Are more nuclear power plants a good idea?

Great Debates
81

The big thing to understand about the cost of nuclear fuel is that unlike fossil-fueled plants, the fuel costs are only a tiny percentage of the cost of nuclear power. A doubling in the cost of oil will result in almost a doubling of the cost of electricity, but a doubling in the cost of uranium only results in a 5% increase in the price of electricity provided by nuclear reactors. This means we just aren’t all that price sensitive to the cost of uranium. And at 10 times current cost, we can extract uranium from seawater - enough uranium to power our civilization for several thousand years. A ten-fold increase in the price of uranium wouldn’t even double the cost of nuclear power. And we’re probably 200-500 years away from needing to do that.

For all intents and purposes, availability of uranium is not a limiting factor - at all.

82

[QUOTE=gonzomax]

These are the kind of people who make the plants. They will do anything for profit. They will cut safety and training to make money.
[/QUOTE]

No, no, no. Your “cite”, which is really just some guy’s anti-Bush anger blog, says ONLY the following under the link:

Now, that’s just bad. First off, anyone in the least bit familiar with nuclear power should know that centrifuges for enrichment are not even remotely related to building nuclear power plants, and second, anyone even totally unfamiliar with nuclear power should know that detonators are not typical equipment found at nuclear power plants.

And most importantly, nowhere does it back up in any way your claim on the first page of this thread:

When I first read this I was curious, because I was unaware of Halliburton building nuclear power plants. So I asked you to clarify. You refused to do so. Again, and again, and again.

But it’s more than that. Next, on the first page, you claimed the following:

And following that, I de-constructed that claim, giving at least 3 key examples of how in fact that did not happen, and I further asked:

[QUOTE=Me]
Please provide your cite for the “Bushies” (whoever those are) “stopp(ing) the suits.” Because my cites seem to say that they did not.
[/QUOTE]

…and you have again refused to answer this.

At this point, I think it’s clear that several of your claims have no support. All evidence thus far says these “facts” were posted to mislead the debate and get people fired up about “guess what *else” Teh Bush and his friends did!" And as I’ve shown, that argument indeed has feet of clay.

A lot of folks are willing to let these things slide because “everyone knows” if you want to fit in with the “funny and kewl Dopers” you have to assign all blame, everywhere, to Bush. But unfortunately, I just can’t do that. It’s a character flaw that as much as I loathe Bush and his Administration, I must nonetheless try to look at energy issues factually and based on hard citations, experience, and with proper qualifications and boundaries. So I’m going to ask you every single day to provide your cites or come clean.

So now…please provide me which nuclear power plants have been built by Halliburton. And please resolve exactly how the “Bushies” stopped all lawsuits, when I proved that three of the most important environmental suits of our time not only proceeded under Bush, but in one of them (AEP) the Administration (along with the States) actually won a huge, $5B environmental judgment.

83

[QUOTE=Una Persson]
…and you have again refused to answer this.
[/QUOTE]

Does the term ‘Modus operandi’ help? :wink: Good luck getting gonzo to respond to any request for clarification, let alone one for cites to back up his claim. You are going to need it if you are seriously hopeful of getting either…

(FWIW, I found your cites and posts quite educational…so they weren’t a total waste)

-XT

84

!.Nuclear plants even in France take 6 years to build. here it will probably take 10. I see many articles that have that position.
2. Construction is hugely expensive. They quote 2 bill and bringing it in at 5 bill would be a break.
3. They are inherently unsafe . The builders cut corners to save money at the cost of safety. We all remember the Silkwood story.
4. When up and running they cut safety and training to increase profits. Their interests are fundamentally at odds with public welfare.
5. There are hundreds of incidents on existing plants. A hell of a lot more covered up. Eventually one will blow.
6. They produce a hazardous waste problem that no country has solved. It has an added benefit of being handy for dirty bombs and nukes.
7. The alternate energy systems from solar to wind etc are cleaner and their technology is growing. They get better and better.
8. The pricks in charge of our energy in America are thieves and do not hold the public welfare sacrosanct. They fight any and all attempts to clean up the coal fired plants. The scrubbers and other technology have been around a long time. They go to court and pressure the senators and congressmen to give them a pass to pollute. Somehow with nukes ,do we really think they will change?
I have spent a lot of time reading about nuke power and I come down against it.

85

gonzo let me save Una the effort. You still haven’t provided any evidence of some very specific claims that you’ve made despite Una’s very specific request that you do so.

Until you do so you may find that few, including those who agree with some of your conclusions, will even spend any energy considering anything else you have to say on the subject.

86

[QUOTE=Una Persson]
Can you list for me exactly which nuclear power plants Halliburton built or is building?
[/QUOTE]

I left out would. Who would build these things. It would be our buddies from Iraq. I did not say Halliburton built them. Actually when I tried to look up who did ,it was not easy. They were before the internet became what it is now.

87

Well that confession of error now said, you are not all wrong. Your claims about Halliburton did make me curious. They seem to be indirectly involved in new nukes at the Tennessee Valley Authority.

And they have done some nuclear plant building before too.

Also from here.

Halliburton may expand its business.

As an aside, the same link also includes this about the carbon cost of nuclear power, especially as lower quality ore is mined.

And Sam I had been quite clear that such GHG production was an important part of the cost of getting more uranium out.

So along the course of this thread I have learned that nuclear isn’t as expensive as I thought but that more significantly more nuclear may end up having fairly little benefit in terms of total CO2 reductions, esp relative to significantly more renewables (which can be “scaled up” to handle expected increases in electricity generating demands and replacement of retiring plants). OTOH I have also learned that sequestration is more costly than I thought, at least right now, and those coal fires give me pause. Yes they can occur naturally, but mining increases their risk significantly. Each one of those is like a nuclear melt-down in terms of environmental impact. I am now a bit less sanguine about “clean coal.”

88

[QUOTE=DSeid]
So along the course of this thread I have learned that nuclear isn’t as expensive as I thought but that more significantly more nuclear may end up having fairly little benefit in terms of total CO2 reductions, esp relative to significantly more renewables (which can be “scaled up” to handle expected increases in electricity generating demands and replacement of retiring plants).
[/QUOTE]

If you learned these things from this thread then all I can say is…let the thread die. Because it’s not accomplishing anything. Nuclear won’t significantly reduce C02? :confused: Renewables can be scaled up to meet increasing demand and replace aging plants to any significant degree? :confused: It might be interesting to see WHERE you learned all this in the thread.

-XT

89

Nearly all engineering companies are involved in some way with power plant construction. Whether it’s managing the laydown area and developing roads to building the reactor (which is going to be GE, Westinghouse, etc. - not Halliburton). Even my company has been involved in about 50 nuclear projects, and could never claim to have built a power plant.

The claim was as I quoted above, and it was false. Now, after days of asking, we have some sort of admission of…well, I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’m tired and pretty much anyone reading this thread can chalk down what happened and who said what when this comes up in a future thread.

Now, about the “Bushies” and all those lawsuits they stopped…that still hasn’t been addressed.

90

EPA's rule on coal plants' mercury emissions challenged - ABC News Ok I will play.
You are aware that new plants are forced to install clean equipment. However if you rebuild 20 % of the plant ,you can call it maintenance and evade cleaning up. The coal plants then claim only doing 20 % a year and in 5 years they have rebuilt while evading the pollution rules.
States urge EPA to tighten rules on coal plants | Reuters The pressure to clean is coming through states. the feds are on the side of energy companies.

91

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20040319/ai_n14570451 Here is a an article about Browner EPA chief in Clintons admin decrying Bush rollbacks.
Here is an article about Spitzer spearheading suits against the EPA . In this ons Whitman a Bush appointee, was referring to the political danger of rolling back the EPA rules.

92

Inside Sports did a story on this last year. It is about the lack of sports being played near power plants. It is also about huge emphysema clusters around them. Then it shows the difference when Cheney got in.

93

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
EPA's rule on coal plants' mercury emissions challenged - ABC News Ok I will play.
You are aware that new plants are forced to install clean equipment. However if you rebuild 20 % of the plant ,you can call it maintenance and evade cleaning up. The coal plants then claim only doing 20 % a year and in 5 years they have rebuilt while evading the pollution rules.
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0530133020070605 The pressure to clean is coming through states. the feds are on the side of energy companies.
[/QUOTE]

Look, I’m tired of the sidestepping here.

First off, your “20% over 5 years” claim is patently and deliberately false. You cannot re-build a power plant through that method and evade pollution rules. Plus, your “cites” don’t even address that at all. Anyone out there reading this actually believe you can rebuild a power plant in 20% increments and avoid NSR rules? Come on, don’t be shy, step forward.

Your first “cite” about mercury emissions simply alleges that the Clinton Administration said coal plants should use the most high-tech controls for mercury emissions. HOWEVER, the Clinton Administration did not enforce this. How do I know this? Because while the Clinton Administration was in power, not one, single, solitary coal plant was forced to install a mercury removal device (although there were a couple of test-bed and pilot-scale tests). In fact, there was no actual “rule” made. Moreover, here is the original release from the Clinton Administration, put out as a “welcome basket” surprise in December, 2000:
From: http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/b1ab9f485b098972852562e7004dc686/cd30963685856f30852569b5005ee740?OpenDocument

What exact mercury regulation did Clinton put into place in his term that Bush “rolled back?” Link to the exact regulation; nothing less is acceptable. Here, let’s review that quote again:

And guess what - that’s what happened. The regulations were developed, and will be put into place. The timetable slipped a little bit, but gee, it has for just about every single environmental reg under any Administration.

The Bush Administration wants to set a 70% reduction, and they want to allow reduction to be counted if it happens via installation of other, beneficial pollution control equipment. This is to encourage people to do things like installing dry or wet FGD systems early (and it IS working, FTR) because by acting early to remove SO2, they can also help reduce mercury. Your “cite” boils down to a political argument that some think that more than 70% removal is needed. That is a whole separate issue.

Your second “cite” is talking about a suit over NSR. Nowhere did the “Bushies” stop all the suits. In fact, the whole point of the article is that there is a dispute ongoing. Your “cite” undermines your own claim.

Your third “cite” is vague claims by Browner with no factual information called out in them. I really don’t even know what you’re getting at. And don’t care.

Next link - I mean, are you serious? An article on sports played near power plants? And the claim that the Bush Administration “rolled back” standards is false, and has been debunked by me on this message board for years. It’s as false as the claim of “Jesus Horses” being used by creationists. The Bush Administration did not reduce hourly or energy-specific (lbm/MBtu) emissions rates under the CAA and its Amendments. I don’t know how else to explain this, but since you’re not listening I won’t bother. They did allow for annual increases if unit capacity factor increased. This is not a “rollback”, no matter how much the environmental “experts” at HBO want to call it that. And the difference when Cheney “got in”? What did Cheney do? What difference? You aren’t even reading your own Googled links, are you?

Let’s put this “rollback” claim to rest. You post the exact link to the legislation that “rolled back” emissions limits under the CAA in your very next post, or don’t bother posting at all. No HBO articles written by some journalist whose industry knowledge is that they went to Wikipedia, no articles which are really just fighting between environmental groups, the exact legislative link.

All you are doing is Googling for Dollars. You’re digging up “cites” which are nothing more than grabbing headlines of any argument over any emissions regulation existing or proposed. And I’m tired of people on the SDMB using the “Hayte teh Bush” zeitgeist as an excuse to pick and choose and grab Googled links about energy and power plant matters, 99.9% of the people on here having no actual experience or knowledge on the subject whatsoever other than “some kewl teenager has an anti-Bush anger blog here.”

Defend or retract this statement of yours with actual hard cites, not Googled quick-links.

94

I think we need a new acronym. IANUP - I am not Una Persson. I work in energy field as well, but not in the engineering side. But I have a more than a passing knowledge of this stuff, yet I will always defer to UP who is just a nails on expert at this.

The bottom line of course, is that there is no one solution…nuclear, renewable, cleaner coal plants, upgraded transmission facilities. It is going to take a whole host of technologies, new and old to meet our electricity needs as well as whatever other goals we have, such as GHG reductions and energy efficiency.

95

[QUOTE=Gangster Octopus]
I think we need a new acronym. IANUP - I am not Una Persson. I work in energy field as well, but not in the engineering side. But I have a more than a passing knowledge of this stuff, yet I will always defer to UP who is just a nails on expert at this.
[/QUOTE]

Gangster, thank you, but that’s also just not me. I make mistakes, all the time, and there are a lot of different ways to view things, especially legislation. I’m just getting frustrated right now because a lot of things in the energy and environment arena are mis-quoted or simply lied about in the press. Yes, it is true that Bush did not do as much as another Administration could have done, or would have done. Yes, it’s true that things moved slow on mercury. But they did move.

But my point is that many things which are reported and passed around about energy and the environment are urban myths. The dispute over NSR is one of them, mercury is another. And nothing in this thread, or outside of it, backs the claim that, in effect, Bush is openly raping the environment. Anyone can point to any industry or factory and write an article about how “it could be cleaner” and “why won’t someone in the government do something about it.” It’s easy for some teenage blogger to grab a few articles and claim a cover up, conspiracy, or “evil Cheney influence.” But is that how we want to examine the problem?

And one thing which folks don’t seem to think about is the “follow the money” principle. They see the “utility industry” as this monolithic bloc of evil cartels, not realizing that environmental regs also benfit those same cartels. B&W, ABB, Westinghouse, GE, Fluor, S&L, S&W, etc. all both build power plants (or very major components of such) and emissions equipment. And the big money is in emissions equipment - the markups on emissions design and components is huge, and at my company is responsible for most of our profits. A VP at B&W I had drinks with at a conference this last year told me that they are telling some folks that it will be 18-36 months before they can even start on their emissions control projects, because they’re so busy. And they’re making a large profit on them, too. There is a huge international component to this as well - the “utility industry” is highly multinational, with many US companies having half or more of their revenue from overseas work.

Let me lay out one example - why the coal companies aren’t thinking that the world is coming to an end with emissions regulations. Point 1 - even with a full complement of FGD/SCR/baghouse/ACI, a coal power plant is still cheaper to operate than a gas plant, and from the EIA price estimates I see, will be so for the foreseeable future. Utilities are going to close some small coal plants, true, and I’m working with some that are doing that. There could even be a hundred small plants that close. But most all of them are going to be saying open, and, after they increase their emissions removal to meet NSR, increasing their capacity factors. In other words - they may close a 40MW plant that only runs 1/4 of the year, and instead improve their 1600MW plant and run it 10% more of the year. Net result - more coal burned. The EIA shows projections of coal use only increasing (in mass terms) out to 2035.

Second, all those controls now allow plants “locked” into low-sulfur coal sources to burn medium and even high-sulfur sources. The result? Now all those politically important Appalachian and Illinois Basin/Ohio sources become profitable again, and the coal companies benefit further from this. And you better believe those Tennessee and Kentucky coal companies have a lot of political clout…

Third, the potential to shift to higher sulfur coal sources now means that the railroads east of the Mississippi have more potential to get coal freight from local mines, which is a high-profit item for them. There are some railroads who are very much looking forward to this, in fact. (some wonder about reduction in PRB traffic, but really, they expect to make it back and then some in the higher-margin short-haul traffic)

Fourth, there is a huge support industry for the emissions components. Chemical companies produce ammonia and urea for SCR. Mining companies produce limestone and lime for FGD systems. Concrete and cement plants get more good flyash for their kilns. Wallboard manufacturers get top-quality cheap gypsum from FGD waste. And all those new emissions controls need maintenance, in the form of parts, labor, tuning, inspections, etc. Whether it’s something as simple as check-valves on slurry lines, or exotic vanadium SCR catalyst, there is a huge industry out there that grows every year to support environmental equipment.

Finally, does anyone really think that their local utility will lose money if they are forced to install $5B in emissions components? Who pays, after all? I’ll tell you who - YOU do. It ends up on your electric bill in the form of higher rates. The utility isn’t going to be installing a half-billion dollar FGD by cutting executive bonuses - they’re going to pass it right on down to the ratepayer, where the buck stops.

There are huge portions of the “utility industry” that benefit very much so from these emissions controls. So if you follow the money as a mental exercise, it seems like there is incentive for the industry as a whole to not really be fighting emissions controls - assuming that unfair competition doesn’t enter into it. It’s true that some directive which said “coal production will be reduced by 20% or else” would cause all sorts of havoc among the coal companies, and you would see some serious political resistance - no denying that. But that’s not what people are fighting about.

As I’ve said before in another thread, IMO and IME the main concern voiced by the utility executives I speak to is unfair competition. As long as the rules don’t benefit one company over another, and are simple and don’t require full-time staffs of lawyers to figure them out (like CEM rules do right now…we have 6 full-time lawyers to try to interpet them, for crying out loud!) then I think they would be happy.

96

[QUOTE=Una Persson]
… even with a full complement of FGD/SCR/baghouse/ACI, a coal power plant is still cheaper to operate than a gas plant, and from the EIA price estimates I see, will be so for the foreseeable future…
[/QUOTE]
Excuse my unending supply of ignorance, but what do those letters all stand for?

Anyway, I would have been shocked if Halliburton didn’t have some pokers in nuclear’s fire. Energy. Construction. Huge company. Of course they are involved in some capacity. Cheney though did famously push massively on building many new nukes as part of that 2001 Energy Plan, and massive new federal incentives for building new nukes were then put in place. If I have time later I’ll try to dig up some links about what those incentives were.

97

FWIW, I know what a couple of them are from memory.

FGD is a Fuel Gas Desulfurization. SCR is Selective Catalytic Reduction. ACI is (I THINK) Association for Conservationist Information. I have no idea what baghouse is or stands for…I never heard that term before.

-XT

98

[QUOTE=xtisme]
FWIW, I know what a couple of them are from memory.

FGD is a Fuel Gas Desulfurization. SCR is Selective Catalytic Reduction. ACI is (I THINK) Association for Conservationist Information. I have no idea what baghouse is or stands for…I never heard that term before.

-XT
[/QUOTE]

ACI is activated carbon injection, the primary and most popular method under today’s technology for mercury removal - or at least, the most popular planned method. A baghouse (aka fabric filter, a term which I prefer but which is less commonly used) is used with ACI to capture the activated carbon particles with the mercury they capture to remove the particles from the flue gas (which has the added benefit of scrubbing out additional very small ash particles). Baghouses can and are used without ACI for the same purpose.

99

lol…well, so much for my memory. I’ll slink off now. :slight_smile:

-XT

100

Thanks Una and xtisme you knew more than I did!

I found a moment so here.