Well, there’s like a .000001% chance of nuclear power getting me, and there’s like a .000001% chance of global warming getting me, so what’s to worry about?
It’s true, nuclear power and global warming will adversely effect some people somewhere, but my personal risk is so low it’s inconsequential. The risk/benefit parameters satisfy me.
Actually, I never said there was no need to worry, I just told Senor to calm down because it’s not drastic enough to demand we replace 80% of our energy with… nuclear?
What are your plans for transportation? Are we going to use those Russian subs that run on lead-cooled nuclear reactors? Can we put wheels on those and drive them around? That would be cool! How about flying? Can we put wings on those Russian subs? That will be cool, too!
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Well, there’s like a .000001% chance of nuclear power getting me, and there’s like a .000001% chance of global warming getting me, so what’s to worry about?
[/QUOTE]
I think your chances of nuclear power ‘getting’ you are lower, while your chances of being affected by Global Warming are significantly higher, but that’s just me.
Since nuclear events are few and far between, and they have a very localized effect which is pretty minimal even when something really significant like what’s going on in Japan happens, while Global Warming has a, well, GLOBAL effect, I think that your risk analysis is rather flawed.
I guess definitions of what is or isn’t ‘drastic’ can vary.
My plan for transportation are much the same for anything…let the market thrash it out. I think that as gas prices rise there will be a demand for an alternative or alternatives. There are several technologies that are in the wings that could potentially replace fossil fuel ICE technology…or, several that could simply let us keep on keeping on with the current technology, and simply replace how we get or produce the fuel. Which will win out? No idea…if I knew, I’d be investing heavily in it right now so that I could retire as a trillionaire in a few decades and have scantily clad love muffins peel me grapes while fanning me on a beach somewhere while my fortune makes 20%. What I DO think is that whatever technology or technologies wins out, it’s going to require more electrical power…which brings us right back to the core question…what’s it going to come from? Since nuclear is out, that leaves niche energy from wind and solar, declining energy from nuclear and hydro (as dams are also being decommissioned due to their environmental impact, and no new ones are being built in the US), perhaps a rise in bio-mass related energy, steady in geo-thermal and…coal and natural gas and other related energy sources.
Huh? Are there serious estimates that say 20% is doable? The DOE has made some serious estimates that say it is doable. The answer is yes, there are serious estimates that it is doable. Yes, they give the details of what would be required to make it so. The answer remains that they give a serious and credible pathway to achieving it if such was decided upon. Period to the question asked.
If what you want to do is to discount any estimate for energy in the future that requires support to get there, or pricing of carbon, or whatever, then please also cross nuclear and its loan guarantees, etc., off the table as well. Stick with coal.
That’s what is actually happening. New capacity is mostly wind. The oldest dirtiest coal is being shut down, slowly. Replacement coal capacity is less dirty and often set up to co-fire biomass or natural gas. If wind only kept up that share of new and replacement capacity it would gradually get us to some pretty impressive results. If it keeps adding 1% plus of the total per year and it was all used to replace the oldest dirtiest coal, then in 20 years roughly the dirtiest half of coal generation would be gone. The claim that there is not enough good resource around has been debunked so many times on this and other threads it is silly. Add in another 10% from other renewables, including solar, and you can retire the dirtiest half of that which remains. We are left with only roughly 10% of generation from coal, and that in the newest most efficient plants, some of it possibly co-fired.
SenorBeef 20% wind does matter, maximizing solar matters, and getting even geothermal up to a percentage point or so does. Every little bit is another of the oldest dirtiest coal plants that can be shut down. But the point is still cogent: we need to replace the 20% that is nuclear that is gradually going to have to retired with something too. If we can’t replace it in kind, with newer safer plants, then we either have to keep older less safe ones running more years past their old predicted lifetimes, or use up some of that new renewable replacing old nuclear with renewables instead of using that new renewable capacity to replace some more older dirtier coal plants.
I’m not a climate change denier or anything, but don’t you think the effects of warming are little vague on details? Tidal waves, hurricanes, drought, famine, blizzards, economic collapse, extinctions, global warming, global ice age… what have I left out? Those are certainly some scary words, but how would you phrase all that in simple, non-frightening IAEA-like terms? What do you think global warming is going to do?
Nuclear “events.” Ha, ha! I love those IAEA-approved words to describe nuclear evacuations and wide-spread radiation contamination all caused by a single nuclear plant that was lucky if it was generating 3% of Japan’s power and now will cost probably hundreds of billions of dollars (not just yen!) to remediate and pay off 100,000 evacuees. Let’s not even think about the number of annual “events” the world is going to have when we give 10,000 nuclear reactors to the world and every single po-dunk dictator, terrorist and criminal gang can gain possession of entire nuclear plants, reprocessing facilities, mining facilities, nuclear material transports and nuclear waste storage facilities. I’m starting to feel a warm glow, and I don’t think it’s coming from the sun.
Don’t worry, we’ll have breeder reactors that actually produce more fuel than they use, which will help us get rid of all that excess plutonium we have building up by… producing even more. Hm.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
I’m not a climate change denier or anything, but don’t you think the effects of warming are little vague on details? Tidal waves, hurricanes, drought, famine, blizzards, economic collapse, extinctions, global warming, global ice age… what have I left out? Those are certainly some scary words, but how would you phrase all that in simple, non-frightening IAEA-like terms? What do you think global warming is going to do?
[/QUOTE]
After being on the fence about this issue, I’ve watched and read lots of threads on this board on the subject, and I pretty much believe that it’s a matter of how bad it will be, not whether it will happen. I think that we are dancing around a tipping point, and whether it happens is going to depend on whether we are able to get our output of CO2 under some sort of control. And I think that nuclear is the ONLY realistic option we have right now. Maybe 20 or 50 years from now that will change, and we’ll get fusion energy, or some other large scale energy, but today nuclear is the only thing I see as a viable option for taking large amounts of CO2 out of our power production infrastructure. Trouble is, it’s not viable, because of folks like you who say stuff like this:
The glow should be coming from embarrassment for saying something like the above. But it’s probably not, and instead from some deep seated satisfaction for being able to spin what’s happening in Japan the way you are doing here.
FWIW, I’m embarrassed for you.
Don’t worry…we all know you are distorting things to put the best spin you can on them. I think most of the ‘pro-nukers’ are well aware that nuclear energy is a dead issue…it’s just the frustration factor of people being so bone stupid about risk that sets most of our teeth on edge.
In other words, you haven’t the faintest or foggiest idea what global warming is or what effects it may have but you are dead certain nuke is the only prayer we had/have.
You’re going to have to do a little better than that if you want to sway “people like me.”
Of course I don’t…anyone who tells you they KNOW what the effects are going to be is lying. As for the other, it’s not up to me to convince you or not convince you of Global Warming…if the massive amounts of evidence don’t do that, then, well, that’s your affair. You can lead a horse to water, but as is plainly evident in this series of threads about nuclear energy, you can’t make him think…
“Massive” evidence that global temps are going up, or massive evidence about what effect it’s actually going to have?
Why should I spend $5 billion on a nuke plant? For the cost of a nuke plant I could probably get two or three times the mega-wattage in wind, and I can get it to my customers two or three times as fast.
I’m not building a nuke plant unless you can guarantee me profits. Big profits, I’m a man of taste. How are you going to do that?
I don’t know if I count as a pro-nuker or not, but I don’t think it is dead. I think it will still proceed but slowly. I doubt it will proceed at a pace fast enough to replace what will or should be retired and I think that without replacements coming on board fast enough there will be pressure to extend the lives of some of the older plants without fully knowing how well the materials stand up to 40 plus years of radiation exposure. But some new plants will come on line and the old plants will get longer extensions.
lev, you really need to have the risks of climate change spelled out for you? Really?
Fine. Much more volatile weather. Hotter hots but also even colder colds wetter wets and drier dries. More extreme weather events. That means more flooding. Many island and shore communities wiped out. Monies spent moving and or protecting cities and parts of cities that are at greater risk. Drought in certain regions leading to some countries having starvation to greater extents than they do now. Many regions having reduced crop productivity. Deaths from heat waves even in countries like the US. Vector borne diseases, like malaria, dengue, encephalitis, and Lyme disease will probably increase and spread to areas that currently do not have them. Economic collapse in the most vulnerable and likely to be hardest hit regions, like Africa and much of Asia, causing mass migrations of climate refugees which will need to be absorbed by the more developed world, and setting up political instability over more limited resources, perhaps water in particular, that the global powers will have to expend resources to deal with. Increased smog. More severe forest fires.
The magnitude of risk associated with the degree of temperature rise and the risk of how much temperature rise is associated with what future levels of emissions is spelled out in various policy papers.
Oh. You want “all that in simple, non-frightening IAEA-like terms”. Well, sorry bud. It is frightening. Here, try this: the United States at least may be able to grow a bit more food and will hopefully have enough resources that your individual risk of death from Climate Change is pretty damn small and you’ll likely be dead before the worst of it hits. And what do we care about what happens to the rest of the world or our county’s more vulnerable or after we are gone? Don’t worry. Be happy. That better?
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
“Massive” evidence that global temps are going up, or massive evidence about what effect it’s actually going to have?
[/QUOTE]
Though it’s not a Global Warming debate, I’d say that there is massive evidence that global climate change is happening, and pretty compelling evidence of what that change might have in store for us. Again, you are free to discount it if you like…many people do.
Really? Can you show me the math you are working from? If a single 1.5 MW wind turbine costs, say, one million dollars, how many would it take to build the same capacity as a $5 billion dollar nuke plant, given the same level of service? You are free to assume that both the nuke plant and the wind farm will be allowed to be built without undue environmentalist or anti-nuke/anti-wind farm NIMBY types. Please, show your work. I’ll be very interested to see how you could get two or three times the ‘mega-wattage’ from wind as you would from a nuclear power plant. And feel free to show how you’d get a large scale wind farm able to generate that kind of ‘mega-wattage’ up and running in 2 to 3 times the speed.
You might also want to show how the large scale wind farm will compare to the theoretical nuke plant wrt how long they will be in service and producing power. Again, you can feel free to fantasize in your work wrt the nuke plant actually getting built in the current climate of unthinking fear and unreasonable hate from the anti-nuke crowd.
Probably by pointing out that most nuke plants show a profit. What did you have in mind?
Modern plants have far better safety features than archaic designs. The only reactors that have had radiation-leakage accidents were designed in the 50s and early 60s.
Dictators, as many countries have already proven, don’t bother to set up fast-breeder reactors for their nuclear weapons projects. Centrifuges are cheaper and easier if your primary goal is getting weapons fast.
Breeders turn worthless-as-fuel U-238 into plutonium, true. Then they burn the plutonium down to relatively-short half-life byproducts. Did you skip that part?
Hyperion Power is claiming that they can ship GenIV Lead-cooled Fast Reactors with 25MW capacity for around $50mil. In other words, about $2m per megawatt, for brand-new technology just out of the prototype stage. These are low-pressure reactors, meaning they don’t need the kind of sophisticated foundries that are limiting production of pressurized-coolant thermal reactors.
From a wind industry site, I’m seeing claims of $3.5m per 2MW turbine in large installations, or about $1.75m per megawatt. For smaller installations, they’re claiming $3m-$5m per megawatt.
When you factor in the various intangibles (convenience of siting, maintenance, waste disposal, reliability), it looks a lot closer to ‘a wash’ than ‘2x-3x faster, 2x-3x cheaper’.
A lot of the issues with nuke plants that cause utilities to want loan guarantees and incentives are political in nature, not technological or profitability.
[QUOTE=DSeid]
Then you’d see no need to offer the utility any incentives, like loan guarantees, or suchlike? It’s such a good investment and all …
[/QUOTE]
Are we going to revoke loan guarantees and subsidies/incentives for coal, natural gas, wind and solar as well? Just to keep everything on an even playing field.
There is no doubt that nuclear plants cost more than other kinds of power plants. The costs are all front loaded, and of course, there is all that risk…the risk that, having spent millions or even billions of dollars, the project might be canceled or the investors might cancel it themselves when it starts to look like becoming a money pit. But if you want to talk an apples to apples comparison OVER THE LIFE OF THE PLANT, I think that nuclear is very competitive…and that it certainly is profitable. Unless you have data to the contrary?
No, I didn’t actually need it spelled out, but thanks for trying.
We already have all those things so you’re just talking about an unknown percent increase in those things. How is nuclear an answer to any of these things that spending equally massive amounts of money on everything else wouldn’t be an even better answer?
You want to help people? Give them 5 MW of wind power spread out among 10-20 smallish turbines. How much does that cost, really?
Or, give them 1000 MW of nuke power and cram them all into one big polluted city. That’s always a good idea.
I’m figuring a typical 1000 MW nuke plant is going to run you $5 billion if you believe the industry propaganda, and up to $10-15 billion more realistically, especially in the US. Again, if you believe the propaganda, it’ll take 3-5 years, but more realistically around 13 or 14 years on average again, especially in the US.
$2 billion bought 845 MW of wind in Oregon. You know that already because I linked to it. The project will be finished next year and ground-breaking was in '09, so that’s three years.
It’s not like Shephard’s Flat was started in 1997 for a projected $500 million and is only now maybe nearing completion @ $2 billion, with a lot of really pissed off tax-payers. That’s how nuke works.
You can’t just brush away all those pesky laws and rights people have to protest and sue to obstruct and/or prevent things they don’t like. This isn’t China. If you’re going to enact some draconian patriot act that wipes those rights away while you hand all the profits to private industry please do it in Canada or someplace first. Or Mexico. Try Mexico. Labor’s cheaper and you really can just shoot people if you can afford it.
Often claimed but with no substantiation. Cites have been provided in many of these threads about the experiences in Finland with Areva and the huge cost over runs - nothing to do with politics.
What I DO think is that whatever technology or technologies wins out, it’s going to require more electrical power…which brings us right back to the core question…what’s it going to come from? Since nuclear is out, that leaves niche energy from wind and solar, declining energy from nuclear and hydro (as dams are also being decommissioned due to their environmental impact, and no new ones are being built in the US), perhaps a rise in bio-mass related energy, steady in geo-thermal and…coal and natural gas and other related energy sources.