Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[Lonewulf]

Sorry if I was unclear. That's my point. I've been avoiding Greenpeace and others as sources for a balanced view.
Oh. I apologize. I misunderstood.

But I think it's equally or more unfair to quote the uranium industry.
The thing is, I'd rather trust the experts that actually deal with and research how nuclear reactors work. I'm not saying that companies are necessarily reliable, though.

Greenpeace does not get money directly for opposing the nuclear industry.
Well, money isn't the only reason people have for being biased.

The uranium industry benefits directly from promoting it.
That may be so, but I would like to see more words from people that actually work with the matter. I would trust a nuclear engineer over an armchair philosopher on the issue.

No, that's not my biggest piece of evidence. That was the last in a list of screwups. I also included dams in my list, by the way.
Fair enough. However, should we ignore the long safety record of all the nuclear plants that haven't had accidents, or that among the handful of mistakes, the majority has been contained?

[Belz...]

You're behind in the times. D&D updated to 3rd edition, where complete immunity is nearly impossible to come by. :D

Fine, fine, fine. The flash needs to have the evil AND good descriptors, simultaneously. HAH!

ETA: Otherwise I have DR 5000.

[Belz...]

No, that's not my biggest piece of evidence. That was the last in a list of screwups.

But 9/11 was not a screw up as far as engineers and architects are concerned. The buildings performed above expectations.

[luddite]

Luddite seems to be a very honest person.

I wonder if he will reconsider his position as a whole given the facts presented in this thread.

It's really, really, a great thread.
I reconsider my positions all the time. I'm cautiously tending to thinking nuclear waste is not as dangerous as I thought. Though I've still got research to do.

I've known for years that the routine emissions from nuclear plants, while not insignificant, pale in comparison with the dangers of other forms of generation which are accepted more easily.

I remain unconvinced that nuclear is economical without substantial subsidies. I remain unconvinced that in a level playing field renewables wouldn't do very well, with a much higher penetration rate. I remain unconvinced that there is anywhere near enough uranium to maintain our current worldwide electrical needs, never mind the transportation requirements.

In fact, I'm convinced of the opposite. The Energy Watch Group seems to do very careful work. And they're expecting uranium to peak in a few decades at current rates of use.

I think one big difference between me and some of the others on this forum is that they begin with a premise that we need x amount of energy. I begin with the premise that we have x amount of resources. And every serious analyst I've seen, and I've seen many, indicates that the resources we have, no matter how we bend and twist and exploit them, simply cannot supply our "energy needs". Most serious analysts predict that we will need to dramatically drop our energy demands.

I've spent several decades knowing that there would be an energy crisis because of global warming and oil depletion, and counting on some technological miracle. There has been every policy incentive to encourage this technological innovation. Enormous subsidies have been poured into developing alternatives. The fact that they haven't materialized is strongly suggestive to me that they will not. A few years ago, I gave up.

We are now in a situation where emissions reductions in the next 5-10 years are absolutely critical for climate stability. And nuclear simply cannot deliver them. We cannot possibly build enough nuclear plants to make a dent in emissions. There has been no serious attempt to deny my assertion that you have to count on 10 years to build a nuclear plant. And the facilities simply aren't there to build more than a few a year anyway.

And every dollar poured into the nuclear industry is a dollar not spent on things that will deliver emissions cuts faster.

I think renewables will be a big part of the answer. They go up fast and can be expanded quickly. And wind is cheap and getting cheaper. It's definitely cheaper than all the natural gas plants they're putting up. I'll say it's a lot cheaper than nuclear, although people on this forum will disagree.

But by far the biggest answer will be in conservation. Recently on this forum, someone pointed out that conservation has only delivered small cuts. That's true, but there are two reasons for this:

1. We've made only feeble attempts to promote it, mostly as we approached a crisis such as transmission constraints.

2. Energy has been really cheap. You get an energy-efficient fridge and that just leaves you with enough money to buy an electric lawn mower. And ironically you don't even think about the lawn mower as you feel virtuous about your fridge.

These two conditions will not continue. It is my hope that they will not continue because we come to our senses and address global warming with appropriate carbon taxes or quotas or emissions caps or other hard measures that will drive down overall demand, not just increase efficiencies in individual appliances. But even if we're so stupid as to not address the climate crisis, oil and North American gas are both right around peak now. And as much coal as there is, it cannot realistically replace all the transportation fuel and home heating that oil and gas provide.

So energy will become more expensive and more rare. In economic terms, that's one and the same. And if we hit a crisis point, utilities are only too aware that the ONLY thing that can immediately meet the difference between supply and demand is conservation.

So where do I see nuclear fitting in? Not much, really. If the Energy Watch Group is correct, and I see no reason why they wouldn't be, there is a limited role for nuclear power anyway from a resource perspective. Again, I'm looking at it from the resource point of view, not from the energy needs. Supply rather than demand. If the supply just isn't there, prices will rise until demand falls. That's all there is to it.

I've said all along that I'm very sympathetic to the voices of people who say we need it all. When I'm talking to analysts who look at the total resource mix and scratch their heads and say "80-90% reductions in energy use are simply unavoidable", I'm extremely sympathetic to people who say "I'll take 80% instead of 90%, please". Just keep in mind when you're saying that, that nuclear is also finite, so we're pushing for a future not too far ahead when you'll have to do without it anyway. So the only way I can see the point of investing the time and money in technology that remains dangerous is with the recognition that this is an interim measure to ease the transition to a truly sustainable future.

I know about fusion. Like I said, it's not like we haven't had ample incentive to figure it out in the last 30 years. We haven't. At this stage, I think it would be wildly irresponsible to count on a high energy future. Hope for one? Sure. Continue building up our cities and industries counting on one? That's just stupid.

And then there's one other concerning aspect of nuclear power which has never been addressed in this forum. The nasty fact that it involves uranium mining. And the only way that uranium mining has been profitable is by leaving the tailings behind. Whole communities are left with radium and other crap in their water. The dust that's disturbed settles on agricultural lands. Cancer rates go up, deformities in children go up. This has been overwhelmingly imposed on first nations populations. In Canada, coincidentally, native lands are under federal jurisdiction, which happens to have much lower standards for radiation safety than any of the provincial standards. I have yet to see a plan where uranium mining is cleaned up. I have yet to see remediation plans that address existing messes from past uranium mines. Looking at the piles of tailings, it's hard to imagine. And I absolutely will not impose more mines on communities that derive little benefit from nuclear power unless we either figure out how to do it with a lot less impact or demonstrate that the resulting lack of power would cause far more widespread destruction.

[Schneibster]

I reconsider my positions all the time. I'm cautiously tending to thinking nuclear waste is not as dangerous as I thought. Though I've still got research to do.

I've known for years that the routine emissions from nuclear plants, while not insignificant, pale in comparison with the dangers of other forms of generation which are accepted more easily.I see a claim here that I don't think has been addressed. What routine emissions are those?

I remain unconvinced that nuclear is economical without substantial subsidies. I remain unconvinced that in a level playing field renewables wouldn't do very well, with a much higher penetration rate. The question is, can renewables provide the power needed to grow, process, and transport enough food for the world? And that is a question that needs to be explored in far more depth before nuclear is rejected, because we cannot afford to be wrong.

I remain unconvinced that there is anywhere near enough uranium to maintain our current worldwide electrical needs, never mind the transportation requirements.Now you're just not reading this thread. Did you not see that uranium has been extracted from the ocean, and did you not see that the estimated amount in the ocean is orders of magnitude more than all the known sources on land?

I think one big difference between me and some of the others on this forum is that they begin with a premise that we need x amount of energy. I begin with the premise that we have x amount of resources. And every serious analyst I've seen, and I've seen many, indicates that the resources we have, no matter how we bend and twist and exploit them, simply cannot supply our "energy needs". Most serious analysts predict that we will need to dramatically drop our energy demands.If you start from we have x amount of resources, why do you keep ignoring proven resources in your estimations?

We are now in a situation where emissions reductions in the next 5-10 years are absolutely critical for climate stability. And nuclear simply cannot deliver them. We cannot possibly build enough nuclear plants to make a dent in emissions. There has been no serious attempt to deny my assertion that you have to count on 10 years to build a nuclear plant. And the facilities simply aren't there to build more than a few a year anyway.You're now denying data that have been presented on this thread; and in fact, there has been a serious attempt to show you that your assertions that it will take ten years are incorrect. That you continue to claim it shows that in fact, you are not honestly evaluating the data you are presented. You're making the same claims over and over, and ignoring reality. I'm sorry, I have no more time for this. I put you on ignore once for this type of behavior; the next time, I will not take you off so easily.

[luddite]

Schneibster, I'll answer your questions one by one as time permits.

I see a claim here that I don't think has been addressed. What routine emissions are those?

I was talking about routine venting of gas, with radioactive particles. This has been agreed to by Buzzo. Also, at least in Canada, there is an issue of tritium releases into water. As I said, these are not trivial concerns, but I recognize that the routine emissions from coal burning, or even burning natural gas are far more serious.

[luddite]

Now you're just not reading this thread. Did you not see that uranium has been extracted from the ocean, and did you not see that the estimated amount in the ocean is orders of magnitude more than all the known sources on land?

I understand that uranium is everywhere. That doesn't make it economical to extract. The Energy Watch Group accounts for price increases with demand and comes up with a peak of production which factors these things in. They might very well be wrong about the dates. But it's clear that with every resource, it gets more and more expensive to extract as you go for poorer deposits. And if they've done anything like careful analysis, their conclusions won't be off by orders of magnitude.

Their conclusions aren't really that far off from more common ideas either. People always quote the years "at current rates". I think the number is 80 years for nuclear. But the peak is always well before. After that, the resource declines. So you get a lot more than 80 years, but at steadily declining rates.

It's also abundantly clear that barring some completely unforeseen technological innovation, more than half the oil we know about will stay in the ground, because extracting it will require more energy than it can deliver. They don't even count this as a "reserve". I think sea water may fall into the same category.

[luddite]

If you start from we have x amount of resources, why do you keep ignoring proven resources in your estimations?

What am I ignoring?

Actually, I can answer that, maybe. Thorium I have not addressed. I know relatively little about it. There's also some plutonium we've produced that could be burned. I've not seen studies that show how much there is. Sorry.

[luddite]

You're now denying data that have been presented on this thread; and in fact, there has been a serious attempt to show you that your assertions that it will take ten years are incorrect. That you continue to claim it shows that in fact, you are not honestly evaluating the data you are presented. You're making the same claims over and over, and ignoring reality. I'm sorry, I have no more time for this. I put you on ignore once for this type of behavior; the next time, I will not take you off so easily.

I think ten years is conservative. For Canadian reactors 15 or 20 years has been the more accurate assessment. Glenn pointed out that in Korea, reactors were built in 6 years from first concrete. So maybe 8 years from proposal at the very earliest? And he pointed out that with the regulatory environment in the US it would take longer.

[Schneibster]

Schneibster, I'll answer your questions one by one as time permits.



I was talking about routine venting of gas, with radioactive particles. This has been agreed to by Buzzo. Also, at least in Canada, there is an issue of tritium releases into water. As I said, these are not trivial concerns, but I recognize that the routine emissions from coal burning, or even burning natural gas are far more serious.The radiation from a color TV is more "serious."

[Schneibster]

I think sea water may fall into the same category.Experiment (the data from which has been presented here) says you are wrong. You need to either respond to presented data with some substantial reason to believe it is incorrect, or you need to accept that it is correct. You're just re-asserting the same things you started with, and ignoring data presented that says that your assertions are wrong.

[DRBUZZ0]

Schneibster, I'll answer your questions one by one as time permits.



I was talking about routine venting of gas, with radioactive particles. This has been agreed to by Buzzo. Also, at least in Canada, there is an issue of tritium releases into water. As I said, these are not trivial concerns, but I recognize that the routine emissions from coal burning, or even burning natural gas are far more serious.

Well the issue of venting radioactive gas is definitely something which is worth looking at and assuring it's within reasonable limits. It's really a safety issue that the gases are vented. You *could* hold stuff like radon and radioactive xenon, because the half lives are short enough. But that adds unnecessary complications and such. For the safety of workers and to have the more reliable system, best to just ventilate that stuff out.

The problem with radiation theory is that the most accepted is "Linear Non Threshold Theory." Basically that means you want to keep radiation exposure as low as you reasonably can and there is no level which doesn't cause some health problems. So you can't ever really say "That won't cause any problem for anyone ever"

In my opinion, it's reasonable to set exposure limits which are on par with what you might get from natural sources like radon from rock formations. Once you get to the point where a nuclear power plant produces exposure levels similar to non-nuclear structures it seems silly to me to worry about it. If you are standing next to the power plant and the majority of your dose of radiation is coming from the concrete of the containment dome, which contains naturally occurring radioisotopes it's getting to the point of ridiculous to worry about exposure, because you'd get the same from ANY concrete structure.

So if the dose is equivalent to... say.. a big granite building and it produces about as much radioactive gas as you get from running the ventilation systems in a few deep basements of standard structures... Well, at that point I don't see the point in worrying about it. It's no worse than other structures and we can't go around obsessing over radiation every time we build ANYTHING.

So as far as Tritium... you don't get any tritium problems from light water reactors, but in Canada they have heavy water moderated reactors. The CANDU reactor is a really great piece of efficient engineering, but it does collect some tritium in the moderator over time. But light water reactors can produce some tiny amounts of tritium if the coolant is run through for a very long period of time.

The coolant/moderator of reactors is contained and doesn't usually get out in significant amounts, but it's true that it does sometimes evaporate a little bit and it is sometimes vented in the form of steam. Also, since it's liquid and there's the potential that it could *all* come out if you had a bad leak, it's worth considering. So at that point, it's not a misplaced concern to ask how tritium from reactors could effect populations and the environment.

Tritium is a low-energy beta emitter. Because of it's extremely low energy it can be hard to detect. Actually you can't detect it at all with a standard geiger counter.

A couple of good things about tritium:

It has a half life of only 12.3 years, which means it's not so much of a concern about "leaving a toxic legacy for our childrens children" sort of crap

It's a very low energy beta emitter. Harmless outside the body. Inside the body it can be incorporated into cells. But the low energy of the beta particle (which for all intents and purposes is a 6 thousand volt electron it spits out) means that any damage is going to be a lot less than higher energy emitters. it only have the ability to inoize a couple of atoms... if that. And it won't travel far at all before being captured. It's possible that the transition from hydrogen to helium-3 could break apart a molecule it is part of, but this hasn't really been shown to be a signifficnat source of damage.

It's only dangerous in water and hence, if it gets into a large lake or ocean, it gets diluted pretty fast before it ends up in anyone's glass.

The best way to deal with possible exposure to tritium is to drink lots of water and do lots of peepee. That pretty much will dilute and replace tritated water in your system and even tritium in biological molecules by ion exchange.

It's also worth noting that high levels of tritium are found in consumer products like exit signs and wrist watches.

Despite this, it is a concern and certainly something that you don't want to cause any undue exposure to for the public. It can cause problems, so it becomes a question of how potent the stuff is.

The science seems to indicate that the levels and conditions which could reasonably be expected to be associated with nuclear energy are low enough to not be of a health concern beyond normal background radiation as well as above mentioned consumer devices, which are so common that they are breached from time to time.

You'll find some good information here:

http://hps.org/

Go to the publications and media section and look up sources on tritium.

If anyone wants to educate themselves on the dangers/safety/enviornmental concerns of radiation and nuclear energy I really cannot say enough good about the health physics society. They're the experts in this and their "Expert Answers" is about the best professional public outreach info program I have ever seen. They're not directly funded or affiliated with the industry and radiation safety is all they do. This isn't an activist organization as such, it represents the profession which is employed by power producers, enviornmental regulators, hospitals and radiology, universities and so on.

[Schneibster]

What am I ignoring?

Actually, I can answer that, maybe. Thorium I have not addressed. I know relatively little about it. There's also some plutonium we've produced that could be burned. I've not seen studies that show how much there is. Sorry.First, you have not addressed uranium from seawater; you've dismissed it without looking at it, and attempted to cover it up like a cat covering its **** by ignoring it, twice now. And I mean on two occasions; the number of occurrences on each occasion has been multiple.

Second, plutonium (as has been repeatedly made clear) is not a natural fuel; it is produced when U-238 is bombarded with neutrons, as in a reactor. Special reactors called "breeders" maximize the production of plutonium from U-238. This has been covered extensively in this thread. I have no idea why you are saying the same thing about it you were saying originally, nor why you are ignoring the fact that production of plutonium reduces the waste that needs to be dealt with, and increases the amount of nuclear fuel. You just keep ignoring it, and you also keep ignoring the fact that it is an assumption of the sources you present that the fuel cycle will be burn once.

Third, thorium increases geological resources by ten times.

Fourth, the energy density of uranium is so high that comparing it to oil is ridiculous. I will not accept (nor should anyone else) any argument based on oil geology as a valid argument about the extraction of nuclear fuel.

So here are four serious faults in just this one point. And here is positive proof that you're just recycling your old arguments and ignoring the ones that are presented. Basically what you've done is admitted that you had no idea what you were talking about on waste, and used that admission to justify bringing the same refuted arguments around again, as if they had not been refuted. If you intended to do this, it is a dishonest rhetorical trick; if you did not, then you have not been keeping track and need to if you want to have a sensible conversation.

[Schneibster]

Look, if you want to have a conversation, you need to pay attention. If you just want to spread propaganda, go do it somewhere else. Is that clear enough for you?

[luddite]

The question is, can renewables provide the power needed to grow, process, and transport enough food for the world? And that is a question that needs to be explored in far more depth before nuclear is rejected, because we cannot afford to be wrong.

Can renewables provide the power to grow things the way they are currently grown? Maybe. You're right. We can't afford to go on hope here.

But I think you're asking the wrong question. The question is can we feed the world without nuclear energy? And I think the answer to that is a lot more hopeful.

When Cuba was starved of oil imports from Russia, and left with a US-led embargo, it had a sudden serious food crisis. What has happened is that in less than a decade, there was a conversion where more than half the food eaten in Havana is grown within the city itself. People grow cabbages instead of grass. Balconies produce food and provide additional income. In the agricultural areas, there has been a shift to small and collective state-run farms with few chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Elderly people were trotted out to teach a new generation how to control donkeys to plow up the fields. More people are employed in agriculture. But the food security is greater. There is actually more food. And no nuclear reactors. And a better literacy rate than the US (I'm not advocating the political system by the way, just the technical solutions).

I pointed you to several articles that indicated that the shift to organic farming with low energy inputs would only marginally decrease food productivity, and in some cases would actually increase it. I also pointed out a link to a video which showed how in some cases, the current system has led to hunger, and that a more local economy would be beneficial.

Food will have to be grown more locally. With oil becoming increasingly scarce and oil security becoming an increasing problem, we should be focusing on food security anyway, not relying on moving food around the world.

From my readings of energy security, it would be a lot more dangerous to count on a high energy future than to adapt to low-energy methods.

[DRBUZZ0]

First, you have not addressed uranium from seawater; you've dismissed it without looking at it, and attempted to cover it up like a cat covering its **** by ignoring it, twice now. And I mean on two occasions; the number of occurrences on each occasion has been multiple.

Second, plutonium (as has been repeatedly made clear) is not a natural fuel; it is produced when U-238 is bombarded with neutrons, as in a reactor. Special reactors called "breeders" maximize the production of plutonium from U-238. This has been covered extensively in this thread. I have no idea why you are saying the same thing about it you were saying originally, nor why you are ignoring the fact that production of plutonium reduces the waste that needs to be dealt with, and increases the amount of nuclear fuel. You just keep ignoring it, and you also keep ignoring the fact that it is an assumption of the sources you present that the fuel cycle will be burn once.

Third, thorium increases geological resources by ten times.

Fourth, the energy density of uranium is so high that comparing it to oil is ridiculous. I will not accept (nor should anyone else) any argument based on oil geology as a valid argument about the extraction of nuclear fuel.

So here are four serious faults in just this one point. And here is positive proof that you're just recycling your old arguments and ignoring the ones that are presented. Basically what you've done is admitted that you had no idea what you were talking about on waste, and used that admission to justify bringing the same refuted arguments around again, as if they had not been refuted. If you intended to do this, it is a dishonest rhetorical trick; if you did not, then you have not been keeping track and need to if you want to have a sensible conversation.


I don't think there are really any professionals or researchers who actually argue about the possibility of running out of nuclear fuel anymore, are there?

I mean, really, uranium isn't even considered a "rare" material and thorium is certainly not. And again, the energy density of this stuff is absolutely ridiculous... beyond comprehension in chemical terms.

hell, you can run a massive submarine on a golf-ball sized piece of U-235 for decades continuously while it pumps out megawatts to have the thing constantly cruising at 25+ naughts while making oxygen, circulating air, running sonar and many other things. That's... almost unfathomable in terms of the amount of coal or diesel or batteries that would be equivalent to.

I mean, for all intents and purposes I think the debate has been closed for some time that fission fuel is just about inexhaustible in human terms. Worrying about that is like worrying that we'll run out of air because cosmic rays strip away tons of atmosphere into space every day. It's just... it ain't gona happen in my lifetime or my grandkids or the next million years and probably billion years.

Hasn't this been put to rest a LONG time ago?

[luddite]

Look, if you want to have a conversation, you need to pay attention. If you just want to spread propaganda, go do it somewhere else. Is that clear enough for you?
Schneibster I'm trying to answer as best I can. And I do listen to the answers. I'll answer your previous post in a bit.

But here's one thing I would suggest for you. You can be, well, a bit of a bully. Sometimes it's amusing. Sometimes it's not.

Where you excel, and where I value your opinion, is when you know how things work. I absolutely trust your insights into dangers and emissions and details of fission reactions. That's great, and I thank you, even when you abuse my stupidity. It's rightly deserved in some cases.

For visions of the future, there's no answer to how it's going to work. We can't know. We can only make best guesses. You'd like to believe that seawater will work. I'm more cautious and trust organizations that do a careful analysis of what's economically viable at what cost. And if they say 32 years to peak, I don't think "It's gotta be more because Schneibster says so". You may be right. But so might the Energy Watch Group. And saying "Hey, I told you there's seawater" repeatedly isn't going to convince me to ignore what EWG says. Threatening not to talk to me is not persuasive. I'd like to keep having your input, even on things we disagree, but at some point, when we run out of sources, we just have to come to an understanding that I take a more conservative view of resource potential than you do. Maybe we stop flogging that horse and move on to more productive avenues of discussion.

Or maybe there's something I genuinely don't understand.

[Belz...]

But I think you're asking the wrong question. The question is can we feed the world without nuclear energy? And I think the answer to that is a lot more hopeful.

Why ? Why in the world would you want to ask that question ?

The question is: is nuclear power safe, economical, and do we have enough fuel to run on it for a very long time ?

If the answer is yes to those questions, then why worry ? Why would you want to word your questions this way ? When do you look at a potential purchase and ask yourself: "Can I live without this" ? Of course you can live without it. If that's the way you shop, then you never buy anything, except the most basic foodstuff.

I get the distinct impression that you are far, far less open-minded than you claim. In fact, it's pretty obvious. I've learned a LOT by reading this thread, not that I was ever against nuclear plants to start with. And it seems you haven't. I don't understand how you can read this thread and NOT grasp the content that's in it, or at least check the data presented and make sure that it is factual. And if you do, why do you always come back to square 1 and keep claiming the same thing over and over ?

Again, I get the impression that this nuclear fear of yours is based on emotion. "Yeah, sure, all that looks good, and all, but I still don't feel right about nuclear..." seems like your main argument. That's just not very smart. A lot of people feel their way through life, but when you're talking about an important subject like energy needs, can we please dispense with the emotional baggage ?

Many people have been very patient with you, explaining all those things in great detail, and I think it shows a great deal of disrespect when you simply seem to ignore everything that is told to you, hit the reset switch and start all over, again.

[Belz...]

From my readings of energy security, it would be a lot more dangerous to count on a high energy future than to adapt to low-energy methods.

Again, why are you going in that direction ? You can't argue for a step backwards in time. We simply NEED that energy and it ain't going to come from the sun or wind.

Or maybe there's something I genuinely don't understand.

Personally, I think it's something quite willful.

[luddite]

Second, plutonium (as has been repeatedly made clear) is not a natural fuel; it is produced when U-238 is bombarded with neutrons, as in a reactor. Special reactors called "breeders" maximize the production of plutonium from U-238. This has been covered extensively in this thread. I have no idea why you are saying the same thing about it you were saying originally, nor why you are ignoring the fact that production of plutonium reduces the waste that needs to be dealt with, and increases the amount of nuclear fuel. You just keep ignoring it, and you also keep ignoring the fact that it is an assumption of the sources you present that the fuel cycle will be burn once.

When I brought up plutonium, I referred to it as the "plutonium that we've produced". I'm well aware that almost all of the plutonium around is reactor made. I know it reduces the waste. I just don't know how much of it there is. How long it will last. Which is why I didn't address it. Until you mentioned gaps. And I pointed out that here was a gap. You want to fill that gap?

Schneibster, I get the feeling you misunderstand me. What thing am I saying over and over? I don't even think I mentioned plutonium before this, except to suggest that maybe Litvinenko was poisoned by it (which I was wrong about). And all I said now is I don't know how I would assess how much of it there is or how much power it can produce.

[DRBUZZ0]

Can renewables provide the power to grow things the way they are currently grown? Maybe. You're right. We can't afford to go on hope here.

But I think you're asking the wrong question. The question is can we feed the world without nuclear energy? And I think the answer to that is a lot more hopeful.



Can we? Possibly. Probably if we're willing to stretch out resources to the limit, make a few gambles and be willing to have everyone make some massive sacrifices. Then yes... just maybe we can scrape by.


When Cuba was starved of oil imports from Russia, and left with a US-led embargo, it had a sudden serious food crisis. What has happened is that in less than a decade, there was a conversion where more than half the food eaten in Havana is grown within the city itself. People grow cabbages instead of grass.
<snip>


I don't want my standard of living to be decreased to that of an empoverished latin american island nation. I don't think I'd want anyone's to. However I would like to see those in impoverished nations be able to have a standard of living akin to mine.


I pointed you to several articles that indicated that the shift to organic farming with low energy inputs would only marginally decrease food productivity, and in some cases would actually increase it. I also pointed out a link to a video which showed how in some cases, the current system has led to hunger, and that a more local economy would be beneficial.


No.. hunger has nothing to do with farming and production of food. We can easily provide enough food to feed the world. The US and Western Europe both throw away enough food becasue it's stale or someone isn't hungry to feed all the starving nations. It's a combination of politics, corruption, wars and countries not having the infrastructure to distribute food.

A good example is North Korea. China has and South Korea and other countries in the area have plenty of food. They'd sell it to the North no problem for pennies. Kim Jong Il could feed his people for the price of a couple of his Dongs (the missiles). It's even been offered for free. He won't accept it. That would show weakness and allow foreigners into his country and reduce his absolute control.

Farming in North Korea could be better too, but all funds avaliable are diverted to military functions and such. They have irrigation resources that could help provide much more food, but nobody will pay the relatively small price for a canal or pipeline to use them. Sad, really.

Such is typical of many starving countries. it is certainly not because the food does not exist.


Food will have to be grown more locally. With oil becoming increasingly scarce and oil security becoming an increasing problem, we should be focusing on food security anyway, not relying on moving food around the world.


But why? I mean, sure you can grow it locally, but I like the fact that I can have bananas and oranges and stuff. I'm glad that I don't have to rely on canned cabbage in the winter to prevent scurvy. Is that so wrong?


From my readings of energy security, it would be a lot more dangerous to count on a high energy future than to adapt to low-energy methods.

Well if we go with the "low-energy" thing... okay, we can possibly squeeze some more use out of renewable without going nuclear.

You can really only save so much with compact florescent bulbs and better insulation though. Really, that stuff can at best, just slow the growth of energy demand a little bit. it will never reduce it.

If you want to reduce it you have to turn the history of human progress upside down and start going to an energy-rationing system, where energy becomes the number one priority to the exclusion of all other things, including economic progress, comfort, standard of living, science, health and so on.

I'm sorry but I just don't see the purpose of working to save the world from global warming if all of humanity has to give up all the things we've achieved from science and technology in the past few hundred years and live a lifestyle that basically rejects our own ability to shape our environment and create things for human benefit.

I really don't want to have to tell my kids things like:

"Back when I was your age people with a reasonable income could go to visit other countries on airplanes. I went to Europe and Australia and Fiji. It wasn't like today where you have to wait five years to apply for a permit from the department of energy conservation to fly on an airplane"

"Back when I was your age we had this stuff called icecream. Wow, it was great, especially on a summer day. They banned the stuff with the Energy Conservation Act of 2020. Apparently freezers are only permitted for biomedical use now and you need a license"

"You wouldn't believe this, but when I was your age, if it was hot out, it was legal to have your whole house cooled by this evaporative system called 'air conditioning' it was great, because you could be comfortable and get a good sleep and work efficiently even when it was really hot out"


Really if you want to get by with low CO2 and rely on renewable energy you have to move to energy rationing and energy conservation as the number 1 priority. But that's just so... missguided to me.

Enviornmentalists will say that "You don't need a big tv" or "you don't need air conditioning" No. You don't *need* it. But isn't that what makes humans different? We've gone beyond filling out basic needs. We have the ability to create things to make life *better* or just *more enjoyable* and through the years these things have become more and more common. More and more people can enjoy them. Standards of living have increased. Countries are developing. People can talk to others around the world. We can enjoy exotic foods and go to visit cultures far away. All these things have really made the world a broader, better place.

It would be such a pitty to take a step backward. Such potential in our species... such great things we can do.

Better health, more travel, more information, better science, new medicines, more people who can be kept warm or cool in the heat. More comfort... hell.. MORE FUN... more enjoyment.. more options... more possibilities.. That's what I hope for the future.

[Schneibster]

The IAEA says you're wrong about supply (http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2006/uranium_resources.html), and the Japanese are building a plant for uranium extraction from seawater that is economically feasible at US$40/kg and highly profitable at US$70/kg. I suggest that you might want to compare that with the price of coal per kilowatt hour; you'll find it's still the most economical way to make power, and the environmental considerations and the likelihood of carbon taxes means that it will be far better. Coal is the cheapest per kilowatt hour other than nuclear, so that lets oil and gas out too.

The Energy Watch Group has a strong political and financial agenda; I had little trouble finding out about it and suggest you might want to do the same before you rely upon their figures. Check the companies that the authors of the studies available from their site work for. You'll find they have a financial stake in renewables.

[Belz...]

Buzzo, Luddite's arguments are feeling-based. He doesn't like nuclear. He doesn't know why, and he'll say ANYTHING to prevent himself from even considering it as a potential source of energy.

[Schneibster]

When I brought up plutonium, I referred to it as the "plutonium that we've produced". I'm well aware that almost all of the plutonium around is reactor made. I know it reduces the waste. I just don't know how much of it there is. How long it will last. Which is why I didn't address it. Until you mentioned gaps. And I pointed out that here was a gap. You want to fill that gap?Practically all the U-238 can be converted to Pu-239. The 85-year figure the IAEA gives is for U-235 only. The 2500-year figure is for use of the U-238 as well, either by breeding or in an integral fast reactor. Since breeding and processing are dangerous and messy, integral fast reactors are the way to go; but that's not going to happen until much of the U-235 is burnt up, and that's a long way off. Finally, all of this is based only on the proven reserves on land; it doesn't take the Japanese seawater extraction method into account, and the recovery from that is three orders of magnitude greater than known mineable reserves; three orders of magnitude is a thousand times. And that means available uranium is sufficient for 85,000 years if we use only the U-235, and 25 million if we use fast reactors. Supposing only half of the uranium in the sea is easily extractable, we "only" have enough to last 42,500 years.

Schneibster, I get the feeling you misunderstand me. What thing am I saying over and over? That there's not enough uranium. The information I've presented here has all been presented before on this thread. There are no surprises here, other than the fact that you don't appear to have read it. Which is rapidly becoming unsurprising.

I don't even think I mentioned plutonium before this, except to suggest that maybe Litvinenko was poisoned by it (which I was wrong about). And all I said now is I don't know how I would assess how much of it there is or how much power it can produce.It can produce about the same amount of power per unit mass as U-235. Because it's made from U-238, and because U-238 is 99.3% of all uranium, that means that there is about 140 times as much energy available from bred plutonium as from enriched uranium, and you can get at that energy using a breeder, or an integral fast reactor.

As far as living like in Cuba, good luck getting people to vote for that. And I don't mean the politics, either. You're going to need to convince about 5 billion people they need to. I'd get started pretty quick; you're wasting time on this forum arguing with people who at least agree with you that we need to pursue renewables aggressively.

[DRBUZZ0]

Buzzo, Luddite's arguments are feeling-based. He doesn't like nuclear. He doesn't know why, and he'll say ANYTHING to prevent himself from even considering it as a potential source of energy.

Alright, lets be fair here. I think that's implying something which has some undertones of being a bit... condesending.

In disagree with Luddite... strongly... and I think that his arguments against nuclear energy are basically the same as many in the anti-nuclear movement and are basically just not valid or supported by the facts.

That having been said, a fair portion of the population feels the same way. That may be because of all the propaganda or becasue of real fears from seeing things like Chernobyl and not having all the knowledge of the systems in use. Plus, I mean... people tend to hold on to beliefs... I'm guilty of that as well.

I think the dogmatic knee-jerk anti-nuclear reaction is prettymuch loony, but yes there do need to be people to ask the tough questions, because if the system is safe then they shouldn't be too hard to answer. And there always needs to be skeptism about how safe and environmentally friendly it can be..

Luddite seems to be a good natured skeptic from what I can see. I'd hope folks like him could be persuaded to take another look at nuclear energy, but if he's willing to listen to me and consider that, then i really ought to listen to him. In any case, you can only get so far before at least trying to work with the opposition.

Lets be nice...

[luddite]

The IAEA says you're wrong about supply (http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2006/uranium_resources.html), and the Japanese are building a plant for uranium extraction from seawater that is economically feasible at US$40/kg and highly profitable at US$70/kg. I suggest that you might want to compare that with the price of coal per kilowatt hour; you'll find it's still the most economical way to make power, and the environmental considerations and the likelihood of carbon taxes means that it will be far better. Coal is the cheapest per kilowatt hour other than nuclear, so that lets oil and gas out too.

The Energy Watch Group has a strong political and financial agenda; I had little trouble finding out about it and suggest you might want to do the same before you rely upon their figures. Check the companies that the authors of the studies available from their site work for. You'll find they have a financial stake in renewables.
Dammit you're right. I honestly thought it was a more neutral organization. You point out that the IAEA says we have a lot of uranium. Forgive me for saying so, but that's not really necessarily convincing. The oil companies say there's plenty of oil. And in the nuclear field I don't see any assessments at all that could be described as neutral.

I know of at least two people personally who favour nuclear but think it has very limited potential. One of them has worked for 37 years in Natural Resources Canada and sits on the National Energy Board as well. So I'm reserving judgment.

I appreciate and have absorbed your point about seawater. Let's see how it works out. The thing is, a lot of things are about to change. For example, if the plant that extracts uranium from seawater uses fossil fuels to operate, it may get more expensive. Conservation is going to look better and better. I'm going to accept the potential. But I think you should accept the potential for conservation. And we should both accept that we have no crystal ball to predict exactly how the economy will fare in the future, how much of any resource will become practicable.

I think there is a similar impasse with prices. You assert that nuclear is second only to coal in price, whereas I've seen no unbiased studies at all. The pro-nuclear studies conclude that nuclear is cheaper either by comparing it to solar or by grouping all renewables together and including things like ethanol. They often do not address the fact that in many countries, nuclear has only progressed as far as it has because there are additional subsidies in insurance or decomissioning or waste storage or debt retirement or research and development or all of the above. The anti-nuclear studies come up with these insane disparities where nuclear comes out several times the price we pay for energy. I haven't quoted those studies because I know they are biased. But what's the middle ground? I don't know.

I do know that whether you dispute the 10-year figure or not, wind turbines can go up much faster. As little as 3 months if the permitting process is paved. They are also more modular and their production can be ramped up faster. But that's not saying much, because you're not arguing against them. What will change a lot is conservation. While both wind and nuclear will benefit from carbon taxes or other vehicles of discouraging carbon emissions, it is clear that the biggest winner will be conservation.

After dawdling here this morning on this forum and missing half of a climate change conference at the University of Toronto, I scurried off in time to hear Thomas Homer Dixon deliver the keynote address. He spoke about climate feedback mechanisms and how in the arctic melt we are now seeing the first non-linear climatic response. He anticipates an ice-free arctic within a decade. The whole conference was kind of depressing. One piece of dismal news after another. Study after study indicating we are a lot more screwed than we thought we were. And one after another concluding we have no time to waste.

So we need to go after the things that can most economically deliver immediate results. There were hundreds of people in the room. There are few nuclear proponents. You must understand that in Canada the nuclear experience has been an economic fiasco, whatever the global outlook. More importantly, the two people who felt there was a need for nuclear power also asserted that the lion's share of the work would have to be carried by conservation. There simply wasn't time to ramp up that much generation.

In Canada, that's the choice. There are "big energy vision" people, and conservationists. The conservationists, whether they support nuclear or not, say we have a slim chance of averting climate catastrophe. We'll need to cut emissions by 80-90% within 30 years, about half of that in the next decade. The big energy vision people aren't making any claims at all about how much we can save. They may support nuclear as a panacea to climate change, but they don't care enough about it to attend climate conferences to understand the scope of the problem. And the nuclear proponents I know all say we better not close the coal plants either, unless we want the lights to go out.

Robinson pointed out that in order just to replace coal, we'd need to build a nuclear power plant every 3 days for 40 years. In order to replace the oil used in transportation, I suppose another 40 years would be required. And if you accept a 10-year delay between project proposal to first power, you need to add that in. That's 90 years of burning fossil fuels. That cannot work. That's not a responsible plan.

Glenn, do you think it's possible to build 121 plants in a year? If not, if we need to ramp up, add some more years to that.

So even if I warm up to a place for nuclear, it's hard to see how I can ever make the leap to where a lot of people on this forum are, envisioning nuclear taking over as the primary source in an energy supply as plentiful as the one we have now.

Thomas Homer Dixon ended his address by pointing out that next week he will be in a place he had hoped he would never have to resort to going to. He will be in Harvard University at a conference on geoengineering. He is resigning himself to the fact that even if we do everything right from now on, within 2 decades we will have to be doing crazy things like mining the seas with iron and sending mirrors into space in a desperate attempt to mitigate the harm we're doing now.

There are some very dark days ahead. Addressing climate change will be difficult and expensive. We will have to make some hard choices. I don't foresee a lot of spare change for research and development. Mitigation money, adaptation money. Quickest, most economical and surest means first.

And unfortunately, what has gotten us into this desperate place has been the vain hope that some technological miracle would save us and enable us to live the same cheap, high energy lifestyle we've become accustomed to. That hope has led us to continue building stupid inefficient structures for decades when we were aware of the problem and had the technology to do better. It has led us to continue building coal plants imagining we'd replace them with something smarter. I'm a newbie to the environmentalist movement. I had, until recently, hoped for a technological breakthrough myself. But I think I'm also a realist. And I'm careful and concerned about the world I leave my children. I've become convinced that the big energy vision is crippling, not empowering. Today's conference highlighted that for me.

So while I try to be open minded, I think the big-energy nuclear vision faces a huge challenge for me. I cannot see it reconciled with 80-90% emissions reductions in 30 years. And even that may not be enough.

[luddite]

I get the distinct impression that you are far, far less open-minded than you claim. In fact, it's pretty obvious. I've learned a LOT by reading this thread, not that I was ever against nuclear plants to start with. And it seems you haven't. I don't understand how you can read this thread and NOT grasp the content that's in it, or at least check the data presented and make sure that it is factual. And if you do, why do you always come back to square 1 and keep claiming the same thing over and over ?

Again, I get the impression that this nuclear fear of yours is based on emotion. "Yeah, sure, all that looks good, and all, but I still don't feel right about nuclear..." seems like your main argument. That's just not very smart. A lot of people feel their way through life, but when you're talking about an important subject like energy needs, can we please dispense with the emotional baggage ?

I hope that my last post clarified this a bit. I think my argument is less with nuclear per se, and more with the notion that we can maintain the current level of generation and tackle climate change. 80-90% in 30 years. Can't see it. Even if I accept assertions that there's plenty of uranium and it's safe and cheap as dirt.

[luddite]

Again, why are you going in that direction ? You can't argue for a step backwards in time. We simply NEED that energy and it ain't going to come from the sun or wind.

We don't need energy. We need the things it provides us. And not all of those. We need shelter and food. No argument there. We also need availability of medicine and education. We need to get between work and home and school and hospitals. We need to be able to communicate with friends and family.

Beyond those basics, what we need most is to leave a livable world for the next generation. That means we flood as little of Bangladesh, Shanghai, Vancouver and Florida as we possibly can.

That may mean that how we get between work and home changes. It may mean that where we live and where we work changes. It may mean that how we communicate changes. It may mean that our shelter changes. It can be smaller or more efficient or closer to other structures or more rural or more urban. It may mean that jobs change. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Beyond the basics, a lot of details are negotiable.

If we can do the basics and still have a lot of energy, I'm all for it. I don't think that's possible.

[luddite]

Schneibster, I'll grant you one thing about seawater. It would seem to be a big improvement over uranium mining, which is a really big sticking point with me.

[luddite]

I think the dogmatic knee-jerk anti-nuclear reaction is prettymuch loony, but yes there do need to be people to ask the tough questions, because if the system is safe then they shouldn't be too hard to answer. And there always needs to be skeptism about how safe and environmentally friendly it can be..

Luddite seems to be a good natured skeptic from what I can see. I'd hope folks like him could be persuaded to take another look at nuclear energy, but if he's willing to listen to me and consider that, then i really ought to listen to him. In any case, you can only get so far before at least trying to work with the opposition.

Lets be nice...

Thanks Buzzo.

[DRBUZZ0]

Dammit you're right. I honestly thought it was a more neutral organization. You point out that the IAEA says we have a lot of uranium. Forgive me for saying so, but that's not really necessarily convincing. The oil companies say there's plenty of oil. And in the nuclear field I don't see any assessments at all that could be described as neutral.


Again, the energy density of this stuff is INSANE. The fact that we have "A lot" is not as important as how little of it you need. You can run a multi-gigawatt nuclear reactor using low-enrichment uranium for a good few years with a single truck load of fuel. Factor in breeding and fast neutron integral reactors and you literally could produce gigawatts of energy for decades even CENTURIES in a highly effecient reactor...

Uranium is not "rare" it's not considered "valuable" because it's relatively common. We're not talking gold here. We're not even talking silver.

There's three to four times more thorium in the world than uranium and if you consider than thorium is nearlu 100% Th-232, you have nearly 100% potential fuel, and it's more effecient for fission than uranium.

This is not about just how much is avaliable, it's not like you need a huge volume of the stuff. It's in no way comparable to coal or oil, because a single deposit of the stuff is a massive amount of energy.

Seriously... there's enough uranium and thorium just in the pottery glazes and welding rods of the world to meet a good portion of energy needs. if it came down to it we could start collecting antique vaslene glass... but it never will!



I know of at least two people personally who favour nuclear but think it has very limited potential. One of them has worked for 37 years in Natural Resources Canada and sits on the National Energy Board as well. So I'm reserving judgment.


Okay... they have a list of "scientists" who think evolution is bull. But it doesn't really matter what two people think on the national energy board of Canada. Show me scientific consensus against nuclear energy by physisists in general and I'll start to take notice...


I appreciate and have absorbed your point about seawater. Let's see how it works out. The thing is, a lot of things are about to change. For example, if the plant that extracts uranium from seawater uses fossil fuels to operate, it may get more expensive.


Well obviously if you start getting fossil fuels into the equasion. But then again the very notion that sea water extraction would be warented is a good couple of centuries away at least... personally I think it will never reach that point. But if in 700 years we start running out of it and have to look to sea water that will be a concern. Of course, by that time everything may be nuclear powered.

In any case, we've got at least a few hundred years and possibly a few millennium or eons to worry about the details...



Conservation is going to look better and better. I'm going to accept the potential. But I think you should accept the potential for conservation. And we should both accept that we have no crystal ball to predict exactly how the economy will fare in the future, how much of any resource will become practicable.


There's a difference between reasonable conservation and rationing. Yes, people should be encouraged to get more insulation to use weather stripping and replace their old appliences. High effeciency light bulbs and engines with high thermal effeciency: All good stuff!

But after that comes "rationing" and making energy use the a factor which must be considered for all activities. That's limiting. It hurts human progress, it hurts the economy. And it's really pretty unfair. Because you can't really eliminate market forces and if you end up without enough energy to go around you're going to increase the class divide. Only the rich will be able to afford the comfort and quality that energy offers and that's really a shame for everyone else.

The more energy you have at your disposal the more you can do. If you're going to be counting kilowatts and trying to squeeze every ounce of effeciency out of everything you shoot yourself in the foot and you'll find that everyone ends up reading by the light of a single LED and listening to wind-up radios with big antennas because the transmitter is very low power. That's no way to live. That's a pitiful end to centuries of human progress and technology.


I think there is a similar impasse with prices. You assert that nuclear is second only to coal in price, whereas I've seen no unbiased studies at all. The pro-nuclear studies conclude that nuclear is cheaper either by comparing it to solar or by grouping all renewables together and including things like ethanol.


If anything ethanol would be less expensive than solar. Solar is ASTRONOMICALLY expensive. But ethanol and nuclear are not comperable anyway. I don't think anyone ever suggested ethanol as a source of base energy and electricity.

Ethanol is ethyl alcohol. It works okay as a motor fuel, but using it in power plants is a joke. Also it creates carbon dioxide when it burns. No, not as much as gasoline, but enough to be worth considering. And it's not "Carbon neutral" becasue that presumes that if it's not made the plant matter would decompose with 100% effeciency to co2.

Also, there are other issues with making a lot of ehtanol... but that's totally off topic.


They often do not address the fact that in many countries, nuclear has only progressed as far as it has because there are additional subsidies in insurance or decomissioning or waste storage or debt retirement or research and development or all of the above.


Well... the French managed to run their whole damn country on nuclear without going bankrupt. I don't see anyone doing the same with solar or wind. The Danes have sunk billions into a wind program which only works at all because they're tied into the european grid as a whole and produces a lot less energy than it had promised. The germans are installing solar panels as fast as they can and they're still importing more electricity each year.

But as far as decomishioning and waste and building. Okay, there are subsidies. I don't have a problem with the government shelling out money to make stuff happen that helps the enviornment. Way more money has been spent on renewable subsidies with less payback.

Once a plant is built, it's cheap. Nuclear is dirt cheap except for the initial cost of building the plant. Hence it's an investment. Once paid off you cruise. But okay, they do have limited lives before the reactor must be changed or the plant retired.

Sure, you want to see how cheaply, safely, efficiently reactors can be built when the regulations promote it? Take a look at the US Navy. They design modular reactors for subs and surface ships. They're prefabbed, tested standardized and good to go. And they work with terrific economics and reliability.




The anti-nuclear studies come up with these insane disparities where nuclear comes out several times the price we pay for energy. I haven't quoted those studies because I know they are biased. But what's the middle ground? I don't know.


You don't need to use "studies" then... just look at the real world. France gets nearly all electricity from nuclear. They've spent a lot of money to build the infrastructure and develop the systems, but not a break-the-bank amount of money.

Plenty of other countries, the US included, have shown that it's entirely economically possible to crank out gigawatts and gigawatts without spending inordinant amounts of money on it. Sure, the US has spent billions on research, but that goes all the way back to the 1940's when it had to be invented from scratch.


I do know that whether you dispute the 10-year figure or not, wind turbines can go up much faster. As little as 3 months if the permitting process is paved. They are also more modular and their production can be ramped up faster. But that's not saying much, because you're not arguing against them. What will change a lot is conservation. While both wind and nuclear will benefit from carbon taxes or other vehicles of discouraging carbon emissions, it is clear that the biggest winner will be conservation.


I'm not sure what you mean bu "winner will be conservation" means. Conservation doesn't provide energy, it can reduce energy need, but never to zero. And I'm not sure why we need to run around on the "conservation" bull again and again. If we're going to maintain a decent economy and standards of living, then just keeping energy needs at what they are will be... damn difficult. Reducing them will require some real sacrafices of quality of life and progress. And really.. that ain't gona happen. And it shouldn't either.

"Carbon Taxes" are really the worst way to go about things. Just forcing people to use less energy without actually providing an alternative is bad bad bad policy, because it'll cause rationing, inequality, economic problems and possibly absolutely rampant inflation.

Destroying the economy tends to end up not benefiting the environment. When people are living paycheck to paycheck they don't worry as much about keeping the car tuned up and recycling. You know why cars spew exhaust in India? because a lot of people there are really poor and have way more to worry about than air quality. So if you think economic limitations are gona help the earth, you are up for a rude awakening.



After dawdling here this morning on this forum and missing half of a climate change conference at the University of Toronto, I scurried off in time to hear Thomas Homer Dixon deliver the keynote address. He spoke about climate feedback mechanisms and how in the arctic melt we are now seeing the first non-linear climatic response. He anticipates an ice-free arctic within a decade. The whole conference was kind of depressing. One piece of dismal news after another. Study after study indicating we are a lot more screwed than we thought we were. And one after another concluding we have no time to waste.


Yes agreed, We need to do some major stuff about this like yesterday. Honestly, this kinda scares me a bit. And we havent even really seen the direct effects in any major way YET. I'm pretty worried about what it might be like in 30 years.


So we need to go after the things that can most economically deliver immediate results. There were hundreds of people in the room. There are few nuclear proponents. You must understand that in Canada the nuclear experience has been an economic fiasco, whatever the global outlook. More importantly, the two people who felt there was a need for nuclear power also asserted that the lion's share of the work would have to be carried by conservation. There simply wasn't time to ramp up that much generation.


Of course, conserve as much as reasonably possible. Also we need to get CO2 free energy as quickly and as much as possible. But conservation at best can just buy you a little time.


In Canada, that's the choice. There are "big energy vision" people, and conservationists. The conservationists, whether they support nuclear or not, say we have a slim chance of averting climate catastrophe. We'll need to cut emissions by 80-90% within 30 years, about half of that in the next decade.


Yeah, that's a real lot. But "big energy vision" does not mean don't conserve. It means don't completely reverse our increasing ability to have good health, comfort, economic benefits and such.

Conservation is a strawman. it's a stupid deception. Cutting energy needs by 80% to 90% by conservation can be done two ways: Living in mud huts with little led's and a tiny solar cooking box or killing 80% 90% of the population.


The big energy vision people aren't making any claims at all about how much we can save. They may support nuclear as a panacea to climate change, but they don't care enough about it to attend climate conferences to understand the scope of the problem. And the nuclear proponents I know all say we better not close the coal plants either, unless we want the lights to go out.


Well, are the "renewable" people claiming we should close coal plants and that the lights will stay on? No. Coal plants are a necessary evil until we can get the capacity from soemthing else. And we need to do that... ASAP.

"Understanding the scope of the problem" That's bull. The scope of the problem is huge and it needs to be addressed as soon as possible. I don't go to climate conferences because it's a hostile audience. I went to a climate summit at Yale two years ago. My mistake was it was a student thing and none of the studfents were actually engineers or anything. If it had been with actual scientists I may have gotten respect. But I got told everything from "Nuclear? Wow. You're such a terrible person" to "I hope you and people like you die for the sake of the earth, but then again, why should you care about dying... you seem to think death is great for all those people in Hiroshima!"


Robinson pointed out that in order just to replace coal, we'd need to build a nuclear power plant every 3 days for 40 years. In order to replace the oil used in transportation, I suppose another 40 years would be required. And if you accept a 10-year delay between project proposal to first power, you need to add that in. That's 90 years of burning fossil fuels. That cannot work. That's not a responsible plan.


It's a HELL OF A LOT EASIER than building windmills. In any case, I'd tend to think that's probably bull. And they can certainly be built faster.

The argument that "We can't build nuclear plants fast enough to stop global warming" is basically valid for one reason: We haven't been building them. If we had, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. But if we start building now it'll be a hell of a lot easier than if we wait even longer.

The sooner we start the more difference it can make.


Glenn, do you think it's possible to build 121 plants in a year? If not, if we need to ramp up, add some more years to that.


Define "plant" as in what capacity. But could you built 121 plants a year? Yes, I think it's possible. Difficult... not impossible. if you take the navy's lead and ramp it up... it could be done.

But actually one of the best proposals I've heard involves using coal plants and replacing the boilers with modular reactor-driven steam generators. All the wiring and distribution is already in place. The turbines don't care how you feed them. It's one of the most novel and valuable plans I've heard.


So even if I warm up to a place for nuclear, it's hard to see how I can ever make the leap to where a lot of people on this forum are, envisioning nuclear taking over as the primary source in an energy supply as plentiful as the one we have now.



Can nuclear ever be the primary source of energy? Like it is in france? or some parts of Japan? I would think so.

But okay, maybe it's a challenge. It sure as hell has better prospects than SOLAR OR WIND.


Thomas Homer Dixon ended his address by pointing out that next week he will be in a place he had hoped he would never have to resort to going to. He will be in Harvard University at a conference on geoengineering. He is resigning himself to the fact that even if we do everything right from now on, within 2 decades we will have to be doing crazy things like mining the seas with iron and sending mirrors into space in a desperate attempt to mitigate the harm we're doing now.


And is this because we built too many nuclear plants in the past or too many non-nuclear plants?

And would the best policy be to try to start doing what we should have all along or to sit on our asses for a few more decades and then say "If only back in 2007 we had realized..."


There are some very dark days ahead. Addressing climate change will be difficult and expensive. We will have to make some hard choices. I don't foresee a lot of spare change for research and development. Mitigation money, adaptation money. Quickest, most economical and surest means first.


There sure as hell won't be much money for anything if we spend it all on a roof solar panels to power a single damn freezer.

The quickest most economical way is to actually... stop with the talking and start with the building of non-co2 energy sources.



And unfortunately, what has gotten us into this desperate place has been the vain hope that some technological miracle would save us and enable us to live the same cheap, high energy lifestyle we've become accustomed to.


No, we did so by ignoring the technology which would allow us to do so because it made us think of mushroom clouds and scary things. So we sat on our asses and burned coal until it was impossible to deny.


That hope has led us to continue building stupid inefficient structures for decades when we were aware of the problem and had the technology to do better. It has led us to continue building coal plants imagining we'd replace them with something smarter.


On that I agree entirely. And actually... they're still building new coal plants. Oh yeah, they're building wind turbines too, but they can't build them fast enough to keep up with demand, much less replace coal.


I'm a newbie to the environmentalist movement. I had, until recently, hoped for a technological breakthrough myself. But I think I'm also a realist. And I'm careful and concerned about the world I leave my children.


If you think being a "realist" means perusing the idea of getting the world to throw out all the comfort, safety and quality of modern life and start living like Cuba... Well we have a different idea of what "realist" means.


I've become convinced that the big energy vision is crippling, not empowering. Today's conference highlighted that for me.



it doesn't matter whether your energy comes from "big" energy plants or "small distributed generation." That's an issue of philosophy and power generating stablity.

One big coal plant vs a bunch of small ones is effectively the same. It's not where it's generated or how it's distributed. The issue is what's going out into the atmosphere.


So while I try to be open minded, I think the big-energy nuclear vision faces a huge challenge for me. I cannot see it reconciled with 80-90% emissions reductions in 30 years. And even that may not be enough.

Okay, and your proposal? "Conservation" Again, sorry but the whole technical progress of mankind and shaping our world and seeing developing nations move forward and start to move into the first world... that's too important to some of us.

I'd rather see a world where african villigers can move toward living more like US citizens than a world where US citizens start living like african villigars.

if that's the world we're moving toward, I see no point in saving it, because in addition to the earth, the spirit of human endeavor is the most important thing we have. It's not worth saving the earth if it means destroying the future and of our species and reversing what we've managed to do to make our species unique.

We're different... we're not especially strong or robust physically, but with our brains we've been able to send stuff into orbit, travel at the speed of sound and wipe out diseases. That's something special. That's not something you want to turn in the other direction.

[Hindmost]

Dammit you're right. I honestly thought it was a more neutral organization. You point out that the IAEA says we have a lot of uranium. Forgive me for saying so, but that's not really necessarily convincing. The oil companies say there's plenty of oil. And in the nuclear field I don't see any assessments at all that could be described as neutral.

The IAEA numbers coincide with much of what I had read in the past. Scientific American had 50-60 years minimum with once through fuel. Even back in the 70s when I was in school, these were similar to the amount of uranium that would be available. Breeders were expected to extent the use of nuclear about 1000 years. Oil companies are not saying we have a lot of oil...oil company executives are and they are lying to keep the stock prices up. If you look at various oil analysis on the web...from geologists etc...they will show the oil issues that exist. See Peakoil.com. Anyone that has followed the oil industry knows that there hasn't been a major oil discovery since the 70s and with modern technology for finding oil, we know where most of it all is. Eventually we will be drilling off the coast of calfornia again and in ANWR and any number of places.

I know of at least two people personally who favour nuclear but think it has very limited potential. One of them has worked for 37 years in Natural Resources Canada and sits on the National Energy Board as well. So I'm reserving judgment.

I appreciate and have absorbed your point about seawater. Let's see how it works out. The thing is, a lot of things are about to change. For example, if the plant that extracts uranium from seawater uses fossil fuels to operate, it may get more expensive. Conservation is going to look better and better. I'm going to accept the potential. But I think you should accept the potential for conservation. And we should both accept that we have no crystal ball to predict exactly how the economy will fare in the future, how much of any resource will become practicable.

I think there is a similar impasse with prices. You assert that nuclear is second only to coal in price, whereas I've seen no unbiased studies at all. The pro-nuclear studies conclude that nuclear is cheaper either by comparing it to solar or by grouping all renewables together and including things like ethanol. They often do not address the fact that in many countries, nuclear has only progressed as far as it has because there are additional subsidies in insurance or decomissioning or waste storage or debt retirement or research and development or all of the above. The anti-nuclear studies come up with these insane disparities where nuclear comes out several times the price we pay for energy. I haven't quoted those studies because I know they are biased. But what's the middle ground? I don't know.

I do know that whether you dispute the 10-year figure or not, wind turbines can go up much faster. As little as 3 months if the permitting process is paved. They are also more modular and their production can be ramped up faster. But that's not saying much, because you're not arguing against them. What will change a lot is conservation. While both wind and nuclear will benefit from carbon taxes or other vehicles of discouraging carbon emissions, it is clear that the biggest winner will be conservation.

After dawdling here this morning on this forum and missing half of a climate change conference at the University of Toronto, I scurried off in time to hear Thomas Homer Dixon deliver the keynote address. He spoke about climate feedback mechanisms and how in the arctic melt we are now seeing the first non-linear climatic response. He anticipates an ice-free arctic within a decade. The whole conference was kind of depressing. One piece of dismal news after another. Study after study indicating we are a lot more screwed than we thought we were. And one after another concluding we have no time to waste.

So we need to go after the things that can most economically deliver immediate results. There were hundreds of people in the room. There are few nuclear proponents. You must understand that in Canada the nuclear experience has been an economic fiasco, whatever the global outlook. More importantly, the two people who felt there was a need for nuclear power also asserted that the lion's share of the work would have to be carried by conservation. There simply wasn't time to ramp up that much generation.

In Canada, that's the choice. There are "big energy vision" people, and conservationists. The conservationists, whether they support nuclear or not, say we have a slim chance of averting climate catastrophe. We'll need to cut emissions by 80-90% within 30 years, about half of that in the next decade. The big energy vision people aren't making any claims at all about how much we can save. They may support nuclear as a panacea to climate change, but they don't care enough about it to attend climate conferences to understand the scope of the problem. And the nuclear proponents I know all say we better not close the coal plants either, unless we want the lights to go out.

Robinson pointed out that in order just to replace coal, we'd need to build a nuclear power plant every 3 days for 40 years. In order to replace the oil used in transportation, I suppose another 40 years would be required. And if you accept a 10-year delay between project proposal to first power, you need to add that in. That's 90 years of burning fossil fuels. That cannot work. That's not a responsible plan.

Glenn, do you think it's possible to build 121 plants in a year? If not, if we need to ramp up, add some more years to that.

There is no way coal is going to be replaced by nuclear. There are only about 450 plants on the planet now. I am not sure of the industrial capacity around the world to build nuke plants, but even the Japanese could probably supply about 8 reactors per year. The Koreans have most of the manufacturing equipment from my old company and they could supply a few, but they have their own plants to build. And it needs talented engineers and technicians. It takes years to build reactor vessels and steam generators. The US would have to rebuild the technology and it would take awhile.

So even if I warm up to a place for nuclear, it's hard to see how I can ever make the leap to where a lot of people on this forum are, envisioning nuclear taking over as the primary source in an energy supply as plentiful as the one we have now.

No one here has said nuclear power is a panacea. If the US builds some capacity...and I don't even know if we can build a vessel, steam generators, pumps and motors here anymore, we might be able to start up about 3-6 reactors a year in about 20 years. I do think we have shown enough evidence that nuclear is competitive. The MIT 2003 study is a very good example and I am going to believe an MIT panel over some anti-nuke stuff.

It is not like we can build a 100,000 wind generators overnight either. And that's how many would be needed to put a small dent in the US grid.

We need all sorts of power: solar, geothermal, wind, nuclear, coal if all the world is going to come close to surviving the next 50 years without severe issues. All oil and natural gas should be reserved for transportation and space heating.

As far as global warming, CO2 capture needs to be advanced and quickly. But I think we are way over the hump on this and will see real problems.

Thomas Homer Dixon ended his address by pointing out that next week he will be in a place he had hoped he would never have to resort to going to. He will be in Harvard University at a conference on geoengineering. He is resigning himself to the fact that even if we do everything right from now on, within 2 decades we will have to be doing crazy things like mining the seas with iron and sending mirrors into space in a desperate attempt to mitigate the harm we're doing now.

There are some very dark days ahead. Addressing climate change will be difficult and expensive. We will have to make some hard choices. I don't foresee a lot of spare change for research and development. Mitigation money, adaptation money. Quickest, most economical and surest means first.

And unfortunately, what has gotten us into this desperate place has been the vain hope that some technological miracle would save us and enable us to live the same cheap, high energy lifestyle we've become accustomed to. That hope has led us to continue building stupid inefficient structures for decades when we were aware of the problem and had the technology to do better. It has led us to continue building coal plants imagining we'd replace them with something smarter. I'm a newbie to the environmentalist movement. I had, until recently, hoped for a technological breakthrough myself. But I think I'm also a realist. And I'm careful and concerned about the world I leave my children. I've become convinced that the big energy vision is crippling, not empowering. Today's conference highlighted that for me.

So while I try to be open minded, I think the big-energy nuclear vision faces a huge challenge for me. I cannot see it reconciled with 80-90% emissions reductions in 30 years. And even that may not be enough.

I agree that there will not be any techological miracle unless someone figures out a way to make hugh amounts of antimatter cheaply. Unless fusion becomes cheap and feasible within the next 50 years, it won't be able to help either.

glenn

[DRBUZZ0]

We don't need energy. We need the things it provides us. And not all of those. We need shelter and food. No argument there. We also need availability of medicine and education. We need to get between work and home and school and hospitals. We need to be able to communicate with friends and family.


"A man cannot live by bread alone." There's a difference between surviving and doing something more. About traveling and enjoying life. About being able to expand capabilities and comfort...

If the basics are all that matter you will find yourself in some sort of cross between the middle ages and the terrible communist drudgery of that hung over eastern Europe.




Beyond those basics, what we need most is to leave a livable world for the next generation. That means we flood as little of Bangladesh, Shanghai, Vancouver and Florida as we possibly can.



The world which you seem to envision would be a miserable place for the next generation. Florida would not be underwater. But what what would be the use of Florida? it's terribly uncomfortable in the summer without air conditioning. And the economey is based highly on tourism. Without vacations, there's not much ecomic activity in florida. Well there's the space center, but launching rockets takes HUGE amounts of energy, so that's a no-no





That may mean that how we get between work and home changes. It may mean that where we live and where we work changes. It may mean that how we communicate changes. It may mean that our shelter changes. It can be smaller or more efficient or closer to other structures or more rural or more urban. It may mean that jobs change. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Beyond the basics, a lot of details are negotiable.

If we can do the basics and still have a lot of energy, I'm all for it. I don't think that's possible.

The world you describe and lifestyle which would be lived can be described best with one word: subsistence.

That's not a world I'd ever want to live in... hardly worth preserving if that's what life is to be.

[luddite]

No.. hunger has nothing to do with farming and production of food. We can easily provide enough food to feed the world. The US and Western Europe both throw away enough food becasue it's stale or someone isn't hungry to feed all the starving nations. It's a combination of politics, corruption, wars and countries not having the infrastructure to distribute food.

Agreed. Except I'll add that the global economy that sells food to the highest bidder can, in some cases, contribute. It can mean that tropical gourmet foods for western markets can displace staples in some countries. And those delicious mangoes can be thrown out in Canada.

A good example is North Korea. China has and South Korea and other countries in the area have plenty of food. They'd sell it to the North no problem for pennies. Kim Jong Il could feed his people for the price of a couple of his Dongs (the missiles). It's even been offered for free. He won't accept it. That would show weakness and allow foreigners into his country and reduce his absolute control.

Farming in North Korea could be better too, but all funds avaliable are diverted to military functions and such. They have irrigation resources that could help provide much more food, but nobody will pay the relatively small price for a canal or pipeline to use them. Sad, really.

Such is typical of many starving countries. it is certainly not because the food does not exist.

I'm well aware of Korea. It's one of the cases Amnesty International is looking at in its expanded mandate. Though I would call it very atypical.

But why? I mean, sure you can grow it locally, but I like the fact that I can have bananas and oranges and stuff. I'm glad that I don't have to rely on canned cabbage in the winter to prevent scurvy. Is that so wrong?

No and yes. It's not wrong to want it. It's not wrong to have it if you can do so without harm. It is wrong to demand it if the only way of doing so is to contribute to the drowning of Bangladesh. Bananas are still routinely flown into Canada. And fuel is so cheap that they're the cheapest fruits around. I buy them myself. But is it right? No. Maybe I should stop.

I really don't want to have to tell my kids things like:

"Back when I was your age people with a reasonable income could go to visit other countries on airplanes. I went to Europe and Australia and Fiji. It wasn't like today where you have to wait five years to apply for a permit from the department of energy conservation to fly on an airplane"

"Back when I was your age we had this stuff called icecream. Wow, it was great, especially on a summer day. They banned the stuff with the Energy Conservation Act of 2020. Apparently freezers are only permitted for biomedical use now and you need a license"

"You wouldn't believe this, but when I was your age, if it was hot out, it was legal to have your whole house cooled by this evaporative system called 'air conditioning' it was great, because you could be comfortable and get a good sleep and work efficiently even when it was really hot out"

I don't want to tell my grandkids that when I was a kid, we had things like polar bears and ice skating and skiing. I don't want to tell my kids that there used to be a country called Bangladesh but we drowned it because we wanted our ice cream. I especially don't want to explain to my kids why we kept building poorly insulated detached suburban frame houses with grassy lawns in the desert when we knew the risks that the Amazon would burn, that China would become parched, that all of Africa would be overrun with resource wars and so on. I cannot explain to myself even now how Dubai operates an indoor ski hill.

And by the way, I think ice cream will survive. I can live with telling my grandkids that when I was a kid, we kept it in our freezer, while my grandkids will get it as a special treat on their birthdays. I can definitely live with telling my grandkids that when I was a kid we had to cool houses with air conditioners because we built them so stupidly. I've hung around on wide, cool porches bathed in tree-shade in the baking heat of Brazilian summers. And I look forward to telling my grandkids that when my kids were little, I didn't let them on the streets with their bicycles, because streets were for cars and bicycle riders simply weren't safe. I look forward to telling my grandkids that when I was a kid, you couldn't swim in Toronto's rivers because we had a stupid idea that rainwater needed to be got rid of, even if it destroyed the river.

As I said to Schneibster, I don't think there's a correct answer here. Competing visions of the future. We cannot predict how things will work out. But grant me that my vision is as compelling to me as yours is to you.

When I started looking into what would need to be done to achieve the necessary emissions reductions, I was afraid. It was very hard for me to imagine how it could possibly be done. And the people who brought me around to see how it could be done are amazing people. They are engineers and urban planners and energy analysts. They are creative and visionary. They foresee skyscrapers as giant greenhouses to feed thriving urban hubs, for example. And once I could see it, it was both thrilling and deeply satisfying. Because it involves clean water and air, safer streets, and homes far more comfortable than those we're building now. It involves better integrated communities and corner grocery stores I remember from my childhood. So that's why I'm resilient to the idea that we need to build a bunch of nuclear plants and maintain a high-energy lifestyle. That's why I'm not excited by the prospect of keeping our cars. It doesn't mean I want to take them away from people. But I'd like to engage people to see that they are an encumbrance. That life can be better. That we don't need so much energy.

I recognize that by trying to engage others in my vision, I have to be prepared to entertain theirs. And I must say that when you spoke about desalination and other high-energy delights, I understood more.

And maybe, just maybe, I can be brought around to seeing how nuclear generation can be built up in time to save us from global warming, though that's pretty hard to see.

You all have complained about how I'm not getting the messages you send. If there's one thing that I can't seem to get across no matter how hard I try, it is that low energy does not necessarily equal hardship. I've been in extremely low energy buildings. They are not just comfortable, they can be spectacular. I keep getting the message over and over that living without air conditioning is intolerable. Whereas I've been in sensibly built houses and I don't understand the advantage of air conditioning.

Long before I became involved in climate action, I wanted to live on the Toronto Islands. There's a community there of little houses. There are no cars. People leave their doors open, so their neighbours can pop in while they're out. Children waddle out of their houses in the morning, still in their pajamas, and go to the local grocery store and order a muffin to put on their parents tab. It's difficult, when you look at that, to see the advantages of the automobile. Why is it, exactly, that we can't conceive of living without them anymore?

I could go on, but I hope you get my point.

Cheers. And thanks for the conversation.

[luddite]

I don't go to climate conferences because it's a hostile audience. I went to a climate summit at Yale two years ago. My mistake was it was a student thing and none of the studfents were actually engineers or anything. If it had been with actual scientists I may have gotten respect. But I got told everything from "Nuclear? Wow. You're such a terrible person" to "I hope you and people like you die for the sake of the earth, but then again, why should you care about dying... you seem to think death is great for all those people in Hiroshima!"

It's late and I'm not going to stay up. But I wanted to answer this.

You need to go to climate conferences. Because most of the people who understand the climate problem don't buy into a nuclear solution. So when the **** hits the fan and policymakers look around to see who can solve the problem quickly, the people they will turn to won't buy into your ideas. I have a friend who is a lead author of the IPCC reports (that sounds a lot more impressive than it is, there are a lot of lead authors). He's anti-nuclear. And he's talking to the others. And the lead author of Canada's climate change strategy is anti-nuclear. On economic grounds primarily.

I may not be in love with a nuclear idea, but I think it's really pointless to stay in separate little hidey-holes afraid to talk to each other. It there's merit to your solution, it needs to be articulated.

[DRBUZZ0]

A very dark future indeed. A very sad and pitiful turn for a species which had so much potential.

Although I could see this future vision of yours as a good setting for a movie...

Imagine the voice of that announcer guy..

"In a world turned backward... where in a matter of decades humans have regressed my millennial, mankind is now less unique amongst the animals...
Conserving energy, tribes with spears hunt amid the ruins of the once great civilization from which they descended.

In a place once called "New York" a witch doctor makes an offering to their green copper goddess, once built to symbolize liberty. Now an idol for a people ruled by superstition, hunger and fear, who stare blankly at the hulks once built as homes offices and now believed a place of magic and demons...

But in one remote corner of the world, the flame of civilization still smolders. Here, the ones they once called "the big power people who are bad for the environment" cling to hope.

Here, where the sounds of computers, electronics and communication still can be heard, a band of throw-backs to a better time lives in a community where warmth, safety, health and hope still burn strong, powered by the reactors of several aircraft carriers.

It was 2010 when the "Greens" finally took over and destroyed civilization. Had these vessels not escaped, all would have been lost... but here, they plan for a day when man will once again, have a bright future... "

[luddite]

If anything ethanol would be less expensive than solar. Solar is ASTRONOMICALLY expensive. But ethanol and nuclear are not comperable anyway. I don't think anyone ever suggested ethanol as a source of base energy and electricity.

Ethanol is ethyl alcohol. It works okay as a motor fuel, but using it in power plants is a joke. Also it creates carbon dioxide when it burns. No, not as much as gasoline, but enough to be worth considering. And it's not "Carbon neutral" becasue that presumes that if it's not made the plant matter would decompose with 100% effeciency to co2.

Also, there are other issues with making a lot of ehtanol... but that's totally off topic.

That was my point. That comparing nuclear to ethanol was pointless.

[luddite]

Well... the French managed to run their whole damn country on nuclear without going bankrupt. I don't see anyone doing the same with solar or wind. The Danes have sunk billions into a wind program which only works at all because they're tied into the european grid as a whole and produces a lot less energy than it had promised. The germans are installing solar panels as fast as they can and they're still importing more electricity each year.

Good point about the French. You're right that their economy is fine. That doesn't mean, though, that it couldn't have been done with wind. Interest in nuclear predated greater interest in wind. Also the pattern has been that utilities build "power plants" while solar, wind and other micro-generators have been left to independent investors, often individuals. I'm not sure about France's situation, but I'd venture to guess that building up nuclear plants was a governmental decision. So while it certainly demonstrates that nuclear is perfectly viable, it doesn't show that wind is not.

[Lonewulf]

Has anyone provided a side by side comparison with costs per kw/h between nuclear and wind yet? Or is it just speculation?

[luddite]

I'm not sure what you mean bu "winner will be conservation" means. Conservation doesn't provide energy, it can reduce energy need, but never to zero. And I'm not sure why we need to run around on the "conservation" bull again and again. If we're going to maintain a decent economy and standards of living, then just keeping energy needs at what they are will be... damn difficult. Reducing them will require some real sacrafices of quality of life and progress. And really.. that ain't gona happen. And it shouldn't either.

"Carbon Taxes" are really the worst way to go about things. Just forcing people to use less energy without actually providing an alternative is bad bad bad policy, because it'll cause rationing, inequality, economic problems and possibly absolutely rampant inflation.

Destroying the economy tends to end up not benefiting the environment. When people are living paycheck to paycheck they don't worry as much about keeping the car tuned up and recycling. You know why cars spew exhaust in India? because a lot of people there are really poor and have way more to worry about than air quality. So if you think economic limitations are gona help the earth, you are up for a rude awakening.

By "winner will be conservation", I mean that when evaluating methods of meeting demand, the impact of a carbon tax would benefit conservation most. You can't get lower carbon than that.

Of course I understand that conservation doesn't produce energy. But if it displaces energy required, it amounts to the same thing. I know it can't go to zero. But when I've thought carefully about how much it can displace, when I've read other analysts speak about the potential, well, it isn't trivial. And it doesn't involve dire straits either.

Obviously, I'm not advocating not providing alternatives. One of the reasons I got involved in climate action is because I recognized that we're all in this together and government action and support are critical. You can't build your own personal public transit system. You suffer with buying homes built under whatever building code you have. You can't choose to buy the low-emissions vehicle that hasn't been built, and regulations can make sure that it's an option. We absolutely need government support for a massive energy retrofit program for all existing structures. And so on.

Cars in India may spew more exhaust, but the average Canadian is responsible for 18 times the emissions of every Indian. And that's not including the stuff we buy that's manufactured in India and China and carted across the ocean. There is a very strong correlation between income and emissions. I'm not advocating that we make everyone poor. But countries like Norway have had a carbon tax for decades and have coupled it with strong environmental regulations, carbon capture and so on.

I don't think carbon tax is the only way to go. Britain's Department of the Environment is advocating a carbon quota. I think that's harsher, but has some benefits, too. There are other methods. Voluntary measures don't work.

[luddite]

Has anyone provided a side by side comparison with costs per kw/h between nuclear and wind yet? Or is it just speculation?
Kind of, sort of.

The problem is that all the reports are biased one way or the other. And when you look at the details, various things are lumped together or omitted. There's no definitive study all sides can agree on, that I can see.

[Lonewulf]

In spite of biase, there has to be some accurate assessment out there somewhere. People aren't in the habit of spending invisible "mystery money", unless they cook their books.

The question is, why should I accept the claim that wind energy is cheaper or more easy to put into place than nuclear? What estimate is there for such a claim?

[luddite]

Yeah, that's a real lot. But "big energy vision" does not mean don't conserve. It means don't completely reverse our increasing ability to have good health, comfort, economic benefits and such.

Conservation is a strawman. it's a stupid deception. Cutting energy needs by 80% to 90% by conservation can be done two ways: Living in mud huts with little led's and a tiny solar cooking box or killing 80% 90% of the population.

Nope. 10-fold reductions in energy use in built form are achievable. They're being done right now. 10-fold reductions in transportation are more challenging. Public transit can do a lot. Economic incentives need to put people closer to where they need to go. Industry and agriculture need to move closer to their markets. This is basically reversing some of the changes that have occurred in the last few decades, but it's not stuff that makes life worth living. Do I really need to have my toothpaste made in China for my life to be complete? It can't be done overnight, of course. What we can do very quickly is encourage carpooling and, where possible, telecommuting. In the meantime, we build up the transit system. Emissions standards need a shakeup. And I agree with Schneibster that electric cars are the way to go. They can double up for grid stabilization.

Industry is where I've admitted greatest ignorance. Monbiot has some ideas about cement. I've toyed with the idea of manufacturing steel in the winter, when the waste heat can be used for district energy, and employing agricultural workers in the off season. I wouldn't put my money into Boeing or GM. Industry manufactures a lot of stuff that, frankly, doesn't contribute much to our lives. In a low-energy economy some of this can disappear and not be missed. Plastic garden gnomes. Plastic walking dollies. Dixie cups. Nosehair trimmers. Rubber kneading toys. Charger plates. Chandelier decorations. Mickey Mouse switchplate covers. You may want to keep some of these. I doubt you'd miss them all. We may even own fewer clothes. If this seems like an intolerable sacrifice, well, I gotta really wonder.

There are tradeoffs, too. I'm pretty sure we'll have full employment because more things will be done manually. But we're likely to have more time too. So you can garden, take hikes, go swimming.

Mud huts would be disastrous. They're worse than existing structures, so why would we switch? You're bringing up ridiculous propositions.

We will not go back to the past. Yes we need to relearn some aspects of the past low-energy lifestyle, but there are things we need not give up and innovations we need to embrace. I've talked about naturally cool buildings for hot climates that are centuries-old. The same is not true for buildings in cold climates. Older buildings tend to be drafty and difficult to heat. We can and should improve them. We should improve buildings for hot climates too. My maternal grandmother saw siblings die of tuberculosis and meningitis. In my father's family, that generation protected against the grief of such losses by having families of 19 and 22 children. My great-grandmothers look bone-weary in their pictures. We will not go back to that. And our grandkids will go to school and, I hope, use computers to blog on fora and share information.

There are other points to make, but I think they're addressed in your other questions.

But my point here as that the constant refrain of "such hardship, you're asking me to live in mud huts" is ridiculous. I'm asking you to live in a house that's probably more comfortable than the one you live in now. It will be more shielded from the elements, it will have no fan noise, no problems with humidity and dryness, it will be better ventilated, it will maintain a more comfortable temperature year-round. It may have more natural light. It will be less prone to flooded foundations, and it will have lower heating bills, cooling bills, electric bills, water bills, sewage bills.

[luddite]

In spite of biase, there has to be some accurate assessment out there somewhere. People aren't in the habit of spending invisible "mystery money", unless they cook their books.

The question is, why should I accept the claim that wind energy is cheaper or more easy to put into place than nuclear? What estimate is there for such a claim?
I did provide sources for Kevin way back. I can dig those up again. Or I can get you more.

Would you accept the Pembina Institute? The Suzuki Foundation? Sierra Club? Energy Watch Group? Rocky Mountain Institute? Energy Probe? Ontario Clean Air Alliance? Ontario Sustainable Energy Association? Canadian Wind Energy Association? The Goldberg Report on relative subsidies during the development period? I think there was one by the EU Environmental Agency, too. I know you won't accept Greenpeace. I saw several from American renewables groups.

It's easy to find reports. But I can just as easily find reports that say the opposite by IAEA, ACLU, that Australian Uranium Group, various energy companies that build nuclear plants and so on.

I've always found the anti-nuclear reports more compelling. But I can't expect you to agree. The thing is, I know the Canadian experience. Every reactor over budget and behind schedule. Every reactor requiring refurbishment greater than its original cost within 20-30 years. Reactors going off line all the time. We inherited a "stranded debt" primarily from nuclear that we're paying on our energy bills. And we all know that no Canadian reactor is ensured beyond the 1% of hypothetical costs in the case of a serious accident. No other insurance money has been set aside by the government, no decommissioning money is set aside, we haven't got a clue what we're going to do with the waste (and Canadian reactors produce a lot of plutonium). A few years ago, we decided to privatize our energy system and sold a few reactors for less than the cost of decommissioning, but maintained the responsibility for decommissioning firmly in public hands.

I'm willing to accept that the experience is different in other parts of the world. But for me, I'd put my money on wind any day. In fact I have. I've bought into a wind co-op.

[Lonewulf]

Why isn't France in the same boat as Canada, then, if it's so bad there from nuclear?

[luddite]

Well, are the "renewable" people claiming we should close coal plants and that the lights will stay on? No. Coal plants are a necessary evil until we can get the capacity from soemthing else. And we need to do that... ASAP.

That's the problem. The pro-nuclear people (I'm not talking about the conservationists with a sprinkling of nuclear, I'm talking about people who basically want to retain the same scale of grid with a lot of baseload nuclear) don't want to get rid of the coal ever.

It's like old school versus new. The Ontario Clean Air Alliance lobbied heavily to close down the coal plants. The current government was voted in initially in 2003 on a platform of phasing out coal by 2007. We just had another election, and they were voted in again on a platform of phasing out coal by 2014. It's a little surreal. But the power workers unions are lobbying heavily to say it can't be done at all. And we need nuclear too. We just need that energy, there's no other way. They are used to crunching their numbers in a particular way, and they just can't squeeze it into that box. Though I think that the fact that nuclear and coal between them account for 90% of the power workers has something to do with it.

Meanwhile, the Pembina Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, the Suzuki Foundation, the Ontario Clean Air Alliance have all demonstrated that it can be done on conservation/renewables/cogen, and by 2009. The thing is they are starting from different premises. The utilities are used to looking at demand and saying we need x reliable steady baseload and y dispatchable power, and there's really no alternative. These other organizations are looking at it and saying, forget what you're used to doing, our planet is dying, so some creativity is going to be necessary. The Pembina/WWF study actually hired the same consultants who evaluated the provincial plan to evaluate theirs, and used the same price inputs. And they still came up with a cheaper plan. It's hard to look at that and say nuclear is economical.

So in Ontario, you have pretty much no allies if you're going to argue for meeting climate change with nuclear. Pretty much anybody here who says we can do anything to put a dent in our emissions is proposing the conservation/renewables/cogen route.

[luddite]

Why isn't France in the same boat as Canada, then, if it's so bad there from nuclear?
I don't know. Want me to hazard a guess?

[luddite]

The argument that "We can't build nuclear plants fast enough to stop global warming" is basically valid for one reason: We haven't been building them. If we had, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. But if we start building now it'll be a hell of a lot easier than if we wait even longer.

Yes and no. The thing is, just like we can't evaluate different visions of the future, neither can we necessarily construct an alternate past reliably. Cheap oil and gas and coal were there. When oil came on line, we found new uses for the coal it displaced. When natural gas came online, we continued to use increasing amounts of coal and oil. I see no reason to believe that more nuclear wouldn't have just continued this pattern.

And today you'd be telling me "I don't want to tell my kids that when I was a kid I used to be able to fly to Paris for breakfast", and it would seem even more impossible to imagine doing without fossil fuels.

I'll agree that we certainly better start doing something now. But I recommend building a transit system while retrofitting every building. Because that's not going to get any easier either.

[luddite]

it doesn't matter whether your energy comes from "big" energy plants or "small distributed generation." That's an issue of philosophy and power generating stablity.

One big coal plant vs a bunch of small ones is effectively the same. It's not where it's generated or how it's distributed. The issue is what's going out into the atmosphere.

You misunderstand my meaning. I'm not talking about the size of the individual units. I'm talking about the size of the whole grid. I'm saying target at least 50% reductions through conservation.

[luddite]

Okay, and your proposal? "Conservation" Again, sorry but the whole technical progress of mankind and shaping our world and seeing developing nations move forward and start to move into the first world... that's too important to some of us.

I'd rather see a world where african villigers can move toward living more like US citizens than a world where US citizens start living like african villigars.

if that's the world we're moving toward, I see no point in saving it, because in addition to the earth, the spirit of human endeavor is the most important thing we have. It's not worth saving the earth if it means destroying the future and of our species and reversing what we've managed to do to make our species unique.

We're different... we're not especially strong or robust physically, but with our brains we've been able to send stuff into orbit, travel at the speed of sound and wipe out diseases. That's something special. That's not something you want to turn in the other direction.

This just makes me sad. You're saying that if you can't travel at the speed of sound there's no point in living. And basically that in order to travel at the speed of sound, you're willing to drown a Bangladeshi or two. Well, who cares, their lives are not worth living anyway, their species is not unique because they haven't been into orbit.

When I thought about what I'd want to tell my kids, I thought I could never explain to them how I had the colossal hubris to stand by and watch the world collapse. The first priority is to preserve a world for them that continues to nurture and sustain them.

I'm not suggesting we turn off our brains. I'm suggesting we turn them keenly to more productive channels. I'm not suggesting we wipe out progress and medicine. I'm suggesting we build on it. I'm suggesting we apply existing building technologies now.

But first we have to recognize the scale of the challenge and what is possible to do to address it.

I've said we cannot redo all our power generation in the next decade. It's not possible. A huge portion will have to be done with conservation. That's not what I want to see, that's the conclusion I inevitably come to. The alternatives are simply unthinkable.

[luddite]

The world which you seem to envision would be a miserable place for the next generation. Florida would not be underwater. But what what would be the use of Florida? it's terribly uncomfortable in the summer without air conditioning. And the economey is based highly on tourism. Without vacations, there's not much ecomic activity in florida. Well there's the space center, but launching rockets takes HUGE amounts of energy, so that's a no-no

Unless you can convince me that we can achieve the necessary emissions cuts with nuclear power, we haven't got much choice, have we? Are you actually willing to put Florida underwater? Do you think it will be any easier moving those people? What about Bangladesh? Do you kill those people or move them? Where?

If we need to make those kinds of emissions cuts, and generation isn't an option (or at least not a complete solution)...then it's time to decide what's important to preserve and make the best of it. Yes we'll have to give some things up. Hopefully there are other things we'll gain.

I know that one day, no matter what we do today, our descendants will say "Can you believe our idiot ancestors used to toss out whole aluminum cans? Isn't that insane?". They'll be digging them out of the garbage heaps.

And I don't want to tell my kids that because I flew to Fiji to see the coral reefs, I contributed in part to a situation where all the coral reefs in the world are dead. And I don't want to tell my kids that because I couldn't stand the thought of living without an air conditioner, they have to suffer heat waves.

[DRBUZZ0]

Has anyone provided a side by side comparison with costs per kw/h between nuclear and wind yet? Or is it just speculation?

I've seen a lot of cost comparisons with wind. Some put wind cheaper than coal or almost anything else, which I suppose is probably true if you just measure the raw energy output as a factor of building a turbine divided by the estimated lifespan.

But I've also seen others which put wind as being astronomically expensive due to grid destabilization issues, transmission and phasing, the fact that you really can't measure capacity factor in the same way as other energy forms because you need excess. Also the cost increases by a lot after it becomes more than 10% of the grid power source. When you hit about 20% you reach the limit of wind power without buffering like massive flywheels or some sort of continuous flow pumped storage buffer.

All in all, I really think that's a tough call. But I tend to also think that the best way to cut through the numbers games on wind is just to look at reality. The fact is that you can't really point out a country which has managed to make wind power the basis for their power supply.

The closest example is Denmark. They're at about 18% generating capacity right now, (NOT TOTAL ENERGY) and they've been struggling to increase capacity past that. The plan right now is shooting for 30% by 2020. But that's very optimistic. The only thing that allows them to do this is that they're tied into a very large European power grid. In reality the amount of energy from wind as a factor of the European power system in that area is less than 10%, so they've gotten by by importing and occasionally exporting excess capactiy.

This has been a good 20 year commitment from the country. Perhaps "struggling" isn't the best word, because they have had some success creating profitable energy from the wind.


But in any case, to compare it to nuclear:

- France, as we have mentioned is nearly 100% nuclear.

- Japan currently gets a good 35% energy from nuclear, and parts of the country are nearly entirely nuclear. It's not one single grid really, because of the fact that it's broken into islands. They want to increase this to more than half in the next ten years. Not too bad, considering they had about zero capability in the 1970's.

- Sweden gets 50% of their power from nuclear. Most of the rest comes from hydroelectric. Sweden has very good hydroelectric resources, With nuclear and hydro they are able get only 7% of generating energy from fossil fuels. In 1980 a popular referendum backed by the "Green" parties passed with several methods for phasing out nuclear energy (mostly by switching to coal gasification and/or renewables... but really fossil fuel is the realistic way). As such, they have closed two plants, but they aren't planning on closing any more. Too bad really. They were on track for complete fossil fuel phase-out for electricity and then moving toward an electric-centric transportation system...

- South Korea does a good 50% from nuclear. Not too bad either considering that they didn't have it in the 1970's. The technology all had to be bought from the US for their first two or three plants. But now they're doing it on their own and Samsung has entered the reactor business.


More than a few other countries have also demonstrated an ability to go from zero to gigawatts in a few years without going into the red. I think history speaks for itself.

[DRBUZZ0]

Unless you can convince me that we can achieve the necessary emissions cuts with nuclear power, we haven't got much choice, have we? Are you actually willing to put Florida underwater? Do you think it will be any easier moving those people? What about Bangladesh? Do you kill those people or move them? Where?

If we need to make those kinds of emissions cuts, and generation isn't an option (or at least not a complete solution)...then it's time to decide what's important to preserve and make the best of it. Yes we'll have to give some things up. Hopefully there are other things we'll gain.

I know that one day, no matter what we do today, our descendants will say "Can you believe our idiot ancestors used to toss out whole aluminum cans? Isn't that insane?". They'll be digging them out of the garbage heaps.

And I don't want to tell my kids that because I flew to Fiji to see the coral reefs, I contributed in part to a situation where all the coral reefs in the world are dead. And I don't want to tell my kids that because I couldn't stand the thought of living without an air conditioner, they have to suffer heat waves.


I don't really get what you're saying about "Unless you can convince me that we can achieve the necessary emissions cuts with nuclear power"

Are you trying to imply that you can cut more without nuclear than with?

I never said that nuclear energy was a "magic bullet" to stop global warming. It's probably too late for anything to stop global warming completely. Conservation would need to be part of the solution. Any plan will be less than perfect, because you can't change things overnight.

But you seem to be saying that building reactors does zero to help and that it even is just going to continue the problem...

There are two ways to cut emissions.

1. With nuclear energy. As much nuclear energy as can be built. Doubtless effeciency and conservation will need to be implemented too, especially while coal still provides the mainstay of power.

2. Don't build nuclear plants. Instead just cut back power use by a good 80-90% to the point where power-rationing becomes the dominating factor of everyday life and most current technology needs to be abandoned. If you could cut power usage by that much you could maybe get by with wind and hydro... or maybe by burning only a small amount of coal.

So the question is "Do you want to do this the hard, gruling, society-destroying, economically crushing way" or the "comparatively easy way where the world doesn't need to suffer so badly"


This is just illogical on so many levels. The key to stopping co2 emissions is most certainly not abandoning nuclear energy.

"Nuclear can't do it. Therefore we should not build nuclear plants eventhough they don't make co2. We should just conserve so we don't burn as much coal"


Sorry... I just... can't... see.... the... logic.

[luddite]

Just found a peak oil site with a section on uranium. I just know I'm going to set people off in a freak again. I'm not drawing any conclusions here. Just pointing out why I'm just not prepared to accept assertions from this blog. The assertions below seem equally compelling to me. They analyze the Energy Watch Group study. Here are some highlights:

Uranium, like any other resource, can't be mined at any desired rate, nor every last drop or ounce of the resource can be mined. No matter the technology, at some point it is just not worth it to mine lower grade ores. While energy balance analysis are complicated and a discussion about it would only bring controversy, another way of putting it is more easily grasped. For any mined ore, the lower the grade, the higher the material throughput you need to process. There is always a limit. And despite what the nuclear industry might tell you, for Uranium too. The materials throughput (not unrelated to the energy needed) is inversely proportional to the ore grade for any mined material: To extract 1 kg of uranium out of 1% ore containing material needs the processing of 100 kg. Extracting the same amount from 0.01% ore needs the processing of 10,000 kg. You can easily see that even if, for the sake of the argument we assume that the EROEI of nuclear energy for all ore grades is positive, there are physical limits to the production throughput Uranium production can ever reach.

This study uses the same data as the post by Martin Sevior. What he labels "Additional recovarable Uranium" is in reality "undiscovered resources prognosticated" and "undiscovered resources speculative". They are very unreliable data, considered by the study too speculative and with a very low probability of ever being brought into production. While some quantity in that category will be eventually mined, it wouldn't matter much in the time-frame considered.

It will surely be interesting for TODers to have a look at the depletion curve for uranium in France. It clearly shows that uranium does deplete in a manner not entirely dissimilar to oil.

While the USA is not nearly completely depleted like France is, the analysis of historical resource reports reveals similar patterns like the ones shown for France before. Shortly after reaching the production peak, in 1983 the "reasonably assured and inferred resources" where downgraded by 85%, a decline of almost 1,000 kt. The implication is that the reserve reporting practices are not "transparent" and "understated" as the nuclear industry will tell you.

This study may have flaws, but so far it is more convincing to me than the position of the nuclear industry, which regards Uranium as mineable without limits. If you believe some, we could mine it form the earth's crust, from sea water, ... or use breeders. And if all fails we have thorium. That is not serious. Being able to do it, even to technologically demonstrate it is not the same as doing it. We can extract gold from sea water too. While all those possibilities may be workable in the future, they could just as well not be viable. You cannot bet your energy future, the biggest investment society has to make, on such assertions. You may as well choose fusion.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2379

[luddite]

I don't really get what you're saying about "Unless you can convince me that we can achieve the necessary emissions cuts with nuclear power"

Are you trying to imply that you can cut more without nuclear than with?

I never said that nuclear energy was a "magic bullet" to stop global warming. It's probably too late for anything to stop global warming completely. Conservation would need to be part of the solution. Any plan will be less than perfect, because you can't change things overnight.

But you seem to be saying that building reactors does zero to help and that it even is just going to continue the problem...

There are two ways to cut emissions.

1. With nuclear energy. As much nuclear energy as can be built. Doubtless effeciency and conservation will need to be implemented too, especially while coal still provides the mainstay of power.

2. Don't build nuclear plants. Instead just cut back power use by a good 80-90% to the point where power-rationing becomes the dominating factor of everyday life and most current technology needs to be abandoned. If you could cut power usage by that much you could maybe get by with wind and hydro... or maybe by burning only a small amount of coal.

So the question is "Do you want to do this the hard, gruling, society-destroying, economically crushing way" or the "comparatively easy way where the world doesn't need to suffer so badly"


This is just illogical on so many levels. The key to stopping co2 emissions is most certainly not abandoning nuclear energy.

"Nuclear can't do it. Therefore we should not build nuclear plants eventhough they don't make co2. We should just conserve so we don't burn as much coal"


Sorry... I just... can't... see.... the... logic.
No, my point has been pretty consistent throughout. Regardless of whether we build nuclear reactors, a commitment to the 80-90% emissions cuts necessary in 30 years will necessarily involve an enormous conservation component.

I was responding to your idea that massive energy reductions would make life intolerable in Florida.

How we get the remaining generation is a minor point. I favour renewables because they can make a dent faster, and in my experience, I still think they're cheaper. I don't really expect you to agree.

There's another question about whether we'll want to ramp up nuclear beyond the crisis point - say 50 years out from now. But I don't think that any serious attempt to address climate change can maintain the current scale of energy use.

[luddite]

I've seen a lot of cost comparisons with wind. Some put wind cheaper than coal or almost anything else, which I suppose is probably true if you just measure the raw energy output as a factor of building a turbine divided by the estimated lifespan.

But I've also seen others which put wind as being astronomically expensive due to grid destabilization issues, transmission and phasing, the fact that you really can't measure capacity factor in the same way as other energy forms because you need excess. Also the cost increases by a lot after it becomes more than 10% of the grid power source. When you hit about 20% you reach the limit of wind power without buffering like massive flywheels or some sort of continuous flow pumped storage buffer.

All in all, I really think that's a tough call. But I tend to also think that the best way to cut through the numbers games on wind is just to look at reality. The fact is that you can't really point out a country which has managed to make wind power the basis for their power supply.

The closest example is Denmark. They're at about 18% generating capacity right now, (NOT TOTAL ENERGY) and they've been struggling to increase capacity past that. The plan right now is shooting for 30% by 2020. But that's very optimistic. The only thing that allows them to do this is that they're tied into a very large European power grid. In reality the amount of energy from wind as a factor of the European power system in that area is less than 10%, so they've gotten by by importing and occasionally exporting excess capactiy.

This has been a good 20 year commitment from the country. Perhaps "struggling" isn't the best word, because they have had some success creating profitable energy from the wind.


But in any case, to compare it to nuclear:

- France, as we have mentioned is nearly 100% nuclear.

- Japan currently gets a good 35% energy from nuclear, and parts of the country are nearly entirely nuclear. It's not one single grid really, because of the fact that it's broken into islands. They want to increase this to more than half in the next ten years. Not too bad, considering they had about zero capability in the 1970's.

- Sweden gets 50% of their power from nuclear. Most of the rest comes from hydroelectric. Sweden has very good hydroelectric resources, With nuclear and hydro they are able get only 7% of generating energy from fossil fuels. In 1980 a popular referendum backed by the "Green" parties passed with several methods for phasing out nuclear energy (mostly by switching to coal gasification and/or renewables... but really fossil fuel is the realistic way). As such, they have closed two plants, but they aren't planning on closing any more. Too bad really. They were on track for complete fossil fuel phase-out for electricity and then moving toward an electric-centric transportation system...

- South Korea does a good 50% from nuclear. Not too bad either considering that they didn't have it in the 1970's. The technology all had to be bought from the US for their first two or three plants. But now they're doing it on their own and Samsung has entered the reactor business.


More than a few other countries have also demonstrated an ability to go from zero to gigawatts in a few years without going into the red. I think history speaks for itself.
I just looked up energy prices in the EU. France is cheaper than Denmark.

[DRBUZZ0]

How we get the remaining generation is a minor point.


No. That's ridiculous.


I favour renewables because they can make a dent faster, and in my experience, I still think they're cheaper. I don't really expect you to agree.


This is directly opposed by all the facts presented. Although there is some semi-truthiness to the "cheaper" part. Nuclear is only economical on a certain scale. Yes, powering a house with solar is cheaper than with a nuclear reactor. Powering a city with solar is absurdly expensive.

[luddite]

No. That's ridiculous.



This is directly opposed by all the facts presented. Although there is some semi-truthiness to the "cheaper" part. Nuclear is only economical on a certain scale. Yes, powering a house with solar is cheaper than with a nuclear reactor. Powering a city with solar is absurdly expensive.
You keep comparing nuclear baseload to solar. Nobody is suggesting a solar baseload.

[DRBUZZ0]

UG. I'm going to have to step out of this for a bit. This thread is making my concern about the future and climate change increase a lot... to the point of near panic. I had best stop facing the attitude toward nuclear for a while as it is becoming overwhelming.

[luddite]

The IAEA numbers coincide with much of what I had read in the past. Scientific American had 50-60 years minimum with once through fuel. Even back in the 70s when I was in school, these were similar to the amount of uranium that would be available. Breeders were expected to extent the use of nuclear about 1000 years. Oil companies are not saying we have a lot of oil...oil company executives are and they are lying to keep the stock prices up. If you look at various oil analysis on the web...from geologists etc...they will show the oil issues that exist. See Peakoil.com. Anyone that has followed the oil industry knows that there hasn't been a major oil discovery since the 70s and with modern technology for finding oil, we know where most of it all is. Eventually we will be drilling off the coast of calfornia again and in ANWR and any number of places.

I'm not sure there's a contradiction between any of these numbers. A peak in 32 years is perfectly consistent with 50-60 years once through supply, or maybe even 82 years once through supply.

What breeders will do is a separate question. I just read the IAEA site that stated that breeders increase the cost of electricity by 10% or more. That's enough that other factors can come into play.

Here's a paper from August of this year that puts costs of uranium from seawater at $250-$450/kg but states that even this is highly uncertain:

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:FLeO2MMKW8sJ:www.physics.harvard.ed u/~wilson/energypmp/2007_uranium.doc

As fuel costs at $37/kg are said to contribute 1-3% to the cost of electricity, seawater sources would increase the cost by 10-30% or possibly more. Again enough that other options come into play. And certainly at this level, fuel costs are no longer insignificant.

The same paper states that

The only way that nuclear power can make an early contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is for the industry to deploy large numbers of reactors of existing type, although the gradual introduction of more advanced reactors will be welcome.

Though I would argue that it's already too late for nuclear to make an early contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Early would have been 10 years ago.

But the point is, if we're going to be talking about contributions to dealing with global warming, let's stick to uranium fission reactors with once through fuel sources.

[luddite]

It is not like we can build a 100,000 wind generators overnight either. And that's how many would be needed to put a small dent in the US grid.

We need all sorts of power: solar, geothermal, wind, nuclear, coal if all the world is going to come close to surviving the next 50 years without severe issues. All oil and natural gas should be reserved for transportation and space heating.

As far as global warming, CO2 capture needs to be advanced and quickly. But I think we are way over the hump on this and will see real problems.

Let's imagine what's feasible. Germany is putting in 100 turbines monthly, averaging about 2 MW each. The population of the US is almost four-fold. More importantly the US has more land mass and much better winds. So at least 10,000 MW annually and maybe double that should be possible in a few years. Of course, that's not a steady 10,000 MW. It would probably average out at something like a quarter of that. So let's say 2,500 MW - 5,000 MW. Hmmm. That's pathetic. California's peak demand alone goes into the 50,000's. Over 20 years we get 50,000-100,000 MW. Over 30 we get 75,000-150,000. I suspect the higher end. Technology can only improve. That's only the demand from a few states. And while conservation will go a long way, we'll probably also be electrifying transportation.

We'd have to do something way more dramatic than Germany. Make wind a national priority. Convert existing factories to turbine making. I'm not advocating this, though something of the sort may eventually be done anyway. 3-6 nuclear plants a year is starting to look awfully tempting, I'll admit.

I foresee solar PV making a similar small contribution to peak. I see a bigger role for solar thermal. Throw in some biomass. I have no idea how much there is. You have to be really careful about it anyway, because you can make soil productivity go up in smoke. And soil productivity is going to be a big priority. I know biomass is significant, but I don't know how to assess it. Cogen is out there. Geothermal.

Coal? We need coal?

I guess that's what David Hughes says too. He says we need it all. He's confident that coal will never replace the decline in oil and natural gas anyway. How do you feel about generation from natural gas using cogen in areas where supply is not an issue for the foreseeable future? Can't agree with you on coal. We need to be getting rid of it as fast as we can. That's the point.

Carbon sequestration. Well, we need to stop wasting our time. That may be another pipe dream. It's been the rationale behind maintaining coal. I've been annoyed with energy planners in Ontario that basically use it as a lie to support continued use of coal. Because even a cursory review indicates that power plants built to burn coal conventionally are in no way equipped to sequester it. You need the proper siting to begin with. It's a lot more complicated and expensive to build a coal plant capable of sequestration. Sequestration reduces the efficiency of coal generation, too, so you burn even more. And you never capture it all.

I've seen one compelling opinion suggesting we need to fund one study intensely to look at the potential of sequestration at one study site and pull the plug on funding of coal in every other case. And yesterday, one analyst said that the sequestration sites in China are completely dwarfed by the immense lignite deposits. So it's not going to be a panacea either.

If it turns out, as is becoming increasingly likely, that we'll be driven to attempt to pull carbon out of the living environment to sequester it, we will feel a little stupid if all the sequestration sites are saturated with coal that we thought we could burn because it was safely sequestered.

As an engineer friend of mine put it, the absolutely cheapest form of sequestration is to keep it in the ground in the first place. And by that, he includes all the costs of more expensive energy/conservation or whatever to reduce the need. He has never encountered a case where this wasn't obvious at first glance.

[luddite]

UG. I'm going to have to step out of this for a bit. This thread is making my concern about the future and climate change increase a lot... to the point of near panic. I had best stop facing the attitude toward nuclear for a while as it is becoming overwhelming.
Sorry. Take care.

[Belz...]

We don't need energy. We need the things it provides us.

Ergo we need energy.

And not all of those. We need shelter and food. No argument there. We also need availability of medicine and education. We need to get between work and home and school and hospitals. We need to be able to communicate with friends and family.

Beyond those basics, what we need most is to leave a livable world for the next generation. That means we flood as little of Bangladesh, Shanghai, Vancouver and Florida as we possibly can.

I see "quality of life" is not part of your list.

Why would you make a list of the bare minimum we need ? I really don't understand your philosophy. If we can continue to live comfortably and bring that level of comfort to the rest of the world by using a safe, abundant source of energy like nuclear fission, then why do we keep arguing about it ?

[robinson]

In regards to wind power, solar power, tidal power and so on.

I'm completely in favor of using renewable natural energy sources where available, but the fact is that it's just not realistic to expect these to be able to do anything more than provide a small portion of total energy needs.


Wind's long-term theoretical potential is much greater than current world energy consumption. The potential of wind power on land and near-shore to be 72 TW, or over fifteen times the world's current energy use and 40 times the current electricity use. The potential takes into account only locations with Class 3 (mean annual wind speeds ≥ 6.9 m/s at 80 m) or better wind regimes, which includes the locations suitable for low-cost (0.03–0.04 $/kWh) wind power generation and is in that sense conservative. It assumes 6 turbines per square km for 77 m diameter, 1.5 MW-turbines on roughly 13% of the total global land area (though that land would also be available for other compatible uses such as farming).

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/global_winds.html

[BenBurch]

If we evaluate human deaths per kilowatt-hour, nuclear would be at the bottom of the list. It is very safe. Coal claims lives every few hours, and will claim more as we use more of it in "green coal" applications that are simply not at all green. (If you think they are, go look at mountaintop removal mining.)

And people not only die in MINING coal, but in the railroad services to transport it. And in breathing its effluents. Did you know that there is Uranium in coal smoke? Did you know that the uranium in coal smoke absolutely causes cancers in people downwind?

And if we are not evaluating power systems on how many people die per kilowatt-hour, what basis IS there?

And renewable systems can be really dangerous to maintain; Would you want to steeplejack up to a wind turbine to repair it? How about maintaining photovoltaics?; You know they are dangerous even when disconnected as they never stop trying to make light into current.

[Belz...]

Good point about the French. You're right that their economy is fine. That doesn't mean, though, that it couldn't have been done with wind.

:covereyes

"But nuclear is SCARY, man!"

[Belz...]

This just makes me sad. You're saying that if you can't travel at the speed of sound there's no point in living. And basically that in order to travel at the speed of sound, you're willing to drown a Bangladeshi or two. Well, who cares, their lives are not worth living anyway, their species is not unique because they haven't been into orbit.

When I thought about what I'd want to tell my kids, I thought I could never explain to them how I had the colossal hubris to stand by and watch the world collapse. The first priority is to preserve a world for them that continues to nurture and sustain them.

I'm not suggesting we turn off our brains. I'm suggesting we turn them keenly to more productive channels. I'm not suggesting we wipe out progress and medicine. I'm suggesting we build on it. I'm suggesting we apply existing building technologies now.

But first we have to recognize the scale of the challenge and what is possible to do to address it.

I've said we cannot redo all our power generation in the next decade. It's not possible. A huge portion will have to be done with conservation. That's not what I want to see, that's the conclusion I inevitably come to. The alternatives are simply unthinkable.

Appeal to emotion = 0.

[Belz...]

No. That's ridiculous.



This is directly opposed by all the facts presented. Although there is some semi-truthiness to the "cheaper" part. Nuclear is only economical on a certain scale. Yes, powering a house with solar is cheaper than with a nuclear reactor. Powering a city with solar is absurdly expensive.

See what I meant by "emotion-based" ?

[Belz...]

Wind's long-term theoretical potential is much greater than current world energy consumption. The potential of wind power on land and near-shore to be 72 TW, or over fifteen times the world's current energy use and 40 times the current electricity use. The potential takes into account only locations with Class 3 (mean annual wind speeds ≥ 6.9 m/s at 80 m) or better wind regimes, which includes the locations suitable for low-cost (0.03–0.04 $/kWh) wind power generation and is in that sense conservative. It assumes 6 turbines per square km for 77 m diameter, 1.5 MW-turbines on roughly 13% of the total global land area (though that land would also be available for other compatible uses such as farming).

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/global_winds.html

And how many hundred thousand windmills would we need for that ?

[luddite]

I've just been thinking again about the article Glenn pointed out to me that shows that nuclear fission subsidies have delivered more energy than renewable subsidies. I had commented before about how it was unfair to compare baseload fission with peak load solar, and unfair to split off the unproductive subsidies to nuclear while including the unproductive subsidies to ethanol under the broad category "renewables".

But now I'm thinking you could include ethanol under renewables. But you should also calculate all the energy we get from renewables. If you really want to throw in all renewables together, go on to consider how much of our home heating is passive gain. How much of our cooling comes from rain and tree shade. How the water in the lakes we swim in is purified. How leaves and apple cores and dog poop get converted into fertilizer. If all of the natural, renewable processes that make life worth living could actually be quantified, we'd find that the contribution from finite sources is a tiny fraction of the energy we use. What's more a lot of it could be replaced. The sun can dry your clothes. You can bake bread in a solar cooker.

[luddite]

Why would you make a list of the bare minimum we need ? I really don't understand your philosophy. If we can continue to live comfortably and bring that level of comfort to the rest of the world by using a safe, abundant source of energy like nuclear fission, then why do we keep arguing about it ?

Because we can't. At least we can't address global warming without dropping our energy demands dramatically, at the very least in the short term.

[luddite]

Wind's long-term theoretical potential is much greater than current world energy consumption. The potential of wind power on land and near-shore to be 72 TW, or over fifteen times the world's current energy use and 40 times the current electricity use. The potential takes into account only locations with Class 3 (mean annual wind speeds ≥ 6.9 m/s at 80 m) or better wind regimes, which includes the locations suitable for low-cost (0.03–0.04 $/kWh) wind power generation and is in that sense conservative. It assumes 6 turbines per square km for 77 m diameter, 1.5 MW-turbines on roughly 13% of the total global land area (though that land would also be available for other compatible uses such as farming).

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/global_winds.html
Thanks Robinson. I've been looking for this information. I've found stats for individual states, and it's impressive - the Dakotas could supply the US, but I never had this broad an assessment before.

[DRBUZZ0]

Wind's long-term theoretical potential is much greater than current world energy consumption. The potential of wind power on land and near-shore to be 72 TW, or over fifteen times the world's current energy use and 40 times the current electricity use. The potential takes into account only locations with Class 3 (mean annual wind speeds ≥ 6.9 m/s at 80 m) or better wind regimes, which includes the locations suitable for low-cost (0.03–0.04 $/kWh) wind power generation and is in that sense conservative. It assumes 6 turbines per square km for 77 m diameter, 1.5 MW-turbines on roughly 13% of the total global land area (though that land would also be available for other compatible uses such as farming).

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/global_winds.html

Oh god no not this again. Not the whole "There are enough wind reserves to power our needs" or "theres enough energy from the sun in a day to power..."

You know there's probably enough body heat in humans to cover a fair part of energy need. Now if we can just cover every squre inch of everyone's skin with thermocouples...

Alright, be that as it may: 13% of the earth's surface. Well, I think that's a bit low, given that the comparison between wind energy and energy from conventional sources aren't really equal. Wind you need about twice as much capacity in order to assure there is enough energy given the fact that it needs to have a storage medium, or at least a buffer. Failing that, you still need to run generators full time, all be it at low load, but still consuming energy, just to assure stability of supply. Thus, if you go with more than 20% wind you automatically need continuous pump storage or huge flywheels and pressure reserves and so on..>

But okay... Much as I think it would be more like 25% we'll go with 13%....

That is all of the lower 48 states of the US plus the entire land area of Russia. Yes, the ENTIRE land area... as in all of siberia and the windswept planes that stretch from the sea of japan to the middleeast to eastern europe.


I'm trying to calculate the weight of such turbines but right now I'm not sure if that would be possible to do within the bounds of known iron ore reserves to make the steel for that many. I think it barely would, but it would just about max out steel manufacturing capacity for the next couple of decades..

The US is building one major megawatt wind turbine every minute. Yes, every minute and has been so for the past few years. Bush announced that he hoped for 20% wind power in 25 years. To do that it would require the current pace (which is feverish) to be quadrupled. Build a wind turbine every 15 seconds. Do it for a quarter of a century and get to 20% capacity.

That assumes energy demands don't increase, which they tend to do. So 25 years of building a lot faster than we currently have the capacity to even consider. And that gets you 20%. 20% ain't gona cut it. Would it help? Yes, but unless the other 80% can be provided... yeah... not good enough.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_Power

In recent years, the United States has added more wind energy to its grid than any other single country, and capacity is expected to grow by 3 gigawatts (3,000 megawatts) in 2007. Texas has become the leader in Wind Energy production, far surpassing California. In 2007, the state expects to add 2 gigawatts to raise its existing capacity to approximately 4.5 gigawatts. Iowa and Minnesota are expected to reach the 1 gigawatt mark by the end of 2007.[15] Wind power generation in the U.S. was up 31.8% in February, 2007 from February, 2006.[16]

----

Texas has more wind power projects than anywhere else in the US and more than almost any country. Theu added nearly 3 gigawatts of PEAK THEORETICAL CAPACITY in the past couple of years. They started in 1994 with the "Texas Wind" project and have sunk more funds into wind energy than any other energy source.

http://www.infinitepower.org/reswind.html
ttp://www.awea.org/projects/texas.html
http://www.glo.state.tx.us/sustain/wind.html


So.... Given the massive expenditure of both private and government funds and the huge project which has been building wind turbines faster than almost anywhere else in the world for more than a decade, I'd like to pose a question:

How many coal power plants has Texas been able to close?


Okay. Trick question! The answer is that not only are they not closing power plants, they're BUILDING THEM.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/02/19/8400164/index.htm


There are plans for building about ten new high capacity coal power plants. Yes, that's right. Not little peak plants either. Ten new billion dollar coal power plants, each cranking out a good half gigawatt plus. And why is this being done? Because as is the electricity companies are facing a near crisis of trying to *IMPORT* power from elsewhere.


So apparently NOT ONLY IS THE WHOLE WIND PROJECT NOT ALLOWING THEM TO PHASE-OUT OTHER ENERGY, IT CANNOT EVEN KEEP UP WITH THE DEMAND GROWTH BY ITSELF.


Oh what about denmark? As mentioned they only have managed to achieve their "20%" number of capacity factor (not energy provided... just capacity factor) due to being part of a much larger grid. Thus, it is really less than 5% of avaliable power in the electrical system, which is low enough to keep it from causing a major brownout on a constant basis.

But they've scaled back anyway as they're starting to hit a head. Denmark has huge wind reserves and coastline. Few places could be better suited for wind. And yet... it's not exactly easy or cheap for them to get even 1/5th of their "CAPACITY FACTOR" from wind. Billions and billions spent. And they IMPORT electricity. Denmark actually gets about 6% of it's electrical needs filled by energy from wind. And much of the energy ends up being sold at a LOSS due to the low energy densities and such.



Info:

http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=138
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/nov04/4005
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/partner/story?id=45658


I am so sick and tired of hearing about theoretical calculations of the energy avaliable on earth which completely fail to account for the practical and engineering considerations which are inherent to the extraction of the energy.

There is enough energy in waves breaking on beaches... in the gravitational flux from the orbit of the moon... in the charged particle collisions of the ionosphere to meet out energy needs. That's beyond debate. It's also totally irrelevant because there's no reasonable conceivable way of harnessing it within the next century and probably beyond.

Wind power worthless? No, it can help... but not nearly enough. It can also help if people put sensors on their bathroom lights or an extra layer of pink fluff in the attic, but it sure as hell ain't gona turn things around. Focusing on wind power is like focusing on a bucket brigade for a sinking ship. If I'm the captain of a sinking ship and I think I have a reasonable chance of saving it, you know what I focus on? The 10,000 horse power pumps. The watertight bulkheads. The possibility of patching the hole.

If the passengers want to do a bucket brigade to help a little, that's all well and good, but it only helps so much.

[BenBurch]

Because we can't. At least we can't address global warming without dropping our energy demands dramatically, at the very least in the short term.

Give me a sufficient budget and I will have the USA off all fossil fuels and onto totally renewable energy in the form of breeder reactors and spent fuel processing - making liquid hydrocarbons out of water hydrolysis and atmospheric CO2 to fuel trains and planes and automobiles and have it DONE in 20 years. And all of it done with a degree of safety that would make any industrial safety maven happy.

In the process we would beef up the national power grid and electrify the main lines of all major railroads using the old Milwaukee Road electrification as a model in terms of trains regenerating into the overhead at stops and on downgrades because fuel you don't have to synthesize very expensively is always better.

(And there are probably better ways than using the atmosphere as feedstock, but you COULD and if your energy were nuclear you would have energy to waste on it.)

[luddite]

And how many hundred thousand windmills would we need for that ?
I just did the math. You'd need about 50,000,000. Or to more specifically answer your question about how many hundreds of thousands, 500 of them. Good thing I like wind turbines.

Though keep in mind, that is 40 times what we need. So drop it down to 1,250,000. Then consider that I want to reduce demand to at least half and you get 625,000. And then throw in other sources to complement it and you get maybe 300,000? Or again to better answer your question about how many hundreds of thousands: 3.

That's one wind turbine for every 2000 cars.

http://ask.yahoo.com/20061013.html

[DRBUZZ0]

Appeal to emotion = 0.

Okay that is emotion-based, because you can't really use facts or science to make a value judgment on something like what the worth of human society is.

Ruling out nuclear and using extreme conservation is a method which would result in a world which, from an objective factual standpoint is neither good nor bad, since it depends on what you define as "progress" and "success" and "A life worth living."

Granted, I cannot quantify or give an empirical answer for why it is better to with technology and the capability to alter the world than it is to live a substance existence. But I find the idea personally absolutely pittyful and nearly worthless.

"Global warming" is only a problem if you consider it to be something which destroys things of value. If you do not care about coastlines or the climate or icesheets then it is not a problem, as the world will continue. Likewise, if you do not put value on increased control and advancement of society through energy, then the idea of drastic reductions is not a problem.

So I guess it goes beyond the scope of this. But the idea still, to me, is a terrible tragedy.

[BenBurch]

1,250,000

And how many people would die in the production of each kilowatt-hour?

How much blood are you willing to tolerate to build your future?

[luddite]

"Global warming" is only a problem if you consider it to be something which destroys things of value. If you do not care about coastlines or the climate or icesheets then it is not a problem, as the world will continue. Likewise, if you do not put value on increased control and advancement of society through energy, then the idea of drastic reductions is not a problem.

So I guess it goes beyond the scope of this. But the idea still, to me, is a terrible tragedy.

This is reasonable. But there's an interesting point about the things of value you listed. Would you consider all animals larger than a cat, including yourself, a "thing of value"? Because the last time the climate heated up by 7 degrees was the Permian extinction, and that's where we're headed.

[DRBUZZ0]

Give me a sufficient budget and I will have the USA off all fossil fuels and onto totally renewable energy in the form of breeder reactors and spent fuel processing - making liquid hydrocarbons out of water hydrolysis and atmospheric CO2 to fuel trains and planes and automobiles and have it DONE in 20 years. And all of it done with a degree of safety that would make any industrial safety maven happy.

In the process we would beef up the national power grid and electrify the main lines of all major railroads using the old Milwaukee Road electrification as a model in terms of trains regenerating into the overhead at stops and on downgrades because fuel you don't have to synthesize very expensively is always better.

(And there are probably better ways than using the atmosphere as feedstock, but you COULD and if your energy were nuclear you would have energy to waste on it.)


Yes, that notes something extremely important to keep in mind. Co2 is not only produced by power generating. That's not even half of it. Industry, heating homes, and obviously transportation are a HUGE issue.

Most credible plans focus on electric-centric approaches. Since electricity is the most useful and flexible and really the "Base" source of energy in any industrial country. Reducing the emissions from cars, trucks, trains and buses relies on moving to an electric-centric transportation model.

I really have very strong doubts about hydrogen and purely electric battery systems being a solution in the immediate future. However, I see great potential in "Plug-in Hybrids" they allow people to have a car with the range and all the performance and capacity of internal combustion engines, but are more efficient and since many trips are very short, if the batteries alone are capable of just providing 50-75 miles or so of range - enough for many commuters daily needs, then the actual amount of fuel burned as a whole could be cut in half.

As far as what to fuel them on, that goes back to energy sources. I think right now synthetic or hydrogenated hydrocarbons and/or stuff like methanol is the best bet. Burning some of that high hydrogen stuff can give you three parts water to co2. Huge reduction.

Other energy needs can also be addressed by electricity. Heating by high effeciency heat pumps. Alternatively municipal gas service could be extended and use a hydrogen-enriched methane natural gas combination. This could cut co2 in half from gas-fired heating and industry. And if it replaced oil-burning it could cut it by about 80% even.

Factor in other stuff. Metal forging can use coal or gas. They can also use electric arc furnaces.

Hence, this is why most of the credable plans for reducing co2 from transportation or elsewhere end up falling back on the electrical system.

The electrical system, of course, is no better source of energy if it produces co2.

So the first step is finding other means. This allows the baisis for a non-carbon energy based system.


Of course doing so means that electricity demand will increase. it will have to. Even if energy demand as a whole decreases, moving toward clean systems means it will be electric-centric more and more. So cutting down on electricity need? Even less realistic in this context

[BenBurch]

And your all-wind grid? What does it do when something like Katrina happens again, as surely it will?

You know that wind turbines have to feather during high winds like that and can generate no electricity. Don't you?

So the entire South is off the grid, can you "wheel" in enough power to keep the grid up?

And if you cannot, how many excess deaths are caused by no power at all?

[DRBUZZ0]

Wow... I just realized something. The amount of iron isn't the big problem. If I go based on the cost of wind turbine generator production and just look at the copper windings alone and then multiply that by the number of wind turbines needed to supply current energy needs, presuming a capacity factor of about 1/3, which is generous, and assuming that a storage medium of 50% effeciency is used (which is EXTREMELY generous)...

Then current needs could be met with an amount of copper equal to roughly 8 to 10 trillion dollars. Of course, that assumes copper supply is unlimited and the current price is fixed. In actuality, you'd buy out the market for copper pretty fast. I estimate that's about twice as much copper as is currently in existence in all man made structures and devices worldwide - since copper is rarely expended and has always been recycled and that production long ago was lower... That's close to twice the copper ever dug up and smelted in the whole of human history.

Lets see... aluminum would work for the generator windings as well, but it has higher resistance and is also not as good for inductive generating. So it would be cheaper but you would need two to three times as much.

Of course... none of this includes the transmission lines or transformers.


Geez... looks like cutting it in half won't do. 4 trillion is still a bit much, and again... that's at a set price

[BenBurch]

DRBUZZ0,

I would also build down the national highway system and encourage rail development with federal money. In the Constitution, the Congress is authorized to fund postal roads, well, if I had my way the Railway Post Office car would return to the rails and rail would become the backbone of the Postal System again.

And I would restrict federal funds for new mass transit builds to funds for electric light rail.

And of course fuel prices will be having people abandoning their automobiles as soon as that becomes even remotely possible.

-Ben

[Lonewulf]

Okay that is emotion-based, because you can't really use facts or science to make a value judgment on something like what the worth of human society is.

To weigh in on this, I'm more neutral here than I once was, but only relative to my previous position. I have always held that we need to pursue greater technology, greater understanding, and eventually to pursue a life amongst the stars. Our planet is too small and too fragile to make our home forever.

On the other hand... I just watched "An Inconvenient Truth", and it got me to thinking. This is serious. And I mean serious. I've gotten to the point where I may even support something that seems draconian, if there was no other choice, in order to attempt to make some sort of change. I want for there to be environmental buildings to be built; those that can stay warm and cool with less use of heating systems. I want common sense practices to be practiced by the average person. But this only goes so far, and can only accomplish so much.

I want us to continue our scientific and technological endeavors, tempered with rationality and wisdom, and yet still find a way to combat global warming without reverting to a dark ages. Could we eat more locally grown crops, tighten our belts a bit, and cut down on transportation issues? Yeah, sure, we could. In fact, I'd even support more of a "depend-on-local-ecology" type attitude, although not necessarily a law. But then, I live here in Eppelheim, Germany, where the local vegetables are better than anything I've had in the States.

I want more environmental-friendly transportation. I want cars that run on electricity, possibly through ultra capacitors. I want more use of transit systems like there exists here in Germany. In fact, transit systems are what is making a city like Manhattan give a relatively low carbon footprint compared to many other Metropolis' (Metropoli...?)

However, no matter how I see it, truly cutting down on energy requirements at the level that makes the most difference would take the greatest amount of change, and many of those changes would be very negative -- not just to our desires, but to our needs. A change that goes beyond the level of convenience, and impacts medical, scientific, commercial, and industrial endeavors... all three of which I feel takes more resources than simply living in your house and driving to your job.

However, I feel that the greatest change that can be made will be in our source of energy supply. That is where we can cut our carbon footprint the most, from what I understand. That and the use of transportation -- although I'm not sure what we can do with jet planes.

I just did the math. You'd need about 50,000,000. Or to more specifically answer your question about how many hundreds of thousands, 500 of them. Good thing I like wind turbines.

Though keep in mind, that is 40 times what we need. So drop it down to 1,250,000. Then consider that I want to reduce demand to at least half and you get 625,000. And then throw in other sources to complement it and you get maybe 300,000? Or again to better answer your question about how many hundreds of thousands: 3.

That's one wind turbine for every 2000 cars.

http://ask.yahoo.com/20061013.html
That's a lot of turbines. 50,000,000 is a hell of a lot, and 1,250,000 is barely anything compared to that figure, but is still a hell of a lot.

Personally, I'm not really a fan of wind turbines. But that means nothing in the context of what we need to do, as a race, to survive.

I'm trying to calculate the weight of such turbines but right now I'm not sure if that would be possible to do within the bounds of known iron ore reserves to make the steel for that many. I think it barely would, but it would just about max out steel manufacturing capacity for the next couple of decades..
Out of curiosity, for nuclear reactors, if they replaced coal reserves and we involved reactors that used thorium and breeder reactors... could we support those far more easily than we could wind turbines, resource-wise?

[BenBurch]

...
Out of curiosity, for nuclear reactors, if they replaced coal reserves and we involved reactors that used thorium and breeder reactors... could we support those far more easily than we could wind turbines, resource-wise?

I believe so, but we will still need to face our metals shortage eventually.

A few escape routes are possible;

1. Replace metals with ceramics and plastics wherever possible.

2. Find alloys of common metals that have some of the properties of rare metals.

3. Recovery of metals already in landfills (a can of worms - literally and figuratively)

4. Development of technologies for VERY deep mining of the earth.

5. Development of technologies for access to metals in the asteroid belt or on the moon.

[Lonewulf]

I believe so, but we will still need to face our metals shortage eventually.

A few escape routes are possible;

1. Replace metals with ceramics and plastics wherever possible.
With oil peaking concerns, won't there come a point where plastics might become uneconomical?

2. Find alloys of common metals that have some of the properties of rare metals.

3. Recovery of metals already in landfills (a can of worms - literally and figuratively)
Those two sound good enough, not sure about 2 though.

4. Development of technologies for VERY deep mining of the earth.
Hm, possible, but also possibly very very intensive...

5. Development of technologies for access to metals in the asteroid belt or on the moon.
This one will take some time to develop, at the least.

Hmm... I wonder if we can ever make carbon nanotubes easy to make and economical... wonder how long those things will last?

[luddite]

Wow... I just realized something. The amount of iron isn't the big problem. If I go based on the cost of wind turbine generator production and just look at the copper windings alone and then multiply that by the number of wind turbines needed to supply current energy needs, presuming a capacity factor of about 1/3, which is generous, and assuming that a storage medium of 50% effeciency is used (which is EXTREMELY generous)...

Then current needs could be met with an amount of copper equal to roughly 8 to 10 trillion dollars. Of course, that assumes copper supply is unlimited and the current price is fixed. In actuality, you'd buy out the market for copper pretty fast. I estimate that's about twice as much copper as is currently in existence in all man made structures and devices worldwide - since copper is rarely expended and has always been recycled and that production long ago was lower... That's close to twice the copper ever dug up and smelted in the whole of human history.

Lets see... aluminum would work for the generator windings as well, but it has higher resistance and is also not as good for inductive generating. So it would be cheaper but you would need two to three times as much.

Of course... none of this includes the transmission lines or transformers.


Geez... looks like cutting it in half won't do. 4 trillion is still a bit much, and again... that's at a set price

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/tim_flannery/2007/06/tim_flannery.html#comment-616443

If you looked up a turbine that a generator with about 500kg of copper with about 400kg in the generator, you are looking at a generator of about 2.8 tonnes. For the lightest weight designs this is up in the 1.3MW region with a 65m diameter rotor. This would give about 4000MWhr per year to supply all of UK electricity with these (which no one is seriously considering and assuming massive energy storage) you would need about 81,000 of these. To supply a more realistic 10% of UK energy you would need 8,100 of them, less than the 10,000 or so windmills in medieval England

... the amount of copper in a wind turbine generator is about the same as in any other generator whether driven by coal, gas or nuclear power. In fact given the costs of excess weight on top of the pylon, there is an incentive to use somewhat more expensive generators that reduce the weight of copper and other materials. The only difference in the copper use by wind turbines is due to differences in load factor. If the load factor of a gas turbine driven generator is about 70% against a 35% load factor for a wind turbine is would require twice the copper. A drawback to be sure but not the disaster you imply.

While copper supply is surely an issue,

http://www.321energy.com/editorials/watson/watson121605.html

keep in mind that there are 55 lbs of copper in the average car. There are 2000 cars on the road for every turbine needed, as previously calculated. Or maybe 500 if you want to do an all-wind grid and replace every single kilowatt with wind power. So for every wind turbine you want to build, you take 9/500 of the cars off the road. It's a good start. Makes me want to put up more wind turbines.

http://www.copper.org/copperhome/Technology/innovations_home.html

The real constraint on wind penetration is time and manufacturing capacity.

Storage mediums of 50% efficiency are not generous at all, either.

Taking into account evaporation losses from the exposed water surface and conversion losses, approximately 70% to 85% of the electrical energy used to pump the water into the elevated reservoir can be regained. The technique is currently the most cost-effective means of storing large amounts of electrical energy on an operating basis, but capital costs and the presence of appropriate geography are critical decision factors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_storage_hydroelectricity

My favourite storage is the VRB Flow Battery, which lists 60-75% efficiencies. A significant amount of the losses are to space conditioning of the building the battery is housed in, and they have calculated that 80% efficiencies are possible with pretty minimal insulation. I like it because it can go pretty much anywhere and doesn't leave nasty toxic cleanup issues.

http://www.vrbpower.com/technology/ess-benefits.html

[BenBurch]

...
Hm, possible, but also possibly very very intensive...


When you go deep enough, the air pressure becomes a real problem!

You'd have to consider airlocking the whole thing, and essentially building it in zones if there are going to be people in it. But I think that you might be able to fully automate a mine.

[BenBurch]

Pumped hydro assumes you have access to that much fresh water.

I don't know if you have realized it, but much of this country is running out of that commodity.

[RecoveringYuppy]

You know there's probably enough body heat in humans to cover a fair part of energy need. Now if we can just cover every squre inch of everyone's skin with thermocouples...
There's actually an interesting point here about something that drives me bonkers in regard to whether raising some kind of energy crop is a good idea.

Human food intake is in the neighborhood of 1 kwh per day. Our energy requirements are in the neighborhood of 250 kwh/day. It drives me crazy when I hear someone say wouldn't it be wonderful if we just harnessed the energy "wasted" from the crops we grow to eat? If we were to go the biomass route to any substantial degree energy wouldn't come from the waste products of our food production, our food would be the waste products of our energy industry.

[luddite]

Pumped hydro assumes you have access to that much fresh water.

I don't know if you have realized it, but much of this country is running out of that commodity.
Pumped hydro is site specific. It won't work everywhere. But it is cheapest where it's available.

That's part of the reason for my enthusiasm about flow batteries. They are more versatile, while sacrificing little in the way of costs or efficiency. They're also environmentally benign.

[Hindmost]

Let's imagine what's feasible. Germany is putting in 100 turbines monthly, averaging about 2 MW each. The population of the US is almost four-fold. More importantly the US has more land mass and much better winds. So at least 10,000 MW annually and maybe double that should be possible in a few years. Of course, that's not a steady 10,000 MW. It would probably average out at something like a quarter of that. So let's say 2,500 MW - 5,000 MW. Hmmm. That's pathetic. California's peak demand alone goes into the 50,000's. Over 20 years we get 50,000-100,000 MW. Over 30 we get 75,000-150,000. I suspect the higher end. Technology can only improve. That's only the demand from a few states. And while conservation will go a long way, we'll probably also be electrifying transportation.

We'd have to do something way more dramatic than Germany. Make wind a national priority. Convert existing factories to turbine making. I'm not advocating this, though something of the sort may eventually be done anyway. 3-6 nuclear plants a year is starting to look awfully tempting, I'll admit.

I foresee solar PV making a similar small contribution to peak. I see a bigger role for solar thermal. Throw in some biomass. I have no idea how much there is. You have to be really careful about it anyway, because you can make soil productivity go up in smoke. And soil productivity is going to be a big priority. I know biomass is significant, but I don't know how to assess it. Cogen is out there. Geothermal.

Coal? We need coal?

I guess that's what David Hughes says too. He says we need it all. He's confident that coal will never replace the decline in oil and natural gas anyway. How do you feel about generation from natural gas using cogen in areas where supply is not an issue for the foreseeable future? Can't agree with you on coal. We need to be getting rid of it as fast as we can. That's the point.

Carbon sequestration. Well, we need to stop wasting our time. That may be another pipe dream. It's been the rationale behind maintaining coal. I've been annoyed with energy planners in Ontario that basically use it as a lie to support continued use of coal. Because even a cursory review indicates that power plants built to burn coal conventionally are in no way equipped to sequester it. You need the proper siting to begin with. It's a lot more complicated and expensive to build a coal plant capable of sequestration. Sequestration reduces the efficiency of coal generation, too, so you burn even more. And you never capture it all.

I've seen one compelling opinion suggesting we need to fund one study intensely to look at the potential of sequestration at one study site and pull the plug on funding of coal in every other case. And yesterday, one analyst said that the sequestration sites in China are completely dwarfed by the immense lignite deposits. So it's not going to be a panacea either.

If it turns out, as is becoming increasingly likely, that we'll be driven to attempt to pull carbon out of the living environment to sequester it, we will feel a little stupid if all the sequestration sites are saturated with coal that we thought we could burn because it was safely sequestered.

As an engineer friend of mine put it, the absolutely cheapest form of sequestration is to keep it in the ground in the first place. And by that, he includes all the costs of more expensive energy/conservation or whatever to reduce the need. He has never encountered a case where this wasn't obvious at first glance.

I think the issues are coming clearer.

My opine:

Coal isn't going away anytime soon. Engineering clean coal is needed since it is such a large resource in the world. Engineers can be clever enough to come up with something that catches most of the CO2.

Build coal gasification plants to help with oil shortage.

Wind power needs to be harnessed quickly...however, the wind doesn't typically blow when need most in the summer.

abandon corn based ethanol as it is almost useless and work on switch grass enzymes to make it useable.

Immediately raise fuel standards on cars.

Start building about 5-6 nuclear plants in the states immediately and continue to build them over the next 30-40 years...other countries with the technology should do the same.

Eliminate natural gas electric plants over time so we don't use up this great resource to make electricity. In the states, that is what we have been building due to the problems with coal and nuclear being difficult to site and expensive in capital costs....it is truly short sighted.

Conservation will occur as heating homes becomes expensive...set new standards for construction that force improved thermal designs. Include reasonable addition of solar power in the standards as well as geothermal--for both residential and commercial.

It's either this type of action or sacrifice one heck of a lot of people. (although I can't give a timetable, within 50 years, this world has some real problems)

Everything depends on how fast one can implement them. Putting everything together is going to be tough in the US since engineering enrollments are not strong enough to support all the research and developoment. Plus the US govt is bankrupting the average person and feeding the top 1% of the population with tax breaks and has a 10 trillion dollar deficit. Therefore, in the near future, when subsidizing such items as wind solar clean coal and nuclear is necessary, the money won't be there. Add in global warming and perhaps some natural disasters such as the san adreas fault and we have one big mess--especially when we are adding 75 million people to the world's population each year. I'm with buzzo on this, it is really depressing.

glenn

[Lonewulf]

Hm, looking at Barack Obama's website, it looks like he supports nuclear energy.

Safe and Secure Nuclear Energy: Nuclear power represents more than 70 percent of our non-carbon generated electricity. It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table. However, there is no future for expanded nuclear without first addressing four key issues: public right-to-know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation. Barack Obama introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate to establish guidelines for tracking, controlling and accounting for spent fuel at nuclear power plants.

To prevent international nuclear material from falling into terrorist hands abroad, Obama worked closely with Sen. Dick Lugar (R -- IN) to strengthen international efforts to identify and stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction. As president, Obama will make safeguarding nuclear material both abroad and in the U.S. a top anti-terrorism priority.

Obama will also lead federal efforts to look for a safe, long-term disposal solution based on objective, scientific analysis. In the meantime, Obama will develop requirements to ensure that the waste stored at current reactor sites is contained using the most advanced dry-cask storage technology available. Barack Obama believes that Yucca Mountain is not an option. Our government has spent billions of dollars on Yucca Mountain, and yet there are still significant questions about whether nuclear waste can be safely stored there.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/energy/

I'm not making an argument here of any sort, just want to say that if this guy ends up nominated, that's where my vote is going.

[DRBUZZ0]

With oil peaking concerns, won't there come a point where plastics might become uneconomical?


Those two sound good enough, not sure about 2 though.


Hm, possible, but also possibly very very intensive...


This one will take some time to develop, at the least.

Hmm... I wonder if we can ever make carbon nanotubes easy to make and economical... wonder how long those things will last?


Well, world energy usage is not something the equivalent of 15 terawatts of continuous power usage. That's not just electricity. That's electricity, oil, gas, heating, transportation, manufacturing and so on.

So within the next few decades, I'll give the very liberal estimate that 100 terawatts of power would cover all forseable needs, invcuding increased use of power-hungry technologies to improve the enviornment (such as desalination to avoid depleting fresh water reserves, thermal decomposition of chemical waste and so on)

So 100 terawatts seems like a reasonable maximum for what would be needed, ok?

Looking at thorium reactors... the thorium-based breeder low-burnup reactors, which would be the ones with generally the highest effeciecy, it looks like you can reasonably expect to do one gigawatt year per metric ton of thorium oxide fuel at a 50% fuel burnup. In other words by the end of the year 50% of the fuel has been depleted, and in most current reactors you'd need to either reprocess or somehow supplement the fuel at that point.

Thus about 500 kg of thorium dioxide ceramic fuel pellets. That equates to about 460 kg of thorium per year, and about 200-300 tons of standard-grade thorium-baring ore which would need to be dug up per gigawatt year.


It *could* be higher, if higher thermal effeciency engines were used, and the reactor were made as effecient as theoretically possible. But in practice, you with current systems you can run a one gigawatt reactor for a year on about a ton.


So you'd need 46,000 metric tons maximum of thorium fuel to power a super energy-demanding world using 100 terawatts (nearly 10 times current demand)

World reserves based on a 2001 study for reasonably assured thorium reserves by conventional mining come out to about two million tons considered "easily obtainable" and about three million tons considered "Reasonably obtainable"

So that would be enough for 65 years at 100 terawatts assuming that energy demand increased drastically... almost as much as could be reasonably imagined and that 100% of needs were from thorium-based nuclear with no use of anything else, not even considering existing hydroelectric facilities or geothermal or anything...

Now, if you account for soil reserves, meaning throium in sands and soils and such, that's actually where most thorium is. It's recoverable but costs about five times more to recover. That would primarly done by seperating Monazite sand from silica sand. It's reasonably easy to do but requires a lot more material be processed than conventional mining...

That would increase it roughtly 10-20 fold. So that would mean that by known minable reserves and extractable thorium sand reserves we'd be set for somewhere between 650 and 1300 years+

Now if we go from that to total known upper crust content, meaning the thorium distributed around the world but not necessarily concentrated enough to make extraction worthwhile by current methods... then we increase that by a factor of a good 200x. But... I'm not sure that's reasonable to dig up every inch of thorium-baring soil. So that would into the hundreds of thousands of years.

But I'm not sure it's reasonable to think that the total soil would be dug up and processed for thorium.

However... factor in sea water and also the estimated unknown reserves on the sea floor and elsewhere.. (based on what we know of the sea floor and the mineral distribution of thorium and extrapolating from there)...

That's... hard to really make a good estimate on.. but reasonably... it seems like a good million years... at least. To be honest, I'm not sure at all, but conservatively... at least a million years.


So therefore, by sticking to the most conservative numbers and being as reasonable as possible.

With current electriticy usage:

About 6 thousand years on easily minable deposits
About 6 million years on all known deposits
Millions to billions on estimated total earth depostis

At the highest reasonable power that mankind would need in the forseable future:

About a century, maybe less on known easily minable deposits
A few thousand years on all known deposits
On all estimated earth deposits.... millions??? Not sure.


This doubles if you change the reactor numbers to reflect the highest burn effeciency theoretically possible by known methods.

[Hindmost]

In spite of biase, there has to be some accurate assessment out there somewhere. People aren't in the habit of spending invisible "mystery money", unless they cook their books.

The question is, why should I accept the claim that wind energy is cheaper or more easy to put into place than nuclear? What estimate is there for such a claim?

this link is worth posting again as it is very comprehensive.

http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2005/ElecCost.pdf

It gives a big overview of electric energy production cost world wide.
And this link below is worth posting again as well as it shows how the US can save energy and where it is spent in terms of quads...

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/pimentel/...nservation.pdf (http://www.hubbertpeak.com/pimentel/...nservation.pdf)


glenn

[Belz...]

Because we can't. At least we can't address global warming without dropping our energy demands dramatically, at the very least in the short term.

Of course we CAN. All we have to do is stop being afraid of the boogeyman and start working on those plants.

[Belz...]

I just did the math. You'd need about 50,000,000. Or to more specifically answer your question about how many hundreds of thousands, 500 of them. Good thing I like wind turbines.

Though keep in mind, that is 40 times what we need. So drop it down to 1,250,000. Then consider that I want to reduce demand to at least half and you get 625,000. And then throw in other sources to complement it and you get maybe 300,000? Or again to better answer your question about how many hundreds of thousands: 3.

That's one wind turbine for every 2000 cars.

Yeah, again you're asking us to live in huts.

This is reasonable. But there's an interesting point about the things of value you listed. Would you consider all animals larger than a cat, including yourself, a "thing of value"? Because the last time the climate heated up by 7 degrees was the Permian extinction, and that's where we're headed.

Which is why we need a power source that will stop contributing to this problem, if not turn it around.

keep in mind that there are 55 lbs of copper in the average car. There are 2000 cars on the road for every turbine needed, as previously calculated.

Yeah, and we sure don't need those damn wheeled things, do we ?

Okay that is emotion-based, because you can't really use facts or science to make a value judgment on something like what the worth of human society is.

Not sure what your point was, I have to admit.

Higher quality of life > lower quality of life.

[SilverBee]

Very well said, DrBuzzo. I've heard some of those comments, in part, from friends also "in the know." I would say this that environmentalists at least have their hearts and motives in the right place. They've been fighting a hard uphill battle with all their efforts to help to save the planet. I worry about politicians who, instead of taking positions based on real understanding and personal integrity, are influenced by ideology and lobbyists. The best and most sensible plans often go awry because of politics. We're just now experiencing the way an administration can exercise a policy of controlling what scientists can say. How would a nuclear energy plan overcome that danger?

[luddite]

Of course we CAN. All we have to do is stop being afraid of the boogeyman and start working on those plants.

No, Belz, what I've been saying for some time now is that we've run out of time. We can start working on the nuclear plants. That won't be enough. There is enough potential to build wind turbines for all our needs eventually. I'm more confident of that than nuclear fission. But we simply don't have the skilled manpower or manufacturing capacity to transform all the world's coal plants to wind nor nuclear in time. It is apparent that a lion's share of the effort will now have to fall on conservation.

Now, when we lower emissions down to a tiny level, we may be able to slowly ramp up to a higher energy level again. And we can have the discussion about how we're going to do that. But we're in real trouble now. And survival will call for drastic reductions that need to come too quickly to build the thousands of nuclear power plants required, even if we assume we have the fuel to power them all.

Again, the narrow discussion now is not about nuclear vs renewables. The discussion now is about tightening our belts or committing collective suicide.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050223130549.htm

[DRBUZZ0]

No, Belz, what I've been saying for some time now is that we've run out of time. We can start working on the nuclear plants. That won't be enough. There is enough potential to build wind turbines for all our needs eventually. I'm more confident of that than nuclear fission.


Eventually? So this is basically back to the whole "We need a source of power that isn't CO2 and we may already be too late to implement it and wind turbines are going to be able to produce energy without CO2 much better than nuclear"

How many times does this need to be addressed? yes, we're running out of time if we haven't already. Yes, we need another power source. That much is agreed.

Now comes the obvious fact that really can't be escaped no matter how "confident" you are of anything.

IRREFUTABLE ABSOLUTELY CONFORMABLE FACT: REACTORS MAKE GIGAWATTS AND CAN BE BUILT IN SHORT ORDER FOR REASONABLE PRICES

It takes ten years to build a power plant with the current system from proposal to operations. It takes less than ONE year to build a modular nuclear reactor from existing blue prints to add to an existing power plant. It takes less than TWO TO THREE years to construct a nuclear plant.

ENERGY OUTPUT = EASILY TWO GIGAWATTS


CAPE WIND PROJECT PROPOSAL: TWO YEARS TO OPERATIONAL STATUS
FOUR TO FIVE FOR FULL CAPACITY OUTPUT

130 Turbines (plus pilons transmission equipment, and so on)

PEAK Power output 430 Megawatts.
EXPECTED AVERAGE: ~130 Megawatts.

AND THIS IS BEING BUILT IN THE MOST FAVORABLE LOCATION ON THE EAST COAST OF THE UNITED STATES.


This is not a matter of contention. It's the way it is. You can do all the "well if we cut our needs in half" and "maybe we could get the wind generator effeciency up 20%" It doesn't matter how much you fudge the numbers or try to make it fit. Nuclear produces so much vastly, ridiculously more energy that you simply cannot argue with any credibility that a wind turbine system could EVER be match that in terms of cost and time to build.




But we simply don't have the skilled manpower or manufacturing capacity to transform all the world's coal plants to wind nor nuclear in time.


Convert our generating capacity from coal to nuclear in time? Maybe not. But if we can't convert it from coal to nuclear in time then we sure as hell can't convert it to wind! And we sure as hell can convert a lot more of it in a lot shorter time to nuclear and actually make a difference, if we STOP WITH THE WHINING AND START WITH THE BUILDING.

Saying that we cannot convert them from coal to nuclear fast enough and therefore we should go to wind instead is like saying "Gee, I'm not sure that this SR-17 is going to get me there fast enough, because it's only capable of going at mach 3.3 and.. that might not be enough. So I think I'll take this piper cub instead and go at 60 naughts. Actually... even better... i'll walk. No... I'll crawl on my belly instead. That will certainly have a better chance of getting me there in time, since mach 3.3 just might not cut it."



It is apparent that a lion's share of the effort will now have to fall on conservation.


Okay, so lets say we cut the energy needs by 40%.. Now we're talking an effort like world war II + The Marshal Plan + Moonshot combined and multiplied by ten. But lets just say that somehow, mankind is able to cut energy needs dramatically reversing the centuries long trend of rising needs...

Now where is the remaining 60 percent going to come from? Hmm??? Coal?

Actually, if you cut energy needs by that much it would still not necesserily mean a drop in electrical demand. Remember how it was discussed that electricity is the best choice for moving the transportation and industrial needs to?

So I guess in addition to cutting energy we also don't care about not in any way addressing the sources of energy...

Oh wait I forgot... wind power... Oh wait I forgot... Math.


[/quote]
Now, when we lower emissions down to a tiny level, we may be able to slowly ramp up to a higher energy level again. And we can have the discussion about how we're going to do that. But we're in real trouble now. And survival will call for drastic reductions that need to come too quickly to build the thousands of nuclear power plants required, even if we assume we have the fuel to power them all.


Assume we have the fuel to power them? That's like debating whether or not we would have enough oil for the foeseable future if all cars required a half liter of gasoline to drive for five years. (In which case... we would... just trust me on this one... seriously... I'm not even going to try the math)

Aircraft carrier... big, right? Big and powerful, right? Big radar.. big catapults... goes really fast...

The AMOUNT OF NUCLEAR FUEL TO RUN IT FOR IT"S ENTIRE LIFETIME (DECADES) WOULD FIT IN THE POCKETS OF A PAIR OF JEANS!


[quote]
Again, the narrow discussion now is not about nuclear vs renewables. The discussion now is about tightening our belts or committing collective suicide.


No the discussion is equivalent as to whether you can meet energy needs using Niagra Falls or a hamster in an exercise wheel.

And I do not want to hear again how there is enough wind energy in the world to meet our needs many times over. YES YES YES, I KNOW, If you COULD EXTRACT THE ENERGY FROM EVERY CUBIC METER OF ATMOSPHERE IN THE ENTIRITY OF THE EARTH WE WOULD HAVE ALL THE ENERGY WE NEED

You know where else there is plenty of energy?

The Orbit of the moon
The charged particles in the inosphere
The potential energy that you could convert to kenitic by knocking several mountain ranges over
The neutrinos that pass through everything constantly and almost never collide with matter
The cosmic rays that get deflected by the magnetic field of the earth
The magnetic potential in the earth's field
The RF energy produced by the vibrations of atoms around the solar system


YES YES YES... The energy is there AND JUST AS ABSOLUTELY ABSURD TO THINK YOU COULD ACTUALLY TAP

[DRBUZZ0]

Okay I just got off the phone with my friend's father who is an engineer at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory.

Asked the following questions after describing this and recorded it:

How long would it take to build a naval reactor, steam generator, turbines, support equipment?

"Depends if they're tooled for it, because we build them every now and then. But start to finish? A couple months maybe. Not long. The timetable is dictated by the hull construction"


Could you build the big reactor system such as on a Nimitz class carrier in under a month?

"Well, the propulsion system actually has two reactors, but if you're tooled for it, you could probably do it in under a month"

How much electrical power can you get from that?

"You get better than a couple hundred megawatts"

So you think you could put a 200+ megawatt power plant together like this?

"Sure. The Russians actually are building a floating nuclear power plant prototype. It's an idea that has come up before. The Army operated one a while ago and we had a couple of these sort of things on barges that powered the panama canal zone base and also in Alaska. I think the mobile power plant idea is great. I'd love to see them bring that back"

So could you build a mobile power plant in a month?

"I really don't know. That would depend very much on the hull you put it in or where you put it and the generators and turbines. If you're tooled for it and, probably could be done. On short order that would take longer."

What if you had a production line could you crank these out one a month or so, reasonably speaking?

"Oh, if you're set up for that you can sure. If you can do the hull or whatever, then the reactor system isn't going to be the problem."

Is there any reason why you couldn't mass produce these at a rate similar to other large industrial equipment?

"I don't see why not. Yes, it's a standard design like that if you're set for that you could."

What about scaling it up to more power?

"You could add more reactors and combine them yes"

What about building larger reactors?

"The largest we currently make is the one I told you about, but you could scale it up, yes. You'd need to redesign the reactor though, but you can do this at any size."

How long would it take to design a new reactor?

"Depends, but if it's a fairly standard design not long. They did the SG9 in a couple years. If it's based on something that's not new it would be pretty fast."

Reasonably speaking, do you think that it would be feisable to mass produce medium to large power plant systems as I described?

"Yes"

How many could you produce in a year?

"Depends on how big an operation you have. If asking if you could make them one a month, that would be doable. If need be, you could do more than one at once."

So lets say you do a gigawatt plant in a box, could you do that in a month?

"Probably, if you had an operation for that. That wouldn't be too hard. You could do that with a few of the reactors, yes, but you'd be easier to go with a scaled up one."

So if it's an issue of the hull size to fit this, how big would you need for a theoretical self-contained gigawatt-level power plant? The size of maybe a big cruise ship?

"No. Wouldn't need to be that big I don't think. If that's all it is then no. If you mean you want support and the distribution.. I don't know. But for generating. No, wouldn't need to be that big."

So in closing, would it be financially possible and technically possible to build many, perhaps a dozen gigawatt-level nuclear power plants using such a design method within a year?

"Financially? If it's the navy that'd be no problem. The reactor isn't that expensive compared to the rest of the ship. If you're talking about a budget to build a carrier, then yes, you could do that if you had to."

And finally...the US could be converted entirely to nuclear in a short time, like a decade if such modular methods were put to use?

"Sure, if they left it up to us we'd have that done. You could do that. Engineering wise, sure you could do that. You'd have to get the politicians to pull their heads out of their asses, that's the only problem. Engineering's never the problem. If you let the guys who know this run things then we'd have been all nuclear a long time ago"

I hope we do soon

"Don't hold your breath there. They have a bunch of idiots who have no idea what they're talking about yelling about how it'll blow up like bomb."

I'm engaged in a debate as I mentioned about whether you could run the country and the world's power needs on wind energy as an alternative.

"Run the country on windmills. ********"

[robinson]

I'm going to have to step out of this for a bit. This thread is making my concern about the future and climate change increase a lot... to the point of near panic.

Right.

[DRBUZZ0]

ETA: The stared out word at the end of the quote is the name of a Penn and Teller show on Showtime.

[Lonewulf]

this link is worth posting again as it is very comprehensive.

http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2005/ElecCost.pdf
My recording of the estimates:

All 5% Discount Rate

Nuclear:
CAN-N: $25 per MWh
USA-N: $30 per MWh
CZE-N: $22 per MWh
FIN-N: $27 per MWh
FRA-N: $25 per MWh

Highest:
JPN-N: $48 per MWh

Nuclear Fuel:
Per MWh Total: $3.57 for Canada, $4.64 for U.S. at 5% discount rate (NOTE: According to the report, the fuel costs are included with overall costs, so don't bother adding the fuel to the cost above).

Wind Energy:
Highest: $84 per MWh in AUT-W, $90 CZE-W, $82 DEU-W2, $95 NLD-W

Lowest:
$30 in USA-W, $33 in GRC-W3, around $40 in GRC-W1, GRC-W2, and GRC-W4

Hydroelectric:
Cheapest: AUT-H2 and SVK-H: $40 per MWh
Second Highest, EU-H: 75$ per MWh
Highest: JPN-H: 140$ per MWh

Solar Power:

Lowest:
USA-S1: $180 MWh
USA-S2: $100 per MWh

Highest:
CZE-S: $1500 per MWh

Mid-Range: DNK-S: $460 per MWh



So, the HIGHEST in nuclear energy costs is about equal to the mid-range of wind, and about the lowest of hydro-electric. And the ever-touted life-saving solar energy is off the charts. (Yes, I know, peak is great and all, but I do like having my energy available to me when I need it).

Well, I know which horse I'm betting on.



EDIT!

I missed the bit on Geothermal. There's *one* estimate of Geothermal, that pegs the cost at about $27 per MWh and gives it an assumed lifetime of 40 years. Yes, geothermal is cheap! However, it's also only usable in certain areas.

Question: What's kWe mean?

EDIT: THE SEQUEL

If we used breeder reactors and reactors that used thorium, would the price go up substantially?

[DRBUZZ0]

KiloWatt (electrical). You see it sometimes when denoting power produced by something like a reactor or a boiler or whatever. It just means that you actually get a kilowatt of electricity from the system, as opposed to the thermal energy of the reactor or the mechanical energy of a windmill or whatever.

Prolly just to avoid confusion because you sometimes see a plant rated in Kw(t) which tells what the net total energy it creates thermally, which really isn't what matters.

[DRBUZZ0]

Perhaps the difference in energy which can be provided can be demonstrated by a simple visual example of real world nuclear versus wind power usage:

Nuclear powered:
http://depletedcranium.com/carrier.jpg

Wind powered:
http://depletedcranium.com/sailin3.jpg


Which one would you want on your side?

[Hindmost]

Okay I just got off the phone with my friend's father who is an engineer at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory.

Asked the following questions after describing this and recorded it:

How long would it take to build a naval reactor, steam generator, turbines, support equipment?

"Depends if they're tooled for it, because we build them every now and then. But start to finish? A couple months maybe. Not long. The timetable is dictated by the hull construction"


Could you build the big reactor system such as on a Nimitz class carrier in under a month?

"Well, the propulsion system actually has two reactors, but if you're tooled for it, you could probably do it in under a month"

How much electrical power can you get from that?

"You get better than a couple hundred megawatts"

So you think you could put a 200+ megawatt power plant together like this?

"Sure. The Russians actually are building a floating nuclear power plant prototype. It's an idea that has come up before. The Army operated one a while ago and we had a couple of these sort of things on barges that powered the panama canal zone base and also in Alaska. I think the mobile power plant idea is great. I'd love to see them bring that back"

So could you build a mobile power plant in a month?

"I really don't know. That would depend very much on the hull you put it in or where you put it and the generators and turbines. If you're tooled for it and, probably could be done. On short order that would take longer."

What if you had a production line could you crank these out one a month or so, reasonably speaking?

"Oh, if you're set up for that you can sure. If you can do the hull or whatever, then the reactor system isn't going to be the problem."

Is there any reason why you couldn't mass produce these at a rate similar to other large industrial equipment?

"I don't see why not. Yes, it's a standard design like that if you're set for that you could."

What about scaling it up to more power?

"You could add more reactors and combine them yes"

What about building larger reactors?

"The largest we currently make is the one I told you about, but you could scale it up, yes. You'd need to redesign the reactor though, but you can do this at any size."

How long would it take to design a new reactor?

"Depends, but if it's a fairly standard design not long. They did the SG9 in a couple years. If it's based on something that's not new it would be pretty fast."

Reasonably speaking, do you think that it would be feisable to mass produce medium to large power plant systems as I described?

"Yes"

How many could you produce in a year?

"Depends on how big an operation you have. If asking if you could make them one a month, that would be doable. If need be, you could do more than one at once."

So lets say you do a gigawatt plant in a box, could you do that in a month?

"Probably, if you had an operation for that. That wouldn't be too hard. You could do that with a few of the reactors, yes, but you'd be easier to go with a scaled up one."

So if it's an issue of the hull size to fit this, how big would you need for a theoretical self-contained gigawatt-level power plant? The size of maybe a big cruise ship?

"No. Wouldn't need to be that big I don't think. If that's all it is then no. If you mean you want support and the distribution.. I don't know. But for generating. No, wouldn't need to be that big."

So in closing, would it be financially possible and technically possible to build many, perhaps a dozen gigawatt-level nuclear power plants using such a design method within a year?

"Financially? If it's the navy that'd be no problem. The reactor isn't that expensive compared to the rest of the ship. If you're talking about a budget to build a carrier, then yes, you could do that if you had to."

And finally...the US could be converted entirely to nuclear in a short time, like a decade if such modular methods were put to use?

"Sure, if they left it up to us we'd have that done. You could do that. Engineering wise, sure you could do that. You'd have to get the politicians to pull their heads out of their asses, that's the only problem. Engineering's never the problem. If you let the guys who know this run things then we'd have been all nuclear a long time ago"

I hope we do soon

"Don't hold your breath there. They have a bunch of idiots who have no idea what they're talking about yelling about how it'll blow up like bomb."

I'm engaged in a debate as I mentioned about whether you could run the country and the world's power needs on wind energy as an alternative.

"Run the country on windmills. ********"

I don't think the months time period to construct reactor components is accurate. It would take months just to forge the materials. The schedule for the Korean units I worked on was 46-48 months for two steam generators. The goal in advanced designs is to reduce the construction time to about 30 months--from purchase order to ready to ship. That is with robotic welding and working 3 shifts. The reactor vessel schedule is a bit shorter.

glenn

[Lonewulf]

How would that compare to erecting wind or solar, though, for the equivalent energy capacity?

[DRBUZZ0]

I don't think the months time period to construct reactor components is accurate. It would take months just to forge the materials. The schedule for the Korean units I worked on was 46-48 months for two steam generators. The goal in advanced designs is to reduce the construction time to about 30 months--from purchase order to ready to ship. That is with robotic welding and working 3 shifts. The reactor vessel schedule is a bit shorter.

glenn

Well this guy designs but does not build them. Well, I don't know that he designs them top to bottom. He works in support for reactors in the field. I suppose it's the context of the thing. It's a question of turning it from steel ingot into a reactor or putting the pieces together.

Naval reactors of course are considerably smaller than those for power generation.

And these are generally not really "built" from the top to bottom in one place. The vessel would be ordered from a steel producer. It's just a big pressure tank. Then it comes in and is mated with the other pieces. The steam generator is probably assembled from prefab ordered tubing and such.

There are many subcontractors. So it seems the question was taken to mean something like assembling a car in the factory if you are brining in the engine from another facility and such.

But the end question is "could you crank these out mass production style" maybe that's what he means by "tooled for it."

The technique for building a reactor at the moment is basically per-order. They're not cranked out. It takes many months to forge a vessel, but you could have a few of them going at once.

Comparing to a ship - another very large and complicated system involving a lot of metal working, subsystems and such. Building your average nominal sized cargo vessel is going to be a rather big undertaking. It will take a couple years from laying the keel to commission.

But during the second world war we cranked out large merchant vessels at a rate of several per month. Sure, each hull might take months to complete, but there were many in line being assembled simultaneously.

The way reactors are built now, it wouldn't make sense to have a continuous run production system.

I don't see why this couldn't be done though...

[Belz...]

No, Belz, what I've been saying for some time now is that we've run out of time. We can start working on the nuclear plants. That won't be enough.

Of course it won't. It's too late to prevent global warming.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do what we can to limit the damage as best we can.

There is enough potential to build wind turbines for all our needs eventually.

Again, why would you want to have it "eventually" and later rather than "eventually" and sooner ?

I'm more confident of that than nuclear fission.

Yes, you've made that abundantly clear, but I still have no idea of why. As I said before, you seem to have a highly irrational fear of nuclear energy. You're flooded with facts about how safe and abundant it is, and yet you desperatly try to find ways to cling to other forms of energy.

Personally, I don't think you can be convinced.

But we simply don't have the skilled manpower or manufacturing capacity to transform all the world's coal plants to wind nor nuclear in time.

It's not a good reason to stop trying. It ain't over 'till it's over.

It is apparent that a lion's share of the effort will now have to fall on conservation.

There's that ugly word, again. Long live the dark ages, eh ?

But we're in real trouble now.

Not in small part because of your fear for nuclear energy...

And survival will call for drastic reductions that need to come too quickly to build the thousands of nuclear power plants required, even if we assume we have the fuel to power them all.

Yeah, it's much more reasonable to kill billions of people in the process...

Again, the narrow discussion now is not about nuclear vs renewables. The discussion now is about tightening our belts or committing collective suicide.

You know, conservation won't stop global warming, either. Maybe you should think about that. It's a lose-lose proposition.

[Lonewulf]

Y'know, I hate to say it, but if it was shown that global warming would lead to the death of all 6+ billion people on Earth, I'd be willing to allow certain draconian measure be taken that WOULD result in the deaths of millions to one or two billion people. But only if I KNEW that the other result would lead to the death of all of humanity. I'm willing to take the route that leads to less destruction here.

However, I DON'T think that global warming will kill everyone. But I do think that it will have disastrous consequences that will be difficult to recover from... but not impossible.

As it is, we have to limit the damage done, but ALSO allow ourselves to be able to progress. Which is why extreme conservation to the point of stepping back in time isn't what I desire. I'm all for conservation, but the amount that Luddite suggests is ludicrous.

[Belz...]

Well, Luddite would prefer the option that has the same disastrous results but also doesn't solve the problem...

[DRBUZZ0]

You know, conservation won't stop global warming, either. Maybe you should think about that. It's a lose-lose proposition.

It's not as complicated as it seems and it's sure as hell not a "conservation or nuclear" question.

The simple answer is that what we have to do is cut back CO2. The way to do this is obvious. Use less fossil fuels. How do we do this? By conserving as much energy as reasonably possible and fulfilling as much of the needs as possible we do have with energy sources that do not create CO2.

The key here is "as much of the needs as possible." Thus the question is "If we want to reduce fossil fuels as much as possible, what can provide the largest proportion of the replacement?" Because replacing 30% is better than replacing 10% and 60% is better and 80% even better.

So which can replace the MOST coal and oil? That's actually not a hard question to answer.


And as far conservation, how much should we conserve? As much as we have to. And the less we have to the better off we end up being. Fivelous energy use is one thing. Florescent lights and insulation are good. But beyond that you start loosing bigtime. And the less drastic you have to the better off you will be.

[Hindmost]

Well this guy designs but does not build them. Well, I don't know that he designs them top to bottom. He works in support for reactors in the field. I suppose it's the context of the thing. It's a question of turning it from steel ingot into a reactor or putting the pieces together.

Naval reactors of course are considerably smaller than those for power generation.

And these are generally not really "built" from the top to bottom in one place. The vessel would be ordered from a steel producer. It's just a big pressure tank. Then it comes in and is mated with the other pieces. The steam generator is probably assembled from prefab ordered tubing and such.

There are many subcontractors. So it seems the question was taken to mean something like assembling a car in the factory if you are brining in the engine from another facility and such.

But the end question is "could you crank these out mass production style" maybe that's what he means by "tooled for it."

The technique for building a reactor at the moment is basically per-order. They're not cranked out. It takes many months to forge a vessel, but you could have a few of them going at once.

Comparing to a ship - another very large and complicated system involving a lot of metal working, subsystems and such. Building your average nominal sized cargo vessel is going to be a rather big undertaking. It will take a couple years from laying the keel to commission.

But during the second world war we cranked out large merchant vessels at a rate of several per month. Sure, each hull might take months to complete, but there were many in line being assembled simultaneously.

The way reactors are built now, it wouldn't make sense to have a continuous run production system.

I don't see why this couldn't be done though...

Took me awhile to find something...take a look. A very disturbing conclusion in this report is that Japan has the only ring forging capability for the advanced design plants.

http://www.ne.doe.gov/np2010/reports/mpr2776Rev0102105.pdf

I was not involved with the manufacturing directly, however I was involved with the Yonggwang 3&4 and Ulchin 3&4 plants in Korea from start to finish including scheduling and project management. I have also visited the fabrication facilities in Korea...which were really cool. They forged their own vessel pieces, machined them and assembled them. They probably bought S/G tubes from an outside vendor, but most of the stuff they forged up and machined in-house. My company still supplied the reactor coolant pumps and we had to order the casings before the ink was dry on the contracts to get machined and to the site on time. (they were forged in Japan)

I don't know how Naval vessels are made specifically and can't find any info on that. I do know, the old B&W people make some of the components.

http://www.bwxt.com/core_competencies/nom.html

glenn

[DRBUZZ0]

from an email:



The pressure vessel isn't that large.

<snip>

That's done ahead of time. It comes to spec and it's all bolt for the outputs.

<snip>

I don’t know how long it takes to make the vessel, but that’s not what matters. That’s just a pressure tank to begin with. It’s not an issue of forging. It’s an issue of plumbing. If you want to talk about making the pressure structures, that’s something else. None of this is anything that really even has to do with it being nuclear. The steam generator and everything after that could just as easily be powered by burning coal or oil.


<snip>

What your friend is talking about is not a fair comparison. Reactors for power plants aren’t a fair comparison to begin with because they’re so much larger. The only reason that it takes so long to make the vessel for the reactor is that it’s very big and it has to be machined down to very precise tolerances.

<snip>

What you're asking is if you can put it together in a month, not whether that's how long it actually takes. It's not something that they really need to hurry. It's not rapid production, but there's no engineering reason why it would need to take very long.



Okay, so I guess it we're talking about differnt things. Plumbing vrs. making pipes. He was thinking in the context of having the big parts forged alreayd

[DRBUZZ0]

Apologies for the poor quality of the image, but this was all I could find for the construction of a naval reactor. This shows the main vessel component being prepared for fabrication of the internals and steam components and such..

As you can see though, it's not that big. Probably not beyond the capabilities of many metal manufacturing places.

[luddite]

When I tried to calculate how many wind turbines we could crank out, I tried to base this on a model where that kind of production was in place and apply it to the US. If you want to make wild hypothetical assumptions, well, we've got factories with production capacities of 100 1.5 MW wind turbines monthly now. Build up 100 of these factories and TA-DA, you've got 15,000 MW a month.

As wild hypotheticals go, that's actually a lot more plausible than the nuclear vision. That scale of manufacturing exists in the real world, for starters. Quality control is less of an issue. There are fewer safety issues. You don't need to train a raft of nuclear engineers and technicians. You don't have to overcome reasonable public fears about the safety of mom-and-pop nuclear manufacturing, which is going to be a hard sell, my friend. For better or for worse, nuclear power has many more regulatory implications. And then you'd have to develop the mines to fuel the things, which isn't an issue with wind.

And despite your assertions that the fuel is inexhaustible, all the conventional economic analyses foresee bottlenecks in production now.

And if you really want to restrict the role of conservation and convert all energy to nuclear-fueled electric, you're also suggesting that we develop new automobile designs, test and manufacture them, and replace the automobile fleet in a decade. Then we retrofit all houses so that in order to "God forbid" not enable them to stand without an air conditioner, they remain leaky energy-hogs now heated even less efficiently by electrical sources. We need to convert all ocean ships, too, to nuclear, all the trucks on the road, which will be more challenging than cars and so on. How do you propose to alter cement and steel production?

Of course, if we made it a national priority, or rather a global priority, to go nuclear in ten years and converted massive resources to the cause, we could maybe make it happen, though I think there are reasonable assessments that indicate that even from a fuel perspective, we wouldn't make it.

The reason I didn't propose a massive crank-out of wind turbines is simply that I know that conservation is more economical than that kind of industrial conversion. I don't know where the line would be drawn between what we conserve and what we convert, but I know that in many cases the stumbling block to energy efficiency retrofits even now is raising the capital cost, not the long-term economy of paying for them. If you have to finance the creation of a short-lived factory to crank out industrial equipment, those options are going to look a lot better.

And given that we're all talking about the economic hardships we'll be facing those kind of dollars-and-cents decisions are what will determine a huge part of the strategy, not somebody's nuclear dreams nor someone else's wind turbine fantasy.

So let's stop with the pipe-dreams. In real world economics, this isn't going to happen.

[Schneibster]

You don't have to overcome reasonable public fears about the safety of mom-and-pop nuclear manufacturing, which is going to be a hard sell, my friend. =:0 Pops Jacobsen's Nuclear Power Plant Manufacturing and Repair, LLC?

And despite your assertions that the fuel is inexhaustible, all the conventional economic analyses foresee bottlenecks in production now.I hate to point it out, but this was just exactly the sort of thing Belz and I were talking about. You make an assertion, provide some references, the assertion is refuted by opposing references, and the references you provided are impeached, but somehow it's like all that never happened and you're back asserting the same thing again. No, quite frankly, all the conventional economic analyses foresee nothing of the kind, and it's been proven here multiple times.

And if you really want to restrict the role of conservation and convert all energy to nuclear-fueled electric, you're also suggesting that we develop new automobile designs, test and manufacture them, and replace the automobile fleet in a decade. In case you weren't watching, it seems that they're selling hybrids. Honda just had to redesign theirs because it looked too much like the standard Accord, and people want a "bubblemobile" so they can show off how ecologically conscious they are. It's getting to be a status thing, at least up in Silicon Valley near where I live.

Then we retrofit all houses so that in order to "God forbid" not enable them to stand without an air conditioner, they remain leaky energy-hogs now heated even less efficiently by electrical sources. We need to convert all ocean ships, too, to nuclear, all the trucks on the road, which will be more challenging than cars and so on. How do you propose to alter cement and steel production?Carbon sequestration seems to be the focus of current research. People seem to be buying replacement windows, insulation, higher efficiency furnaces and water heaters, and so forth at an alarming rate. I have a furnace installer who wants to sell me a solar powered air conditioner; claims it won't use any electricity from the mains, you don't even hook it up to the service. It seems to be happening rather quickly, at least in California. I don't suppose the Dirty East or all those red states that start with vowels are doing nearly as well, however.

And given that we're all talking about the economic hardships we'll be facing those kind of dollars-and-cents decisions are what will determine a huge part of the strategy, not somebody's nuclear dreams nor someone else's wind turbine fantasy.

So let's stop with the pipe-dreams. In real world economics, this isn't going to happen.I think you'll be surprised, if there's money to be made in it. And there is.

[DRBUZZ0]

And if you really want to restrict the role of conservation and convert all energy to nuclear-fueled electric, you're also suggesting that we develop new automobile designs, test and manufacture them, and replace the automobile fleet in a decade. Then we retrofit all houses so that in order to "God forbid" not enable them to stand without an air conditioner, they remain leaky energy-hogs now heated even less efficiently by electrical sources.



Okay maybe I'm going about this wrong. Fine. You want to have conservation by stopping people from using things like air conditioners and refrigerators and big televisions and such. We will limit our society to only the necessary uses of energy and nothing that might be considered "wasteful."

How do we do this. Here are some ways:

1. Get everyone to agree to it - No that is never going to happen. Sorry but everyone already knows conserving energy is good and that hasn't done much yet. Plus it's always extremely difficult to get people to do anything as a whole which is meaningless on an individual baisis and only works collectively. It's not workable. It won't happen. I don't care how many ads you run, it won't make a dent. People don't like being told to do something when they know that it doesn't matter whether or not they do it if everyone else does.

This is why voter turnout is so fickle and hard to do. A single vote rarely determines an election just like one air conditioner does absolutely nothing. You can't get people to do something collectively when individually they know they can cheat. Everyone considers it a non-priority because it doesn't matter if they do it or not, but that combined mentality destroys it.

Trust me, people get this message so much already and it has not driven down the energy consumption at all. Simply asking people to won't do it. And it won't matter how sincere or how much they understand how important it is, because the fact of the matter is no one person changes things and they all end up thinking "Well it won't change much if just I don't..." And you have a "no one raindrop is resonsible for the flood" situation.


2. We could outlaw things like air conditioners and say televisions can only be up to 12 inches wide and lights cannot be more than a certain wattage. Well, this is a problem, because now we have a police state. And on top of that we have to collect all the ones already out there. Plus, is it fair to outlaw them?

Really, most would say that they have to be allowed sometimes, right? What about an old person with a weak heart during a heat wave. They probably ought to have an air conditioner. Also, a big television is probably okay for a lecture hall, becasue that's better than everyone having their own. And higher power lights are needed for large public spaces.

So now we have a worse problem. We have to individually decide who is entitled to what energy usage and what is "justified" each and every device must be evaluated by some agency and the license obtained. You want an air conditioner? Apply for a permit and then wait for your hearing before the energy commission.

Bad idea.

3.

A. Reduce the amount of energy generated and avaliable and let people get by with what is considered a reasonable amount.

OR

B. Set the price high enough to reduce usage drastically.


These are really the same thing, because as soon as you limit energy usage market forces come into play which will make it astronomically expensive. You cannot both generate less and keep the price reasonable, because if you try to do that everyone will use the same and you'll just end up with a massive brownout. It's a comodety, there's no way around that.

Also imposing a "carbon tax" or some other financial method effectively does the same as raising the price. And imposting a "cap" does the same as limiting production.


So now what do we have? Well, we have just turned electricity and energy in general into a luxury item.

So people continue to eat lots of icecream, lay in the big air conditioner, watch their big television, crank the tunes and leave the lights on.... but only if they're rich.

For the middle class energy becomes a bigger issue and they have to consider it as the primary motivation in all things they do. They spend a larger portion of their income on energy and thus the standard of living decreases.

And for the lower class, you've made them live without it because it's just too expensive. Thus, the class divide has just gotten dramatically worse, because now the underclass has no hope of being able to view the internet, get their news in a timely manner, communicate and so on.

You have killed upward mobility or even the option thereof.

On top of this since consumerism has been so dramatically reduced the entire ecocomy is reduced to nothing. People don't buy products as much, nobody is needed to make them, people loose their jobs making them. There ya go..

And on top of this there is now extreme inflation. Since everything depends on energy to be produced and distributed the price of everything goes up to factor in energy. The monetary system will naturally compensate, but since you have a shortage of a vital and universal commodity (energy), it will simply spiral out of control.

AND ON TOP OF THAT: That Guatamalin farmer who was growing bananas for Americans and Europeans: The ones who unjustly demand fruit from another part of the world which takes energy to produce? Well now he can't sell his bananas to anyone because they won't buy them because they're too expensive to ship.

He cannot buy food for his family so all they can do are eat the bananas that are rotting in the fields. But unfortunately those won't sustain them, because they can't preserve them (a poor farmer would NEVER be able to afford refrigeration or canning equipment in this world) and so the bannas all end up rotting and before the next crop cycle of bannas are ready for his family (who is nutritionally deficient from living on bananas to begin with) they have all starved to death and are found in the fields clinging to rotten banas.

4. We ration energy by giving each person an allowence. This effectively is the same as number 2 and 3 combined. It has the disadvantages of both because now the governement decides how much each person is entiled to and doles it out, and on top of that when you limit something like that you can't keep market forces out of it. Just as in times like the second world war with butter and flower, people trade their ration credits and it becomes a commodity. And you're back to where you started.

But on top of this... you also have even more freelance generation. You give someone a limited amount of energy credits and they will start doing things like cutting down the trees on their property to burn to keep warm, less they waste their credits. Also, they may even burn them to make electricity.

But they won't alternatively buy solar cells for their roof, because that's never going to be a cost effective way of making their own energy. Which gets us back to the point that if you make it expensive you move people away from clean energy and toward cheap energy.


Of course, if we made it a national priority, or rather a global priority, to go nuclear in ten years and converted massive resources to the cause, we could maybe make it happen, though I think there are reasonable assessments that indicate that even from a fuel perspective, we wouldn't make it.


This brings us to option 5.

Where you end up going here now is that it has to be the priority to make people conserve and since all the options I've listed have diar consequences, there's only one way to do it. We do it communally. Basically you start worrying about the system as a whole and you take the choice away from people.

Instead the government micro-manages everything, telling people what tv they can buy and companies what to make and how the energy is to be used and preventing the class problem by giving money to the poor and taking it from the rich and tweaking every tiny variable in an attempt to reach equilibrium.

This is called "Communism" and the problem it presents (amoung others) is that it works when everyone independently does what they can to help the collective. That never happens. So you have the government never getting past micromanaging the lives of each and every person. Of course, it cannot ever do this. It's basically impossible. So it fails and philosophy falls apart.

You end up in a police state and the fact that you have so much power over every aspect of the lives of everyone inevitably does not mean that the government stays benevolently with it. The most ambitious rise to the top by making deals and you end up with top-down corruption and a system that looks NOTHING like the original concept was supposed to be.

Welcome to the Soviet Union.




The reason I didn't propose a massive crank-out of wind turbines is simply that I know that conservation is more economical than that kind of industrial conversion.


HA! No that's not the problem with a massive cranking out of wind turbines. They're so huge and the energy density is so low that you end up in chasing your own tail or in a "Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul" situation, because you can't built wind turbines fast enough to power your factory to build wind turbines.

Get it? Massive wind turbine factories to reduce CO2 production is going to lead to a lot of juggling to try to figure out how you can build turbines efficiently enough that you don't burn more coal to power your wind turbine factory.




I don't know where the line would be drawn between what we conserve and what we convert, but I know that in many cases the stumbling block to energy efficiency retrofits even now is raising the capital cost, not the long-term economy of paying for them.



Hah! also because you can't. And see how conservation is not that easy. You don't just pass a law that says "Everybody has to conserve" or say "it's out policy to use less energy." That's not how it works. What you are saying is easy. But doing it is hard. Actually it's impossible

And the capital costs are the least of the economic concern. You want conservation as policy, that means restriction. That means shortages and you decapitate your economy from the get go.


If you have to finance the creation of a short-lived factory to crank out industrial equipment, those options are going to look a lot better.
And given that we're all talking about the economic hardships we'll be facing those kind of dollars-and-cents decisions are what will determine a huge part of the strategy, not somebody's nuclear dreams nor someone else's wind turbine fantasy.

So let's stop with the pipe-dreams. In real world economics, this isn't going to happen.



Well lets define these dreams then:

My dream for a "nuclear world" is dozens of terawatts generated worldwide allowing stuff like dredging and decomposing of dioxen contaminated soil, desalination of water to reduce the strain on frehs-water reserves, thermal depolymerization of garabage, massive production of hydrogen-rich synthetic fuels. Hydrogen to power rockets and nuclear reactors flying probes to the outer reaches of the solar system.

That's a dream. Won't happen.

A nuclear realistic goal: Making it the primary power source for industrial countries within the next 30 years with better than 20% conversion in 10 years. Shutting down all coal opperations and cutting oil and gas demand in half within a few decades. Cutting CO2 from power generation to nill by 2040. And seeing massive returns much sooner.


Your wind power dream:

Windmills covering a large portion of the worlds surface and providing all power needs.

That's a dream. Won't happen:

A realistic wind power goal: provides 15% of power capacity in the next 40 years for industrial use. Provides about 6% of total energy consumption. Thus reduces carbon-based sources by 4%


That's a doable goal.

[Hindmost]

Apologies for the poor quality of the image, but this was all I could find for the construction of a naval reactor. This shows the main vessel component being prepared for fabrication of the internals and steam components and such..

As you can see though, it's not that big. Probably not beyond the capabilities of many metal manufacturing places.

I forget how small navy nuke plants are...even the Nimitz class reactors are just not that big. I agree, many places could make those components assuming they could meet code requirements.

The S/Gs on the big comercial plants have about 12000 tubes. They all have to be custom formed. Just drilling the tube sheet takes a long time. The shells and the reactor vessels have to be ring forged in pieces and welded together. But that is much better than before when flat pieces were forged and bent into shape One person I knew that actually welded nozzles in vessels told me it would take him two weeks per nozzle.

thanks for the info.

glenn

[DRBUZZ0]

I think much of that has to do with the fact that they use highly enriched uranium and a very small mass. The actual fuel core is very small, so it probably is also designed to run insanely hot compared to commercial plants. With that kind of heat and pressure you may not need as big a steam generator to get good results.

[luddite]

I hate to point it out, but this was just exactly the sort of thing Belz and I were talking about. You make an assertion, provide some references, the assertion is refuted by opposing references, and the references you provided are impeached, but somehow it's like all that never happened and you're back asserting the same thing again. No, quite frankly, all the conventional economic analyses foresee nothing of the kind, and it's been proven here multiple times.

Schneibster, note that I'm not saying which conclusions are correct. There are sources that say both. But most of the sources that refute a resource problem are pro-nuclear and envision a lot of non-traditional sources. The economic and resource analyses foresee a problem in the medium term. They tend not to evaluate things like uranium from seawater or granite at all.

http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/chinainstitute/nav03.cfm?nav03=59974&nav02=59973&nav01=57272
http://www.stockinterview.com/combs2.html
http://www.stockhouse.ca/bullboards/viewmessage.asp?no=16015636
http://www.stockhouse.com/bullboards/viewmessage.asp?no=16653947&t=0&all=0&TableID=0
http://www.uraniumseek.com/news/UraniumSeek/1177974242.php
http://www.uranium-stocks.net/uranium-price-confusion-especially-in-the-us-doe/

Here's a pro-nuclear site that also evaluates only conventional supplies:

http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionG.htm

And here's a pro-nuclear site that recognizes that

In the same vein, we continually hear about how the “proven reserves” of uranium will only last ~50 years at current consumption levels.

and goes on to dispute it.

http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.html

And here's a pro-nuclear site that acknowledges economic analyses of supply bottlenecks:

Uranium supply news is usually framed within a short-term perspective. It concerns who is producing with what resources, who might produce or sell, and how does this balance with demand?

It goes on to explain why this is irrelevant for long-term forecasting. It does this very well, and is persuasive. But I've also presented what I feel are persuasive arguments against this view. And in any event, I was addressing the potential for a massive power-up over the next decade, where issues like this are rather critical.

As one of the analyses I pointed to pointed out, gold is also recoverable from seawater. But we assume that gold extraction would drop considerably before we turned to seawater as a resource.

[luddite]

In case you weren't watching, it seems that they're selling hybrids. Honda just had to redesign theirs because it looked too much like the standard Accord, and people want a "bubblemobile" so they can show off how ecologically conscious they are. It's getting to be a status thing, at least up in Silicon Valley near where I live.

If we're going to drop our emissions adequately, we need to go well beyond the currently available hybrids. Hybrids deliver substantial emissions reductions in cities. Not so much on the highway. I love the idea of plug-in hybrids. But that requires a massive infrastructure overhaul, too. And it's not enough in the long run anyway.

We're going to have to do a lot of things simultaneously, I know. I'm just saying that a significant part of the drop in emissions from transportation is going to come from moving things less. More passengers per vehicle. Smaller distances between people and the places they need to go. Smaller distances between products and their markets. Because we're nowhere near the point where we have a car that runs on 10-20% of the fuel. Then there's the embodied energy of the car, too, to worry about. And road construction. And electricity is going to be tight even without trying to electrify the whole car fleet too.

[luddite]

Hah! also because you can't. And see how conservation is not that easy. You don't just pass a law that says "Everybody has to conserve" or say "it's out policy to use less energy." That's not how it works. What you are saying is easy. But doing it is hard. Actually it's impossible

And the capital costs are the least of the economic concern. You want conservation as policy, that means restriction. That means shortages and you decapitate your economy from the get go.

What you absolutely have to restrict is the use of fossil fuels. On Friday's climate change forum, policy expert after policy expert stood up to state relentlessly that voluntary measures just don't work. So you don't have to tell people how they will reduce their emissions, but you do have to make them reduce.

Your choices are cap-and-trade, quota system, strict caps, and price signals, though there may be other mechanisms I'm not aware of. Whichever of these you choose, there will be a public demand for investment and infrastructure for the transition.

So we'll get demand for public transit, for more efficient vehicles, for retrofit financing and so on. And you'll get these long before you can make a dent in energy supply.

Of course, you'll get more demand for investment in emissions-free generation as well.

[luddite]

=:0 Pops Jacobsen's Nuclear Power Plant Manufacturing and Repair, LLC?

Right down the street from Momma Jones's Spent Fuel Storage Depot. :-)

[DRBUZZ0]

What you absolutely have to restrict is the use of fossil fuels. On Friday's climate change forum, policy expert after policy expert stood up to state relentlessly that voluntary measures just don't work. So you don't have to tell people how they will reduce their emissions, but you do have to make them reduce.

Your choices are cap-and-trade, quota system, strict caps, and price signals, though there may be other mechanisms I'm not aware of. Whichever of these you choose, there will be a public demand for investment and infrastructure for the transition.

So we'll get demand for public transit, for more efficient vehicles, for retrofit financing and so on. And you'll get these long before you can make a dent in energy supply.

Of course, you'll get more demand for investment in emissions-free generation as well.


Yeah that was discussed under the "Shortages" and "limiting a commodity will force market forces to make it astronomically expensive"

You could do that... Just cap emissions and thus force conservation. Then sit back and watch the carnage as your entire economic and social system sputters, destabalizes, and then it all comes crashing down.

In California they had a situation where they had a limited amount of avaliable energy (partially due to Enron trading and such but also due to a situation where artificial price controls existed in a semi-regulated semi-deregulated market)

You know how power was conserved? By shutting it off. Rolling blackouts. Not even just planned ones either. People sucked in power. Power wasn't there. Regulators tried to compensate. Voltage dropped, transformers caught fire.

Large industries also suffered. Some mining operations went under because electricity was the primary expense.

It lasted a short time. It was limited. If that had happened on the scale you are proposing it would have not been a localized problem. It would be a world-wide catastrophic collapse of infrastructure.

But eventually it would stabalize, when the market caught up... Then as siad above... frivelous use would return. But only for the rich. The class divide enters. Inflation hits.

It would be a spectacular worldwide meltdown.

Then there was the summer a few years ago on the east coast...

Power was a bit tight. A couple plants were down for maintenance. One other had to be shut down due to a turbine failure. Hot day. But there was enough power.... just barely... Power companies issued warnings to big customers warning that they needed to conserve bigtime...

And conservation measures save the day?

No. A wire sagged and shorted on a relatively unimportant and small high tension line. Most of the eastern seaboard fell dark.

This would be normal in your world. That is, until the market begins to compensate. Eventually this would move from an every day event to happening only every few days or a couple times a month as the price sores.

But then maybe the damand would eventually go down, as inflation, market meltdowns and absolute priceouts lead to huge increases in mortality.

[luddite]

Carbon sequestration seems to be the focus of current research.

This was in the context of home heating. There's research being done into carbon sequestration from home heating?

[luddite]

I think you'll be surprised, if there's money to be made in it. And there is.

I hope very much that we will all be surprised. It's the unsurprising relentless march of the status quo toward destruction that really scares me.

[Hamradioguy]

If I remember, the Yankee Rowe nuclear plant was a Naval reactor design. Wasn't very big- around 170MW, but it was built for well under $50 million and operated for 32 years. Pretty economical I think. But that was then and this is now- Permitting and design of a new nuke takes a long time and big bucks. It's an argument for standardized designs like the French do.

Of course the French have a whole different take on nuclear power. When I was in St. Pierre and Miquelon some years ago I was amazed that power for the whole island was supplied by big diesel generators running on imported oil. When I suggested to my St. Pierre host that maybe a small nuke plant might be a better alternative he said he thought that was an excellent idea. Can you imagine the reaction if you told the good folks in a place like Martha's Vineyard that they should build a nuke plant on their island?

[luddite]

Yeah that was discussed under the "Shortages" and "limiting a commodity will force market forces to make it astronomically expensive"

You could do that... Just cap emissions and thus force conservation. Then sit back and watch the carnage as your entire economic and social system sputters, destabalizes, and then it all comes crashing down.

In California they had a situation where they had a limited amount of avaliable energy (partially due to Enron trading and such but also due to a situation where artificial price controls existed in a semi-regulated semi-deregulated market)

You know how power was conserved? By shutting it off. Rolling blackouts. Not even just planned ones either. People sucked in power. Power wasn't there. Regulators tried to compensate. Voltage dropped, transformers caught fire.

Large industries also suffered. Some mining operations went under because electricity was the primary expense.

It lasted a short time. It was limited. If that had happened on the scale you are proposing it would have not been a localized problem. It would be a world-wide catastrophic collapse of infrastructure.

But eventually it would stabalize, when the market caught up... Then as siad above... frivelous use would return. But only for the rich. The class divide enters. Inflation hits.

It would be a spectacular worldwide meltdown.

Then there was the summer a few years ago on the east coast...

Power was a bit tight. A couple plants were down for maintenance. One other had to be shut down due to a turbine failure. Hot day. But there was enough power.... just barely... Power companies issued warnings to big customers warning that they needed to conserve bigtime...

And conservation measures save the day?

No. A wire sagged and shorted on a relatively unimportant and small high tension line. Most of the eastern seaboard fell dark.

This would be normal in your world. That is, until the market begins to compensate. Eventually this would move from an every day event to happening only every few days or a couple times a month as the price sores.

But then maybe the damand would eventually go down, as inflation, market meltdowns and absolute priceouts lead to huge increases in mortality.
The disastrous shortages you describe were caused by unpredicted spikes in demand. I'm proposing predictable demand decreases. This should increase grid stability as all capacity remains.

Quotas, restrictions, rationing and price mechanisms have a long history of addressing needs in troubled times, and doing so successfully.

In Brazil, extended droughts a decade ago led to limited hydro-electric power which forced rationing in some states that went on for months or even years. Power was available above the quotas established, but a fine was paid. People who could easily afford the fines didn't incur them because it was considered rude and selfish to waste precious electricity. The economy grew.

During the second world war, pleasure driving was prohibited altogether in the United States. Civilian vehicles were not manufactured and gasoline was rationed, as were meat, coffee, butter, sugar, shoes, clothing and rubber. The transition was orderly. The economy grew.

The reason these sorts of economic impositions are accepted is because people recognize the problem and want to do their part. The problem we have with global warming is that the scale of the problem is not broadly recognized. Most people who buy a hybrid and change their lightbulbs feel virtuous. There is little recognition of how tiny this step is toward the 80%+ reductions necessary.

In Toronto, the local utility introduced a peaksaver programme 2 summers ago that remotely turned down air conditioners at peak to ease stress on transmission lines. They hoped to achieve 7 MW reductions. What they got was 100 MW in a couple months. A survey of respondents revealed the number 1 reason was "civic duty".

So I don't share your cynicism about people not doing anything individually that won't benefit them. And I don't share your pessimism about dire consequences.

The consequences of sticking with the status quo and just introducing new energy sources are far more dangerous. This would expend public money while driving down energy prices for everything including fossil fuels. Wasteful industry would thrive and grow, new markets for coal and oil would be found. And, as analyst after analyst pointed out, emissions would rise. It is apparent to every climate change policy analyst I've spoken to that through one mechanism or another, emissions from fossil fuels must be artificially suppressed or we have no chance at all of addressing the crisis.

[luddite]

A. Reduce the amount of energy generated and avaliable and let people get by with what is considered a reasonable amount.

OR

B. Set the price high enough to reduce usage drastically.


These are really the same thing, because as soon as you limit energy usage market forces come into play which will make it astronomically expensive. You cannot both generate less and keep the price reasonable, because if you try to do that everyone will use the same and you'll just end up with a massive brownout. It's a comodety, there's no way around that.

Also imposing a "carbon tax" or some other financial method effectively does the same as raising the price. And imposting a "cap" does the same as limiting production.

A and B are related but there are slight differences in how they work out. A is hard-edged. B allows some flexibility. On extremely hot days, for example, you might still turn on your AC, but you'd want to do it less. A may not leave you the option, if your personal energy is rationed.

But because you want to achieve the same reductions overall, B has to set the price even higher than the average price of A. The differences, in practice, are not high.

So now what do we have? Well, we have just turned electricity and energy in general into a luxury item.

So people continue to eat lots of icecream, lay in the big air conditioner, watch their big television, crank the tunes and leave the lights on.... but only if they're rich.

For the middle class energy becomes a bigger issue and they have to consider it as the primary motivation in all things they do. They spend a larger portion of their income on energy and thus the standard of living decreases.

And for the lower class, you've made them live without it because it's just too expensive. Thus, the class divide has just gotten dramatically worse, because now the underclass has no hope of being able to view the internet, get their news in a timely manner, communicate and so on.

You have killed upward mobility or even the option thereof.

There are differential quotas and scaled carbon taxes, tax credits for low income and government programs that target retrofits for lowest income tax brackets. There are a lot of creative ways of getting around the problems of energy poverty.

But you're wrong about it expanding class divides. It is rather a great social leveler. Income is one of the best indicators of carbon emissions. Make it expensive to emit and you hit the rich hardest. One holiday flight to Fiji and you basically blow your whole carbon quota for the year. Business meetings every week would basically be a thing of the past. Rich people will suddenly see the appeal of small cars, like they do in Europe where energy has been more expensive for decades. And rich people will be the first to invest in efficiencies as they arise, paving the way for price reductions as new ideas catch on.

I haven't done a systematic analysis, but I think the countries with highest energy prices tend to have smaller class divisions. Europe, for example, fares a lot better than North America.

[luddite]

So, the HIGHEST in nuclear energy costs is about equal to the mid-range of wind, and about the lowest of hydro-electric. And the ever-touted life-saving solar energy is off the charts. (Yes, I know, peak is great and all, but I do like having my energy available to me when I need it).

Well, I know which horse I'm betting on.

Just keep in mind that the document you're basing your decision on is put out by Nuclear Energy Agency. I've previously posted sources with dramatically different conclusions.

And by the way, peak is all about energy when you need it. That's why it's so expensive.

[Hindmost]

If I remember, the Yankee Rowe nuclear plant was a Naval reactor design. Wasn't very big- around 170MW, but it was built for well under $50 million and operated for 32 years. Pretty economical I think. But that was then and this is now- Permitting and design of a new nuke takes a long time and big bucks. It's an argument for standardized designs like the French do.

Of course the French have a whole different take on nuclear power. When I was in St. Pierre and Miquelon some years ago I was amazed that power for the whole island was supplied by big diesel generators running on imported oil. When I suggested to my St. Pierre host that maybe a small nuke plant might be a better alternative he said he thought that was an excellent idea. Can you imagine the reaction if you told the good folks in a place like Martha's Vineyard that they should build a nuke plant on their island?

A modular pebble bed would be nice...

glenn

[robinson]

Funny that this should come up. The battle over wind farms in that area is intense, and involves a lot of money. Another topic looms large...

[DRBUZZ0]

If I remember, the Yankee Rowe nuclear plant was a Naval reactor design. Wasn't very big- around 170MW, but it was built for well under $50 million and operated for 32 years. Pretty economical I think. But that was then and this is now- Permitting and design of a new nuke takes a long time and big bucks. It's an argument for standardized designs like the French do.

Of course the French have a whole different take on nuclear power. When I was in St. Pierre and Miquelon some years ago I was amazed that power for the whole island was supplied by big diesel generators running on imported oil. When I suggested to my St. Pierre host that maybe a small nuke plant might be a better alternative he said he thought that was an excellent idea. Can you imagine the reaction if you told the good folks in a place like Martha's Vineyard that they should build a nuke plant on their island?


The potential for small modular reactor designs seems really exciting to me. The DOE has done many studies on the whole idea of standardized low and medium sized reactors.

The advantages include that it's a scalable system which can be built in a modular manner which means you get generating capacity before it's reached it's final size. Also it can be designed for easy expansion and very high reliability and variable power capabilities. The use of some of the newer integral advanced fast reactors they can power them up and down pretty easily and they have good variability of the thermal mass.

Also, high reliability and continuous use. Any unit can be shut down for refueling, inspection or servicing without shutting down the whole system. It also floated around a bit after TMI. In the highly unlikely event of a reactor damaging accident, your cleanup and capacity loss is limited by not relying on a few very large single units.

They had a partial setup a while back at the idaho national labs. There were plans to build the modular-scalable concept a long while back using six modules at about 900 megawatts or eight for 1200 megawatts on a common central steam bus. Of course... despite a lot of potential that never went anywhere.

Here's the latest incarnation of the concept:

http://depletedcranium.com/Smith1.jpg

It's a single unit reactor. Completely sealed "black box" design. Self regulating by passive thermal feedback internally. It'll do up to 100mw of electricity.

It's tamper-resistant. It does not contain or produce anything of use for weapons, except for maybe spent fuel for a dirty bomb, after it's been running a long time (good luck to anyone to remove it without killing yourself... you can't). It's designed to be self-sealed to a degree that it basically is "it's own cask." Highly passively safe and high density non-solable fuel. It's designed to be capable of remote monitoring and high safety with minimal security.

It also has a projected lifespan of 30 years. They hope to have the first fully functional prototype by 2015.

I really think it's exciting but I also think Caldicott and her crowed will do a decent job at stopping it in the name of "peace," which really I think is something to be infuriated about, (assuming it happens which I think it will).

Just think of the difference this sort of thing could make in humanitarian situations. Look at New Orleans, for example. How much different would it have been if FEMA had a few 100-megawatt units on hand?

They could have powered back up portions of the city where the electrical feeds were gone. Gotten pumps back online. Even provided power to surviving residences so people could get their sump pumps turned and start drying out. Powered the hospitals, which had run out of diesel within days. Streetlights, floodlights and electricity in the areas that fell into lawlessness. Cold storage for food. Power for the police stations and fire houses. Ample electricity for emergency centers and such.

Imagine what the superdome would have been like if they had electricity. Luddite will tell you air conditioning is a luxury. I think people in the superdome would have disagreed. Not only because it broke 100 degrees, but without air conditioning in New Orleans, the extreme humidity meant there was no place dry to escape from the floods and dry out. Everything was sticky damp and wet. Disease and mosquitoes were impossible to avoid.

And most importantly: water. Megawatts of electricity and gigawatts of thermal energy means that you can make clean fresh water for everyone.


This isn't a "dream of a how nuclear fixes all problems." It's a fact that in Katrina much of the devastation and inability to control was because of not having the energy. The first priority was establishing power to the pumps. That took weeks, more than a month in some cases. The city was dark and police and fire were in diar trouble, as were hospitals which degraded to hellish conditions when their diesel supplies ran out. Patients were attempted to be evacuated. But many died and in the superdome the lack of ventilation, light, water, even the sweage pumps to keep the bathrooms flushing lead to a crucipal of death and disease.

For weeks afterward, blackhawks from the national guard dropped drums of diesel to field generators and hospitals. Lineman worked feverishly to completely rebuild miles of high voltage feeds to get the pumps and powered again.



How much difference would it make if you dropped this and an evaporator on a poor island during a drought? What about a refugee camp in Africa? They can't get enough fresh water in to keep people alive in some cases.

The IAEA has jumped on this idea before and issued reports to the UN on the potential such systems would have to completely liberate energy needs in some very severe humanitarian situations.

Being able to provide clean drinking water, even enough water to bathe and to pump away sewage, to provide functional medical centers, to provide ample electric lighting... What a difference this could make for a large refugee camp in a famished area????

The possibilities are extreme. You could very easily bring such great capabilities to these areas which need it so desperately.


But those like Caldicott have an agenda, and if you tried to provide this, they will say "Those poor African children are being irridiated by that big bomb that the corporations lobbied to have sent there for profit!" And so it won't happen. And the children who could have clean showers and water to drink, who could go to school in big tents with cool air blown in. Who could be safe in a well lit and orderly center... no... they will have none of that.


Maybe we can send them a goddamned windmill instead.

[DRBUZZ0]

oh here's the DOE page: http://www.llnl.gov/str/JulAug04/Smith.html

[robinson]

I don't understand why some people are so against Nuclear Power. It seems like every time some country wants to join the Nuclear club, the people that already have nuclear power want to stop them. That doesn't seem fair at all.

[DRBUZZ0]

I don't understand why some people are so against Nuclear Power. It seems like every time some country wants to join the Nuclear club, the people that already have nuclear power want to stop them. That doesn't seem fair at all.

Yeah. Horrible how the US tried so hard to stop Germany, Japan, Sweden, South Korea, Norway and Canada from acquiring it. Funny how "stopping them" apparently means the same as "exporting several reactors to"


But of course, I guess it's pretty unfair that we don't help out Iran with their nuclear ambitions.

Oh wait I forgot. You can't sell them a freakin load of fertilizer and not expect them to turn it into a bomb.

I think it's also pretty hypocritical that we don't like it with certain countries like Iran or North Korea buy other stuff that we have. What's up with everyone getting pissy when north Korea wants to buy something entirely legitimate like we have.

For example, a bunch of massive bioreactors, culturing matter, incubators, atomizers and organic synthsis stuff? I mean *obviously* they were looking to build a vaccine factory or manufacture synthetic insulin, right?

Why are people so against vaccines?


Why did everyone say it was such a bad idea to sell F-14's to Iran back in the 1970's? I mean *we* have F-14's, right?

[Lonewulf]

Just keep in mind that the document you're basing your decision on is put out by Nuclear Energy Agency. I've previously posted sources with dramatically different conclusions.
You mean the International Energy Agency (http://www.iea.org/)? That's the agency that published the document I was "basing my decision on".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Energy_Agency

I don't see any signs that they're the evil, lying, nuclear conspiracy that you're on about. Where did you leap to this conclusion?

Because they happened to disagree with your nuclear-fearing friends?

Tell me, I disagree with those same people. Am I a "disinfo agent", paid by the eeeeevil Nuclear companies to keep "the man" down?

And by the way, peak is all about energy when you need it. That's why it's so expensive.
Yeah yeah, blah blah, heard it all before. I still contend that heaters in the wintertime at places up north do not correspond with peak. You have yet to refute this.

[DRBUZZ0]

I don't understand why some people are so against Nuclear Power. It seems like every time some country wants to join the Nuclear club, the people that already have nuclear power want to stop them. That doesn't seem fair at all.

our observations about the threat nuclear energy poses to peace are obviously very well placed, clearly we cannot allow other countries to have thermal nuclear fission reactors running on low enrichment fuel...

but have you considered joining in any campaigns against weapons of mass destruction?

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

[luddite]

You mean the International Energy Agency? That's the agency that published the document I was "basing my decision on".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interna..._Energy_Agency

I don't see any signs that they're the evil, lying, nuclear conspiracy that you're on about. Where did you leap to this conclusion?

Because they happened to disagree with your nuclear-fearing friends?

Tell me, I disagree with those same people. Am I a "disinfo agent", paid by the eeeeevil Nuclear companies to keep "the man" down?

Look at the title page of the document. Two agencies are listed. The International Energy Agency and the Nuclear Energy Agency.

I'm only suggesting that people in the nuclear industry are predisposed to thinking it's a good idea. No conspiracy or bad intent implied.

[Lonewulf]

Look at the title page of the document. Two agencies are listed. The International Energy Agency and the Nuclear Energy Agency.

I'm only suggesting that people in the nuclear industry are predisposed to thinking it's a good idea. No conspiracy or bad intent implied.
So, "predisposed"... now, your sources say that nuclear is DEFINITELY not a good idea.

This well-researched paper that seems to fairly and accurately compare costs, that's published by the IEA and NEA (sure, you can act like they're the same, but that's going back into conspiracy talk)... apparently, they published this big report where they must have left out lots of data. Lots and lots of data, right? After all, to come to such a radical conclusion that, yes, nuclear might actually be cost-effective when your sources say that it DEFINITELY isn't, requires a lot of information to have been left out. This is a huge gap here.

Either you're claiming that they're purposefully majorly lying (both the IEA and NEA), which goes back into conspiracy talk. Or you're acting like these fine engineers and research scientists can't get anything right. In which case, it looks like they're all a bunch of harvard drop-outs that don't know a thing about economics, research and nuclear engineering, even though that's their job, right?

And obviously, the IEA must be just as incompotent, either that or their name is just on it for show. But they didn't do anything with the document, they're all in the pockets of the eeeeeevil nuclear conspiracy, right?

The IEA is not nuclear-based. They co-wrote the report. Saying that this report was entirely made by nuclear companies is being dishonest to the extreme.

But as some posters have said here, what's wrong with a little bit of dishonesty if you want to push your side, neh?


I just love this mindset. It's the same one the 9/11 Twoofers use. As soon as an engineer comes up that actually knows what they're talking about, and demonstrate evidence that what they say is correct, then they're a disinfo agent that is using data from the eeeeevil gubmint.

Actually, can you show any evidence that the NEA AND the IEA has published false reports before? You can speculate that they are dishonest, but without proof, I can't assume that they are. Of course, I suppose I could go by your word, and then assume that all of the sources you tout about are exemplar examples of honesty, but... sorry. This kind of thing has to work both ways.

[pmurray]

The nuke industry would not exist without government subsidies. If it's so great, why does it need to be subsidised?

[robinson]

No private Corporation wants to lose money.

[robinson]

In stark contrast, Wind Power is a friggin battleground it is so lucrative. Do you know how much money each turbine makes in a year?

[my_wan]

The nuke industry would not exist without government subsidies. If it's so great, why does it need to be subsidised?
Reckon they could compete without subsidies if coal wasn't subsidies? LOL

Meanwhile coalitions are being formed so no one member of the has to take the brunt of possible public outcries when they start building.
Designs are being preapproved to remove the cost of individual plant approvals. Nuclear is on the way.

[luddite]

So, "predisposed"... now, your sources say that nuclear is DEFINITELY not a good idea.

This well-researched paper that seems to fairly and accurately compare costs, that's published by the IEA and NEA (sure, you can act like they're the same, but that's going back into conspiracy talk)... apparently, they published this big report where they must have left out lots of data. Lots and lots of data, right? After all, to come to such a radical conclusion that, yes, nuclear might actually be cost-effective when your sources say that it DEFINITELY isn't, requires a lot of information to have been left out. This is a huge gap here.

Either you're claiming that they're purposefully majorly lying (both the IEA and NEA), which goes back into conspiracy talk. Or you're acting like these fine engineers and research scientists can't get anything right. In which case, it looks like they're all a bunch of harvard drop-outs that don't know a thing about economics, research and nuclear engineering, even though that's their job, right?

And obviously, the IEA must be just as incompotent, either that or their name is just on it for show. But they didn't do anything with the document, they're all in the pockets of the eeeeeevil nuclear conspiracy, right?

The IEA is not nuclear-based. They co-wrote the report. Saying that this report was entirely made by nuclear companies is being dishonest to the extreme.

But as some posters have said here, what's wrong with a little bit of dishonesty if you want to push your side, neh?


I just love this mindset. It's the same one the 9/11 Twoofers use. As soon as an engineer comes up that actually knows what they're talking about, and demonstrate evidence that what they say is correct, then they're a disinfo agent that is using data from the eeeeevil gubmint.

Actually, can you show any evidence that the NEA AND the IEA has published false reports before? You can speculate that they are dishonest, but without proof, I can't assume that they are. Of course, I suppose I could go by your word, and then assume that all of the sources you tout about are exemplar examples of honesty, but... sorry. This kind of thing has to work both ways.
You're overstating what I said.

The Energy Watch Group does careful work too. And their reports are devoid of hysteria and knee-jerk presumptions too. But when Schneibster pointed out that many of their authors get incomes from renewables, I ceased to list them as an unbiased source.

I don't even assume the European environmental agency is unbiased, though they pooh pooh nuclear too. If nuclear is such a great environmental option, someone there should have figured it out. But they're consistently anti-nuclear so I don't use them for this forum. The Pembina Institute argues against nuclear primarily on the grounds of cost. The only place that the dangers of nuclear even come up in their report is when discussing the costs of decommissioning and disposal. Energy Probe tends to favour market liberalization with true cost accounting. They have pointed out the many aspects of nuclear that are very difficult to quantify, but also point out that even if you pick on the quantifiable ones, nuclear comes out more expensive than other options.

If the IEA wanted a truly unbiased report, they should have collaborated with a renewables group as well as the NEA.

Here's a report from a Swiss parliamentarian that accuses the IEA of systematic bias towards fossil fuels and nuclear power.

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/sustainability/Renewables2004Rechsteiner.pdf

[Belz...]

As wild hypotheticals go, that's actually a lot more plausible than the nuclear vision.

You know, you could find a more subtle way to completely ignore everything that's been said in this thread.

You don't have to overcome reasonable public fears about the safety of mom-and-pop nuclear manufacturing, which is going to be a hard sell, my friend.

So we shouldn't go for nuclear because people fear it ?

For better or for worse, nuclear power has many more regulatory implications. And then you'd have to develop the mines to fuel the things, which isn't an issue with wind.

Of course it isn't, because wind isn't a viable solution.

Then we retrofit all houses so that in order to "God forbid" not enable them to stand without an air conditioner, they remain leaky energy-hogs now heated even less efficiently by electrical sources.

I hope you have fun in your personal, cave-man, ideal civilisation.

We need to convert all ocean ships, too, to nuclear, all the trucks on the road, which will be more challenging than cars and so on. How do you propose to alter cement and steel production?

Of course, if we made it a national priority, or rather a global priority, to go nuclear in ten years and converted massive resources to the cause, we could maybe make it happen, though I think there are reasonable assessments that indicate that even from a fuel perspective, we wouldn't make it.

You know, your arguments here, such as they are, are ALSO arguments against conservation, wind and solar power.

The reason I didn't propose a massive crank-out of wind turbines is simply that I know that conservation is more economical than that kind of industrial conversion.

Killing people is always more economical than feeding them, you're right.

So let's stop with the pipe-dreams. In real world economics, this isn't going to happen.

:i:

[Belz...]

Schneibster, note that I'm not saying which conclusions are correct. There are sources that say both.

Nice backtracking.

It goes on to explain why this is irrelevant for long-term forecasting. It does this very well, and is persuasive.

Of course it is. You were convinced before reading it.

We're going to have to do a lot of things simultaneously, I know.

What part of "impossible" don't you understand ?

[Belz...]

And I don't share your pessimism about dire consequences.

Now, who's being uselessly optimistic ?

[Lonewulf]

The nuke industry would not exist without government subsidies. If it's so great, why does it need to be subsidised?

OH! You're so right! Subsidies... I never even thought of that! Nuclear has subsidies, so therefore all of the research, record keeping, and evidence MUST BE WRONG as to the price comparisons!

I mean, solar power would NEVER be subsidized!

http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/8000-solar-power-subsidy-for-homes/2007/05/08/1178390288210.html <--- obviously a link made by the evil nuclear scientists!

And wind energy... wind energy makes TONS of money, and thus needs NO subsidies at all!

http://www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/Subsidy.pdf <--- MORE EVIL NUCLEAR SCIENTIST GIBBERISH! Apparently, the American Wind Energy Association is in with them!

During the year 2003 alone, federal energy subsidies
ranged from $37 billion to $64 billion, according to a study
prepared for the National Commission on Energy Policy.
Wind energy accounted for less than 1% of the total.2

And coal... coal is the one that's really used today, so therefore that shouldn't be subsidized at all! Oh, the links that I dug up by those evil nuclear scientists are so numerous, do you really want me to post them all? I can only describe the horror of their lies...

And hydroelectric is the safest, most economic source in the planet! I mean, yeah, it submerges trees underwater, but it's water! The thing that we drink to survive, so therefore it's perfectly green pollution!

And SURELY, hydroelectric power doesn't need subsidies at all, being that great source that it is!

http://www.mof.go.jp/english/zaito/zaito2001e-exv/33.pdf

OH THOSE EVIL NUCLEAR LIARS! They're in everything!

If only we knew! If only we knew! Nuclear power requires subsidies, unlike any other source of energy source, suggested or existing! Your logic astounds me, and I crumple to my knees and beg your forgiveness for my silliness.

Please, forgive this man for thinking things such as evidence, expertise, and scientific reports might actually mean something! With one line, complete with lack of any actual data, evidence, or scientific or economic articles, you have entirely eradicated the evil nuclear conspiracy from the comfort of your computer room! Congratulations!

In stark contrast, Wind Power is a friggin battleground it is so lucrative. Do you know how much money each turbine makes in a year?
Teach me, oh master! Show me the figures!

[pvt1863]

I always find it funny that many environmentalists suddenly become free market advocates when talking about nuclear power. Talk about fossil fuels or renewables, though, and they will say that the government needs to manipulate the market through penalties and subsidies to encourage the use of the latter at the expense of the former.

More interesting numbers about how renewables have been "ignored" in the government subsidies:

Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 2006 (http://www.issues.org/22.3/realnumbers.html)

[Belz...]

diar

"Dire", Buz.

But those like Caldicott have an agenda, and if you tried to provide this, they will say "Those poor African children are being irridiated by that big bomb that the corporations lobbied to have sent there for profit!" And so it won't happen. And the children who could have clean showers and water to drink, who could go to school in big tents with cool air blown in. Who could be safe in a well lit and orderly center... no... they will have none of that.


Maybe we can send them a goddamned windmill instead.

It is very frustrating, isn't it ?

[Belz...]

The nuke industry would not exist without government subsidies. If it's so great, why does it need to be subsidised?

Ditto for every corporation, industry or enterprise that's ever gotten any money from the government.

What was your point, again ?

[luddite]

I always find it funny that many environmentalists suddenly become free market advocates when talking about nuclear power. Talk about fossil fuels or renewables, though, and they will say that the government needs to manipulate the market through penalties and subsidies to encourage the use of the latter at the expense of the former.

More interesting numbers about how renewables have been "ignored" in the government subsidies:

Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 2006 (http://www.issues.org/22.3/realnumbers.html)
Wrong. Environmentalists tend to realize that subsidies to fossil fuels are even higher than nuclear subsidies. And most recognize that subsidies to ethanol, which is theoretically renewable, are also a waste.

Most environmentalists don't want a free market. Many want a very highly regulated market. Many would like externalities included in the cost of energy. So the part of the cost of asthma treatment attributable to coal-fired generation gets put on your energy bill instead of your health bill, reducing health costs while discouraging overconsumption. I think they're pretty fair about including externalities for all forms of generation.

[Belz...]

Most environmentalists don't want a free market. Many want a very highly regulated market.

Actually, I don't think they know what they want.

[luddite]

Yeah. Horrible how the US tried so hard to stop Germany, Japan, Sweden, South Korea, Norway and Canada from acquiring it. Funny how "stopping them" apparently means the same as "exporting several reactors to"


But of course, I guess it's pretty unfair that we don't help out Iran with their nuclear ambitions.

Oh wait I forgot. You can't sell them a freakin load of fertilizer and not expect them to turn it into a bomb.

I think it's also pretty hypocritical that we don't like it with certain countries like Iran or North Korea buy other stuff that we have. What's up with everyone getting pissy when north Korea wants to buy something entirely legitimate like we have.

For example, a bunch of massive bioreactors, culturing matter, incubators, atomizers and organic synthsis stuff? I mean *obviously* they were looking to build a vaccine factory or manufacture synthetic insulin, right?

Why are people so against vaccines?


Why did everyone say it was such a bad idea to sell F-14's to Iran back in the 1970's? I mean *we* have F-14's, right?
Sometimes I feel very naive, Buzzo, but this answer really surprised me. After all your talk about how safe nuclear was, about how we could just churn them out by the hundreds and put them anywhere, how the fuel was useless for weapons and so on

AND

how nuclear was necessary for improving the standard of living everywhere in the world,

I just thought you would support a civilian nuclear program everywhere. That you don't indicates that you recognize risks you don't want to talk about

[Apollo20]

I worked as a research scientist in the Canadian nuclear industry for 23 years. Having studied CANDU reactors in great detail, I can say I would not want to live within 10 miles of one. Pickering Unit 3 (P3) had a serious LOCA in August 1983 from a pressure tube rupture that was not supposed to be possible (according to all the scientists at Chalk River).

Chalk River scientists also believed that the N2 annulus gas system used by all CANDUs at that time could not produce particulate carbon -14. When P3 was opened up for repairs in 1985, thousands of curies of particulate carbon-14 were released to the air and was soon found on swipes taken in the offices AND IN THE HOMES of staff working at Pickering.

And, let's face it, the long-term disposal of CANDU fuel IS a major problem. AECL has been working on this for 50 years and has not come up with a viable plan. So hundreds of thousands of hot fuel bundles are stored in glorified swimming pools that have been known to leak into the local ground water after just 25 years of operation.

And, by the way, a spent fuel storage bay makes a GREAT terrorist target!

[luddite]

Buzzo, a while ago you brought up the safety features in existing reactors to convince me that they were perfectly safe.

(Though on a side note, the specific safety issues I brought up have never been addressed)

Here's my question. If we go to the kind of production that you're talking about, how many of those safety features will be in place?

Also, this is based on a model for submarines, which use very highly enriched fuel, correct? Civilian reactors don't use such highly enriched fuel because of a recognition that there are elevated dangers, correct? And the spent fuel is more dangerous, correct?

[luddite]

Welcome Apollo. I've been a little lonely. Nice to hear a Canadian perspective.

[DRBUZZ0]

Sometimes I feel very naive, Buzzo, but this answer really surprised me. After all your talk about how safe nuclear was, about how we could just churn them out by the hundreds and put them anywhere, how the fuel was useless for weapons and so on

AND

how nuclear was necessary for improving the standard of living everywhere in the world,

I just thought you would support a civilian nuclear program everywhere. That you don't indicates that you recognize risks you don't want to talk about

Oh I'd totally support a thorium-based reactor system in Iran or anywhere. I'd also consider supporting a light-water thermal reactor which is fueled by low enrichment uranium purchased abroad or manufactured by a modest domestic system.


However, Iran seems to be building a HUGE enrichment capability. Way more than you'd need to get 3% enrichment for a few power plants. Actually it's so large... it almost seems like the only practical use would be cascading enrichment for super-high weapons grade enrichment.

Also, despite all this talk about their enrichment for their "peaceful energy needs" they've shown no interest in purchasing low-enrichment uranium from Russia, even if it would be much cheaper. Geez, weird, because they could use that stuff just fine to get their peaceful reactors started right away.

Also, they're not building any reactors either. Oh wait... no I take that back... they are building one. It appears to be a bit too small to really be optimal for generating electricity. Also it seems to be a bit too big to be a prototype or pure-research reactor. Also, it's not even a light water reactor.. it seems to be some sort of hybrid heavy water reactor. Weird, because they say they're enriching for standard thermal reactors.

The other strange thing about their reactor is that it's nowhere near their power demand centers... and they don't seem to be building the distribution system for it... or installing turbines.

Hmmmm....

Based on this I'm starting to suspect that it's not Iran's desire for nuclear electrical generation that everyone is so upset about...

I guess I'm naive, eh?

[luddite]

Here's another thought, Buzzo.

While you ridicule the thought of wind turbines everywhere saying you can't capture all the energy in the atmosphere, I think you do attempt to try to quantify all the thorium on the Earth in a way that's even more silly.

Wind potential that's been studied indicates that a fraction of the Earth's surface would do. The Dakotas and maybe Texas, for example, could do all of the United States. And wind just goes on and on and on. It doesn't get weaker with time.

When you're trying to quantify thorium, you actually proposed churning up all the world's soils and scraping the ocean bottoms. And you proposed this as an option on environmental grounds. Now I know we're talking hundreds of years out. But still, the environmental impact of a hundred turbines has got to be lower than turning over all the soils beneath them.

There's been similar talk about uranium in granite. As an environmental solution, it fails. Wind turbines have got to be more benign.

[luddite]

I guess I'm naive, eh?

Not at all. I wouldn't trust Iran either. But then you're in the position of trying to decide who gets power and who doesn't. You're in the position of watching regimes turn over and just hoping that dangerous materials don't fall into the hands of madmen or incompetents. These are the kinds of security concerns that have been brought up in the past and you've pooh-poohed. Can we rule out another Hitler?

[luddite]

And, let's face it, the long-term disposal of CANDU fuel IS a major problem. AECL has been working on this for 50 years and has not come up with a viable plan. So hundreds of thousands of hot fuel bundles are stored in glorified swimming pools that have been known to leak into the local ground water after just 25 years of operation.

Do you know anything about the details of CANDU fuel? I'm trying to get a deeper understanding of the level of danger. How long is it dangerous for? And how dangerous?

[luddite]

Schneibster, do you have any links to support your claim that spent fuel is no more dangerous than natural uranium after 100 years? I've been trying to find the facts one way or another and have come up woefully short.

What I can say is that everyone, nuclear proponents and opposers alike, are looking at storage for thousands of years at the very least. Many nuclear sites openly recognize that spent fuel will remain dangerous for millenia, though they do not quantify the dangers.

The closest thing I've found to addressing your claim is this:

http://books.google.com/books?id=iRI7Cx2D4e4C&pg=PA21&sig=IdHoSHE_eby_R2X1jqrJDj_Q9Gs#PPA99,M1

Not all of the text is publicly available on line. The relevant section is about an ALMR reactor. It is proposed because it can reduce the dangers of spent fuel. The suggestion (on page 207) is that with the ALMR, spent fuel will only take 200-300 years to go down in toxicity to the level of natural uranium. There's some discussion about why even this may be a bit hopeful. My point, though, is that the implication is that spent fuel from existing reactors is expected to be dangerous for much longer.

[DRBUZZ0]

In stark contrast, Wind Power is a friggin battleground it is so lucrative. Do you know how much money each turbine makes in a year?

Have you seen what a battle ground the double-A battery market is? Damn those things kill wind power for profit. I mean look at the ads where they're battling it out. You've got Rayovac, Duarcell, Energizer all running big add campaigns...

Obviously AA batteries are therefore the thing which will lead to energy independence for baseload use!



Do you know how much money each turbine makes in a year?


Depends. That's a highly loaded question. Different locations will have VASTLY different potential. Hows about we use "Cape Wind" as an example?
Big proposed project off of Cape Cod Ma. That's considered the "Best" offshore wind location for the Northeastern US. In other words: ANY other location would do WORSE than this.


Project cost: about 900 million dollars to build. With commitment to take down the windmills eventually. They have about a 20 year lifespan, and they're going to require maintience. These are out at sea, so you have to bare in mind that they will require relatively frequent repainting and such to keep corrosion in check. Any metal offshore structure needs that.

The cost over the lifespan of the project are estimated about 1.2 billion dollars, including the final cost of either removing or refurbing and overhauling them at the time of planned life span.


They optimistically hope for about 1.5 billion kilowatt hours per year in electrical output. Reasonable, but on the high-side of estimates...

But we'll use their optimistic estimate...

The wholesale price that an electrical company will pay for that is actually just about one cent per kilowatt hour. It varies from .9 cents to about 1.2 cents. This is not only because "non stable" sources like this are hated by power utilities (who often would not buy the damn electricity if they weren't required to). But the amount you pay for electricity has a lot to do with distribution, line losses, maintenance, taxes and so on than generating cost.


The capacity factor issue of wind power makes every kilowatt hour worth the equivalent of about half of standard generation, because the variance factor means you twice as much to reliably reduce output elsewhere.


So they'd get 15 million dollars per year. Oh good. They can get their investment back in just 60 years. Oh wait... I thought the turbines were rated for an offshore lifespan of about 20 years? Well, maybe if they take good care of them they could double that.... oh wait... still not enough... damn


But I thought they wanted to make a profit?

Oh wait... EXTREMELY generous public funds: http://www.prnewsnow.com/Public_Release/State/98931.html


Ah, so basically they're doing this at a loss to sap up the funds of Massachussettes and the US.


Oh wait... but aren't their subsides for nuclear plants too?

Hmmm... well based on what the DOE has been paying...


The 2006 Department of Energy research and development budget provides $1.2 billion for renewables and conservation, $800 million for clean coal, and $510 million for nuclear. These levels reflect the growing awareness that the United States will need a diverse generation portfolio to meet increasing demand, to reduce emissions, and to move closer to energy independence.

Okay...

Hmm... according to this page the subsidies for wind power per kilowatt are $1200... JESUS H CHRIST THATS HIGH

http://www.ncpa.org/studies/renew/renew2c.html

Christ... based on all the articles i've read, wind power subsidies seem to be in the multiple billions if you include all the tax writeoffs...

http://scienceline.org/2007/08/17/env-romero-green-energy-markets/


Hmmm... Jeez... Well at least with subsidies it won't be the consumer who gets hit in the pocket... at least not directly...

Oh wait just look at this page:

http://www.awea.org/faq/wwt_costs.html

If my utility uses more wind energy, will that make my electric rates go up my electric rates go up?

Yes, probably, but not much. Let's say that wind energy costs 2 cents more per kilowatt-hour (2 cents/kWh) than the rest of the electricity your utility is generating or buying—a conservative estimate.



And that's from a pro-wind page. So even with all that funding it still costs a bit more? Wow.

Well at least the billions of dollars have resulted in making wind power a real source of energy in the US...

Wait what's that? It's only less than 1%? But haven't these been around since at leas the early 1990's?

So if we shell out billions per year like we do not, how long till we get to a 20% wind power use? That would be as high as nuclear?

Oh wait... that would be 100 years. Assuming demand does NOT INCREASE


So if something is going to be subsidized... um... shouldn't we get something semi-decent in return, at least?

[DRBUZZ0]

Here's another thought, Buzzo.

While you ridicule the thought of wind turbines everywhere saying you can't capture all the energy in the atmosphere, I think you do attempt to try to quantify all the thorium on the Earth in a way that's even more silly.

Wind potential that's been studied indicates that a fraction of the Earth's surface would do. The Dakotas and maybe Texas, for example, could do all of the United States. And wind just goes on and on and on. It doesn't get weaker with time.

When you're trying to quantify thorium, you actually proposed churning up all the world's soils and scraping the ocean bottoms. And you proposed this as an option on environmental grounds. Now I know we're talking hundreds of years out. But still, the environmental impact of a hundred turbines has got to be lower than turning over all the soils beneath them.

There's been similar talk about uranium in granite. As an environmental solution, it fails. Wind turbines have got to be more benign.


HAH! You've got to be kidding me? Yeah, we'll need to churn up all the soil in a few million years.

No, we can get along for centuries before we even need to consider abandoning conventional mining.

You're comparing covering an amount of earth effectively the size of the former Soviet Union with wind turbines.

I'm talking about using current mining operations for about 30-40 years, then backfilling those and moving on to other minable deposits and so on. I mean really, it's no different than any other mining.


Wind turbines from the searing deserts of Kazakstan to the bitter cold reaches of the artic sea, from the northern tip that looks out to alaska, down to the sea of japan across the wind swept thousands of miles of siberia, to the black sea, the casbian sea, the borders of Norway, to moscow the Baltic and toward germany. Threw the jungles, tundra, deserts and mountains...

That's... a... lot... of... windmills.

[Lonewulf]

Buzzo, that's pretty much what I said. Naturally, though, Luddite and the like have done a good job ignoring it.

[Apollo20]

Luddite:

Each CANDU bundle weighs about 22 kg and contains pellets of natural UO2. A bundle spends about 1 year in the reactor core and is irradiated to a burnup of about 200 MW.h/kg U. Pickering Units have about 4500 bundles in the reactor at any given time. The radiation dose from a freshly discharged bundle is about 10^6 millirem per hour at a distance of about 0.5 meters in air. This would provide a lethal dose in less than 30 minutes of exposure. The radiation field from this bundle would have dropped by a factor of about 100 in 100 years.

[Lonewulf]

How much of this "waste" is not reusable?

Of course, the solution is to naturally shut down all nuclear plants, shuffle the stuff where we can't ever find it, and then get rid of coal.

While we're at it, we should probably also get rid of hydroelectric. When those things blow, those things are dangerous.

[DRBUZZ0]

There are differential quotas and scaled carbon taxes, tax credits for low income and government programs that target retrofits for lowest income tax brackets. There are a lot of creative ways of getting around the problems of energy poverty.


A lot of creative ways... expensive too..






But you're wrong about it expanding class divides. It is rather a great social leveler. Income is one of the best indicators of carbon emissions. Make it expensive to emit and you hit the rich hardest.


Proportionally, I suppose. Yes, you do hit the richest hardest in terms of how they have to spend money. A rich person might get hit by millions and have to give up their second yatch.

A poor person is hit by several thousand. They have to give up eating.



One holiday flight to Fiji and you basically blow your whole carbon quota for the year. Business meetings every week would basically be a thing of the past. Rich people will suddenly see the appeal of small cars, like they do in Europe where energy has been more expensive for decades.


First that's not a fair comparison because Europe has smaller roads and is much more population dense, but rich people won't buy smaller cars. They'll buy the carbon credits off of poor people who will need to sell them to live at all. And the rich might have slightly smaller cars. But everyone else gets NO CAR AT ALL.


And rich people will be the first to invest in efficiencies as they arise, paving the way for price reductions as new ideas catch on.


No this was already explained.


I haven't done a systematic analysis, but I think the countries with highest energy prices tend to have smaller class divisions. Europe, for example, fares a lot better than North America.

Not a fair comparison at all... or even close. And Europe is not a lot better than the US. I really suggest you might want to do some research before you buy into that myth.

But even if it were. Wholliping a system with a sudden monitary collapse isn't going to work well for class division... well actually it might eliminate social class... if you do it hard enough you might lead to "An equal distribution of absolute poverty."

[DRBUZZ0]

I worked as a research scientist in the Canadian nuclear industry for 23 years. Having studied CANDU reactors in great detail, I can say I would not want to live within 10 miles of one. Pickering Unit 3 (P3) had a serious LOCA in August 1983 from a pressure tube rupture that was not supposed to be possible (according to all the scientists at Chalk River).

Chalk River scientists also believed that the N2 annulus gas system used by all CANDUs at that time could not produce particulate carbon -14. When P3 was opened up for repairs in 1985, thousands of curies of particulate carbon-14 were released to the air and was soon found on swipes taken in the offices AND IN THE HOMES of staff working at Pickering.

And, let's face it, the long-term disposal of CANDU fuel IS a major problem. AECL has been working on this for 50 years and has not come up with a viable plan. So hundreds of thousands of hot fuel bundles are stored in glorified swimming pools that have been known to leak into the local ground water after just 25 years of operation.

And, by the way, a spent fuel storage bay makes a GREAT terrorist target!


I'd like to know more about your background, as I've never ever heard a nuclear energy research scientist come out against the idea. Heard them say one variety of reactor or process was flawed, yes.

I've actually never liked the CANDU especially, but I've not seen any reason I wouldn't want to live near one. Are you aware of some of the things that come out of a coal stack?


The "spent fuel" issue has come up and been addressed before and what you are saying is the simplistic view which I have heard over and over and fails to address the actual physical nature of the stuff.

Furthermore, I'd be interested to know what scientist claimed it was impossible for a high pressure pipe to rupture. Given that there is no "infinately strong" metal and that pressure pipes of all sorts have had a tendency to rupture on occasion before.

This is of course, why there are contaimnet structures and why there are measures for this. One does not buy a fire extinguisher because theyexpect their house to catch fire, but because they know it can happen.

Is this the same scientist (the one with the pressure pipe which can not explode) who designed the "unsinkable ship" and the "Aircraft which simply cannot possibly crash ever"

[DRBUZZ0]

OH! You're so right! Subsidies... I never even thought of that! Nuclear has subsidies, so therefore all of the research, record keeping, and evidence MUST BE WRONG as to the price comparisons!

I mean, solar power would NEVER be subsidized!

http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/8000-solar-power-subsidy-for-homes/2007/05/08/1178390288210.html <--- obviously a link made by the evil nuclear scientists!

And wind energy... wind energy makes TONS of money, and thus needs NO subsidies at all!



What I always find so frustrating is that these arguments about solar and wind potential are never with really people who deal with this stuff. It's established...

I mean, people in the industry.. You don't see them reasonably arguing that you can run a country on solar or wind. You hear environmentalists. You hear politicians.

Have you ever heard an engineer who works with distribution systems claim you can? have you ever heard the guys who sell wind trubines even claim it? No they use words like "help" and "Cut back out need."

But people who are actually part of the ins and outs... It's... just not an argument. It's established.


You can read this post I made on solar energy and what the "solar guy" who is in the solar energy industry says

He does say "everything said is about 95% true." I think he picks on me for giving estimates which are a bit too generous for solar energy effeciency.

I choose to go with the highest reasonable effeciency estimates I could find, because I would rather they be skewed slightly in the wrong direction. Like current solar cells are about 18% effecient in practice. I picked 20% as my estimate based on the "best cells under the best conditions" to be generous.

However it's basically agreed on
From a solar guy...

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

[Belz...]

Sometimes I feel very naive, Buzzo, but this answer really surprised me. After all your talk about how safe nuclear was, about how we could just churn them out by the hundreds and put them anywhere, how the fuel was useless for weapons and so on

AND

how nuclear was necessary for improving the standard of living everywhere in the world,

I just thought you would support a civilian nuclear program everywhere. That you don't indicates that you recognize risks you don't want to talk about

Well, well. The woo's out of the bag.

[Belz...]

And, by the way, a spent fuel storage bay makes a GREAT terrorist target!

Hasn't, so far.

[Belz...]

Wind potential that's been studied indicates that a fraction of the Earth's surface would do. The Dakotas and maybe Texas, for example, could do all of the United States.

Don't you still find that a little excessive ?

A power plant the size of texas ?

Not at all. I wouldn't trust Iran either. But then you're in the position of trying to decide who gets power and who doesn't. You're in the position of watching regimes turn over and just hoping that dangerous materials don't fall into the hands of madmen or incompetents. These are the kinds of security concerns that have been brought up in the past and you've pooh-poohed. Can we rule out another Hitler?

You're right!!! Let's stop moving forward because somebody might use something in some wrong way !

But you're wrong about it expanding class divides. It is rather a great social leveler. Income is one of the best indicators of carbon emissions. Make it expensive to emit and you hit the rich hardest.

Not proportionally, no.

[Belz...]

I'd like to know more about your background

I'll help. Dr Greening (Apollo20) has a master's degree at being antagonistic. Careful.

[Apollo20]

The reactor failure that was deemed to be "impossible" was a rapid fracturing of a zirconium alloy pressure tube. Chalk River scientists preached the "leak-before-break" scenario to the regulators for years back in the 1970s and early 80s. A "leak-before-break" didn't happen in the case of Pickering Unit 3 - instead a hydride blister unzipped and opened a gash about 1 meter long in a fraction of a second!

[DRBUZZ0]

Not at all. I wouldn't trust Iran either. But then you're in the position of trying to decide who gets power and who doesn't. You're in the position of watching regimes turn over and just hoping that dangerous materials don't fall into the hands of madmen or incompetents. These are the kinds of security concerns that have been brought up in the past and you've pooh-poohed.


No you don't go around deciding who gets power and who doesn't. You do get extremely concerned when you see an Islamic fundamentalist country which has called for "death to Israel" and has sponsored terrorist groups - (We're not talking "suspected" I mean Iran has literally done so it's a known fact.. They say they gave that up in the mid 1980's... yeah sure)

and they turn around and start a very large construction project on what they claim is a peacefully civillian nuclear energy system but which has no apparent use for power generation and is basically EXACTLY what you would expect a nuclear weapons program to look like.

This is what it looked like when Iran announced they had their first samples of enriched uranium:

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

I don't remember what words were used but they were not "We are pleased to have taken the first step in our process of diversifying our energy supply and assuring we are prepared for the eventual depletion of petroleum resources as well as moving toward less carbon intensive means of generating electricity"

Is anyone even still pretending this is really a peaceful electricity project going on?







Can we rule out another Hitler?

I think so. The last of his fraternal line has already changed the name a long time ago and the only ones I know of still alive are getting older and have not yet reproduced.

Aside from maybe some neo-nazi I can't imagine anyone would want to keep that sir name anyway, just because of the stigma.

So I would say there probably won't be many more Hitler's. I don't know that there are even any living former hitlers. William Patrick Hitler died in the 1980's and his sons were born long after he changed his last name... so I wouldn't consider them to qualify wither way...

[Hindmost]

The reactor failure that was deemed to be "impossible" was a rapid fracturing of a zirconium alloy pressure tube. Chalk River scientists preached the "leak-before-break" scenario to the regulators for years back in the 1970s and early 80s. A "leak-before-break" didn't happen in the case of Pickering Unit 3 - instead a hydride blister unzipped and opened a gash about 1 meter long in a fraction of a second!

That doesn't sound like much of a problem. Large break LOCA analysis assumes a 4 foot section of the Coolant pipe mysteriously falls away.

A one meter gash seems small.

glenn

[luddite]

Glenn, how often does a 4 foot section of coolant pipe mysteriously fall away?

[Schneibster]

I got this one Glenn- the answer is, never unless the fairies come and make it vanish.

[Hindmost]

Glenn, how often does a 4 foot section of coolant pipe mysteriously fall away?

It's never happened...but, the analysis has to be worst case. Typically, one assumes a big problem...the pipe thingy...off site power goes away, one diesel fails and the operators don't do anything for a half hour.

glenn

[Hindmost]

I got this one Glenn- the answer is, never unless the fairies come and make it vanish.

Simultaneous posts

glenn:D

[Apollo20]

If the LOCA at Pickering was no big deal why did AECL spend $100 million dollars between 1983 and 2000 researching corrosion and hydriding of zirconium alloys and OPG, (the operator of Pickering NGS), spend several billion dollars retubing all of its Pickering reactors in the same time period?

[pvt1863]

Most environmentalists don't want a free market.

I agree, except when they are talking about nuclear. Then many of them have to make the "if it can't survive in the market without subsides, then we shouldn't be using it" argument. Switch the subject to solar or wind, on the other hand, and they will complain that the government isn't giving enough money away for them.

As for the pipe, it is easier and more conservative to assume that the pipe simply disappears. A break in the pipe is harder to model and also is preferable to a complete dissapearance because what is left of the pipe will partially block the opening and slow the loss of colant.

That is a common approach to accident analysis in nuclear engineering -- design the plant to withstand a hypothetical (and physically impossible) accident that bounds (is worse than) an actual accident can be.

[pvt1863]

If the LOCA at Pickering was no big deal why did AECL spend $100 million dollars between 1983 and 2000 researching corrosion and hydriding of zirconium alloys and OPG, (the operator of Pickering NGS), spend several billion dollars retubing all of its Pickering reactors in the same time period?

Because regardless of the plant's ability to withstand such an accident while remaining safe, you have to understand the failure mechanism and replace defective equipment.

Nobody said that LOCAs aren't big deals. They are. But that doesn't mean the reactor is in an unsafe condition. If it were really unsafe, then all the plants would have been shut down until the replacement was complete. But that didn't happen.

Things like this have happened in the US as well. When you find an unexpected problem, you monitor it through more thurough and more frequent inspections at any plant where it may apply while you investigate the problem to see if it requires widespread replacements. One of the reasons the plants are designed with the defense in depth that they have is so that things like that can happen without the regulatory body having to decide that a bunch of reactors have to go down for preventative maintenance at the same time.

[DRBUZZ0]

Well I have done some research further on the incidents which were mentioned.

I've said before that I was never that fond of the candu reactors or using heavy water as the moderator anyway, but by "not fond of" I mean it's not the reactor design I like best... still way better than coal.

As has been mentioned before, the CANDU reactors do produce a decent amount of tritium, which can be seperated relatively easily from the coolant, (seperating hydrogen isotopes is the easiest of all, because titrium is 50% heavier than deuterium it's a lot easier than uranium isotopes where it's just <3%). But the tritium has caused some to be concerned in the past. I don't think it's much of a risk even if it all were released in a catastrophic leak.

But I was not aware of the fact that they produced carbon-14. Actually, they don't anymore, but at one time way back they used nitrogen as a secondary coolant for the moderator. Anyone who knows the first thing about reactions knows nitrogen has a massive neutron capture crosssection and creates not only c-14 but also hydrogen and high energy gamma rays on recoil.

But C-14 isn't that bad as far as isotopes go. It's a very low energy beta emitter and it is quickly diluted by the huge amounts of carbon in the environment. Obviously not all "curies" are created equal. I read the IAEA report on that reactor and it listed the incident, but it was not considered serious.

I didn't read anything about more than small amounts making their way into the enviornment. I'm not sure that they detected elevated levels in homes, but they may have. Clearly, you can test for this stuff at very low levels, since that's how they do carbon dating. So it may be it was ever so slightly elevated. But I don't know.


As for the rupture, I'm still a bit confused on that one as it sounds minor in all I read. Pressure tubes rupture. It happens. In coal plants, in nuke plants, in water treatment plants. It's no surprise that if you fill a tube with something under high pressure every once in a while one will fail. Obviously, this is accounted for and there's no huge safety threat from it as there are contaimnet measures.

[pvt1863]

It was a tube rupture? That explains why I couldn't find any info on it online other than the typical alarmist "Chernobyl in Quebec" articles. Here I thought we were talking about a serious problem. Tube ruptures, while a concern, are nowhere near as bad a LOCA elsewhere since they always carry low loss rates (these are small tubes) and because a tube can be sealed off easily. Heck, when we do thermal analyses for plants, we generally assume that 20% of the tubes in the steam generator have been plugged for one reason or another.

[Schneibster]

Simultaneous posts

glenn:DGreat minds think alike. :cool:

[Lonewulf]

And, by the way, a spent fuel storage bay makes a GREAT terrorist target!

I'm curious about this, and I don't want to make it seem like this claim has gone uncontested.

Please explain how the terrorists will use the spent fuel, and why it would be any worse than if they used their target against plants that store deadly chemicals all over the place?

[DRBUZZ0]

I'm curious about this, and I don't want to make it seem like this claim has gone uncontested.

Please explain how the terrorists will use the spent fuel, and why it would be any worse than if they used their target against plants that store deadly chemicals all over the place?

I have heard before that the spent fuel pool is sometimes called a "weak point" in the whole armor of the plant, but just the same I'm not exactly kind of attack would be mounted on one. I know where I am the plant has the fresh spent fuel just off the reactor in a large pool with passive convection-based cooling and shielding.

I believe that when it first comes out it's kept right next to the core though, until it "cools" just a tad bit, so there would be no i-131 concern or anything after that.

They were talking about dry cask storage to make some more room. That would involve concrete casks with a welded stainless steel container that the bundles go in and then it's packed with filler. I don't know if that's just the plan or if they had the casks actually filled yet.

The spent fuel pool probably isn't in quite as strong a structure as the actual containment dome.

I'm just not sure what the "terrorist" would do? Crash a plane into it? Blow it up? How do you get a truck full of explosives onto a nuclear plant... I mean they have big gates and M-16 armed guards (and before ludite says "If it's so safe why do they have armed guards, they have them at fossil fuel plants too and the hangers at the airport)

So... assuming they blow the stuff up, then what? Great, that would leave a whole bunch of radioactive pebble-size bits and pieces of spent fuel strewn around the pool. And then the DOE would have to come with a vacuum truck and guys with brooms and geieger counters and clean the damn thing up.


Okay... I know... it would certainly be a PR DISASTER. Yes, that's a given. The antinukes would claim it poinsoned everyone in the damn state and then when some guy down the street gets lung cancer (after years of chain smoking) they'll hold him up as an example of someone dying because of the damn spent fuel.



But then you'll have to give it to them: They latch onto anything. The local anti-nuclear group posted on their website not long ago about how a 49 year old worker at the plant had died and they had his picture and obituary and everything up. It was an unexpected death of a relatively young man.

Yes... only it turns out the guy died after unsuccessful surgery to try to fix a congenital heart valve defect that had gotten worse with age. oh well..

[Belz...]

It was a tube rupture? That explains why I couldn't find any info on it online other than the typical alarmist "Chernobyl in Quebec" articles.

Chernobyl in Québec ? Gosh I hate extremists.

Please explain how the terrorists will use the spent fuel, and why it would be any worse than if they used their target against plants that store deadly chemicals all over the place?

Yeah. Didn't think about that.

[stanleywinthrop]

Don't you still find that a little excessive ?

A power plant the size of texas ?





Indeed. I wonder if he's stopped to think about what a state completlely covered in windmills would do to the bird population of said state.

[pvt1863]

Chernobyl in Québec ? Gosh I hate extremists.

Yeah. The article is here (http://www.ccnr.org/gentilly_hq.html), and they are basically saying that Pickering's tube rupture proves that a tube rupture can happen at Gentilly-2. They also point out that Chernobyl had pressure tubes. So the next (il)logical step for them is to assume that a Chernobyl-style accident is possible at Gentilly-2.

Anti-nuclear groups simply love to invoke the name Chernobyl. Using a tactic straight out of Fear Mongering 101, they say it over and over and over again. Sometimes I swear that Greenpeace has a policy that states that any article about nuclear power must use the name Chernobyl at least two dozen times. When Davis-Besse had its hole-in-the-head problem, antis did the same thing, saying that we narrowly avoided a Chernobyl on Lake Erie.

I should also point out that my last response was in error. When I hear "tube rupture" I immediately think of steam generator tube ruptures. I forgot that the CANDUs use tubes in the reactor core. So my comparison to tube ruptures in the US was incorrect.

[Hellbound]

Indeed. I wonder if he's stopped to think about what a state completlely covered in windmills would do to the bird population of said state.

Or the bird populations of other states and countries that happen to cross Texas on their migration path.

[Hellbound]

Anti-nuclear groups simply love to invoke the name Chernobyl.

Chernobyl is the new Three Mile Island.

[Hindmost]

It was a tube rupture? That explains why I couldn't find any info on it online other than the typical alarmist "Chernobyl in Quebec" articles. Here I thought we were talking about a serious problem. Tube ruptures, while a concern, are nowhere near as bad a LOCA elsewhere since they always carry low loss rates (these are small tubes) and because a tube can be sealed off easily. Heck, when we do thermal analyses for plants, we generally assume that 20% of the tubes in the steam generator have been plugged for one reason or another.

deleted.

FYI: On the new steam generator thing however, next generation plants should do well as they will use inconel 690 and the tube support system is way better...one of the things we found out from experience in older plants. The supports are placed where there is the least amount of vibration on the tubes...part of enhanced computer programs. I just thought that was so cool.

glenn

[Apollo20]

The cause of the Chernobyl accident has never been fully explained. It was originally claimed by the USSR National Nuclear Safety Committee that it was the result of infringements of the SRNPS regulations for the operation of an RBMK and the IAEA agreed with this assessment. However, by 1992 both of these organizations had changed their story to "a design deficiency related to the length of the displacer rods".

At one time no less than 13 scenarios leading to the explosion of Chernobyl Unit 4 were under consideration.

This is typical of the nuclear industry here in Canada. When something unexpected happens, invent a plausible cover story.... who cares if its true! The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission are in bed with AECL and OPG so our wonderful regulators do whatever the nuclear "barons" want. I know ..... I have watched them perform their little charade of Public Hearings for 20 years!

[Belz...]

This is typical of the nuclear industry here in Canada. When something unexpected happens, invent a plausible cover story.... who cares if its true!

It's fascinating how much of a twoofer mindset you show, doctor.

[Hellbound]

The cause of the Chernobyl accident has never been fully explained. It was originally claimed by the USSR National Nuclear Safety Committee that it was the result of infringements of the SRNPS regulations for the operation of an RBMK and the IAEA agreed with this assessment. However, by 1992 both of these organizations had changed their story to "a design deficiency related to the length of the displacer rods".

At one time no less than 13 scenarios leading to the explosion of Chernobyl Unit 4 were under consideration.

This is typical of the nuclear industry here in Canada. When something unexpected happens, invent a plausible cover story.... who cares if its true! The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission are in bed with AECL and OPG so our wonderful regulators do whatever the nuclear "barons" want. I know ..... I have watched them perform their little charade of Public Hearings for 20 years!

One question.

How is the reaction of the Russian nuclear industry to a major accident at one type of nuclear reactor indicative of what's "typical" of the Canadian nuclear industry at a minor accident at a different type of plant?

Or are you just making an assertion without evidence and hoping it slips right by?

[Lonewulf]

I worked as a research scientist in the Canadian nuclear industry for 23 years. Having studied CANDU reactors in great detail, I can say I would not want to live within 10 miles of one. Pickering Unit 3 (P3) had a serious LOCA in August 1983 from a pressure tube rupture that was not supposed to be possible (according to all the scientists at Chalk River).

This is typical of the nuclear industry here in Canada. When something unexpected happens, invent a plausible cover story.... who cares if its true!
nuclear "barons"

It's fascinating how much of a twoofer mindset you show, doctor.

Suddenly, the first thing I quoted above is put into question.

Apollo, care to put forth the effort to back up your claim as to your supposed "expertise"? So far, you're using far too many weasel words for me to not be dubious.

[Apollo20]

Here is a letter I sent to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) in December 2006:

In 2003 and 2005 I was an intervenor in the public hearings on the licensing of the four CANDU reactors at Pickering ‘A’ NGS. I felt compelled to participate in those hearings because of my first-hand knowledge of OPG’s nuclear operations and my concerns over the condition of the feeder pipes in Pickering ‘A’ Units.

These concerns were not alleviated by OPG’s announced intention of carrying out extensive feeder pipe inspections and only replacing degraded components where absolutely necessary. Indeed this merely guaranteed a major radiation dose commitment to the OPG employees and contract workers destined to carry out inspection work in the appalling conditions encountered close to the face of a large CANDU reactor. As it transpired the total dose to the individuals involved in the Pickering Unit 4 feeder pipe inspection was 271 mSv, a significant exposure when it is considered that the normal operation of a single CANDU Unit entails a radiation dose of about 700 mSv per year. Fortunately OPG eventually abandoned its plan to refurbish Pickering Units 2 and 3, even after the CNSC had granted OPG permission to proceed with such an ill-conceived plan.

Now, two years on from these events, I see that OPG wants to forge ahead with more refurbishments that will involve even more feeder pipe inspections and radiation exposures. However, the radiological consequences of OPG’s latest exercise in rebuilding near-defunct reactors, namely Units 5 - 8 at Pickering ‘B’, has the potential to endanger not only the station personnel involved in the task, but also the hapless residents of Pickering township and the local environments on the designated route from Pickering to the Bruce Waste Disposal Site. Why? Because the scope-of-work document issued by OPG lists replacement of steam generators and transportation of the associated waste as new and untested requirements for the refurbishment of Pickering ‘B’.

This immediately raises heightened concern about the Pickering ‘B’ refurbishment because of the simple fact that, after a CANDU reactor’s pressure vessel and in-core components such as the pressure and calandria tubes, the steam generators constitute the area within a nuclear power station that most effectively concentrates radioactivity. Furthermore, steam generator tubing is the thinnest barrier in a CANDU reactor heat transport circuit and therefore constitutes an area that is highly susceptible to the release of primary coolant and its associated radioactive contamination to the supposedly non-radioactive secondary side of the steam generator.

Two decades of operation of the four Pickering ‘B’ Units has resulted in the production and deposition of large quantities of activated corrosion/erosion products, fission product, uranium and transuranic isotopes from the neutron irradiation of pressure boundary materials and natural uranium. The transfer of radioactivity from the reactor core to the steam generators, mainly via the associated “sludge/crud” of corrosion metal oxides such as magnetite, has lead to many operational problems for OPG such as radiation field build up and loss of thermal efficiency through the fouling of steam generator tubes. Indeed, because of these problems, OPG has attempted from time to time, to chemically clean affected steam generators in Pickering ‘A’ and ‘B’ Units. As a result of these cleaning activities, a number of radioactive effluent solutions and particulate filters from Pickering “boiler-cleans” were subjected to chemical and radiochemical analyses by Kinetrics (Formerly OPT) in Toronto and AECL’s Whiteshell Laboratories in Pinawa, Manitoba.

These analyses showed that long-lived activation products from the irradiation of chromium, iron, cobalt, nickel, zinc and niobium, such as Fe-55, Fe-59, Co-60, Zn-65 and Nb-94 as well as fission products such as Ru-103, Ru-106, Sb-125, Cs-134, Cs-137, Ce-144, Eu-154 and the uranium and transuranic isotopes U-235, U-238, Pu-238, Pu-239, Am-241, Cm –242 and Cm-244 were present in substantial amounts in the analyzed samples. However, it should be noted that data on the long-lived species Cl-36, Ni-63, Sr-90 and I-129 are few and far between because of the difficulties, (and cost!), of measuring these pure beta-emitting radioisotopes.

Nevertheless, one of the most significant findings of the analytical studies of Pickering steam generator cleaning wastes is the fact that while these persistent and highly radio-toxic species are known to be present in all steam generator samples, it has proved to be next to impossible to convert the available data into meaningful steam generator inventories because of the great uncertainties involved in making such extrapolations. This is due to a number of factors:

(i)The variable distribution of deposited activity on steam generator surfaces, especially in inaccessible areas such as the “U-tubes”.
(ii)The highly uncertain efficiency of a chemical cleaning agent in removing a particular radioisotope from a steam generator deposit.
(iii)The nature of the samples, (i.e. un-quantified wash solutions and/or filters) from which the analytical data was derived.

If we focus only on the radiologically significant plutonium inventory in a Pickering steam generator we find that “guestimates” have in fact been made, but the uncertainties are acknowledged to be such that inventories as high as 10 times the quoted values are equally probable. And this raises a number of very serious concerns about the planned removal of steam generators from Pickering ‘B’ as I shall now explain.

The regulation of the Canadian nuclear industry is based on a probabilistic safety analysis approach in which the risk and radiological consequences of a potential nuclear accident are assessed. Typically the accident in question is assumed to involve the environmental release of a radionuclide and an associated radiation dose, via air or water-borne transport, to the population within a specified radius of the accident. In the present case, the accident scenario might involve damage, with breach of containment, to a steam generator through hard impact during its removal or transportation from Pickering ‘B’. Furthermore, the accident might be envisaged to result in the release of 1 % or more of the steam generator inventory of Pu-239 or, to follow standard CNSC practice in this regard, the release of a specific amount of this radionuclide, say 1 x 10^7 Bq of Pu-239.

Now herein resides the source of my concerns and the main reason for my intervention in the OPG proposals for the refurbishment of Units at Pickering ‘B’: as previously noted, all the Pickering steam generator’s Pu-239 inventories are highly uncertain. What is more, the radiation dose-to-Becquerel conversions used by OPG are also highly uncertain because of construction complexities and uneven crud composition/deposition patterns in the steam generator channel-head bowl, divider plate, tube sheet and tubes. Thus:

A meaningful probabilistic safety analysis of the proposed steam generator
removal operations at Pickering ‘B’ cannot presently be made.

I would also like to point out that OPG has a very poor track record in accurately predicting the condition of critical systems such as pressure tubes, feeder pipes and steam generators, in its nuclear reactors. An example of this may be seen in the information provided by OPG to British Energy in February 2003 regarding the fitness for service of the steam generators in Bruce Unit 8. It appears that OPG assured British Energy that the steam generators in question would be “in good condition, repair and proper working order, having regard for their use and age.” Unfortunately for all concerned, this turned out not to be the case. Indeed, when the Bruce Unit 8 steam generators were inspected during the first planned outage after the signing of the 2003 Purchase Agreement, their condition was such that British Energy immediately served a Statement of Claim on OPG seeking damages in the amount of $500,000,000 for the anticipated reduced operating life of Unit 8 steam generators.

This incident should make it perfectly clear to the CNSC that OPG cannot be trusted to provide a reliable assessment of the radiological conditions prevailing within the Pickering ‘B’ steam generators. And I hope the CNSC recalls how OPG previously misled the AECB with pronouncements that there was no carbon-14 on the pressure tubes at Pickering ‘A’, when, as it turned out, there was thousands of curies!
And we also need to consider OPG’s well-known reticence to share information with the public on the amount of “tramp” plutonium in its reactor systems as the following example shows: In my role as a research chemist for OPG, I used to analyze samples of irradiated fuel bay water from Pickering NGS. I typically found, in addition to the expected activated corrosion products, significant amounts of Pu-239. In the course of this research I became involved in an information exchange with U.S. nuclear industry researchers on issues connected with the long-term storage of nuclear fuel and I sought permission from my OPG manager to share my data with my American colleagues. My manager said I could provide the results of my Pickering fuel storage bay water analysis as long as the Pu-239 data were removed. When I asked the reasons for the exclusion of the plutonium data I was told: “We don’t want the whole world to know that we have plutonium in our fuel storage bays.”

With these facts in mind I am asking, indeed begging, the CNSC to acknowledge the reality that OPG is too secretive and too self-serving to be allowed to proceed with steam generator replacement activities without an independent audit and proper accounting of the radiological hazards involved. And OPG has already proven that it is more concerned with concealing its intentions with regard to the Pickering ‘B’ refurbishment than revealing the details of its work plans for this project. In fact OPG has gone so far as to deny the CNSC access to its Project Execution Plan (PEP) as reported in the CNSC Minutes of the Pickering ‘B’ Integrated Safety Review Meeting held on October 26 2006. This meeting also shows CNSC staff complaining about the impact of not having a PEP for Pickering ‘B’ on the CNSC’s business plan for 2007, rather than voicing any concerns over the potential radiological impact of OPG’s Pickering ‘B’ refurbishment operations!

Therefore, because it is well-known how the CNSC goes out of its way to cater to the wishes of OPG, I believe it would serve the best interests of the people of Ontario for the CNSC Commissioners to show real due diligence and insist that an independent consultant/auditor be contracted to provide a report that includes:

(i)A quantification of the Pu-239 and Sr-90 inventory in every Pickering ‘B’ steam generator slated for removal in the upcoming refurbishment.
(ii)A detailed description of how such data were derived.
(iii)An estimate of the predicted OPG employee and/or contract worker radiation exposure from involvement in the removal of the Pickering “B’ steam generators.

I am further requesting that the consultant/auditors report be produced before the CNSC grants perfunctory approval of the Pickering ‘B’ refurbishment operations so that the people of Ontario may understand the potential consequences of the high-risk activities OPG plan to undertake, supposedly for our benefit, before the inevitable problems arise.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Needless to say I received no feedback on this from the CNSC....

[luddite]

Thank you Apollo. I very much appreciate your insights.

From here, it sure looks like Apollo has a far more detailed knowledge of reactor functions than any of the people demanding his credentials. Nor is Apollo especially unusual, at least in a Canadian context. I know at least 2 nuclear engineers who abandoned their interest in nuclear power. One is now an engineering professor at the University of Toronto specializing in solar power. He says that he has learned that fusion power is best kept at a distance. The other was an immigrant from India who hoped to find better conditions at Canadian reactors and found himself disappointed.

From the little details I'm getting, I know that neither of these is Apollo.

[Apollo20]

Luddite:

Thanks!

Yes, I can only speak with "insider" knowledge about the Canadian nuclear industry, but I know, from visits to nuclear facilities in the UK, that the Brits have had their share of problems, (horror stories really!), with nuclear energy too. That's why they have abandoned their "Advanced" gas reactors after years of problems. I guess they weren't so advanced after all....

You know the problem of long-term storage of nuclear waste is perhaps the real show-stopper. The Canadian master plan was to bury it "up north" in the Canadian Shield. Hence the AECL research facility at Whiteshell in Manitoba were working on this for years. Then the people of Manitoba wisely said "NIMBY" and AECL promply shut down Whiteshell and went back to the drawing board.

I challenge any pro-nuker to tell me they would be happy to have a nuclear waste depository in their backyard!

[Belz...]

Thank you Apollo. I very much appreciate your insights.

Translation: "Whew! Finally someone who's opinion coincides with mine. Now I can safely ignore everything that's been said so far in this thread and maintain my fear-based faith."

From here, it sure looks like Apollo has a far more detailed knowledge of reactor functions than any of the people demanding his credentials.

He sure has more than me. Some of us have already had run-ins with doctor Greening, here.

Nor is Apollo especially unusual, at least in a Canadian context. I know at least 2 nuclear engineers who abandoned their interest in nuclear power.

TWO ? Holy hell! I wasn't aware there were that many!

[Belz...]

I challenge any pro-nuker to tell me they would be happy to have a nuclear waste depository in their backyard!

Sure. Just give me a geiger counter.

ETA: I'd rather a nuke plant than a chemical one.

[luddite]

I challenge any pro-nuker to tell me they would be happy to have a nuclear waste depository in their backyard!

You might be surprised. Several of the people on this forum have no problem with spent fuel storage tanks nearby and claim that civilian nuclear waste is not hazardous after a few decades. The specific claim was that it was no more radioactive than natural uranium after 100 years and hardly more so after 30.

Actually, on this note, I should point out that this has not been substantiated, and while I haven't asked for a lot of references, this is one where I'm going to demand it, because everything I read indicates otherwise.

I spoke to a friend of mine yesterday, an engineer, though not a nuclear engineer. He is a former proponent of nuclear energy, now in the Green Party and a passionate opponent. He said that while he wasn't sure how to assess the claim that 100 year old spent fuel was no more dangerous than natural uranium, he suggested that I calculate the lethal dose of natural uranium.

So I've done my best. This is not my area of expertise and I appreciate corrections. But here's what I've got.

I went to this site and tried to calculate the dose for natural uranium.

http://www.wise-uranium.org/rdcu.html

I plugged in just the numbers you gave me. 22 kg bundles and 4500 of them in a loaded reactor. That gave me about 100 tonnes of natural uranium, which gives a dose of gamma radiation of 1.079 mSv/h and 468.2 Sv/h of external radiation from soil (that seemed to be the closest option given to having a stack of this stuff next to you). Meanwhile the following site gives a lethal dose as 3-5 Sv:

http://www4.tsl.uu.se/~radiation_protection/RPCOURS.htm#dlimi

So my cursory understanding says that a stack of natural uranium as large as the spent fuel from one refueling would deliver about 100 times the lethal dose of radiation in an hour. Unless there's something I've totally screwed up.

Which might well be, because the dose calculator I used gave slightly higher doses the longer the delay. So I'd appreciate some help.

[Belz...]

You might be surprised. Several of the people on this forum have no problem with spent fuel storage tanks nearby and claim that civilian nuclear waste is not hazardous after a few decades. The specific claim was that it was no more radioactive than natural uranium after 100 years and hardly more so after 30.

Actually, it's been pointed out to you that some radioactive waste is dangerous for a long, long time, but that due to the quantity involved, can be handled.

Actually, on this note, I should point out that this has not been substantiated

The truth is that it has, but you ignored it.

So I've done my best.

No, you haven't. What you've done is say "Well, that's all very interesting, Schneibster, but I STILL think nuclear is wrong, for some reason." Apollo's presence in this thread just serves as an excuse to galvanise your position, as if you were in any danger of being convinced of anything to start with.

As I told Buzzo earlier on, your opinion is faith-based, and no amount of evidence will change it.

[Belz...]

Apollo:

Your posted letter is interesting, but I don't think one could say that laziness or complacency ISN'T something that affects ALL human endeavours, not just nuclear. So I think it's safe to say that chemical plants are just as badly administrated, if not more so, than nuclear ones.

Unless you can correct me, of course.

[Hindmost]

Luddite:

...snip...

I challenge any pro-nuker to tell me they would be happy to have a nuclear waste depository in their backyard!

Unfair analogy...

Choose which of the following you would rather have in your backyard:

Nuclear power plant
Chemical plant
Ethanol plant
Paper factory
oil refinery
coal fired plant
Garbage dump
Nuclear waste repository
Chemical waste dump

now, ask the question. For me, if I had to have something in my back yard, I would take the nuke plant or the nuclear waste repository.

glenn

[Apollo20]

Belz:

Well there are some examples of chemical plant disasters that support your point: Bhopal (in India) would be one and Flixborough (in the UK) would be another....

Luddite:

The question of radioactive decay of spent fuel is quite complex because a whole slew of radioisotopes are present in the discharged fuel. But to claim irradiated nuclear fuel is "safe" after only 100 years is not true - plutonium and americium see to that! There are also the long-lived fission products Sr-90 (Half-life = 29 years) and Cs-137 (Half-life = 30 years) that are initially present at the 1000s of curies per gram level, as well as activation products from the fuel cladding ...... and remember 5 half-lives reduces the initial activity by only a factor of 32.

[RecoveringYuppy]

plutonium and americium see to that!
But those can be used as fuel.

[Belz...]

The question of radioactive decay of spent fuel is quite complex because a whole slew of radioisotopes are present in the discharged fuel. But to claim irradiated nuclear fuel is "safe" after only 100 years is not true - plutonium and americium see to that! There are also the long-lived fission products Sr-90 (Half-life = 29 years) and Cs-137 (Half-life = 30 years) that are initially present at the 1000s of curies per gram level, as well as activation products from the fuel cladding ...... and remember 5 half-lives reduces the initial activity by only a factor of 32.

Doctor,

I don't know if you've been following the whole thread so this might be redundant of me.

No one here has argued that spent fuel is safe after 100 years. What HAS been said is that after 40 years part of the spent fuel can be recycled, and the rest, some 30-40 tons per reactor per year, if I understand correctly, must be disposed of for thousands of years.

[Lonewulf]

But to claim irradiated nuclear fuel is "safe" after only 100 years is not true

Now I know no one has claimed that.

Invent strawmen on your own time, pal. Don't waste mine.

I challenge any pro-nuker to tell me they would be happy to have a nuclear waste depository in their backyard!
Yes. I would.

You know why?

Because there is something going to happen in my back yard. It's called Global Warming. It's something that I alone can't stop, can't control, and something that will affect us all. Something that, if left unchecked for long enough, can mean very catastrophic consequences. You think Chernobyl was bad? Global warming is worse. But I can contribute, and part of my contribution is to side with nuclear here. If you have to ask me which is worse, CO2 gas or UO2 rods, I'll have to go with the former. An accident like Three Mile Island is local. An accident like Global Warming is global.

And yes, I know, we can set up wind mills and solar and hug the earth to give it more power. But to handle not only what Coal has, but also nuclear? Sorry, not buying it. It takes a lot more than just wanting it to happen, and it takes a lot more than massive government subsidies. Which come from somewhere, after all.

Oh, and by the way. If people are going to say that wind and solar can revolutionize the world? Then hell, replace hydroelectric too. That has the longest history of causing deaths and environmental damage. I've already posted a link where Brazil is standing to go through one hell of a damaged environment thanks to plans to set up their own dam.

One other thing: if you meant "my back yard" as in literally? Then yes. Still. Bunk that crap up, put it in my back yard. Just double check it before you do. I'm all for safety, and I'm willing to slap around people if they aren't safe about it. I'm willing to make a sacrifice to combat global warming.

And finally: About safety. I like how people say, "There are people that aren't safe about it! Therefore, we should scrap the entire plan because Chernobyl will happen again and the entirely nuclear power plant will go up like an atom bomb!!11111eleveneleven".

I'll have to agree with Obama's platform here.

Safe and Secure Nuclear Energy: Nuclear power represents more than 70 percent of our non-carbon generated electricity. It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table. However, there is no future for expanded nuclear without first addressing four key issues: public right-to-know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation. Barack Obama introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate to establish guidelines for tracking, controlling and accounting for spent fuel at nuclear power plants.

To prevent international nuclear material from falling into terrorist hands abroad, Obama worked closely with Sen. Dick Lugar (R -- IN) to strengthen international efforts to identify and stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction. As president, Obama will make safeguarding nuclear material both abroad and in the U.S. a top anti-terrorism priority.

Obama will also lead federal efforts to look for a safe, long-term disposal solution based on objective, scientific analysis. In the meantime, Obama will develop requirements to ensure that the waste stored at current reactor sites is contained using the most advanced dry-cask storage technology available. Barack Obama believes that Yucca Mountain is not an option. Our government has spent billions of dollars on Yucca Mountain, and yet there are still significant questions about whether nuclear waste can be safely stored there.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/energy/

He recognizes safety concerns, but doesn't shrink away like a weasel about it.

Newsflash: If you're going to say that people can't be safe because something might be dangerous, then congratulations. You just wipe out every chemical factory and mining operation on the planet. You also just wiped out a good deal of modern society.

After all, someone might not be safe with airplanes. You sure you want to take a chance on your next flight? We should wipe out all the airports. Yeah, sure, they're supposed to be safe... except for all the airplane crashes. And all the times minor crap happens, like depressurization. You sure we should take that risk?

[pvt1863]

I challenge any pro-nuker to tell me they would be happy to have a nuclear waste depository in their backyard!

The whole “would you want it in your backyard” is one of the worst arguments I’ve ever heard.

There is nothing wrong with wanting access to a product without having to directly deal with the downsides of its production or use. The proof of this is that we do it every day with most products we deal with and most technology we readily accept. Is it wrong to want access to gasoline without wanting an oil well or refinery in your backyard? Is it wrong to take advantage of x-rays while not wanting old x-ray machines stored in your backyard? Is it wrong to support the use of solar PV cells while not wanting the toxic waste that results from their production stored in your backyard?

The answer to all of these, and the corresponding question about nuclear power and nuclear waste, is no. The reason such positions are acceptable is because the question does not reflect reality -- it is a strawman argument because nobody is advocating the consequences that the questions imply (unless, in the case of nuclear, you assume people’s “backyards” are 160 miles in diameter). Nobody wants to build refineries, dispose of old x-ray machines, bury PV-related toxic waste, or store spent nuclear in anybody’s backyard because we don’t have to. So the "store it in your backyard" approach is just more scare tactics.

That having been said, I would have no problem with it.

[DRBUZZ0]

Sure. Just give me a geiger counter.

ETA: I'd rather a nuke plant than a chemical one.


You have made a very good point which I have tried to make many times before. With a few exceptions of very low energy particle emitters, radioactive material is extremely easy to detect EXTREMELY. So easy it can be detected on levels way way way below dangerous or even considered significant. A geiger counter can be had for less than $100 and will EASILY tell you even a small amount of radiation abnormally concentrated above normal.

A spectrometer that just about fits in your pocket can give you an instantaneous identification of that radiation as being something like natural thorium deposits or an unusual synthetic isotope not found in nature. Even a very modest laboratory can detect radioactive material to a high degree of accuracy.

That is the big problem which I have with a lot of the anti-nuclear projects like "The Toothfairy Project" which has already made a conclusion before it started or various far out methods of measuring the possible increase in cancer rates in populations who eat a lot of fish which spwaned in an area in the same title estuary as a nuclear plant.

There are done in such a round-a-bout way simply grabbing at straws to try to find some coincidental factor or just to try to come up with their preexisting conclusion.

If the plant is leaking some signifficant amounts of radiation, I can tell you in five minutes with a simple sweep. Even if it's leaking tiny amounts, that can be easily checked for with a brutally simple sampling station. If it's made it's way into the enviornment or drinking water or condenser discharge that is zero problem to verify. It can't be hidden by the big corporations. Just buy a surplus gieger counter on ebay for $40 if you don't believe me. (But for christ sake read the manual and don't flip out when it makes a single tick here and there)


The fact is radiation is by far the easiest contaminant to test for... far and away...


Now I've got a question: If there's a leak in an industrial system, or they think there might be, or just want to check for one, in something like an oil pipe line or a chemical storage tank.... What might they add to it to make the process of tracking down any stray leaks or losses super easy instead of nearly impossible?

I'll give you a clue. It's the same method used by scientists if they're trying to figure out where a drug or substance of some sort is accumulating, being broken down or migrating in an organism or some other system and do so easily so that they don't have to even be invasive....

[BenBurch]

Actually, if my back yard were over the right sort of geologic structure, and you promised not to do blasting at night, you could make the shaft in my back yard, no problem! I'd only charge a reasonable rent.

I shouldn't tell you about all the radioactive things I've collected though; A depleted uranium round (sans cartridge), a small bottle of radium paint from the 1920s, tritium illumination capsules. The local observatory has a 1905 (or 1915? Not sure...) Radium Star Atlas, but that isn't surprising as it was the Elgin Watch Co. observatory and at that time radium was heavily used by the watch company.

[Belz...]

Don't forget smoke detectors...

[luddite]

Well, before you begin, perhaps we should explore precisely what we're talking about when we talk about nuclear fuel, when it's put in the reactor, when the reactor is running, and when it's taken out.

Nuclear fuel rods for a civilian reactor are enriched to about 5% U-235; the remainder of 95% is U-238, not U-234 (except in vanishingly small amounts). Natural uranium is about 99.3% U-238, 0.7% U-235, and an even smaller amount of U-234 (the enrichment processes, both gaseous diffusion and centrifugal enrichment, favor light isotopes, so both U-234 and U-235 are enriched).

The U-235 (5%) does all the fissioning (except for the very occasional U-234 or U-238 fission; this has a very much longer half-life than radioactive decay of either, however, so only a truly astronomically small fraction of the U-234 and U-238 undergoes fission). As the fuel is used, the U-235 undergoes fission; this results in likely radioactive fission products. The U-238 can absorb neutrons and the newly-formed U-239 will quickly decay to neptunium-239, and then to plutonium-239.

Since plutonium-239 is fissile, like U-235, some of it will undergo fission in the storm of neutrons inside the reactor, forming more fission products; however, this is not a majority process. The majority process is the fission of U-235. That's because the neutrons that are best at being absorbed by U-238 to form Pu-239 aren't the same energy as the neutrons that are best at being absorbed by U-235 and causing it to fission. The structure of the reactor is designed to maximize power, and therefore to moderate the neutrons so that they are the kind that cause the most U-235 fissioning, not the kind that convert U-238 to Pu-239; it's possible to make a reactor that makes neutrons that are the right energy to make Pu-239, of course, and this is called a "breeder" because it makes Pu-239. And, of course, the reason you do is because those neutrons are also not the right energy to cause Pu-239 fission; sure, it happens, but again, that's not the majority process, and that's controlled by the moderation.

So what we've got when we start is mostly U-238, with one atom in 20 being U-235, and one in a few thousand being U-234. As it's bombarded with neutrons, the U-235 fissions a lot, the U-238 is occasionally converted to Pu-239, the Pu-239 fissions sometimes, the U-234 is very occasionally converted to U-235, and occasionally a fission product (which was likely already radioactive) is converted to another isotope by the neutrons. As time goes on, the amount of U-235 decreases. As it does so, the amount of fission going on drops; this means that the moderation must be adjusted to keep the reaction going on. There's another problem, too; these products are also very often neutron absorbers and as their concentration increases, they damp the reaction by eating neutrons. Eventually, no amount of moderation decrease can keep the reaction going; there are too few neutrons being made, and too many things absorbing them. By this time, the amount of U-235 has decreased to perhaps 1-2% (Hindmost could probably come up with that figure; I'm too lazy to hunt further for a reference, but it's not all that important). A few percent of the U-238 has converted to Pu-239, and some of the Pu-239 has fissioned. This has taken a decade or more.

What you've got is still well over 90% U-238. Of the remainder, a couple percent is U-235, and a couple percent is Pu-239. The remaining six or eight percent is fission products, of varying levels of activity; a couple percent of this is high activity nuclear waste. But the higher level activity it has, the faster it decays. The bulk of the material is U-238, which has a half-life of 4.5 billion years; in terms of radiation hazard, not much because it has such a long half-life. There are high-activity isotopes in it, but storage for a few decades reduces this to the point where it is very little more active than the U-238 already is anyway. That's because the concentration of highly active isotopes was already in the single digits, and they decay very quickly; that's what "high activity" means.

Now, I won't misrepresent this; it's still radioactive after it's done its decades cooling off. But handling it for a limited period would be unlikely to harm the average person. You wouldn't want to handle it with your bare hands for a period of weeks on end, but more because you'd be likely to ingest some than because of anything it might do to your hands. You wouldn't want to eat it much of it; uranium is a low energy alpha emitter, so your skin (as has already been pointed out) is sufficient to stop the radiation, but if you were to ingest it, it could be a problem later on; however, it's important to point out here that the hazard would be far more a chemical poisoning risk than anything to do with radiation. In amounts small enough not to cause heavy metal poisoning and kidney failure, it would not pose much of a radiation hazard. No increase in human cancer has ever been reported in the scientific and medical literature as a result of exposure to natural uranium, and after the high-level isotopes have decayed, the spent fuel rods are not a great deal different.

Now, those are the facts. Let's see how many of them you already knew.

Well, gee, I'm sure glad you validated that from your infinite wisdom. I have a question: where is all this U-234 coming from? It's only five thousandths of a percent in the first place, even after enrichment, and U-234 doesn't get made by likely interactions inside a reactor.

So? It still only decays at a rate so low that only one half of it has done so in the lifetime of the Earth. And I repeat, why do you keep talking about U-234?

But it STILL only happens to half the atoms in a sample in four and a half billion years. I repeat, so? The incidence of it is still low. Furthermore, you're still talking about U-234. Which you have not demonstrated is relevant to the conversation since it only represents five one-thousandths of a percent of enriched uranium, and five ten-thousandths of a percent of natural uranium. Where is all this U-234 coming from?

Why does it have to be held in a vault for hundreds of thousands of years? In a hundred years, it's no more radioactive than natural uranium. And in thirty, it's only barely so.

And ignoring the facts is hysteria.

Let's talk about reality. The problem here isn't with civilian waste. The problem is with military waste. Military reactors use highly enriched uranium, and can "burn" a great deal more U-235 because they have a great deal more in the first place. This results in a very high concentration of fission products, and those products are very "hot;" furthermore, they remain so for a much longer time. Thousands or tens of thousands of years is not an unreasonable time to discuss spent military fuel remaining very dangerous in radiological terms. But if civilian use becomes widespread, the waste that it makes remains much lower level, and is therefore much less of a disposal problem than military waste. So basically, what opponents of civilian nuclear power are doing is equating military waste with civilian waste and claiming they're the same thing; add a dose of hysteria over teh invisuble nucular cancer rays, and there you have it.

And why do military reactors use HEU? That would be because most military reactors are on ships and submarines and they have to carry the fuel; that means that the more enriched the fuel, the less weight they have to carry per unit power, and the faster they can go. Simple, easy, obvious.

All of this is information you could easily have found out for yourself; much of it is already available in Wikipedia. Try "nuclear fuel cycle" and "uranium" for highly relevant articles.

Speaking of straw men...

So again, what we have here is hysteria driven emotional rhetoric. You don't know the difference between U-234, U-235, and U-238; you don't know that military and civilian fuel are different; you don't know the relation between specific activity and half-life; you don't know the difference between a breeder and a power reactor; you don't know the civilian "use once" cycle; you don't know what an integral fast reactor is; you don't know that there is thousands of times more uranium in seawater than in all the deposits of natural uranium we have ever discovered; you don't know that natural uranium is insufficiently radioactive to cause a single known case of cancer documented in the scientific or medical literature; and you don't know enough math to understand why if one in four and a half billion uranium atoms decays in a year, it means that one atom in 142,009,200,000,000,000 decays every second.

Overall, I'd have to say you know little of physics, and less of nuclear engineering. Which means that your opinions are based, not on facts, but on emotion. Which is basically what I said before. I'm pretty certain that there's no point in moving on to economics until you demonstrate a much firmer grasp of physics. So I think I'll stop here and wait to see if you have learned anything before I waste any more time.
Okay, fellows, look at this message from Schneibster way back. I didn't misrepresent what he said. A number of posts defended this position as well.

[DRBUZZ0]

Actually, if my back yard were over the right sort of geologic structure, and you promised not to do blasting at night, you could make the shaft in my back yard, no problem! I'd only charge a reasonable rent.

I shouldn't tell you about all the radioactive things I've collected though; A depleted uranium round (sans cartridge), a small bottle of radium paint from the 1920s, tritium illumination capsules. The local observatory has a 1905 (or 1915? Not sure...) Radium Star Atlas, but that isn't surprising as it was the Elgin Watch Co. observatory and at that time radium was heavily used by the watch company.

Bottle of radium paint, eh? That's gotta be pretty damn hot. The actual paint was pretty radioactive but the actual amount on each hand is very low. When whole bottles show up they're often very hot and peg a good meter up close.

Actually what I've been trying to find for a while for my collection for some time is a plutonium sample. In the US, they never sold plutonium in consumer devices (except pacemakers), but in europe a few smoke detector companies used it in place of Am-241. Don't worry... same deal as the AM-241... IE: we're talking nanograms.

I think it would be bellow the exempt limits, but I'd have to double check. But if I could find one, it would be cool just because "plutonium" is so iconic. It's the one material that has never really been approved for any general market device. But again, I'd have to make sure it's bellow exempt limits.

[Hindmost]

Actually, if my back yard were over the right sort of geologic structure, and you promised not to do blasting at night, you could make the shaft in my back yard, no problem! I'd only charge a reasonable rent.

I shouldn't tell you about all the radioactive things I've collected though; A depleted uranium round (sans cartridge), a small bottle of radium paint from the 1920s, tritium illumination capsules. The local observatory has a 1905 (or 1915? Not sure...) Radium Star Atlas, but that isn't surprising as it was the Elgin Watch Co. observatory and at that time radium was heavily used by the watch company.

Hmmmmm, it seems your neighbors could use a scintillation counter or two....Ah, they can just avoid the glow.:p

Some radium watches had exposures that were quite high...I hope your paint is shielded.

glenn

[luddite]

Belz:

Well there are some examples of chemical plant disasters that support your point: Bhopal (in India) would be one and Flixborough (in the UK) would be another....

Luddite:

The question of radioactive decay of spent fuel is quite complex because a whole slew of radioisotopes are present in the discharged fuel. But to claim irradiated nuclear fuel is "safe" after only 100 years is not true - plutonium and americium see to that! There are also the long-lived fission products Sr-90 (Half-life = 29 years) and Cs-137 (Half-life = 30 years) that are initially present at the 1000s of curies per gram level, as well as activation products from the fuel cladding ...... and remember 5 half-lives reduces the initial activity by only a factor of 32.
Apollo, I know you're more familiar with the CANDUs, but it's my understanding that the spent fuel from reactors that use natural uranium produce more plutonium than standard light-water reactors. Is that correct? What about americium?

And is the amount of plutonium in spent fuel from light-water reactors so low as to be considered trivial?

[luddite]

Question for anyone.

After one half-life, does the lethal dose take twice as long?

For example, if something delivers a lethal dose after 5 minutes and has a half-life of 30 days, can we conclude that a month later, you'll get a lethal dose after 10 minutes? Or is it not that simple? Things are rarely that simple.

[DRBUZZ0]

Question for anyone.

After one half-life, does the lethal dose take twice as long?

For example, if something delivers a lethal dose after 5 minutes and has a half-life of 30 days, can we conclude that a month later, you'll get a lethal dose after 10 minutes? Or is it not that simple? Things are rarely that simple.

Oh god not even close to that simple. First what the hell is the "lethal dose" do you mean the dose that if you stand next to it you'll drop to the ground and be dead almost immediately? That amount would be huge. Absolutely huge. Probably beyond what you could get from just decaying material. Maybe a powerful pulsed neutron reactor of some type.

Do you mean you mean "Will cause acute radiation sickness which could nearly assuredly result in short term death." There are examples of people getting massive doses that go beyond what is considered "survivable" and not actually dying for weeks.


There is no "lethal" dose per-se. There are dose rates that could make you relatively sick in short order. There are doses which you have less than a 50% chance of surviving past 24 hours.


Also you have to consider the conditions and such. How far you are from something and whatnot. You could have a sizable amount some of the most radioactive stuff known to man in your basement and spend a decent amount of time in your attic and not get a dangerous dose because of the inverse square law.

Neutron radiation is a bit different than gamma and the big thing is internal/exertnal dose.

Spent fuel poses zero radiation risk to those who are either a decent distance from it or have something between them. Lets say I'm standing at the edge of a pool, for example looking at a big bundle of spent fuel. It's all okay, it's under 20 feet of water. Now take away that water, and I'll be find if I step back by 80 feet or so. Or, I could just only stay there for a few seconds. Any of these ways work.


But there's another thing to consider. Spent fuel is like most radioactive stuff. Primarly you don't worry about being near it just because it's there.

I could be sitting right now with a big chunk of plutonium on the table next to me and as long as its solid and not giving off any dust i could breathe in, I'm fine, because it's nearly exclusively an alpha emitter. Now take that plutonium and lets say I eat a chunk. Well, if it's in the form of a plutonium-oxide ceramic I may be just fine. It'll just make it hurt a lot when I have that sucker come out the other end.. not cuz it;s radioactive but ya know... any solid chunk of anything...


Ah, but now the question is what happends if you have something like plutonium nitrate or something else that's water soluable and organicly reactive. Get that in your system and you're in trouble....

[luddite]

Oh god not even close to that simple. First what the hell is the "lethal dose" do you mean the dose that if you stand next to it you'll drop to the ground and be dead almost immediately? That amount would be huge. Absolutely huge. Probably beyond what you could get from just decaying material. Maybe a powerful pulsed neutron reactor of some type.

My understanding of the term "lethal dose" is that it means that 50% of the people who got that dose would die of causes attributable to the radiation. I'm prepared to stand corrected, but that's my understanding.

For the purposes of my question, assume that after the half-life you get the dose in the same way. Ie, eating it before and after the half-life is over, or inhaling it before and after the half-life is over, or standing next to it before and after. Ignore spent fuel. I mean, I'm very interested in spent fuel, but this is just a more general question about how radioactive decay works.

My question is does twice as much exposure after one half-life equal the same dose.

[DRBUZZ0]

Well I guess you could go with that. In any case, stuff doesn't even always get less radioactive as it decays. In the end, yes it will eventually become non-radioactive, given a long enough period of time, so in the long term it will become less and less radioactive.

But midterm that's not always what happens. If you have something like refined uranium or thorium, the longer you hold onto it the more radioactive it will get, because it acumulates daughter products which are considerably more powerful emitters of radiation then the original material.

[luddite]

That's interesting, because when I suggested that before, it was shot down. I was assured that radiation always went down. I assume though, that this is relatively short-lived? Any particularly awful daughter products will tend to disappear rather quickly? And the long-lived products will prevail?

[Hindmost]

Question for anyone.

After one half-life, does the lethal dose take twice as long?

For example, if something delivers a lethal dose after 5 minutes and has a half-life of 30 days, can we conclude that a month later, you'll get a lethal dose after 10 minutes? Or is it not that simple? Things are rarely that simple.

Based on what you said, yes, that particular isotope would kill someone in 10 minutes...however....

Whether radiation is lethal or not depends on the type of radiation as well as the amount. In general, gamma rays are of the greatest concern since they are the most penetrating and can kill at a distance. Beta and alpha radiation are really only internal dose issues. Beta have a range of about 1 meter in air, but ionize quite a bit. Alphas can't get through the skin, but really ionize what they are going through. It is the ionization that is the problem as it knock electrons out of atoms and molecules...this changes the chemical nature in cells and kills them.

Carry around Sr90 might give you a beta burn on your skin, but it won't kill you since it doesn't emit gammas--swallow it and it becomes a real problem. A bit of Co-60 in your pocket would kill you quickly since it has high energy gammas and relatively high activity.

After a half life, the activity and dose rate of an individual isotope would be cut in half.

After 5 half lives, 97% of the activity is gone...after 10 the activity is down to 99.9% of the material is gone. So something like Sr90 would be gone in about 300 years.

Neutron radiation is particularly nasty and will kill a person quickly...but it is only found inside the containment building and if you happen to have an accelerator and can make some californium.

Radiation follows the inverse square law...so doubling your distance from the source decreases the dose by a factor of four.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning
this link will give the Lethal dose rates.

Don't worry, the cockroaches will survive...


glenn

[Hindmost]

That's interesting, because when I suggested that before, it was shot down. I was assured that radiation always went down. I assume though, that this is relatively short-lived? Any particularly awful daughter products will tend to disappear rather quickly? And the long-lived products will prevail?

Decay chains for long lived isotopes will have different decay rates for different decay products...but, the general trend has to be down....no choice...it's essentially going for the least energy configuration.

Once you create something in a reactor or accelerator or supernova, then you've started new decay chains and radioactive products. Leave them along and the trend will always be down...exponentially down.

glenn

[DRBUZZ0]

That's interesting, because when I suggested that before, it was shot down. I was assured that radiation always went down. I assume though, that this is relatively short-lived? Any particularly awful daughter products will tend to disappear rather quickly? And the long-lived products will prevail?

Um... not exactly. With some long-lived radioisotopes you may see an increase in the short term, but only in the very short term. That's an illusion caused by the generation of daughter products. This isnt really an issue with reactor products anyway.

But in any case, in the case of U-238 it may take a while to reach equilibrium, but in most cases, if there are radioactive daughters, it will reach equilibrium relatively fast. It would only be out from being somehow separated.

At that point it stabilizes and decays consistently. And no, the daughter products are always there because they're regenerated by the decay chain. So it reaches "equilibrium" once it all balances out and then you see the decay as it really is.

This is why lead-210 can be used as a good alpha and beta source, eventhough lead-210 doesn't produce any alphas by decay. It will be in equilibrium with the daughter Po-210 which is an alpha emitter and short lived.

[Schneibster]

OK, first things first. I screwed up, and forgot the transuranics that are present in spent single-cycle fuel. There are three classes of radioactive isotopes present in single-cycle spent fuel, more or less:
1. High-activity short half-life radioisotopes of relatively light elements like cesium, strontium, and so forth. The longest lived of these is samarium-151, with a half-life of 90 years. These are an extreme short-term danger because of their high activity.
2. Medium-activity medium half-life radioisotopes of transuranics like plutonium-239 with a half-life of 24,100 years. These are the long-term danger in nuclear wastes, because these are also gamma emitters.
3. Low-activity long half-life radioisotopes of light elements; the shortest half-life among these is technetium-99, with a half-life of 211,000 years. These are low-activity radioisotopes that don't present much danger.

If you process spent nuclear fuel made from low-enriched uranium, that is, about 5% U-235 to start with, and remove the transuranics from it, or if you burn such fuel in an integral fast reactor or some designs of pebble-bed reactors, which burn all of the transuranics, you're left with the short-term high-level and long-term low-level isotopes, but none of the medium-term medium-level isotopes that make the spent fuel hazardous long-term. Such waste is very hot in the short term, but cools down after a hundred years or so quite a bit; most of the short-term high-activity waste is gone. After 100-300 years (depending on who you believe), the activity is no greater than uranium ore. Processing to remove the transuranics, which are primarily plutonium-239, is relatively simple because they are all actinides, and therefore chemically similar. You'll also incidentally remove most if not all of the uranium, which is also an actinide. This will leave you with a small amount of waste compared to the original, composed of the short half-life and long half-life isotopes of light elements. The actinides can all be used again as fuel; the waste is disposed of (after separation of some of the light isotopes that are useful in medical research and therapy and for the manufacture of certain products).

However, I have to confess my mistake; since spent fuel in the US is not reprocessed to remove the transuranics, and since we don't use reactor designs that burn all the actinides, such waste as they produce is, indeed, dangerous for thousands of years. However, to the best of my knowledge, no such waste has ever been buried. It's still sitting in dumps at the sites of nuclear plants, since there's no other safe place to put it. The obvious solution is to wait for the integral fast reactors, or other fast neutron reactors, in which it can be burned, then reprocess it (or even just put it in as-is; designs capable of using the majority of this stuff as fuel are available) and dispose of the greatly reduced amount of waste of a lower level of hazard. And if it doesn't all get put in casks and shipped off to Yucca Mountain, that's almost certainly what we'll do. That spent fuel will then represent a resource rather than a problem. And the safety of nuclear waste will be increased (at least in the medium term, over 300 years).

This information is cribbed from the Wikipedia article on Integral Fast Reactors. It is sourced from the Cal State Berkeley Nuclear Engineering department's site here (http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/designs/ifr/anlw.html).

[Schneibster]

That's interesting, because when I suggested that before, it was shot down. I was assured that radiation always went down. I assume though, that this is relatively short-lived? Any particularly awful daughter products will tend to disappear rather quickly? And the long-lived products will prevail?No, you were assured that radiation from spent reactor fuel always goes down. What Buzzo is talking about is what happens in a sample of purified long half-life radioisotope, such as U-235 or U-238. Initially, there is nothing there but uranium (for example). The radioactivity is pretty low. However, as the uranium decays, daughter products are created, and these release more radiation than uranium does; some of them, as you noted, have half-lives in days or weeks. Despite extremely small quantities due to the obvious mathematics of how much of them can be present at maximum, they are very active, so they contribute a significant amount to the radioactivity of the sample; its radioactivity therefore increases for a short time, until equilibrium concentration of the short-lived isotopes occurs.

The situation is very different in spent fuel. Spent fuel has had years or decades to reach equilibrium, and in addition it contains fission products, most of which are of the short half-life high activity or long half-live low activity types I discussed in my previous post. Even with the addition of the transuranics, spent fuel is already very close to or at equilibrium, and so the radioactivity levels will not increase over time as they do in a pure sample freshly cast.

[Schneibster]

Apollo, I know you're more familiar with the CANDUs, but it's my understanding that the spent fuel from reactors that use natural uranium produce more plutonium than standard light-water reactors. Is that correct? What about americium?

And is the amount of plutonium in spent fuel from light-water reactors so low as to be considered trivial?That is another point. I should have addressed it in my first post of today, but I forgot.

The spent fuel from a light water reactor has been exposed to lower energy neutrons because of the moderation techniques used in light water reactors; these lower the energy of the neutrons to what is called "thermal" levels. Such neutrons are quite good at initiating fission, but not so good at being absorbed by U-238 (which must happen for it to be transmuted to plutonium-239). The higher energy, "fast" neutrons are better at that. The concentration of plutonium in spent low-enriched fuel from a "thermal" reactor, therefore, is not high in plutonium; there is enough to make it dangerous, but the concentration is only about 1%, according to the Wikipedia article on Spent Nuclear Fuel.

The majority of the long-term danger is in plutonium; but the amount of plutonium produced is only 1%. The material is far more dangerous due to the light high-level short half-life fission products, which make up several percent. Still, it's 96% U-238. And as it turns out, I was actually technically correct in my analysis; I merely underestimated the problem of the transuranics (primarily plutonium). But not by much; after 300 years at the most, and some sources say as little as 100 years, all of the high-level short half-life stuff is gone; what you're left with is low-level long half-life stuff, 96% U-238, a few percent long-lived fission products like technetium-99, and one percent transuranics. Because of the low concentration, and because natural uranium contains daughter isotopes from its radioactive decay process that make it hotter than the uranium alone, such waste is still no more active after 100 years than natural uranium; and if you'll recall, that's precisely the claim I made. I was, however, unintentionally deceptive on the following point:
By natural uranium, I meant uranium in equilibrium, not freshly cast. I didn't make this clear because I hadn't thought about the buildup of daughter nuclides at that time.

So that's the whole story, and you can look it up for yourself and follow through to the initial sources.

And it now appears that we have another alarmist in our midst. Apollo, I have to say that the practices you describe are deplorable. You should quite rightly raise hell over them. I certainly would. But you've gotten the underlying fight wrong. It's not about nuclear. It's about transparency. The problem you describe is about people hiding problems, not about the problems themselves.

Furthermore, it appears that you were incorrect regarding CANDU waste, and natural uranium waste in general; this waste has less fission products (the uranium started out with only 0.7% U-235, not 5%, so there is less of it to burn) and less plutonium (on the close order of 0.3%). It is therefore correspondingly less dangerous than single-cycle low-enriched spent fuel. The source, again, is Wikipedia, and it's the same article.

[Schneibster]

You might be surprised. Several of the people on this forum have no problem with spent fuel storage tanks nearby and claim that civilian nuclear waste is not hazardous after a few decades. The specific claim was that it was no more radioactive than natural uranium after 100 years and hardly more so after 30.

Actually, on this note, I should point out that this has not been substantiated, and while I haven't asked for a lot of references, this is one where I'm going to demand it, because everything I read indicates otherwise.You've got them.

I spoke to a friend of mine yesterday, an engineer, though not a nuclear engineer. He is a former proponent of nuclear energy, now in the Green Party and a passionate opponent. He said that while he wasn't sure how to assess the claim that 100 year old spent fuel was no more dangerous than natural uranium, he suggested that I calculate the lethal dose of natural uranium.

So I've done my best. This is not my area of expertise and I appreciate corrections. But here's what I've got.

I went to this site and tried to calculate the dose for natural uranium.

http://www.wise-uranium.org/rdcu.html

I plugged in just the numbers you gave me. 22 kg bundles and 4500 of them in a loaded reactor. That gave me about 100 tonnes of natural uranium, which gives a dose of gamma radiation of 1.079 mSv/h and 468.2 Sv/h of external radiation from soil (that seemed to be the closest option given to having a stack of this stuff next to you). Meanwhile the following site gives a lethal dose as 3-5 Sv:

http://www4.tsl.uu.se/~radiation_protection/RPCOURS.htm#dlimi

So my cursory understanding says that a stack of natural uranium as large as the spent fuel from one refueling would deliver about 100 times the lethal dose of radiation in an hour. Unless there's something I've totally screwed up.Yes, there is. How precisely do you intend to eat 100 tonnes of uranium? For that matter, how will you eat a single kilogram? Remember: uranium is an alpha emitter. Alpha particles can't get past your skin. Do you recall that conversation? That means you have to eat it. It's kind of like saying, "That snake has enough venom in it to kill ten people!!!11one!!" How precisely are ten people going to get bit by the same snake? Odds are, it might bite one, and unless it's lucky it will die right there.

Next, you misread. It's 468.2Sv/a. That's per annum; per year. Divide it by 8,760 hours. Furthermore, because you chose all that spent fuel, the calculator knows you can't get close to it, so the actual exposure turns out to be less than 2mSv/hr.

Then there's the fact that your source states a fatal dose without discussion of the time period in which that dose must be absorbed for it to cause death. That time period is short. Minutes or hours is typical.

You wouldn't want to roll around in it; but it's not going to strike you dead if you look at it for ten seconds. It won't even make you sick if you pick it up.

And finally, remember that radiation workers are limited to 50mSv/yr, and 100mSv over five years (in Canada). Levels of instant exposure of up to 200mSv in a single dose, not over a period of five years, are not known to cause any overt symptom at all; see the Wikipedia article on Radiation Poisoning. There is even argument about whether they'll cause cancer or not. There are inhabited places on Earth where the background radiation is over 200mSv/yr. Everyone seems fine.

Which might well be, because the dose calculator I used gave slightly higher doses the longer the delay. So I'd appreciate some help.Hopefully this series of posts will give you more information.

[Belz...]

Okay, fellows, look at this message from Schneibster way back. I didn't misrepresent what he said. A number of posts defended this position as well.

What are we looking for ?

[Belz...]

There are inhabited places on Earth where the background radiation is over 200mSv/yr. Everyone seems fine.

Linky ?

[luddite]

Yes, there is. How precisely do you intend to eat 100 tonnes of uranium? For that matter, how will you eat a single kilogram? Remember: uranium is an alpha emitter. Alpha particles can't get past your skin. Do you recall that conversation? That means you have to eat it. It's kind of like saying, "That snake has enough venom in it to kill ten people!!!11one!!" How precisely are ten people going to get bit by the same snake? Odds are, it might bite one, and unless it's lucky it will die right there.

The calculator calculates for various types of exposure. I calculated for external exposure, not ingestion. I assume it does the right thing. If I had put in exposure to 100 tonnes of uranium by ingestion, I would have gotten an even higher number, 118.8 kSv/h. And by inhalation, higher still at 19.83 MSv/h. So no, I didn't get that part wrong. Though of course these higher numbers would be relevant if the uranium contaminates the soil and water and people do start ingesting it. Obviously not 100 tonnes at a time. I didn't bother with that calculation for this reason - you have to figure out contamination rates, rates of ingestion and so on. Even though I know that in practice, contamination would affect people most by ingestion.

The source "Stack of refined uranium rods standing beside you" was not an option given for radiation source. So I chose "external radiation from soil". I assume they calculate properly for this kind of radiation. Your skin may be quite good at blocking it, but I assume some portion gets by. And apparently, that's enough to hurt you pretty badly if you've got enough natural uranium around.

Next, you misread. It's 468.2Sv/a. That's per annum; per year. Divide it by 8,760 hours. Furthermore, because you chose all that spent fuel, the calculator knows you can't get close to it, so the actual exposure turns out to be less than 2mSv/hr.

No, it's 468.2 Sv/h. The calculation per year was 4.104 MSv/a. I just checked.

Thanks for the other information. I'll look into it.

[luddite]

Furthermore, it appears that you were incorrect regarding CANDU waste, and natural uranium waste in general; this waste has less fission products (the uranium started out with only 0.7% U-235, not 5%, so there is less of it to burn) and less plutonium (on the close order of 0.3%). It is therefore correspondingly less dangerous than single-cycle low-enriched spent fuel. The source, again, is Wikipedia, and it's the same article.

I think the statement about CANDU waste was mine, and I just looked up the source of my misunderstanding. CANDUs produce more weapons-grade plutonium, not plutonium in general. It's a disposal issue Canadians are concerned with.

Plutonium produced in other reactors, such as graphite-moderated reactors (some of which are in operation in Britain, Russia, and elsewhere) or heavy water reactors used in Canada and elsewhere, has a composition in between that shown for weapons grade and reactor grade plutonium in the table.

http://www.ieer.org/ensec/no-3/puchange.html

The absolute amount of plutonium (or at least fissile plutonium), though, is not lower in the CANDUs:

It should also be noted that the concentrations of total fissile plutonium (plutonium 239 plus plutonium 241) are not dissimilar for these reactor types, but that PWR fuel contains relatively low concentrations of plutonium 239 and high concentrations of plutonium 241.

http://www.isis-online.org/publications/fmct/primer/Section_II_nopics.html

There's a chart at the end of the link that gives details of plutonium in reactor fuel by type of reactor.

[Schneibster]

The calculator calculates for various types of exposure. I calculated for external exposure, not ingestion. I assume it does the right thing. If I had put in exposure to 100 tonnes of uranium by ingestion, I would have gotten an even higher number, 118.8 kSv/h. And by inhalation, higher still at 19.83 MSv/h. So no, I didn't get that part wrong. Though of course these higher numbers would be relevant if the uranium contaminates the soil and water and people do start ingesting it. Obviously not 100 tonnes at a time. I didn't bother with that calculation for this reason - you have to figure out contamination rates, rates of ingestion and so on. Even though I know that in practice, contamination would affect people most by ingestion.I'm sorry, it doesn't appear you're getting it, still. The numbers you are quoting, first, don't match those in your original post (see below), and second, make no sense. The reasons they don't make sense are, and these are merely for example, there is very much more, the inverse square law, the non-cumulative nature of radiation exposure due to your body's ability to heal if given the opportunity, if we're talking about a leak from a cask, physical limitations on the amount of exposure possible after various periods due to how slowly it would get out, and so forth.

Here's how I know: uranium miners and prospectors don't die quickly and unpleasantly, and if the figures you are quoting were true, they would. Something is not right. Either we don't understand what we're choosing on that calculator, or it's not calibrated for certain sorts of things, or something.

The source "Stack of refined uranium rods standing beside you" was not an option given for radiation source. So I chose "external radiation from soil". I assume they calculate properly for this kind of radiation. Your skin may be quite good at blocking it, but I assume some portion gets by. And apparently, that's enough to hurt you pretty badly if you've got enough natural uranium around.The physical limitations I listed above are enough to tell me that's wrong.

No, it's 468.2 Sv/h. The calculation per year was 4.104 MSv/a. I just checked.Go back and look at your own post. It was nothing of the kind. The figures I quoted, I cut-n-pasted. In addition, it's physically impossible for a single person to get physically close enough to 1 tonne of uranium, much less 100 tonnes, to absorb all the radiation it puts out.

Thanks for the other information. I'll look into it.Do that. It's all linked. Sorry for the earlier confusion.

Please also stop being ridiculous; no one can get close enough to 100 tonnes of uranium to absorb all the radiation it puts out. It's not like heat, where the radiation of infrared is dependent upon the temperature, no matter whether the material is near or far and there's only inverse-square law to protect you; this isn't electromagnetic radiation, it's alpha and beta particles, and they have a very limited range in air. It's the gamma that will really get you, and those don't come from uranium much.

[Schneibster]

Linky ?http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/ramsar-natural-radioactivity/ramsar.html

[Schneibster]

I think the statement about CANDU waste was mine, and I just looked up the source of my misunderstanding. CANDUs produce more weapons-grade plutonium, not plutonium in general. It's a disposal issue Canadians are concerned with.No, they don't. First, fission of the U-235 in natural uranium can't produce more plutonium than fission of the U-235 in enriched uranium, because it can't stay in the reactor as long, and therefore gets less neutrons. Second, the sources say the plutonium in natural uranium waste is less than 0.3%, and the plutonium in low-enriched waste from a PWR is over 1%.

http://www.ieer.org/ensec/no-3/puchange.htmlYes, so? That doesn't mean there's not less plutonium in it. They're talking about the ratios of isotopes of plutonium, not the amount of plutonium present.

The absolute amount of plutonium (or at least fissile plutonium), though, is not lower in the CANDUs:You're wrong. Plain and simple. There isn't any way for that plutonium to get made in the first place.

http://www.isis-online.org/publications/fmct/primer/Section_II_nopics.html

There's a chart at the end of the link that gives details of plutonium in reactor fuel by type of reactor.Yes, OF THE PLUTONIUM PRESENT, PWRs have 56% Pu-239, whereas CANDUs have 66.6%. But 66.6% of 0.3% is only 0.1%, whereas 56% of 1% is 0.56%.

[Belz...]

http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/ramsar-natural-radioactivity/ramsar.html

Thank you.

[bobdroege7]

From

http://hss.energy.gov/HealthSafety/ohre/roadmap/achre/intro_9_5.html

A very high dose of 100 gray (10,000 rad) to the entire body causes death within twenty-four to forty-eight hours; a whole-body dose of 2.5 to 5 gray (250 to 500 rad) may produce death within several weeks.

from DRBuzzo

But in any case, in the case of U-238 it may take a while to reach equilibrium, but in most cases, if there are radioactive daughters, it will reach equilibrium relatively fast. It would only be out from being somehow separated.

For pure U-238 it will take several hundred million years to reach equilibruim, due to the number of daughter products and the long half-lives of some of the daughters as well as the long half-life of U-238. the decay rates of each isotope will eventually be equal as that is what equilibrium means. Rate of generation equals rate of decay. And it will continue to increase in radioactivity until equilibrium is reached.

Used fuel bundle radiation levels indeed can be lethal

from

http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=5295958

Maximum exposure rates varied from 36,000 R/h next to a 3.5 year old PWR bundle with a 30,000 MWD/MT burnup

That's a lethal dose in one minute
If you want to stand next to one, be my guest, but the licensee would soon be a no longer licensed entity.

radiation decreases with the square of the distance is for point sources and other more higher exposures may be expected with other configurations.

And I say, to those opposed to nuclear waste storage in their backyard, well no FDG for you. And no tech, no radiolite, no prostate cancer seeds, ect. No waste, no Ram for medical uses. That millions of unit doses a year from my employer alone.

[DRBUZZ0]

You might be surprised. Several of the people on this forum have no problem with spent fuel storage tanks nearby and claim that civilian nuclear waste is not hazardous after a few decades. The specific claim was that it was no more radioactive than natural uranium after 100 years and hardly more so after 30.

Actually, on this note, I should point out that this has not been substantiated, and while I haven't asked for a lot of references, this is one where I'm going to demand it, because everything I read indicates otherwise.


No. That's not acurate and I don't think anyone ever said a spent fuel rod would be as radioactive as uranium ore in 100 years. When talking about relatively short timespan waste, we're generally talking about the reprocessed and separated fission products, because most of those are very short lived. If you have fission products then really the only ones that are very long lived are I-129, Tc-99 and a few others. Low yeild percentage, so it turns out the material goes down in radiation rapidly.

That having been said I'd have no problem having fully unprocessed spent fuel in my back yard in a standard dry storage cask.



So my cursory understanding says that a stack of natural uranium as large as the spent fuel from one refueling would deliver about 100 times the lethal dose of radiation in an hour. Unless there's something I've totally screwed up.

Which might well be, because the dose calculator I used gave slightly higher doses the longer the delay. So I'd appreciate some help.

You have had much help. The spent fuel is going to vary greatly... extremely greatly from thorium-cycle reactors, thermal light water reactors, integral fast neutron reactors, breeders, high enrichment naval reactors. Also, how long the fuel stays in the reactor. This stuff is not all equal. It has a lot of the same stuff in it, but totally different proportions.

I don't know that you could effectively ever get a lethal dose from natural uranium alone. You could sit in a room with giant piles of the stuff all around you for days on end and not get acute radiation sickness.

[Apollo20]

Here are some data for Pickering ‘A’, a 540 MW(e) large CANDU reactor:

A Pickering ‘A’ fuel bundle contains about 22.5 kg of UO2 equivalent to 20 kg U, (The exact values depend on the pellet density).

The reactor has 12 bundles/channel and 390 channels giving 4680 bundles/reactor.

Hence each Pickering ‘A’ reactor contains 20 x 4680 kg of U = 93,600 kg of U.

The average burnup of Pickering fuel is 180 MWh/kg = 7500 MWd/t = 650 GJ/kg uranium

The U-235 content of a CANDU fuel bundle goes from 7.1 kg/t as installed to 2.4 kg/t at a burnup of 7500 MWd/t. (This corresponds to a 66 % utilization of the available U-235, of which 85 % produces useful energy.)

Hence 4.7 kg of U-235 has been “consumed”. The consumption is from fission and neutron capture. The fission and capture cross sections of U-235 are 580 barns and 98 barns respectively. Therefore 580/678, or 0.8555 of 4.7 kg = 4.02 kg of U-235 per tonne of uranium has been fissioned.

Pu-239 is produced at an initial rate of 1 kg/t per 1000 MWd/t. Therefore at a burnup of 7500 MWd/t there should be 7.50 kg of Pu-239 per tonne of uranium. The observed Pu-239 concentration is 2.61 kg/t so that 4.89 kg/t has been “lost”. The losses are from plutonium fission and neutron capture. The fission and capture cross sections of Pu-239 are 742 barns and 271 barns respectively. Therefore 742/1013, or 0.7325 of 4.89 kg = 3.58 kg of Pu-239 per tonne of uranium has been fissioned.

The fission of 1 kg of U-235 or Pu-239 releases 1000 MWD/t of energy. In a CANDU we have the fission of {4.02 (U-235) + 3.58 (Pu-239)}= 7.6 kg of fissioned material. Hence, the expected energy release is 7.6 x 1000 MWd/t = 7600 MWd/t, in good agreement with the 7500 MWd/t expected.

Since the reactor contains 93.6 tonnes of uranium, the total energy output is 7500 x 93.6 = 702,000 MWd. The average reactor residence time of a fuel bundle is about 1 year = 365 days. Hence the (thermal) power output of Pickering is 1923 MW. Then, because the thermal efficiency of a Pickering unit is 28 %, the electrical power output is 538 MW.

[Lonewulf]

That having been said I'd have no problem having fully unprocessed spent fuel in my back yard in a standard dry storage cask.
Something I don't get. Okay, let's say that something WOULD have to be stored for several millenium, and would be "just as harmful" thousands of years from now. What keeps us from remaking it's container after a certain amount of time? Obviously, we can safely store it NOW, what will keep us from safely re-making it's container 40 years from now, 100 years from now, or however long you expect it to last?

[Belz...]

So, Apollo... were you asking that backyard nonsense for a reason, or are you going to ignore the fact that almost everybody said they wouldn't mind ?

[luddite]

Please also stop being ridiculous; no one can get close enough to 100 tonnes of uranium to absorb all the radiation it puts out. It's not like heat, where the radiation of infrared is dependent upon the temperature, no matter whether the material is near or far and there's only inverse-square law to protect you; this isn't electromagnetic radiation, it's alpha and beta particles, and they have a very limited range in air. It's the gamma that will really get you, and those don't come from uranium much.

I did look back and I've been consistent. I've also been prepared to accept I was wrong all along. Looking over the calculator, I see a lot of variables and most of the assumptions don't apply. So it may just be unable to answer the hypothetical question of what uranium will do to you if you stand next to a stockpile big enough to fuel a reactor. And maybe that's a stupid question anyway.

Now that you've agreed that spent fuel is more dangerous, can we just agree that it would be preferable to make sure the stuff is carefully controlled? That we can't just forget about it after 100 years? Feel free to say "But nobody ever said that".

[luddite]

Something I don't get. Okay, let's say that something WOULD have to be stored for several millenium, and would be "just as harmful" thousands of years from now. What keeps us from remaking it's container after a certain amount of time? Obviously, we can safely store it NOW, what will keep us from safely re-making it's container 40 years from now, 100 years from now, or however long you expect it to last?
The problem is that we haven't been great at keeping track of it now. In the US and Canada, the spent fuel is pretty well taken care of, but not the low-level waste or depleted uranium. The tailings get left behind and children play with them or contractors use them as building rubble. And in Russia all kinds of waste of every kind goes missing. They have no idea where all their waste is. And the fear, of course, is that you're only going to figure out that you need to rebuild the containment when you start seeing rising rates of cancers and finally trace it to the water or soil to discover there's been a breach. That's a lot of trouble to load onto the following generations. And if we've got those problems now, you'd have to multiply 15-fold to try to eliminate coal plants and even more if you try to replace cars as well. And the more of it there is, let's face it, the more careless we'll be.

[RecoveringYuppy]

The problem is that we haven't been great at keeping track of it now. In the US and Canada, the spent fuel is pretty well taken care of, but not the low-level waste or depleted uranium.
What exactly is your worry with depleted uranium? It's about as radioactive as a typical granite countertop.