Further, energy conservation efforts in the past meant that the U.S. ended up consuming the same total amount of energy in 1986 as in 1974 and, with the Obama administration expected to focus on such efficiency programs, the need for new nuclear power plants could be obviated again. "If you are the utility executives, you have climate change in your mind, but it's not necessarily the driving force," says Westinghouse's Gilbert. "The driving force is what's economical to build for new generation."
But there are other considerations that may stand in the way of any future fissioning. "We are not going to fight with our neighbors about building a new plant. And another primary criteria, there has to be some resolution to the high-level waste issue," says Craig Nesbit, vice president of communications for Exelon. "We don't think it's appropriate to build another plant in another community knowing that we are saddling that community for an indeterminate amount of time with high-level waste."
See what we're tweeting about
25 Comments
Add CommentLooks like we came full circle.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Reactivating Nuclear Reactors for the Fight against Climate Change"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll right so far.
"Even environmentalists --"
There's the first wrongness, and it is, as one suspects they all will be, fossil-money-friendly.
Between now and this time next week, in more than 30 countries, nuclear power plants will deprive the fossil fuel interests of two billion dollars. If they are diversified, and able to supply uranium too, they still lose $1.9 billion. Governments will share in that loss, so they are antinuclear in behaviour although not always in words.
--- G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/
TVA as leader of the nuclear renaissance?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf investor-owned utilities want to go for nuclear power, I say go for it. It is a complex process from what I gather and ultimately it is the end user who decides if they are willing to pay the freight, not government.
Grinding around in the nuclear mix in America is the minor player, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and many seem to be relying on it to lead in the new, new nuclear renaissance. Bad choice for a leadership role.
I have been researching the TVA for several years and their past history of nuclear reactor fits and starts hardly qualifies them for any kind of role in modern nuclear plant development.
Their most recent restart of one of the Browns Ferry reactors in Alabama has been plagued with many problems. Reportedly, it now is running at only 79 percent of capacity. This was the unit that was set afire by incompetent workers over two decades ago. The restart in 2007 was the result of old technology mixed with current technology ( new wine in old bottles ) and it is just not working out. Part of, if not the main, problem is TVAs bubba culture of doing it their way.
An example of that occurred with the Kingston coal-fired plant disaster December 22, 2008 when TVA failed to implement mandated emergency procedures; they did it their way first.
The crux of the matter is that the TVA is a federal government entity authorized as part of FDRs New Deal in 1933. Its present financing structure cannot support the two planned Bellefonte reactors or the completion of the stripped out Watts Bar unit. TVA has a statutory borrowing limit of $30 billion and already owes $25 billion of that.
Users of TVA electricity are expected to pay for all of these expansions by rate increases. When the Kingston debacle is added (TVA claims it is spending a million dollars a day on it) the final costs probably will be in the billions. Numbers of lawsuits already have been filed or planned.
The TVA is so poorly managed that I have recommended that management control be wrested from it and turned over to an independent management group. TVAs production model is based on bonuses, i.e., cut those corners to boost output and increase bonuses at the expense of safety and maintenance procedures. I have plenty of information to support these allegations.
Since TVAs financial structure does not permit congressional appropriations, the congressional oversight committees have been very lax in their responsibilities and have admitted as much in their January 8 Senate hearing on the Kingston dam blowout.
For more insights into the machinations of the TVA, see http://norsworthyopinion.com
Ernest Norsworthy
emnorsworthy@earthlink.net
yes, let us invite other people too..............................but experts should made it durable,,,so that,there would be no fear of radiations
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI still have a difficult time figuring out how Amory Lovins managed to get on so many journalist's Rolodexs as the "go to guy" for commentary about energy economics. Though he is a highly compensated consultant for the established energy industry (coal, oil and gas) his individual efforts have been in areas like fuel cell and H2 powered HYPErcars. http://tinyurl.com/b5gfsp
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHis academic background is limited to being "educated" at Harvard and Oxford, without having gone to the trouble of actually completing a degree program at either one. http://tinyurl.com/b49bu3
The energy sources that Lovins says are much more popular for private capital includes what he calls "micropower". If you read his documents closely he clearly defines - in the small print - "micropower" as including diesel and natural gas fired generators that supply loads in remote locations like tourist focused islands and many other "off-grid" locations. Those might be fine investments for those who do not have any electricity, but they are certainly not friendly in a carbon constrained world. He also includes power systems that use waste heat in a co-generation application as "micropower". Cogeneration is not a bad idea, but classifying fossil fuel power plants generating 280-1600 MWe as "micropower" surely stretches the definition of "micro" a wee bit. http://tinyurl.com/d86nku
Though TVA appears to be leading in the nuclear renaissance because of its Browns Ferry experience, there are plenty of other organizations that are diligently working to make the renaissance real. Those organizagtions are led by smart, dedicated people like Mike Wallace at Constellation, John Deal at Hyperion, Paul Lorenzini and Jose Reyes at NuScale, David Crane at NRG, George Chapman at Amarillo Power.
There are also some terrific new information sources on the web that are taking advantage of the communications media that did not exist when the first Nuclear Age got shouted down by people who liked burning fossil fuels. The creators of those information sources like Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat, Kirk Sorensen and Charles Barton at Energy From Thorium, and John Wheeler at This Week In Nuclear will continue to tell the story of how the second generation of nuclear scientists, engineers and operators have learned from the first and are ready to take on the challenge of pushing some fossil fuels out of the energy mix.
My livelihood is very dependent on the Appalachian coal Industry. As a result I closely follow the debate about the use of fossil fuels and coal in particular. Some of the articles I have read are well thought out properly researched and based on fact. Unfortunately, too much of what is said and printed looks like something prepared by Herman Goebbels on behalf of Adolf Hitler. All sides of the many arguments are guilty of using exaggeration and falsehoods to advance an opinion. We need to face the fact that ALL sources of energy need to be considered in an effort to develop a sustainable and reliable energy base for our economy to survive. We must realize that fossil fuels at some point will be depleted and no longer a viable source of energy. Their interim use until alternative sources can be developed and become reliable is a given. There is no alternative. However, we do need to do our utmost to make sure Oil, Coal and Natural Gas are used as efficiently as possible and combusted in the least polluting way. To minimize carbon discharge and the release of pollutants will be expensive. Someone must pay for it. The users of the enrgy should expect to foot that bill. The plants and alternative sources of energy must be located somewhere; in someones back yard. We must either accept that or turn out the lights and park our cars. There is no free lunch. As the use of alternative energies increases we will discover downsides to them also, as there is a reaction for every action. We must anticipate that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe need to keep the debate on a civil level and understand we either all win or all lose. If the gold fish bowl can only sustain twelve fish and we drop in a thirteenth the population does not fall back to twelve it drops to zero!
There was an error in my last comment. I meant to reference "Joseph Goebbels " not Herman. He was another of Hitler's henchmen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@JDW - I am not sure where your comment is directed, but it seems to me that we have developed at least one alternative to burning coal that is reliable and emission free.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe it is incredibly selfish of us as the ancestors of what I hope will be a very long line of human generations to believe that we have the right to deplete the earth's very useful hydrocarbon resources at a rate thousands of times larger than the rate at which they were produced and stored over Earth's history. If I did not know what I know about atomic energy, I would most definitely give up my car and work to make my house as small and conservative as possible to try to keep something around for them to use for light, heat and as raw material for many chemically based products.
However, I have studied atomic energy deeply and comprehensively for more than 25 years and know that it can replace coal, oil and natural gas in a large number of applications so that we can vastly reduce our consumption rate of those valuable materials and leave something behind for the people who will be around in 2200, 2500, and 3500.
You are correct - there is no "free lunch" but there are many items on the menu. Some are healthier and more cost effective than others, even though they take a bit more preparation time or a bit more skill in the kitchen.
I have a good friend who has taken a different tack in his arguments - he gets downright nasty when someone suggests that protecting their job today is worth putting the entire planet's future at risk because of the various hazards of burning fossil fuels at the rate at which we are proceeding.
I will not get nasty, but your introduction of comparisons to the Nazis is rather offensive if you were directing it to other commenters who had the gall to suggest that the Appalachian coal industry just might be causing some hard to overcome environmental and resource depletion issues.
BTW - my livelihood is not dependent on any energy source, though I do someday hope to put my nuclear knowledge to commercial use.
Green nuclear power is the only practical solution to simultaneously (1) avoid dependence on foreign oil and gas, (2) overcome future oil and gas depletion, and (3) ameliorate global warming. Only two prime energy sources, coal and uranium, can affordably deliver terawatts of "mother" electricity to: (a) feed heavy industry, i.e. manufacture of automobiles, ships, airplanes, bridges, etc; (b) power vast fleets of future electric plug-in autos; and (c) produce enormous quantities of portable synfuels (hydrogen and ammonia) and biofuels to replace oil. However coal worsens global warming and should be preserved as raw material to make plastics and other organics when oil and gas are gone. In spite of many millions of dollars spent by hungry researchers, underground sequestration of gaseous carbon dioxide produced by coal-burning power plants is not economical or practical for thousands of generating stations worldwide. This leaves uranium as the only "big-mama" green energy source, an "inconvenient truth". That is, there is only one economic engineers-certified solution to overcome impending worldwide energy shortages. This is introduction of fast-breeder power reactors that burn up all available uranium and thorium to give the whole world 3000 years of all the electricity and heat it needs. It can be done most prudently by developing multinational nuclear fuel (re-)processing operations such as the proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) program monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which processes/provides fuels for fast breeder reactors that are useless (poisoned) for weaponry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPopular solar and wind energy are useful for small-quantity power generation in select locations. In future energy mixes they may contribute as much as 15% of all electricity generation. But at terawatt levels, immense areas of land or sea would be needed, requiring enormous maintenance operations, spoiling scenic land- or sea-scapes, and destroying local ecosystems - an absolute nightmare for naturalists. As scientifically documented in "The Nuclear Imperative - A Critical Look at the Approaching Energy Crisis" (ISBN 1-4020-4930-7), by the year 2050 when petroleum fuels are basically exhausted, only uranium and thorium can affordably sustain global energy needs for some 3000 years, using proven fuel reprocessing and advanced fast reactor technology. A serious in-depth analysis of our future energy shortage by accredited professional engineers (not by anti-nuclear self-inflated philosophers) reveals that nuclear power will be essential to rescue our children from a future economic catastrophe. For the USA, 500 additional nuclear reactors are required, built on 9000 acres (@ $1.5 trillion), compared to 1,500,000 windmills with storage batteries on 6,000,000 windy acres (@ $4.5 trillion). Ten times these numbers are needed for the entire world. (Costs are in 2005 dollars; for later years, all costs must be multiplied by the dollar inflation factor).
Because it takes a decade to design, license, and build a reactor, action must be taken immediately to prevent a worldwide depression by 2030 when oil begins to run out. Contrary to false propaganda by anti-nuclear groups, the cost of electricity at terawatt levels is three times less expensive with nuclear than for wind or solar. Solar and wind power generation requires expensive energy storage systems (batteries, etc) when there is no sunshine or wind. Also many miles of access roads for maintenance and repair are needed to keep blades or solar panels clean from bird droppings, dead birds, sand erosion, and storm damage, and to periodically replace electrodes on storage batteries. Aficionados of renewables usually quote peak windmill or solar station capacities, neglecting to multiply their numbers by a factor of four to account for a year-averaged availability of only 25% of peak wind or sunshine. Reactors run continuously all year at 90% capacity. Should a country limit itself to solar and wind energy, it is guaranteed to become impoverished and dependent on portable synfuels imported from other countries (future OPECs ->OSECs), who expanded their nuclear power generation before oil fields were depleted.
Energy consumption for transportation is between 35% and 40% of all energy usage in the world. On the assumption we stop drilling when it costs a gallon of oil to retrieve a gallon, one finds we will run out by 2040/2050, even with exploitation of all the tar-sand fields in the world. There is only so much volume in the 10 km deep surface shell that circumscribes our earth where decayed plants and animals (mixed with lots of sand and river run-off mud) were compressed into oil over a period of 300 million years. We are burning all that up in two centuries. With an increasing world population and with Asia and Africa wanting more of the oil, optimistic estimates show it will all be gone by 2050. While in the next fifteen years, oil and gas may remain major sources of portable chemical energy for aircraft and transport vehicles, beyond 2030 the world can only survive if synthetic fuels are produced on an enormous scale.
Of course nuclear energy extracted from uranium or thorium can not be used directly as a portable fuel to move long-haul transport vehicles (airplanes, trucks, etc). But its heat or turbine-generated electricity can be converted into portable bio-fuels and other synfuels (synthetic fuels) with reasonable efficiency. In bio-fuel production, nuclear electricity can empower farms and the extraction/distillation operations to obtain alcohols or bio-diesels from vegetation. Without input of (nuclear) electricity, bio-fuel farming would be unsustainable since energy needed for cultivation, harvesting, and extraction exceeds the energy stored in combustible plant chemicals. Nuclear-assisted farmed bio-fuels have other limitations however. They can at most replace about 20% of today's petroleum fuels because biofuel farming is limited by available arable land; man also needs to grow food to survive. The other 80% of oil-replacement must come from hydrogen and ammonia synfuels which can empower combustion engines as well as (future) fuel-cells. Hydrogen can be affordably produced by electrolysis (or chemical dissociation) of water into hydrogen and oxygen. But hydrogen has the fundamental problem of being very difficult to compact into a reasonably-sized fuel tank. So ammonia (called "second" hydrogen by some) is now favored, because it can be stored at very moderate pressure in normal-size fuel tanks used today for a comparable driving range. Ammonia is produced by compression of hydrogen with nitrogen (from the air) via the well-developed Haber-Bosch process. This is a less expensive way of storing hydrogen than liquifying it. Ammonia can fuel combustion engines (already commercially available) and solid-oxide fuel-cells (future), and is less dangerous than gasoline in vehicle collisions. Engine exhausts are water vapor and nitrogen (air) again from which ammonia was synthesized with nuclear "mother" energy.
Modern nuclear power plants are absolutely safe. Because of the negative "coefficient of reactivity", reactor fuel elements only melt (an explosion is not possible) during a maximum credible accident in which the emergency core cooling system totally fails. This was "experimentally" proven in the Three-Mile-Island (TMI) accident. A negative coefficient of reactivity means that neutron multiplication is automatically stopped when the temperature in the reactor gets too high. The Russian Chernobyl reactor, which took the lives of 57 people, had a positive coefficient of reactivity because it used graphite as moderator. Such a design for nuclear power plants is now prohibited in all countries. Furthermore the Chernobyl reactor had no containment vessel, as is the law in all Western countries and now worldwide. The assertion that perhaps thousands of people could still die from radioactive fallout around Chernobyl is nonsense. Of the 60,000 inhabitants of Pripyat who had been exposed to fallout, about 9,000 will die at an advanced age of cancer because worldwide 15% of all people ultimately die from cancer. To ascribe those 9,000 deaths to Chernobyl's fallout is equally ridiculous as claiming that such a death toll is due to drinking coffee because 15% of all people drink coffee. Security precautions and containment measures for today's nuclear power plants do reckon with the possibility that terrorists might crash a large airplane or bomb on a reactor. Even if aerial obstructions (e.g. balloons) or underground construction can not prevent penetration of the large dome-shaped containment vessel, the reactor core vessel is designed to remain mostly intact. It can further be inundated with neutron-absorbing borated water which instantly suppresses all uranium fission in case of an accident.
A worn-out anti-nuclear lament is "what do we do with all the long-lived radioactive nuclear waste". The volume of waste amounts to one aspirin tablet per year per person using nuclear electricity, compared to tons of air pollutants and globe-warming gaseous CO2 emitted by coal or fossil-fuel combustion. Nuclear waste can be easily stored and safely transported, as the US nuclear navy has done for half a century. Contrary to allegations that uranium and plutonium in spent fuel elements pose a problem because of million-year half-lives, they are separated from fission products by reprocessing and burnt as fuel in future fast-breeder reactors. They will not be dumped. This reduces 50 tons of spent fuel per reactor per year to 0.5 tons of fission products (with shorter decay lives), taking centuries instead of decades to fill the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada. The notion that long radioactive lifetimes are undesirable is also erroneous. The longer the decay lifetime, the less the radiation emitted per gram of radio-isotope. Most elements that make up our bodies (hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc) have infinitely long decay lifetimes. All humans are "hot" because everyone has radioactive potassium-40 (K-40; 0.012% abundance) in his body, which continuously emits beta particles with a half-life of one billion years! Man successfully evolved in this environment, and there are even indications that low levels of radiation benefit health (called hormesis). The hue and cry about possible terrorism and "dirty bombs" is also highly exaggerated. By reasoning of anti-nuclear activists, we should stop flying 707 jets because they can be used as weapons to kill thousands of people.
Energy is man's third most important need after water and food. Those who hinder expansion of nuclear power will be viewed as irresponsible neo-luddites by future generations and must be held accountable. Any further delay of a committed worldwide nuclear energy program will cause certain impoverishment and deaths of many people by 2050. Without large-scale synfuel production by greatly expanded nuclear power, desert cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix will become ghost-towns. Originally the US had planned to have 200 to 300 reactors (@ 1 GWe each) by the year 2000, but instead there are only 104 today. After the Three-Mile-Island (TMI) reactor meltdown in 1979 in the US (with 0 casualties) and Russia's Chernobyl accident in 1986 (with 57 fatalities), public hysteria fanned by fear-mongering antinuclear activists caused cancellations and moratoria on construction of new nuclear plants. While the USA was once the leader, most US businesses with reactor manufacturing know-how closed. Instead France, Russia, Japan, South-Korea, India, and China are now in charge. Zealous anti-nuclear lobbyists and a mal-informed government have created the pending energy crisis. We are entering a war-like energy-deprivation period as serious as WW-II or Al-Qaida. Strong Manhattan-project-like leadership is now needed to reverse the short-sightedness and follies of prior administrations.
Jeff W. Eerkens, PhD
Adjunct Research Professor,
Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute
University of Missouri, Columbia
This article is full of information and misinformation. Unfortunately the end result is much more negative than the reality, in my opinion. My advice to anyone reading this is to find some additional information. Try 'Power to Save the World' by Gwyneth Cravens.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBrought to you by the nuclear power industry... In actuality nuclear power is neither affordable, safe or practical in solving our energy problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsider just the following:
• Physicist Dr. Tom Cochran extrapolated from the nuclear industry calculations for its future and found that by adding 700 gigawatts of nuclear electricity to the world – double today’s capacity – for the fifty years from 2050 to 2100 would entail:
• Adding about 1,200 new nuclear plants (provided they last forty years and have no meltdowns);
• Adding fifteen new uranium enrichment plants;
• Generating 0.97 million tons of high-level nuclear waste containing enough plutonium for hundreds of thousands of nuclear weapons;
• Outfitting fourteen Yucca mountains to store the waste;
• Adding fifty new reprocessing plants to extract plutonium if the Generation IV reactors were to proceed;
• Investing $1 to $2 trillion.
The effect would then be to cut the global average temperature rise by just 0.2%; far from helping to actually reduce global warming.
Then read http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear-power-in-a-warming-world.pdf
and see this map:
Union of Concerned Scientists map of U.S. nuclear facilities: http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/reactor-map/embedded-flash-map.html
and read this report:
Craig A. Severance, 2008, Business Risks and Costs of New Nuclear Power
and then for a little background:
Ernest J. Sternglass, 1981, SECRET FALLOUT, LOW-LEVEL RADIATION FROM HIROSHIMA TO THREE MILE ISLAND.
Then try to argue for nuclear.
Apparently, Ron Adams is unaware of Amory Lovins landmark article "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?" published in Foreign Affairs, in October 1976, which is credited with having started a "negawatt revolution" in the US and abroad. Demand Side Management techniques from this "soft path" have saved literally trillions of dollars over the last 30 some years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLovins has a MacArther Genius award and a Time magazine Hero of the Planet awarded along with numerous honorary doctoral degrees. None of this is seem sufficient proof of his capacity to convince Dr Adams. For Lovins brief analysis of the economic failings of nuclear see tinyurl.com/forgetnuclear
For Lester Brown's see tinyurl.com/brownnuclear - an analysis which includes the gem that Yucca Mountain's final cost is likely to be $1 billion per reactor in the US, a cost taxpayers will have to carry.
Instead we are promised the same bright nuclear future which we have been promised for several decades now: breeders and reprocessing, technologies which have failed spectacularly worldwide. "Just a few hundred billion more and we can certainly get it running right" we are told again.
As for plans to get us to climate friendly solutions without nuclear, it seems like everyone except the nuclear industry has them. Google, T. Boone Pickens, Al Gore and of course Lovin's Rocky Mountain Institute.
Lovins also said in his 1976 foreign affairs that nuclear energy was a dying industry, which he continues to repeat. Yet kwh from nuclear power has increased by over 400% since then.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/another-amory-lovins-big-lie-nuclear.html
The Big lie repeated in this article is not that nuclear power costs large amounts of money. The big lies ignore these truths:
1. Other forms of power also cost a lot money too
2. Government money massively subsidizes and supports all forms of energy
- public money is needed to prop up all of the private energy companies and industries
3. Other forms of energy are risky to develop as well
Most thin film solar companies fail. Out of hundreds of companies only one or two companies have brought products to market in any scale.
Solar and wind are likely to be getting $20 billion from a clean energy bill, probably going along with tens of billions more in whatever $800-1500 billion stimulus packages get passed.
The long-term extension of the renewable energy production tax credits, which would cost the government $13.1 billion over 10 years. Plus 30% tax credits for instant subsidy.
Worldwide energy spending is about $2 trillion per year. Hundreds of billions on subsidies and research and development. Energy costs BIG money. The US energy grid is going to take well over a trillion to upgrade over the next decade or two. Same for Europe's energy grid. Renewable like solar and wind need a better energy grid to have deeper penetration.
What is this "all private" BS ?
Who is covering all the risk for coal, natural gas and oil (85+% of all of our power ?)
3 million deaths per year worldwide (World Health Organization) from air pollution.
Potential extinction from CO2 levels.
The state is not even covering it yet which is worse than paying for effective coverage.
People/citizens just die.
60,000 in the US (30,000 from coal each year, the 60K is coal and oil)
250,000+ in Europe
750,000+ in China.
This is every year.
Plus 5000 to 10,000 dead each year from coal mining.
More asthma, more heart attacks, more lung disease. 30% of the medical care is related to the increased air pollution.
Coal power is being added the fastest worldwide.
Oil over $250 billion on exploration and development each year.
US energy subsidies over the last few decades.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/09/us-energy-subsidies-updated.html
Every energy source gets a large amount of support, either from favorable taxes (oil, gas, coal) or from R&D etc...
I completely agree with the "truths" stated above, I just take them to a completely different conclusion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) "Other forms of power cost money too." i don't think anyone is disputing this, in fact the point seems a bit trivial. What is relevant is what are the relative costs and carbon reduction efficiency. By all kinds of analysis nuclear does quite poorly.
2) Govt subsidies go to all forms of energy. True again. But unlike the NEI funded study you quote in your comment, the number i read are that the total nuclear subsides in the US are closer to half a trillion dollars, with non-hydro renewables at about 1/10th this. [The NEI is notorious for funding studies that only show what is favorable to the nuclear industry, which makes sense because they are a lobby group - but it does not mean we have to take them seriously.]
3) Other forms of energy are risky to develop. Again no disagreement. And it is about relative risks. Breeders and proposed 4th gen reactors are often liquid sodium cooled. This is the opposite of "inherently safe" this is inherently dangerous. And the waste we still don't have a good solution for.
According to an article in the November 20, 2008 edition of Nature, the financial crisis will postpone if not cancel new nuclear power plant projects. Journalist Geoff Brumfiel reports that the International Energy Agency's recommendation to increase the world's current nuclear capacity by 80% would set an impossible task financially, a view reflected by Matthew Bunn, a nuclear policy expert at Harvard who said that given the bleak financial outlook and the limited production capabilities of power plant vendors, "nuclear power can no longer support climate change needs and targets."
Show me your source for the subsidy analysis you are claiming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy research shows different facts in terms of costs.
Lazard energy cost analysis
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/11/energy-cost-analysis-2008_18.html
Show me some proof or analysis that nuclear and 4th generation reactors would be more dangerous. Dangerous in terms of more deaths per TWh.
Deaths per Terawatt hour: Relative risk analyzed. Swiss study main source.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html
Coal 161 deaths per TWh worldwide.
In the USA about 30,000 deaths/year from coal pollution from 2000 TWh. 15 deaths per TWh.
In China about 500,000 deaths/year from coal pollution from 1800 TWh. 278 deaths per TWh.
Displacing energy from coal and oil will save lives if the energy source is less deadly. Nuclear is far less deadly than those two.
Where is your analysis of relative risk for energy sources?
Waste- unburned fuel. Deep burn reactors can be made. Liquid flouride throium reactors. molten salt reactors were made in the 60s and 70s.
Integral Fast breeders. Russia has Beloyarsk 3 (600MW breeder running since the 80s). They are completing a 800MW breeder in 2012. China is buying another copy.
Nuclear waste stream is contained.
Oil and coal waste stream is not contained. What is the halflife of mercury, arsenic, particulates, smog, CO2 etc... ? Acid rain causes damage. Coal mining destroys forests and environment by blowing them up. Mountain top removal mining.
A lot things might not get funded because of the financial problems. Oil projects are being delayed. Wind projects too.
75% of expected new nuclear are not in the OECD. China is pressing ahead. Other countries too.
@Paxus - first of all, people without any degrees do not get to be called Dr. unless they happen to play basketball. Actually, that is not fair to Julius Erving, he eventually returned to his alma mater to complete his bachelor's degree. http://www.speakingofsports.com/speakers/Erving.htm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSecondly, Lovins ability to seduce people with his mantras of easy energy savings has nothing to do with whether or not his suggestions are actually successful. In the time since his "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?" was published, American electrical power producers have increased their consumption of coal by about 600 million tons per year.
As it turns out, Lovins was at least somewhat prescient about that development - here is a quote from that article - somewhere around page 9 of the hard copy that I keep on my bookshelf: "Coal can fill the real gaps in our fuel economy with only a temporary and modest (less than 2 fold at peak) expansion of mining, not requiring the enormous infrastructure and social impacts implied by the scale of coal use in Figure 1." He liked the future predicted by Figure 2, which, by the way, predicted that US energy use would be somewhere around 95 Quads and lowering in 2009 with none of them coming from nuclear power plants.
The real number is about 101 quads and increasing with 8.4 nuclear quads.
My guess is that Lovins popularity with the establishment is due to the fact that his article helped them avoid the fate predicted by his article's Figure 1. That scary - for the fossil fuel industry - graph showed oil, gas and coal getting squeezed out of the energy market by a nuclear sector that would be producing more than 70 Quads by now.
. . . and Lovins is very 'economically feasible' driven in his work, so for him to conclude the following I would say is significant, and one would think, give one pause to review one's opinions:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"So why do otherwise well-informed people still consider nuclear power a key element of a sound climate strategy? Not because that belief can withstand analytic scrutiny. Rather, it seems, because of a superficially attractive story, an immensely powerful and effective lobby, a new generation who forgot or never knew why nuclear power failed previously (almost nothing has changed), sympathetic leaders of nearly all main governments, deeply rooted habits and rules that favor giant power plants over distributed solutions and enlarged supply over efficient use, the market winners’ absence from many official databases (which often count only big plants owned by utilities), and lazy reporting by an unduly credulous press." - Amory Lovins http://tinyurl.com/forgetnuclear
And aside from the 'climate change' issue, just the economics is bad enough. If you don't project reasonable costs (use 40-50 year old 'costs' given projected build dates), you can justify just about anything.
And, yes, anything over 30 years for a nuclear power plant is beyond its design date, folks. Extending beyond that is just asking for problems. Already there have been a number of problems surfacing (see http://www.citizen.org/documents/FatalFlawsSummary.pdf and http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/reactor-map/embedded-flash-map.html ). UCS has analyzed all current known nuclear plant designs and NONE are found to be reasonably safe, affordable or desirable.
Affordable? http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nuclear-costs-2009.pdf - recognized industry expert report. And as far as safety of new designs? see http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear-power-in-a-warming-world.pdf . They don't look so safe to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe comments hear are amazing! I agree with the thoughts that we need to come up a green form of energy be it nuclear or other methods. i recently read an interesting article about creating the energy found in stars here on earth, it had some brillant thinking behind it! i alos believe we should concentrating more on Cold Fusion.! I recently discovered a company called Energetics Technologies. They have a process called SuperWaveFusion, which could be a possible breakthrough in Cold Fusion. Using an interaction between palladium and deuterium they have reported an excess heat reaction. I am trying to learn more about this process and would like to hear from others about what they think.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTheir website is SuperWaveFusion.com, let me know your thoughts. This is the type of thinking we need to save our planet!
Rod Adams has enough foresight to lament the selfishness of depleting our resources and thereby depriving our future generations. However, why does his foresight not extend to the selfishness of polluting our environment with nuclear waste and thereby saddling our future generations with debt, health problems, and environmental poisoning?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHis deep and comprehensive study of atomic energy over past 25 years makes him certain that it will allow today's generation to "leave something behind for the people who will be around in 2200, 2500, and 3500" and I can't agree more.
Calling Amory Lovins an "energy expert" is like calling Paris Hilton an "actress". The man has won more awards for being wrong than most of us will ever get for being right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=676
I am not the smartest man,but let me get this right,do endless research untill its to late,and let the world go to hell,or start building breeder reactors now,and be ready when oil runs out in 20 or 30 years.By starting now we would stabilize our nation,and thus retain our ability of keeping of the peace for the next 50 years,if not,then a world war that would put an end to all things.The question is, do we allow a very small percentage of the population to stop what needs to be done,as has happened for the last 40 years,or get on with it.We are out of time,we simply don't have another 40 years to waste.As for the rich and powerfull,your going to get flushed down the same toilet as the rest of us,think about it,just don't take too long.The begining of the end is closer than you think.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLets go all nuclear! is the best alternative of all if we really want to fight climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWind and solar are o k for some special purposes, what one needs is cheap and green base load power, and that you get from nuclear. Whats the point of wind farms, when you have to build a backup (maybe gas turbines, which are expensive to run and not particularly green) to cover the time when there is no wind. One might as well just build the turbine generators and save the expense of the wind mills. The same applies for solar energy, it doesn't work too well at night. And even if the grid is smarter than Einstein, if nothing goes in, don't expect anything to come out. Forget about storage methods, the only proven ones are the pump storage schemes, and you are limited as to where you can put them. The alternative is to tell the passengers, that as soon as the wind picks up, their train will depart.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKudos to Prof. Eerkens for providing a concise course in nuclear physics, engineering, and policy. As an NRC-licensed Senior Reactor Operator for over three decades, I can't find a flaw in any of his statements. Thanks to him for taking the time to post here. For the nuclear neophytes reading this article, Dr. Eerkens is the real deal, listen to what he says. As for Amory Lovins - he is an "energy expert" like Paris Hilton is an "actress".
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