Bold my goddamn name next time. It’s polite.
And I did answer the fucking question. Read it again.
Just on the issue of costs. :
Nuclear =1.87 cents per kilowatt-hour
Solar = 10 to 14 cents per kilowatt-hour
Not to say that a doubling of electricity cost using wind is untenable, but claims that it s cheaper than nuclear are pure bunkum. A five to seven fold increase from solar is simply impractical. Anyone suggesting that we could have anything like the current standard of living with 7 times the price for our power isn’t living in he real world.
The fact is that we can very rapidly (~20 years) replace most if not all the world’s power needs with nuclear is needed. And we can do that using current technology in a manner that will have far, far fewer health and environmental risks than any current power regime.
So the question I put to you Oakminster is why you feel we need to spend any more money doing tests?
See post number 55. And bold my goddamn name.
Many words, but you haven’t even attempted to answer my question.
The fact is that we can very rapidly (~20 years) replace most if not all the world’s power needs with nuclear is needed. And we can do that using current technology in a manner that will have far, far fewer health and environmental risks than any current power regime.
So the question I put to you Oakminster is why you feel we need to spend any more money doing tests?
I wish this thread was in the Pit. There’s some incredible ignorance in this thread, and with the way rules have been enforced lately in GD I’m uncertain if I’m even allowed to call another poster “ignorant” or not.
It is nothing…we in the USA of Obama are spending trillions-often with no clue of where the money is going!. I like the “Stimulus” Bill-not one of our esteemed senators have read the entire bill.
Barring all the obstructionism? That is about as practical a suggestion as the one you make to barring all obstructionism to ending religious belief worldwide. I mean this in all seriousness and respect for your position, but you do realize that barring all obstructionism to things we oppose is just simply not plausible, even in just a discussion?
I’m ignorant and feel free to call me that, I’m not offended.
Indeed, the average production cost of nuclear is low. That number does not include the cost of capital. Wind and solar have even lower production costs. Counting for capital costs nuclear is substantially higher and by some estimates significantly higher than many other electricity sources. Including capital costs one source quotes
although I have read lower numbers as well.
The point of the op Blake is not how expensive a nuclear plant is to run. It is not, and neither is a wind farm or a utility grade solar plant or a geothermal plant, or so on. The point is how expensive they are to build and that hopes that the new generation of “standardized” plants would lower those initial capital costs have turned out to be untrue and that budgeted and “anticipated” costs may underestimate true costs dramatically.
That may be true, but it’s dishonest, illogical and misleading for the ones doing the obstruction to then claim that the thing they obstruct is expensive for technical reasons, and that this expense s the reason why they are obstructing it.
Nuclear power is not expensive because of any technical or inherent economic reason. It’s expensive because people like you obstruct it at every step of the way. For you to then claim, as you have done, that you obstruct it because it is expensive is both disingenuous and self-referential.
DSeid I think you may want to go back and read the thread. The Second Stone said wind electricity is, and I quote, “a lot cheaper to produce energy per kilowatt hour than nuclear”.
The point is explicitly not how expensive they are to build. The point is only how expensive a nuclear plant is to produce energy per kilowatt hour. My figures show that they are not lot more expensive to produce energy per kilowatt hour than wind. They are in fact a lot cheaper.
Irony. Cool.
Look, the fact is that we can very rapidly (~20 years) replace most if not all the world’s power needs with nuclear is needed. And we can do that using current technology in a manner that will have far, far fewer health and environmental risks than any current power regime.
So the question I put to you Oakminster is why you feel we need to spend any more money doing tests?
Moo.
Blake you are comparing the cost of nuclear marginal operation and production costs with wind and solar’s capital and operating and production costs. That is just a stupid comparison to make. Sorry but there is no nicer way to say that. For each the cost of the power is primarily the cost of the capital to build it and the cost of servicing that capital cost. O and M in each is fairly minor. Nuclear is at a distinct disadvantage there as its initial capital cost is much harder to predict (as the article linked to in the op demonstrates) and the period of time from taking out the capital to earning a return on the investment is longer and potentially much longer.
If you want to make your point such as it is you need to provide a source that identifies how much wind power costs to operate and maintain and compare that to your nuclear figure. But again the figure that most actually care about includes the capital cost.
Sure, if it’s only the proper testing, not the additional testing that Joe Average demands because of his irrational fear of nuclear power.
You may want to read the article linked to in the op. It’s taken much longer and cost much more because of
Nope. They are not running into these costs from obstructionism. Not in nuclear powered France. Just that big construction runs into extra costs. Especially when it really needs to be done right. Again, from the article
But the debt needs to be serviced even during the interminable delays.
Ah, but you are right. If it wasn’t for all those inspectors that Oakminster thinks are such a good idea, then they wouldn’t have found the problems and it wouldn’t be costing so much!
For wind and solar, are you including the economic and ecologic costs of acquiring vast tracts of land and rendering them unusable for anything else ? Is it wildlife preserves or farmland you plan to sacrifice ? And the costs of the huge road network and the rest of the infrastructure necessary to maintain all of this ? And are you making your calculations using present energy usage, or multiples of our present energy usage ? Because due to the innate unreliability of solar and wind, you need to massively overbuild, otherwise you’ll have major energy shortfalls every overcast day.
I serious doubt that we CAN meet our energy needs with solar and wind, much less do so more cheaply than nuclear. And it would certainly be much more destructive than nuclear.
I live within 30 miles of three oil refineries, several electrical generating plants (natural gas I believe) and a DuPont chemical plant. I would much rather have a turbine construction facility instead of any one of those. In fact there is an empty US Steel facility that might do really well at that.
Nope, there is enough wind energy in the US to run the whole country several times over. Enough desert in Nevada to run the whole country several times over for solar.
Yes, it needs a grid. There is a grid all over the country and we can and must build more grid because of our increasing electricity needs.
You haven’t looked at the data or thought this through. One windmill is a lot more modular than one-hundredth of a coal plant. Yes, they do need to be placed in a windy area. But the new ones need only a slight breeze. There were 8 politically friendly years from 2001 to 2009 to build nuclear. Not one plant was built in that time. It is not likely to happen. Randy Johnson getting to 350 wins is much more likely than 20 nuke plants going up in the next 20 years. It is not likely that a single one will be seriously proposed for the US. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of windmills will go up, because it is profitable and possible.
If not one nuclear plant was proposed or sought a license in the last 8 years, it is not reasonable to say nuclear can be a substitute right now. Duh.
Poke around on the internet onto costs of building and generating and profitability. In about 2001 in invested $2k in some obscure German windmill manufacturers, and made 8 times that in two years when I did my profit taking. The market is rapidly expanding and will continue to expand. The reason it will continue to expand is that there are millions of suitable acres for windmills in this country on farms that get several thousand dollars a month in royalties. The cost of putting up and operating these windmills are small fractions of the cost of a coal plant and much smaller than nuclear. I made the investment when the manufacturers were making 1 and 2 megawatt capacity windmills (at about a million per megawatt) and delivering electricity at less than 6 cents a kilowatt. It is now less than 4 cents, and they require far less maintenance than much smaller turbines of the past, which were not economically viable. The current largest windmills cost more, but are even cheaper to operate per kilowatt hour and cheaper at 7 megawatts for the super windmills. http://fromthereporter.com/specials/made/pages/made53.html That is why the Solano wind farm near me has grown huge. It is getting bigger all the time. http://fromthereporter.com/specials/made/pages/made53.html California is now getting the super large windmills. I’m doing the costs from my head because I can no longer find that information in the intertubes, but keep in mind that windmill size and efficiency is much like ship efficiency: twice the length gives you a cube of capacity at far less than a cube of the fuel cost. Here is an estimate of around 3.5 cents per kwh. http://www.energy.ca.gov/wind/overview.html
I used to own PacG&E stock. They owned and operated Diablo Canyon nuclear plant (still do). Diablo Canyon sits on 750 acres and generates over two gigawatts. It cost $5.5 billion in 1984 estimates before it was finished. It cost a lot more to operate than two gigawatts of windfarm. Diablo Canyon Timeline part 2
Here is a great article on the true costs of nuclear and the estimates of a CEO on the cost of building two gigawatts of capacity today: $15 billion. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/06/02/nuclear_power_price/index1.html
**Pickens recently proposed spending $6 billion to generate 4 gigawatts http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19231397/ in good wind blowing country. This is far cheaper and more doable than a new 2 gigawatt nuclear at $15 billion. And newer larger windmills will be even more cost effective.
**
New Record: World's Largest Wind Turbine (7+ Megawatts) - MetaEfficient
Now I’ve had my money in nuke, and I was lucky to break even over 20 years. I’ve had my money in windmills and I octupled my money in 2 years. So if you think that nuclear is worth putting your money into, by all means, go ahead.
Given that most wind farms are used on land that is also used for other purposes at the same time, and that some of the best resources are off-shore including in the Great Lakes, and that they in no way render the land unusable for anything else, yes, yes we are.
(Utility grade solar plants may indeed take up some desert space or need to be placed on top of other structures. If one is open to distributed generation then there are huge expanses of factory rooftops that utilities may “rent”, paying the rent in discounted power pricing to the factory.)