http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0810-02.htm Latest nuke accident in Japan.
BBC News | Asia-Pacific | Nuclear accident shakes Japan A beauty 7 years ago.
http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob/rep02.html
They certainly are not without major risks.
The plants are potentially dangerous. If we allow them to be built for profit corners will get cut. They will try skeleton crews running and start shorting the training. Profit and safety are in an endless war.
I would be more likely to allow them if the government built and maintained them.
Do you know what the term ‘strawman’ means?
I assume you mean who built these things (i.e. past tense)…no new nuclear plants have been built in the US for over a decade IIRC.
And what is your theory as to why nuclear plants have huge cost overruns (I assume you mean in the US)?
The article doesn’t exactly say all that, but so what? The government wants to extend the life of existing plants so they don’t have to build new ones (nuclear or otherwise), but inspection have shown that the current plants have some aging problems (probably why they HAVE inspections, ehe?). And ‘many’ in Scotland would prefer non-nuclear replacements. Shocking.
What exactly do you intend to prove with this and the other cites you provide? What point are you trying to make here with your drive by links?
-XT
I’ve got a couple things to add to this thread. Damn Interesting has a fantastic article on the Windscale disaster.
As far as nuclear power plants being a good idea, until we have a viable disposal method I think that large-scale nuclear plants are not a good idea. However, there are some interesting small-scale possibilities. The small reactors used by the worlds navies are simple and safe, and these little guys from Japan sound really interesting.
The main problem I have with nukes is I don’t want one in my back yard. I have one about 5 miles away, on the USS Lincoln. That’s enough for me.
Also, since when is “it’s not a good idea” a deciding factor in energy production? Economics and politics decide the issue, not rational thought.
I’m not opposed to nuclear power per se, but there are some places I’m not happy about seeing it. Vietnam is planning to build a nuclear power plant, and the Thai government keeps pushing for one here. I’m not convinced safety standards can be maintained in either place.
Oh where to start?
xtisme:
I do not know that it is not a valid cite but I acknowledge that Utne is not Science or The New York Times. If someone had a more authoritative cite for comparing unsubsidized cost over plant lifetime I’d take it. Sam, I see, came up with some, and more searching on my own comes up with this. See at the end for synopsis of the studies. Bottom-line: most recent numbers (and that’s important since capital costs are so much of the cost for nuclear) puts nuclear at 5.4 - 7.4¢/kWh, wind 4.7 to 20.2 (depending on on-shore vs off-shore, wind quality, and other factors) and coal and gas both at about 4.6 - 6.1. (It must be noted that nuclear waste costs are considered to be what the government has charge as a flat fee but, as seen below, the government has not yet disposed of any for all that money.) So costly, and up front costly, but maybe not crazy costly.
Obviously we do not need 7 times (yes, I know there was a typo in the cite, I didn’t correct it because that would be improper, and those "sic"s annoy the shit out of me) the world’s energy production and obviously I am not suggesting that wind alone is the answer to the world’s energy needs. But the calculation is enough to demonstrate that the claim that there isn’t enough wind power to “produce enough” (as opposed to nuclear) is clearly specious.
And more to the point let us compare it to how much nuclear can provide in the next decade or so. And here I will go to The New York Times
Worldwide three or four a year. Taking seven years each at least if they already have the parts on order. Assuming you can find qualified people and facilities to design and staff them. Boy that’s likely to solve global warming right there.
I certainly am no expert on what the risks of decaying radioactive waste may be, but as a pediatrician I can certainly say I would want any of it leaking into my kids water supply. In any case the bottom line is that it will have to stored and securely stored whether you think such is overkill or not. Even if it is a mere political reality, it is a reality that is unlikely to change. And so far we have spent over $10 billion to develop a place to store it, that is unlikley to open anytime soon, and the US government is likely to have many billions of dollars more in liabilities to utilities for their failure to deliver on a waste storage facility. This problem will not just disappear with more plants.
And while FutureGen is an intriguing concept (and as aging plants get replaced this may be the model for the future), I do not think that we need to go out and replace all coal plants with new ones let alone with other power sources in the next several years as the only means to address Global Climate Change. On the contrary, I think that coal, being cheap and plentiful, is a critical part of our energy future, even with our current plants as the backbone. (And my investments go along with that belief.) It is my belief that improving coal technology will more cost-effectively and quickly reduce our carbon footprint than nuclear or even most renewables. As to Sam request for hard numbers about the costs of these efficiency gains, I certainly don’t have hard numbers to give but
As to upgrading transmission lines … well our transmission infrastructure currently is a shambles in desperate need of work anyway. The cost is not trivial, but the need for the work is clear even if no efficiency was to be gained … unless we go to a true distributed power generation system with local back-up supplies.
As to biomass co-firing … the best case in the wings I know of is by Alliant Energy
Others are gearing up for it as well (TECO off the top of my head). And NRG is testing Greenfuels algae bioreactors as an inexpensive means of carbon capture.
My bottom line is not anti-nuke, just aware that nuclear power isn’t going to accomplish much and what it will accomplish it will be a very slow process and bring unsolved problems with it. There are it seems other ways to meet growing needs faster and better. Build nukes, if you can without preferentially subsidizing them (other than what either auctioned cap/trade or carbon tax would accomplish) but I’d rather invest in improving the grid.
Hi, this is my first post here - I noticed this as I was clicking through. This topic is something I’ve done a fair amount of research on, so I thought I’d chime in.
Firstly, it’s useful to point out the numbers in terms of scale. This will help us as we figure out what needs to be built to meet our energy needs.
[ul]
[li] Current worldwide energy consumption is about 480 Quadrillion Btu, US Energy Consumption in 2006 clocked in at 99.87 Quadrillion Btu (PDF). You can convert the energy to power (to joules/seconds) - comes to about 3.3TW (3,300,000 MW) or 15TW globally (15,000,000 MW), but this is more to give a scale to the problem - only about 40% of total energy is in the electric power sector, and the majority of that (almost 70% is lost in the electrical system). The best way to see the total energy flow, including losses is from this 2004 U.S. Energy Flow Trends anaylsis (PDF).[/li][li] What’s more relevant to this discussion is the Net Electrical Generation. The rolling 12-mo for 2007 is: 4,130,746,000 MWh. Wikipedia has a good chart of how this breaks down percentage-wise. In the US, wind generates 0.7% of annual production, nuclear 19.4%, and coal, 49.1% (hydro is 7.0%)[/li][li] Note that wind actually has 3x the units in operation (power plants) and more nameplate capacity in MW than nuclear but generates much less actual energy - wind typically has much lower capacity factors than nuclear (35% vs 85-90%) and if you look at the nameplate chart, you can see that there are almost no large (100MW+) wind farms in the US (this is beginning to change. 8 of the 45 new wind projects completed in 2006 were over 100MW in size)[/li][/ul]
Costs are a good thing to look at as well:
[ul]
[li] The Economics of Nuclear Power (last updated June 2007) makes a number of projections, ranging from 3.7-7.4 cents/kWh. In all the studies, it is cost comparable w/ coal, and in the EU study, it is cost comparable with Wind. Note, that much of the difference comes down to capital costs, which range from $1500/kW to $2000+/kW[/li][li] The American Wind Energy Association has their own figures on costs. This also has a lot of complexity, especially figuring in the Production Tax Credit, financing (private or investor-owned) etc. From their latest Economics of Wind publication, a 51MW plant (w/ PTC) can generate at a cost of 2.6-4.8 cents/kWh, with a capital cost of $790/kW, in any case, the prices can be seen as competitive (a 2004 analysis for a 100MW plant w/ no PTC comes out to 4.6 cents/kWh)[/li][li] Worth looking at are the results of the European Commissions study of the Externalities of Energy, ExternE, published in 2001. These study was “to put plausible financial figures against damage resulting from different forms of electricity production for the entire EU” and tries to account for additional environmental, health, etc costs that aren’t tied to the energy producer but are borne by the community. Here’s a summary: hydro and nuclear average 0.4 euro cents/kWh, wind is at 0.1-0.2 ec/kWh, natural gas at 1.3-2.3 ec/kWh, and coal of course, is sucking with a whopping 4.1-7.3 ec/kWh[/li][li] The avg retail price of electriciy to ultimate customers in the US in 2007 (rolling 12-mo) is: 9.06 cents/kWh [/li][/ul]
Hopefully the above figures and references are useful for furthering discussion. I believe that they do help to address some of the issues brought up. The first is simply the scale of the problem we’re talking about.
We’re seeing construction of multi-billion dollar wind farms (i.e. the 735MW Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, internationally Conergy’s $2B AUD 1000MW plant) but that hardly makes a dent in the U.S.'s consumption, not to mention globally. The same can be said for nuclear power, say in China, which has been making a huge push, but which will still be primarily dependent on coal.
The U.S. wind power growth has been at 22% annually (PDF), but even at that current rate, by 2020, it won’t break providing 10% of consumption. Europe is looking better, having grown at 32% annually over the past decade and even having beaten the EC’s 2010 targets 5 years ahead of schedule. By all accounts, business is going gangbusters, and we’ll see if they reach their 2020 target of 20% wind.
Regarding the other issues nuclear power has, the big issues I’ve encountered appear to be:
[ul]
[li] Total cost of ownership (waste disposal, decommissioning)[/li][li] Accident potential (leakage, meltdown)[/li][li] Generating dangerous nuclear materials that could be used by malefactors[/li][li] The larger issue of waste management (where/how to dump it)[/li][/ul]
As shown in the ExternE stuides, TCO is much lower than the incumbent (coal). Modern designs are safe and getting safer (for an interesting read, check out the World Nuclear Association’s Safety page - their info pages actually address all the issues), and the “dirty bomb” threat is silly considering how much easier it is to get low-level radioactive materials for those purposes from hospitals, research facilities, or industrial sites). Also, as a fun fact: “the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, fly ash—a by-product from burning coal for power—contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste.” Now, that being said, high-level radioactive waste is definitely a problem and the Yucca Mountain Repository isn’t expected to open until 2020.
At the end of the day, in terms of real world solutions, I don’t think there’s a clear cut answer. The alternatives aren’t cheap enough to overcome the current regulations and policies that make it cheaper and easier to keep burning coal. We’re not going to run out of it, and the economic costs aren’t being accounted for.
Whether you think nuclear power is necessary or not I guess comes down to how serious you think the climate situation is. I think that the situation is quite dire and that efforts need to be made to curb burning of fossil fuels as soon as possible - nuclear power would certainly help (as would wind and even solar (i.e., PG&E and Edison are signing massive deals - California utilities must obtain 20% of electricity from renewable resources by 2010 and 33% by 2020)). As they address and attack different parts of the problem (and the market), I see nuclear as complimentary to the other things that can be done.
(I also think that Sam Stone’s comment on fungibility is especially worth noting - it’d be easy to consume lots less energy, but that doesn’t mean any coal power plants will be shut down. That’ll only happen if the market or policy makes it so that it’s more expensive to burn coal than the alternatives.)
DSeid, I think you have a lot of good points, wish I had read that before I posted since I by and large agree w/ the main thrust of your bottom-line:
I think that in the U.S., nuclear won’t play a huge role. If you look at the trends, you’ll notice that our power consumption isn’t skyrocketing in any case. It’d be great if we could simply be more efficient (again, taking a look at the [Energy Flow] almost 60% of total energy (and 70% of electrical) is lost…
That being said, I’m a bit puzzled about that NYTimes article since China is building… [URL=http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf63.html]a lot](https://eed.llnl.gov/flow/pdf/ucrl-tr-129990-02.pdf) of plants over the next few years. Which is a good thing since the number of coal plants planned to built built around the world is staggering. (Gassification may help but it’s still mind-boggling)
That’s one heck of a first post, let me say.
Note that we really don’t know what effect massive use of Wind Power will have on the climate.
And, they are well known for chopping birds- especially Raptors- into birdburger.
Sure, at the current level, or even several times that, there seems to be no serious environmental problems, but decades ago, Human caused Global Warming was more or less unknown.
It is not at all impossible that in a few generations the problems with wide spread wind power might make Global Warming look trivial. Doubtful, but AFAIK, there have been no real studies on this.
What we really need is Energy from a wide range of sources so that no one source can damage the environment like CO2 is doing. And sources that show no signs of running out, like Oil. Sources like: Wind, solar, coal, tidal, Geothermal, and yes- Nuke.
randomfoo, that may be a first post but you’ve sure impressed me. Well organized and cited.
Thanks for the welcome guys.
BTW, in regards to alternatives, it’s still early days, but if I had to put my money on any one area that is most exiting, it’d be on photovoltaic solar. Nanosolar has just started shipping it’s first thin-film solar panels.
There are a couple huge things about this:
[ol]
[li] Pricing for panels is under $1/watt, making it price competitive w/ coal - this is amazingly big news. It really changes everything.[/li][li] Panels are “printed”, leapfrogging traditional silicon/vacuum deposition processes. This makes for much higher throughput and cheap expansion - the reported production capacity for their new facility is 430 MW (that’d make it the biggest solar producer in the US - although FirstSolar was at 60 MW last year, 210 MW this year, and plans to add another 480 MW next year) [/li][/ol]
Current capacity for photovoltaics is still tiny but with grid parity and easy manufacturing scale-up, it looks like it might have finally turned the corner. The experimentation w/ efficient plastic photovoltaics (usually involving quantum dots and buckyballs) are cool, but not as cool as low-cost solar being rolled out instead of new and coal-plants being built.
(Local grid-connected solar is also exciting since it can reduce transmission and distribution losses, which can be non-trivial.)
See also: Google’s RE<C Initiative which is investing in other projects that aim to cost less than coal.
Windscale was constructed with the sole purpose of making a British nuclear bomb, at a time when nuclear power wasn’t really understood (the first atomic detonation occurred only a few years before Windscale was built). Despite this, the impact of Windscale was relatively minor (local farming was affected) - a real disaster was prevented by a great piece of engineering, Cockcroft’s filters.
Using the Windscale “disaster” (“disaster” used in the loosest sense) as a reason to abandon civilian nuclear power generation is ridiculous.
randomfoo I also extend my welcome! (I hope that some mod fixes links on #28 though.) Nanosolar has seemed like big news. Will other thin film makers (like Applied Materials, AMAT) be able to match their techniques and price points? Or do they have a lock?
Also how big of a role do you see for technologies that effectively power shift allowing the generating capacity to produce more during current low demand and use it later instead of peakers with little loss? (Among these options are large stationary power arrays of the newer nanobased lithium batteries like those of Altairnano that can last for many thousands of full discharge cycles, or even the concept of using EVs someday in V2G applications.)
DrDeth I at least agree with your bottom line.
Is it? That’s at odds with my 15 years of experience as a manager and engineer on coal power plant and biomass projects. Why don’t you explain to me how easy it is to re-power a coal plant (as referenced in your OP).
That’s not to say that there are many improvement that could be made relatively easily to the efficiency of coal plants. I do analyses and write reports on such every month. But we’re talking on a scale of 1-5% overall, typically less than 2%.
(Sigh) No, it won’t, to any major extent, as much as I would personally like to see it. I’ve posted at-length on this and will not re-hash it. Seriously, you need to investigate this a bit deeper.
With you, I sincerely doubt that any nuclear plant can be built in under 7 years from first licensing hearing to on-grid. I think the Dopers here would be surprised to hear that the license preparation and hearings alone can cost much more than $10M for a nuclear plant. Trust me; I’ve seen the numbers, and know someone managing just such a project.
I dispute the “fact” however that there is a “serious shortage” of nuclear engineers. And are we talking EPC, operations, or what?
Can you list for me exactly which nuclear power plants Halliburton built or is building?
You are aware that we can’t even get IGCC plants built (Stanton B was just canceled…), so how are we going to get to this FutureGen snake oil?
What numbers is your belief based on?
I do but they are so variable depending upon the type of upgrade, location, etc. it’s almost meaningless to throw out blanket numbers, and I suspect anyone who does is oversimplifying for the public.
What do you mean, know of?
Why do you think their method is any better or worse than others? (conflict of interest note - I’ve actually worked on the Iowa switchgrass project referenced in the link)
Why do you think their system of algae will suddenly work, when others tested in year past have not? On what scientific basis have you evaluated their claims?
The problem is this - the US is HUGE in terms of its energy budget, and simply increasing coal power plant efficiency by a percent or two isn’t going to do more than remove a year’s worth of demand growth. I suggest exploring what the “true” carbon neutrality of biomass co-firing is, because I’ll bet that it’s not nearly as much as you’d expect. Plus the fact that very few coal power plants 1) can burn biomass more than 1-2%, 2) have enough available to even support that level of fuel burn rate.
IMO at some point, since demand shows no signs of decreasing, gas is getting tighter and tighter, and coal plants harder and harder to get permitting, it’s going to be nuclear or blackouts.
Are you suggesting that absorbing energy out of wind will alter the climate? Interesting hypothesis- as you note, there has been little consideration of the impacts besides bird kills. And that is far from clear cut. IIRC, many more birds are killed from flying into buildings and being hunted by housecats, although that will change as wind turbines are scaled up. And, some argue, a lot of birds are whacked so hard that there’s no proof that a bird was ever there.
You’re in “Great Debates” . All you’ve done is fling opinion. We have not had a problem with nuclear power plants in the US that can be registered as a health issue compared to coal fired plants. Your singular disdain for profit is completely unfounded. Socialism (IE the USSR) has produced far more environmental chaos than anything found in societies that are based on free enterprise. Profit is the result of efficiency and the protection of assets is part of that efficiency. Companies strive hard not to have accidents because it is profitable to do so. Every company I’ve ever worked for has gone out of their way to maintain safety. It isn’t always a benevolent intention (because of lawsuits) but the process works. It’s a lot harder suing a government agency.
The United States is the most technologically advanced country in the world and we have the technical background to produce nuclear power plants. We also have the necessary government oversight to see that it’s done right.
Yes, or perhaps change wind patterns.
The amount and environmental impact of bird kills is hotly debated, true.