Are more nuclear power plants a good idea?

Great Debates
101

I get the impression you don’t know the technical meaning of “inherently safe” in nuclear engineering and thought it sounded like a nifty phrase to turn on its head. All the core designs currently in production are inherently safe and most of them are inherently stable. Of the ones that are not inherently stable, operator action is required to prevent negative reactivity addition and spontaneous shutdown.

And do they bribe the on-site NRC QAI representative? Cut corners all you want. It’ll get caught in quality assurance and you’ll do it again. For free. Until you do it right.

Considering it was more than three decades ago, some of us may not remember it.

Considering how radiation worker qualified personnel are paid and how closely health physics is scrutinized, it would have a greater long term impact on profits to not follow guidelines due to increase maintenance outages and the frequency of rework due to undertrained personnel. It really doesn’t save any money to cut corners.

What, pray tell, do you think “one will blow.” entails? You can have pressure boundary failure, but that’s not particularly hazardous to the public with a properly designed containment structure. Other than SR-1 (which bears little resemblance to commercial plants, ever, or any modern plant, anyway), I don’t recall hearing about a criticality excursion in the United States. The only thing that makes it exciting is the “ZOMG! NUCLEAR!” hysteria.

Maliciously burdensome regulation has created a waste problem no country has solved. If coal power’s fly ash was subjected to the same disposal regulations as low-level nuclear waste coal would produce a hazardous waste problem no country could solve. And if we incinerated low-level nuclear waste and used it as a filler in concrete (like the coal industry does with its radioactive waste) the problem would cease to be unmanageable.

Power plant RAM and spent fuel aren’t particularly suitable for either of those applications. Do encourage that misconception, though, it make give some would-be terrorists radiation sickness.

Solar, maybe. We’ll see. Wind? Not so much.

Are you asking if nuclear will change to get as lax and polluting as coal? Probably not.

Read more.

102

http://groups.msn.com/AAEA/cleanairissues.msnw Here is the regulation. It refers to the 20 % rule. read UNA

103

http://groups.msn.com/AAEA/newsourcereview.msnw This site near the bottom discusses the 20% rule and follows up with the Clinton admin generated dozens of lawsuits to control them. Subsequently dropped.

104

Now there you go again. YOU posted this:

Neither this latest “cite”, nor anything posted before, supports the ridiculous claim that you can rebuild a coal plant in 5 years and evade pollution rules.

Further, your “cite” is not telling the whole story. Compare what the EPA themselves said - it’s easy to find:
From: http://epa.gov/nsr/documents/fs20050606.pdf

Is there some ambiguity about the above sentence I bolded? This is what I’ve been saying the whole time, and for absolutely fucking years on this message board. There was no pollution limit rollback with this NSR ruling, despite how many anti-Bush folks desperately want that to be true. Net annual emissions could have increased as a function of a greater capacity factor*, and very well might in some cases, but permitted limits were not rolled back! And even then, there was no “rollback” because Congress had not established annual emissions limits for the plants (other than some overall goals for the nation as a whole, IIRC) in the first place!

Pay special attention to those other conditions too. Those weren’t just window dressing. “Fixed capital cost” is not the same as rebuilding 20% of the unit, especially when the first condition, “replacement may not change basic design parameters of the process unit” is obeyed, as well as the all-important second condition I bolded. And how the hell would someone determine factually what 20% even constitutes in terms of a “plant”, unless you look at cost? I don’t even know that I could.

I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish here in this thread, but you really need to think about this before you post another quick-found link that doesn’t say what you think it does.

Seriously, does anyone actually care about this topic any more? Because I think this really is my last post on this where I’m going to bother to look things up.
*It’s hard to even feel like power plants are too much to blame for an annual emissions increase even if they did (while fully meeting the emissions limits established by law). If Congress wanted to, nothing prevents them from setting annual net mass limits. Further, there are already a large number of power plants (I do not know how many, but several of my clients have them) which are already subject to an annual limit under State regulations, and therefore could not even increase their net annual emissions if they did upgrade. So one cannot even claim that “all” power plants would even potentially have the ability to increase net annual emissions, while still obeying their permitted limits, which typically are on an hourly, daily, or mass-energy (lbm/MBtu) basis.

105

That’s not at all what it says and you know that. Do you think people on this message board can’t read?

Further, I posted links to lawsuits regarding NSR that were not dropped, and were in fact pursued by the Bush Administration - and won. Here is one major one again.

I’m not going to bother to take this latest “cite” apart. I think everyone reading knows the score by now.

106

http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKT8219820070319 This shows that many Japanese are losing faith in the nuke plants due to cover ups and many incidents. This mirrors what the Scotsman articles said is happening in Scotland. These are 2 places that embraced and trusted the nuke power operators only to feel skeptical as time passes. I arrived there long ago.
Nuke plants are not only dangerous but a real serious incident could be catastrophic. /\ love the blind confidence you guys share. I just do not feel it.

107

We all knew the score before. I hate to see you beating your head against the wall…but then I realized that you weren’t actually doing this for gonzo (who is, sadly, a lost cause). You are doing this to educate the rest of us…and, FWIW, on THAT score you are doing a good job IMHO.

Anyone still confused need only compare post #104 to, say, posts #102/103 to see a fairly stark comparison between a well thought out argument that contains cites backing it up…to drive by links that one must slog through to attempt to figure out what the hell the posters point MIGHT be.

What you think this proves is beyond me. ‘Many’ people think that crystals will heal all sickness…or that yak blood or ground up dinosaur bones will give them a better woody. Does that make them right?

There are valid reasons to be concerned about nuclear power…just as there are valid concerns about a lot of things. Everything in life has associated risks that must be weighed vs it’s possible benefits to an individual and to society. You seem to have arrived at your version of ‘truth’ using a similar path to how the Flat Earthers have arrived at the ‘fact’ that the Earth is, well, flat.

-XT

108

Just out of curiosity I followed the latest drive by link to try and puzzle out whatever the point was supposed to be:

From gonzo’s cite:

I assume this was the point (since all this stuff happened a fairly long time ago…and obviously no one was injured in the making of this epic):

Well, that cuts it. Public confidence in Japan has been undermined. I guess nuclear power is doomed and they might as well pack up and go home. I think we should seriously look into going back to the whole hunter and gatherer thingy at this point…

-XT

109

Hey guys, gonzomax is not really participating in the discussion. He is simply throwing out boilerplate claims from the anti-nuke crowd with comments that indicate that he really does not understand even his own references.

Your general discussion will probably go more smoothly if you simply refrain from encouraging him by responding. I am sure that he is sincere in his beliefs, (as he has been sincere about the nature of economics and “big” business, religion, and other topics about which he is passionate). However, once you have established that his posts are simply emotional exclamations only tenuously connected to facts, I think that you can consider his arguments refuted and move one to continue your own donnybrooks.

110

Going back to wind power, would a mass switchover significantly affect the climate? After all, you’re taking energy out of it

111

As far as I know, the answer is ‘no one knows’.

112

There have been studies, but their accuracy is highly questionable. Overall, the consensus seems to be that it could have a minor impact, but not nearly as much as even current global warming has.

Here’s a technical paper I had bookmarked. I do not vouch for it as being good, bad, or ugly.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0406930101v1.pdf

113

Of course the same “don’t know” can be said of solar power, geothermal, and could have been said of television, radio, and computers. Perhaps more accurately it could be said that there is no reason to think so. (And on preview I see Una’s unvouched for link which supports that POV with a real analysis.)

And since wind power was brought into the discussion as a compare and contrast alternative to using massive amounts of additional nuclear power, that stands in stark contrast to the significant environmental effects (not exclusively climate) of uranium mining, especially as poorer ore sources are required in the near term future. The net effects on CO2 emissions due to harvesting poorer uranium sources have already been citied. There are of course also the already known environmental consequences of any massive mining operation especially those like uranium which include open pit operations which will, in the lower ore quality future, include massive amounts of stone harvested to get out sufficient uranium. Finally, there the more controversial environmental impacts, claimed by some but disputed by others.

xtisme certainly you and I seem to be not reading the same things. Let me try to see if we can come to some common understandings (agreements, no, understandings, maybe.)

When I opened this thread I was reacting to what I have been seeing as an unrealistic enthusiasm for massive deployment of new nuclear power. I track this back to Cheney’s 2001 Energy Policy meetings on Bush’s behalf:

If I understand your position, you, like Cheney, believe in massive amounts of new nuclear plants. Your position differs from Cheney’s in that you’d use them to replace extant coal plants including coal plants early in their life cycle. Still the same issues re rapid nuclear power roll-out exist.

The concerns of the utilities over the “economic viability of building new nuclear power plants anytime soon” were addressed in 2005 with government money as already cited. With those governmental monies underwriting it and the financial risks, utilities once again love nuclear. With those assurances we the people assume most of the potential financial risks so what’s not to love?

The environmental concerns are not so well addressed in my mind and have been referenced in this post above. Mining poor quality ore sources will be needed with additional demand for uranium and that mining process has significant GHG and other environmental consequences.

The practical concerns over the ability to build them fast enough to have a substantial impact has been addressed before as well.

We disagree on the need also. My position remains that replacing coal plants beyond those at the end of their lifespan, is not practical or required. You see it otherwise. I see more usefulness in renewables than you do. In particular I see that they can meet marginal growing demands without a need to immediately move into massive amounts of new nuclear plants. Wind can even be used as baseload power.

Finally I see a third avenue not addressed in the Cheney-speak of supply vs conservation: efficiency. That includes efficiency at extant plants, efficiency at the demand side, and efficiency at delivering the power. Our transmission infrastructure is a huge waste of power. Improving that grid improves reliability and quality of power in addition to reducing losses along the way. In the meantime increasing the amount of power generated in a distributed manner (something solar and wind can contribute to, as can better use of biomass by industry) can decrease the expected increases in demands upon the transmission grid.

So again, I am not and have not been arguing against any and all nuclear. I have no interest in demonizing nuclear like Gonzo’s sources do. I instead am reacting to what I see as an “irrational enthusiasm” that I perceive many now have for rapid deployment of new nuclear power plants on a fairly massive and impractical scale.

114

Interesting, thank you. It doesn’t address a wholesale switchover, but the Implications section does discuss up to 2 TW, saying that there would be no detrimental effect.

115

That led me to this thesis (pdf), which I’m finding most interesting, but it still talks about mitigating the effects of other CO2 emissions.

116

You may want to check the Garwin Archive and The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists - both highly authoritative sources that none can accuse of the anti-nuclear bias.

  1. Building nuclear powerplants is slow and expensive if it is to be done safely.
  2. The past record at least in US is a very mixed bag. The fact we did not have a full-scale disaster with a wide area contamination and/or lethal radiation injuries so far should be no comfort: There were few close calls and some of them were covered up. Any techology in practice coexists with greedy and incompetent management.
  3. Reprocessing the spent fuel is a terrible idea, it currently makes no economic sense while it is increasing the actual volume of radioactive waste. It also allows the isolated plutonium too easy to divert for bomb-making purposes.
  4. Reactor-grade plutonium is very suitable for making bombs with boosted design, with tritium. (Too hard to build for a terrorist group but feasible for a rogue regime). As Garwin comments it is quite easy to get full yield with reactor plutonium bomb when one knows what he is doing. One only needs 3-5 kilos of Pu per bomb.
  5. There is enough uranium for World to run on nuclear-only powerplants for few decades
  6. But the spent fuel has to be kept in cooling ponds for several years because the heat produced by its intense radiation can melt and ignite the spent fuel rods without the cooling
  7. And the dry-cask storage on site is only a stop-gap solution until a nuclear repository is built (Yucca Mountains). It is hard to imagine expanding greatly the number of nuclear powerplants if the repository is not completed

To the point 2 I would like to add that there have allways been explosions in oil refineries, fertilizer- or ammunition-producing factories. Briges and dams collapsed and sloppy air traffic controlers cased the planes to colide mid air. But consequences of a full-scale nuclear disaster or a succesfull terrorist attack are enormously more scary compared to other industrial catastrophes. I could live with more nuclear powerplants but if you are going to build so many you should expect more close calls - and you get a full-scale disaster sometimes too.

When I read of cases of the reactor pressure vessel steel nearly eaten through by boric acid or by the lack of backup pumps for spent fuel storage pond (and managers trying to ridicule and muffle their own officer urging them to spend money on safety upgrades) and I think: Do I want to live near to one of these?

117

OK…let’s make sure we’re talking about the same thing. Before any discussion gets too far about T&D losses, let’s look at the magnitudes involved - see the Sankey diagram on page 221 of this link: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec8.pdf

T&D losses only account for 1.31 Quads out of an energy input of 41.27 Quads - about 3.1%. In terms of the net generation, T&D losses account for 1.31 out of 13.83 Quads - about 10%.

I’m sensitive to this because IRL and on other places I often have to debunk a “factoid” that says anywhere from 25-50% of all our electricity is “lost” in transmission and distribution (T&D).

It’s unclear that there’s a huge room for improvement, but 10% loss of net is something that certainly should be addressed.

I think conservation is a principal component of any sane energy plan. I am reluctant to push it hard as an argument on here, however, because in the past I’ve been subjected to some insane pretzel-logic by folks on here who somehow believe that conservation doesn’t help anything at all. But good God, there’s so much waste in our Society it’s insane. The energy audits I’ve been asked to review of city energy use and homes are jaw-dropping in the level of waste. See my recent thread on programmable thermostats in MPSIMs, where I demonstrate with hard numbers how much energy and CO2 emissions I saved by my programmable thermostat, and where I mention how only a minority of homes have them.

You want to see something scary? See this page here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.html

Look at the row labeled “Cable boxes”. Note the total energy use required by cable boxes in the US - 2.9 billion kWh were consumed by cable boxes. That’s right, 2.9 BILLION. It’s stunning. FTR, that means it would take a 473MW (net) coal power plant running at a 70% net capacity factor to supply just the cable boxes sitting there on people’s TV tops.

(2.9E9 kWh / 1000 kWh/MWh) / (8760*0.70) = 473

Folks (no one in particular, just “folks”) who talk about energy matters often have no actual idea of the enormous magnitude of electrical use in the US. If just the cable TV boxes alone require a whole medium-sized coal power to run…then there’s so much room for improvement.

Let’s look at some other fun numbers, assuming that a typical medium-sized 500MW power plant can put out about 3 billion kWh per year.

  • Coffee makers require 2 power plants.
  • Swimming pools (residential ones) require about 5.8 power plants.
  • Telephone answering machines require almost a whole power plant.
  • About 28 whole power plants of energy is “residual”, which is unaccounted-for or “other”.

Anyone who can’t see the fat dripping from those numbers like from a Bob Evans Ticker Stopper Skillet Special is willfully blind.

And that’s just residential numbers. Look at everything else around you. My workplace chills itself to an insane level in the summer, where many employees have to walk around with sweaters or even coats on. The reason given is because it “helps the computers”, which is bullshit. I’ve been told personally that “the executive officers don’t like it hot.” Hot is a relative term, I guess. It might be just a coincidence that those who say the temperature is “fine” have BMI’s that are at least 30 or higher…gosh, I don’t see any connection at all there. We have a huge amount of lighting on, even though the employees have repeatedly made petitions to turn them off. Conference room lights have no ability to have their lights even turned off! - so all day long, and night, conference rooms sit there burning through hundreds of Watts of lighting in each room. When folks go on vacation, they undock their laptops and leave their goddamn monitors on for days, weeks, or months while they’re out of town. I go around and turn them off every now and then - only to get flack from even the people I manage, who accuse me of being like “their mom.”

The short - despite the moaning and misdirection bullshit of some I’ve fought in the past, based on the energy audits I’ve seen I believe that the US could cut energy consumption by 20% across the board and see very little change in our quality of life.

118

I’m too late for the edit window but I should note that the thesis does operate under that constraint, so I am not criticising it for that. I’ve been very cheeky and emailed the guy.

119

Well given that it is you Una I’ll save myself the download of a more than 221 page pdf and believe it. :slight_smile:

Your fleshing it out with real numbers is appreciated.

120

Conservation is certainly a good idea, and there is certainly a lot of low-hanging fruit out there to be plucked. Our office has probably 150 computers in it - and most of them stay on all night when they don’t need to. Windows is terrible with its hibernate functions - they work inconsistently, sometimes they just stop working, and people don’t have time to fuss around with them - especially when the worker has zero incentive to conserve energy.

However, conservation does not change the fundamental problem. You can’t conserve enough that you can power your society with renewables alone. Nor can you conserve enough to eliminate global warming as a problem. So in that sense, adding conservation to the discussion of energy infrastructure is a diversion from the real issues. If we could talk about it sensibly in terms of ROI, overall cost of energy, and the like, that would be fine. But far too often it’s used as a trump card by environmentalists who refuse to face the hard choices we have today. They throw out wind and solar as our saviours, and when you point out that they can’t make up our power needs, they toss waste and conservation into the mix and end the debate.

Una, how much do you honestly think we could save with conservation before it starts to become painful to conserve more? How much low-hanging fruit is there out in the world? 10%? 20%? 50%?

Also, as a worldwide solution, you have to remember that conservation is less effective than you might think, because the net effect of one-half of the world conserving energy is to make it less expensive for the other half that doesn’t give a rat’s ass, giving them incentive to consume more. Lowering the price of energy through conservation also acts as a disincentive to further research into alternative energy and energy efficiency.

The other problem I have with conservation is that I don’t want to see it as an excuse for more government intervention in our lives. As the market price of energy goes up, people will conserve voluntarily. If we aren’t willing to wait for that, then that means all kinds of intrusive government regulations - and again, if the conservation isn’t voluntary based on market conditions, imposing artificial restrictions will just result in cheaper energy for those who still waste it.

Nonetheless, I agree that conservation should be part of any sane energy policy - it just shouldn’t dominate the debate or divert discussions of difficult choices.