Why is the Left so afraid of nuclear power?

[Trepa_Mayfield]

@pedescribe

Furthermore, the Chernobyl reactor was untested, outdated, malfunctioning, ignored by inspectors on the orders of insane Russian scientists, and even then–even then!–it refused to fail until malicious ‘safety’ inspectors deliberately sabotaged it–and it wasn’t easy for them to do it, either!

If it took that much work for such a shitty reactor to fail, then think about how much time it would take for a modern reactor to fail.

Furthermore, Chernobyl was the only incident of its kind. Think about that–we’ve been using nuclear power plants for, what, 40 odd years? and there’s been exactly 1 accident with any significant impact. And it wasn’t even that bad. I mean, yes, 4000 some people died, and yes, they did evacuate a city, but think about it: 4000 people, over 40 years: that’s…what, 100 deaths a year? And that decreases every year.

How many people die from coal mining a year? Not coal, just coal mining? 2,000. Per year.

One year of coal mining causes as many deaths as half of all the deaths from nuclear power accidents ever.

[gonzomax]

@Chimera

Very clear by this point (page 5) that this is not a ‘debate’ to Gonzomax as he is not to be persuaded or influenced by logic and facts.

Odd isn’t it. I find you nuklies oblivious to the obvious facts ,it is an old unworkable technology with huge expensive problems. To you guys ,it is the panacea. Sorry but after 50 years the huge ugly problems remain. The problems remain. The cost remains. It is still old bad technology that has become worn out and wrong. Hitch your wagon to the future technology and look to the clean energy systems of tomorrow. In a few years you will wonder how you got sold that crap. Now you are using emotions where your brain should be engaged.

[Trepa_Mayfield]

@gonzomax

Odd isn’t it. I find you nuklies oblivious to the obvious facts ,it is an old unworkable technology with huge expensive problems. To you guys ,it is the panacea. Sorry but after 50 years the huge ugly problems remain. The problems remain. The cost remains. It is still old bad technology that has become worn out and wrong.

You have no evidence for any of this.

[Quartz]

@gonzomax

Odd isn’t it. I find you nuklies oblivious to the obvious facts ,it is an old unworkable technology with huge expensive problems.

Remind me, how many nuclear plants are working around the world? They don’t seem to be unworkable.

To you guys ,it is the panacea. Sorry but after 50 years the huge ugly problems remain. The problems remain. The cost remains. It is still old bad technology that has become worn out and wrong. Hitch your wagon to the future technology and look to the clean energy systems of tomorrow. In a few years you will wonder how you got sold that crap. Now you are using emotions where your brain should be engaged.

Perhaps you’ve missed it, but we do need energy to get to that future technology. And nuclear power is the only current means of providing that stopgap power.

[Anne_Neville]

@Sam_Stone

Here’s another photo Altamont wind turbines. Notice how much steel is used here - and you’re looking at about 1/100 of the total wind farm in that picture. That steel has to be mined, which costs energy and leaves industrial waste behind.

Nitpick: that’s the Tehachapi Pass wind farm, not the Altamont.

Another nitpick: the iron ore for making steel is mined, but the steel has to be manufactured. Steel mills aren’t exactly green technology. We know that very well here in Pittsburgh. The steel mills are why Pittsburgh used to be so infamous for pollution, and the fact that they are gone is why it isn’t like that any more.

[gonzomax]

@billfish678

So, at this rate (if we can keep it up), wind is about 1/2000th of the way to powering the world.

The year 4025 is looking better all the time.

Thats a semi educated WAG, it could easily be more like 1/10,000 ths of the way.

Well it takes ten years to build a huge nuclear boondoggle.
Is there some reason you can not interpret? Wind is not getting a lot of support, yet it has come up with the equiv. of 1.5 nuke plants last year. What that means is before you get the first nuke plant on line, wind would have the equivalent of 15 plants running.

[Fear_Itself]

@Anne_Neville

Steel mills aren’t exactly green technology. We know that very well here in Pittsburgh. The steel mills are why Pittsburgh used to be so infamous for pollution, and the fact that they are gone is why it isn’t like that any more.

Am I to infer you think all ‘green technology’ must be woven out of macrame to be considered truly green?

[Quartz]

@gonzomax

What that means is before you get the first nuke plant on line, wind would have the equivalent of 15 plants running.

Or not running, when the wind drops.

[Anne_Neville]

@Fear_Itself

Am I to infer you think all ‘green technology’ must be woven out of macrame to be considered truly green?

I’m saying that steel mills aren’t all environmentally friendly.

I’m also saying that you can’t forget about pollution from the manufacture of things like solar panels and windmills.

[Fear_Itself]

@Anne_Neville

I’m saying that steel mills aren’t all environmentally friendly.

I’m also saying that you can’t forget about pollution from the manufacture of things like solar panels and windmills.

That’s what I thought. I don’t think that is a very good argument against green technology…

[Grumman]

@Fear_Itself

That’s what I thought. I don’t think that is a very good argument against green technology…

That depends on how much bang you get for your [del]buck[/del] tonne of steel. Quite simply, if one reactor-lifetime’s worth of environmental damage gets you X gigawatt-years of electricity, you need to know whether X gigawatt-years of electricity production costs more or less lifetime environmental damage when produced by wind turbines. That includes both startup costs and running costs.

[billfish678]

@gonzomax

Well it takes ten years to build a huge nuclear boondoggle.
Is there some reason you can not interpret? Wind is not getting a lot of support, yet it has come up with the equiv. of 1.5 nuke plants last year. What that means is before you get the first nuke plant on line, wind would have the equivalent of 15 plants running.

Given that hundreds of nuclear plants are ALREADY running, its gonna take you wind guys awhile to catch up, even if nuclear stands still.

And, remember, a 1.5 GW wind farm is in reality more like a 1.5 times 0.2= 0.3 GW power plant (because the wind doesnt always blow, and often doesnt blow strong). If you have a really good national grid system, that might make it more like 1.5 times 0.3. = 0.5 GW plant. So, in reality you dont have 15 plants in 10 years, on average you have more like 3 to 5 plants. A 1.5 GW nuclear plant can run full out almost all the time if necessary. So, its gonna take you about 100 times 10 or 1000 years at this rate to reach current nuclear level production. Many times THAT to replace current coal/fossil production.

You are STILL gonna need a non wind power source to make up for all those days the wind isnt blowing strong (or for solar when the sun isnt shining).

Wind is a FUEL saver, not a production capacity/ability saver. Fossil fuels are not cheap. Nuclear fuel is is pretty cheap by comparision.

So, what are going to use for the fuel portion? Its still either boils down to nuclear or coal/fossil.

[Fear_Itself]

@Grumman

That depends on how much bang you get for your [del]buck[/del] tonne of steel. Quite simply, if one reactor-lifetime’s worth of environmental damage gets you X gigawatt-years of electricity, you need to know whether X gigawatt-years of electricity production costs more or less lifetime environmental damage when produced by wind turbines. That includes both startup costs and running costs.

Fair enough, so long as you include the decomissioning and cleanup costs, as well as indefinite storage of nuclear waste.

[billfish678]

@Grumman

That depends on how much bang you get for your [del]buck[/del] tonne of steel. Quite simply, if one reactor-lifetime’s worth of environmental damage gets you X gigawatt-years of electricity, you need to know whether X gigawatt-years of electricity production costs more or less lifetime environmental damage when produced by wind turbines. That includes both startup costs and running costs.

Bingo.

At the VERY least, its going to take between 3 and 5 times as much copper to produce X watt hours of energy using wind as it does nuclear. And significantly more than that if you try to use a national grid to distribute the unreliable wind energy.

A nuke plant has much steel and concrete in it. OTOH, so do thousands of windmills. Its certainly not obvious to me without doing some research which one uses more or less.

Also, a running nuclear plant isnt killing birds and bats continously like a wind farm is.

[XT]

@gonzomax

Well it takes ten years to build a huge nuclear boondoggle.
Is there some reason you can not interpret? Wind is not getting a lot of support, yet it has come up with the equiv. of 1.5 nuke plants last year. What that means is before you get the first nuke plant on line, wind would have the equivalent of 15 plants running.

Leaving aside the fact that you have still provided no link demonstrating this, even assuming it’s true, do you not see how silly the assertion is? There are hundreds of nuclear power plants (over a hundred in the US alone), so building the equivalent of 15 in a decade is small beer…and it would take a fairly massive effort (with a massive amount of capital) to increase wind power 15 fold in a decade. I’m having trouble finding the exact number of wind turbines built in the US last year, but assuming your assertion is correct (HUGE grain of salt time), we are talking about hundreds of the things. They can cost anywhere between $1-10 million a pop, last I checked (and that doesn’t count the infrastructure…that’s just for the turbine), so, we are talking about a cost of hundreds of millions to billions, depending on what the actual numbers are…to build 1.5 nuclear power plants of unknown capacity (they aren’t all the same, ehe?).

And, basically, most of the low hanging fruit wind wise has already been taken here in the US. Oh, there is still some left, but 15 fold? :dubious: That’s going to be tough, and that is only going to get you to a fraction (2% depending on the assumptions you make) of the CURRENT nuclear power capacity…and that’s only 20% of our total energy output today. You’d still need to go another 40% more if you wanted to try and get rid of nukes AND coal.

I know you don’t understand what people are telling you when they refer to ‘scale’, and I know you think it’s all a plot by big energy and gods know who else to keep alternatives down while pushing for nuclear (to profit no doubt), but even your own unsupported assertion makes the case that wind just ain’t gonna happen in the time frame and on the scale we are going to need if we are going to seriously reduce CO2. It’s a shame that you can’t see it, but there you go…that’s another thing that just ain’t happening, sadly enough.

-XT

[Una_Persson]

Since gonzomax continues to throw out assertions and refuses to back them up, I figured that I should do a little work to show what he’s babbling about. My doing this work by no means excuses his continued bad scientific behavior in this thread.

~

According to the American Wind Energy Association 4th-Quarter 2009 report, new wind capacity increased by 9,922MW last year: http://www.awea.org/publications/reports/4Q09.pdf

According to the DoE EIA, total wind capacity was 23,847MW in 2008 (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table4.html), and the total net generation in 2008 was 52,025,898 MWh (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table3.html). Doing the math, we get:

52,025,898 MW*hr / (8760 hr * 23,847MW) = 0.249, or 24.9%.

Comparing this to nuclear: according to the DoE the net 2008 nuclear summer capacity was 100,755MW, divided over 104 plants (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p2.html). The actual generation in 2008 was 806,182,000 MWh (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1.html). Doing the math, we get:

806,182,000 MW*hr / (8760 hr * 100,755<W) = 0.913, or 91.3%

So in effect, that 9,922MW of wind capacity added last year must be weighted by the ratio of the net capacity factors.

9,922MW *(0.249/0.913) = 2,706MW

So if we assume a modern design of 1300-1600MW for a nuclear unit, we see that approximately 2 modern nuclear units worth of generation were added last year.

Note that I am making no comment on the timing, frequency stabilization, pollution, or other factors, I am only showing how the claim might be justified at a high level.

• Note - used 2008 numbers for calculating the NCF since the 2009 numbers are not final. I would expect no more than a +/- 5% error.

[XT]

Thanks Una…and thanks for doing the donkey work with the math as well. That really puts things into perspective.

-XT

[BMalion]

@YogSosoth

… let’s make damn sure all of our bases are …

…Belong to us?

[billfish678]

Thanks for the math/research Una.

So its gonna take wind bout 50 years at this rate to equal nuclear and another 100 to replace the coal. And we will STILL need coal/fossil or nuclear plants to provide for the down times.

[XT]

Una, do you have any idea what the cost was to build what your numbers are indicating? I assume it was cheaper than building the ~2 nuclear power plants, but it would be interesting to see how much cheaper it was, if you have the figures handy. I’ve been trying to google stuff on this on and off since last night but I’m in a maze of sites that don’t seem to have the data easily at hand for some reason.

-XT