went down the toilet, and we've been swirling around ever since. You with me here? THAT'S reality.

The current and practical problems are, global warming, and the only other choice is coal. The choice is stark, and clear. It's time to realize it and move on. And if you don't like fission, well, I guess you'd better get your elected representatives putting money into fusion, and if you're not sure about fusion, you need to ask questions, because in the long run, it's the only hope we've got. And that's also reality.

[robinson]

We were just getting ready to ramp it up when TMI and Chernobyl went, and Jane Fonda made that stupid movie. And it all went down the toilet, and we've been swirling around ever since. You with me here? THAT'S reality.

No, that is your reality. China, France, Japan, and other nations have been building new Power Plants, and plan to build more. Heres a list. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors)

[Schneibster]

Thanks, robinson, I didn't know that, I can't read. /sarcasm

Any suggestions how to magically whomp up some nuclear engineers quicker than the eight years it takes to get a PhD, smart***?

[JoeEllison]

The current and practical problems are, global warming, and the only other choice is coal. The choice is stark, and clear. It's time to realize it and move on. And if you don't like fission, well, I guess you'd better get your elected representatives putting money into fusion, and if you're not sure about fusion, you need to ask questions, because in the long run, it's the only hope we've got. And that's also reality.

Someone very close to me works on the decommissioned nuclear plants. I've been involved with other non-nuclear facilities before.

Again, based on what you're saying, my only response is "yeah, ON PAPER... can you guarantee what happens when we expand the nuclear programs nationwide, with a government that slashes regulatory agency budgets to the bone?"

I have absolutely zero doubt that a safe, effective, cost efficient nuclear power plant can be built.

[Schneibster]

Ahhhhhhhhh, yes. Human factors.

Perhaps the right answer is to get people in charge who will put enough regulations (and regulators) in place to ensure it's done right. But again, that's not a thread on SMM&T. :D

Remember also that no utility wants to own the next Chernobyl- if they're lucky, they'll only get shut down and their pants sued off. If they're not, they might get strung up to the nearest lamppost. Or wind up entertaining Bubba for the rest of their life. Not to mention, their multi-billion dollar investment is a puddle of radioactive slag. And remember finally that the nuclear engineers running it will be on-site; nobody wants to die of radiation poisoning, and a nuclear engineer will have the disadvantage of knowing precisely what's going to happen. It's a very ugly process.

Still, human factors is a serious consideration. And I agree that it has to be addressed; but we really don't have a choice any more as I see it. So the question becomes, what are we going to do about that? And like I said, that's not a thread on this forum.

[Lonewulf]

and Jane Fonda made that stupid movie. And it all went down the toilet, and we've been swirling around ever since
Which stupid movie is that? Not sure if I've heard of it.

Not to mention, their multi-billion dollar investment is a puddle of radioactive slag. And remember finally that the nuclear engineers running it will be on-site; nobody wants to die of radiation poisoning, and a nuclear engineer will have the disadvantage of knowing precisely what's going to happen. It's a very ugly process.
Eh, better than a pool of chemical slag as far as I'm concerned. It's IMO that evil radiation is a tad overrated. Yeah, sure, it's dangerous, but many industrial processes deal with chemicals and equipment that's also dangerous.

There are chemical factories next to populated cities that have a far higher chance of wiping out those cities than any fission reactor.

[robinson]

Thanks, robinson, I didn't know that, I can't read. /sarcasm

I guess I should have added a smiley. While looking at the list, I noticed just how many reactors have been shut down/decommissioned or entombed. Nuclear reactors are very expensive, a short term solution, and a long term danger*.

*Same for radioactive waste.

While we have been discussing/ranting about how great it is, or could be, the bottom line doesn't add up. Nuclear Power isn't a solution for the United States. If nuclear power plants were profitable, we would see a new one go up every 2 years in the US.

Public Health concerns don't stop construction of far more dangerous industries. Or actions. Popular opinion didn't stop the US from continuing to build Nuclear reactors. Financial reasons did.

:D

[JoeEllison]

Remember also that no utility wants to own the next Chernobyl- if they're lucky, they'll only get shut down and their pants sued off.
That might happen other places, but not in America, with its LLCs and golden parachutes and corporate structures in which no person is actually held accountable.

My fear? An Enron-type company in charge of a string of nuclear power plants.

[luddite]

Here's the problem, luddite: if everyone keeps dissing nuclear power, none of the kids deciding what they want to be decides to be a nuclear engineer, and then we don't have any. And here we are. We now have a much larger problem with greenhouse warming than we'd have if TMI, The China Syndrome, and Chernobyl hadn't happened, and we'd built nuclear plants. Everyone's running around pointing fingers, jumping up and down and waving their hands about global warming, but the truth is, they should be pointing fingers at themselves, because they turned off the money for nuclear and that's how we got here.

I am not convinced. When we discovered oil, it could have been used to clean up the environment, rather than destroy it. It could have replaced coal in industry. That would have cleaned up our cities and made them pleasant to live in so rich people didn't feel the need to own country homes away from it all. Natural gas could have replaced existing space heating requirements and lasted hundreds of years, making cities even more pleasant.

If we had recognized that our fossil fuel inheritance was a precious trust that should be safeguarded for future generations and limited its use, progress in building design and insulation would have meant that a lot of energy "needs" would never have come up. And maybe our industrial base would have been somewhat smaller. We would have fewer cars and maybe no cheap plastic toys from China at all.

It is my observation that energy "needs" rise to meet any availability. As long as cheap oil was available, we kept coming up with new and creative ways to use it. We now spend more time in traffic and service fees for our homes cost a lot more because we've scattered them across the countryside.

Nuclear was supposed to deliver power "too cheap to meter". Again, we just discovered a raft of new uses for the electricity it produced. If we had invested in more nuclear as well, I'm convinced we'd have an even greater dependence on electricity today, with no decrease in our dependence on cars at all. If TMI and Chernobyl hadn't happened, governments may have been more complacent and not as supportive of nuclear research. So current reactors may have been more dangerous and research into new technologies might have been further behind. We may well have had an even deeper climate crisis because mining, transporting and refining uranium still use a lot of fossil fuels, and nuclear plants rely on coal for backup. And we'd be even more desperate today, because we'd have less uranium remaining and our perceived energy "needs" would be even more astronomical.

I don't think the solution is to keep giving the addict his fix.

I'm also concerned about the lecture on "dissing" nuclear power. The first article I quoted stated that Ontario Power Generation was

keeping important information hidden from the public

The whole point of a democracy is to have an informed and engaged electorate judge the pros and cons for themselves. It is contemptible to keep information from them, yet you suggest that it is revealing the dangers of nuclear power that is somehow morally reprehensible.

What I think we need to do instead is inform the public about the dangers of global warming, inform the public about the dangers of all the various generation options, make reasonable assessments about what life will be like if we commit to the various options and let the public judge. My friends enjoy the challenge of reducing personal emissions to negligible levels. There's a big challenge around food supply that's hard to solve at a personal level, but that can be addressed as well with the necessary political commitment. I don't like the presumption that we know how much energy people need, what risks they should be willing to take.

I'll agree that most people are unaware of the magnitude of the upcoming energy crisis, but in my experience, when apprised of their options, most people prefer to focus on reducing their energy dependence first and investing in renewables second. That would change if the alternative was starving in the dark, but it's not. It means you give up such luxuries as standby modes on television and sweep instead of vacuuming sometimes. You hang your clothes to dry and it smells nice as a result.

But my biggest complaint about nuclear is that in practice it competes directly with conservation. I know there are a lot of people on this forum that believe the two can and should coexist. But the reality is that governments have energy budgets. Nuclear involves huge capital cost outlays. It creates budgets that make people's heads spin. And it is always based on models of energy "needs" founded on the current model. It presumes that in a low-carbon future we will continue to produce cars, electric weed trimmers, golf carts, can openers, little electronic dolls and other crap at the same rate. It presumes that our houses will continue to be poorly insulated and that we'll continue to commute from ever more distant suburbs. It presumes that populations will continue to expand. It always presumes that living with less is impossible. So the monetary commitment to conservation is a pittance, even though conservation is widely accepted as the cheapest, fastest, most reliable and safest way of reducing demand. Where a nuclear fix is not an option because of public resistance, the result is a greater investment in conservation and renewables to keep the lights on.

[Schneibster]

Which stupid movie is that? Not sure if I've heard of it.The one I mentioned before: The China Syndrome. The worst thing about it is, it's not even technically accurate, nor anywhere close to it.

Eh, better than a pool of chemical slag as far as I'm concerned. It's IMO that evil radiation is a tad overrated. Yeah, sure, it's dangerous, but many industrial processes deal with chemicals and equipment that's also dangerous.I think we found out exactly what's involved when Chernobyl went up. The one distinction I will make is that once contaminated with radioactive material, there is no possible way to clean up, and the contaminated area remains unusable for longer than a human lifetime.

There are chemical factories next to populated cities that have a far higher chance of wiping out those cities than any fission reactor.There is a certain amount of truth to that view. The Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal comes to mind, among others. 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate, and it's estimated that a person still today, over twenty years later, dies early every day from the effects.

[Schneibster]

I guess I should have added a smiley. Probably. I'll accept that as an apology.

While looking at the list, I noticed just how many reactors have been shut down/decommissioned or entombed. Nuclear reactors are very expensive, a short term solution, and a long term danger*.

*Same for radioactive waste. There is considerable controversy about how big a long term danger they are. The longer radioactive material lasts, the less radioactive it is; that's called half-life.

While we have been discussing/ranting about how great it is, or could be, the bottom line doesn't add up. Nuclear Power isn't a solution for the United States. If nuclear power plants were profitable, we would see a new one go up every 2 years in the US.The reasons are political, not financial. Utilities are risk-averse, and the risks were perceived as too high for the reward. The financial risks were not the only ones considered.

Public Health concerns don't stop construction of far more dangerous industries. Or actions. Popular opinion didn't stop the US from continuing to build Nuclear reactors. Financial reasons did.

:DWe disagree.

[Schneibster]

I am not convinced. When we discovered oil, it could have been used to clean up the environment, rather than destroy it. It could have replaced coal in industry. Actually, it couldn't. You apparently don't know much about the manufacture of steel, or of cement. The use of a liquid fuel for either one would have required the use of a completely different type of plant. And that would have been a very large capital investment. And from the point of view of global warming, it would have made no difference at all.

That would have cleaned up our cities and made them pleasant to live in so rich people didn't feel the need to own country homes away from it all. Natural gas could have replaced existing space heating requirements and lasted hundreds of years, making cities even more pleasant.I'm not sure why you think natural gas isn't used for heating houses; I'm looking at a natural gas fired forced air heating system in my garage right now. As it happens, it's going to be replaced shortly with a higher-efficiency unit, partly because it needs to be replaced, and partly because I want to cut down my carbon footprint. That's merely one of the measures I'm taking.

If we had recognized that our fossil fuel inheritance was a precious trust that should be safeguarded for future generations and limited its use, progress in building design and insulation would have meant that a lot of energy "needs" would never have come up. And maybe our industrial base would have been somewhat smaller. We would have fewer cars and maybe no cheap plastic toys from China at all.I think that you're expecting people not to be people. I also think you're not really thinking about what that "industrial base" actually provides.

It is my observation that energy "needs" rise to meet any availability. As long as cheap oil was available, we kept coming up with new and creative ways to use it. We now spend more time in traffic and service fees for our homes cost a lot more because we've scattered them across the countryside.Do you have any evidence to support this assertion? I've looked your posts on this thread over, and I don't see any. I also see evidence to support the opposite view, evidence you've ignored or passed over. Certainly I don't see a credible response to that evidence from you, and here you are making the same assertion again, in defiance of apparent reality. If you want to have a conversation, you need to respond to what other people say, not just ignore it and keep saying the same thing.

Nuclear was supposed to deliver power "too cheap to meter". Again, we just discovered a raft of new uses for the electricity it produced. If we had invested in more nuclear as well, I'm convinced we'd have an even greater dependence on electricity today, with no decrease in our dependence on cars at all. If TMI and Chernobyl hadn't happened, governments may have been more complacent and not as supportive of nuclear research. So current reactors may have been more dangerous and research into new technologies might have been further behind. We may well have had an even deeper climate crisis because mining, transporting and refining uranium still use a lot of fossil fuels, and nuclear plants rely on coal for backup. And we'd be even more desperate today, because we'd have less uranium remaining and our perceived energy "needs" would be even more astronomical.All of this is frank speculation, and all of it is unsupported, and basically unsupportable by any facts, because it didn't work out that way.

I don't think the solution is to keep giving the addict his fix.I don't think the solution is to starve a billion people because of an unsupported characterization.

I'm also concerned about the lecture on "dissing" nuclear power. The first article I quoted stated that Ontario Power Generation was

The whole point of a democracy is to have an informed and engaged electorate judge the pros and cons for themselves. It is contemptible to keep information from them, yet you suggest that it is revealing the dangers of nuclear power that is somehow morally reprehensible.No, I suggest that blowing a bunch of smoke about how dangerous it is, without proper respect for the facts, is irresponsible. I don't disagree with your assertion that keeping information from the public is contemptible, and I also don't disagree that it's been done, but the dangers of nuclear power have been considerably overblown. Hyperbole serves no purpose; and in this case, it's an active danger to the environment. It has resulted in there not being enough trained nuclear engineers in the US, because kids deciding what classes to take in college didn't take classes in it. We've got over a hundred nuclear reactors operating in the US, and not enough engineers to tend them. And the reason is a movie that was filled with technical inaccuracies and a bunch of hysteria. And we've got a huge problem with carbon emissions that would be considerably smaller if we had built nuclear plants instead of coal plants. It's going to take ten years to fix that problem, and meanwhile we're going to be burning a whole lot more coal. So thanks for the mess.

What I think we need to do instead is inform the public about the dangers of global warming, inform the public about the dangers of all the various generation options, make reasonable assessments about what life will be like if we commit to the various options and let the public judge. My friends enjoy the challenge of reducing personal emissions to negligible levels. There's a big challenge around food supply that's hard to solve at a personal level, but that can be addressed as well with the necessary political commitment. I don't like the presumption that we know how much energy people need, what risks they should be willing to take.The recommendations I've seen you make on this thread sounded pretty restrictive in terms of personal freedom. I'm a liberal, but I'm also anti-authoritarian, and it sounded like the carbon police to me. And it's the carbon police to avoid using a perfectly reasonable solution, which is unjustifiable. If you could have shown that there was no choice, well, OK, I guess we gotta do what we gotta do. But in the absence of proof of that, I think you're imposing a bunch of regulations in order to avoid a perceived danger that's less than you make it out to be.

People can save money, and save the environment at the same time. Drive less. Insulate your home. Think about what you buy, where it came from, and how much carbon footprint that has, and how to make it less. But if you think that's going to solve this problem, or that you're going to get the Chinese to let people starve because you're afraid of nuclear energy, I'd have to say that I haven't seen you present any evidence to support your views, and they strike me as pretty unrealistic.

I'll agree that most people are unaware of the magnitude of the upcoming energy crisis, but in my experience, when apprised of their options, most people prefer to focus on reducing their energy dependence first and investing in renewables second. That would change if the alternative was starving in the dark, but it's not. It means you give up such luxuries as standby modes on television and sweep instead of vacuuming sometimes. You hang your clothes to dry and it smells nice as a result.You've been shown evidence to support the assertion that this will not be enough, and ignored it. If you have some evidence to present to support this point of view, then present it; otherwise, this is just more smoke.

But my biggest complaint about nuclear is that in practice it competes directly with conservation. I know there are a lot of people on this forum that believe the two can and should coexist. But the reality is that governments have energy budgets. Nuclear involves huge capital cost outlays. It creates budgets that make people's heads spin. And it is always based on models of energy "needs" founded on the current model. It presumes that in a low-carbon future we will continue to produce cars, electric weed trimmers, golf carts, can openers, little electronic dolls and other crap at the same rate. It presumes that our houses will continue to be poorly insulated and that we'll continue to commute from ever more distant suburbs. It presumes that populations will continue to expand. It always presumes that living with less is impossible. So the monetary commitment to conservation is a pittance, even though conservation is widely accepted as the cheapest, fastest, most reliable and safest way of reducing demand. Where a nuclear fix is not an option because of public resistance, the result is a greater investment in conservation and renewables to keep the lights on.And yet more unsupported assertions. Again, you've been shown evidence you've ignored. If you want to provide some evidence instead of making assertions, then let's see it. Otherwise, what you've got is some half-baked ideas about saving the world that, if they were implemented, would result in a carbon police state with brown people on the other side of the world starving to death. And a bunch of hysteria about how dangerous nuclear power is.

Look, I think that your points about conservation and renewables are good ones. But I think you haven't done enough research to understand what we're looking at. People aren't going to give up their cars willingly; and they aren't going to vote for anyone who tries to make them. The solution that will work is to stop burning oil in them. That means electric cars. The electricity has to come from somewhere, and if we burn coal to make it, that just transfers the problem somewhere else. Renewables aren't going to handle what we already use, even if we conserve all we can; and the evidence to support that assertion has already been presented here. How can we expect renewables to handle the extra load that using electric cars will present, if they can't even handle what we already have? Nuclear solves that problem, at least for now, while we figure out the permanent solution, which is fusion.

Try and see if you can't give some answers to the questions I posed above, instead of writing a radical environmentalist screed. This is not the political forum.

[Schneibster]

That might happen other places, but not in America, with its LLCs and golden parachutes and corporate structures in which no person is actually held accountable.

My fear? An Enron-type company in charge of a string of nuclear power plants.You got a point. But again, it's a political point.

[robinson]

Any suggestions how to magically whomp up some nuclear engineers quicker than the eight years it takes to get a PhD,...

Sure, just do the same thing US Industry does now, hire them from another country. France would be the safest. China the cheapest, though North Korea has a bunch of unemployed nuclear engineers right now.

:wackylaugh:

[Schneibster]

That doesn't help in running them. Are you actually interested in the conversation? You don't seem to be reading it.

[Lonewulf]

Y'know, I had fun fiddling with estimates of kw/h and the costs of such with solar energy. There's a certain thrill in doing the math yourself...

[robinson]

Combined cycle electricity plants using natural gas are more economical than nuclear power plants. A typical nuclear plant cost from about $1 billion to several billion dollars in excess lifetime costs.

Edouard Launet, "Nuclear Power's Future in Question as Relative Costs Rise," Paris Libération, April 17, 1997.


“…If nuclear plants replaced all coal-fired plants in the world, global warming could be cut by 20 to 30 percent by the middle of the next century (2050). But it would require bringing a nuclear power plant on line somewhere in the world every one to three days for the next forty years. The cost would be $9 trillion; the pace of construction would be ten times greater than any the world has ever seen. Both figures are unthinkable. A totally safe reactor, a totally safe place to dispose of its deadly wastes, and a totally safe way to keep the wrong kind of nuclear materials from falling into the wrong hands none of these things have been resolved. By the time they are resolved, if they ever can be, it will be too late. The projected global warming will be full upon us.”
Senator George Mitchel

[Lonewulf]

How much power, overall, do you actually get for that money? How does it translate into cost per kw/h?

If you get 1000 watts for $100, and 10 watts for $10, guess which one is the greater deal?

Hm, somehow I doubt the source, now that I've read it in detail. I'm still waiting for people to explain why my coffee is a radioactive hazard. :D

[Schneibster]

CCGTs are being built, but they don't sequester carbon; and construction costs for combined cycle plants per kWh are multiples of those for nuclear plants, and that doesn't include carbon sequestration technology. A considerable amount of uncertainty in nuclear plant building (and consequent overrun costs that multiplied the expense of building them) came from hearings held after the plants were built. This cost has been eliminated by following the French practice of certifying a reactor model, provided manufacturing processes are also certified, as well as installation practices.

Considering that technology doesn't stand still, I'd say quoting a fifteen year old book, particularly one by a technophobe Senator who notoriously hobbled the US' leadership in science and technology in the world, and whose actions arguably led to the loss of the Democratic majority in Congress in 1994 and the consequent destruction of health care reform and a delay in it that has lasted to the current day, doesn't constitute strong evidence to support your view. In short, the man is and was an idiot; and I speak as a member of the same party he is. You'll need something a little more convincing.

[BenBurch]

I'm an old reactor safety systems guy.

If you have any questions about how noble gas isotope radionuclide effluents are dealt with, just ask.

The software I wrote is called the A-Model and detects the release or potential for release of noble gas radionuclides, can detect core damage (though operators undoubtedly would know before my software does) and monitors the stack radiation sensors and blower fan status and flow rates to declare warnings at several levels from Unusual Event up, and to project the downwind sector and dosage levels at various distances given the magnitude of the release and the current wind data.

[robinson]

Considering that technology doesn't stand still, I'd say quoting a fifteen year old book... doesn't constitute strong evidence to support your view.


I did the math. He is right about the rate of building to replace coal plants with Nuclear. We would need at least 4,000 power plants. That is around one every three days, for 40 years.

[Hindmost]

I guess I should have added a smiley. While looking at the list, I noticed just how many reactors have been shut down/decommissioned or entombed. Nuclear reactors are very expensive, a short term solution, and a long term danger*.

*Same for radioactive waste.

While we have been discussing/ranting about how great it is, or could be, the bottom line doesn't add up. Nuclear Power isn't a solution for the United States. If nuclear power plants were profitable, we would see a new one go up every 2 years in the US.

Public Health concerns don't stop construction of far more dangerous industries. Or actions. Popular opinion didn't stop the US from continuing to build Nuclear reactors. Financial reasons did.

:D

The fact is that nuclear plants are profitable. The capital cost for building the plants back in the 70s and 80s was very prohibitive due in part to escalating cost and a very high cost of capital due to interest rates at that time. Utilities have to borrow all the money and can't recover it in rate increases until the plant goes on line--that costs a bunch. In addition, when the oil 'crisis' hit, energy conservation helped significantly. Electrical power growth dropped from 7-8%/year to negative and then grew only at 1-2%. This eliminated the need to build any plants. With adding north slope oil and its price dropping to less than 20 dollars a barrel, the entire energy scene changed--it is changing again...and fast. CEOs of utilitie got burned real bad when told building a plant would cost 500 million dollars and the eventual cost was 5 times that initial number. The reason for stopping was the cost of construction along with licensing delays due to TMI back fits and public resistance. There are thirty plants on the boards of utilities today--will have to see what happens. The fact is that nuke plants produce the lowest cost electricity over their lifetime with the exception of certain hydro plants. The reactors that are being shut down are older units...most due to size concerns...the plants less cost efficient when they are small due to fixed cost of operation. Bigger is cheaper.

Some plant were shutdown solely due to public pressure. Trojan, fort st vrain--although this one had operation issues, shorem...and others I can't remember.

glenn

[Lonewulf]

With so much misinformation being spread around, it's a wonder how anyone in the energy industry actually gets anything done.

[BenBurch]

Zion 1 & 2 also shut down mostly due to public perception. It was on the watch list, yes, but there was nothing wrong at that plant that could not have been rectified.

Dresden 1 was kept shut because though they had built a decontamination plant, and could have decontaminated the plant, renovated it, and used it for another 20 years, the cost of the environmental protection plan and survey exceeded the profit to be gained from doing so!

[RecoveringYuppy]

I did the math. He is right about the rate of building to replace coal plants with Nuclear. We would need at least 4,000 power plants. That is around one every three days, for 40 years.
I've seen recent reports that China is building a major coal fired plant every 7-10 days. I would think that means the world is building coal fired plants at a rate nearly what the Senator cites. So we shouldn't reject nuclear just because we think that sounds like a lot of building to be done. We've got to build at a similar rate no matter which way we go.

As a world wide venture building a nuclear power plant every three days doesn't seem like that big a deal. The 9 trillion he cites works out to about a quarter trillion a year. Energy is a multi trillion dollar industry. For comparison: the approximately 30 billion barrels of oil consumed on the planet are 2.4 trillion dollars a year at $80 a barrel. Worldwide generation of electricity is 15 trillion KwH anually. Don't know what worldwide rates for electricity are but that's got to be nearly a trillion dollars.

My guesstimate is that the program he's citing would require a greater capital re-investment than usual, but not by an impossible amount.

BTW here's a link that seems to relate to the quote from the Senator:

http://www.mothersalert.org/globalwarming2.html

It claims "31.48 trillion" as the "cost" of generating electricity. Sounds a bit disengenuous to me since I would think that is actually the value of the electricity generated by that 9 trillion dollar investment, IOW I think its the return on investment.

[Hindmost]

I am not convinced. When we discovered oil, it could have been used to clean up the environment, rather than destroy it. It could have replaced coal in industry. That would have cleaned up our cities and made them pleasant to live in so rich people didn't feel the need to own country homes away from it all. Natural gas could have replaced existing space heating requirements and lasted hundreds of years, making cities even more pleasant.

If we had recognized that our fossil fuel inheritance was a precious trust that should be safeguarded for future generations and limited its use, progress in building design and insulation would have meant that a lot of energy "needs" would never have come up. And maybe our industrial base would have been somewhat smaller. We would have fewer cars and maybe no cheap plastic toys from China at all.

It is my observation that energy "needs" rise to meet any availability. As long as cheap oil was available, we kept coming up with new and creative ways to use it. We now spend more time in traffic and service fees for our homes cost a lot more because we've scattered them across the countryside.

Nuclear was supposed to deliver power "too cheap to meter". Again, we just discovered a raft of new uses for the electricity it produced. If we had invested in more nuclear as well, I'm convinced we'd have an even greater dependence on electricity today, with no decrease in our dependence on cars at all. If TMI and Chernobyl hadn't happened, governments may have been more complacent and not as supportive of nuclear research. So current reactors may have been more dangerous and research into new technologies might have been further behind. We may well have had an even deeper climate crisis because mining, transporting and refining uranium still use a lot of fossil fuels, and nuclear plants rely on coal for backup. And we'd be even more desperate today, because we'd have less uranium remaining and our perceived energy "needs" would be even more astronomical.

I don't think the solution is to keep giving the addict his fix.

I'm also concerned about the lecture on "dissing" nuclear power. The first article I quoted stated that Ontario Power Generation was



The whole point of a democracy is to have an informed and engaged electorate judge the pros and cons for themselves. It is contemptible to keep information from them, yet you suggest that it is revealing the dangers of nuclear power that is somehow morally reprehensible.

What I think we need to do instead is inform the public about the dangers of global warming, inform the public about the dangers of all the various generation options, make reasonable assessments about what life will be like if we commit to the various options and let the public judge. My friends enjoy the challenge of reducing personal emissions to negligible levels. There's a big challenge around food supply that's hard to solve at a personal level, but that can be addressed as well with the necessary political commitment. I don't like the presumption that we know how much energy people need, what risks they should be willing to take.

I'll agree that most people are unaware of the magnitude of the upcoming energy crisis, but in my experience, when apprised of their options, most people prefer to focus on reducing their energy dependence first and investing in renewables second. That would change if the alternative was starving in the dark, but it's not. It means you give up such luxuries as standby modes on television and sweep instead of vacuuming sometimes. You hang your clothes to dry and it smells nice as a result.

But my biggest complaint about nuclear is that in practice it competes directly with conservation. I know there are a lot of people on this forum that believe the two can and should coexist. But the reality is that governments have energy budgets. Nuclear involves huge capital cost outlays. It creates budgets that make people's heads spin. And it is always based on models of energy "needs" founded on the current model. It presumes that in a low-carbon future we will continue to produce cars, electric weed trimmers, golf carts, can openers, little electronic dolls and other crap at the same rate. It presumes that our houses will continue to be poorly insulated and that we'll continue to commute from ever more distant suburbs. It presumes that populations will continue to expand. It always presumes that living with less is impossible. So the monetary commitment to conservation is a pittance, even though conservation is widely accepted as the cheapest, fastest, most reliable and safest way of reducing demand. Where a nuclear fix is not an option because of public resistance, the result is a greater investment in conservation and renewables to keep the lights on.

It seems that you are dismissing any arguement that shows nuclear to be viable. The "too cheap to meter" comment came at a time when the first plants were build without containments and safety systems back in the 50s and capital costs were minimal. Coupled with the fact that fission releases a million times more energy than any chemical reaction, that statement was thought to be reasonable. Obviously it belongs with statements such as...there is only a need for 3-4 computers in the US...etc

TMI and chernobyl didn't affect the downturn of nuclear power in the US. Utilities abandoned before those issues. 10CFR50 along with ASME codes and reg guides determine how a plant get built in the US. The government wasn't complacent before TMI and they certainly weren't after those problems. And again...nuke plants have a better capacity factor than coal plants...so it is the coal plants that rely on nukes, not the other way around. The Toronto star printing one sided articles against nuclear does not mean that nuke plants are unreliable and coal plants aren't having maintenance problems. Any plant always has maintenance tasks and issues to deal with on a daily basis. Actually, you never really get any rest working at a power plant...I speak with experience.

When you indicate that energy demands rise to meet availability, what evidence do you have for this. Demand comes first. Looking at world wide electricity growth, it is the expanding economies in India and China along with population growth have caused the increase in demand. Utilities do not go out promoting consumers to buy energy draining stuff like plasma tvs...Utilities didn't invent dryers. Utilities actually don't like building plant due to risk...right now, natural gas plants are the cheapest to build and don't have a great risk associated with them. The market comes first.

I agree with your posts related to conservation, but there still will be a certain amount of energy needed that is not considered luxury just too keep the world economy going. Conservation can't stop this demand...and current technology for wind, solar and geothermal power just won't supply the energy. Nuclear power doesn't compete with conservation. If wind and solar power were cheap and available, energy demand would increase.

glenn

[BenBurch]

Yes, one plant every three days.

And we'd better get started; the consequence of not doing so is the fall of our technical civilization, and the death through exposure, starvation and chaos of you, your loved ones, basically 95% of all humans living now.

[luddite]

Actually, it couldn't. You apparently don't know much about the manufacture of steel, or of cement. The use of a liquid fuel for either one would have required the use of a completely different type of plant. And that would have been a very large capital investment. And from the point of view of global warming, it would have made no difference at all.

I'm not sure why you think natural gas isn't used for heating houses; I'm looking at a natural gas fired forced air heating system in my garage right now. As it happens, it's going to be replaced shortly with a higher-efficiency unit, partly because it needs to be replaced, and partly because I want to cut down my carbon footprint. That's merely one of the measures I'm taking.

My apologies. I meant it could have replaced some coal, not all. Though I understand Brazilian steel is made using charcoal, so coal is not absolutely necessary. I know most houses are heated with natural gas. We've also largely eliminated coal powered trains for transportation. My point is not that there has been no fuel-switching. My point is that it's had no impact at all on the use of coal. We've just found other uses for the coal.

I also think you're not really thinking about what that "industrial base" actually provides.

I'm not trying to be difficult here. But all I've seen is assertions that the industrial base requires a lot of electricity and is structurally resistant to efficiency improvements. That much I know. I've said before that I don't have a lot of knowledge and I'd appreciate more. Industry also has widely varying requirements. So tell me what you know. I'd be glad to learn.

Because without specific examples, I come to some of my own conclusions. The auto industry is being bailed out again, for example, in Canada. When we should be worrying about reducing our emissions, this seems profoundly wrong.

Some industry should even grow, energy intensive as it is. We need more wind turbines, for example.

But I know industry will be profoundly affected in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Big final emitters are being targetted in every country that's serious about climate change. George Monbiot recommends auctioning off the carbon allocated to industry. Whatever mechanism you use, energy intensive industries will suffer. Doubly so if they make energy guzzling end products.

I've never seen anyone make an assessment of what industries are likely to survive, which will grow, which will shrink. But I think that planning on energizing the current industrial base in a low-carbon economy is a little myopic.

It is my observation that energy "needs" rise to meet any availability. As long as cheap oil was available, we kept coming up with new and creative ways to use it. We now spend more time in traffic and service fees for our homes cost a lot more because we've scattered them across the countryside.

Do you have any evidence to support this assertion? I've looked your posts on this thread over, and I don't see any. I also see evidence to support the opposite view, evidence you've ignored or passed over. Certainly I don't see a credible response to that evidence from you, and here you are making the same assertion again, in defiance of apparent reality. If you want to have a conversation, you need to respond to what other people say, not just ignore it and keep saying the same thing.

Do I really need to substantiate the fact that pumping water to houses separated by 30 metres door to door requires more infrastructure than pumping water 6 metres door to door? And what evidence do you see to support the opposite view? What I've seen is a lot of unsubstantiated assertions that demand comes first. Hindmost has also claimed repeatedly that utilities resist expansion and promote conservation for this reason, again without support. I've pointed out that many utilities are paid to promote conservation. And I've suggested (without support) that while they may be risk averse and reluctant to invest in increased infrastructure, that doesn't mean they want to see dramatic demand decreases. And when they build a new power plant, they want to see it working to pay itself off. To my knowledge, nobody answered this at all.

It may well be a chicken-and-egg question.

All of this is frank speculation, and all of it is unsupported, and basically unsupportable by any facts, because it didn't work out that way.

That's what it was meant to be. My point was that your ideas about what might have happened if TMI and Chernobyl had not happened was equally speculative. We just don't know. But I think the idea that it would have necessarily resulted in an emissions reduction is very optimistic.

I don't think the solution is to starve a billion people because of an unsupported characterization.

As I've said, if that were the only alternative, I wouldn't raise a single objection to anything that needed to be done. But neither have you supported your claim that a billion people would starve. That's a pretty heavy hammer to throw.

The recommendations I've seen you make on this thread sounded pretty restrictive in terms of personal freedom. I'm a liberal, but I'm also anti-authoritarian, and it sounded like the carbon police to me. And it's the carbon police to avoid using a perfectly reasonable solution, which is unjustifiable. If you could have shown that there was no choice, well, OK, I guess we gotta do what we gotta do. But in the absence of proof of that, I think you're imposing a bunch of regulations in order to avoid a perceived danger that's less than you make it out to be.

Actually, I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can avoid a "carbon police" situation. I'd much rather control emissions through market mechanisms and give people a lot of freedom about how they trade off their various priorities.

What happens is that when people say "Hey it's impossible to live without air conditioning" and I say "No, it's not, it's been done", they assume that I want to dictate the exact conditions of what they will do. I don't.

But we have a lot of bad options. If you live in a suburban frame house in the desert with air conditioning powered by coal, realistically you need to expect something to change. There are a lot of options on the table. You can move. You can insulate. You can concentrate by moving several families into a single house. Or you can change the source of the electricity. I'd rather not tell people what to do. But when asked, it has been my consistent experience that when people understand that insulation can take care of things, that's the first option they pick. The second is changing the source to solar or wind. Many people would rather move than generate from nuclear.

And a lot of my point is that saying "We'll build a nuclear power plant because people obviously demand air conditioning" is equally presumptuous and intrusive.

If you look at the links to the two English articles I sent, there was a study which indicated that you cannot attain the required emissions reductions without basically retrofitting all existing housing stock. So even though I'm not proposing which mechanisms are to be used, I'm prepared to go out on a limb here and say that addressing global warming will force almost all of us to make significant energy retrofits. If we don't embrace this soon, carbon police may have to force us. When we do it ourselves, we have a lot more freedom about how it's done.

But if you think that's going to solve this problem, or that you're going to get the Chinese to let people starve because you're afraid of nuclear energy, I'd have to say that I haven't seen you present any evidence to support your views, and they strike me as pretty unrealistic.

Why do you bring up Chinese? When have I ever suggested that anyone should starve? What view am I supposed to present evidence for?

You've been shown evidence to support the assertion that this will not be enough, and ignored it. If you have some evidence to present to support this point of view, then present it; otherwise, this is just more smoke.

I have? Lonewulf has expressed doubts that the 0.4% share of renewables could rise to 100%. Glenn has claimed (unsupported) that we could not conserve our way out of our industrial demands. Several people have complained that wind sites are limited, the sun is weak in the north and renewables are intermittent.

I've actually responded about why things may be more hopeful. For example, I pointed out that renewables have a much higher penetration in countries that take coal reduction seriously and storage technologies are rapidly maturing as a result. Also I've pointed out that the wind studies for Ontario give a conservatively estimated potential many times our load. And I pointed out that reducing the load through efficiency and conservation is the priority. It's cheapest, fastest, safest and most reliable. I supported all these statements. Then there's sun and biomass and geothermal and other delights.

But Lonewulf's comments were equally speculative anyway. Can we or can't we? This isn't a question that has a rigorous, testable answer. It depends a lot on where we put our energies. You've pointed out yourself that ramping up nuclear would not be without its own challenges.

I don't think there's been any compelling argument presented for why it would be impossible to avoid expanding nuclear. Sorry if I've missed something. I want to note that I'm not demanding such compelling evidence either. I think all this is an exercise in envisioning future possibilities. There is no slam-dunk argument.

What I'll admit to is that envisioning a renewable future requires more imagination. It requires a careful scrutiny of where our energy goes and where and how it could be reduced. It requires doubting the assumption we've all gotten used to that energy needs will necessarily climb. It requires thinking about priorities a lot.

What I've been trying to say is that this kind of thinking will have to permeate our thoughts anyway, whether or not we invest in a nuclear renaissance. There are some people on this forum, mhaze and Dr. Buzzo, for example, who see nuclear potential as essentially inexhaustible. Whereas I'm convinced that even if we fail to address global warming and invest in nuclear, we're still very likely to have a major energy crisis.

I've seen people inspired by the realization that unheated structures could actually be more comfortable than heated ones. I don't want this to be an argument between entrenched sides about whether nuclear is necessary or not. That's pointless. I only want people to realize that there are other ways of looking at things than meeting the demand for x kilowatts and that, at the very least, different perspectives can go a long way to reducing our energy dependence. So we'll need less nuclear, at the very least. But I think it's an interesting challenge to see if we can get to the point where none is necessary.

And in a spirit of fun, I'll suggest that those who begin with the premise that all generation from coal needs to be replaced with an equivalent amount of generation from another source are the true unimaginative luddites.

what you've got is some half-baked ideas about saving the world that, if they were implemented, would result in a carbon police state with brown people on the other side of the world starving to death.

I don't think the brown people on the other side of the world have to worry. If you look at carbon emissions per capita, we're the ones who will have to make the greatest changes in our lives. If we lead by example, it will only make it easier still for them to copy us. A couple months ago, I sat down with a couple of friends over charts of petroleum consumption per capita by country and realized that for much of the world, oil could disappear tomorrow with little appreciable difference.

I got politically involved with climate change because I recognize it as the greatest human rights crisis we've ever faced. I've been concerned about human rights my entire life. So if I believed your prediction, I would be horrified.

Perhaps what you mean is that if we don't build nuclear plants, we'll have to build coal plants and that will cause widespread droughts. I question the premise that if we don't want to build coal plants the only alternative is to build nuke plants. And it seems rather harsh to suggest "take your nuclear pill or a billion Africans will starve". I've said all along that my priority is reducing emissions drastically now. Eliminating coal is a huge part of the challenge. I would never support a coal plant over a nuclear plant. I try to make that abundantly clear to everyone I speak to.

People aren't going to give up their cars willingly; and they aren't going to vote for anyone who tries to make them. The solution that will work is to stop burning oil in them. That means electric cars. The electricity has to come from somewhere, and if we burn coal to make it, that just transfers the problem somewhere else. Renewables aren't going to handle what we already use, even if we conserve all we can; and the evidence to support that assertion has already been presented here. How can we expect renewables to handle the extra load that using electric cars will present, if they can't even handle what we already have? Nuclear solves that problem, at least for now, while we figure out the permanent solution, which is fusion.

I know rather a lot of people who would love to be able to give up their cars. And they vote for politicians who promise to invest in more public transit, among other things. They also recognize that cars have emissions associated with manufacturing, road construction and disposal that remain even if the car is electric.

I've pointed out why I think a significant expansion of nuclear power is unlikely to occur quickly enough to power up our fleet anyway (and I referenced it).

Try and see if you can't give some answers to the questions I posed above, instead of writing a radical environmentalist screed. This is not the political forum.

Oh. I may well be on the wrong forum. I'm still rather new here.

[luddite]

It seems that you are dismissing any arguement that shows nuclear to be viable

I am? How so? I don't mean to deny this. I just don't know what you mean by viable. Clearly I'm aware that nuclear plants can be built and produce power. They would lower emissions somewhat under current conditions, and more so if extraction and processing of fuel could be done with less fossil fuel.

I think that on the balance we'd be better off putting our energies elsewhere.

When you indicate that energy demands rise to meet availability, what evidence do you have for this. Demand comes first.

As I mentioned to Schneibster, this may well be a chicken-and-egg question. But is it really conceivable that we would have built up a suburban auto culture without the availability of oil?

When you indicate that energy demands rise to meet availability, what evidence do you have for this. Demand comes first. Looking at world wide electricity growth, it is the expanding economies in India and China along with population growth have caused the increase in demand. Utilities do not go out promoting consumers to buy energy draining stuff like plasma tvs...Utilities didn't invent dryers.

Of course not. But nobody would have invented a handheld hair dryer if it cost $20 a minute to run the thing. If energy was rare and precious, we would use it more carefully. And once utilities commit to building a power plant (and as you say, they want to make sure the need is really there first), they definitely want to see it recover the investment in energy sales.

I agree with your posts related to conservation, but there still will be a certain amount of energy needed that is not considered luxury just too keep the world economy going. Conservation can't stop this demand...and current technology for wind, solar and geothermal power just won't supply the energy. Nuclear power doesn't compete with conservation.

And this is where it's a guessing game. Yes we need to keep the economy going. Conservation and renewables investment would be very good for the economy. Imagine what it would take to reinsulate 5% of the building stock every year. Imagine the fibreglass manufacturing involved.

And that, by the way, is part of the reason I'd like to start now, because when we're energy starved it will be a lot harder to do these necessary things.

Obviously, I hope that renewables can fill the need. I also have doubts about how much nuclear can do. I'm receptive to arguments that we need both, because I can't know what people will be willing to do. But most people can't imagine having an unheated house. That doesn't mean they'd be unwilling to live that way if it were possible to do so comfortably.

The argument that nuclear power competes with solar is a common one here in Ontario. Here's a paper from the Rocky Mountain Institute that says the same thing:

Empirical data also confirm that these competing technologies not only are being deployed an order of magnitude faster than nuclear power, but ultimately can become far bigger. In the U.S., for example, full deployment of these very cost-effective competitors (conservatively excluding all renewables except windpower, and all cogeneration that uses fresh fuel rather than recovered waste heat) could provide ~13–15 times nuclear power’s current 20% share of electric generation— all without significant land-use, reliability, or other constraints. The claim that “we need all energy options” has no analytic basis and is clearly not true; nor can we afford all options. In practice, keeping nuclear power alive means diverting private and public investment from the cheaper market winners—cogeneration, renewables, and efficiency—to the costlier market loser.

http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E05-08_NukePwrEcon.pdf

If wind and solar power were cheap and available, energy demand would increase.

So you've come to agree with me? :-)

[luddite]

Perhaps the right answer is to get people in charge who will put enough regulations (and regulators) in place to ensure it's done right. But again, that's not a thread on SMM&T.

Remember also that no utility wants to own the next Chernobyl- if they're lucky, they'll only get shut down and their pants sued off. If they're not, they might get strung up to the nearest lamppost. Or wind up entertaining Bubba for the rest of their life. Not to mention, their multi-billion dollar investment is a puddle of radioactive slag. And remember finally that the nuclear engineers running it will be on-site; nobody wants to die of radiation poisoning, and a nuclear engineer will have the disadvantage of knowing precisely what's going to happen. It's a very ugly process.

I find this comment very interesting.

While most pro-nuclear authors here are arguing that nuclear is perfectly safe and nothing could possibly go wrong, this suggests that the reason we should be reassured is precisely because nuclear is so dangerous that people will be careful.

[RecoveringYuppy]

While most pro-nuclear authors here are arguing that nuclear is perfectly safe and nothing could possibly go wrong, ...
This will hardly help all those pro-nuclear authors take you seriously.

[luddite]

People aren't going to give up their cars willingly; and they aren't going to vote for anyone who tries to make them.

I'd also like to point out that during the second world war, civilian car manufacturing ceased entirely and fuel was rationed in the United States. I believe that global warming is a greater world threat than naziism.

I do not want to force people to do things unwillingly. But I'm willing to recognize that in a crisis, people rise to meet the challenge, and that this may yet be necessary.

Achieving these goals was possible only by converting existing industries and using materials that previously went into manufacturing civilian goods. Nowhere was this shift more dramatic than in the automobile industry, which was at that time the largest concentration of industrial power in the world, producing 3-4 million cars a year. Auto companies initially wanted to continue manufacturing cars and simply to add on production of armaments. They agreed only reluctantly—after pressure from President Roosevelt—to a wholesale conversion to war-support manufacturing.14

...

The year 1942 witnessed the greatest expansion of industrial output in the nation's history—all for military use. Early in the year, the production and sale of cars and trucks for private use was banned, residential and highway construction was halted, and driving for pleasure was banned.17

In her book No Ordinary Time, Doris Kearns Goodwin describes how various firms converted. A sparkplug factory was among the first to switch to the production of machine guns. Soon a manufacturer of stoves was producing lifeboats. A merry-go-round factory was making gun mounts; a toy company was turning out compasses; a corset manufacturer was producing grenade belts; and a pinball machine plant began to make armor-piercing shells.18

In retrospect, the speed of the conversion from a peacetime to a wartime economy was stunning.

...

The harnessing of U.S. industrial power tipped the scales decisively toward the Allied Forces, reversing the tide of war. Germany and Japan could not match the United States in this effort. Winston Churchill often quoted Sir Edward Grey, Britain's foreign secretary: "The United States is like a giant boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate."20

A rationing program was also introduced. In addition to an outright ban on the sale of private cars, strategic goods—including tires, gasoline, fuel oil, and sugar—were rationed beginning in 1942. Cutting back on consumption of these goods freed up resources to support the war effort.21

This mobilization of resources within a matter of months demonstrates that a country and, indeed, the world can restructure its economy quickly if it is convinced of the need to do so. Many people—although not yet the majority—are already convinced of the need for a wholesale restructuring of the economy. The issue is not whether most people will eventually be won over, but whether they will be convinced before the bubble economy collapses.

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB/PBch11_ss3.htm

[luddite]

This will hardly help all those pro-nuclear authors take you seriously.
Sorry. It's not like I don't understand.

[Kevin_Lowe]

I just want to add that the last post is not definitive, and was just based on data that I could quickly gather; it's also not quite edited for purtiness. I'm rather pressed for time overall, so I'm not capable of giving a definitive extensive post. However, I feel that the last post is at least a way to start in on a reasonable discussion involving cost expenditure and overall energy efficiency of solar energy vs. nuclear energy.

Great post Lonewulf.

I do have a few comments of my own to add.

One is that it seems a bit unfair to ask the New York metropolitan area to cover the power needs of the whole state. I'm unfamiliar with US geography, but I imagine there's more to the state than just the city.

Another is that Dr Buzzo's figures ignore solar hot water heating. Solar hot water heating is a lot more efficient than using solar power cells to create electricity to heat water, and heating water is a significant chunk of a household's energy budget.

I think we can take 1/30th of the state's power needs as being a plausible lower limit to what current solar could do, for back-of-the-envelope purposes. If we let New York take care of itself without having to carry the state by itself, added solar hot water systems and maybe stuck wind power installations on the roofs for good luck (lots of wind there or so I am told) I think it's plausible you could to a lot better than 1/30th.

That's still only using "free" real estate. We're just sticking solar panels on buildings that are already there anyway. We haven't even started putting up wind farms or solar farms outside the city limits.

To go even further, I imagine that New York is something of a worst case scenario when it comes to the ratio of population to surface area. Less urbanised places are going to have more roof space per person to put panels on and so are going to do proportionally better.

We still haven't touched the issue of relative cost - I still see the pro-nuke posters claiming that nuclear is cheaper per kilowatt-hour than other sources, and I'm still pretty sure that the reputable sources I've seen say that's total rubbish without huge government subsidies and special exemptions.

[Hindmost]

I am? How so? I don't mean to deny this. I just don't know what you mean by viable. Clearly I'm aware that nuclear plants can be built and produce power. They would lower emissions somewhat under current conditions, and more so if extraction and processing of fuel could be done with less fossil fuel.

I think that on the balance we'd be better off putting our energies elsewhere.

I have posted links that show nuclear is more reliable than other forms of generation and is supported by capacity factors. You have indicated nuclear is supported by coal when the reverse is true. All plants require maintenance...when the toronto star shows a one-sided point of view, it doesn't properly present the facts that coal plants are shut down periodically with numerous problems.

As I mentioned to Schneibster, this may well be a chicken-and-egg question. But is it really conceivable that we would have built up a suburban auto culture without the availability of oil?

I agree, cheap oil has made suburbs...but it was henry ford putting a car in everyone's hands that created the demand. Very few people today don't want a car.

Of course not. But nobody would have invented a handheld hair dryer if it cost $20 a minute to run the thing. If energy was rare and precious, we would use it more carefully. And once utilities commit to building a power plant (and as you say, they want to make sure the need is really there first), they definitely want to see it recover the investment in energy sales.

It as if the utilities have done too good of a job. When I was in Houston back in the 70s, energy demand was growing so fast, the utility had trouble building plants fast enough. When that growth ended, they were relieved. The utility will always try to build enough to match the demand plus spinning reserve...they would rather people conserve than have to take the risk of building a plant due to cost overruns, and the difficulty of getting qualified help.


And this is where it's a guessing game. Yes we need to keep the economy going. Conservation and renewables investment would be very good for the economy. Imagine what it would take to reinsulate 5% of the building stock every year. Imagine the fibreglass manufacturing involved.

And that, by the way, is part of the reason I'd like to start now, because when we're energy starved it will be a lot harder to do these necessary things.

Obviously, I hope that renewables can fill the need. I also have doubts about how much nuclear can do. I'm receptive to arguments that we need both, because I can't know what people will be willing to do. But most people can't imagine having an unheated house. That doesn't mean they'd be unwilling to live that way if it were possible to do so comfortably.

The argument that nuclear power competes with solar is a common one here in Ontario. Here's a paper from the Rocky Mountain Institute that says the same thing:


http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E05-08_NukePwrEcon.pdf


So you've come to agree with me? :-)

I have indicated agreeing with you on conservation and developing alternate energy sources. But wind power and solar power are like harnessing mosquitoes. I have always believed that. Until recent technology development, wind power wasn't competitive. It still needs subsidies now. At least they are not the maintenance nightmares they used to be.

The Rocky Mountain institute is difficult to understand. The assertions stated are not supported by calculations. The stuff is so nebulous I can't understand and I have a degree in Nuclear engineering so I can really read graphs and that first graph is just confusing. This statement


In the U.S.,for example, full deployment of these very cost-effective competitors (conservatively excluding all renewables except windpower, and all cogeneration that uses fresh fuel rather than recovered
waste heat) could provide ~13–15 times nuclear power’s current 20% share of electric generation—all without significant land-use, reliability, or other constraints.

First, they advocated using natural gas and I disagree with using it. Plus production has been going down in North America. Now, 13 to 15 times nuclear power's current 20% share is the equivalent of over a million Megawatts of installed capacity...with no calcs to support this, it just doesn't seem real. However, they do indicate how difficult it is to build nuclear plants quickly...and I have stated that several times. They are exaggerating a bit since some places, like South Korea are doing a great job of bringing plants online. But I don't agree that time should be a factor. If we are sinking under global warming, then burning fossil fuels is throwing an anchor to a drowning person...with nuclear...even if slower to install, it would be better long term.

glenn

[Schneibster]

My apologies. I meant it could have replaced some coal, not all. Though I understand Brazilian steel is made using charcoal, so coal is not absolutely necessary. Steel is iron that has had carbon added to it; it's then quenched, which rapidly reduces its temperature, making it very hard, but also brittle. If it must be both hard and strong, then it is tempered, by re-heating it until it is red hot and then cooling it slowly.

The process of adding carbon to iron can be combined with smelting the iron ore. This results in a considerable savings in energy, and, as it happens, also in carbon emissions. Furthermore, the heat from this process can be used in tempering, resulting in even further savings of both energy and carbon emissions. Coke and iron ore are fed in; the carbon in the coke combines exothermically with the oxygen in the iron ore, and carries it off, leaving molten iron; some of the carbon remains in the iron, turning it into steel. The steel is quenched, hardening it, then reheated using heat from the next batch of ore and coke into the converter and finally tempered. Hardened, tempered steel comes out the far end, and as little carbon is emitted as can be, and as little coal is used as can be. Ideally, all of the oxygen to fuel the burn comes from the ore; in practice, very little of it comes from the surrounding air.

The reasons this type of process is used is because it makes the most product for the least money, and the owner of the plant produces a high-quality product for a low price and makes money, which is, from their point of view, an important part of the point of doing it. Designing this process to work with a liquid instead of solid coke would not be child's play; I'm sure it could be done, but why use more expensive oil instead of less expensive coal?

During the manufacture of cement, a component of concrete and also the material used to stick bricks or stones together into structures and surfaces, powdered limestone is mixed with clay and heated; the calcium carbonate in the limestone and the magnesium carbonate in the clay both release carbon dioxide as they decompose and combine with the silicon oxide and aluminum oxide in the clay. Furthermore, coal is commonly burned to heat the mixture. Cement manufacture is therefore a strong global warming contributor, almost as much so as power generation, and there are not good ways to avoid the release of carbon in the industrial process. This carbon will therefore need to be sequestered, as it will need to be in power generation that uses fossil fuels. This will make cement, and concrete, more expensive.

Concrete and steel are the two most important materials for industrial civilization. Our cities are quite frankly impossible without these materials; we use them to bring water and food into the cities, to remove waste, to build buildings, and to provide routes for transportation of people and goods in and out of them. The reason our society is one of the richest in the history of the world is because we can do these things easily and cheaply. This leaves time and effort for the further creation of wealth, and for social services, neither of which would be possible but for the ease of commerce that cities provide, and the economic advantages of being able to put up a building without having to conscript a hundred thousand people to do it. A modern skyscraper can house workplaces for fifty thousand workers, and can be built by a crew of less than a thousand people, in a couple years or less. Take away this capability, and most people will have to spend much more time getting food and water, and will have correspondingly less time to create wealth. You can see the results of this in the third world, and in history exhibits.

In addition, all the machinery of modern agriculture, which is needed to grow enough food to feed everyone, uses steel; and the plants where the food is prepared are made from concrete. The food is transported on roads and railroads, built with steel and concrete, and more steel and concrete is needed when they must be repaired. Steel is needed to make the trucks and the railroad cars to transport all of this food. And if the food is going overseas, then steel and concrete are needed to build and repair the ships that transport it, and the docks where it is on- and off-loaded. If any of these things stops happening, people are going to starve. And the people who build many of these things live in the cities, as do the ones who make sure that everyone who does everything gets paid, and that the food goes where it needs to go. So the cities can't stop either. "Just grow it locally" isn't an option for many people around the world; the US ships food all over the planet. People will starve if we stop.

This may just begin to give you the idea of how interconnected things have become all over the world. There is very much more just like it. What we have to do is figure out how to do all this without making as much CO2 as we do now; we can't stop doing it, because people will starve if we do. That's how things are. We can wish all we like that they weren't, but they are, and that's that.

So when I see you talk about conserving energy, and using renewable energy sources, it seems like a good idea, but I know it's not going to fix things; we have to figure out how to not only make up the difference between what we can conserve and what we currently have to burn coal to get, we also have to figure out how to get all that transportation done without burning any more coal or oil than we can figure out how, and electricity is what's going to do that for us. Unless you want to see a billion people starve. We can't stop doing all this industry; it's where the food, and the clothes, and the medicines, and the houses, and the buildings where all the business that gets the food distributed gets done, and the factories where all the machines to grow it and transport it get built, all come from. Stop and the whole dang thing falls apart, like a house of cards, and a billion people starve to death, and if they've got nuclear weapons, maybe they shoot some of them off first. And that is not hyperbole. Ask an economist some time.

I know most houses are heated with natural gas. We've also largely eliminated coal powered trains for transportation. My point is not that there has been no fuel-switching. My point is that it's had no impact at all on the use of coal. We've just found other uses for the coal.Yeah, like for growing things for people to eat and transporting them.

Part of the reason I'm so harsh about this stuff is that I see a lot of people who just don't get the fact that there are people depending on all of this stuff getting done. And they'll die if it stops. So when someone says, "We should just stop doing all this industry and stuff, it's bad for the environment," my response is, "Yeah, it doesn't matter if all those brown people we're feeding starve to death." And that's nasty and sarcastic, but it's the truth.

We can't go back to an agrarian society unless a couple billion people die off. That's how the world is. And those people, they're going to have kids, so there's going to be more people. At some point we have to do something about that, but right now, we've got a more pressing problem, which is global warming. Once we've got that solved, then we can worry about population control. Until then, we'd best figure what to do about generating the energy we need to keep all those people fed, without making any more CO2 than we can help. Renewables sounds great. Conservation sounds great. If you've got some alternative to nuclear up your sleeve or under your shirt or something, by all means let's hear about it; but stop trying to tell me we can just stop doing industrial things and it will be OK, because it won't.

I'm not trying to be difficult here. But all I've seen is assertions that the industrial base requires a lot of electricity and is structurally resistant to efficiency improvements. That much I know. I've said before that I don't have a lot of knowledge and I'd appreciate more. Industry also has widely varying requirements. So tell me what you know. I'd be glad to learn.The most important parts are above. I wish I saw an alternative; but I don't.

Because without specific examples, I come to some of my own conclusions. The auto industry is being bailed out again, for example, in Canada. When we should be worrying about reducing our emissions, this seems profoundly wrong.If we could use electric cars and generate the electricity without making too much CO2, that would help, don't you think? As a matter of fact, there is a company in Canada called Zenn Motors that is getting ready to make electric cars that use a technologically advanced supercapacitor, that is to be supplied by a company in Texas called EEStor, for electricity storage. This supercapacitor doesn't pollute like lead-acid batteries do, and lasts a lot longer as well. If this works, both companies will get rich and electric cars will take a quantum leap. And gasoline powered cars will be nothing but an evil memory.

But in order for that to happen, there have to be auto workers who can build the cars, and until the design is ready, and the general public has decided they want these electric cars, those auto workers have to eat, and people will need cars until then, too. If the Canadian government doesn't bail out the auto industry, all those auto workers starve. And when it comes time to build the electric cars and get rid of all the old gas guzzlers, who will build them? Nobody, because the people with the skills will all be dead or have other jobs. If you'd like, the government could let the auto industry go to hell in a handbasket and pay all those people to twiddle their thumbs until the electric cars are ready; but I don't think the taxpayers would like that much, nor the auto workers, and I bet the people who own the plants would scream bloody murder.

There are going on (perhaps over) six billion people on this planet. They all depend on one another for things. If those things stop, you're gonna have a hell of a problem. So when you set about making changes, because you've found that some really essential thing is causing a big problem, you have to go about it slowly, and not rock the boat too much, because otherwise you're going to create the ****edest mess you ever did see. Welcome to Economics 101.

Some industry should even grow, energy intensive as it is. We need more wind turbines, for example.Yeah, and more trucks and trains and ships to ship food, and more factories to process it, and more machines to harvest it, and cultivate the soil, and more fertilizer to grow it with, and all the people who make all that stuff and operate it all have to be fed, and clothed, and have medical care, and...

Am I getting through here at all? Do you understand yet what we're talking about here? You can't just go start shutting down coal power plants without providing something in their place, you'll have worldwide riots. Wars will start over this. Would you not consider it an act of war if you stopped getting food for your people and they were considering having a riot and stringing you up? Seriously, this is the real world here. We are way, way beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth for a simple agrarian society. We can't get back without a lot of people dying.

Like I said, if you're gonna ride the tiger, don't let go of the ears.

But I know industry will be profoundly affected in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Big final emitters are being targetted in every country that's serious about climate change. George Monbiot recommends auctioning off the carbon allocated to industry. Whatever mechanism you use, energy intensive industries will suffer. Doubly so if they make energy guzzling end products.Yep. And that's as it should be. There's no other way to do it that people will respect.

I've never seen anyone make an assessment of what industries are likely to survive, which will grow, which will shrink. But I think that planning on energizing the current industrial base in a low-carbon economy is a little myopic.If we don't, people starve, and we get wars and riots and so forth. And anybody tells you they know which industries will do what, don't give 'em any money you can't afford to lose.

Do I really need to substantiate the fact that pumping water to houses separated by 30 metres door to door requires more infrastructure than pumping water 6 metres door to door? And what evidence do you see to support the opposite view? What I've seen is a lot of unsubstantiated assertions that demand comes first. Hindmost has also claimed repeatedly that utilities resist expansion and promote conservation for this reason, again without support. I've pointed out that many utilities are paid to promote conservation. And I've suggested (without support) that while they may be risk averse and reluctant to invest in increased infrastructure, that doesn't mean they want to see dramatic demand decreases. And when they build a new power plant, they want to see it working to pay itself off. To my knowledge, nobody answered this at all.If you haven't gotten it by now, you never will. And here's a question for you: how are you going to build all those houses 6 meters apart? Out of what building materials? Plaster? Well, got news for you: plaster contains gypsum, and so does wallboard, and guess what? Gypsum manufacturing is a major source of CO2. Are you absolutely sure you want to rebuild 500 million houses? Think about it. The Europeans have the right idea: retrofit. Make it as efficient as you can.

It may well be a chicken-and-egg question.Until you've read and comprehended what I've written above, you don't know what the chicken-and-egg question is. There are a couple billion people alive on this planet that wouldn't be if we hadn't provided enough food and the hope that their parents could have kids, and now they need to be fed, and that's how it is. A bunch of companies, you see, decided they wanted cheap labor, so they went over and gave these people jobs, so they got married, built houses, and had kids, and there you have it. So what do you want to do now?

That's what it was meant to be. My point was that your ideas about what might have happened if TMI and Chernobyl had not happened was equally speculative. We just don't know. But I think the idea that it would have necessarily resulted in an emissions reduction is very optimistic.I don't. That's because I understand what's driving this, and you don't. Or perhaps by now you do. Please think your way though this. It's not some game people play in order to pretend they're important, and it's not some plan someone came up with to take over the world. It's just people doing what they do, just like you and me, and this is the consequence of it. And now we can't turn it off.

As I've said, if that were the only alternative, I wouldn't raise a single objection to anything that needed to be done. But neither have you supported your claim that a billion people would starve. That's a pretty heavy hammer to throw.Perhaps by now you might see why I say that. I certainly hope so.

Actually, I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can avoid a "carbon police" situation. I'd much rather control emissions through market mechanisms and give people a lot of freedom about how they trade off their various priorities.Well, as long as you're not trading off the little pleasure other people get in between what they have to do to make sure their family eats, and that other people eat, I don't see a problem with it, but make sure you understand what you're talking about.

What happens is that when people say "Hey it's impossible to live without air conditioning" and I say "No, it's not, it's been done", they assume that I want to dictate the exact conditions of what they will do. I don't.

But we have a lot of bad options. If you live in a suburban frame house in the desert with air conditioning powered by coal, realistically you need to expect something to change. There are a lot of options on the table. You can move. You can insulate. You can concentrate by moving several families into a single house. Or you can change the source of the electricity. I'd rather not tell people what to do. But when asked, it has been my consistent experience that when people understand that insulation can take care of things, that's the first option they pick. The second is changing the source to solar or wind. Many people would rather move than generate from nuclear.

And a lot of my point is that saying "We'll build a nuclear power plant because people obviously demand air conditioning" is equally presumptuous and intrusive.I think you've got a pretty inflated idea of how much difference it's going to make. Data have been presented in this thread that show that. I think it will get done, but I don't think it will make enough difference to not need nuclear.

And you've forgotten a couple of important things. First, we have to get rid of as much of the fossil fuel power generation as we can. Second, we have to replace all the cars. And we're not doing that without a significant source of energy, and the only thing there is is nuclear. The air conditioners are aside from the point.

If you look at the links to the two English articles I sent, there was a study which indicated that you cannot attain the required emissions reductions without basically retrofitting all existing housing stock. So even though I'm not proposing which mechanisms are to be used, I'm prepared to go out on a limb here and say that addressing global warming will force almost all of us to make significant energy retrofits. If we don't embrace this soon, carbon police may have to force us. When we do it ourselves, we have a lot more freedom about how it's done.Sure, but the problem is, that's not all that has to be done.

Why do you bring up Chinese? When have I ever suggested that anyone should starve? What view am I supposed to present evidence for?I think you'll have a pretty good idea what my answer is from the above.

I have? Lonewulf has expressed doubts that the 0.4% share of renewables could rise to 100%. Glenn has claimed (unsupported) that we could not conserve our way out of our industrial demands. Several people have complained that wind sites are limited, the sun is weak in the north and renewables are intermittent.

I've actually responded about why things may be more hopeful. For example, I pointed out that renewables have a much higher penetration in countries that take coal reduction seriously and storage technologies are rapidly maturing as a result. Also I've pointed out that the wind studies for Ontario give a conservatively estimated potential many times our load. And I pointed out that reducing the load through efficiency and conservation is the priority. It's cheapest, fastest, safest and most reliable. I supported all these statements. Then there's sun and biomass and geothermal and other delights.The problem is, the people who are going to build all that infrastructure, and the people who analyze what those people do, say you're wrong. They say that the efficiency of solar and wind power is too low. And if you think I want to see bird species going extinct because they get chopped up along their migration path in a wind farm, you got another think coming. These things take land, and that land has things living on it. You get out there with tractors and bulldozers and build a wind farm, or a solar farm, you're going to have environmentalists (and I'm one of them) fighting you every step of the way. I'd far rather see nuclear than that.

Again, I don't think you've thought your way through this.

But Lonewulf's comments were equally speculative anyway. Can we or can't we? This isn't a question that has a rigorous, testable answer. It depends a lot on where we put our energies. You've pointed out yourself that ramping up nuclear would not be without its own challenges.You want my opinion? We need everything we can get. We need nuclear, we need conservation, we need wind, we need solar, we need electric cars, we need geothermal and tide power, and we're all going to have to tighten our belts to get through this. I don't think we can afford an either/or approach. I think we need to do everything we can- and I think we have the resources to do it. I'm not absolutely certain about that last part, and that's pretty scary, because the consequences are dire indeed. And we need fusion, and we need it soon, and ITER isn't soon enough. We need to pump money into every crackpot fusion scheme we can find. And we need advanced power storage technology. And we better hope the coal and oil and solar and wind and geothermal and tidal and nuclear and everything else holds out until we get fusion plants going, because if they don't, we're going to be in very, very serious trouble. Think Book of Revelations.

I don't think there's been any compelling argument presented for why it would be impossible to avoid expanding nuclear. Sorry if I've missed something. I want to note that I'm not demanding such compelling evidence either. I think all this is an exercise in envisioning future possibilities. There is no slam-dunk argument.You're right, it is such an exercise, but you've forgotten economics, and you've forgotten that it's how people eat, or starve. That's the slam-dunk argument.

What I'll admit to is that envisioning a renewable future requires more imagination. It requires a careful scrutiny of where our energy goes and where and how it could be reduced. It requires doubting the assumption we've all gotten used to that energy needs will necessarily climb. It requires thinking about priorities a lot.It also requires that a couple billion people die off, and I seriously doubt they will go gently into that good night. I rather suspect they will rage against the dying of the light.

What I've been trying to say is that this kind of thinking will have to permeate our thoughts anyway, whether or not we invest in a nuclear renaissance. There are some people on this forum, mhaze and Dr. Buzzo, for example, who see nuclear potential as essentially inexhaustible. Whereas I'm convinced that even if we fail to address global warming and invest in nuclear, we're still very likely to have a major energy crisis.We agree here, but I don't think you have quite grasped what "major" could mean.

I've seen people inspired by the realization that unheated structures could actually be more comfortable than heated ones. I don't want this to be an argument between entrenched sides about whether nuclear is necessary or not. That's pointless. I only want people to realize that there are other ways of looking at things than meeting the demand for x kilowatts and that, at the very least, different perspectives can go a long way to reducing our energy dependence. So we'll need less nuclear, at the very least. But I think it's an interesting challenge to see if we can get to the point where none is necessary.I think we'll need all the nuclear we can get, and we better hope it lasts long enough.

And in a spirit of fun, I'll suggest that those who begin with the premise that all generation from coal needs to be replaced with an equivalent amount of generation from another source are the true unimaginative luddites.I think you are probably beginning to see why I think what I think by now. I certainly hope so.

I don't think the brown people on the other side of the world have to worry. If you look at carbon emissions per capita, we're the ones who will have to make the greatest changes in our lives. If we lead by example, it will only make it easier still for them to copy us. A couple months ago, I sat down with a couple of friends over charts of petroleum consumption per capita by country and realized that for much of the world, oil could disappear tomorrow with little appreciable difference.You forgot where their food and clothing comes from. And a whole lot else they aren't going to give up without a fight. It's an amusing exercise, but please don't confuse it with real economics.

I got politically involved with climate change because I recognize it as the greatest human rights crisis we've ever faced. I've been concerned about human rights my entire life. So if I believed your prediction, I would be horrified.I hope you're beginning to get horrified enough to think about what you can do; I am, and I'm doing it. When I'm not screwing around on forums on the Internet.

Perhaps what you mean is that if we don't build nuclear plants, we'll have to build coal plants and that will cause widespread droughts. I question the premise that if we don't want to build coal plants the only alternative is to build nuke plants. And it seems rather harsh to suggest "take your nuclear pill or a billion Africans will starve". I've said all along that my priority is reducing emissions drastically now. Eliminating coal is a huge part of the challenge. I would never support a coal plant over a nuclear plant. I try to make that abundantly clear to everyone I speak to.Good. But try to keep in mind that a) there are other brown people in the world than Africans, b) there are a hundred million gas guzzling cars we need to get rid of, and c) people need to keep eating while we do it.

I know rather a lot of people who would love to be able to give up their cars. And they vote for politicians who promise to invest in more public transit, among other things. They also recognize that cars have emissions associated with manufacturing, road construction and disposal that remain even if the car is electric.Sure, but you can minimize a great deal of that if you do it right- but only if you have enough electricity. I'd love not to have to drive much. It's a hassle. And in fact, I don't drive much. But I think you'll find that works much better in cities than in the country, and I think you'll find that a lot of people don't want to live in cities. And if you try to make them, you're going to encounter a political problem that you don't have a solution to.

I've pointed out why I think a significant expansion of nuclear power is unlikely to occur quickly enough to power up our fleet anyway (and I referenced it).I see things happening that are making it appear you are wrong, and they're being done by people who make a lot of money, and who are investing a lot of money in doing them. That's sufficient to make me doubt that your reference has quite as much figured out as they think they do. You should check the US NRC web site and see how many applications for combined construction and operating permits have been granted lately. Seems that there are quite a few of them. So I'd say the argument is probably moot, at least as far as the US goes.

Oh. I may well be on the wrong forum. I'm still rather new here.I've taken this conversation considerably into political and economics territory, but I think that's necessary to understand what we are facing. Please understand that I don't think that conservation is a bad idea, or renewables- I just don't see the capacity that will be required, and I think that the consequences of failing to keep this house of cards standing are basically the end of civilization. I like civilization, and I don't want to see a billion people starve to death. And we can't burn fossil fuels any more, either. So I think nuclear power is inevitable, and I hope it gets done without creating nuclear accidents, and I intend to vote for people who I think will see to both of those things- and conservation and renewables and electric cars and insulation for houses, too.

Now, let's try to keep this conversation connected to the real world, shall we? I think it's an important conversation. But please study some economics. It might be boring, but it's about whether people eat or not, so it's pretty important.

[Lonewulf]

One is that it seems a bit unfair to ask the New York metropolitan area to cover the power needs of the whole state. I'm unfamiliar with US geography, but I imagine there's more to the state than just the city.
True enough. However, Manhattan is an incredibly large city that is a HUGE energy hog in all of New York... a great deal of energy usage in all of New York State is in Manhattan. And NYC is the most energy efficient city, compared to many others.

Still, if someone can demonstrate the energy needs of NYC, I can deal with that. My searches have proven futile (and I don't have time now, I gotta go to school!)

Another is that Dr Buzzo's figures ignore solar hot water heating. Solar hot water heating is a lot more efficient than using solar power cells to create electricity to heat water, and heating water is a significant chunk of a household's energy budget.
From http://www.dmme.virginia.gov/de/chap7c.html:

The cost-effectiveness of solar water heating depends on the system's installed cost and energy performance, and the value of the conventional energy saved. For normal energy performance, solar water heaters installed for $20 per square foot of collector area (sf-coll.) or less will be cost-effective when saving residential or commercial natural gas. However, the same system installed for as much as $60 per sf-coll. will be cost-effective when the auxiliary energy is electricity, priced at small commercial or residential rates or large-use rates that include demand charges.

That's about all there is on the subject. It seems pretty expensive; I'm not sure what the energy return is. I'll look later.

I think we can take 1/30th of the state's power needs as being a plausible lower limit to what current solar could do, for back-of-the-envelope purposes. If we let New York take care of itself without having to carry the state by itself, added solar hot water systems and maybe stuck wind power installations on the roofs for good luck (lots of wind there or so I am told) I think it's plausible you could to a lot better than 1/30th.
Y'know, to be honest, I've tried to imagine this, and I cannot imagine a building I really would want to live in. Solar panels can be pretty, but then you have those silly windmills sticking out the roof. :P

I'm not sure how much energy tiny windmills on the roof can generate. I'd like to see some data on that.

To go even further, I imagine that New York is something of a worst case scenario when it comes to the ratio of population to surface area. Less urbanised places are going to have more roof space per person to put panels on and so are going to do proportionally better.
Well, cities tend to have a lot more buildings. Less urbanized areas have fewer buildings.

We still haven't touched the issue of relative cost - I still see the pro-nuke posters claiming that nuclear is cheaper per kilowatt-hour than other sources, and I'm still pretty sure that the reputable sources I've seen say that's total rubbish without huge government subsidies and special exemptions.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_nuclear_power:

The economics of new nuclear power plants is a controversial subject, since multi-billion dollar investments ride on the choice of an energy source. Nuclear power plants typically have high capital costs for building the plant, but low fuel costs. Therefore, comparison with other power generation methods is strongly dependent on assumptions about construction timescales and capital financing for nuclear plants. Cost estimates also need to take into account plant decommissioning and nuclear waste storage costs, as these can dramatically increase the whole-of-life cost of a plant. On the other hand measures to mitigate global warming, such as a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading, may favor the economics of nuclear power.

I honestly think that if they relaxed a few standards that are just a bit exaggerated (for instance, the fact that COFFEE can be considered a nuclear waste under present conditions), that would cut down on costs of storage. Set-up tends to be expensive, but it's an investment, with a huge return in energy given. Like I said, you can pay $100 for 1000 watts, or $10 for 10 watts. One *seems* cheaper than the other, but only at first glance.

As for "low level waste" that I keep seeing brought up again and again: Just remember, everything is a low level waste as long as the sun hits it. The food you eat is irradiated by the sun. You get a radiation dosage just from standing out in the sun on a hot day. "Low level" radiation is always going to be around, with or without fission power plants. ;)






Gotta run soon, but I have a response, Schneibster:

The problem is, the people who are going to build all that infrastructure, and the people who analyze what those people do, say you're wrong. They say that the efficiency of solar and wind power is too low. And if you think I want to see bird species going extinct because they get chopped up along their migration path in a wind farm, you got another think coming. These things take land, and that land has things living on it. You get out there with tractors and bulldozers and build a wind farm, or a solar farm, you're going to have environmentalists (and I'm one of them) fighting you every step of the way. I'd far rather see nuclear than that.

No offense, schneibster, and I hate to sound cold and ruthless, but I don't really care if a few birds get chopped up by wind mills (from what I understand, that doesn't happen TOO often). You've already hit home the global warming issue... global warming will cause a lot more extinctions than any windmill ever will. "Some birds dying" is a relatively low con compared to "global warming", IMO.

The question is, is wind energy efficient enough to be put into place on a grand enough scale to replace or even come close to replacing coal, with any amount of economic efficiency?

[Schneibster]

Gotta run soon, but I have a response, Schneibster:

No offense, schneibster, and I hate to sound cold and ruthless, but I don't really care if a few birds get chopped up by wind mills (from what I understand, that doesn't happen TOO often). Heh, none taken. I follow your line of thought.

You've already hit home the global warming issue... global warming will cause a lot more extinctions than any windmill ever will. "Some birds dying" is a relatively low con compared to "global warming", IMO.Well, but what if it's unnecessary?

The question is, is wind energy efficient enough to be put into place on a grand enough scale to replace or even come close to replacing coal, with any amount of economic efficiency?I don't know, but I suspect not. I'd have more hope with solar, and even that's problematic IMO.

[Belz...]

See post 386. You don't need oil to make anything that's made out of oil. We're talking hydrocarbons here. Hydrogen and carbons.

Oil contains the chain sizes and ratios already that are good for plastic/gasoline/diesel and such.

You can make it out of other stuff, such as natural gas, coal and water, peat, biomass or people.

I know, but why would you go through MORE trouble to make it ?

[Lonewulf]

Heh, none taken. I follow your line of thought.

Well, but what if it's unnecessary?
If it's unnecessary, then we avoid it, naturally. I agree with you on that. :)

I don't know, but I suspect not. I'd have more hope with solar, and even that's problematic IMO.
Yeah, agreed. Small windmills on top of rooftops would probably be less a problem than giant windmills big enough to actually hit giant flocks of birds, I would think. The question is how we use it, and where as well. Location, location, location. :)

[Ziggurat]

Small windmills on top of rooftops would probably be less a problem than giant windmills big enough to actually hit giant flocks of birds, I would think.

I believe it's the other way around. Angular velocities for large windmills are smaller, so it's easier for the birds to time their flight through without getting hit.

[Belz...]

I find this comment very interesting.

While most pro-nuclear authors here are arguing that nuclear is perfectly safe and nothing could possibly go wrong

I do believe that's a straw man. From what I've read, they're just saying that it's much, much safer than the public believes, and that the benefits outweigh the risks.

Oh, and that no other source of energy comes close.

[Lonewulf]

I do believe that's a straw man. From what I've read, they're just saying that it's much, much safer than the public believes, and that the benefits outweigh the risks.

Oh, and that no other source of energy comes close.

Definitely a strawman. I'm beginning to wonder if Luddite is even really all that interested in a true discussion on the topic.

I'd also add that there's one other comment: That the fear of danger of nuclear energy is not only exaggerated, but people fear the supposed "risks" of nuclear energy, when those risks also exist in other venues (such as in chemical storage facilities), at MUCH greater amounts.

But it's not nuclear, so it's okay. ;)

Anyways, I need some low-level toxic waste to get started in my day... er, I mean, coffee. :D

[Schneibster]

Anyways, I need some low-level toxic waste to get started in my day... er, I mean, coffee. :DIt's probably worth pointing out that there is still a law on the books making it a misdemeanor to permit your horse to **** on the street in New York City. I thought your point about classifying waste according to a more objective standard of how hot it's measured to be, rather than where it came from, was a good one. We were super-careful for sixty years to make sure we wouldn't discover some novel new type of radiation; we haven't and it's time to state definitively that we know what kind of radiation comes out of nuclear materials, we can measure it, and we can classify waste based on that.

[Hindmost]

Great post Lonewulf.

I do have a few comments of my own to add.

One is that it seems a bit unfair to ask the New York metropolitan area to cover the power needs of the whole state. I'm unfamiliar with US geography, but I imagine there's more to the state than just the city.

Another is that Dr Buzzo's figures ignore solar hot water heating. Solar hot water heating is a lot more efficient than using solar power cells to create electricity to heat water, and heating water is a significant chunk of a household's energy budget.

I think we can take 1/30th of the state's power needs as being a plausible lower limit to what current solar could do, for back-of-the-envelope purposes. If we let New York take care of itself without having to carry the state by itself, added solar hot water systems and maybe stuck wind power installations on the roofs for good luck (lots of wind there or so I am told) I think it's plausible you could to a lot better than 1/30th.

That's still only using "free" real estate. We're just sticking solar panels on buildings that are already there anyway. We haven't even started putting up wind farms or solar farms outside the city limits.

To go even further, I imagine that New York is something of a worst case scenario when it comes to the ratio of population to surface area. Less urbanised places are going to have more roof space per person to put panels on and so are going to do proportionally better.

We still haven't touched the issue of relative cost - I still see the pro-nuke posters claiming that nuclear is cheaper per kilowatt-hour than other sources, and I'm still pretty sure that the reputable sources I've seen say that's total rubbish without huge government subsidies and special exemptions.

http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/publications/list/reports/Cost_Generation_Commentary.pdf

the above link indicates the cost of producing power in the UK from various sources. The study was designed for direct comparison without subsidies.

http://www.ceri.ca/documents/CERIComparativeCostsSept2006.pdf

similar for Canada

http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2005/ElecCost.pdf This one is very comprehensive and takes a bit to go thru, but covers the whole world

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy1/exec_summary.html

This link shows how much various forms of energy were subsidized in the US...the total subsidy was only 1.1 % of the total...the most was given to renewable fuels. This is why wind power is getting much attention now as it receives a very high subsidy.

glenn

[Hindmost]

...snip...

Do I really need to substantiate the fact that pumping water to houses separated by 30 metres door to door requires more infrastructure than pumping water 6 metres door to door? And what evidence do you see to support the opposite view? What I've seen is a lot of unsubstantiated assertions that demand comes first. Hindmost has also claimed repeatedly that utilities resist expansion and promote conservation for this reason, again without support. I've pointed out that many utilities are paid to promote conservation. And I've suggested (without support) that while they may be risk averse and reluctant to invest in increased infrastructure, that doesn't mean they want to see dramatic demand decreases. And when they build a new power plant, they want to see it working to pay itself off. To my knowledge, nobody answered this at all.

It may well be a chicken-and-egg question.

Just pick a utility and type conservation into the search and the conservation programs will show up.

http://www.duke-energy.com/environment/energy-efficiency/initiatives.asp (http://www.duke-energy.com/environment/energy-efficiency/initiatives.asp)

http://www.energyright.com/ (http://www.energyright.com/)

http://www.cl-p.com/clmres/indexclmres.asp (http://www.cl-p.com/clmres/indexclmres.asp)




....snip...I have? Lonewulf has expressed doubts that the 0.4% share of renewables could rise to 100%. Glenn has claimed (unsupported) that we could not conserve our way out of our industrial demands. Several people have complained that wind sites are limited, the sun is weak in the north and renewables are intermittent.

I've actually responded about why things may be more hopeful. For example, I pointed out that renewables have a much higher penetration in countries that take coal reduction seriously and storage technologies are rapidly maturing as a result. Also I've pointed out that the wind studies for Ontario give a conservatively estimated potential many times our load. And I pointed out that reducing the load through efficiency and conservation is the priority. It's cheapest, fastest, safest and most reliable. I supported all these statements. Then there's sun and biomass and geothermal and other delights....snip....

Having worked in the power industry, I know where we can conserve. With so much of the energy going into commercial and industrial sections, there is little energy that can be conserved. I will try to find a link that has a good study.

glenn

[Hindmost]

Here is a good link which shows how much energy consumption can be conserved in the US. Since the US is by far the largest consummer, it would be a benchmark. It indicates that 28% or about 27 quads could be conserved.

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/pimentel/bioscience/conservation/conservation.pdf

glenn

[Kevin_Lowe]

http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/publications/list/reports/Cost_Generation_Commentary.pdf

the above link indicates the cost of producing power in the UK from various sources. The study was designed for direct comparison without subsidies.

This report makes no mention of solar, makes no mention of taking into account the costs of dismantling and storing nuclear plants at the end of their life cycle, and (judging by the fact it states that nuclear is a zero-carbon emitter) seems to assume that the fuel for these power plants squirts from the forehead of Zeus rather than being mined.


http://www.ceri.ca/documents/CERIComparativeCostsSept2006.pdf

similar for Canada

Contains insufficient information to tell if they are playing the same games.


http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2005/ElecCost.pdf This one is very comprehensive and takes a bit to go thru, but covers the whole world

This one is too long, and it is too early. :) I might try and dig through it later.


http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy1/exec_summary.html

This link shows how much various forms of energy were subsidized in the US...the total subsidy was only 1.1 % of the total...the most was given to renewable fuels. This is why wind power is getting much attention now as it receives a very high subsidy.


This seems to be picking out one year and summarising just the subsidies then.

My belief was that nuclear power plants are heavily subsidised during construction and decommissioning more so than in the middle of their lifespan. So I suspect that these figures could be completely accurate and still be meaningless.

I cannot comment on the longer paper but the rest look like massaged figures to this educated layperson.

[Hindmost]

This report makes no mention of solar, makes no mention of taking into account the costs of dismantling and storing nuclear plants at the end of their life cycle, and (judging by the fact it states that nuclear is a zero-carbon emitter) seems to assume that the fuel for these power plants squirts from the forehead of Zeus rather than being mined.


I would venture to say that solar, which typically has the highest generation cost and twice what wind power is was not considered viable in the UK climate....why bother. It said nuclear was carbon neutral...along with other renewable...it didn't say it was zero carbon. I suppose the Royal academy of engineering could be lying, but what would be the point.

here's another link showing cost for various technologies including solar.

http://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/ElecCostSUM.pdf


Contains insufficient information to tell if they are playing the same games.

I picked something that indicated its independence...outside the utilities with no reason to be biased.

This one is too long, and it is too early. :) I might try and dig through it later.

It is very comprehensive, but requires a lot of detailed study. I haven't looked at it totally

This seems to be picking out one year and summarising just the subsidies then.

My belief was that nuclear power plants are heavily subsidised during construction and decommissioning more so than in the middle of their lifespan. So I suspect that these figures could be completely accurate and still be meaningless.

I cannot comment on the longer paper but the rest look like massaged figures to this educated layperson.

I see no evidence that independent analysis--which is why I selected them-- has massaged figures. These coincide with many of the stuff I have read over the years. I cannot say for countries outside the US, but nuclear is not heavily subsidized in the US. Most subsidies were to study fuel design and what could be done to burn excess plutonium. Currently, the US is partially subsidizing initial study of next generation reactors...but that is in the millions of dollars. Currently, US congress is subsidizing ethanol and wind power most...ethanol will be a useless endeavor here due to a very poor energy balance. It is easy to check other years as well and there is no great difference.

As I have stated in the past, the US requires decommissioning funds to be collected over the life of the plant. Utilities here are public companies and there are no subsidies during construction and certainly none during operation. Such things are public record.

glenn

[Hindmost]

A little more research about subsidies in the US and I found the 2005 energy bill changed some of the subsidies for the energy industry...quite a bit--it provides subsidies across the board.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005

specifically for nuke power.

http://www.nei.org/filefolder/highlights_of_nuclear_provisions_in_energy_bill_08 05.pdf

glenn

[luddite]

http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/publica...Commentary.pdf

the above link indicates the cost of producing power in the UK from various sources. The study was designed for direct comparison without subsidies.

PB Power, which wrote this report, build nuclear power plants. In their report they refer to "nuclear and other renewables". They have no involvement in true renewable power. The fact that they would find nuclear economical is not surprising. Wind developers will undoubtedly find that wind is far more economical. And while decomissioning costs are included in the study, disposal is not.

They report that the most economical generation option is natural gas. They also do work with oil and natural gas pipelines.

Finally, they state that the costs for nuclear and wind would remain unchanged if there were penalties from carbon use. This is false. Every generation option currently has tremendous carbon inputs. It is my understanding, not disputed by nuclear proponents, that the carbon inputs involved in generation from nuclear are significantly greater than those for wind, and also more difficult to overcome.

http://www.pbworld.co.uk/index.php?doc=53

The CERI study you quoted is frequently pointed to by nuclear promoters in Canada. Apart from that, I have no knowledge of CERI, though they are a Canadian energy consultancy. They do claim, in their own description, that their research program is guided by a board of directors named by their sponsoring organizations. These sponsors include Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. They do not include corresponding proponents of renewable power.

They also state that their research pertains to "oil, natural gas, coal, and electricity economics."

Their evaluation of biomass, landfill, small hydro, large hydro, solar and geothermal is based on a report whose principal author is the Nuclear Energy Agency:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=IBCJNmvWWMQC&dq=oecd+iea+nea+projected+costs+generating+electri city&pg=PP1&ots=ghSdvIZ2b_&sig=CEx1FFdnXMTHRt9Uv2wZB3Qggeg&prev=http://www.google.ca/search%3Fq%3DOECD%2BIEA%2BNEA%2Bprojected%2Bcosts% 2Bgenerating%2Belectricity%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26aq%3Dt%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26client%3Dfirefox-a&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail#PPP1,M1

Interesting. I looked up your 3rd link and it was the same study that the second study was based on, whose principal author was the Nuclear Energy Agency.

I don't mean to discount any work done by the nuclear industry. But I don't think they can be relied on to produce reports that balance all energy sources fairly.

I am also concerned with the connections between nuclear proponents and the fossil fuel industry, as highlighted by both CERI and BP Power. As I've noted, it's the nuclear proponents in Canada who often take the side of coal as well. In Canada, the next big jump for nuclear will be the construction of two reactors to fuel tar sands extraction. Now, you may be pleased that they'll be replacing natural gas as a fuel, but they will also theoretically enable an expansion of the extraction of the dirtiest oil on the planet.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicer...c_summary.html

This link shows how much various forms of energy were subsidized in the US...the total subsidy was only 1.1 % of the total...the most was given to renewable fuels. This is why wind power is getting much attention now as it receives a very high subsidy.

For the 4th study, Kevin Lowe already pointed out that it was for one year only in the US, during which no nuclear plants were built and none decommissioned. More importantly, the study included direct subsidies and research grants, but didn't include underwriting insurance nor spent fuel waste storage costs.

You're also mistaken about where the study said the greatest subsidies went.

Fossil fuels received by far the largest share of these subsidies, nearly half the total.

Under renewables, they identified ethanol as the leading recipient of subsidies. They didn't even mention the others specifically. This suggests to me that subsidies for ethanol dwarf subsidies to other renewables. It has always been my understanding that ethanol subsidies are enormous, so this fits. Wind subsidies may be very modest, or even non-existent, for all we know. I see no basis for your conclusion that wind power is getting so much attention because it receives a high subsidy. With a difference of 18% of all subsidies for all renewables and 10% of subsidies for nuclear, and especially if you throw in insurance and storage subsidies, or building subsidies, nuclear may well come out the big loser compared to wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, etc. We just can't tell from these conclusions.

[luddite]

Quote:
....snip...I have? Lonewulf has expressed doubts that the 0.4% share of renewables could rise to 100%. Glenn has claimed (unsupported) that we could not conserve our way out of our industrial demands. Several people have complained that wind sites are limited, the sun is weak in the north and renewables are intermittent.

I've actually responded about why things may be more hopeful. For example, I pointed out that renewables have a much higher penetration in countries that take coal reduction seriously and storage technologies are rapidly maturing as a result. Also I've pointed out that the wind studies for Ontario give a conservatively estimated potential many times our load. And I pointed out that reducing the load through efficiency and conservation is the priority. It's cheapest, fastest, safest and most reliable. I supported all these statements. Then there's sun and biomass and geothermal and other delights....snip....

Having worked in the power industry, I know where we can conserve. With so much of the energy going into commercial and industrial sections, there is little energy that can be conserved. I will try to find a link that has a good study.

glenn

Actually, Glenn, as I said I'm not really counting on a link. I provided a link to the BC power company that targets 50% conservation reductions. It was jumped on by a number of people who said "It ain't gonna happen". Ditto my link to California's net-zero building program. I pointed to a conservative provincial study that identified vast and economical wind potential. It was ignored.

Likewise, Robinson has pointed out that building nuclear plants to replace coal plants isn't going to happen. And even you've expressed doubts for how far a nuclear renaissance can go. And that doesn't stop people from thinking it's possible.

I hope that I'm receptive to new information. That doesn't mean I'm likely, when I'm talking to dozens of respected people who say 50% reductions are entirely feasible, to accept a link to an organization saying "no it's not". Especially from a utility that would have to lay off 1/2 its workers and close 1/2 its plants and possibly cut its profits.

Any more than you're likely to accept that Luddite says 50% is possible and has a link to a BC utility when everyone you speak to says the opposite.

I'm far more likely to be engaged by real assessments of where vast amounts of power are needed and will continue to be needed in any sort of low-carbon future. "Industry" is not specific enough. What industry? Why will we need it?

A friend of mine, an engineer, recently sat down with the Greenpeace staff. He was engaged as a consultant to make their building net-zero. It was challenging because they had purchased a leaky heritage building. Their architects were saying it could not be done economically. My friend said "If you start with that attitude, it will surely never be done. If you assume it will be done, there's a good chance you'll succeed".

Conservation, renewables and nuclear each have their own sets of challenges. How much of each we end up with will hugely (but perhaps not entirely) depend on where we put our energies.

You've said recently that I seem to be resistant to seeing the viability of nuclear power. I see this as a very polarized forum, where there are nuclear enthusiasts and nuclear avoiders. And perhaps my biggest problem is that I don't understand the enthusiasm. I completely understand people thinking "we need enough power to keep people from freezing, starving, dying of heat stroke or otherwise suffering". If that must include nuclear, I'd have no argument. But all I hear are assertions. And I can dredge up assertions by the hundreds from environmental organizations that say the opposite.

So here's my question to everyone. If it were possible to feed, comfortably house and provide education and health care to a level where the majority was satisfied with the results, all without recourse to nuclear power, would you support a shift to complete renewables?

Because the question then becomes "Is it possible?" Right now, the questions are a muddle of "Is nuclear possible?", "Are renewables possible?", "What are the limits of conservation?", "Is luddite an environmentalist flake?", "Can environmentalists be trusted?", "Can the nuclear industry be trusted?", "Is nuclear economical?", "Are renewables economical?", "Is nuclear power safe?", "Aren't some chemical products more dangerous than nuclear waste?".

All of these questions are interesting to me. But I sense that they are disingenuous questions, at least to some authors. Most minds are more or less made up. There's a thrill about enormous amounts of power that's got a lot of appeal. It's that appeal that car companies cater to. "Imagine the freedom". If all I'm saying is I want to take your toys away, you're not going to like me. And you'll resist what I'm saying.

And, on the opposite side, I'll admit that I'm very skeptical about nuclear. I've said it all along. Fusion, which everyone is so excited about, seems like too much power to entrust to anyone. If you look at how well we've managed our affairs with our current energy, it's hard to feel optimistic about what we'll do to our rivers, aquifers, the air we breathe, the fish in the oceans and so on if we manage to get our hands on fusion technology.

It's funny, I don't really need links, especially for future projections. Who knows what's possible? Oh, maybe for some statistical claim that seems really off, I'd really appreciate a link. But I think most of the people here are honest about their backgrounds and knowledge. They aren't particularly dumber than folks who do studies to benefit particular interests.

So I'll grant you that in your experience, conservation from the industrial sector is severely limited. I know that. It follows what all the power workers I speak to say. I'm not sure that's at all indicative of what things will be like in a low-carbon economy. Right now, industries are being targeted in Europe. In Ontario, which has a strong industrial base, there are a lot of people saying our economy will collapse if energy prices go up. Meanwhile other analysts point out that in most of Europe and even New York State, higher energy prices have made the industries more efficient, and the economy is as strong as ever. Then people counter that by saying these places are de-industrializing. Well, so what, I say, does it matter? Are New Yorkers complaining? They have cleaner air. But even I know the answer to that. They're buying just as much stuff as ever, if not more. It's being made in China in factories powered by coal.

The question is whether all this is inevitable. Are past trends indicative of future trajectories? We are about to have an energy crisis. Either because we address global warming responsibly or because cheap oil becomes a thing of the past. In either case, we won't be able to build nuclear power plants quickly enough to completely offset the slide. I think when people can't fuel their cars, they're going to be pissed off that the government is bailing out the car companies yet again, or offering subsidies to petrochemical companies who continue to make unheard-of profits. When I speak to people about what happens when natural gas supplies can't meet demand, they respond in striking unison that the first thing any responsible government will do is to limit or suspend natural gas for industrial uses, then ration natural gas for home heating. People come first, because when push comes to shove, people protect their homes over their jobs. I cannot believe that the residential sector will be asked to make all the cuts.

So I may not be aware of all the different industries and all their different challenges, but the fact that steel and cement manufacture release a lot of CO2 (which I was aware of, by the way, I'm actually aware of most of the big industries) is strong indication to me that these industries will not survive in their present form at their present scale. We may not be building so many 50-story office towers of cement and steel that require huge cranes to build and elevators to operate once they're constructed.

I'm actually a lot more aware of the commercial sector. It's a lot more similar to the residential sector. It's also more homogeneous. I've mentioned the savings before. Again, I think when people are turning down their own lights and air conditioners, I don't think they'll be happy going to a store that has special spotlights to highlight the fish tank. Things will change.

Ralph Torrie, who is a highly respected energy consultant in Canada (the man who was the lead author of Canada's climate change strategy), spoke to me about how the utilities assess conservation potential. First they figure out what is "feasible", by which they mean "no more expensive than the least expensive generation option". Then they say they can attain 60% of that. Why? If we recognize that conservation has tremendous advantages in terms of safety, reliability, transmission costs and health and safety concerns over any generation option, why wouldn't you give it a much higher priority? Especially when we're facing a serious energy crisis.

Glenn, I respect your experience and value your opinions. I enjoy your input. If it can't singlehandedly counterbalance the input I get from my personal connections, don't be put off. There are things I doubt you'll convince me of. I doubt I'll ever convince you that nuclear power is unnecessary. That shouldn't prevent us from trading interesting information.

[luddite]

It said nuclear was carbon neutral...along with other renewable...it didn't say it was zero carbon.

Here's a definition of carbon-neutral:

car·bon-neu·tral
adjective
Definition:
counteracting release of carbon dioxide: relating to the maintenance of a balance between producing and using carbon, especially balancing carbon-dioxide emissions by activities such as growing plants to use as fuel or planting trees in urban areas to offset vehicle emissions

Are you saying that nuclear power plants somehow sequester as much carbon dioxide as is released during mining, transport, construction, decommissioning, etc?

[luddite]

During the manufacture of cement, a component of concrete and also the material used to stick bricks or stones together into structures and surfaces, powdered limestone is mixed with clay and heated; the calcium carbonate in the limestone and the magnesium carbonate in the clay both release carbon dioxide as they decompose and combine with the silicon oxide and aluminum oxide in the clay. Furthermore, coal is commonly burned to heat the mixture. Cement manufacture is therefore a strong global warming contributor, almost as much so as power generation, and there are not good ways to avoid the release of carbon in the industrial process. This carbon will therefore need to be sequestered, as it will need to be in power generation that uses fossil fuels. This will make cement, and concrete, more expensive.

George Monbiot, in his book "Heat", talks about this extensively and has a different suggestion. I'd be interested to know what you think of it.

[luddite]

We can't go back to an agrarian society unless a couple billion people die off. That's how the world is.

Why would you say that?

This link is just from Wikipedia, but it's intensely referenced and agrees with most of what I've read and understand.

Organic farming is highly labor and knowledge intensive whereas conventional farming is capital-intensive, requiring more energy and manufactured inputs. Organic farming generally produces somewhat lower yields but sustains better yields during drought years, allowing it to reap higher yields in some cases. Studies thus far have shown that organic farming requires less water, uses few and always natural pesticides, prevents soil erosion, leaches dramatically fewer nitrates, and has been shown to have improved nutrient qualities including as as much as double the flavonoids, an important antioxidant.

Productivity

A 22-year farm trial study by Cornell University published in 2005 concluded that organic farming produces the same corn and soybean yields as conventional methods, but consumed less energy and contained no pesticide residues.[9] On the other hand, a prominent 21-year Swiss study found an average of 20% lower organic yields over conventional, along with 50% lower expenditure on fertilizer and energy, and 97% less pesticides.[10] A recent University of Michigan study found that yields in developing world could "double or triple" with organic methods, mainly because the developing world lacks access to cheap pesticides and fertilizer.[11] A major US survey published in 2001, analyzed results from 150 growing seasons for various crops and concluded that organic yields were 95-100% of conventional yields[12]. A long-term study by U.S Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists concluded that organic farming can build up soil organic matter better than conventional no-till farming. [13]

The issue of productivity is more complex than a summary of yield (production per land area), which was the measure used in these studies. Instead, productivity could be calculated in labor time rather than by land area. Organic methods often require more labor,[14] providing rural jobs but increasing costs to urban consumers. Also, grain forms the majority of world agricultural production, and most of that is fed to animals, not humans (for instance, in the United States, 80% of grain production is for livestock [7])—broad calculations of how much agriculture is feeding people is therefore complicated when feeding animals to feed people is factored in.

There's an additional problem that our food is carried over immense distances. In Ontario summers, when I get my own parsley from my yard, where it seems to reseed itself, our supermarkets carry parsley from Mexico, hauled in refrigerated trucks over here. It's difficult to understand how this improves our lives. At the very least, it's difficult to understand how our economies will collapse if they are more localized. It would seem to be of general benefit overall.

I'm aware of the economic principle of competitive advantage. The problem is that it's not factoring in the destructive effects of carbon use. If it were, if carbon emissions were charged for their environmental and human harm, then local production would suddenly have the competitive advantage.

I've seen studies that indicate that 1/4 or more of our personal carbon footprint comes from our food. The fertilizers we put in, the transportation, the freezing, the cooking, etc. It is especially high for meat. A lot of this is easily avoidable.

Finally, there are plenty of places in the world where the current economy is causing starvation rather than preventing it. The pattern of large farms producing cash crops for the highest bidder is facilitated by cheap energy and produces immense suffering when it interferes with subsistence farming. We get cheap Philippean pineapples, which the Filipino working on the farms can't afford to buy.

http://www.dgmoen.net/video_trans/008.html

[luddite]

The Rocky Mountain institute is difficult to understand. The assertions stated are not supported by calculations. The stuff is so nebulous I can't understand and I have a degree in Nuclear engineering so I can really read graphs and that first graph is just confusing.

The coloured bars indicate a price range for 2004. They are thicker or thinner depending on the variation in price. The black bars indicate the direction the price would go if a carbon tax were introduced. The one part I find hard to understand is what happens to wind with a carbon tax. It seems to skip around.

Here's a fuller paper with better references.

http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E05-14_NukePwrEcon.pdf

n the U.S.,for example, full deployment of these very cost-effective competitors (conservatively excluding all renewables except windpower, and all cogeneration that uses fresh fuel rather than recovered waste heat) could provide ~13–15 times nuclear power’s current 20% share of electric generation—all without significant land-use, reliability, or other constraints.

First, they advocated using natural gas and I disagree with using it. Plus production has been going down in North America.

I don't think they advocate using natural gas. With carbon tax, natural gas looks worse than nuclear on this chart. They do advocate cogeneration. What he says is that the 13-15 times nuclear power's share explicitly excludes any use of fresh fuel. So yes, you do get energy from natural gas, but only natural gas that would have been burned anyway. You're using industrial waste heat.

I find it difficult to argue against using waste heat. I can. I do. But on grounds you wouldn't approve of. Specifically, building up cogeneration using waste heat ties our electrical generation with continued burning of fossil fuels. Tom Casten, who heavily promotes cogeneration, describes the relationship between generators and their related industries as "welded at the hip". So an industry has to be sure of a market for its electricity to enter such a relationship and the electrical utility wants to be sure that the industry will survive. I've mentioned my suspicions about basing our plans for future energy needs on current industrial use patterns, especially patterns that rely on fossil fuels. But you've been on the other side of that argument so far.

There is a way I can make a reconciliation with cogeneration, though. The amount of electricity generated from waste heat is relatively small. The theoretical potential of electricity from heat converts at best 33% of the energy released to electricity. In practice, the industrial priorities will reduce this number. There are reasons (and I can get into them, but since this is all speculation I thought I wouldn't bother) that I believe the amount of electricity produced would probably be used up entirely by the host industry anyway. So it makes the industry more competitive now, and if the industry fails anyway, the rest of us don't lose any electricity.

[Schneibster]

I'm sorry, I don't have time to teach you economics. When you ignore what I wrote, it makes me tired. Good bye.

[luddite]

If we could use electric cars and generate the electricity without making too much CO2, that would help, don't you think? As a matter of fact, there is a company in Canada called Zenn Motors that is getting ready to make electric cars that use a technologically advanced supercapacitor, that is to be supplied by a company in Texas called EEStor, for electricity storage. This supercapacitor doesn't pollute like lead-acid batteries do, and lasts a lot longer as well. If this works, both companies will get rich and electric cars will take a quantum leap. And gasoline powered cars will be nothing but an evil memory.

But in order for that to happen, there have to be auto workers who can build the cars, and until the design is ready, and the general public has decided they want these electric cars, those auto workers have to eat, and people will need cars until then, too. If the Canadian government doesn't bail out the auto industry, all those auto workers starve. And when it comes time to build the electric cars and get rid of all the old gas guzzlers, who will build them? Nobody, because the people with the skills will all be dead or have other jobs. If you'd like, the government could let the auto industry go to hell in a handbasket and pay all those people to twiddle their thumbs until the electric cars are ready; but I don't think the taxpayers would like that much, nor the auto workers, and I bet the people who own the plants would scream bloody murder.

There are going on (perhaps over) six billion people on this planet. They all depend on one another for things. If those things stop, you're gonna have a hell of a problem. So when you set about making changes, because you've found that some really essential thing is causing a big problem, you have to go about it slowly, and not rock the boat too much, because otherwise you're going to create the ****edest mess you ever did see. Welcome to Economics 101.

The only future I see for cars is electric (though I'm open to other suggestions). I also think there will have to be a lot fewer of them, and they will have to be lighter and more aerodynamic. I'm not trying to put Zenn out of business. Economics 101 indicates that when a company discovers that it's uneconomical to make its product, it's because the price is no longer right. Oil prices, worry about climate change, whatever the cause for this, I don't quite understand why driving up demand artificially is beneficial. If the big auto companies will need to compete with Zenn, then they should start now. If the taxpayers aren't buying the cars, they shouldn't object much if the product dies.

Every car we put on the road now adds to emissions now and for years to come. Since fewer cars would be a good idea, reducing the number now would be a good start for a lot of reasons. The remaining auto workers would be more than adequate to make a reduced number of cars.

I'm not sure you realize that the Canadian auto industry makes SUVs for the American market. We're making the gas-guzzlers that Zenn should be getting rid of. Only a fraction is sold here. We're a smaller market and SUVs are not as popular in Canada. If the product line died most Canadians wouldn't care. And the planet would definitely benefit.

Among Canadians, the big losers would be the auto workers. I'd be in favor of government subsidies to set them to work building wind turbines.

I have a personal anecdote from someone who sold his SUV because all his neighbours who had SUVs were getting their cars vandalized. It was clearly a targeted hit. This is a blatant example, the specific tactics of which I don't approve of, of a general pattern which I completely approve of. A similar, but more benign thing happens when people try to conserve water. They get annoyed at neighbours who leave hoses running for hours. They express their disapproval. People buy SUVs in part to impress others. If the only thing they're impressing on their friends and neighbours is that they are inconsiderate energy hogs, the SUV loses a lot of its appeal.

The market changes. Linda McQuaig, a Canadian author, wrote a book where there's a great section about how hard the car industry had to work to make SUVs popular. There's favourable tax treatment, relaxed CAFE standards, and still it was very hard to convince people that they wanted such aerodynamically impaired, gas-guzzling, unstable hulking monsters with bad acceleration. It's quite an advertising coup.

But it's got to be pretty easy to reverse.

I don't share your pessimism about auto workers, either. I wish the reason GM wanted to close their Canadian operations was because there was no market for their SUVs. The reality is that it's just very tempting to train some Mexicans. Apparently it can be done pretty quickly. I don't know why you imagine auto workers would be dead if GM closed, but if they're employed elsewhere and you want their skills, just offer them an appropriate salary and they'll come running. But even that may not be necesary. I don't imagine Canadians are any harder to train than Mexicans. They just want better pay. Which is fine. I just think that the Canadian government has better things to do with its money than artificially subsidizing a profitable industry that's damaging to the environment.

[luddite]

Just pick a utility and type conservation into the search and the conservation programs will show up.

http://www.duke-energy.com/environment/energy-efficiency/initiatives.asp

http://www.energyright.com/

http://www.cl-p.com/clmres/indexclmres.asp

Glenn, we've had this back-and-forth a few times.

I'm aware that utilities promote conservation, so you don't need to convince me of that. I have 3 responses to this.

1. I said energy availability encourages demand increases. This does not necessarily pin the blame on the utility, so you're defending an argument I didn't make. I should point out that I agree the reverse is true too, just to confuse you. I know demand increases promote the construction of power plants.

2. I don't know the ins and outs of all utilities. Every utility that I'm more familiar with is paid to promote conservation. So the fact that they promote conservation isn't enough to convince me. Are the utilities you've pointed me to actually voluntarily reducing their market without compensation?

3. Once a utility builds a power plant, it wants to recoup its investment through energy sales. Can you show me any example of a utility advertising a goal of their conservation program being the closure of a recently constructed power plant?

The funny thing is, I don't think we actually disagree. Your comment about Henry Ford I completely agreed with.

[Belz...]

The only future I see for cars is electric

You don't live in Canada, do you ?