It’s well on its way to costing as much as Chernobyl. Gotta think “bottom line!”
Letting your nuke plant meltdown is a hell of a way to stimulate job creation.
Okay, thank you for that. Nice presentation. I liked the color-coded wind resource map. Looking at it helps me visualize the truly mind boggling amount of exploitable wind energy we have in the US.
Well, I’m pretty sure the people installing wind farms know all that stuff. I’m positive they do.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
It’s well on its way to costing as much as Chernobyl. Gotta think “bottom line!”
[/QUOTE]
So soon? Do you, perhaps have a cite showing that the costs are ‘well on its way to costing as much as Chernobyl’? Not that cost is the only factor here, but I’m sure it SOUNDS scarier to say that Fukushima=Chernobyl, even if the reality of Chernobyl in terms of deaths or injuries was pretty mild, comparatively speaking, even if we use your exaggerated half a million figure from your GD thread.
Well, think about the job stimulation effect from having a major earthquake and tsunami hitting you!! The nuclear aspect of this event is only going to cost a fraction of what the rest of the event will cost the Japanese, in terms of lives AND treasure. We should all do that, ehe? 
-XT
Clean up is going to go on for years, and everything is more expensive in Japan. A lot more expensive than Ukraine.
There’s a calculation of deaths by power source per terawatt-hour produced here:
This is the summary chart:
http://desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/chart-deaths-per-terawatt-hr-many-eyes-IBM.png
Got a deal for you: I’ll host a couple of containment domes in my backyard the minute you agree to store their spent fuel rods in your backyard! Deal?
Great! Hope you got one hellacious deep swimming pool, and that you’re prepared to guard against drought/earthquakes/terrorist attacks, etc. for the next twenty or forty thousand years or more. If plutonium’s involved, a LOT more.
So there’s the rub. I realize that if I want, say, my precious night games between the Mariners and Orioles–and all those lovely illuminated billboards on the way home, of course–I’m going to have to pay for it one way or another. But to subject countless generations to the risk of radiation poisoning when other alternatives are available…! Well, it strikes me as a proposition so devoid of foresight (of the “well, duh!” variety), and so lacking in simple human consideration and empathy as to verge on the psychotic!
Sure, that sounds like a great deal. I’ll get billions of dollars in federal funding, plus billions of dollars from the nuclear power industry to study the site, and prepare it to accept your and everyone else’s waste, and then just before it’s ready to go live the anti-nuke folks who will invariably be protesting against it from day one will finally kill it, and you’ll be left having to care for the stuff yourself and I’ll be off the hook! You can, of course, sue the government for breech of contract, and eventually you might get some of the billions you spent towards the waste containment plant…but me, I’ll be in the clear!
So…when did you want to sign up??
-XT
Well, power suppliers and utility companies are always going to rape your bank account if they can. The only thing stopping them is the government. What happens when the government blinks?
Read about the California Phony Energy Crisis of 2001.
Anyhoo, unless we figure out how to socialize the power industry and staff it with altruistic communal minded Moonies who for some strange reason don’t want to be paid, then electricity and fuel are going to cost you around what the market will bare. You aren’t going to get modern electricity in the US at 3rd-world prices, anymore than you’re going to get a latte at Starbucks for 25 cents.
Nuclear has never been competitive, and by its very nature it can’t compete. You can’t turn it up and down, and you can’t lay off 400 employees to cut costs. You can’t turn half your plants off to respond to whatever it happening in the energy market. You can’t build in over capacity so you can suddenly fire up 20% more nuke plants when you need to.
I think renewables are more competitive as long as we don’t end up with three energy monopolies controlling 60% of everyone’s energy. That may happen, but that’s business and politics, not the nature of wind and solar themselves.
How much safer could they possibly make it? I mean, the incident is far from over, but the affected reactors were weeks away from being decommissioned (primarily because they were considered unsafe), survived an earthquake 10 times more powerful than designed for, survived a tsunami which was wasn’t anticipated, and they still haven’t breached containment.
I mean, is the situation dangerous? Yes, of course. But complaining about the safety record of these plants is ridiculous. (As is complaining about Three Mile Island, BTW.) They’ve far, far out-performed all expectations for a disaster like this. If anything, this incident proves that the system works.
BTW, I’ve always thought the best way to give nuclear to the public is to have the Navy handle it. Or ex-Navy personnel… they run a ton of reactors, have a near-perfect record, and the public has near-zero objections to, say, a nuclear aircraft carrier sitting in the bay of a major city. For some reason, people believe nuclear is safe when the Navy’s doing it.
I’ve got a better idea; let’s subject countless generations to the aftereffects of AGW. We don’t know how it will play out (although we’ve got some worse-case scenarios that don’t look like fun) so it’ll add some much-needed mystery to their lives!
I figured I’d post this here, since the Pit threads are, well, in the Pit, and the only GD discussion on the topic concerns nuclear vs alternatives.
So…pretty much what Cecil said, though a bit more specific. FWIW and all that.
-XT
nm
Green energy is unreliable? Yes, solar only works with sunlight (i.e. fuel), and wind energy requires wind, (i.e. fuel). However, without Uranium (i.e. fuel) nukes don’t work either, and are equally “unreliable”
Inefficient? Based on what efficiency criteria?
Unaffordable? Based on what cost criteria? In order to compare actual cost in an “apples to apples” manner, we must calculate the cost in terms of environmental damage for the entire fuel cycle of the systems, AND either factor out tax breaks granted to nukes that are NOT granted to green technologies, or grant the same breaks to green technologies.
Nukes do not factor in real world liability costs since the taxpayer is on the hook for actual damages caused by accidents. If the Indian Point reactor suffers a failure similar to the Fukushima disaster, who will pay for 9 million people to move out of NYC?
Also, I think it will be fair to compare green tech to nuclear power only when the same economic effort is made in terms of deployment and infrastructure investment.
[QUOTE=Dr Miguelito Loveless]
Unaffordable? Based on what cost criteria? In order to compare actual cost in an “apples to apples” manner, we must calculate the cost in terms of environmental damage for the entire fuel cycle of the systems, AND either factor out tax breaks granted to nukes that are NOT granted to green technologies, or grant the same breaks to green technologies.
[/QUOTE]
Feel free to do so. There are several threads on this same subject currently going on, and from what I’ve seen you are going to be hard pressed to show that wind and solar can scale up to something like nuclear. Oh, wind and solar are ‘affordable’…in very vertical areas under very constrained conditions (as you noted, you need constant wind to make wind power even close to competitive, and you need high percentages of solar to put it in the ball park).
As for tax breaks and what have you…well, solar and wind ALSO get such breaks from the government. They also get grants to encourage companies to put them in (one of the schools I used to do consulting for got a million dollar package of grants and incentives to put in a large wind turbine, for instance). So…you’d need to detail what grants or breaks that nuclear gets that wind/solar doesn’t get, and how that amortizes over the lifetime of the plant in question (a lot of the stuff nuclear gets are LOAN guarantees, since much of the cost of nuclear is front loaded in the initial capital costs of building the plant itself)
So, you want to wait several decades before a fair comparison can be made?? Of course, if you look in the last few years in the US, you’ll find that a LOT more investment has been made in wind and solar (nuclear is also ‘green tech’ btw) than in nuclear in terms of both deployment and infrastructure. How many nuclear power plants have been built in the US in the last 10 years and at what cost? How many wind farms and solar plants have been built in that same time period and at what cost?
-XT
You’re really missing the point. Once a nuclear plant is activated, it runs steady and provides steady power output. It can be ramped up or down and provide changes, but that takes time.
Solar power plants have the problem that the output is not consistent from day to day or throughout the day. They can’t be set to provide constant output, because the “fuel” source is too variable. Solar also is limited to ~ half the 24 hr cycle.
Similarly, wind power plants are at the mercy of the available wind. If you have a consistent wind source then you can get consistent output, but very few places have consistent wind. Wind can also be affected by day/night cycles, plus weather patterns.
If you don’t think Japan’s ongoing nuke disaster (now rated the 7 maximum for severity) could not happen here tomorrow–think again.
We have a number of nuclear plants built on fault lines, near the ocean. If you are in Southern California, then you are 1 of 7 million people in reach of Diablo Canyon and San Onofre. They are designed to withstand a 7 and 7.5 magnitude quake (which is merely the aftershocks of Japan’s quake). They are near the San Andreas fault and other faults in an area which is guaranteed a major quake in the next 30 years, according to seismologists who have studied this issue at length. They concluded that the quake one could expect is going to be in the high 6 magnitude, if not more. That’s a pretty obvious problem. You have a virtually guaranteed quake, in the next 3 decades which will, at its minimum, be, at least, near the maximum of what those plants can withstand. (BTW—the NRC doesn’t even require Diablo to have an earthquake plan.)
This is not to address the nuclear plants on other faults around the country. NYC’s Indian Point nuclear plant is on TWO active fault lines. The New Madrid fault (which runs throughout the Midwest) is 500 years overdue for a major quake and it has, at least, 15 nuclear plants within its influence. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the designers gave NO thought to serious earthquakes in that area when designing those nukes.
Add these issues together with the fact most of the nuclear plants in the US are approaching or at their intended design life of 40 years and that we STILL DON’T HAVE ANY STORAGE SOLUTION FOR THE DEADLY WASTE (of which we add 2000 metric tons each year).
Is coal bad? Sure, it is. No one is arguing that. But, nukes are much, much, much worse. Japan’s nuke plant joins Chernobyl in polluting the land, the drinking water and the ocean. Some of this deadly pollution will last for decades if not longer. Coal is not even in the same league when we could be talking about a civilization-ending event starting pretty much as this one is now.
In Australia there have been a number of government funded incentives provided to help citizens reduce energy consumption over the past few years. Up to $1600 was provided to households to pay for roof insulation, $1000 to change an electric hot-water system to gas or solar, HUGE discounts for solar panel insulation (a 1.5kw grid connected system could be installed for as little as $999 with the government rebates) and you can even be paid for the electricity your solar system puts back into the grid. Many of these schemes are winding down now and some of them have been controversial (the insulation scheme resulted in a huge demand and some companies installed the insulation improperly causing some house-fires, which then resulted in another scheme where every house was checked to ensure the insulation WAS installed correctly). All of these schemes were intended to reduce the demand for power from non-renewable sources, not as replacements, and I feel this is the best way to go.
As for nuclear energy, I think one of the main problems is the location of the plants. Japan is one of the most seismically active and densely populated nations on the planet which are the ideal circumstances for a localized incident to turn into a tragedy. In many other parts of the world, however, where the plants can be built away from populations and in stable areas, nuclear power should be used over coal. Central Australia, for example is basically a giant sand bowl; isolated from coastal cyclones and little seismic activity. Is it unfeasible to produce the power in isolated areas such as this and transport it to populated cities?
[QUOTE=hipposaurus]
Is it unfeasible to produce the power in isolated areas such as this and transport it to populated cities?
[/QUOTE]
Pretty much. Not only would it cost a lot more to build out the infrastructure, the losses inherent in the system would mean that half or more of the power you generated in those remote locations wouldn’t ever get back to the grid. Assuming you are using current (heh) power transport technology. I suppose if someone comes up with room temperature super-conducting power lines and stuff like that it might be more feasible.
-XT
You have not proven that, only asserted it.
As do coal plants.
But aside from a rare, extreme accident can be effectively contained, unlike the by-products of coal mining and burning. Time will tell whether the area in Japan will be uninhabitable for as long as you say it will be.
This is very silly exaggeration.
http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf here is a critique of nuclear power from a former member of the NRC. He voices the standard reasons. Cost too much to build, cost over runs are enormous and predictable, the energy is never as large as promised nor as cheap, the waste problem including spent rods is unsolvable, etc.
It just is an unworkable, overpriced technology that is too damn dangerous.