Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[DRBUZZ0]

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?


Well the containers now are supposed to last a damn long time, arguably as long as the stuff will be an issue. They use concrete commonly because it doesn't corode or anything and's always a high density multi layer kind of thing. Also, always designed so the whole consistency of the thing is going to be safe (hence glass and ceramic based waste medium surrounded by a stainless steel vessle and them embed in concrete)

But as far as keeping it in storage vessels? That's no problem. You could open up the cask and put it in another if it's in something like the above ground casks.


I suppose the issue brought up is that in a thousand years there might be some sort of nomadic people like a Kevin Cosner movie or something. And that it "transfers the burden to future generations" or whatever.

But with the current system we can totally keep the stuff on hand for the forsable future, and even move it around and put it in a new container no problem. I guess that's not "Perminant"

[Schneibster]

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.I don't think it's a stupid question, I just think it's based on unrealistic premises. The first question before answering it has to be, how long has the spent fuel been out of the reactor? The second has to be, how long was it in there? The third, what was the concentration of U-235 in it? As you move along, you go through what kind of neutron flux, both in terms of raw neutron count and in terms of the energy spectrum of those neutrons, what other impurities were there to start with, and so on. The answers are going to be different for different fuels, and different reactors, and different amounts of time.

Anyone who would stand close to a fuel bundle fresh out of a reactor unprotected, or perhaps even with good protection, is insane and will likely die quickly, not to mention the entity that allowed them to losing its license quite quickly as Hindmost pointed out. OTOH, 300 years downstream, is it the same? Absolutely not; a lot of the high-level waste has decayed and is gone. Is it still dangerous? That depends on whether the medium-level waste has been removed or not. If not, then yes, it's still quite dangerous, for a number of reasons not limited to the medium-level materials themselves. If so, then not so much.

What threshold do you wish to impose for exposure? We have seen evidence that humans are currently living out their lives in the presence of amounts of radiation that are five times the permitted level over five years, and twice the level in any single year, that a relatively reputable organization feels is the limit. And this is their whole lives, not a year or five years. There is no verifiable extra risk to these people from a medical actuarial standpoint. So, again, what limits do you think are appropriate?

Now that you've agreed that spent fuel is more dangerous, Hold on there, hoss, WHICH spent fuel? We've discussed, so far, IIRC, five different kinds. Each one gets a different answer. And we've also discussed techniques for dealing with that spent fuel that give as many different answers for each type as we already had for them all. Furthermore, I've upheld my original evaluation in round terms; all I did was qualify it. I'd appreciate it if you'd actually read what I wrote. So I'd like to know, in detail, precisely what it is you think I've agreed to, before I go along with that, because we've seen evidence here that indicates a less-than-perfect comprehension of the implications of various contingencies, and even basic facts. Not necessarily your fault; this is a complex subject. But I'm not at all confident that what I said has as much to do with what you think I said as you seem to be, by using that term, "agreed."

can we just agree that it would be preferable to make sure the stuff is carefully controlled? Preferable to what? Overall, I'd say reprocessing and burning the actinides up in a fast reactor is preferable; reprocessing and separation of the various fractions so that they can be handled separately in different and appropriate fashions preferable to the current plan; the current plan preferable to the current situation; and the current situation to a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

That we can't just forget about it after 100 years? Feel free to say "But nobody ever said that".Yeah, "but nobody ever said that." What I said was, the levels of danger being used by the people in charge of making the current plan (and I don't necessarily endorse the current plan, much less agree with it) are well in excess of the actual levels we are likely to see, and what I didn't say but would have if I hadn't been swatting at a bunch of misinformation and hysteria, is that's a good thing, because it means we'll be more careful than we need to be. And then I'd add, that if a more conservative plan, and one that makes better use of the bulk of the problem as a resource instead of a problem were to be used, I wouldn't necessarily advocate using a lesser estimation of the danger, in order to improve the margin for error.

Frankly, I'm pleased that there are people who are anal retentive about the details of this stuff, and also pleased that there are people who continue to be nervous about it; Ed forbid we should ever get complacent. But there's a reasonable level of care and nervousness, and then there's hysteria, and I object to hysteria.

[DRBUZZ0]

What exactly is your worry with depleted uranium? It's about as radioactive as a typical granite countertop.

I think that there's some pretty compelling evidence that depleted uranium can cause all sorts of problems from neurological issues to kidney failure.... but that's generally limited to when you eat it. Well assuming you can abosorb it enough.

I would say the following:

I highly recommend not eating depleted uranium slugs.

And I especially do not recommend in any way grinding up depleted uranium slugs into a fine powder and then adding large quantities of it to a vintager-based salad dressing. Potentially, that could have some very nasty health consequences.


Then again there more than a few cases of people dying nearly instantly due to depleted uranium. Of course, that's generally limited to instances where the depleted uranium is coming in your direction at a few times the speed of sound...

[DRBUZZ0]

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.


Well as stated before, how much of a stockpile we are talking about would depend on fueling it for how long and the type of reactor and such. But actually it doesn't even matter really.

It would do absolutely nothing to you. Nothing. Nada. It would not give you any kind of radiation sickness at all. No observable skin damage, no hair falling out, no bleeding gums. Actually you could stack the stuff floor to ceiling in any sized room you like and then go sleep in there.

You'd get a small dose of radiation from it, just like many things. Would it be enough to be concerned about? no. Would it be enough to impact your lifetime health? Not any more than a few plane rides or living in a house built on granite. Nope.

Here are some actual real not-mockup reactor fuel pellets. You know why the person isn't allowed to hold them in their bare hand and has to wear the silk glove? No, not to protect them from the pellets. Those are going to get sealed in a pressurized high-tolerance tube. If someone touched them they'd have to completely clean and degrease them again...

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

[Belz...]

What exactly is your worry with depleted uranium? It's about as radioactive as a typical granite countertop.

But it's URANIUM, man !!!! URANIUM!!

[DRBUZZ0]

But it's URANIUM, man !!!! URANIUM!!

You know you don't need a licence to buy or own uranium. I have some depleted uranium. It's kinda hard to find metal uranium in large quantities for a reasonable price. You can buy small amounts at any chemical supplier but they're often higher grade than needed for anything but analytical use (hence they are expensive). But that is their primary use.

You can actually buy a big slab of depleted uranium from eberline services for about $1500.

You can get modest sized samples here: http://www.unitednuclear.com/uraniumstock.htm

But that's actually really expensive for it if you wanted it in bulk..

Of course, you can get uranium ore no problem. That you could even buy from many mineral collectors places... or in bulk.

If you can find uranium in non-analytical grade, it's not terribly expensive. They used to sell it a lot for use in ceramic glazes. You still see that crop up from time to time, but most glazes are premade and have other dyes in them now.

Anyways, you can get like 30 pounds of the stuff before you even are required to get any permitting at all. And you don't need an actual NRC licence for it at all.


There are millions of orange plats and bowls in cabinates around the country which predate synthetic dyes being used in the 1980's. Especially "Fiestaware" brand. They're loaded with depleted uranoium. But it's in the glaze and therefore it's not a concern. The few micrograms you might get into food are neglidgable. Studdies have been done and it's just not worth being conerned about.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Sorry for vanishing earlier, it's marking time and forum posting is the first thing that gets the chop when time is short.

A question I had earlier, but did not get around to exploring, was "If breeder reactors are so awesome, and represent an instant solution to nuclear waste by turning it into free energy, why are there so few of them? What's the catch?".

So I had a chat to someone who keeps track of this sort of thing, and the short version is that you can make a fission reactor that is close to idiot-proof and terrorist-proof but you can't make an idiot-proof, terrorist proof breeder. Since breeder reactors make megawatts of energy in a volume the size of a beer barrel, the only way to keep them from melting or exploding is to constantly pump molten sodium or potassium through them in many channels a few millimetres wide. Those channels tend to get clogged, and the core is of course as radioactive as all get out presenting a non-trivial maintenance problem. Fortunately there has never been a breeder reactor failure yet, but if there was it could be extremely energetic.

So the reason we are not already hip-deep in cheap electricity from breeder reactors is that they are technically challenging, and very dangerous if they are sabotaged or if idiots are in charge of them. That's also the reason why the nations that already have them are not building more and are phasing them out. That's apart from the proliferation threat which makes them a terribly dangerous solution to the global energy problem.

Nice, safe breeder reactors are just as much science fiction as maximally efficient solar panels, solar panels in space or functioning fusion reactors as I understand it. If you're going to assume one will come along to save the day you might as well assume they all will.

[DRBUZZ0]

Well I agree that breeders have a lot of issues. I think they can be safe though. Not 100% safe from a major problem, but safe for the community, if well contained. Any time the coolant is something like sodium that can solidify and is not cemically stable, it makes me very nervous. This is one reason why I really like throium-based systems, because it can do essentially the same without using sodium or other non-moderating coolants and it can do so at a lower core power level.

The integral fast reactors also offer some advantages without all the challenges of a fullblown breeder. But I have to agree that a traditional breeder reactor is, at best, the sort of thing I'd only want to see limited use of.


Anyways. I did a post on my site today about the costs of power generation:
http://depletedcranium.com/?p=185

[luddite]

Here's another concern about relying on nuclear power to address global warming:

The heat wave has hit France's energy sector particularly hard because of the country's reliance on nuclear power, energy analysts said. Nuclear power from 19 stations and 58 reactors accounts for 70 percent to 80 percent of energy production in France, as opposed to about 20 percent to 30 percent of production in Britain, for example. These plants run less efficiently when temperatures are high, and many are located in the hottest parts of France.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2003/08/12/heat_ed3__2.php

[DRBUZZ0]

Here's another concern about relying on nuclear power to address global warming:



http://www.iht.com/articles/2003/08/12/heat_ed3__2.php

What you're talking about is really narrow and completely out of context. Nuclear reactors power thermal power plants. These plants require cooling from water or from evaporative/convection towers. This is true of any thermal power plant. It's also true that the effeciency is effected by the temperature differential. Basically the issue is the condenser which lowers the pressure by condensing the steam.

Therefore if the temperature exceeds what the plant was designed to operate efficiently at, it will cause a loss of overall thermal effeciency. This is true of coal-fire power plants as well. It's even more true of combined cycle gas plants. But that doesn't hit too hard because few countries use those for much of their baseload, as gas is generally too scarce and too expensive.

Coal plants also often have greater reserve capacity and since they tend to be smaller and more numerous, you don't always have to worry as much about the local discharge temperature beign an ecological issue.

The reason that it might be more of an effect to nuclear plants than others is only because they're generally more energy dense and thus operate at higher temperatures. Also, they might cause water to be emitted beyond the acceptable temperature limit if the intake is too warm to begin with.

It's simply a design issue though. There are nuke plants which operate just fine in the summer in Florida. The problem seems to be that these plants were designed without the anticipation that they would need to be efficient in such conditions. Simply adding secondary cooling or taking in a greater volume of water or more air is a very simple fix for the problem. It's all just an issue of what the operating peramiters were. It may be that we're getting to a point where we should be designing reserve cooling capacity into plants, beyond what we think they'll need, just becaue of what's happening climate wise.


But I suppose the other option would be to have a power source that's not as dependant on the fickle whims of nature and unfavorable conditions, like stalled high pressure systems or heat waves occurring at extremely inopportune times...

Therefore I think this is just proof we should depend on wind..


oh wait...

[Lonewulf]

I have a question.

I've heard many many arguments against nuclear power. Some less logical than others. (NUCLEAR USES SUBSIDIES, OMG!)

However, I have a question involving safety, environmental damage, and subsidies. How can anyone who levies any of the arguments here not be fighting tooth and nail against hydroelectric power? I really mean this. Why aren't there threads on hydroelectric, with people suggesting that those that defend hydroelectric are ignorant buffoons (see some of Kevin Lowe's posts a few pages back in response to Schneibster, to which he still hasn't responded to), or talking about the safety issues or terrorist threats of dams?

Hydroelectric causes relocation, has greenhouse gas emissions from construction and usage, causes environmental damage, and when it fails... well, need I really go into this? When the Banqiao Dam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam) busted, 171,000 people died. OVER ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY THOUSAND! And MILLIONS were left homeless. But I just don't see the same outrage, the same fear, and the same attacks levied against hydroelectric power. In fact, someone in this very thread has even gone so far as to say that hydroelectric is the "most safe" and "most environmental" of power sources.

There has been no argument against nuclear that cannot be levied against hydroelectricity. Safety issues? Check. Chances of terrorists using it to their advantage? Check. Massive population relocation if an accident happens? Check. People actually die when things go wrong? Check again. ****s up the environment? Check yet once more (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectric#Environmental_damage).

Is it just a game to attack nuclear, but ignore the very real danger of hydroelectric? Is the decisions as to which one is better completely arbitrary?

I really mean this. I'm not doing this to "score points". I'm getting a little disturbed that people ignore the very real danger of one power source, and then attack the supposed possibility of maybe there being a danger with another. It's... well, it's pretty depressing, and very disturbing.

[luddite]

I would argue against big hydro. I'm all for micro-hydro.

That said, one of the biggest hydro-electric projects is the Adam Beck plant at Niagara Falls, and I support it. Because of the unique geological nature of the site, building the plant required little flooding. There was a natural drop which was used. Sites like this are rare. Most recent large hydro projects have involved a lot of relocations during construction, and many have unexpected problems with silt buildup behind the dam. I suspect all the really good sites have already been used.

Micro hydro is something different, though. There are farm operations that use it to power up their needs and flooding doesn't extend beyond a small section of farmland. Usually fish are easily able to make the leap over the dam, either with or without fish ladders.

I don't think hydro big or small can really be expected to replace coal. Maybe in some areas, but not overall. It's just too site specific.

Also, hydroelectric is even more affected than nuclear by global warming trends (droughts and heat waves).

[Schneibster]

(see some of Kevin Lowe's posts a few pages back in response to Schneibster, to which he still hasn't responded to),I was under the impression I had, and I can't find the posts you're referring to. If I haven't, I'd like to, so could you give links or post numbers or just page numbers, please? Last I can find, we had established that the poster you name had ridiculed my economic analysis without providing evidence to support that, which is using rhetoric instead of evidence since I had provided evidence to support it in the original assertion, and that he had spent a lot of time referring to U-234, which is an incredibly small fraction of both natural and enriched uranium, basically irrelevant to any discussion of the content of fuel rods before or after use, or any discussion of what happens while they are in the reactor.

[ZirconBlue]

I was under the impression I had, and I can't find the posts you're referring to. If I haven't, I'd like to, so could you give links or post numbers or just page numbers, please? Last I can find, we had established that the poster you name had ridiculed my economic analysis without providing evidence to support that, which is using rhetoric instead of evidence since I had provided evidence to support it in the original assertion, and that he had spent a lot of time referring to U-234, which is an incredibly small fraction of both natural and enriched uranium, basically irrelevant to any discussion of the content of fuel rods before or after use, or any discussion of what happens while they are in the reactor.

Not to speak for Lonewulf, but I think that was an unclear antecendant; I don't think you are the "he" in question.

[DRBUZZ0]

I was under the impression I had, and I can't find the posts you're referring to. If I haven't, I'd like to, so could you give links or post numbers or just page numbers, please? Last I can find, we had established that the poster you name had ridiculed my economic analysis without providing evidence to support that, which is using rhetoric instead of evidence since I had provided evidence to support it in the original assertion, and that he had spent a lot of time referring to U-234, which is an incredibly small fraction of both natural and enriched uranium, basically irrelevant to any discussion of the content of fuel rods before or after use, or any discussion of what happens while they are in the reactor.

U-234 is not worth worrying about... if anything it's an asset. It has a high thermal neutron cross-section. It has a low fission probability, but that's no problem because it becomes U-235 in ground state. Spent nuclear fuel contains LESS U-234 than natural uranium because most of it is transformed to U-235, which is the freakin stuff you want anyway!

Why are we even talking about U-234? U-236 can be a problem, because on occasion U-235 will absorb a neutron without fissioning. Thus you have U-236 which isn't that useful, because it has a low cross-section and isn't directly fissionable.

But it's also not that big a deal wither because it's both low in yeild and it's just not that radioactive. It even occurs naturally in low amounts.

It is actually useful in creating synthetic isotopes for special purposes, but otherwise uranium isotopes are neither hear nor there. They're either desirable or just neutral. The exception might be U-232, but that is not created in high concentrations in any conventional reactor anyways.

[Hindmost]

Sorry for vanishing earlier, it's marking time and forum posting is the first thing that gets the chop when time is short.

A question I had earlier, but did not get around to exploring, was "If breeder reactors are so awesome, and represent an instant solution to nuclear waste by turning it into free energy, why are there so few of them? What's the catch?".

So I had a chat to someone who keeps track of this sort of thing, and the short version is that you can make a fission reactor that is close to idiot-proof and terrorist-proof but you can't make an idiot-proof, terrorist proof breeder. Since breeder reactors make megawatts of energy in a volume the size of a beer barrel, the only way to keep them from melting or exploding is to constantly pump molten sodium or potassium through them in many channels a few millimetres wide. Those channels tend to get clogged, and the core is of course as radioactive as all get out presenting a non-trivial maintenance problem. Fortunately there has never been a breeder reactor failure yet, but if there was it could be extremely energetic.

So the reason we are not already hip-deep in cheap electricity from breeder reactors is that they are technically challenging, and very dangerous if they are sabotaged or if idiots are in charge of them. That's also the reason why the nations that already have them are not building more and are phasing them out. That's apart from the proliferation threat which makes them a terribly dangerous solution to the global energy problem.

Nice, safe breeder reactors are just as much science fiction as maximally efficient solar panels, solar panels in space or functioning fusion reactors as I understand it. If you're going to assume one will come along to save the day you might as well assume they all will.

Breeder reactors are just as safe as light water reactors. There are also significant avantages. First they are themally more efficient--approximately 41% as compared to 38% for large coal plants and 33-34% for light water reactors. Corrosion in the reactor and other places is essentially non-existant since it is metal to metal contact when using liquid sodium. Overall, primary chemistry is easier. The system operates at low pressure since liquid sodium has a high boiling point. This reduces capital costs and eliminates many types of accidents. EBR II operated for a long time very safely. It also demonstrated the inherent fuel safety--the plant can lose coolant and shut itself down.

They do have maintenance drawbacks associated with the liquid sodium, but that is just a matter of engineering.

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


The reason they have not been constructed in several countries is due to the cheap price of uranium and the general lack of construction of nuclear plants in many countries making breeder reactors economically unecessary. If nuclear revives, they will be needed in the future. And again, the more uranium and plutonium the US burns means less for any kind of proliferation.

glenn

[Schneibster]

Not to speak for Lonewulf, but I think that was an unclear antecendant; I don't think you are the "he" in question.I hadn't thought of that; you may be right. Lonewulf will log on shortly and clarify, I'm sure. Thanks!

[luddite]

The International Energy Agency has a new and very depressing report on the world's energy future to 2030. The summary is here:

http://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/WEO2007SUM.pdf

There's a focus on China and India which I won't get into, because I'm more interested in the general conclusions.

As far as I can tell the base case is built entirely on demand projections and doesn't take into account at all likely shortages in oil and North American natural gas. They're a conservative group, generally skeptical of alternative energy of any kind, and as I've pointed out before, they've been accused of being systematically pro-fossil fuel and pro-nuclear.

In their assessment of where current trajectories will take us, they foresee a rise in oil use of 37% over 2006 levels by 2030. I don't think this is physically possible, even if we decide to ignore global warming and subsidize oil exploration at unheard of rates. The IEA thinks it is possible, though admits great uncertainty and potential supply side crunches with rapid price increases around 2015. They also talk a lot about energy instability and the growing share of Middle East oil.

What's interesting to me is that in their assessment, even if every emissions reductions strategy envisioned anywhere in the world were successfully implemented with the targeted drop in emissions reductions achieved, our emissions will still be 37% higher in 2030 over 2006 emissions.

So either we will have to come to our senses and be a lot more creative, daring and resolute about our approach to emissions reductions, or we have no chance at all of curbing climate change.

The IEA does have emissions reductions policy suggestions, in between all the handwringing about how we can possibly deliver all that needed fossil fuel to meet demand.

In a “450 Stabilisation Case”, which describes a notional pathway to achieving this outcome, global emissions peak in 2012 at around 30 Gt. Emissions savings come from improved efficiency in fossil-fuel use in industry, buildings and transport, switching to nuclear power and renewables, and the widespread deployment of CO2 capture and storage (CCS) in power generation and industry. Exceptionally quick and vigorous policy action by all countries, and unprecedented technological advances, entailing substantial costs, would be needed to make this case a reality.

There are explicit worries about the fact that carbon sequestration is not yet a mature technology, won't be able to contribute in the short term, and will only be helpful if a lot of research money is thrown at it and results are successful. What's interesting to me is that in this very conservative document, I still read what I've been saying:

Energy efficiency and conservation will need to play a central role in curbing soaring electricity demand and reducing inputs to generation. Nuclear power and renewables can also make a major contribution to lowering emissions.

Many of the policies available to alleviate energy insecurity can also help to mitigate local pollution and climate change, and vice-versa. As the Alternative Policy Scenario demonstrates, in many cases, those policies bring economic benefits too, by lowering energy costs – a “triple-win” outcome. An integrated approach to policy formulation is, therefore, essential. The right mix of policies to address both energy-security and climate concerns depends on the balance of costs and benefits, which vary among countries. We do not have the luxury of ruling out any of the options for moving the global energy system onto a more sustainable path. The most cost-effective approach will involve market-based instruments, including those that place an explicit financial value on CO2 emissions. Regulatory measures, such as standards and mandates, will also be needed, together with government support for long-term research,
development and demonstration of new technologies.

The way I read this document fits with my understanding. Here is my summary of what it says about building a successful climate change strategy:

We are running out of time.
Conservation/efficiency will be the big player.
We need to look at all policy instruments, focusing on monetizing emissions costs first and regulatory mechanisms second.
Even still success in meeting energy projections would depend on technological miracles not available in the short term.

[Schneibster]

Well, there IS one thing in there you haven't been saying:Energy efficiency and conservation will need to play a central role in curbing soaring electricity demand and reducing inputs to generation. Nuclear power and renewables can also make a major contribution to lowering emissions. And that's what we keep trying to tell you.

[DRBUZZ0]

Why are we doing this again? Why is the conservation strawman back? Can we please send the conservation strawman over to a biomass plant or something so that the straw can at least be used for something useful?

Yes. We have an impending energy crisis. Yes, this will probably require cutbacks. Yes, shortages are a problem.

But the thing most important now is to mitigate any crisis or shortage by moving to energy sources of the greatest density, economy and minimal environmental impact. That's how you have to do it.


The "Big energy nuclear people" do not say that conservation is bad. They don't say that they change the dynamics of the situation.

What they do say: The more low-impact energy sources we can establish the less extreme measures will be required and the less impact we'll end up having.

Can nuclear turn the climate around? No. It can't. Nor can conservation. Nor can windmills.

But it can help a lot. It can help more than anything else. And the greater portion of energy it provides the better. If we start today it will help. Had we started last year, it would have helped more, but oh well... can't go back. If we do it next year it will help, but less. If we do it in ten years it will help, but a LOT less.

This makes no sense! Being pro-nuclear as not anti-conservation or even pro-expansion. That would not seem to even be a realistic option for anyone right now.


You want a current miracle technology? There are no miracle technologies, but if you want something that fits close enough to miracalous. Something that fits with the Clark quote of "any suffeciently advanced technlogy is indistinguishable from magic..."

Well nuclear energy comes damn close. I can give youb a way of turning a tiny amount of matter into gobs and gobs of energy which such reality that you can easily live with this thing in a sealed tube under thousands of feet of saltwater. That's at least as miracalous as any other technology,

[Kevin_Lowe]

The reason they have not been constructed in several countries is due to the cheap price of uranium and the general lack of construction of nuclear plants in many countries making breeder reactors economically unecessary. If nuclear revives, they will be needed in the future. And again, the more uranium and plutonium the US burns means less for any kind of proliferation.


That doesn't sound like it makes sense on the face of it. There is all this nuclear waste lying around, which we are told is fodder for future breeder reactors, and nations are paying significant amounts of money to store it. Yet you are saying it is cheaper to mine and refine uranium than use the waste already in existence and not pay to store it any more?

Something is funny about the economics there. Either it's more expensive to turn nuclear waste into usable fuel than it is to mine uranium and refine it, which is not the impression I got earlier, and in which case breeders are not cost-effective, or there is a reason other than fuel cost why everyone does not build breeders.

As for the US thing, we have already been over this. This discussion is not solely about the US and never has been, nor has anyone ever said that uranium and plutonium inside the USA was a proliferation risk in the first place. The problem is that global adoption of breeder reactors would lead to a greatly increased risk of global proliferation.

[luddite]

Well, there IS one thing in there you haven't been saying:And that's what we keep trying to tell you.
I've never said otherwise. That's why I quoted that statement.

I do think renewables can be brought online faster than nuclear. But nuclear reactors deliver more when they are brought online. If I've given the impression that I think renewables and nuclear cannot reduce emissions, I apologize.

[luddite]

Sorry, Schneibster, I just reread your comment and the emphasis. My understanding now is that you're suggesting I've been saying nuclear in particular cannot contribute to emissions reductions. That's not what I ever said. What I said was that I would prefer for the generation portion to be tilted in favour of renewables and away from nuclear. That's a discussion about preferences, not possibilities. And I've always said that I'm highly sympathetic to people who feel we need to do it all.

[DRBUZZ0]

That doesn't sound like it makes sense on the face of it. There is all this nuclear waste lying around, which we are told is fodder for future breeder reactors, and nations are paying significant amounts of money to store it. Yet you are saying it is cheaper to mine and refine uranium than use the waste already in existence and not pay to store it any more?

Something is funny about the economics there. Either it's more expensive to turn nuclear waste into usable fuel than it is to mine uranium and refine it, which is not the impression I got earlier, and in which case breeders are not cost-effective, or there is a reason other than fuel cost why everyone does not build breeders.



Reprocessing depends a lot on the nature of the spent fuel and also it's important to do it in a manner which isn't overly "messy" in that it generates a lot of contaminated equipment and such.

Some places have come up with very good reprocessing cycles. It requires a large initial investment though. It's complex subject






As for the US thing, we have already been over this. This discussion is not solely about the US and never has been, nor has anyone ever said that uranium and plutonium inside the USA was a proliferation risk in the first place. The problem is that global adoption of breeder reactors would lead to a greatly increased risk of global proliferation.


Yes you're correct in a lot of this. The rate at which the US burns uranium and/or plutonium is not withstanding. I think burning left over stuff from weapons is a great way to get rid of it but it's also something which is has no effect outside the US since it's secure anyway.


The question of a fast breeder, I have my concerns about those, much more so that a reactor which generates plutonium that is too pu-240 rich for effective weapons use.

Policy wise there are some things that need to be considered about how reactors can be deployed without being a proliferation threat. I'd have little problem with the US or most larger western countries, or even china or india having nuclear technology because the fact is it doesn't really enable weapons there anyway.

This is important though. Even if it doesn't include all countries, the US alone generates a huge amount of CO2. If large first world countries can go nuclear then that's going to be a big step.

The problem is how to come up with a system that brings this energy source to Fiji and Angola and Chad and the Gilbert Island and Bermuda and so on. We need to find a way to respect the sovernty and desires of such countries without the US, Brittan, Germany and Japan holding their hands. Sure, we could just give them a sealed-vessle reactor and then take it away in 20 years. But I think that there will need to be a look at sub-critical reactors, thorium-cycle and other systems that do not have a proliferation threat for places where there could easily be a revolution next week.

But in the mean time, converting the first world nations would be HUGE

[Schneibster]

That doesn't sound like it makes sense on the face of it. There is all this nuclear waste lying around, which we are told is fodder for future breeder reactors, and nations are paying significant amounts of money to store it. Yet you are saying it is cheaper to mine and refine uranium than use the waste already in existence and not pay to store it any more?Yes. It's very cheap to mine, and reprocessing takes a lot because you have to handle the concentrated high level waste. See:
1. http://www.cameco.com/uranium_101/uranium_science/nuclear_fuel/
"Reprocessing is the chemical separation of spent fuel into these three components. The U-235 can again become reactor fuel. The plutonium can be blended with natural UO2 to create mixed oxide fuel (MOX), a fuel used in some reactors in Belgium, Germany, France and Switzerland. The waste is placed in secure storage.

While the costs of reprocessing outweigh its benefits at the present time, Russia and some European countries reprocess used fuel for environmental reasons or as a result of political policy. As well, countries like Japan are turning to reprocessing because they lack domestic fuel sources and wish to be energy independent. "
2. http://www.allbusiness.com/north-america/united-states-colorado/4496058-1.html
"By the 1980s, the market for uranium either for nuclear weapons or fuel for nuclear reactors in the U.S. had crashed. Nuclear reactor accidents in the U.S. and in Russia soured public support for nuclear power. Government stockpiles for nuclear weapons programs were full, and the prospect of reprocessing nuclear weapons for reactor fuel all but killed the uranium mining in the U.S." They can't even afford to mine it; they can't sell it for enough to make it worthwhile, there's no demand. Why bother reprocessing?
3. http://technolog.it.umn.edu/technolog/fall00/ideas.html
"...the AEC and its successor, the Department of Energy (DOE) have had problems choosing appropriate means of disposal. In 2010, the federal government hopes to build a waste-storage facility in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Once again, local opposition has delayed completion for at least ten years. Frustrated over constant delays and bureaucracy, Xcel Energy (formerly Northern States Power) is suing the government for breach of contract and is pursuing private means of waste disposal.

How did the U.S. dream for nuclear power become such a nightmare? President Carter's 1977 executive order banning the reprocessing of nuclear fuels is one reason. During the ban, new ways of disposing nuclear waste were supposed to be developed. Instead as, former Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy A. David Rossin states, 'during that time all the industrial momentum where nuclear energy was concerned was lost.'

The federal government has simply ignored reprocessing while the rest of the world has developed a reprocessing industry. With a waste crisis close at hand, the United States should reconsider reprocessing. Reprocessing spent fuel is trickier than simply burying it in Nevada, but it represents the first step toward a closed fuel cycle that allows radioactive byproducts to be reused. "

That should about cover it. I'll re-iterate that the current spot price of uranium is $130/kg; think about this a moment, that's one hundred thirty dollars for two pounds. It's not exactly a precious metal.

Something is funny about the economics there. Either it's more expensive to turn nuclear waste into usable fuel than it is to mine uranium and refine it, which is not the impression I got earlier, and in which case breeders are not cost-effective, or there is a reason other than fuel cost why everyone does not build breeders.China, Russia, the UK, France, India, and Japan currently either reprocess or are storing their spent fuel in anticipation of reprocessing. Russia and France are the main reprocessers.

As for the US thing, we have already been over this. This discussion is not solely about the US and never has been, nor has anyone ever said that uranium and plutonium inside the USA was a proliferation risk in the first place. The problem is that global adoption of breeder reactors would lead to a greatly increased risk of global proliferation.But global adoption is not needed. You don't need one breeder per other reactor; you need one per something like ten or twenty. Not only that but you don't even have to use breeders to get most of their benefits; you can use fast reactors instead. And to top it all off, not only can you do both breeding and fast neutrons with gas-cooling and heat transfer instead of sodium, and use helium which is pretty much immune to neutron transmutation and totally inert, but you can do fast reactors with pebble bed technology which is inherently safer in the first place.

Glenn may have already mentioned these things by the time I get around to posting this. I did a fair bit of research and got interrupted a bunch.

[Schneibster]

Sorry, Schneibster, I just reread your comment and the emphasis. My understanding now is that you're suggesting I've been saying nuclear in particular cannot contribute to emissions reductions. That's not what I ever said. What I said was that I would prefer for the generation portion to be tilted in favour of renewables and away from nuclear. That's a discussion about preferences, not possibilities. And I've always said that I'm highly sympathetic to people who feel we need to do it all.Anyone in their right mind prefers renewables; I prefer renewables. And I'll act locally to promote and use them. But I already know they won't be enough, and I think it's extremely dangerous to promote the idea they will. The lead time for getting the nuclear power industry spun back up in the US is just too long to screw around. There aren't any nuclear engineers, there aren't any foundaries to make the reactor vessels, and that's just for starters. We needed to start right about the time Carter issued the directive that the US would not reprocess.

Now, I like Jimmy Carter. Always have. I never thought he got a fair shake from anybody, and that includes Democrats. And I love the stuff he's done since he was out of office. But I really, really wish he hadn't signed that executive order; it's one of the very few things I ever got pissed at him about.

The other huge problem is public hysteria about nuclear power. It's destroyed nuclear power in the US and partly if not completely in Germany. They're over there flailing and floundering in Germany, trying to figure out how to build enough windmills and solar panels to run their country; at some point, there's gonna be a reckoning. You just can't avoid it. And they had some of the most advanced reactor designs in the world, very nearly within their grasp. They had the jump on damn near everyone, and they let it slip away.

So did we over here in the US, because of a stupid damn movie and an accident that didn't even kill anyone. It's time to grow up and stop acting like 13-year-old girls. We have to do everything we can figure out how to make sure we don't kill off half the people in the world or have a nuclear war. It's just too important to be coddling people who want to act like little children any more. I hate to put it like that; I'm a liberal, and furthermore I'm an environmentalist. I've picketed, and I've demonstrated, and I've written my Congresscritters. I've put my money into environmental organizations for several decades. But it's time NOW, and we can't afford to **** around any more. If we do, expect gigadeaths.

[Lonewulf]

I was under the impression I had, and I can't find the posts you're referring to.

Not to speak for Lonewulf, but I think that was an unclear antecendant; I don't think you are the "he" in question.

I meant that Kevin hasn't responded to Schneibster's calling on his bluff. Kevin essentially kept claiming that Schneibster was completely ignorant as to a certain nuclear process, and Schneibster essentially came back and demonstrated that he was not. Kevin did this as to lead up to some kind of point where he'd call us all on our ignorance, but never responded.

I'll endeavor to use less pronouns in the future. :D

Anyone in their right mind prefers renewables; I prefer renewables. And I'll act locally to promote and use them. But I already know they won't be enough, and I think it's extremely dangerous to promote the idea they will.
That's part of what's so disturbing about this entire thread to me. People saying that mass-scale hydroelectric is "perfectly safe" while nuclear is the boogeyman is just one aspect of it. I'm also disturbed at the people that think that making a world-wide solar and wind energy system can be estimated through multiplication alone (which is what Kevin_Lowe showed earlier; I'll find a cite), while ignoring that the efficiency of solar and wind are dependant on where you live. Not all places have strong winds or plenty of sunlight. I already provided numbers by the International Energy Agency that demonstrated that the costs of wind and solar. In the USA-S2, it costed $100 per MWh. So we just multiply that by a certain number, and we know how much money every country has to spend, right? That's Kevin-logic.

But guess what? The highest cost is CZE-S, which is $1500 per MWh.

The logic here just isn't adding up. If it was a simple multiplication, why the difference of ten times the cost? I thought you could just add some number to the $100, and BAM, you have the cost of solar worldwide! But anyways, back to my point.

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

I didn't know that all you had to do was built 250 times the facilities! Hey, that's easy to do, right? Geothermal sources pop up everywhere, after all, right? Bleh, the arm-chair engineers here disturb me to no end.


Overall, I'm just surprised at how easily people are dismissing nuclear altogether. Hey, there's a slight chance of something going wrong, so it ain't worth it. Nope. Global warming is nothing to worry about compared to a localized nuclear accident...

Meanwhile, they aren't in arms over hydroelectric, they just "don't support it", even though hydroelectric can be hundreds of times more dangerous than any nuclear power plant. But hell, submerging a significant number of the rainforest to make way for hydroelectric just doesn't warrant their concern... neither does the environmental problems. Luddite "doesn't support" the big dams, but is he actively working to tear down the existing ones? Why not?

Bleh. It almost seems like this is a game to these people.

Global warming sure as hell isn't a game to me.

[Kevin_Lowe]

I meant that Kevin hasn't responded to Schneibster's calling on his bluff. Kevin essentially kept claiming that Schneibster was completely ignorant as to a certain nuclear process, and Schneibster essentially came back and demonstrated that he was not. Kevin did this as to lead up to some kind of point where he'd call us all on our ignorance, but never responded.

I'll endeavor to use less pronouns in the future. :D

I considered resurrecting that subthread when I got back and upon consideration decided it would be a waste of time. Since you're taking pot shots at me though:

The point that nuclear waste will be dangerous for at least a thousand years and possibly much longer, because of its decay products, was accepted by yourself and Schneibster before I got back. I saw no point in harping on that.

The amount of relevance in Schneibster's talk of U-234 is approximately the same as the amount of U-234 in nuclear waste. I chose U-234 as an illustration of how decay products work and why you can't just look at the original isotope's half-life, chemical and physical properties in order to figure out if the waste is dangerous. The idea that I was really arguing that the major danger in nuclear waste is the U-234 was his, not mine. I saw no point in digging up that straw man.

The claim that if we don't go nuclear a billion people will die was never adequately supported, nor was I ever clear on what exactly we had to do to prevent this mass slaughter, but Schneibster seemed to have dropped that claim anyway. I saw no point in digging it up either.

If you think I'm conveniently ignoring some other devastating point, feel free to bring it up again.

[Lonewulf]

The point that nuclear waste will be dangerous for at least a thousand years and possibly much longer, because of its decay products, was accepted by yourself and Schneibster before I got back. I saw no point in harping on that.
Do you remember asking what, specifically, made it so dangerous? I remember you did. I also believe it was pointed out that the material in question was an alpha emitter. Alpha waves can't even penetrate the skin. So, you going to "debunk" that, or did you have a point with saying that Schneibster and I were ignoramus' as to the danger? Either that, or are you going to come up with another strawman where you claim that I'm claiming that nuclear waste is "perfectly safe"? If you've been reading the posts throughout this thread, it was brought up that other alpha wave emitters, such as Uranium, is only really dangerous if you ingest it. And that's more due to the chemical properties of Uranium than to the alpha waves.

Please actually back up your entire line of thought back there. It was cut off in mid-statement. You claimed that we didn't know why it was dangerous. You then didn't actually explain why. Please educate us!


The claim that if we don't go nuclear a billion people will die was never adequately supported, nor was I ever clear on what exactly we had to do to prevent this mass slaughter, but Schneibster seemed to have dropped that claim anyway. I saw no point in digging it up either.
Schneibster, can you please expand on this point? If it's true, it's a very important one to deal with.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Do you remember asking what, specifically, made it so dangerous? I remember you did. I also believe it was pointed out that the material in question was an alpha emitter. Alpha waves can't even penetrate the skin. So, you going to "debunk" that, or did you have a point with saying that Schneibster and I were ignoramus' as to the danger? Either that, or are you going to come up with another strawman where you claim that I'm claiming that nuclear waste is "perfectly safe"? If you've been reading the posts throughout this thread, it was brought up that other alpha wave emitters, such as Uranium, is only really dangerous if you ingest it. And that's more due to the chemical properties of Uranium than to the alpha waves.

Please actually back up your entire line of thought back there. It was cut off in mid-statement. You claimed that we didn't know why it was dangerous. You then didn't actually explain why. Please educate us!

Alpha emitters are very dangerous if they can be ingested and taken up by the body or breathed in and caught in the lungs, as some can. However nothing says that all nuclear waste and all of its descendant isotopes will be alpha emitters. Beta and gamma emitters are almost certainly going to be in there too once the decay chain gets going even if they are not there at the start.

I say "almost certainly" because it's theoretically possible that every isotope in the waste just happens to have alpha emissions all the way down it's decay chain, but I'd be very surprised if it worked out that way.

[Schneibster]

I considered resurrecting that subthread when I got back and upon consideration decided it would be a waste of time. Since you're taking pot shots at me though:

The point that nuclear waste will be dangerous for at least a thousand years and possibly much longer, because of its decay products, was accepted by yourself and Schneibster before I got back. I saw no point in harping on that.I accepted nothing of the kind. I'll demonstrate that by merely asking, which of the several kinds of nuclear waste discussed on this thread is that, Kevin? Either you didn't notice that at least five have been mentioned, or you're claiming that because I "admitted" it about one, it's true about them all, an obvious logical fallacy.

The amount of relevance in Schneibster's talk of U-234 is approximately the same as the amount of U-234 in nuclear waste. I chose U-234 as an illustration of how decay products work and why you can't just look at the original isotope's half-life, chemical and physical properties in order to figure out if the waste is dangerous. Now this is outright dishonesty, and I have no intention of letting it pass. You didn't even know that U-234 isn't created in the reactor except in vanishingly small quantities; you were talking about its presence in waste, implying that it was enough to worry about. It's about 0.0058% of natural uranium; that's less than six one thousandths of a percent. Note that you spoke of Pu-238 in the same sentence, and you apparently don't have a clue that a) Pu-238 isn't a product of nuclear fission of U-235 mixed with U-238, and b) U-234 is present in uranium ore, and therefore in both natural uranium and enriched uranium. Tell me, Kevin, what reaction in a nuclear reactor produces Pu-238? Do you know how Pu-238 is produced? "It comes from nuclear reactors" is not an acceptable answer. Since you seem to think you know more than I do about nuclear reactions, why don't you just tell us all? Tell us, after you find out, how much of it you think is in nuclear waste, too. That will be an interesting piece of information.

Moving right along, U-234 IS an "original isotope," so there is absolutely no point you could possibly make regarding how decay products work that has to do with not being able to "look at the original isotope's half-life" using U-234 as opposed to U-235 and U-238. Finally, U-234 is such a low percentage, even after enrichment, that it is essentially non-existent from a radiological point of view; its contribution is so diluted by its low occurrence that there's no point in even discussing it even in enriched uranium, much less in the natural uranium which is used in CANDU reactors.

You had not the slightest idea what you were talking about, and nothing I've seen from you since has changed that opinion one iota; you're STILL talking about U-234 as if it weren't an "original isotope." And now I've caught you outright misrepresenting what you said. That's not merely dishonest, it's stupid, because you had to know I was going to go find where you said it and prove you had. So here it comes.

The idea that I was really arguing that the major danger in nuclear waste is the U-234 was his, not mine. I saw no point in digging up that straw man.Spent fission reactor fuel contains U-234 (half-life 246000 years), Pu-238 (half-life 88 years then it turns into the aforementioned U-234) and Am-241 (half-life 432 years). Make a big pile of that stuff and it will be a serious health hazard for longer than any human political system has ever endured, by at least a couple of orders of magnitude. And now I've caught you misrepresenting what you said again. Let's think about that; you've stated that U-234 makes an important contribution to the danger of nuclear waste, and this is emphasized by your use of it as an example of the danger of nuclear waste in another post in which you mention it alone as an example of why nuclear waste is so dangerous, here: Schneibster, exactly what do you think is dangerous about a stockpile of used fuel rods containing U-234? This looks to me definitively as if you are arguing that it is at least A major danger, if not THE major danger (since you mention it completely alone as if it were somehow important enough to be worth considering), in nuclear waste. So here we have two phenomena of note; first, you again misrepresented YOUR OWN ARGUMENT. And second, you have done so TO AVOID ADMITTING YOU WERE WRONG, and here we find that although I appear to be able to admit it when I was wrong, you cannot. I think that speaks to character, and lack of it.

The claim that if we don't go nuclear a billion people will die was never adequately supported, nor was I ever clear on what exactly we had to do to prevent this mass slaughter, but Schneibster seemed to have dropped that claim anyway. I saw no point in digging it up either.Plenty of evidence was presented; you just can't come up with any arguments against any of it, so instead of being honest and admitting that, you instead choose to descend to rhetoric and pretend there wasn't any.

The evidence is right here (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3079722&postcount=476). You've not refuted a lick of it, and now you're trying to pretend it doesn't exist. And that, Kevin, is a lie. Your fourth of the evening, in fact. Tell us all, after you just got done lying four times, why we should listen to anything further you might have to say.

[Schneibster]

I meant that Kevin hasn't responded to Schneibster's calling on his bluff. Kevin essentially kept claiming that Schneibster was completely ignorant as to a certain nuclear process, and Schneibster essentially came back and demonstrated that he was not. Kevin did this as to lead up to some kind of point where he'd call us all on our ignorance, but never responded.

I'll endeavor to use less pronouns in the future. :DWe're cool; I just wanted to make sure I hadn't overlooked something.

[Schneibster]

Schneibster, can you please expand on this point? If it's true, it's a very important one to deal with.This page (http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Wheat/trade.htm) has a very informative graphic at the bottom; leading importers of wheat. Note the "developing countries" segment. Note that it is most of 75 million metric tons. The question here is, what happens to those countries if agriculture becomes local? Where will they get those calories from? And how many people live there? Then take a look at corn. Consider also that corn is livestock feed.

The amounts we're talking about here feed more than half the people alive today. That's over three billion people. Think about the implications of that statement, and then think about how that food gets to where it's being eaten. I may be an optimist claiming that only a billion people will die.

[Kevin_Lowe]

I accepted nothing of the kind. I'll demonstrate that by merely asking, which of the several kinds of nuclear waste discussed on this thread is that, Kevin? Either you didn't notice that at least five have been mentioned, or you're claiming that because I "admitted" it about one, it's true about them all, an obvious logical fallacy.

I refer to this post:

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3129873&postcount=981

Looks to me like you were discussing fission reactor fuel waste originating in the USA at the time, and that's the kind of waste (apart from the originating in the USA bit) we have mostly been talking about.


Now this is outright dishonesty, and I have no intention of letting it pass. You didn't even know that U-234 isn't created in the reactor except in vanishingly small quantities;

...and so on and on at great length.

I didn't go in to irrelevant details because the person I was conversing with, Lonewulf, did not understand the very basics of radioactivity. You saw from a recent post, I hope, that he still thought all radioactive waste was alpha-emitting waste. U-234 was a good example because it was easy to look up all of its descendant isotopes, and it included ones with a variety of properties (like radium and radon) that illustrated the point I was making better than any other breakdown chain I could find with a casual search.

Look, you've already admitted in the post I just linked to that I was basically right. Do you have any goal in pursuing this subtopic except to pick a fight?


Plenty of evidence was presented; you just can't come up with any arguments against any of it, so instead of being honest and admitting that, you instead choose to descend to rhetoric and pretend there wasn't any.

The evidence is right here (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3079722&postcount=476). You've not refuted a lick of it, and now you're trying to pretend it doesn't exist. And that, Kevin, is a lie. Your fourth of the evening, in fact. Tell us all, after you just got done lying four times, why we should listen to anything further you might have to say.

I don't see a lick of evidence there to refute. I see a lot of stating the obvious, and a lot of very lengthy jumps to unsupported conclusions, but I don't see evidence. Calling me a liar for not thinking it's evidence is pretty cheeky.

[Belz...]

What I said was that I would prefer for the generation portion to be tilted in favour of renewables and away from nuclear. That's a discussion about preferences, not possibilities.

And what reason do you still have for that preference ?

[Belz...]

So did we over here in the US, because of a stupid damn movie

Which movie was that ?

[Lonewulf]

You saw from a recent post, I hope, that he still thought all radioactive waste was alpha-emitting waste.
Now that's a lie. Thank you, Kevin_Lowe, for showing your true character.

You had mentioned U-234 specifically. U-234, you dishonest SOB. U-234 is an alpha emitter. Or did you forget?

Uranium 234 is an alpha wave emitter with a long lifespan, yes. I was referring specifically to 234. You claiming that I've ever said that all waste is an alpha emitter is, quite frankly, a disgusting lie.

Welcome to my ignore list. Through your straw men, lies, and misrepresentation of other people's positions, you are not worth discussing this with. I'd take a discussion with Luddite over someone like you anyday.

Someone PM me if Kevin actually says something worth addressing, m'kay? I have no desire to waste my time reading through his dishonest trash to find out myself.

[Lonewulf]

I just want to note how I'm getting majorly annoyed at outright misrepresentation or dishonesty existing with some here. For instance, Sparks is quoted as saying:

You may be right Lone on Greenpeaces record: But then again, who doesn't distort facts to bolster their own position?

Which sure as hell sounds like a free pass to lie to support your own position.

Luddite has at times not seemed like he seriously considered any pro-nuclear arguments at all, and even has gone so far as to ignore almost all of them when someone else came up that was anti-nuclear. Either way, I do not blame Luddite for much as he's actually taken the time to debate topics, even if I don't like how he's hand-waved away hard figures that seemed to show that nuclear was economical. Meh. C'est la vie.

And now we have Kevin_Lowe grossly misrepresenting my position to the point where he's either lying, or SERIOUSLY needs to work on his reading comprehension. Unfortunately, he's done this often enough that I'm beginning to think that it's more of the former.

Sheesh, can we at least have some more honest anti-nuclear guys up here?

[Rob Lister]

Which movie was that ?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078966/

The China Syndrome, I think.

[Hindmost]

That doesn't sound like it makes sense on the face of it. There is all this nuclear waste lying around, which we are told is fodder for future breeder reactors, and nations are paying significant amounts of money to store it. Yet you are saying it is cheaper to mine and refine uranium than use the waste already in existence and not pay to store it any more?

Something is funny about the economics there. Either it's more expensive to turn nuclear waste into usable fuel than it is to mine uranium and refine it, which is not the impression I got earlier, and in which case breeders are not cost-effective, or there is a reason other than fuel cost why everyone does not build breeders.

As for the US thing, we have already been over this. This discussion is not solely about the US and never has been, nor has anyone ever said that uranium and plutonium inside the USA was a proliferation risk in the first place. The problem is that global adoption of breeder reactors would lead to a greatly increased risk of global proliferation.

Others have answered the fuel cycle portion. And we have gone over the proliferation thing. However, I want to go over what is needed to build a bomb...etc.

Obviously, the US and other countries already have weapons--so building breeding type reactors can be used to extend the fuel available for electricity production.

To build a plutonium breeding reactor to make weapons grade plutonium is not that difficult unfortunately. The Handford reactors were simple--a bit of natural uranium and graphite cooled with water and you have a production reactor. However, the characteristic of a bomb builder reactor is that it must have very low burnup rates. The reactor will fuel up and go critical for about a month...shutdown and then reload fuel. In this manner, Pu239 will be bred. However, if the reactor was to stay at power too long, then it will burn the Pu or it will be converted to Pu240, 241 and 242. This would contaminate the Pu and make it useless for a weapon. This is how the US can tell if someone is making Pu...the thermal signature of the plant will show startup and shutdown on a monthly basis or so.

With a light water reactor, they are not designed to be refueled as quickly as a production reactor. The fuel is taken to burnup rates about 10 times as much. The Pu in LWR gets contaminated with isotopes of Pu that are just useless for bomb production. However, that Pu can be used to fuel other LWRs since the physics for bombs and the physics for power reactors is much different.

Power production breeders are different as well. These are fast reactors and can be used to make power and breed Pu for reactors...but the fuel cycle can be adjusted to make the spent fuel usless for bombs.

Of course, to handle spent fuel reprocessing requires really special equipment...some of which hasn't been designed yet on a large scale. This will require some significant engineering to make the process commercial viable. Personally, I don't think it will happen too soon.

The US Navy used to reprocess fuel...when a Navy plant reached end of life, there was still a significant amount of U235 which was worth recovering. Navy plants didn't breed Pu much since there was little U238 in the cores.

I would venture to say that Iran is building a production reactor. They also have centrifuges to make U235--which, similar to pakistan, they can build a fission bomb with.

From what I have read lately here, the US and other countries will probably only have the capability to produce enough reactors to keep the electricity contribution constant over the next 30 years or so.

There are other variation of breeding technology...light water thorium breeders for example...much of this needs new designs that are not available or licensed in the US. Right now, only a few designs have NRC approval and those will be built first. GE--advance BWR. Westinghouse--AP1000 and Sys 80+. And that's it--so only those will get built in the US.

glenn

[DRBUZZ0]

You had mentioned U-234 specifically. U-234, you dishonest SOB. U-234 is an alpha emitter. Or did you forget?

Uranium 234 is an alpha wave emitter with a long lifespan, yes. I was referring specifically to 234. You claiming that I've ever said that all waste is an alpha emitter is, quite frankly, a disgusting lie.

Welcome to my ignore list. Through your straw men, lies, and misrepresentation of other people's positions, you are not worth discussing this with. I'd take a discussion with Luddite over someone like you anyday.

Someone PM me if Kevin actually says something worth addressing, m'kay? I have no desire to waste my time reading through his dishonest trash to find out myself.

What the hell does U-234 have to do with anything? U-234 is reduced by fission reactors. Well, perhaps a u-233 thorium-cycle reactor would breed some but it's bull, because the damn stuff is just about as good as U-235.

IE: IT GETS BURNED.

Not to mention. The freakin stuff does decay to daughter products like radium, radon etc etc. This is true with ALL uranium isotopes. It's the natural decay chain which is why you find these materials in minute amounts in uranium ore.

U-234 is not a waste product. U-236 maybe, but that's not a big deal anyway. U-234 absorbs neutrons. It becomes U-235. U-235 is fuel.

AND there is LESS U-234 in spent fuel than in natural uranium

[Lonewulf]

What the hell does U-234 have to do with anything? U-234 is reduced by fission reactors. Well, perhaps a u-233 thorium-cycle reactor would breed some but it's bull, because the damn stuff is just about as good as U-235.

IE: IT GETS BURNED.
Yeap. It was Kevin that brought it up. I brought up how U-234 was an alpha emitter. Apparently, in Kevin-speak, that means "all nuclear waste are alpha emitters". Hence why he's on my ignore list.

Not to mention. The freakin stuff does decay to daughter products like radium, radon etc etc. This is true with ALL uranium isotopes. It's the natural decay chain which is why you find these materials in minute amounts in uranium ore.

U-234 is not a waste product. U-236 maybe, but that's not a big deal anyway. U-234 absorbs neutrons. It becomes U-235. U-235 is fuel.

AND there is LESS U-234 in spent fuel than in natural uranium
Out of curiosity, what's the material that you would worry about the most in nuclear waste piles?

[DRBUZZ0]

Oh also... in regards to radium, radon, lead-210, bismuth-214, polonium..... All this stuff is indeed nasty as hell. It's also found in uranium ore. Not in very high concentrations, but it is found in the ore. Infact, the daughter products contribute most of the radioactivity to the uranium ore. Same deal with thorium ore.

You can find uranium ore anywhere in the world. There are some places with high concentrations, such as colorado, new mexico, parts of canada, australia and so on. You can just pick up a rock off the ground and have a big vain of uranium through it.

There's also a type of naturally-occuring uranium called "pitchblende" it's basically 100% uranium and daughter products, without being full of other rocky stuff. It's pretty rare, but it exists in large quantities in Congo. In other deposits the stuff can be found from time to time.

This is natural and it's impossible to avoid uranium-bearing rocks because they're so common. U-234 and it's daughters will be present in these in much larger amounts than spent fuel.

[Hindmost]

Alpha emitters are very dangerous if they can be ingested and taken up by the body or breathed in and caught in the lungs, as some can. However nothing says that all nuclear waste and all of its descendant isotopes will be alpha emitters. Beta and gamma emitters are almost certainly going to be in there too once the decay chain gets going even if they are not there at the start.

I say "almost certainly" because it's theoretically possible that every isotope in the waste just happens to have alpha emissions all the way down it's decay chain, but I'd be very surprised if it worked out that way.

Alpha emitters are confined to elements with a high atomic mass. Fission products are well known...just look at a nuclide chart and all info is there. I could only find one fission product that was an alpha emitter. Since it is high mass, the percent yield in fission is small. Some other fission products probably beta decay into something that emits alphas, however, again, the amount would be small since above a certain mass, alphas are not emitted.

There certainly aren't alpha emitters all the way down the decay chain. The lowest I found was Nd 144 with a quick view of the nuclide chart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission_product This give the yield from thermal fission of u235...tells what percent of fission produce what stuff. More detailed info is available.

glenn

[Tez]

Heres a stupid question: If the US military can churn out a bunch of small reactors for ships/subs that are safe enough for people to live beside for months at sea, can't we simply install a whole bunch of them on a suitable football pitch somewhere near any given city? That could be an interim and pretty immediate way of renuclearising ourselves, the new big reactors can come in 10 years if need be.

[Hindmost]

Heres a stupid question: If the US military can churn out a bunch of small reactors for ships/subs that are safe enough for people to live beside for months at sea, can't we simply install a whole bunch of them on a suitable football pitch somewhere near any given city? That could be an interim and pretty immediate way of renuclearising ourselves, the new big reactors can come in 10 years if need be.

Navy plants are very expensive and not really designed for the commercial market. The cores are designed for longevity, power on demand and robustness. The plants are inefficient and really made to push the boat around--not for electricity production. One would need about 10 nimitz class reactors to equal one commercial plant's output.

The uranium is also weapons grade when the core is first installed...which would add problems.

Commercial plants are designed on ecomony of scale. No matter the size of the plant, you need 4-6 shifts of operators, I & C techs, electrical techs, engineers..etc. There is a base load of people and material...so, the more electricity produced makes the plant more profitable.

glenn

[DRBUZZ0]

Out of curiosity, what's the material that you would worry about the most in nuclear waste piles?


hmmm. Interesting question. I suppose I would say that stuff like plutonium and other heavy transuric stuff would be a concern if the plan for the waste is just to bury it, since that stuff has a long half-life and also is quite toxic.

However, this is also the *easiest* to address. That stuff can be burned in a fast reactor. Also, one reason I'm really into the idea of the thorium-cycle is that it all but eliminates that stuff.

But as far as true "waste" that is, stuff that isn't useful and you are limited to burrying, I guess the two big ones are Sr-90 and Cs-137. Long enough half-life that you can't just leave them in a tank for a few years to get rid of them but short enough to be dangerous. THey need to be contained for a few centuries. Also they can be uptaken into organisms.

However, they only have like a <6% yeild per fissions. Also they're not that hard to contain. They shouldn't be too hard to deal with.


Beyond that the long lived fission products like I-129 and Tc-99 are something you have to account for. But the radioactivity is so low with those it's a lot less of a concern.


If you put the fission products into some sort of synthetic glass, you end up with the intermediate ones being the problem. Leave the stuff sitting around for 200 years or so and that's mostly gone. Done properly, the others would be left, but after a couple hundred years it's just on par with uranium or thorium ore in terms of radiotoxicity. Not a biggie.


So I'd have to say Cs-137 and Sr-90 are the ones I get concerned about. But not *that* concerned.

[DRBUZZ0]

Heres a stupid question: If the US military can churn out a bunch of small reactors for ships/subs that are safe enough for people to live beside for months at sea, can't we simply install a whole bunch of them on a suitable football pitch somewhere near any given city? That could be an interim and pretty immediate way of renuclearising ourselves, the new big reactors can come in 10 years if need be.

In principal yes, you could do that. The issue is that such reactors really aren't designed for the same demands as a civilian power generating system.

They are small and modular, but they also use highly enriched uranium, which is expensive and generally something they don't like floating around in civilian hands. Also, each reactor would not really provide enough power unless you had multiples.

The idea however does have a lot of potential with some tweaks. There are naval reactors that don't require high enrichment (the French had used some) and the concept has been applied to small power plants for emergency use or to power remote facilities.


As far as could you crank these things out? Yes, in principal you could build them on an assembly line just like any big piece of industrial equipment. You would need to keep the size small enough that you wouldn't have to resort to special large-scale forging and fabrication methods. That's doable too. Right now we don't build reactors that way. They take a long time to build and they're done per-site. You don't have producers with six or seven being built in line at the same time. You could though. Especially if you went with the small modular design of naval reactors and just adjusted it a bit for power generation.


The idea of using multiple relatively small reactors for power generation is an interesting idea. Offers a lot of advantages aside from the fact that you could fab them pretty fast. You can shut them down for refuling or inspection without shutting down the whole plant. You can scale the plant by adding more later. You can get your first watts out before you're done installing them all. If there is a problem with one, it's confined to that one.

The DOE had the idea floating in the 60's of a system like that. They even tested it in Idaho. The idea being to have four to eight 100-250 megawatt reactors, based on a slightly scaled-up design not unlike naval reactors. Quick deployment and easily expansion.

Never went anywhere though... shame.

One of my friends fathers works at the Kolls Atomic Power Laboratory. He thinks that's the way to do it. Apparently that was an idea everyone was gung-hoe about at one time. Back in the 1950's or so. Build these things somewhere, put them on rail cars and send them out. Drop them somewhere and hook up two or four or ten and hook them up to turbines or desalination stills or whatever you want. Have the thing going in a year.

Of course that might have been a bit optomistic, but not totally beyond possibility. Never happened though.


Here are some articles on this sort of thing:

http://www.adn.com/front/story/4214182p-4226215c.html

http://www.atomicinsights.com/nov95/ML-1.html

http://www.nti.org/db/nisprofs/russia/naval/civilian/flreactr.htm

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6344-us-plans-portable-nuclear-power-plants.html

[Schneibster]

I refer to this post:Which, depending on how charitable one wants to be, you either didn't read, didn't understand, or are deliberately misquoting in order to "prove you're right."

Looks to me like you were discussing fission reactor fuel waste originating in the USA at the time, and that's the kind of waste (apart from the originating in the USA bit) we have mostly been talking about.No, it's not. The reason being, no one here is advocating building more reactors that use the once-through fuel cycle. Certainly I'm not; but apparently "tehy is talking about teh nucular!" is sufficient reason, in your mind, to outright ignore everything but that one single fact, not to mention justification for misrepresentation of what you have said and what we have said (or, less charitably, justification to lie whenever the fancy takes you).

I didn't go in to irrelevant details because the person I was conversing with, Lonewulf, did not understand the very basics of radioactivity. Whether he did nor not is irrelevant; the point here is, YOU don't. And that's painfully obvious, just given what you say, and what you ignore. So basically you're arguing against something you don't even understand, because you're scared of it. Which is what "hysteria" means. And apparently you believe that any dirty tactic or lie is permissible in the arguments you use, as well. As I have repeatedly said, all of this is highly revealing as to your character. The truth is the truth; if it scares you, too bad. If you don't like it, too bad. Deal with it. Welcome to the real world.

You saw from a recent post, I hope, that he still thought all radioactive waste was alpha-emitting waste. I believe he has dealt with this effectively; I see no reason to add anything other than note it has been done.

U-234 was a good example because it was easy to look up all of its descendant isotopes, and it included ones with a variety of properties (like radium and radon) that illustrated the point I was making better than any other breakdown chain I could find with a casual search.U-234 is present in such minute quantities in reactor waste that discussing it is approximately as relevant to a conversation about nuclear power as the mating habits of the booming bittern.

Look, you've already admitted in the post I just linked to that I was basically right. Do you have any goal in pursuing this subtopic except to pick a fight?And you lie yet again. Do try to actually READ the post, will you?

I don't see a lick of evidence there to refute. I see a lot of stating the obvious, So, what is obvious is not evidence? That's a new one. "Evidence" is now defined, not as fact, but as some other entity that Kevin_Lowe hasn't yet delimited. Tell me, Kevin, if facts are not evidence, then what is?

and a lot of very lengthy jumps to unsupported conclusions, So you claim; however, you've yet to point out what those "lengthy jumps" might be. The suspicion, given the number of times you've been proven to have lied on this thread, has to be that you in fact don't have any examples of such jumps to point out. You'll need to prove your claim. Oh, and by the way, be sure to avoid the obvious. That's not evidence, according to you.

but I don't see evidence. Well, given that you don't call obvious fact "evidence," and haven't defined what precisely you believe "evidence" consists of if obvious facts don't fit your definition, I'm sorry, but I'll have to state that I think your definition of "evidence" has little to do with anything that might actually BE evidence as most people define it.

Calling me a liar for not thinking it's evidence is pretty cheeky.You're right; given how you define "evidence," I'd have to say you're not a liar. I'll leave the conclusion to be drawn by others, but it seems like another obvious fact to me; of course, it's not, by your definition, "evidence."

I suppose I could put you on ignore, and certainly I see ample justification for doing so, but given that it doesn't take all that much time to refute what you say, I think I'd rather refute it than let it stand. I suppose that means I'll have to wade through more of this kak in order to get on with the conversation; so be it.

[DRBUZZ0]

There's something to consider with spent fuel in the United States. There has been little incentive to do much with it. Reprocessing has not happened since the late 1970's, but more importantly: The US Government gaurenteed all power plants it would take care of their spent fuel disposal.

Whether this was a bad idea or not is open for debate, but at this point the power plants had been built years or decades ago with an understanding that they just had to store their fuel for a period of time and then the government would handle the rest, no sweat. So the pools are starting to fill up and Yucca mountain is behind schedule.

It may be partially the fault of the private sector for pushing for this handout, but in any case, they've been operating like this for a while because of the policy.

[luddite]

Luddite "doesn't support" the big dams, but is he actively working to tear down the existing ones? Why not?

I'm not working to tear down existing nuclear plants either. Why not? Because the priority is reducing carbon emissions, and there are way too many coal plants to eliminate long before we go after anything else. Where we put our money when we replace old infrastructure is a different question, and is, by the way, the answer to Buzzo's comment about Germany being a nuclear phase-out nation. They are not closing productive reactors. They are just putting new generation money into other, equally low-carbon alternatives.

[luddite]

Bleh. It almost seems like this is a game to these people.

Global warming sure as hell isn't a game to me.

I appreciate that. I really do.

Lonewulf, in my experience in real life, all the nuclear proponents who push nuclear as a salvation to global warming have been pushing nuclear for decades and virtually none understand the scale of the problem. Which is why our provincial government has produced a plan that theoretically addresses global warming by reinvestment in nuclear, which will unfortunately delay closure of existing coal plants and result in overall emissions increases projected for the next 2 decades.

The only plans I've seen that even come close to getting the sorts of emissions cuts we need are promoted by environmental organizations that understand the scope of the cuts necessary. And not surprisingly, they focus on conservation/renewables. I've seen such plans for various jurisdictions and they show over and over that it's possible. What's more they usually show that it's cheaper. It's definitely faster. (And that's important because like I said delaying cuts means you have to cut even more later to get the same cuts overall).

Just a few days ago, a friend of mine showed me the OPA (Ontario Power Authority) study on which they based their conclusions that we needed to reinvest in nuclear. The big focus was operating costs, where nuclear comes out great. Buried in the study, they actually had the government's own projections which included construction and decommissioning costs and lo and behold by the governments own optimistic assumptions, wind was actually cheaper, even if you included associated storage costs. And that doesn't even include the fact that nuclear plants in Canada are basically uninsured.

Basically, the government consults with people who have been delivering reliable power for decades. They are experienced in this. They look at demand projections and plan in some reserve. They are suspicious of dispersed generation and especially intermittent sources. So given a directive to reduce emissions, they'll replace some coal with nuclear, but generally insist on leaving coal on for peak. At the very least, they'll leave coal for the shoulders and do natural gas on peak. They will say that putting any more than 20% renewables is just too risky. Some utilities demand even less renewable penetration. This is great for delivering steady, reliable power in a cheap energy world. It is irresponsible in an era of climate change.

Basically, the models that have served us so well in the past won't work in a post-carbon future. I have yet to see a single model, costed out and planned, for delivering the required emissions cuts in a jurisdiction to meet Kyoto commitments and beyond that included any investment in nuclear. Again, I'm not saying it can't be done. But the people who are concerned enough to do the math to try to figure out how to deal with global warming have almost no overlap with the people promoting nuclear.

So when you say global warming is a game to "these people", I need to tell you that in my experience global warming is a convenient cover for a great many nuclear proponents with no real interest or appreciation of the scope of the problem. And that's why I have an appreciation for people like you. Because I know that your commitment to nuclear stems from a commitment to dealing with global warming.

[DRBUZZ0]

I'm not working to tear down existing nuclear plants either. Why not? Because the priority is reducing carbon emissions, and there are way too many coal plants to eliminate long before we go after anything else. Where we put our money when we replace old infrastructure is a different question, and is, by the way, the answer to Buzzo's comment about Germany being a nuclear phase-out nation. They are not closing productive reactors. They are just putting new generation money into other, equally low-carbon alternatives.


NO! Thats not the case at all. Germany is in the process of "nuclear phase out." As such they have imposed a strict closure schedual:

http://www.uic.com.au/nip46.htm


The Biblis nucler plant is to begin shutdown early next year. It is the next one on the list to go. It has pressurized water reactors from the 1970's which had lifetime extensions and evaluations in the mid 1980's and turbine upgrades around the same time. The lifetime for the reactors is really not that limited. By most standards, they are going to not need any major overhauls for another 10 to 15 years.

But...

The utility filed an appeal to keep the plant open, citing possible generating capacity shortages and issues with meeting carbon caps in the time limitations imposed:

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/regulationSafety/060307German_minister_s_no_to_Biblis_A_extension.s html

The german government has imposed strict limits on reactor energy hours, very much below the actual rated hours of the reactors.

The deal has been "set in stone" with the government working to prevent any backtracking. They wnat 50% capacity cuts by 2015.

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/energywatch/nuclear/news/article_1209661.php/Merkel_stands_by_deal_to_close_German_nuclear_plan ts

An "accident" got a lot of attention and was exploited by the anti-nuclear groups:
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9595481

The energy minister called for 7 reactors to be closed imediatly... like NOW:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6973999.stm

Scientists say there is no credable danger:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,2878030,00.html



Meanwhile... the thing few are talking about....

Germany operates dozens of multigigawatt coal power plants:
http://www.industcards.com/st-coal-germany-nw.htm

Oh but they're working on closing those too, right?

No... they have 34 coal plants which are being built or which are being granted aproval for being built. 34 NEW ones:

http://www.carbon-power.de/seite9.htm

Existing power plants in germany:



Boxberg Power Plant (brown coal): 3 Gigawatts. Capacity is currently being upgraded.

Scholven Power Plant (Bituminous coal, brown coal): 3.8 gigawatts Capacity is being upgraded. Two 1100 Megawatt boilers to be installed by 2015

Schwarze Pumpe Power Plant (Brown Coal, Lingite): 1.6 gigawatts, Currently begining a 3.5 billion euro upgrade program

Weisweiler Power Plant (coal): 1.8 gigawatts. Just finished a life-extension upgrade progect.

Voerde Power Plant (Bituminous coal): 2.26 gigawatts: Planned to be kept online for the foresable future

Walsum Power Plant (Brown coal, Bituminous coal, Slag): Currently in the midst of a plan to upgrade capacity to 4+ gigawatts, making it the largest coal burning plant in europe and second only to a plant in china in total coal burned.


Read all about it here: http://www.carbon-power.de/german_power_plants.htm


They are building coal plants in Germany like CRAZY


The new ones will have scrubbers (Oh ain't that environemtnally friendly) reducing the filth by 75-90%, leabing only 10% filth but 100% of the CO2


Okay quick question. These mega coal plants. The amount of coal that EACH PLANT burns in one single solitary 24 hour day. Would you guess that it would weight more or less than the fully loaded (hull, cargo, crew, passengers, fuel, fresh water, fxitures) net displacement of the RMS titanic, the well known 900 foot ship from 1912 that would be very large even by modern standards?


Here's a clue:

http://depletedcranium.com/titanicbalance.jpg



Oh yeah they also have wind and solar power. They're looking at getting that up to like 12% by 2020. That's an ambitious gaol. They might get it though. They only spent 8.1 BILLION US dollars on solar and wind power IN A SINGLE YEAR in 2006.



That would mean 20% of the energy would come from "Renewables" but of course, most of that is hydroelectric energy which was already in existence beforehand.

http://depletedcranium.com/energyforthefather.jpg

I mean, come on. The fact that they're dumping carbon like that and all they can talk about is the nuclear energy phaseout? It sounds to me like the German government is trying to scapegoat a group for their problems by blaming everything from fires to contaminating the precious purity of the beloved fatherland on them!


CHRIST NOT AGAIN!

[Kevin_Lowe]

Now that's a lie. Thank you, Kevin_Lowe, for showing your true character.

You had mentioned U-234 specifically. U-234, you dishonest SOB. U-234 is an alpha emitter. Or did you forget?

Actually I did misinterpret your response now I read it a second time, probably because only assuming that you thought all waste was alpha emitting made any sense of your remarks.

Allow to withdraw my previous comment and substitute this: You did not think all waste was alpha emitting waste, you just missed the point completely to a degree I find baffling.

[DRBUZZ0]

Lonewulf, in my experience in real life, all the nuclear proponents who push nuclear as a salvation to global warming have been pushing nuclear for decades and virtually none understand the scale of the problem.



Scale of the problem? Scale of the problem??? Scale of the problem????

This is a 14 terawatt problem. In ten years it will be an 18 terawatt problem. If we institute some extreme consevation measures we may only end up with a 16 terawatt problem. Hell, if we really work out collective asses off, we may even keep it at a 14 terawatt problem.

That is a huge problem. That's massive.

A single coal-fired power plant produces enough CO2 in a year that if you wanted to sequester it, you know how much you'd need? If you compressed the CO2 down to it's most dense form, which would actually take more energy than the plant produces, you would be left with a block of dry ice 1000 feet long by 1000 feet deep by 50 stories high. That's dry ice! If you compressed it into a high pressure liquid you'd need more than twice that much space.

And that would still take more energy than you create.


There are dozens of plants which each day burn so much coal that they would fill a bowl stadium to the rim in less than a week. A single freakin plant!

This is simply massive... almost incomprehensably so. Wind farms are not going to fix this.


In reality, nothing will *fix* this, but there is one thing that can signifficantly midigate it, at the very least.,




The only plans I've seen that even come close to getting the sorts of emissions cuts we need are promoted by environmental organizations that understand the scope of the cuts necessary.


No... by organizations who live in a fantasy world where if you cut demand by 10% we're golden. Based on poulation increases and economic expansion aline, we could cut energy use by 1/3 and we're still up s**t creek


And not surprisingly, they focus on conservation/renewables. I've seen such plans for various jurisdictions and they show over and over that it's possible. What's more they usually show that it's cheaper. It's definitely faster. (And that's important because like I said delaying cuts means you have to cut even more later to get the same cuts overall).


Renewables? Delaying does mean more cuts, yes. And you can build a windmill in a short period of time. It may take a nuke plant a few years but it can crank out gigawatts. All of the US produces less energy from all the wind farms built in the past twenty years than two of the nuclear plants.


Just a few days ago, a friend of mine showed me the OPA (Ontario Power Authority) study on which they based their conclusions that we needed to reinvest in nuclear. The big focus was operating costs, where nuclear comes out great. Buried in the study, they actually had the government's own projections which included construction and decommissioning costs and lo and behold by the governments own optimistic assumptions, wind was actually cheaper, even if you included associated storage costs. And that doesn't even include the fact that nuclear plants in Canada are basically uninsured.


You want to talk about optomistic projections? Yeah, wind is cheaper, below a certain point

Christ "uninsured"? What more does one need to trust this? We have thousands of people right now who's lives depend on nuclear reactors while they sit in a location unknown to the rest of the world under thousands of feet of ice cold salt water. How much safer does can it get?


Basically, the government consults with people who have been delivering reliable power for decades. They are experienced in this. They look at demand projections and plan in some reserve. They are suspicious of dispersed generation and especially intermittent sources. So given a directive to reduce emissions, they'll replace some coal with nuclear, but generally insist on leaving coal on for peak. At the very least, they'll leave coal for the shoulders and do natural gas on peak. They will say that putting any more than 20% renewables is just too risky. Some utilities demand even less renewable penetration. This is great for delivering steady, reliable power in a cheap energy world. It is irresponsible in an era of climate change.


20% on renewables is not "too risky" it's more like "Not going to make nearly a big enough difference." Coal will not "peak" in my lifetime or my grandkids. Unfortionately we have enough of the filthy stuff to last damn near forever.

And as far as "Distributed generation" the fact that germany is building multi-gigawatt coal plants... sure doesn't sound like distributed. Or that texas wants five more mega-large coal plants.

[luddite]

This page (http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Wheat/trade.htm) has a very informative graphic at the bottom; leading importers of wheat. Note the "developing countries" segment. Note that it is most of 75 million metric tons. The question here is, what happens to those countries if agriculture becomes local? Where will they get those calories from? And how many people live there? Then take a look at corn. Consider also that corn is livestock feed.

The amounts we're talking about here feed more than half the people alive today. That's over three billion people. Think about the implications of that statement, and then think about how that food gets to where it's being eaten. I may be an optimist claiming that only a billion people will die.

I found this so utterly unconvincing that I thought I must have gotten the link wrong. There is no implication in this article even that the "developing countries" listed rely on the wheat imported. They have "limited production potential", but that's of wheat. They are probably growing our bananas and pineapples and could easily feed themselves.

Livestock feed is another issue. The global demand for meat has been growing even per capita. I can point you to numerous articles that describe the resulting environmental devastation, quite unrelated to the energy inputs, which are huge. Nor is there a nutritional advantage. In fact I've seen studies that show that we could even fuel our cars on ethanol if we just gave up meat. Not that I'm advocating this. But it's a pretty silly reason to give for anyone starving. Feed them the corn directly instead of the beef and you can support several times the number of people.

I've previously sent you links about what happens when agriculture goes local and organic. The answer: not much. Production drops slightly overall, but actually goes up in many places, especially in developing countries. And where local self-sufficiency is promoted over export crops, we might even expect a reduction in hunger.

Actually, reading this article I got quite the opposite idea. Most countries historically were able to feed themselves. Productivity has generally gone up. And yet because of the focus on export crops, many productive countries have problems with hunger or malnutrition while being net exporters of food. Our greatest disservice to them may well be making them rely on imported energy-intensive and subsidized crops. Because even though they could grow their own food, if supply is suddenly cut off for whatever reason, they are now more vulnerable.

In fact the real threat is contained in the first sentence of the article:

Exports are crucial for the U.S. wheat industry

But it is my expectation that even if the U.S. wheat industry collapsed entirely, there would be virtually no deaths. It would be painful and unpleasant, but not apocalyptic in the way you describe.

And the claim that 1 billion would drop dead also relies on the premise that none would die under your alternative plan. And I'm afraid that's where I really disagree. Maintaining an international food dependence based on export agriculture on the premise that we'll somehow meet all our energy needs through nuclear, down to transportation and shipping, all in the next decade or two, that's putting people's food supply in a lot more danger than suggesting they might want to start growing some of their own.

[luddite]

NO! Thats not the case at all. Germany is in the process of "nuclear phase out." As such they have imposed a strict closure schedual:

Sorry, I thought I had read otherwise. Obviously I don't support closing nuclear plants while building coal plants.

[luddite]

And as far as "Distributed generation" the fact that germany is building multi-gigawatt coal plants... sure doesn't sound like distributed. Or that texas wants five more mega-large coal plants.

That's my point.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Which, depending on how charitable one wants to be, you either didn't read, didn't understand, or are deliberately misquoting in order to "prove you're right."

No, it's not. The reason being, no one here is advocating building more reactors that use the once-through fuel cycle. Certainly I'm not; but apparently "tehy is talking about teh nucular!" is sufficient reason, in your mind, to outright ignore everything but that one single fact, not to mention justification for misrepresentation of what you have said and what we have said (or, less charitably, justification to lie whenever the fancy takes you).


It seems to me that you are trying to have it every way at once here. You at first denied that fission waste was signficantly dangerous for any great length of time, and now when you have had to backtrack because it turned out not to be the case, it turns out that all along you were talking about something else and anyone who thought differently is lying.

I think that rather than getting into a dudgeon you should clarify exactly what you are advocating.


Whether he did nor not is irrelevant; the point here is, YOU don't. And that's painfully obvious, just given what you say, and what you ignore. So basically you're arguing against something you don't even understand, because you're scared of it. Which is what "hysteria" means. And apparently you believe that any dirty tactic or lie is permissible in the arguments you use, as well. As I have repeatedly said, all of this is highly revealing as to your character. The truth is the truth; if it scares you, too bad. If you don't like it, too bad. Deal with it. Welcome to the real world.

I believe he has dealt with this effectively; I see no reason to add anything other than note it has been done.

U-234 is present in such minute quantities in reactor waste that discussing it is approximately as relevant to a conversation about nuclear power as the mating habits of the booming bittern.

And you lie yet again. Do try to actually READ the post, will you?

I'm not going to bother further. This has turned into a particularly silly ad hominem attack, where you have latched on to something you can misinterpret and are trying to use it to run down my character as a substitute for defending the rest of your position.


So, what is obvious is not evidence? That's a new one. "Evidence" is now defined, not as fact, but as some other entity that Kevin_Lowe hasn't yet delimited. Tell me, Kevin, if facts are not evidence, then what is?

So you claim; however, you've yet to point out what those "lengthy jumps" might be. The suspicion, given the number of times you've been proven to have lied on this thread, has to be that you in fact don't have any examples of such jumps to point out. You'll need to prove your claim. Oh, and by the way, be sure to avoid the obvious. That's not evidence, according to you.

Well, given that you don't call obvious fact "evidence," and haven't defined what precisely you believe "evidence" consists of if obvious facts don't fit your definition, I'm sorry, but I'll have to state that I think your definition of "evidence" has little to do with anything that might actually BE evidence as most people define it.

You're right; given how you define "evidence," I'd have to say you're not a liar. I'll leave the conclusion to be drawn by others, but it seems like another obvious fact to me; of course, it's not, by your definition, "evidence."

I suppose I could put you on ignore, and certainly I see ample justification for doing so, but given that it doesn't take all that much time to refute what you say, I think I'd rather refute it than let it stand. I suppose that means I'll have to wade through more of this kak in order to get on with the conversation; so be it.

Schneibster, you don't get to state the obvious five times and then help yourself to a ridiculous conclusion. That's all your rant did.

Evidence has to be evidence for something. Writing out a very basic primer on economic interconnectedness is evidence of something, but it's not evidence for the very specific and very silly claim that we must build nuclear power systems or a billion people will die.

You would need a lot of well-researched and supported numbers to back a claim like that, and my guess is that getting them would be a major undertaking for a well funded research group. As claims to predict the future go it is inane, even by the standards of a web forum that regularly deals with inane attempts to predict the future.

[luddite]

No... by organizations who live in a fantasy world where if you cut demand by 10% we're golden. Based on poulation increases and economic expansion aline, we could cut energy use by 1/3 and we're still up s**t creek

The organizations I'm talking about target conservation of at least 1/3 in the short term. At least 50% in the medium term. I've seen proposals as high as 80% in the long term. That's overall, not per capita. Obviously it requires public commitment too. And as I've said before, I think these kinds of short and medium term cuts will be necessary independent of the question of where we get the generation from. We're out of time.

[DRBUZZ0]

Actually I did misinterpret your response now I read it a second time, probably because only assuming that you thought all waste was alpha emitting made any sense of your remarks.

Allow to withdraw my previous comment and substitute this: You did not think all waste was alpha emitting waste, you just missed the point completely to a degree I find baffling.

This may very well be the first impassioned personal argument on matters of integrity and honor ever to occur over the decay mode of a nucleotide in the history of the world..

[Schneibster]

I don't believe it's a matter of prioritization. I see windmills as something power companies need to do, and solar as something individuals and companies need to do. Big installation solar plants, as opposed to solar panels, I think are something power companies need to do, but we've got to be judicious about that just like wind. Nobody's putting any solar power plants in Alaska. OTOH, they should be putting them down near LA and San Diego and all over Arizona and Utah and New Mexico for obvious reasons. You start to get into Texas and you're into tornado country, so I don't know about that, and the Gulf Coast is subject to hurricanes, so that's probably not the greatest idea ever conceived, for either wind or solar. We need all the power we can get, any way we can get it.

If I thought it was going to come down to a choice, I'd have to think about that harder than my current position. I don't think it will, so I haven't. That's not to say I couldn't be wrong, but for now, my support is for ALL reasonable power sources. In fact, there is a conversation to be had about fusion on this thread, but I wanted to see all the fission smoke cleared away first. I may know some things about fusion that will surprise even some of the technically sophisticated here, and certainly I don't get the impression that there's wide knowledge of precisely what fusion entails in different regimes (by which I mean different methods of using it and different methods of accomplishing it) among the more environmentally-minded like yourself, luddite. There's a lot there I think you should know.

[Ziggurat]

I've seen proposals as high as 80% in the long term.

That simply is not possible without drastic decreases in standards of living. For some groups, that outcome is acceptable. But it will not happen, because it isn't acceptable to most people.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Moving right along, it might be helpful to attempt to summarise the points so far I think we can agree on:

Existing nuclear fission is cheaper per unit energy than existing renewables, but produces waste which is dangerous in the long term.

Existing nuclear fission fuel supplies are known to be good for fifty years, perhaps a little more. Past that point efficiency decreases and before too long fission will not be advantageous compared to renewables. There are unproven proposals to get more uranium from other sources, but nothing that has yet been demonstrated to be cost-effective.

Unless there does turn out to be another source of fission fuel which is economically viable, building more fission plants will just mean we hit the wall sooner.

I think we've got consensus on those points, but I could be wrong.

So the solution to the future shortage of fission fuel is to find new sources of uranium like getting it out of seawater (if it works, great), or reprocessing the existing leftovers. However this too is more expensive than mining and refining uranium ore.

Question One: How do the numbers stack up comparing reprocessing nuclear leftovers to building more of the existing renewables? I take it as given that any cost breaks you assume for reprocessing (scale, technological advances and so on) apply also to the renewables.

Next point, conventional breeder reactors have inherent safety risks and proliferation risks. It's been stated that other alternative reactor models can be built so that they do not produce material which is ideal for weapons, can use existing leftovers and/or produce more fuel fission reactors can use.

Question Two: Ideally we'd have a reactor that used existing leftovers, was proven cost-efficient compared to renewables without convenient assumptions, and could not be used as a stepping stone to nuclear weapons by a state that was so inclined. Is there any such beast?

If the answer to those questions is "Yes, reprocessing waste is proven to be cheaper than building solar panels (or whatever)" and "Yes, there's an ideal reactor model that solves all our problems at once" then the case for nuclear power would be close to ironclad.

On the other hand if there is no reason to believe that nuclear is going to be any cheaper than renewable in fifty years time however you work it, and that nuclear is always going to be a proliferation risk if deployed outside the existing nuclear weapons club, then the long-term solution to the world's power needs has to be based on wind, solar or something of the sort with nuclear only being used in the niches where renewables cannot be made to work cost-effectively.

[luddite]

That simply is not possible without drastic decreases in standards of living. For some groups, that outcome is acceptable. But it will not happen, because it isn't acceptable to most people.
I have real doubts about this too. The people promoting it may actually think of it as not affecting their standard of living, but I don't think everyone shares their assessment. And I'm not about to impose luddite standards on everyone unless there is absolutely no alternative.

But I do know people whose electrical consumption is less than half the average and you wouldn't know it if they didn't tell you. It's the industrial uses that will be the most challenging.

I'm editing this because I think I'm actually wrong. I know people who are advocating 80% cuts from conservation, but I think that's overall. I suspect the electrical sector takes a slightly smaller share. And if we move to electrify transportation, the overall generation requirements may not change so dramatically at all.

[Belz...]

Lonewulf, in my experience in real life, all the nuclear proponents who push nuclear as a salvation to global warming have been pushing nuclear for decades and virtually none understand the scale of the problem.

Which is funny, considering that the alternatives you're proposing are even less likely to help.

[Belz...]

I have real doubts about this too.

Rrrreeeallly ?

[luddite]

Thanks for the summary, Kevin.

I don't agree that nuclear is cheaper. In Canada, there's widespread recognition that nuclear is a very expensive option. It's the reason behind a huge public debt we're slowly paying off on our energy bills with decommissioning costs yet to come. And as I said, the OPA, even as they went with nuclear, recognized that the overall costs are greater than wind. I don't think there are unbiased cost studies out there at all. I could be made to believe that nuclear is cheaper, but I haven't been convinced yet.

I would happily pay a premium for generation sources that are cleaner or safer. The main reason price is an issue with me is that it affects what we can do. Our kids will be burdened with enough of our stupidity that we shouldn't be saddling them with unnecessary debt on top of it. And acting quickly means putting money where it's most effective. So if I believed that nuclear was much cheaper, I'd invest in that. But, as a for instance, in Ontario it's pretty clear that nuclear comes out more expensive. So my guts still tell me "so why are we bothering with it?"

Just went over your post and I have to add that I don't think there's agreement on the 50 year supply of fuel. That's what I think, but I think the others disagree.

[luddite]

Rrrreeeallly ?
Sure. That's a decision for the future, anyway. We need to throw a lot of resources into retrofits, public transit, better efficiency standards in everything from cars to refrigerators to standby modes. We have so much work that obviously needs doing anyway that we don't really need to think about the exact proportions of our ultimate energy mix. And I do hope we'll be helped along with new ideas. But I think 80% emissions cuts from conservation/efficiency would be hard for most people so I certainly hope it won't be necessary.

[luddite]

I don't believe it's a matter of prioritization. I see windmills as something power companies need to do, and solar as something individuals and companies need to do. Big installation solar plants, as opposed to solar panels, I think are something power companies need to do, but we've got to be judicious about that just like wind. Nobody's putting any solar power plants in Alaska. OTOH, they should be putting them down near LA and San Diego and all over Arizona and Utah and New Mexico for obvious reasons. You start to get into Texas and you're into tornado country, so I don't know about that, and the Gulf Coast is subject to hurricanes, so that's probably not the greatest idea ever conceived, for either wind or solar. We need all the power we can get, any way we can get it.

If I thought it was going to come down to a choice, I'd have to think about that harder than my current position. I don't think it will, so I haven't. That's not to say I couldn't be wrong, but for now, my support is for ALL reasonable power sources. In fact, there is a conversation to be had about fusion on this thread, but I wanted to see all the fission smoke cleared away first. I may know some things about fusion that will surprise even some of the technically sophisticated here, and certainly I don't get the impression that there's wide knowledge of precisely what fusion entails in different regimes (by which I mean different methods of using it and different methods of accomplishing it) among the more environmentally-minded like yourself, luddite. There's a lot there I think you should know.
Sounds reasonable to me. Thanks Schneibster.

[Schneibster]

Luddite, you have GOT to learn some economics. Not only that, you need to go a lot further around that site than the first page you see. There are six billion people on this planet, and they have to eat something; people aren't importing grains for fun.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Schneibster, merely repeating "you've got to learn economics!" without supplying a sound economic argument is empty rhetoric.

You are not an authority, and even if you were an authority an appeal to you would still be a canonical fallacy.

[DRBUZZ0]

I have real doubts about this too. The people promoting it may actually think of it as not affecting their standard of living, but I don't think everyone shares their assessment. And I'm not about to impose luddite standards on everyone unless there is absolutely no alternative.


The question is do you mean conservation is in more insulation and better light bulbs? That's all well and good. At issue is that a huge amount more is needed and the plans you've put forward thus far are all based on enducing an energy shortage as a means of forcing conservation.

The problem with reducing standards of living and consumerism is the economic rational. You may say we need to stop being greedy and bite the bullet, but when you have a shrinking economy it ends up hurting everyone. There's more crime, less money for the government to spend, it's just a very bad situation. Economic downturns really lead to social downturns.

We don't want that and ultimately it won't help the environment either. It's been said that "enviornmentalism is a luxury." That's sorta true. Go to Fiji and try to walk on the side of the street. I have. You can barely breathe. The cars are poorly tunes. This is why you don't want to destroy the economy, because it forces people to take their own welfare to the expense of things like the environment. Furthermore, the population just isn't going to put up with it.

Every item you've brought up is based on making a shortage and really... that's going to hurt bad.




But I do know people whose electrical consumption is less than half the average and you wouldn't know it if they didn't tell you. It's the industrial uses that will be the most challenging.

it is the industrial users for one, but also these individuals probably make a point of this. And they probably pay for it. This doesn't work for everyone and forcing it through rationing is going to hurt.


I'm editing this because I think I'm actually wrong. I know people who are advocating 80% cuts from conservation, but I think that's overall. I suspect the electrical sector takes a slightly smaller share. And if we move to electrify transportation, the overall generation requirements may not change so dramatically at all.

Wait... what? what? Most of the plans for reducing global warming whih have credibility require moving to electric-centric transportation, yes that is true.

I personally think the "Plug in hybrid" is the best bet for the semi-near future for cutting gas use dramatically. The others are to move indusrial users of fossil fuels to electricity. To create hightly hydorgenated fuels, to advocate more electric-based transportation like electrified light rail in place of busses and to encourage the use of it. Possibly even moving heating toward a hybrid thermal heat-pump/stored thermal mass system.

But this will increase electrical demand. So even if energy use overall is reduced, electricity only plays a MUCH larger role.

[Lonewulf]

Lonewulf, in my experience in real life, all the nuclear proponents who push nuclear as a salvation to global warming have been pushing nuclear for decades and virtually none understand the scale of the problem. Which is why our provincial government has produced a plan that theoretically addresses global warming by reinvestment in nuclear, which will unfortunately delay closure of existing coal plants and result in overall emissions increases projected for the next 2 decades.

Wait wait wait wait...

WHEN do you actually plan on making everyone go all-solar, all-wind, and all-geothermal again?

And WHEN do you plan for everyone to "start cutting back" on MAJOR things, including mass-scale transportation and industrial/commercial changes?

If it's overnight, or even within the next year, then how do you understand the scale of the problem?

[luddite]

First of all, an apology. Yesterday, as I thought about it, I couldn't remember a single energy plan for climate change that included nuclear. I do now. Ralph Torrie's study for the Canadian Round Table for the Environment and Economy that I've mentioned before and included links to. That was a study commissioned by the government of Canada and targeted 60% emissions reductions by 2050. Not great, but getting there. Ralph included nuclear reluctantly because he was told to. What he found was that even though the investment in nuclear was one of the largest, the emissions reduction was the tiniest sliver of the lot. He is currently, with the other authors, producing a similar report on his own time that takes out nuclear. He believes that by freeing up the investment, he can economically provide even deeper emissions cuts.

When I asked him why this was, he said that it's because nuclear has high capital costs and long lead times. And whatever it's replacing has to remain online. It makes no sense to build a nuclear plant and then demolish all the windmills you've put up. So you need to actually keep coal plants around so that you can close them when the nuclear plant starts operating. Now maybe this is irrelevant in parts of the U.S. or China. There are so many coal plants anyway. But in Canada, we've got a lot of hydro power that could provide baseload. And in Ontario, we've got nuclear plants as well. In other words, if we really rolled up our sleeves, we could get rid of the coal plants long before we could build a single reactor.

[luddite]

Schneibster, merely repeating "you've got to learn economics!" without supplying a sound economic argument is empty rhetoric.

You are not an authority, and even if you were an authority an appeal to you would still be a canonical fallacy.
Thank you Kevin.

[luddite]

Wait wait wait wait...

WHEN do you actually plan on making everyone go all-solar, all-wind, and all-geothermal again?

And WHEN do you plan for everyone to "start cutting back" on MAJOR things, including mass-scale transportation and industrial/commercial changes?

If it's overnight, or even within the next year, then how do you understand the scale of the problem?
Overnight would definitely be best. What are we waiting for? Every study indicates that the faster we start the less painful it will be.

Scale of the problem. 80-90% emissions cuts in the next 30 years is what I'd like to see. That was considered a radical goal 2 years ago. It's rapidly becoming completely mainstream. And I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out not to be enough. That's definitely the pattern with climate change. Every time we settle on a target, some time later we hear it isn't enough. It's a lot harder to get the last 10% cuts than the first 10%. Plus anything you spew into the atmosphere now you have to make up for with even more abrupt changes later. So you target big reductions in the beginning. Let's say 40-50% cuts in the next 10 years. I'm open to any realistic plan that gets us there.

[Lonewulf]

Overnight would definitely be best. What are we waiting for? Every study indicates that the faster we start the less painful it will be.
Wait. So you actually do believe that we can cut energy emissions enough so that we go from needing 50,000,000 windmills to 1,250,000 windmills... overnight?

And you feel that you can dare make this claim about anyone else?:

virtually none understand the scale of the problem.

Please give me a reason to not start ignoring you right now?

[luddite]

Wait. So you actually do believe that we can cut energy emissions enough so that we go from needing 50,000,000 windmills to 1,250,000 windmills... overnight?

You misunderstood that link from Robinson. 50,000,000 was the number of wind turbines that would be required to harvest all the available best winds. 1,250,000 was the number required to meet our current demands. And I'm proposing somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of that ultimately. In the meantime, we encourage efficiency and conservation, build up what we can and rely on existing sources of generation, taking the worst offenders offline as soon as possible.

We'll be building generation up faster in the second decade than the first, as our production capabilities improve. So in the first decade, when the biggest cuts are made, an even greater share will fall on conservation. If we do what the Germans are doing, we can retrofit 5% of building stock annually, targeting the least efficient structures first, all to standards where no heating/cooling is required. After a decade, we will have done half, and it will be the worst half. So we get to 40-50% emissions reductions from home heating, and a good dent in electricity demand. That enables us to take off the most polluting generation sources.

We target cars by raising energy prices. My favorite is the carbon tax, offset by a corresponding reduction in income and other taxes. You end up with the same disposable income, but a built-in incentive to do things differently. Carpool, move closer to where you work, use public transit, bicycle, whatever. You can also introduce or raise road tolls and reduce them for carpoolers. You can introduce or raise taxes for new vehicle purchases and reduce them for the most efficient models. Or you can do what the British are considering and introduce a carbon quota.

You also need to give people better alternatives, so you need to build up the public transit systems to reach more people. The public transit system of the future is very likely to be electric. But you can get combustion powered buses up a lot faster and they still make a big dent in transportation emissions. So we build up bus routes immediately and electrify them as we can. We start building in the infrastructure for electric cars, which are responsible for fewer emissions even when the ultimate power source is a coal-fired plant. And we need to build up the rail system for freight.

To get 40-50% emissions cuts from transportation in the first decade, it's going to be a combination of people moving around less because they live closer to their jobs, greater efficiency in the vehicles that get them there and pooling of resources so as many as possible are in each vehicle. This process will just continue after the first decade.

Clearly we need to stop building big box stores in the middle of nowhere. There may be some hope for some of them as hubs accessible by public transit. But there's going to be a resurgence of corner grocery stores. Monbiot recommends that all stores offer delivery service, too. And a lot of other things will be locally made. No more ice cream from California in Toronto, yummy as it is. No more parsley from Mexico. Specialty pasta imported from Italy made from Canadian wheat will become even more of a specialty. We'll buy more local wines, local cheeses, local furniture, locally made clothes. We'll be manufacturing toothpaste locally again.

I could go on and on. Whatever you do, you need to build in incentives now and make it clear that the incentives will only be stronger in the future.

So if you're asking when the ultimate targets will be reached, I suspect we'll find that there are cuts to be made for the remainder of the century. But the bulk of it should be done over the next 3 decades. If you're asking when we should start, that's the wrong question. We should have started at least a decade ago.

And as to ultimate hardship, it's hard for me to see. Local economies are good. We'll live in better houses in more integrated communities with daily necessities accessible by walking. The streets will be safer, the air cleaner, the water drinkable, or at the very least less smelly.

[cloudshipsrule]

1,250,000 was the number required to meet our current demands.

Imagine the energy needed to create, install and maintain that number of windmills.

[luddite]

We don't want that and ultimately it won't help the environment either. It's been said that "enviornmentalism is a luxury." That's sorta true. Go to Fiji and try to walk on the side of the street. I have. You can barely breathe. The cars are poorly tunes. This is why you don't want to destroy the economy, because it forces people to take their own welfare to the expense of things like the environment. Furthermore, the population just isn't going to put up with it.

What really happens is that people and nations who can afford the luxury impose the environmental costs of their activities onto other countries. I've already sent links that showed that the entire growth in Chinese emissions can be attributable to the production of goods destined for western countries.

The mining of minerals, which imposes almost unimaginable environmental costs, benefits the west, not the developing countries that deal with it. We dump our industrial waste on the third world too.

Now you're right. Emissions standards even for local activities can be lower in places like Fiji. But even if we ignore the fact that a lot of the emissions from Fiji are attributable to production for export that benefits us, when you look at emissions per capita, the USA comes out 7th in the world with 24.3 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, Canada 9th with 22.2 tonnes and Fiji 110th with 3.1. If you include emissions attributable to land-use changes, USA comes in at 14th with 22.9 tonnes, Canada 12th with 24.3 and Fiji 126th with 3.1. We are responsible for about 8 times the emissions of Fijians, and that's not including the goods they provide on our behalf. It's also not taking into account the emissions attributable to tourists in Fiji, who undoubtedly pollute more than the Fijians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_ capita

Income is one of the best indicators of carbon emissions. If the developing world were suddenly given our income, meeting climate change goals would become far more challenging.

I do not want to destroy the economy. I very much want to make the transition smooth, orderly and beneficial for all. But I have no doubt that you're wrong here. If we did destroy the economy, emissions would drop. Just look at Russia. Appalling environmental standards, but the crashing economy magically brought down emissions.

[RecoveringYuppy]

Imagine the energy needed to create, install and maintain that number of windmills.
If you think of the scale of other industries, including energy industries, that number is not daunting at all.

[luddite]

Imagine the energy needed to create, install and maintain that number of windmills.
It's certainly a great deal of energy. But building nuclear plants is also extremely energy intensive. And consider that I calculated that it's 1 wind turbine for every 500 cars on the road. If you imagine the average car lasts for 10 years, you'd only need to build 1 turbine for every 50 cars we build today as we ramp up wind power. It will actually go down then, because wind turbines last a lot longer than cars. So we can replace 1 wind turbine for every 1000 cars we manufacture. And all this is based on maintaining the same electrical demand, which is not what I'm proposing anyway.

[Schneibster]

Thank you Kevin.There's no point in arguing with someone who has built up a mythology in which countries import food that no one ever eats. Tell me why I should bother to read anything further you have to say.

[luddite]

There's no point in arguing with someone who has built up a mythology in which countries import food that no one ever eats. Tell me why I should bother to read anything further you have to say.
I never said they don't eat it. I said there is no indication they don't produce other food that we eat. As an example, I know Brazil is a wheat importer. It exports a lot of beef that is consumed in North America. Also coffee, soy, sugar, and a lot of tropical fruits like bananas, mangos and pineapples. If we stop exporting wheat to Brazil, they will start producing some of their own, import a little more from Argentina, which is closer, or just eat more bananas. Nobody is going to starve. Brazil is one of the biggest net food exporters.

I should point out that some countries will continue to require food imports. These tend to be countries that can afford it, like South Korea, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia. And there will be some countries that will absolutely require food aid. But even then, it doesn't have to come from the other side of the world. It does now because energy is so cheap. If energy is more expensive, things will shift. No indication of mass starvation.

[CapelDodger]

I don't agree that nuclear is cheaper. In Canada, there's widespread recognition that nuclear is a very expensive option. It's the reason behind a huge public debt we're slowly paying off on our energy bills with decommissioning costs yet to come. And as I said, the OPA, even as they went with nuclear, recognized that the overall costs are greater than wind. I don't think there are unbiased cost studies out there at all. I could be made to believe that nuclear is cheaper, but I haven't been convinced yet.

When the Thatcher government privatised the UK electricity industry they originally included nuclear in the deal. For years the CEGB accounts showed nuclear as profitable, but the city boys insisted on seeing the real books and walked away laughing like donkeys. Nuclear power was a poison pill which had to be taken out of the deal.

All this, of course, refers to the old generation of nuclear power. There are new designs and fuel-cycles out there - mostly on paper, as I understand it. And no doubt lessons have been learned.

[DRBUZZ0]

Thanks for the summary, Kevin.

I don't agree that nuclear is cheaper. In Canada, there's widespread recognition that nuclear is a very expensive option. It's the reason behind a huge public debt we're slowly paying off on our energy bills with decommissioning costs yet to come. And as I said, the OPA, even as they went with nuclear, recognized that the overall costs are greater than wind. I don't think there are unbiased cost studies out there at all. I could be made to believe that nuclear is cheaper, but I haven't been convinced yet.


Nuclear can vary in price by a lot, this is true. Generally it gets cheaper as you scale it up. There's also a large initial investment that is made in the plant. Once you have the plant built the operation is not that expensive and the fuel price is very cheap.

You really need to look at the whole picture for it. But I can agree that if you're starting out from nothing then it is expensive to put in the first plant from scratch. And of course, there's a lot of expense due to regulatory issues.

The reality is that most large sources of energy are going to be expesnive. Even very large coal plants cost multiple billions of dollars, especially considering that now they are being required to add scrubbers and such. It's the infrastructure too.

Yes, a wind turbine is relaitvely cheap, but it becomes expensive to build a large enough number to really make a dent in power consumption

[luddite]

With all this talk about hopeful developments in nuclear power, nobody has mentioned the promising ideas in renewable generation, like hybrid PV/thermal panels which increase the efficiency of both systems and tethered hovering wind turbines that capture the high winds. I haven't mentioned them because I try to stick to reality, especially since I'm focusing on the short term. But if you want pie-in-the-sky idealism, it isn't restricted just to nuclear.

[luddite]

Nuclear can vary in price by a lot, this is true. Generally it gets cheaper as you scale it up. There's also a large initial investment that is made in the plant. Once you have the plant built the operation is not that expensive and the fuel price is very cheap.

You really need to look at the whole picture for it. But I can agree that if you're starting out from nothing then it is expensive to put in the first plant from scratch. And of course, there's a lot of expense due to regulatory issues.

The reality is that most large sources of energy are going to be expesnive. Even very large coal plants cost multiple billions of dollars, especially considering that now they are being required to add scrubbers and such. It's the infrastructure too.

Yes, a wind turbine is relaitvely cheap, but it becomes expensive to build a large enough number to really make a dent in power consumption
I think we can all agree that while wind has low operating costs and no fuel costs, the operating costs of nuclear are lower still per kilowatt hour, even with the fuel. I don't think anyone disputes that. What fuel prices are likely to do, I'm not sure of, but there is a potential there for operating costs to go up as a result. Not dramatically in the next decades, like natural gas or coal if we put in carbon taxes, but enough to make a difference in the evaluation.

Nuclear has very high capital costs and long lead times, which increase the debt build up. In the various assessments of cost, decommissioning, waste storage and insurance are often not included. When they are, they are likely to be estimated on the low side by nuclear proponents and on the high side by opponents.

I agree that regulatory issues can raise the costs. They do with wind too. In both cases, some streamlining would really help. As it is we have to start from scratch arguing for each project. I wouldn't mind this normally, but as I've been saying, we're kind of running out of time here. And a part of me wants to just leave it up to individual communities - you get nuclear, wind or conservation. Pick your poison pill. But a coal plant is not an option. And neither is a nuclear plant or a bunch of wind turbines 300 miles away.

[luddite]

I want to address the concern about wind turbines killing birds that was brought up some time ago. This is an issue routinely brought up by people who object to wind turbines primarily because it ruins their view.

In Toronto, we have a wind energy co-op that I belong to. Some members were horrified to discover this concern and expressed their discomfort with the staff. Because it is a co-op, the concerns were taken very seriously and the co-op hired the chief ornithologist of the Royal Ontario Museum, a man opposed to wind expansion on this basis, to conduct a study of the effects of the Toronto wind turbine on bird deaths. What he concluded was that, much to his surprise, the turbine caused fewer bird deaths than a comparably sized stationary building.

Wind turbines are known to cause bird deaths among raptors. Hawks that plunge directly downwards to pick up rabbits can sometimes hit the blades, which have a narrow profile from above. So in areas where rare eagles and hawks breed, I wouldn't put up wind turbines without some special design features. Migrating birds only hit wind turbines when they are thrown by winds in a storm. And in this respect, lit office buildings are even worse, because they disorient the birds as well.

Usually, the issue of bird deaths is bogus.

http://windshare.ca/documents/ExPlace%20Bird%20Monitoring%20Report.pdf

[Kevin_Lowe]

With all this talk about hopeful developments in nuclear power, nobody has mentioned the promising ideas in renewable generation, like hybrid PV/thermal panels which increase the efficiency of both systems and tethered hovering wind turbines that capture the high winds. I haven't mentioned them because I try to stick to reality, especially since I'm focusing on the short term. But if you want pie-in-the-sky idealism, it isn't restricted just to nuclear.

I made that point earlier, but it does bear re-emphasising.

We can either compare currently-working technologies to currently-working technologies, or speculative technologies to speculative technologies. Comparing currently-working renewables to speculative nukes or vice versa is just a covert way of begging the question.

[DRBUZZ0]

Okay I have been doing some research based on DOE info for the US. I'm using the US beceause there is good data avaliable and this stuff would be less possible elsewhere.

If all conservation programs and technologies are implimented at 100%, this includes lighting replaced to LED's and all devices replaced to the most effecient technoogy avaliable this would reduce overall energy usage by up to 15-20% or so. BUT, most of these savings end up coming from heating, which is mostly done by non-electric means.

If you go with the electric grid, all technologies for conservations result in about an 8% net reduction. BUT, this turns out to only be about neutral for the next 30 years, based on expansion.

So in other words, if all appliances are replaced by energy star models and all incandescent lights are replaced and so on (not counting the energy needed to acomplish this) it would result in our energy demand being basically the same for the next 20-30 years. IT would just about offset all growth.

But, that's being optomistic and assuming across the board adoption. However, if you add in that there is a 30% reduction in technology capability by people (30% smalelr or less tv's, 30% smaller fridges, 30% slower computers) this results in a savings of only about 5%. If you assume a 20% reduction in consumerism (qualifies as a "Severe recession") that would result in an added 5-10%. This includes industry. Most electricity is used by industry and most energy intensive industries are already pretty effecient, since it's already a high cost.


So we're left with a total reduction of standard of living and an economic depression, we are left using about 85% as much as today. That is only a difference of 4.2 terawatts to about 3.9 terawatts.

And again, these are the most liberal estimates.

Now here comes the even worst part: If transportation moves to electric-centric with a 50% increase in deployment and usage of public transit, electrified railroads and a reduction of gasoline usage in the context of plug-in hybrids, battery cars or even hydrogen... it would result in a huge added demand to the electric grid. This means even with our induced depression we have about 130% need for electricity.

These are estimates and they;re initial, I'm trying to refine them, but the DOE's numbers show that even the most extreme measures will likely only manage to hopefully keep it from growing too fast..

[luddite]

If all conservation programs and technologies are implimented at 100%, this includes lighting replaced to LED's and all devices replaced to the most effecient technoogy avaliable this would reduce overall energy usage by up to 15-20% or so. BUT, most of these savings end up coming from heating, which is mostly done by non-electric means.

You need to stop thinking inside the box. Yes, if you insist on heating the same house with the same type of heating system, just a more efficient model, you'll only get marginal savings. Insulate it enough and you can yank out the heating system altogether and get heat from the hot water in your pipes and the stove you cook on. That reduces your heating load 100%.

And if we just did that and nothing more, given that HVAC accounts for 31% of domestic electricity use, we would already clear your numbers.

I think this level of insulation would probably be economically stupid. That last bit of energy savings is so hard to get that we'd be better off turning our attention elsewhere, and there's lots of elsewhere to turn to. But 75-80% reductions are fairly routine for anyone who wants them, and that level of conservation would generate 23% reductions in electricity use, still higher than your total numbers.

Edit: I'm wrong. Not overall, but about the exact numbers. Industry uses between 40-60% of energy, depending on the jurisdiction. Commerce uses some too. 23% reductions in domestic electricity are not 23% reductions overall. Although commerce routinely gets the same sort of reductions. I've toured several stores that are proud of their 80% reductions. Even WalMart is bulding stores with green roofs, refrigerators that throw heat into the sidewalk instead of indoors and use ultra efficient lights and other delights to achieve 80% energy reductions. I've always confessed my ignorance about industry. There have to be substantial savings possible, but not necessarily on the order of 80%.

Which brings me to another question. Is the DOE even calculating in the effects of things that combine? For example, if you install LED lights to replace incandescents, even if you don't insulate, your air conditioning needs will go down.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Dr Buzzo, when you are talking about a "20% reduction in consumerism", what does that mean exactly? Are you assuming that people would be buying 20% fewer appliances and sticking the money they save under their mattress, or are you assuming that they would spend the money elsewhere but it would still cause a recession? I'm unclear on what the mechanism is supposed to be.

[DRBUZZ0]

Dr Buzzo, when you are talking about a "20% reduction in consumerism", what does that mean exactly? Are you assuming that people would be buying 20% fewer appliances and sticking the money they save under their mattress, or are you assuming that they would spend the money elsewhere but it would still cause a recession? I'm unclear on what the mechanism is supposed to be.

Basically a 20% reduction in consumer good sales across the board. But that's assuming all things are equal. And actually I have to look deeper into the stats. The DOE has a mountain of info on energy usage that I'm sifting throuigh

[luddite]

Basically a 20% reduction in consumer good sales across the board. But that's assuming all things are equal. And actually I have to look deeper into the stats. The DOE has a mountain of info on energy usage that I'm sifting throuigh
Nobody is advocating a 20% decrease in sales across the board. Really old refrigerators should be replaced with new models. Insulation should be bought. As should new windows, roof paint and trees for shade. So should bicycles and transit passes. And rather than buy the $2 sweater imported from China, maybe you buy the $40 sweater knitted by hand locally. I foresee a temporary increase in sales, settling into something that feels comfortable when we've addressed global warming and finished building up our generation capacity. The economy should be booming.

[RecoveringYuppy]

Comparing currently-working renewables to speculative nukes or vice versa is just a covert way of begging the question.
What "speculative nukes" do you have in mind? I can't think of any nukes mentioned in this thread that aren't in operation somewhere. The most speculative thing I can recall in this thread are some re-processing techniques that have been demonstrated in a lab but are not commercially developed. Not completely "speculative".

[Lonewulf]

Because he doesn't hear of it often, that makes it as "likely" as Luke Skywalker throwing waste into the sun. :D

[DRBUZZ0]

Here is the best comprehensive chart I could find for electrical use across sectors. This is for California in 2002. I would have to think it's probably a good representative example of roughly what you'd find in other states and roughly what you'd find in other industrial countries as well.

As you ca seen, a large portion is in areas which are just not easily addressed. Lighting makes up a decent chunk, but how much can you save with more effecient lighting? Less than 50% savings, especially considering commercial already uses mostly florescent lights.

Heating and cooling makes up a relatively small chunk, and it's unknown how much you could really save there. If you have more effecient heat management for frigdes then mabe you could save a bit. But still... no matter how generous you are, you're doing well to squeeze a few percent savings out.

http://depletedcranium.com/faq_enduse_chart.jpg

[DRBUZZ0]

A little More info:

In the United States, approximately 1/3 of CO2 emissions come as a direct result of power plants generating electricity.

In much of Europe, it's higher, like ~40%. In Japan and South Korea it's even higher. In developing countries it ranges greatly. In some areas a lot of the energy for industry is generated on site due to the lack of power plants. But china, for example. is well over 50% CO2 emissions from fixed site power generation and such.

Worldwide, electrical generation and related fixed site electricity usage is about 40% of global CO2 production. Industrial processes make up the second, such as smelting, oil refining and so on That's about 20-25%. A close third is transportation at 20% and the remainder includes all other human activities.

[Hindmost]

Moving right along, it might be helpful to attempt to summarise the points so far I think we can agree on:

Existing nuclear fission is cheaper per unit energy than existing renewables, but produces waste which is dangerous in the long term.

Existing nuclear fission fuel supplies are known to be good for fifty years, perhaps a little more. Past that point efficiency decreases and before too long fission will not be advantageous compared to renewables. There are unproven proposals to get more uranium from other sources, but nothing that has yet been demonstrated to be cost-effective.

Unless there does turn out to be another source of fission fuel which is economically viable, building more fission plants will just mean we hit the wall sooner.

I think we've got consensus on those points, but I could be wrong.

So the solution to the future shortage of fission fuel is to find new sources of uranium like getting it out of seawater (if it works, great), or reprocessing the existing leftovers. However this too is more expensive than mining and refining uranium ore.

Question One: How do the numbers stack up comparing reprocessing nuclear leftovers to building more of the existing renewables? I take it as given that any cost breaks you assume for reprocessing (scale, technological advances and so on) apply also to the renewables.

Next point, conventional breeder reactors have inherent safety risks and proliferation risks. It's been stated that other alternative reactor models can be built so that they do not produce material which is ideal for weapons, can use existing leftovers and/or produce more fuel fission reactors can use.

Question Two: Ideally we'd have a reactor that used existing leftovers, was proven cost-efficient compared to renewables without convenient assumptions, and could not be used as a stepping stone to nuclear weapons by a state that was so inclined. Is there any such beast?

If the answer to those questions is "Yes, reprocessing waste is proven to be cheaper than building solar panels (or whatever)" and "Yes, there's an ideal reactor model that solves all our problems at once" then the case for nuclear power would be close to ironclad.

On the other hand if there is no reason to believe that nuclear is going to be any cheaper than renewable in fifty years time however you work it, and that nuclear is always going to be a proliferation risk if deployed outside the existing nuclear weapons club, then the long-term solution to the world's power needs has to be based on wind, solar or something of the sort with nuclear only being used in the niches where renewables cannot be made to work cost-effectively.

I don't agree with everything here. Specifically about the shortage of uranium. MIT assumed 1500 reactors for their analysis.

http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/

For nuclear to be viable long term...past the 50-60 years on the once through fuel system, a series of nuclear plants and reprocessing plants would need to be built. Essentially, in a group of 4-5 reactors, there would need to be one breeder and enough reprocessing capacity to fuel the other 3-4 plants with the fuel bred. This has not been done anywhere--as a result, the engineering costs would be large...but...the technology exists as it has been done previously.

question one: I don't think there is enough evidence to compare renewables with reprocessing fuel. There are very few reprocessing plants and they are not operating on a big enough scale to compare with renewables.

Conventional breeder reactors do not have inherent safety risks. I have shown evidence to that in past posts. In fact EBRII proved the fuel can be made inherently safe in a loss of coolant accident...which is a worst case senario.

As far as proliferation, I certainly don't expect countries outside the existing nuclear powers to be building breeder reactors. The major concern would be theft in place where the fuel is not secure--possibly in Russia. But then the roque elements would need one heck of a lab to reprocess that fuel and it wouldn't be truly weapons grade...it would be reactor grade...see the following:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/intro/pu-isotope.htm

If a country was going to attempt to construct a bomb, the course of action would be to build a production reactor--which is very much easier than reprocessing spent fuel. India did this and it appears as if pakistan is doing so as well, however, their initial weapons were made by enriching uranium. Iran's program is probably building a production reactor now.

question two: Integral fast reactors can do this: they can burn up the vast majority of the transuranic waste--especially the Plutonium. It is not new technology.

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

Finally, I don't think this can be an one or the other situation. We will need both renewable and nuclear power...and anything else we can use to generate electricity and heat. Even Bazil with their ethanol program is going to come up against some hard issues in the future with exhaustion of the land along with growing population...etc.

glenn

[Hindmost]

As far as energy savings, I am going to post this link again...it is a very good study of how much energy can be saved in the US.

http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/

Now, I haven't sifted through this one yet...but it looks interesting

http://web.mit.edu/globalchange/www/MITJPSPGC_Rpt138.pdf


http://web.mit.edu/globalchange/www/

actually, there might be some interesting stuff in this whole website...everyone go study; there will be a quiz.


glenn

[Belz...]

Sure. That's a decision for the future, anyway. We need to throw a lot of resources into retrofits, public transit, better efficiency standards in everything from cars to refrigerators to standby modes. We have so much work that obviously needs doing anyway that we don't really need to think about the exact proportions of our ultimate energy mix.

And who's going to pay for all this, eh ?

[Kevin_Lowe]

I don't agree with everything here. Specifically about the shortage of uranium. MIT assumed 1500 reactors for their analysis.

Noted.


For nuclear to be viable long term...past the 50-60 years on the once through fuel system, a series of nuclear plants and reprocessing plants would need to be built. Essentially, in a group of 4-5 reactors, there would need to be one breeder and enough reprocessing capacity to fuel the other 3-4 plants with the fuel bred. This has not been done anywhere--as a result, the engineering costs would be large...but...the technology exists as it has been done previously.

question one: I don't think there is enough evidence to compare renewables with reprocessing fuel. There are very few reprocessing plants and they are not operating on a big enough scale to compare with renewables.

Well, that's a useful conclusion at least. Nobody really knows if reprocessing is cost-competitive with solar panels and wind turbines and so forth.


question two: Integral fast reactors can do this: they can burn up the vast majority of the transuranic waste--especially the Plutonium. It is not new technology.

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


Hang on a sec, this isn't quite answering the question as it was asked.

Firstly the page you link to says that construction only ever started on one prototype of this kind of plant, and it was cancelled three years before it was completed. The reasons for the cancellation are not given. So saying "it is not a new technology" seems to me to be a very carefully chosen half-truth. It would have been a decade-old technology had construction gone ahead, but as it is it is just a plan on paper.

Secondly I specified a reactor that used existing nuclear leftovers and it's not clear from the site you linked to where the fuel for these things comes from.

Thirdly I specified a reactor that is known to be more cost-effective than existing renewables and nobody has any idea how much these things would cost to build and run in reality because it has never been done.

It's good that there is a design on paper that is not a proliferation risk, but that alone is not going to solve the world's energy problems.

This is exactly the logical mis-step I was just talking about, attempting to compare a speculative technology to a concrete one. Oh, and RecoveringYuppy? This right here is a perfect example of a speculative nuke.

Funding such a reactor as a research and development expense could be defensible, assuming people who know more than I do crunched the numbers and concluded that it looked promising once you have taken cradle-to-grave costs into consideration. However advancing such a reactor as an alternative to existing renewables for a current problem is irrational.

[luddite]

Just poking around looking for reprocessing costs, all the first 5 items Google delivered were not promising. And there's this one statement that settles a previous confusion:

If reprocessing is undertaken only to reduce the radioactive level of spent fuel it should be taken into account that spent nuclear fuel becomes less radioactive over time. After 40 years its radioactivity drops by 99.9% [18], though it still takes over a thousand years for the level of radioactivity to approach that of natural uranium [19].

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

The note refers to the World Nuclear Association, which would have no reason to inflate the numbers.

[Hindmost]

.....snip...


Hang on a sec, this isn't quite answering the question as it was asked.

Firstly the page you link to says that construction only ever started on one prototype of this kind of plant, and it was cancelled three years before it was completed. The reasons for the cancellation are not given. So saying "it is not a new technology" seems to me to be a very carefully chosen half-truth. It would have been a decade-old technology had construction gone ahead, but as it is it is just a plan on paper.

Secondly I specified a reactor that used existing nuclear leftovers and it's not clear from the site you linked to where the fuel for these things comes from.

Thirdly I specified a reactor that is known to be more cost-effective than existing renewables and nobody has any idea how much these things would cost to build and run in reality because it has never been done.

It's good that there is a design on paper that is not a proliferation risk, but that alone is not going to solve the world's energy problems.

This is exactly the logical mis-step I was just talking about, attempting to compare a speculative technology to a concrete one. Oh, and RecoveringYuppy? This right here is a perfect example of a speculative nuke.

Funding such a reactor as a research and development expense could be defensible, assuming people who know more than I do crunched the numbers and concluded that it looked promising once you have taken cradle-to-grave costs into consideration. However advancing such a reactor as an alternative to existing renewables for a current problem is irrational.

Sorry, I should have elaborated on the reactors. (stuff that's been in my head for a long time...)

What is not really known by many is that the first nuclear power plant producing electricity was a fast breeder reactor. It was a loop type of design where the sodium flowed through pipes to the reactor. It operated without any safety systems for a longtime. It had a reasonable breeding ratio and used pu as fuel. It proved the breeding principle and a few other things. I toured it a long time ago as it is a museum now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBR-I

The next design was EBRII--a larger plant with about 20 MW electric output. The design was different from EBRI as it was a pool type design. The reactor was submerged in a pool of sodium as were pumps and other components. This was built to prove several things...one was onsite fuel reprocessing and fuel manufacturing, which is what the idea of what your question 2 was--at least my interpretation. EBRII successfully proved this principle. They made there own fuel with the "waste" out of the reactor. This is why I say the technology exists, but it hasn't had large scale commercial application--therefore, the cost would be nebulous. This reactor can take the spent fuel from LWRs and make a MOX type of fuel leaving in all the transuranics and other junk and burn it up continueing to breed a bit and burn a bit. This is why I consider them a benefit to reduce proliferation by burning up all the uranium and plutonium on the planet. However, it would take such a long time, so that probably isn't justified.

Most importantly, EBRII proved inherently safe fuel. The reactor was brought to full power and the sodium drained without tripping the control rods. The reactor shut itself down and the configuration inside the fuel pellets separated within the fuel pins so the fuel wouldn't melt. (really cool if you ask me.) Bill Clinton shut down the project right after we got the best answer ever for nuclear power--a reactor that is inherently safe during a complete loss of coolant. This is the only part the doesn't really have as much experience. The fuel would be a metal alloy...It was tested and worked, then the project was shut down. The plants can still burn MOX fuel which there is ample experience, but it loses the inherent safety and needs normal safety systems.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBR-II

Now, Clinch River was a nightmare back in the 70s. It was going to be the first full scale fast breeder with a loop type design. Political decisions about proliferation shut the plant project down. This, along with the cheap cost of uranium and the fact that by the 80s, all utilities cancelled all the reactors. Breeders were deemed unneeded.

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

The French have the phenix reactor which is still operating but shutdown their superphenix plant as it had design issues and political concerns--along with cheap uranium. The French reprocess the fuel into MOX and burn it in their plants and other plants in Europe and Japan. So the technology is even more proven in Europe.

http://www.uic.com.au/nip42.htm

As I said in a previous post, the only plants that have approval from the NRC in the states are AP1000, sys80+ and the ABWR from GE. There is no breeder design that is advanced enough to be considered for licensing. And not enough engineers have fast reactor experience either to go starting something now. It would take govt subsidy to kick start the program and it certainly won't be popular. I don't have much hope for the US congress to understand the issue anyhow. Based on the MIT report of having sufficient uranium for 1500 reactors makes the point moot for a bit--as stated in the report.

These types of reactors would breed reactor grade Pu which, if you read the link I provided, it isn't very good for bomb material. One can still be made but you would still have to steal the very hot fuel and have one heck of lab to extract the Pu. It would make a bomb that would just fizzle.

Sooooooooo, nothing new, nothing speculative. We have proven technology--it is being used right now and I think 30+ years of experience is sufficient. The only thing to do is deploy it on a large commercial scale--which always has unknow costs involved.

glenn

[luddite]

Here is the best comprehensive chart I could find for electrical use across sectors. This is for California in 2002. I would have to think it's probably a good representative example of roughly what you'd find in other states and roughly what you'd find in other industrial countries as well.

As you ca seen, a large portion is in areas which are just not easily addressed. Lighting makes up a decent chunk, but how much can you save with more effecient lighting? Less than 50% savings, especially considering commercial already uses mostly florescent lights.

Heating and cooling makes up a relatively small chunk, and it's unknown how much you could really save there. If you have more effecient heat management for frigdes then mabe you could save a bit. But still... no matter how generous you are, you're doing well to squeeze a few percent savings out.

California has a very efficient economy. They've kept per capita electrical demand steady for over 30 years. Their energy prices are high and as a result their industrial base is small and efficient. Ontario's industry is much larger, with 1.5% of the customers responsible for 55% of the electrical demand. It's tempting to say that we could get the kinds of cuts that California has, where all industry put together uses 20%, a walloping 35% decrease from industry alone, but I know this isn't right. While some industry in California has definitely become more efficient, some industries have simply moved away. Some may well be enjoying a carbon feeding frenzy in China.

You're right, there is a huge portion on this chart that isn't easily addressed. Mostly because it's completely undefined. Residential and industrial categories each have substantial "other" categories, which together with miscellaneous commercial and a general "other" category make up 38% of the pie. In addition there are broad categories like "agriculture/pumping" and "process" which are also difficult to attack for lack of detail, and 2% for "compressed air" which I'll admit to ignorance on, and ask anyone who knows anything about this to help me out on this tiny percentage.

That leaves 45% that really can be addressed because it's sufficiently clear. Of that 45%, space conditioning, which is the easiest thing to attack, and can be reduced by 100%, accounts for 1/3 of what we know. That's pretty good.

Lighting accounts for 24% of the total pot. As this link points out:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cbecs/lit-type.html

electrical demand for residential lighting could be reduced by 35% if we only replaced existing incandescents that operate more than 4 hours daily with compact fluorescents. The potential is obviously higher, but that's a reduction of 3% off the total. The same article points out that demand from existing commercial fluorescents could be reduced by 20% by moving to T8 ballasts instead of the standard T12s. Commercial incandescents that moved to T8 directly could realize savings of 60%. Given their distribution for commercial as 77% fluorescent and 14% incandescent, we get combined savings of 24% from the commercial lighting sector or 3% from the big pot.

So far I'm getting reductions of 21% of only the 45% we know about. Not bad. But when it comes to lighting, we're still thinking inside the box, especially for commercial/industrial. The newest terminal of Toronto's Pearson Airport is daylit on all 3 levels, reducing daytime lighting costs to negligible levels. Retrofitting existing structures would not be particularly difficult, since most industrial and commercial facilities exist on a single level. One thing I do know about industry is that lighting can be more focused where it is needed, doing away with broad lighting across whole buildings. Much higher savings are easily achievable if we have the will.

Then we get to the last category we can address, domestic refrigeration, which accounts for 6% of the total. As this link points out:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/reps/enduse/er01_us.html

a new refrigerator in 2001 used just 38% of the energy of the average refrigerator in the US. So it's tempting to say that efficiency in domestic refrigerators could reduce the total part of the pot by a further 4%, but that would be wrong, because the chart is for California. California is singlehandedly responsible, with their refrigerator efficiency program (funding the purchase of the most efficient models every year) for driving refrigerator efficiency up across North America. They are very proud of the fact that so far, this conservation program has delivered savings in California alone equivalent to the total output of all the nuclear power plants in the United States, and at a significantly lower cost than it would have taken to build all those plants:

http://energypriorities.com/entries/2006/02/california_energy_commissioner.php

So Californians as a group already have the most efficient refrigerators. Bad news for dropping the numbers on this particular chart, but good news overall. Because across the rest of America, there are plenty of savings to be had just by adopting California standards. Another reason why this is extremely good news is that other big states and provinces can tackle other appliances. New York can tackle washing machines, Texas can do air conditioners, Massachusetts can do lighting, and so on.

Refrigerator efficiencies have improved in an almost unbelievable way. In 1972, the average refrigerator had a UEC of 1986 kWh. By 2001, the UEC was 476 kWh. That's a reduction of 76% over less than 30 years, when conservation wasn't the priority it should be now. And over that time period, average refrigerator sizes have more than doubled. If we applied this kind of program to a variety of common appliances, the savings would be tremendous.

The EIA link I pointed you to gives a breakdown of domestic electricity sources. The big enumerated ones would all benefit from being targeted for efficiency standards. A lot of the smaller ones are pretty discretionary, and could just be hit by high energy prices. We'd all have the same energy bills, because even though the cost per kWh would be higher, we'd be using fewer kilowatts. That is the point the California Energy Commission makes. Their overall energy bills are about the same as the US average, even though their unit costs are substantially higher.

I think I'll stop blathering now. I hope you get the idea.

[DRBUZZ0]

Sorry, I should have elaborated on the reactors. (stuff that's been in my head for a long time...)

What is not really known by many is that the first nuclear power plant producing electricity was a fast breeder reactor. It was a loop type of design where the sodium flowed through pipes to the reactor. It operated without any safety systems for a longtime. It had a reasonable breeding ratio and used pu as fuel. It proved the breeding principle and a few other things. I toured it a long time ago as it is a museum now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBR-I

The next design was EBRII--a larger plant with about 20 MW electric output. The design was different from EBRI as it was a pool type design. The reactor was submerged in a pool of sodium as were pumps and other components. This was built to prove several things...one was onsite fuel reprocessing and fuel manufacturing, which is what the idea of what your question 2 was--at least my interpretation. EBRII successfully proved this principle. They made there own fuel with the "waste" out of the reactor. This is why I say the technology exists, but it hasn't had large scale commercial application--therefore, the cost would be nebulous. This reactor can take the spent fuel from LWRs and make a MOX type of fuel leaving in all the transuranics and other junk and burn it up continueing to breed a bit and burn a bit. This is why I consider them a benefit to reduce proliferation by burning up all the uranium and plutonium on the planet. However, it would take such a long time, so that probably isn't justified.

Most importantly, EBRII proved inherently safe fuel. The reactor was brought to full power and the sodium drained without tripping the control rods. The reactor shut itself down and the configuration inside the fuel pellets separated within the fuel pins so the fuel wouldn't melt. (really cool if you ask me.) Bill Clinton shut down the project right after we got the best answer ever for nuclear power--a reactor that is inherently safe during a complete loss of coolant. This is the only part the doesn't really have as much experience. The fuel would be a metal alloy...It was tested and worked, then the project was shut down. The plants can still burn MOX fuel which there is ample experience, but it loses the inherent safety and needs normal safety systems.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBR-II

Now, Clinch River was a nightmare back in the 70s. It was going to be the first full scale fast breeder with a loop type design. Political decisions about proliferation shut the plant project down. This, along with the cheap cost of uranium and the fact that by the 80s, all utilities cancelled all the reactors. Breeders were deemed unneeded.

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

The French have the phenix reactor which is still operating but shutdown their superphenix plant as it had design issues and political concerns--along with cheap uranium. The French reprocess the fuel into MOX and burn it in their plants and other plants in Europe and Japan. So the technology is even more proven in Europe.

http://www.uic.com.au/nip42.htm

As I said in a previous post, the only plants that have approval from the NRC in the states are AP1000, sys80+ and the ABWR from GE. There is no breeder design that is advanced enough to be considered for licensing. And not enough engineers have fast reactor experience either to go starting something now. It would take govt subsidy to kick start the program and it certainly won't be popular. I don't have much hope for the US congress to understand the issue anyhow. Based on the MIT report of having sufficient uranium for 1500 reactors makes the point moot for a bit--as stated in the report.

These types of reactors would breed reactor grade Pu which, if you read the link I provided, it isn't very good for bomb material. One can still be made but you would still have to steal the very hot fuel and have one heck of lab to extract the Pu. It would make a bomb that would just fizzle.

Sooooooooo, nothing new, nothing speculative. We have proven technology--it is being used right now and I think 30+ years of experience is sufficient. The only thing to do is deploy it on a large commercial scale--which always has unknow costs involved.

glenn



Good info. However, I think metal cooled breeders are probably overkill both in terms of complexity and other factors and licensing for power generation at the moment. It's hard enough getting a pressurized water reactor approved and built.

But I'm going to have to look more into the coolant loss and the fuel safety. That looks really damn cool

[luddite]

Glenn, again I'm going to mention the solar hybrid PV/thermal panels, that have likewise been tested and work. And like with breeders, the question is what the costs would be per kWh to deploy them on a large scale. We seem unable to agree on the relative costs of technology that's up and running now. This is an avenue I'd prefer to avoid for that reason.

But if you really want to go there, I think it doesn't bode particularly well for nuclear. Every article I've read indicates that the economics for plants that use reprocessed fuel don't look good given anything close to the current price of uranium. By contrast developments in renewables tend to bring the price down.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Sooooooooo, nothing new, nothing speculative. We have proven technology--it is being used right now and I think 30+ years of experience is sufficient. The only thing to do is deploy it on a large commercial scale--which always has unknow costs involved.


Thanks for all the good info.

I think we're using "proven" in two different ways though. It's proven these reactors are physically possible, which is always a good start.

What's not proven is that they are cost-effective compared to existing renewable technologies which are already producing power. It's not a criticism of nuclear technology in particular to say this, but it's a fact.

I think that's a hole in any nuclear advocate's argument that is going to need some serious attention. If one is to advocate developing these things as a solution to climate change or energy shortages then one needs some justification for the belief that they are actually going to be a better solution than existing systems like solar and wind.

To quote Belz, "And who's going to pay for all this, eh?". Getting these technologies to the stage where we can make intelligent estimates of their real costs and benefits is not going to be free either. I'm not saying it's something we should not look at, but I am definitely saying that pointing to nuclear as a better solution than renewables is premature if you can't give reason to believe it's even going to be cheaper.

[Pidge]

So, how much does nuke plant plant cost over it's life? (For the sake of argument, a current, approved design, once-through fuel plant).

And how much would a comperable total energy output windfarm, solar plant, tidal plant etc cost over their lives, assuming the same lifetime.

How long would the equivalent output plants take to build, assuming you could "break ground" right now? (no arguing about this assumption, please!)

If possible, do take into account parts production and the availablity of the materials required. e.g. Don't try to use up a significant portion of the available production of copper (or other materials) in one go.

[Hindmost]

Good info. However, I think metal cooled breeders are probably overkill both in terms of complexity and other factors and licensing for power generation at the moment. It's hard enough getting a pressurized water reactor approved and built.

But I'm going to have to look more into the coolant loss and the fuel safety. That looks really damn cool

Since there is no licensed design, it would obviously be a long time before one would get built in the US. There is still a lot of fear with the whole concept of a breeder and the proliferation thing even though it is more political than a real issue.

As far as the metal fuel with the inherent safety features, there isn't enough data to scale up to a full sized plant at this point, so we would need a prototype or just burn MOX fuel. EBRII could have been used for long term test of the fuel and its operational characteristics. The idea of getting over 99% of the energy out of the fuel is just fantastic when compared with a once through fuel design.

As far as complexity...I don't see it being more from a design standpoint than an LWR, however, maintenance with the sodium is a pain and having qualified people would also be a problem with design and operation.

If we look at the MIT report, 1500 reactors would required about 400 breeders...we really don't have enough engineers. And 1500 reactors is just a dream.

glenn

[luddite]

Partial response to Pidge.

Here's a site that puts the cost of wind at 8 cents per kWh all-in:

http://www.airtricity.ca/en/faqs/

This site puts it at 5 cents with a production credit of 1.5 cents, total 6.5 cents per kWh:

http://www.awea.org/faq/wwt_costs.html#How%20much%20does%20wind%20energy%2 0cost

This European site puts it at 2-4p/kWh, cheaper than all other generation options, including coal if health and environmental costs of coal are included:

http://www.earthfuture.com/seconomy/sei20.asp

Here's a Louisiana offshore proposal. Offshore projects are more costly per kWh, and the link outlines the reasons why. Still, the break-even point is 4.2 cents per kWh. However, because wind turbines tend to be built for profit, it only becomes attractive to investors at 8 cents per kWh:

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:6OQ1RIS4Y-cJ:dnr.louisiana.gov/sec/execdiv/techasmt/newsletters/2001_2005/2005-02_topic.pdf+windfarm+cost+kWh&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=11&gl=ca&client=firefox-a

I think the price assumptions for nuclear are going to vary like mad. If you look at a Korean plant, you're going to get a completely different price than you would if you looked at Okiluoto. Nuclear proponents will suggest that Korea can be reproduced worldwide. Nuclear opponents will point to Okiluoto and point out that 18 months into construction it was 18 months behind schedule, and that Areva is being sued for fraud for illegally subsidizing construction.

Hope this helps.

[Hindmost]

Thanks for all the good info.

I think we're using "proven" in two different ways though. It's proven these reactors are physically possible, which is always a good start.

What's not proven is that they are cost-effective compared to existing renewable technologies which are already producing power. It's not a criticism of nuclear technology in particular to say this, but it's a fact.

I think that's a hole in any nuclear advocate's argument that is going to need some serious attention. If one is to advocate developing these things as a solution to climate change or energy shortages then one needs some justification for the belief that they are actually going to be a better solution than existing systems like solar and wind.

To quote Belz, "And who's going to pay for all this, eh?". Getting these technologies to the stage where we can make intelligent estimates of their real costs and benefits is not going to be free either. I'm not saying it's something we should not look at, but I am definitely saying that pointing to nuclear as a better solution than renewables is premature if you can't give reason to believe it's even going to be cheaper.

Actually, I think we are missing a good portion of the point by focusing too much on cost right now. As I have stated in the past, we need all forms of energy to get the job done. Cost difference are going to be meaningless with coming energy problem. The world uses over 400 quads of energy every year and most of it comes from fossil fuel. Focusing solely on cost and making this an either or issue is the problem. We have to put all this together if we are going to avoid real bad problems in the world. The technology and lifestyle for the planet are based on cheap oil and lots of cheap energy and no one can or should deny this issue is getting close to being very big problem.

Renewables have not been cost effective--many links have been posted showing this. They produce a small amount of power at high cost and subsidies are what have kept them going. And I think that is OK because we are going to need them. At least wind technology has finally improved to a point where it is reasonable.

About the proven thingy...I agree that cost effective part is still open to debate since the world hasn't built a fleet of them. The first few plants will be expensive. However, the plant don't need to be deployed immediately. Actually, I expect to be dead or very old before we have one.

When I say proven: We are burning MOX fuel now. Reprocessing technology is available. A plant can be built that will do what we want...ie reprocess fuel on site... burn MOX or metal fuel...get rid of Pu and other transuranics...There is not as much need for proof-of-principle testing.

glenn

[Hindmost]

Glenn, again I'm going to mention the solar hybrid PV/thermal panels, that have likewise been tested and work. And like with breeders, the question is what the costs would be per kWh to deploy them on a large scale. We seem unable to agree on the relative costs of technology that's up and running now. This is an avenue I'd prefer to avoid for that reason.

But if you really want to go there, I think it doesn't bode particularly well for nuclear. Every article I've read indicates that the economics for plants that use reprocessed fuel don't look good given anything close to the current price of uranium. By contrast developments in renewables tend to bring the price down.

See my response to Kevin's post...it covers much of what you posted here.

Actually, reprocessing spent fuel is not that bad when it comes to removing Pu and reusing it. The cost of the plant is not related to the reprocessing issue. Plants are designed to run with once through uranium and with MOX fuel without any modifications. Even some old plants can be modified to use MOX fuel with only small changes.

Anyhow, here is a good list of advanced reactors. It gives expected cost to deliver...but I wouldn't take those numbers as cast in concrete...steal reinforced concrete.

http://www.uic.com.au/nip16.htm

glenn

[luddite]

Another evaluation of the cost of wind power that says it's 1.2 cents more than coal if properly accounted:

Is wind power too expensive?
What really matters is the cost to society. With current subsidy methods, it costs around 3¢/kWh of subsidy to get wind turbines built. But this is because the up-front costs of wind turbines are huge and the payback takes twenty years. Investors require fast paybacks and this "costs" extra. But this is not a social cost. Much of that money is just a transfer to stock-holders. By evaluating a different subsidy method, a more accurate social cost can be found and it is only 1.2¢/kWh.

Although the amount of wind that could be installed this cheaply is limited, it is interesting to ask how much it would cost to solve the global warming problem if all GHG reductions could be accomplished so cheaply. The answer is they could be eliminated for a cost of $81 billion per year. That is 0.63% of GDP, and considerably cheaper than the Iraq war.

[RecoveringYuppy]

This is exactly the logical mis-step I was just talking about, attempting to compare a speculative technology to a concrete one. Oh, and RecoveringYuppy? This right here is a perfect example of a speculative nuke.

Funding such a reactor as a research and development expense could be defensible, assuming people who know more than I do crunched the numbers and concluded that it looked promising once you have taken cradle-to-grave costs into consideration. However advancing such a reactor as an alternative to existing renewables for a current problem is irrational.
If you'll read further in to the article you'll see that most of the IFR concepts have been tested at Argonne National labs. Not exactly my idea of "speculative". It certainly isn't ready for mass deployment either though.

[Kevin_Lowe]

If you'll read further in to the article you'll see that most of the IFR concepts have been tested at Argonne National labs. Not exactly my idea of "speculative". It certainly isn't ready for mass deployment either though.

I think again this is just a matter of us using one word two different ways.

The distinction I was aiming for was that wind and solar (and coal, and oil, and old school fission...) have been deployed in real-world business situations and there is empirical data about how much money you have to put in and how much energy you get back out.

If a new technology is still in the lab at best then you can only speculate about the costs and benefits of a real installation.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Actually, I think we are missing a good portion of the point by focusing too much on cost right now. As I have stated in the past, we need all forms of energy to get the job done. Cost difference are going to be meaningless with coming energy problem. The world uses over 400 quads of energy every year and most of it comes from fossil fuel. Focusing solely on cost and making this an either or issue is the problem. We have to put all this together if we are going to avoid real bad problems in the world. The technology and lifestyle for the planet are based on cheap oil and lots of cheap energy and no one can or should deny this issue is getting close to being very big problem.

If you've got a hungry family to feed and a limited budget you buy more rice than caviar. You don't say "cost differences are going to be meaningless because we will be really hungry" or "we are going to need all forms of food to get the job done" and then spend half your food budget on caviar.

If there is really a crisis, or there is really going to be a crisis, then surely we should be spending the available money on the most efficient forms of power generation?

Of course if there is a crisis we should also put a significant amount of money into research to figure out new and better ways of generating electricity. That is an investment not a luxury. However there's a lot of difference between "we should invest in nuclear because it is efficient!" and "we should invest in research in nuclear because it's conceivable it might turn out to be efficient".


Renewables have not been cost effective--many links have been posted showing this. They produce a small amount of power at high cost and subsidies are what have kept them going. And I think that is OK because we are going to need them. At least wind technology has finally improved to a point where it is reasonable.

They have not been cost effective compared to coal, or oil, or according to some stories fission, so in that sense they are not cost-effective. Then again, that ignores global warming as a cost and assumes oil prices will remain where they are.


About the proven thingy...I agree that cost effective part is still open to debate since the world hasn't built a fleet of them. The first few plants will be expensive. However, the plant don't need to be deployed immediately. Actually, I expect to be dead or very old before we have one.

When I say proven: We are burning MOX fuel now. Reprocessing technology is available. A plant can be built that will do what we want...ie reprocess fuel on site... burn MOX or metal fuel...get rid of Pu and other transuranics...There is not as much need for proof-of-principle testing.


I agree with all that. These things are physically possible, and we have a pretty good idea how to make them happen. The question is whether investing in these technologies is a better or worse investment than investing in renewables.

[DRBUZZ0]

They have not been cost effective compared to coal, or oil, or according to some stories fission, so in that sense they are not cost-effective. Then again, that ignores global warming as a cost and assumes oil prices will remain where they are.


Oil is generally not the issue. Few countries, outside of those which product a lot of oil to begin with, use oil as a major component of power generation. IT's just not worth it. In the US they have some oil fired boilers but they're only used as "peekers." They are less than 10% of capacity in the us. I believe it's the same in most other countries.

AS for the "cost" of global warming, that's the argument which comes up all the time, but you're assuming that there is some imediate losses from it which can be recouped by some immediate means. It doesn't generally work that way in politics. You can't compare it in terms of dollars or euros. It's more of a question of a how much money you can reasonably expect to pay.

[luddite]

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine recommended this site:

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/

which details a motorcycle trip through the Chernobyl area, geiger counter in hand. It dispels a number of the ideas presented on this thread. For example, the notion that people live there and are healthy:

This old man lives in the Chernobyl area. He is one of 3.500 people that either refused to leave or returned to their villages after the meltdown in 1986. I admire those people, because each of them is a philosopher in their own way. When you ask if they are afraid, they say that they would rather die at home from radiation, than die in an unfamiliar place of home-sickness. They eat food from their own gardens, drink the milk of their cows and claim that they are healthy.....but the old man is one of only 400 that have survived this long. He may soon join his 3,100 neighbors that rest eternally in the earth of their beloved homes.

Also that it's perfectly safe even right around the reactor itself:

The readings on the asphalt paving is 500 -3000 microroentgens, depending upon where you stand. That is 50 to 300 times the radiation of a normal environment. If I step 10 meters forward, geiger counter will run off the scale. If I walk a few hundred meters towards the reactor, the radiation is 3 roentgens per hour - which is 300,000 times normal.

I believe the number of total fatalities could also be much higher than at least some of those quoted around here. I'm just adding up the firemen, and the construction workers to build the sarcophagus, and the power workers inside, and the 3,000 residents who stayed on and died and then we get into the thyroid cancers attributable to Chernobyl and the leukemias yet to come.

The author considers herself an optimist for hoping the area will be habitable again in 300 years. The pictorial diary is a graphic reminder of the innumerable non-fatal tragedies. People were not allowed to take anything, even their clothes were removed and destroyed during decontamination.

I expect Lonewulf will complain that I'm bringing up Chernobyl, and protest again that it couldn't be repeated. But that's not my point.

My point is that from claims of "in a hundred years, it's no more radioactive than natural uranium" to claims that "the background radiation level at the majority of the Chernobyl site is next to negligable", to "less than 100 people have died--including chernobyl--from nuclear related accidents" to "the people living in that area have no known problems", the pro-nuclear side on this thread has consistently overstated the case for nuclear safety, while at times mocking people who fear radiation. Looking at this site, my fear of radiation is substantially renewed, at least in part because I can't seem to rely on the accuracy of the nuclear advocates, who seem prone to understating the dangers.

If the people building and manning these plants have a similar too-rosy picture, I worry they won't take the necessary precautions. We may not have another Chernobyl, but that's not the only bad thing that can happen at a nuclear plant.

And like I've said before, any mockery or belittling of the tragedy at Chernobyl I find repugnant.

[DRBUZZ0]

Alright... if I hear one more time that anyone here said that the spent fuel from a nuclear reactor is less radioactive than ore in 100 years, or anything close to that I'm going to have a meltdown followed by a thermal and steam explosion.

The material which was talked about in that context is what is left after reprocessing and seperation of certain reactors, designed to produce less long lived istopes or after the spent fuel is treated in one. Not the initial spent fuel.

But in the case of chernobyl: I would not want to live there. It sounds like the background levels are a bit high and the soil is definately contaminated. I'd still visit there though. But that's getting into the whole theory of radiation tissue damage and time and cumulative dose.

Chernobyl was pretty bad, no doubt. (although so were many horrible industrial accidents).

But sure, chernobyl is a horrible example of what happens in a corrupt system that builds a faulty reactor and operates it outside of safety guidelines.

I also think the hindenburg was an accident waiting to happen and thus I would not recomend flying on a massive rigid airship full of hydrogen. But that has nothing to do with airliners. Just as chernobyl has nothing to do with modern light water reactors. Or heavy water, for that matter.

[Lonewulf]

They eat food from their own gardens, drink the milk of their cows and claim that they are healthy.....but the old man is one of only 400 that have survived this long. He may soon join his 3,100 neighbors that rest eternally in the earth of their beloved homes.
That's why. They're eating the food grown in the soil and drinking the milk of nearby animals. The radiation itself isn't the problem, it's the way it's mutated the soil and animals that eat of that soil in the short-term. At least, that's what actual experts tell me... you're free to debunk my "misconceptions", if you wish.

I didn't realize that 3,100 people stayed behind... huh.

The readings on the asphalt paving is 500 -3000 microroentgens, depending upon where you stand. That is 50 to 300 times the radiation of a normal environment.

Scary, I guess.

By the way, don't take a plane flight.

A transatlantic flight is equivalent to having at least one chest X-ray. Passengers flying at 35,000 feet are exposed to between 50 and 100 times more radiation than when they are on earth.

http://menshealth.about.com/cs/lifestyle/a/cosmic_radiatio.htm

Of course, you wouldn't want to live in the stratosphere. However, this backs up my claim that the sun spews out far more radiation than you would run into at Chernobyl. We're just protected from most of it... but a hot sunny day still exposes you to radiation. And you get a relatively more significant dose when flying.

Luddite, you can throw out the "50 to 300 times of background radiation" all you want to. But do you even understand what that means?

[DRBUZZ0]

3000 uRem is a bit much for ground level radiation. That's really not the problem though. You would gt a higher dose than normal when there, but that's not really what you have to worry about. The real issue would be living there you're likely to breathe in dust and drink water from the local sources.

If you visited there are drank the water you'd probably not show any signifficant exposure. But living there for years on end, drinking the water and inhaling dust and such. That could be a problem. Although I think if you moved there now you would probably be okay. It would be the ones who stayed there for a long time right afterward who got the biggest dose.


That having been siad, I understand it's considered safe to visit for an unlimited amount of time. But living there for years on end might be iffy.

[Schneibster]

So basically, the gnarliest imaginable nuclear accident, full meltdown, a huge fire that burned for days, radioactivity spewed over hundreds of thousands or millions of square miles, people trying to get it clamped down and the fire put out getting exposures that killed them, happened nineteen years ago, and anybody can go to the "contaminated" area and stay an unlimited amount of time and not die of it. So much for the hundreds of thousands of years teh nucular radiation will make everything uninhabitable.

Hysteria, like I said.

[luddite]

Thanks all,

Having slept on it and read the comments above, I'm mollified. The author of the link states that she's the daughter of a nuclear scientist whose family lived in the now contaminated zone. She demonstrates a certain reckless confidence, but also a sense of limits. She explains how the asphalt is safer than the soil. She gets only so close to the reactor. I tend to trust her as not being hysterical, and the geiger counter readings do not lie. 50 to 300 times was the reading off the road near the reactor. In the picture where she's holding up the geiger counter, the plant isn't even visible. She states that a hundred metres closer and the readings are 300,000 times normal. You're right, I don't know exactly what it means. My only comment was that it cannot be described as "negligible".

That said, the comment about 3500 people staying behind, while I suspect is likely close to the truth, has no substantiation in literature. The Russians attempted to cover up as much as possible and had no interest in conducting studies in the area. The big WHO/IAEA study pretty much ignored everything but thyroid and leukemia rates in the emergency workers and among the residents of nearby counties. It seems likely to me that they missed a lot, and the WHO has since already revised their estimates and issued a lot of disclaimers about what they don't know. At the same time, I have no idea where the 3500 figure comes from. It's quite likely to be speculative and inflated by local fear. The author of the piece may not be hysterical, but she views this as a great tragedy and isn't about to trim numbers accepted by her peers.

And yes, they're dying because they're eating from the soil. That's foolish of them. But it needs to be recognized that people do foolish things. We design playgrounds to eliminate certain risks because we know foolish children will do stupid things. Similarly, our assessment of the risks of a meltdown need to take into account that people will try to take precious belongings, will return for them later, will get careless about ingesting contaminated things and so on. It needs to be part of the risk calculation.

Schneibster, anybody can't go there. There are checkpoints all over staffed by people in hazmat gear. They routinely stripped and decontaminated the author, and she submitted even in the cases where she felt their motives where dubious. Between checkpoints she describes a freedom but also a very eerie silence. She also expressed fears of having a mechanical breakdown. It's okay on the roads. But you can't eat or drink anything there, you really had better not get off the roads, and there are no working telephones.

And about animals. She says the horses were deliberately introduced, along with North American buffalo, which did not breed successfully. Just an interesting factoid.

[Kevin_Lowe]

That's why. They're eating the food grown in the soil and drinking the milk of nearby animals. The radiation itself isn't the problem, it's the way it's mutated the soil and animals that eat of that soil in the short-term. At least, that's what actual experts tell me... you're free to debunk my "misconceptions", if you wish.

Radioactive elements are chemically identical to non-radioactive ones, and food gets incorporated into your body. Incorporate radioactive isotopes into your body and you get all the radiation hitting you from the inside, which is much worse for you than standing near radioactive isotopes hitting you from the outside because of the inverse square law and because there's no skin on the inside to stop alpha radiation damaging you.

[luddite]

Alright... if I hear one more time that anyone here said that the spent fuel from a nuclear reactor is less radioactive than ore in 100 years, or anything close to that I'm going to have a meltdown followed by a thermal and steam explosion.

Wouldn't want that. We'd have to wait 100 years to get near you.

The material which was talked about in that context is what is left after reprocessing and seperation of certain reactors, designed to produce less long lived istopes or after the spent fuel is treated in one. Not the initial spent fuel.

Well, my point was the carelessness. I wasn't talking about reprocessed fuel. I was talking about civilian waste from current reactors. Now it may be that everyone had it in their heads that reprocessing reduced the risks, but nobody said that, and nobody clarified after the original claim. Instead they supported it. When I asked why they were building architecture for a million years I was told that governments were fearful and ignorant. I was wading through hundred-page documents on Yucca Mountain, tracking down claims of 400,000 year peak doses, and only when I found something that definitively disputed the 100 year claim did I get "Oh, yeah, that's with reprocessed fuel".

Here's my suggestion. I think you are right that people have a fear of radiation that can go beyond the rational. I think it makes a lot of sense to point out what happens at various radiation levels, what kinds of activities are risky, and so on. But you have to be cautious about not overstating the safety. I see no future for nuclear if proponents are perceived to be belittling the concerns.

Just as a personal example, I have a couple of pro-nuclear friends who were foolish enough to propose a small urban reactor in Toronto to an anti-nuclear group as a supply constraint solution. One of the people in the group is a doctor who studies the health effects of tritium releases. She described some of the cancers and other problems she has seen. The response was an angry rebuttal about how the overall cancer rate increases were trivial.

Well, it's pretty hard to trivialize teratogenic effects. People were outraged. But ironically, I thought the nuclear side was correct, not necessarily about a downtown reactor, but certainly about the relative health risks to the population from routine procedures in generation from nuclear versus say, coal.

But in order to address that properly, you need to begin by recognizing that nuclear has some problems. That bad things happen. Then you move on to point out that the other options are also bad, and in many ways worse. We get something like 1900 deaths from respiratory diseases annually in Toronto, and a significant contributing factor is Ontario's coal plants and those in Ohio. And for every death there are thousands of kids on steroids in order to breathe. Our outrage should first be directed towards the coal plants, some of which still operate without scrubbers.

So in the 2 decades since Chernobyl, coal contributed to the early deaths of perhaps 35,000 Torontonians. Relentlessly, even with no accident whatsoever. That's a compelling statistic. But people won't hear it if you belittle the experience of the distraught woman remembering how iodine was forced on her and how her family had no idea what was happening and how they were forced to move away and start from scratch - no home, no belongings, not even photographs, naked as the day they were born.

I do think though, that if you go that route, you need to be prepared for people saying they don't want either. There are a lot of people who don't have time to think about where their energy comes from. If you ask them, they're all for efficiency and smart design, and would rather wind over other alternatives, but they're not going to sweat it. Among the politically engaged, the attitude is very much "none of the above, thanks, get me something that doesn't produce any systemic bad effects". And most of them are willing to put their money where their mouth is, investing in renewable coops or mounting solar panels on their roofs, but above all reducing their demands.

I don't know how this will play out when emissions reduction becomes a policy imperative that affects everyone. But the degree to which people are willing to change their habits thrills me, and I have every hope that it will make the transition to a post-carbon future easier and more healthful.

Chernobyl was pretty bad, no doubt. (although so were many horrible industrial accidents).

But sure, chernobyl is a horrible example of what happens in a corrupt system that builds a faulty reactor and operates it outside of safety guidelines.

I also think the hindenburg was an accident waiting to happen and thus I would not recomend flying on a massive rigid airship full of hydrogen. But that has nothing to do with airliners. Just as chernobyl has nothing to do with modern light water reactors. Or heavy water, for that matter.

Yep.

[luddite]

By the way, the hydrogen on the Hindenburg had nothing to do with it:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s1052864.htm

[ellindsey]

The "Chernobyl biker girl" page is apparently a hoax (http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/05/27/woman_racing_through_chernobyl_a_fraud.html).

And the incendiary paint theory for the Hindenburg appears to be fatally flawed (http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/LZ129fire.pdf). For one thing, the burn rate of the paint mixture is too slow by a factor of 1000 to explain the observed rate of fire spread. While the skin of the Hindenburg was flammable, only a hydrogen flame could explain the observed spread of the fire across the entire ship in just a few seconds.

[luddite]

I'm not sure what to make of the accusation that it's a hoax. One person, Mary Myclo, claims it's a hoax. Who do we believe?

More importantly, what part was hoaxed? She states that Elena went only once. But nothing more was claimed. She states that escorts are required. Well, Elena did say she had to get special papers and that her father helped. But maybe she had escorts. I'm not sure what that disputes. That it's not as easy to get around as the photo-essay implies? Then Mary Myclo reveals the most scathing accusation, that she was in a car and not a motorcycle, and that motorcycles aren't allowed in the zone. I'm not even sure I'd care, but she's also wrong. I read Ukrainian and the picture with the motorcycle on the road next to the sign is in Chernobyl. The pictures with the geiger counters are not disputed.

[luddite]

Now I'm even more confused. The woman who claims it's a hoax is Mary Mycio. She is an LA based journalist who periodically visits Kyiv. You can hear an interview with her here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/02/2006_13_wed.shtml

Funnily enough, a lot of what she says supports motorcycle girl. Two critical things do not. One is that she states that the doses in the red forest only go up to 3-5 milliroentgens. The other is the numbers of returning residents and the reasons for their deaths. She says over 1000 returned, and claims most died of old age. They were overwhelmingly elderly women.

She seems, if anything, more reasonable than the biker girl. The interviewer begins the interview by stating that "135,000 people were evacuated. Many of them died or became seriously ill." This is not disputed in the interview, but seems too high to me. I guess the question is what is "many".

[Hindmost]

If you've got a hungry family to feed and a limited budget you buy more rice than caviar. You don't say "cost differences are going to be meaningless because we will be really hungry" or "we are going to need all forms of food to get the job done" and then spend half your food budget on caviar.

OK, I shouldn't have used meaningless, but the caviar thing is a false analogy. Cost projections over a 40 year period are going to be estimates at best...the "too cheap to meter" thing with nuclear is a perfect example. Right now, all over the world, power plants are getting old. New generation must be put together at large capital cost. If nuclear starts construction now in the west, the best that could be achieved is a status quo to slight increase in capacity. So nuclear isn't going to solve any issue. With coal plants supplying the bulk of power in the US, they will need to be replaced as well. Oil and gas are just obvious bad choices as we all have shown here. That doesn't exactly leave a bunch of options. Clean coal would be nice if it was engineered to capture CO2. Renewables are fine, but lack the capcity factor to provide reliable energy and solar just happens to be closer to "caviar" at 20-25 cents (US) than other sources. And that is going to be a problem. At the point where this becomes an issue, a few cents per KW-hr are going to be much less important than supplying electricity for refrigeration and industrial needs. I point out refrigeration because our food supply is sooooooooooooooo very dependent upon refrigeration always being available.

If there is really a crisis, or there is really going to be a crisis, then surely we should be spending the available money on the most efficient forms of power generation?

Of course if there is a crisis we should also put a significant amount of money into research to figure out new and better ways of generating electricity. That is an investment not a luxury. However there's a lot of difference between "we should invest in nuclear because it is efficient!" and "we should invest in research in nuclear because it's conceivable it might turn out to be efficient".

This applies to any energy source...right now, the US is investing in corn based ethanol and that is just the poorest investment we could subsidize. It just doen't make enough energy and may even cost fossil fuel. Right now, solar has a similar issue...the cost of manufacturing and deployment use a lot of energy. Remember, the energy from nuclear fission is millions of times greater than any chemical reaction. That certainly helps with efficiency.

I also guarantee that utilities would abandon nuclear power in a heartbeat if renewables could get the job done at reasonable cost.

They have not been cost effective compared to coal, or oil, or according to some stories fission, so in that sense they are not cost-effective. Then again, that ignores global warming as a cost and assumes oil prices will remain where they are.

The current status of renewables is not going to be able to replace 500,000 MW of electricity in the US. Efficiency increases from this point will be more marginal. This differences in cost are going to be minimal over the long term compared with not having electricity.

I agree with all that. These things are physically possible, and we have a pretty good idea how to make them happen. The question is whether investing in these technologies is a better or worse investment than investing in renewables.

I believe we better invest in a diverse group of energy solutions. severe weather can destroy wind farms, coal strikes have hit US plants, oil and gas prices are going to rise...etc. Diversity would always be better. The US has one million MW of installed capacity. That is just enormous and isn't going to be replaced and increased by renewables anytime soon with the current technology--and as I stated earlier in the post, efficiency increases will most likely be marginal from this point.

Projections--which are always unreliable--are for worldwide electricity to increase by 160% by 2050 according to Sept. 2006 Scientific American.

Right now, the people of cape cod don't want a wind farm off shore because of the view...it has the potential to provide 450 MW of power...it will get defeated most likely and that is just stupid.

glenn

[Pidge]

I started a post yesteday about electricity production in NZ. Then lost it, d'oh...

Summary: NZ has just over 9GW of production capacity, with a total of 42TWh generated last year.
Type Capacity Production
Hydro 58.4% 55.2%
Geothermal 4.8% 7.6%
Wind 2.4% 1.5%
Wood 0.4% 1.2%
other renewables 1% 0.5%

Gas 17% 21.8%
Coal/Gas 10.6% 12.2%
Gas/Oil 5% 0%
(The Capacity and production are from different data sets, and for some reason they don't classify all the plants the same, argh!)

Total Renewables 67.4% 66%
Total Fossil fuels 33.1% 34%

(Data source: http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/ContentTopicSummary____20511.aspx)


Oddities:
The Wood plant is a lumber/paper mill, which burns the waste material - and it runs all year round, powering the mill with its 40MW steam turbines - plus a number of other smaller plants (at least one more) which don't rate on the list of Plants as they generate less than 10MW. I count this as a renewable as the wood has already been transported to site for processes, the wood waste only has to be dryed (using the waste heat from the steam generated by burning the wood) and feed into the furnance - probably a gross simplification. If the Lumber mill / paper plant wasn't there, the wood fired steam turbine woodn't be there.

There is a plan for a new wind farm of upto 650MW, which will cost NZ$2 billion to build, which tallies with the US$2.2 million/MW to build figure that ludite provided, and take 4-5 years. And it's a Big farm - 140 Turbines. There are other windfarms under development, but not as big That farm will basically quadruple the NZ Wind power generate capacity - and assuming it runs as well as the existing wind farms, will increase wind to just shy of 9% of the generating capacity, and wind power production to 5.6%, assuming nothing else changes (The current 217 MW of Wind farms average 70MW of production)

The Geothermal is a single plant, just north of Taupo, which appears to run continuously producing roughly the same amout each year, excluding extending the field and adding turbines. Oh, and it's cooling tower is the single largest structure (by bulk) in NZ, and you'd think we have a nuke plant.

Hydro, although is by far the largest capacity, is limited by the lake storage. There's been a number of dry years recently. In 1995, 77.5% of generated power came from Hydro - 27.3TWh.

Power in NZ is drawn first from Hydro, than gas (from our domestic gas fields - which are due to run out of gas in the next two decade, or earlier, unless new viable fields are found), then coal (not our domestic coal, becuase it's too high-grade to burn for power!), with geothermal and other renewables chipping in to reduce the need for fossil fuels.

The next hurdle in NZ is going to be the move to electric powered cars (whatever the energy storage system)

Total NZ Domestic consumption for Petrol (Gasoline) and Diesel was 221PJ. Assuming ICE average efficency of 30% (useful energy released 75PJ), and electric transmissions and storage losses of 50%, 150PJ or 42TWh of additional electrical production would be required over the time taken to move to Electric cars. On top of that will be additional consumption from population growth and industrial capacity growth (electricity production being a major stumbling block to any significant new industry in NZ...)

We can't dam any more rivers.

The State Owned Electricity producers (>95% of production) have been told to not build and new Fossil-fuel power plants - though private ones may be built, if they can get it past the local communities and the Resource Management Act.

That leaves Wind, Biomass, Solar to provide our additional energy needs to be able to displace the fossil fuel consumption (OK, it won't be totally replaced. And public transport might improve - "Yeah, right" - another huge problem as NZ cities tend to be 90% sub-urban, with little long term planning around growth - but I digress!)

Wind is sort of working, but pushing Wind up to be able to provide twice our hydro capacity will be a Transmission nightmare. And there's the cost. 42TWh is an average production of 4.8GW. Assuming the wind farms can provide an average of 50% of their capacity (current windfarms in NZ are doing around 33%), that's a capcity of 9.6GW - or 15 more of those 140 turbine farms, at a cost of NZ$30 Billion (but that's low-ball), present value. And take 15 years to build, if we can buld 4 or 5 at a time. And a NIMBY nightmare, as well as a nightmare to find a viable locations to stick the farms. It's a definite possiblity, if energy storage systems can be found to smooth out their energy delivery.

Three nuke plants of 3GW capacity would easily provide the additional capacity we need. And replace the fossil fuel plants.

The question is - could the three nuke plants be built, decommisioned, and spent fuel taken care of for less that NZ$30 billion PV, and operated for less than a total of 2100 turbines and associated transmission lines?

However, given the social climate here regarding anything Nuclear, the Windfarms + solar + Biomass will probably be the solutions choosen - at least they have a 0% chance of rendering the immediate (10km) neighbourhood un-inhabitable if somebody screws up. (although unlikely), and not "p*ss off" the populace.

Heck, they might even dam another river or two up. Geothermal is another possiblity, at least we have local expertise on them already. But there's only one or two more locations they could be built without resorting to drilling a load of really deep holes.

*sigh* I was so hoping the numbers would work out for Nuclear :(

[Lonewulf]

Now I'm even more confused. The woman who claims it's a hoax is Mary Mycio. She is an LA based journalist who periodically visits Kyiv. You can hear an interview with her here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/02/2006_13_wed.shtml

Funnily enough, a lot of what she says supports motorcycle girl. Two critical things do not. One is that she states that the doses in the red forest only go up to 3-5 milliroentgens.
Yeah, I'd call that pretty critical. :D

The other is the numbers of returning residents and the reasons for their deaths. She says over 1000 returned, and claims most died of old age. They were overwhelmingly elderly women.
That would do it, wouldn't it?

Seems kinda weird to me that elderly women would reappear, without any of their families coming along... unless they were seperated from their families for whatever reason, or had none left?

She seems, if anything, more reasonable than the biker girl. The interviewer begins the interview by stating that "135,000 people were evacuated. Many of them died or became seriously ill." This is not disputed in the interview, but seems too high to me.
I'll have to agree with you.

I guess the question is what is "many".
That would factor into it, wouldn't it?

[luddite]

Seems kinda weird to me that elderly women would reappear, without any of their families coming along... unless they were seperated from their families for whatever reason, or had none left?

I believe they tend to be widows. They just couldn't bear to leave their homes, where they had borne and raised children, and where their husbands had died. In some cases their families left, in others they were already living alone. They are not spread out all over. Pripyat, the "Ghost Town" built for the power plant workers, was completely evacuated and no one was allowed to return. Looters have been through, but no one lives there. Many of the more toxic villages were actually buried to prevent former residents from returning.

I've just found that going around with geiger counters is a popular activity near Chernobyl. There are even tours that do it. You get a dose-ometer as well to measure the gamma rays you're hit with, hazmat suits are provided in some areas and you get decontaminated periodically. They'll try to find particular locations for former residents or the curious. The disadvantage of tours is that they take you to places where the levels are known to be safe - they're government operated and they don't want to open up a scandal. There are parts of the evacuated zones with radiation levels below the average ambient levels for Ukraine as a whole. However, there are other parts that are very high, where they go above the levels the little geiger counters measure. Mossy areas are especially bad. Apparently mosses actually preferentially absorb radioactive particles. You can get a patch of moss where the geiger counter goes crazy, and a metre away the levels are fine, just slightly above normal. The red forest is known for being the worst part, but no convincing conclusion about just how bad it is that I can see.

[DRBUZZ0]

Now I'm even more confused. The woman who claims it's a hoax is Mary Mycio. She is an LA based journalist who periodically visits Kyiv. You can hear an interview with her here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/02/2006_13_wed.shtml

Funnily enough, a lot of what she says supports motorcycle girl. Two critical things do not. One is that she states that the doses in the red forest only go up to 3-5 milliroentgens. The other is the numbers of returning residents and the reasons for their deaths. She says over 1000 returned, and claims most died of old age. They were overwhelmingly elderly women.



Probably accurate. 3-5 milliroentgens I'm not sure if you mean total or per hour, but either way, it's a bit high, relatively speaking, but not *that* high, compared to, for example, flying during a time of high sunspot activity or something similar.


The fact that older people would be less effected is not that surprising. Their cells divide much more slowely, their matabolism is much slower. They already have a relatively short remaining lifetime for problems to manifest.

Old people can sometimes live with a festering tumor for years. Prostate cancer, for example, can lie dormant in the elderly, never spreading and only slowely growing for a decade or more.

It's the same deal with radiation. The chronic health effects are genetic damage which results in problems with cells reproducing, repairing or metabolizing. This is all less pronouncedly in older people for the same reason.



She seems, if anything, more reasonable than the biker girl. The interviewer begins the interview by stating that "135,000 people were evacuated. Many of them died or became seriously ill." This is not disputed in the interview, but seems too high to me. I guess the question is what is "many".
[/quote]

Yes, many were evacuated. I don't know how many died, exactly, but it was really only the first responders or plant workers who had any danger of immediate health effects due to radiation poisoning.

I would not want to be within a mile of the plant on the day it blew, but today is much different. See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Totalexternaldoseratecher.png


The actual dose now is only less than 1/10,000 of what it would be the day it happened. Most of the radiation comes from short-lived fission products. Those are long gone. Only a few longer lived isotopes remain at all. Those represent less than 10% of the yield by volume and less than .1% of the total radioactivity, due to their long half-lives.

It's safe to visit the area around Chernobyl. I would have no problem doing so. There is very little hazard from proximity to any of the material left.

We have to understand something here:

Proximity hazard is very different from internal toxicity hazards. Plutonium is just about harmless outside the body, as it only emits a few soft gamma rays and mostly alphas. Sr-90, a major fission biproduct, is basically harmless outside the body. At worst, if you came in contact with a large amount, it could burn your skin a little. But if you have it build up in your body, that can be very dangerous.


The problem is not visiting the zone. It's not even living there. It's drinking the water, inhaling the dust, eating the foods, and doing so for long periods of time. You can go there, no problem. You can probably even drink the water or eat the food with little effect. But do it every day for years and it will build up in your body. That is the problem.


But I'd happily go spend a couple of days in the area,

[DRBUZZ0]

I believe they tend to be widows. They just couldn't bear to leave their homes, where they had borne and raised children, and where their husbands had died. In some cases their families left, in others they were already living alone. They are not spread out all over. Pripyat, the "Ghost Town" built for the power plant workers, was completely evacuated and no one was allowed to return. Looters have been through, but no one lives there. Many of the more toxic villages were actually buried to prevent former residents from returning.

I've just found that going around with geiger counters is a popular activity near Chernobyl. There are even tours that do it. You get a dose-ometer as well to measure the gamma rays you're hit with, hazmat suits are provided in some areas and you get decontaminated periodically. They'll try to find particular locations for former residents or the curious. The disadvantage of tours is that they take you to places where the levels are known to be safe - they're government operated and they don't want to open up a scandal. There are parts of the evacuated zones with radiation levels below the average ambient levels for Ukraine as a whole. However, there are other parts that are very high, where they go above the levels the little geiger counters measure. Mossy areas are especially bad. Apparently mosses actually preferentially absorb radioactive particles. You can get a patch of moss where the geiger counter goes crazy, and a metre away the levels are fine, just slightly above normal. The red forest is known for being the worst part, but no convincing conclusion about just how bad it is that I can see.

The "tours" take you to areas where are levels are low and they are extremely cautious and conservative with the general public. They keep it way down. Just the same, there aren't any areas which give you a singifficant dose from standing there for a few minutes. The red forest is one of the hotter areas. A geiger counter can detect levels well under what would be considered dangerous.

[DRBUZZ0]

I just took this video right now. Too bad I don't live in an area where it's that impressive. The rocks are relatively un exciting. If I lived in colorado, utah, new mexico, parts of australia, then I'd frequently see the geiger counter fly off the charts. They have some sizable uranium deposits with rich uranium ore.

There's an area not far from me where there are some abandoned granite quaries. Those are much more exciting. Also, toward Rhode Island, there's an area very rich in thorium sands. I'll try it in my friend's dirt-floored basement a bit later. I think that will be a lot "hotter"

DLMlWnVwtGc

[winnietheblue]

I realize this is from an earlier part of the discussion, but I wasn't paying attention then, so... :p

I'm convinced that solar energy is not a complete solution to the energy issue(the solar park in Germany pretty much destroyed the last shreds of that fantasy for me), but I was wondering if anyone had info about the environmental impact of building the solar panels? I've seen opinions that it is as bad or worse than coal power plants, but I've never been able to find any solid facts.

[luddite]

I'm convinced that solar energy is not a complete solution to the energy issue(the solar park in Germany pretty much destroyed the last shreds of that fantasy for me), but I was wondering if anyone had info about the environmental impact of building the solar panels? I've seen opinions that it is as bad or worse than coal power plants, but I've never been able to find any solid facts.

Solar PV is good for peak, and likely to become more so if we stop using fossil fuels on peak and prices skyrocket. It's not so good for baseload. It's just too expensive, both in terms of embodied energy and monetary cost to compete with lower cost options, and would require storage for overnight delivery in addition.

As far as I know the biggest concern is the energy it takes to make a solar panel. A couple decades ago, it required more energy to create a solar panel than the panel delivered in its lifetime. Which is why solar power languished in niche markets - off grid and experimental applications.

These days, it generates enough energy to cover its manufacture in about two years. Some manufacturers claim a 1-year energy payback. If it lasts for 30 years, even if all the energy used to make it came from coal, it would still have an impact of 1/15 the impact of coal. In terms of emissions, the study below puts coal at 1000 g/kWh produced, combined cycle natural gas at 400 g/kWh, and every other power source below 50 g/kWh. Solar is still the highest in the group at 45 g/kWh, but that's less than 1/22 the emissions of coal.

http://www.nrel.gov/pv/thin_film/docs/lce2006.pdf

And if we're talking about speculative technologies, the impacts of solar PV are rapidly going down, with thin films, frameless panels and alternative materials dramatically decreasing the energy required in manufacture.

Solar thermal panels have had very low impacts and quick payoff times for decades.

[T-Diddy]

Disclosure: I have experience with US nuclear plants. I also admit I haven’t read this entire post, only the first few pages, due to its massive length. I have serious problems with Gengi’s (who seems to be leading the anti-nuke charge) issues:

Please cite the United Nuclear Corporation death. I’m willing to bet it had nothing to do with the nuclear systems: the only deaths I am aware of in the U.S. as the result of unintentional criticality were at the U.S. Army’s SL-1 reactor. Also, please cite for (U.S.) Subs. Even the lost Soviet subs were not lost as a result of the reactors. I do not believe you without verification. Also, you claim that there is no benefit to several large plants vs. multiple smaller ones due to transmission losses. That is why they jack up the voltage – resistance is the product of the square of current, but is not proportional to voltage, thus if you convert your power to potential, the transmission losses are negligible. Due to the added value with extra heat exchangers and other features on large plants, larger plants are indeed more efficient. Also, the largest cost in reactors is regulation, not fuel or facilities.

Further, your point about the British sub a few years back (the Tireless) had nothing to do with the reactor systems. It was a faulty manufacturing process that led to cracking of a primary coolant joint. The same thing can happen on any high-temp plant, such as a coal-burning plant. The only reason it caused a ruckus was that it was unpopular in Gibraltar.

Incidentally - Hindmost - great name and reference.

[Darth Rotor]

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

It's very interesting reading if nothing else. I'm not sure how the numbers he came up with in the late 1970s would compare to the current economic conditions though.
The undergrad project in energy conversion I worked on, 1980, with that as a general model, and some generous assumptions "pro" the method, came out with a 13% usable output from those space based solar energy generators. It was an interesting exercise, but also an eye opener regarding the costs of energy conversion and transmission.

DR

[Darth Rotor]

Finally read to the last page.

Thanks all for the discussion. Good to see the hysteria cheerfully presented, and the arguments against the anti nuke woo well stated.

No one in the thread, pro or con, seems cavalier on nuke safety, nor of the need to intelligently handle spent fuel, but the perceptions of those two matters are profoundly marked between the woo and those who know what the hell they are talking about.

A point on accidents and safety.

Within the last two years, I think it was 2005, BP had at its Texas City refinery an accident that killed/injured 100. That's a run of the mill petroleum processing facility. (Yes, they cocked it up a bit, did BP.)

From 1998 to 2002, DoD in the US lost 2000 people to accidents.

The citing of one or two deaths in a 1950's accident was an asinine attempt early in this thread to lean on fear mongering themes, but the accident matter, and human ability to screw up are significant factors in design and operation of any plant, (Hindmost, Belz, Dr Greening, all chimed in so nicely) be it a nuclear carrier, a coal plant, a breeder reactor, or a chemical plant.

You can mitigate risk, but you can't eliminate risk or hazard completely. You are dealing with humans.

Those of you preaching risk avoidance, versus risk management, are missing the point, in both energy production and the other matter, which Schneibster did the best at addressing.

None of this science and tech exists in a vacuum. It exists to address a human need or activity. Energy is, like it or not, interwoven in life, and life quality, and life choices, as of this writing, in November of 2007. If energy isn't found, it will become a scarce commodity, sure, but given the little thing about expectations, it is a critical commodity, like water has been for millenia. (still is)

People have gone to war over water, and water rights.

Hell, the US has shown it will go to war over oil and oil rights, along with the bulk of the industrial world on its team. See Kuwait, 1991 for the classic example. Other nations have so scrapped: China over the Spratleys, Iran and Iraq in the 80's.

It is Schneibster's pointing to second and third order dependencies that is often the hardest thing to get people to see, either in this thread, or IRL, when the mythology of the bogeyman of energy supply versus living standards, in combination, interferes with problem solving. Carter's cock up back in 1977, one of many reasons I thought he failed as President, is a case in how policy based on myth is damaging "unto the second and third generation." As a nuclear engineer (NOT SCIENTIST) he should have known better. Sorry, he was a peanut farmer at heart, when the last song was sung.

Y'all want to leave a better future for the next generation? (I do, I read the sentiments of both sides of this discussion as similar in intent.) Don't close out any options, or the conflict over energy, or the products it affords us, will arise, as conflicts have ever done among the various peoples of the earth.

Solve the problem, and don't close off any options.

Or, choose other variables to change in the equation. Address the problem of overpopulation, and start killing people off, to address Global warming and energy demand. Where gross demand goes down, the carbon foot print drops. That's an objective statement. (Of course, who lives, who dies, who decides? Not a pretty question.)

That path is not a solution I think any of us prefers, but science also provides the tech to pull that off.

Like it or not, it's there.

One way or another, the problems arising from energy supply and demand, and thus energy production, will be solved. Will this problem be solved by people who solve problems, and their methods, or by people who cater to hysteria, and their methods?

I know where I want that answer to fall, and thanks, Dr Buzzo, for a great thread iniiation. This is one of the best multi variable problem discussions I've seen in a while, and another feather in the cap of the S & T forum crowd. I mostly lurk, and learn, here.

Good stuff.

PS: luddite and robinson. As Lonewulf tried to explain to you: in Corpus Christi, regarding air conditioning, from April through september, you can plan on 90's to high 90's most days, humitidy 30-60%. Some days, though, it gets really hot and humid.

PPS: for Kevin and ludditeI agree with you that conservation and wiser usage is a part of the answer.

DR

[Schneibster]

First rule: the world ain't simple. If it was, we'd have developed the perfect society several thousand years ago. Always remember the Law of Unintended Consequences. I.e., be careful what you wish for- you may get it.

[DRBUZZ0]

I will have to find the article I found it in, but the number one cause of workplace deaths in the nuclear industry is falling, as from a ladder or catwalk or something. A close second is having something fall on you. These are both commonly the number one cause in many work environments. The actual number is small but it happens in any industry.

The only deaths I am aware of in anywhere besides the Soviet Union, due to a power producing reactor malfunctioning were three at the SL-1 Reactor in 1961. That was back in the dark ages of nuclear energy reactors. I don't mean to write off the Soviet Union, but their safety measures were deplorable... or simply non-existant.

[Lonewulf]

Or, choose other variables to change in the equation. Address the problem of overpopulation, and start killing people off, to address Global warming and energy demand. Where gross demand goes down, the carbon foot print drops. That's an objective statement. (Of course, who lives, who dies, who decides? Not a pretty question.)
I have a Modest Proposal: Let's eat all the poor kids. Especially anyone from Ethiopia.

...What?

[Darth Rotor]

I have a Modest Proposal: Let's eat all the poor kids. Especially anyone from Ethiopia.

...What?
Given that this would be the exploitation of a lean meat source, that's not the Atkins Diet, it's the Addis Ababa High Protein Diet. :p Is this good for people with cholesterol issues, Doktor Mengele Lonewulf?

(I might go to Hell for that one.)

Jonathan Swift would surely approve of your jest. :)

DR

[Lonewulf]

Given that this would be the exploitation of a lean meat source, that's not the Atkins Diet, it's the Addis Ababa High Protein Diet. :p Is this good for people with cholesterol issues, Doktor Mengele Lonewulf?
Only if you eat the skinny, healthy children. The fat ones can be fed to anorexics.

Jonathan Swift would surely approve of your jest. :)

I dare say that Jonathan Swift stole my thesis for himself, the time-travelling bastard.

[Hindmost]

I realize this is from an earlier part of the discussion, but I wasn't paying attention then, so... :p

I'm convinced that solar energy is not a complete solution to the energy issue(the solar park in Germany pretty much destroyed the last shreds of that fantasy for me), but I was wondering if anyone had info about the environmental impact of building the solar panels? I've seen opinions that it is as bad or worse than coal power plants, but I've never been able to find any solid facts.

I have had difficulty finding definitive stuff on the environmental impact associated with building and installing solar cells. However, I did find a link or two that gives some info.

http://www.clca.columbia.edu/papers/21-EUPVSC-Alsema-DeWild-Fthenakis.pdf

http://www.energybulletin.net/17219.html

It appears to be optimistic. I do not know enough about manufacture of solar cells to give a good estimation.

glenn

T-Diddy: A fellow Niven fan I assume...:)

[Lonewulf]

Hm, seems like Nuclear in Europe (not the U.S.) gives off less greenhouse gas than Wind, Biomass, and even present and projected solar.

...even I'm surprised about that. o.O

European Nuclear gives off ... uh... 6. Derived from the formula (g CO2-eq/kWh), Wind has 11, and projected solar gives off 15 (present-day gives off 32 for multi-Si and 25 CdTe). USA nuclear gives off 25.

Meanwhile, fossil fuels go up into the hundreds, from the lowest being 160 to the highest being 400.

And no, I don't quite know what these numbers mean. I'm dumb. :D