Maybe nuclear power isn't so bad after all
By John Horgan |
May 11, 2010 10:00 AM |
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Even before the colossal oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlighted the downsides of fossil fuels (as if we needed reminding), nuclear energy was looking better to me. In a previous post, I bashed Barack Obama for trying to revive nuclear power. Nuclear energy materials, equipment and expertise can be diverted toward building nuclear weapons, I fretted, and every reactor and waste repository represents a potential dirty bomb. I reiterated these anxieties in an online chat on Bloggingheads.tv, a segment of which was aired by The New York Times.
Then Rod Adams e-mailed me. Adams is a U.S. Navy officer who served on nuclear submarines, founded a firm to promote small reactors and blogs about nuclear power at Atomic Insights (highly recommended). Adams asked if I would like to talk to him on Bloggingheads.tv, and I said sure. Here are some of the major points that Adams made in our conversation:
- Nuclear energy, far from undermining anti-proliferation efforts, can supplement them. Shortly after the cold war ended, the U.S. started buying warheads from Russia and converting the weapons-grade uranium into fuel suitable for commercial reactors. This so-called Megatons to Megawatts Program has eliminated 15,000 Russian warheads in the past 18 years. Ten percent of the electricity produced in the U.S. in the past decade stems from Russian warheads. The program will soon start consuming Russian plutonium as well as uranium. "It's an amazing example of beating swords into plowshares," Adams said.
- Nuclear waste can be viewed as a feature, not a bug, of nuclear energy. First of all, spent fuel rods from a typical plant cannot easily be converted into weapons-grade explosives. "The mixture of isotopes is just way too complicated to be able to effectively do that," Adams said. But spent reactor fuel, which still contains more than 90 percent of its potential energy, can be reprocessed to make it reusable as fuel. "There is an enormous amount of energy in the 60,000 or so tons of used nuclear material in the U.S.," Adams said. The 900,000 tons of uranium waste generated by the U.S. nuclear weapons program represents an even larger potential source of energy, "more than all our oil, coal and natural gas combined," Adams said.
- Terrorists cannot easily blow up nuclear plants to create dirty bombs. Reactor vessels and waste-containment pools are heavily guarded, and they offer much smaller targets for planes than the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which terrorists struck on 9/11. If a plane did smash into a reactor containment shell, it would probably not penetrate it; the shells typically consist of concrete three to four feet thick, reinforced by iron rebar as thick as a man's forearm. In a test by Sandia National Laboratory, an F4 jet, which is more dense than a commercial airliner, simply vaporized when it struck a reinforced concrete wall. (Some commenters on Adams's blog have questioned the validity of this test.)
- The spread of nuclear power need not lead to nuclear weapons proliferation. Many countries that have nuclear power plants do not possess weapons. And almost every country that has nuclear weapons today acquired them before acquiring nuclear reactors. (Some commenters on Adams's blog have pointed out that India is an exception to this rule.) More importantly, nuclear power can promote peace by making nations less reliant on outside sources for energy. "You can write the history of world conflicts over the past 100 years as a battle over resources," Adams said.
- Nuclear energy is cheaper as well as cleaner than fossil fuels. Adams cited these statistics from the (obviously pro-nuke) Nuclear Energy Institute: The average production cost from a U.S. nuclear power plant in 2008 was 1.87 cents per kilowatt-hour, much less than coal (2.75 cents) or natural gas (8.09 cents). The nuclear energy costs, Adams noted, include "labor, material and supplies, contractor services, licensing fees, and miscellaneous costs such as employee expenses and regulatory fees…amortized costs associated with the purchasing of uranium, conversion, enrichment, and fabrication services along with storage and shipment costs, and inventory (including interest) charges less any expected salvage value." Adams thinks that the costs of nuclear power could be reduced much further by small, mass-produced reactors.
I still dream of a breakthrough in solar energy that gives us a truly clean, cheap, inexhaustible source of energy. But because of Rod Adams, I'm giving nuclear power a closer look.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Horgan, a former Scientific American staff writer, directs the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology. (Photo courtesy of Skye Horgan.)
Image: Los Alamos National Laboratory
The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
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126 Comments
Add CommentA large coal-fired power plant requires 10,000 TONS of coal a day. There is NO SUCH THING as "clean coal," as burning fossil fuels is the single largest source CO2 emmissions, a major contributor to global warming. Burning coal generates two to three times as much CO2 as burning natural gas. Nuclear power creates zero CO2 emissions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSolar, wind and hydroelectric power account for 10.5 percent of the U.S. energy picture, while buyrning coal and natural gas account for 68.3 percent. If we double our nuclear power generation capacity, we can cut those greenhouse gas emmissions by nearly a third! It is foolish to wait for a "breakthrough" in solar power technology, when we have clean, safe nuclear energy technology which is already proven.
Besides, solar is not so "clean" as you might believe. The manufacture of photoelectric cells generates a multitude of toxic by-products which are every bit as difficult to deal with as spent fuel rods.
We need nuclear energy now, because the alternatives are destroying our environment!
OMG. You modified your views after reasoned discussion with another party? You know you can lose your blogging license for that, right? ;)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can't say I blame you, Mr Horgan, for your initial reluctanace. I think the nuclear industry wrote the book on lousy public outreach and information from 1970 up through the early part of the last decade. But I commend you on your open mindedness and ability to see reason. I see so many that are so entrenched in their antinuclear position that they just refuse to listen to anything and instead beleive that anyone who sees differently is a corporate lackey paid off by big nuclear corporations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for being open minded. You've made a regular BloggingHeads.tv viewer out of me!
uh, excuse me... but, if we can have a catastrophic "accident" with fossil fuels, imagine the disaster we could have with nuclear. green energy is sustainable, cheaper and clean. why do we insist on embracing the dirtiest sources of energy possible? what is your major malfunction?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHorgan does miss some major points in this blog. For one, nuclear power can lead to proliferation as it can be used an excuse to develop a secret weapons program (Iran). Additionally, the cost of power estimate from the Nuclear Energy Institute is wildly off. This number assumes total efficiency. Considering the regulatory delays and siting concerns for reactors in the last twenty years, nuclear costs often increase tenfold. This number also ignores the hidden subsidies that nuclear and fossil fuels recieve; take these out and renewable energy today is competitive (with wind being the cheapest in many areas).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother major thing not considered is the reliability of energy producers. Compared to fossil fuels, nuclear power has a very low reliability; nuclear plants only operate 60-70% of the time due to maintenance. Such offtimes can cause very expensive dirty fossil fuel reactors to be turned on to replace the nuclear reactor. Compare this to renewables and the choice is obvious. Most wind turbines can operate 98% of the time, photovoltaics require virtually no maintenance, and CST and Geothermal require very small amounts of maintenance.
A major problem with security is that nuclear power plants are run by companies. The industry has had a mixed history for a reason. Companies will cut corners to make profits, often resulting in dangerous operating tactics that increase the need to SCRAM reactors and increase the chance of meltdown. Three Mile Island, a relatively well run reactor, show us the danger. Human error combined with relatively minor equipment failure that almost resulted in catastrophe. We can't even predict what will go wrong in a nuclear reactor and we certainly can't exclude human error. The physical security of nuclear plants is also at question; recently in Illinois, a security manager was fired because he filed a complaint about being forced to hire inept employees unable to properly defend the plant from a potential attack.
There is also the problem of siting. There is not ideal spot to place a nuclear reactor. It has to be close enough to where power is used but should be far away from population centers. This often means rural placement where locals political power is small. NIMBY is a major impediment to a spread of nuclear power.
Renewables are a much more viable option than nuclear or fossil fuels. There is no risk of catastrophic failure. Wind energy is cost competitive with fossil fuels, and other forms of renewable energy are catching up quickly.
clean is not cheaper and cannot provide a substantial amount of the energy we need. Nuclear power is safe - there is no question about that at least here in the US. Reactor designs enhance the safety of these systems. While not perfect, we cannot continue to let political correctness stop implementation of new plants.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisuhhh, you'd better stay away from the reactor core - you seem to be suffering from some unexplained speech failures.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery person against nuclear power is a misinformed luddite.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to know where a statement like "wind turbines can operate 98% of the time" comes from. Is that 98% of the time the wind is blowing which is for most areas about 15% of the time. My math would then show that the capacity to produce electricity from a wind turbine is really about 14.7%. The last wind farm I visited had a net output of about -0.2 MW and that was in August with a temperature of about 95 degrees. I think most Americans would like to have their air conditioning at that point in time. Maybe the focus should not be so much where we get the electricity from, but going back to pre-1960 when things like air conditioning, etc were a luxury, not a necessity. Sorry, but I don't think we can get there and I can't see the average American missing "American Idol" because the wind isn't blowing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery statement in the aqgil post is demonstrably false. Mr. Horgan is at least talking to credible experts, and finally coming to appreciate reality. There are no perfect solutions, but getting the government out of the way of building more nuclear power plants is clearly in the public interest.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisafter all? it's always been good
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I still dream of a breakthrough in solar energy" -- Solar energy is nuclear energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"There is an enormous amount of energy in the 60,000 or so tons of used nuclear material in the U.S." -- U.S. spent nuclear fuel has the energy equivalent of over 6 billion barrels of oil (approx. two years worth of imports)--see: <http://energy.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=1253&wit_id=2534> (search on "6 billion").
"[N]uclear power can lead to proliferation as it can be used an excuse to develop a secret weapons program (Iran)." -- It is oil revenue that is funding uranium enrichment in Iran.
"Considering the regulatory delays and siting concerns for reactors in the [p]ast twenty years, nuclear costs often increase tenfold." -- Antis' scaremongering causes regulatory uncertainty, cost increases, and schedule delays; then the antis use those as additional reasons to oppose nuclear. Rich.
"Nuclear waste can be viewed as a feature, not a bug, of nuclear energy." -- Antis emphasize nuclear's "waste problem" as though coal plants produce no waste. They do; see: <http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02c.html>. At least the nukes containerize their waste.
"Compared to fossil fuels, nuclear power has a very low reliability; nuclear plants only operate 60-70% of the time due to maintenance." -- Not true.
"Hydro ... is very friendly to the environment." -- Enviros have been anti-dam for years.
"Most wind turbines can operate 98% of the time." -- Wind and solar don't work at all when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining. Contending for the reliability of wind and solar over nuclear or fossil is idiotic.
"Wind energy is cost competitive with fossil fuels." -- If that were true, then those greedy corporations would already have converted the country to wind.
"Every reactor and waste repository represents a potential dirty bomb." If we're worried about terrorists, we would do a lot better to wean ourselves off oil. I would much rather my kids guard a nuclear plant or waste repository in the U.S. than "liberate" oil rich nations on a pretext.
Jeff Skov.
The data provided outlining the costs between each current method of electricity generation is incorrect or "skued" at best. It fails to incorporate the cost of cleaning up the site of the power plant once it has depreciated to the point of being demolished. Just as certain mines don't incorporate the cost that is incurred for cleaning up the soil etc. that is usually passed onto the taxpayer to clean the area up neither does the costs here incorporate the true cost to the consumer, or future taxpayer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo tear down and secure a site, remove the topsoil etc. cost millions and can go up to billions....
These costs are never an issue with solar. I live here in Phoenix and am sure that when First Solar is disolved there won't be a containment area that is incased in cement for thousands of years as a result of their energy manufacturing processes.
Once again you are not comparing apples to apples. Yes solar is more by your methods....but these methods don't show the entire and true costs.
While the media likes to present issues as pros versus cons the reality when it comes to nukes, like so many issues, isn't just for or against, it's 'how'. I'm sure that if the Norwegians and their state run industry were operating our offshore facilities instead of BP we would be more confident. That's not to say that just because it's a nationalized industry it's safer. Just look how nationalization worked towards environmental and worker safety in the old Soviet Union, and for that matter in China right now. So, it's complicated but if profits, whether for the state of industry, is the prime motivator and to the exclusion of legitimate oversight, then we have a protential for problem, whether its drilling, mining, or in regards to the nuclear industry. To say one is better than the other but not address the need for oversight and a deep incentive to do it right even if it's not the first time, with the knowledge that it will pay off because you won't have to fix it later, then we can get someplace and arrive intact and ready to more ahead to the next phase of our civilization's progress.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@JamesDavis
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRadiation in the vicinty of Nuclear Power plants is no higher than background. Now coal and ng plant and coal ash dumps they'll give you a real dose.
Recent builts of American nukes in Asia show real cost of nukes coming in at $1.5B/Gw 1.5 cents a kwh and are looking to drop below 1 and 1 very quickly with mass production - cheaper than coal or NG. Asian build times are less than 5 years
Two real nuke builds one actual cost, one sale cost.
$2B/Gw Candu 2.0 cents a kwh with 5% finance
www.cnnc.com.cn/tabid/168/Default.aspx
$1.2B Westinghouse 1.5 cents a kwh with 5% finance
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&refer=asia&sid=aJPyNB5Q_Fr0
Proposed major hydro development Site C dam. Cost $20B/Gw
destroying 50 sq km of farmland and forest. Opposition from environmental groups enormous. Google it.
@tulcak
No disaster is possible with nuclear power.
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2009/01/relative-safety-of-new-generation-of.html
Not so Renewables are enormously expensive. Replacing them and their associated fast spooling low efficiency load balancing gas plants with high efficiency slow spooling CCGT gas plant actually produces less green house gases at a lower cost
Cape wind $20/Gw with a current negotiated 24 cents a kwr rising to 38 cents over 15 years.
Largest solar installion in the US at Arcadia Florida
$32B/Gw or 50 cents a kilowatt hour at Florida Power's discount rate.
@aqgil13
What does nuclear power in the US have to do with some third world country using a nuclear plant to cover a weapons program.
There are no current nuclear subsidies not one. Wind power soaks up $30 billion in tax breaks and other subsidies 19 cent a kwh in subsidies, 25 times as much as the combined subsidies for all other forms of electricity.
The current US sixties tech nuclear power is currently in the low nineties and the new plants are expected to run at 95%. Coal is close to 70%.
Photovoltaics have to be constantly washed at enormous cost in injury and wasted water, are destroyed in hail storms and fill Toxic waste dumps after only 20 years of service
There is no credible large scale geothermal alternative
Each Nuclear power plant has two NRC inspectors on site and they take their job seriously, requiring immediate action on staffing, securiy and equipment shortcomings. THis is a result of TMI which was run by a bunch of clowns.
Nimby can be thwarted with federal legislation allowing nukes to replace coal plants on site without new permits.
@kapanen
Decommissioning costs are assessed by the NRC
No energy production is completely safe. Traditional hydro power carries a risk of catastrophic dam failure (accidental or deliberate, see WWII movie "Dambusters"), and geothermal has been accused of triggering earthquakes in Switzerland. We have to study both operational lifetime impact and possible failure scenarios to choose a good system. It does seem to me that nuclear has been unfairly demonized - the Windscale accident in the UK poisoned weeks of milk production over hundred of square miles of pasture, but pales into insignificance compared to the ongoing Gulf oil spill's effect on commercial fisheries.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"uh, excuse me... but, if we can have a catastrophic "accident" with fossil fuels, imagine the disaster we could have with nuclear. green energy is sustainable, cheaper and clean. why do we insist on embracing the dirtiest sources of energy possible? what is your major malfunction?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGiven the way current and proposed nuclear reactors are designed, catastrophic accidents are actually impossible.
Nuclear explosion: requires that nuclear material be gathered in a vastly supercritical configuration. There is no way to achieve this in a modern reactor, because the fuel elements are so fissile-dilute (5% 235-U, 95% 238-U; 238-U is not fissile, so cannot be used to create a fission weapon).
"China Syndrome": the reactor is encased in a 3 inch thick steel pressure chamber. If a full meltdown occurs, the fuel falls from the core, hits this giant heat sink, and spreads out into a non-critical configuration well before it can melt through its containment.
"Chernobyl": The coolant failure accident at chernobyl was primarily caused by the fact that it was moderated by graphite, but cooled by water. When the water flashed to steam, the reactor's neutrons were still being moderated - so reactivity was maintained in spite of the coolant loss. In an LWR, the reactor is both moderated and cooled by pressurized water. If the coolant boils off, the core loses reactivity, and the plant shuts down.
Anything else?
"For one, nuclear power can lead to proliferation as it can be used an excuse to develop a secret weapons program (Iran). "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not sure who they think they're fooling. There is no need to enrich past 5% for a peaceful power program, and they're going up to 20% (the lower limit for being able to construct a 235-U weapon).
But the reason Iran can get away with it is that they're developing their own nuclear technology. A country with enough money and access to Wikipedia can do that, no problem.
If we were to have developed modular reactors 10 years ago, and sold them to the rest of the world, this wouldn't even be an issue; extremist factions do not take hold if resources are plentiful, and power can provide most of those resources by fiat.
Instead, we have a religio-political clusterf**k concerning Iran compounded by a sore d**k from invading Iraq and Afghanistan that, essentially, has made enforcement of nuclear non-proliferation almost impossible.
Dr. Scott, your statement that nuclear power creates zero CO2 emissions is false, unless you completely ignore the entire fuel cycle. For every ton of ore mined, only about 4 pounds of yellow cake is produced. The mining of the ore produces CO2, the trucking of the ore to a mill produces CO2, the mill itself generates CO2, then the yellow cake is trucked to an enrichment plant hundreds of miles away, more CO2, then the enrichment plant generates CO2, more trucking to get it to a power plant. Plus you have all of the CO2 generated by all of the workers driving to remote mine sites, mill sites, enrichment sites, and power plants. Now that is just the CO2 problem. Then there are all of the other environmental impacts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMining produces tremendous amounts of overburden that is laden with heavy metals. Most people have seen piles of overburden on steep hillsides below the mines. Heavy metals leach out of these piles and end up in our streams, air, soils, and the ecosystem in general, whereas previously they were contained in the earth. Every uranium mill site that has every existed in this country has contaminated ground water. Most of these mills are located in arid parts of the country and they use tremendous amounts of water, plus contaminating water supplies. There are significant impacts on fish & wildlife, along with human health.
And then finally there is the problem of trying to store dangerous materials for what amounts to forever.
If we limit our nuclear power to only the nuclear material that has already been mined and is already in existence in the form of weapons or spent fuel, then I might support the idea of nuclear power as a temporary holdover as an energy source. But that support would depend on whether it could actually be done economically, which hasn't been the case so far, and safely.
@cudgel
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou might read this to get an idea of nuclear lifetime co2 emissions. Much less than wind and solar.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/comparativeco2.html
Note that the wind and solar contribution are in reality higher than natural gas because of the immense amount of gas required to load balance the intermittent power.
Your schtick on uranium mining is true of any form of mining. Note that wind uses 60 times the concrete and steel of a nuclear plant. All of that needs to be mined.
All the spent fuel produced to date by all commercial nuclear power plants in the US would cover a football field to the depth of about one meter -the world 4 times that. This contrasts with the thousands of sq miles of coal ash and mine tailings. It all will be burned up in Gen IV reactors, powering the world for centuries.
Candu reactors already use remix fuel for fuel and presently US reactors are running on dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons.
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2010/23/c3481.html
Not sure what you mean by "green energy". There is no energy source that doesn't produce some sort of environmental offset. Take wind energy for instance. Have you considered just how many windmills would be necessary to produce the same output of a single nuclear power plant? We're talking 7500 to 10,000! Now think about how much metal, plastic and other materials are necessary to produce them. Think how these things will impact wildlife. Then what happens when the wind stops? You still need a backup power facility. Why do you think Denmark with more wind power per capita than any other nation has still been unable to shut down a single conventional power plant? (And don't mention "smart-grid" cause it isn't going to happen in the next 30 years)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRenewables are good for offsetting the cost and supplementing the grid, but not as a primary source of energy for the most industrialized nations in the world. For that you need something with major output. Nuclear power, especially 4th gen and pebble bed reactors make the most sense. They are safer, produce less waste, can't be used to make weapons, and are even better for the environment than these crazy oil spills we're dealing with.
Like John Horgan, I read "We Almost Lost Detroit", opposed nuclear power, and had my opinions reinforced by the Three Mile Island episode. But then the full effects of the use of fossil fuels began to dawn on me, and I experienced the same epiphany he describes, about twenty years ago.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe live about ten miles from a nuclear plant that has been in operation more than fifty years without significant incident. They recently had their operating certificate renewed, and are building a second, state of the art, reactor. Our power is cheap, relative to other areas, and our water and air quality are excellent.
About once a year, we visit my wife's family at their home situated on the Ohio River, about eight miles from a coal fired power plant. Smog is a virtually constant presence, there is a stench in the air, and the incidence of chronic lung disease, cancers and heart ailments seems epidemic; I don't think we have ever encountered anyone up there, over the age of 45, who wasn't affected by them.
I agree the best source of energy would be wind and (especially) solar. I have wanted to "go solar" at home for years, but every time I have checked it out, the yield has been too low and the costs too high to justify it. It's similar to that Prius my wife would like to buy, but can't justify because the price is set at a point that makes it impossible to realize any savings over the use of a conventional vehicle.
So until we develop a reliable and affordable source of solar and/or wind energy, this tree-hugging, gun-owning social liberal will vote for Nuclear Energy over the other options every time.
EPA says that US coal plants cause 25,000 deaths every single year. The worst concievable accident at a US nuclear plant wouldn't have one tenth that (annual) effect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUtilities are required by law to pay into a trust fund that will cover the entire cost of decommissioning the nuclear plant and returing the site to greenfield. They also pay the govt. a fee that will cover all costs of nuclear waste transportation and final disposal. Thus, all these costs are fully included in the price/cost of nuclear electricity.
Few other industries do this. One example is the solar (thermal) industry. One reason Senator Feinstein has soured (a bit) on solar thermal is that the previous solar farm projects were shut down and just abandoned, leaving large amounts of industrial equipment/jumk just strewn around sensitive (National Park/reserve) sections of the Mohave desert. Kapanen is right about the comparison being skewed, but it is skewed in the opposite direction.
Even when one thoroughly accounts for all aspects of the generation process (e.g., mining, plant construction, etc..), nuclear' overall net CO2 emissions are a tiny fraciton of fossil fuels, and similar to (or lower than) renewables like wind and solar. The punchline is that all non-fossil (i.e., nuclear or renewable) sources have negligible CO2 emissions.
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull422/article4.pdf
Nuclear plants are very reliable, with over 90% uptime, ~9% planned downtime, and less than 1% unplanned downtime. (Planned downtime is not a problem, since they schedule it for times of minimum demand.). Renewables like solar and wind only have ~25% uptime at most, with downtime that can not be planned or scheduled. Also, even before accounting for the costs and problems associated with intermittentcy, govt. data show that solar and wind are substantially more expensive than nuclear power (let alone fossil fuels).
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html
Due to intermittentcy and other issues. Renewables will be at most ~25% of our electricity. For the rest, it's between nuclear and fossil, and nuclear is infinitely better than fossil from an environmental perspective.
Nuclear is only appropriate if you've got a large supply of cooling water, a reliable source of uranium fuel rods, a plan for disposing of the hot, partially-fissioned 'spent' fuel rods, and a security system that prevents diversion and theft of nuclear materials. Despite the safety claims, nuclear reactors are still susceptible to terrorist attacks, such as by large passenger planes, truck bombs, etc., and that could easily trigger a Chernobyl-scale event.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt the very least, the wise thing to do would be to keep the existing nuclear plants operating and well-maintained, but to put all efforts in building renewable energy generating capacity (which in Brazil accounts for about 50% of the energy supply - it's not that it can't be done.)
The main advantage of solar and wind for vast regions of the planet, by the way, is their lack of reliance on large volumes of cooling water. It's true that the intermittent supply of wind and solar requires energy conversion and storage technology - such as high-capacity batteries, chemical energy storage (as hydrogen, methane, methanol, etc.) - but that technology already exists and has improved greatly in the past ten years alone. In contrast, nuclear fuel rod reprocessing is still the most toxic industrial process known. Solar is largely silicon-based, and generates little waste in manufacturing, and none in operation - unlike both fossil and nuclear systems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would also be unwise to have more than 20% nuclear power (the current U.S. level) because nuclear reactors work best at one power output setting - ramping them up and down shortens the lives and can damage the fuel rods. Nuclear power plants are really a baseline-only power source that have to be tied into grids in conjunction with other, adjustable sources (like solar and wind). France has real problems with their reactors because of this - as well as having to shut them down during heat waves due to the cooling water problem (the same thing has happened in Georgia).
Germany, on the other hand, is planning to phase out all nuclear and rely entirely on renewable energy sources - and yes, that's technologically plausible. The U.S. could do the same, if it wanted to.
@ikesolem
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSolar CSP requires a lot of water.
Nukes using air/geothermal cooling would still be a order of magnitude cheaper than wind or solar PV
Storage systems when added to wind and solar in a effort to make them baseload double their cost putting them above 20 times nuclear cost.
The US nuclear industry is running on remixed Soviet nuclear weapons and the Candu reactor can easily be powered by reused PWR reactor fuel rods. Economical reuse of all nuclear waste will happen with Gen IV reactors.
Solar PV produces a massive amount of toxic waste every 20 years when they have to be replaced.
There is no point in ramping a nuke up and down. It runs full blast all the time. Offpeak nukes can generate power for hydrogen production, desalination, heating and cooling storage systems, vehicle charging and other time insensitive apps.
Wind and solar are not considered adjustable sources. They are too intermittant.
Georgia and France just needed to increase cooling tower capacity to deal with once in a hundred year weather events.
Germany is no longer planning to phase out all nuclear after the greenie nitwits got the boot in the last election. Because its renewable energy sources have cost hundred of billions to no effect, they are planning massive builds of coal plants
Running on not so renewables is technically possible at twenty times the cost of nuclear power minimum.
Nukes are just more expensive with air cooling.
Cooling, uranium sources, waste, and a security issues are all resolved.
Nukes are not despite debunked Big Oil disinformation claims, susceptible to terrorist attacks, large passenger planes, truck bombs, etc., nothing in any event that any chance of triggering a Chernobyl-scale event.
At the very least, the wise thing to do would be to keep the existing nuclear plants operating and well-maintained, but to put all efforts in building much more nuclear capacity just like China and India.
36% of Brazil energy is from hydro. There are no significant hydro resources available in the US.
yes fordi, there is something else. first you claim that catastrophic accidents are actually impossible given they way current reactors are built. when was the last new plant built? and, also, claiming that catastrophic accidents are impossible is a ridiculous statement ("accident"). AND, where are we storing the spent nuclear material? green energy will create a sustainable economy with jobs that cannot be outsourced and the jobs created will be far more than any jobs created by building more nuclear power plants. we need to move away from centralized energy production. most if not all your claims are not based on fact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJohn, I believe you are truly a Scientific American, when presented with new data, you changed your conclusion. Isn't that the basis of science? Thank you for having an open mind. aqgil13-Your reliability numbers are way off, Nuclear Power plants in the US capacity factors are over 90% and have been for years. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/analysis/nuclearpower.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@ikesolem You are correct. Nuclear plants need a heat sink, a reliable supply of fuel, adequate security systems, and a plan for proper handling of used fuel materials. Fortunately, all of our plants today have all of those features and the plants that are being planned will also have them. They are part of the cost of doing business, and the nuclear industry learned a long time ago that taking short cuts that appeared to provide short term profits was a dumb way to run a business.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne big advantage that nuclear fission has over its fossil fuel competition is that the fuel is really, really cheap and has the potential for getting even cheaper as we do a better job of using it. Even with our current systems, which are operating on what is essentially 1960s vintage, second generation technology, heat from commercial nuclear fuel costs just $0.52 per million BTU. (http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/costs/)
Heat from coal has a variable cost depending on distance from the mine and quality of the mine of $1.50-$4.00 per million BTU. Natural gas for electric utilities cost $6.90 per million BTU for the last month that the EIA has compiled prices. (http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_nus_m.htm) The advantage in fuel cost allows nuclear plant owners to spend a lot more money on people, equipment, and quality control than their fossil fuel competitors and STILL sell power at a lower price. I like that.
Of course, another advantage that nuclear has is that the fission process is and always has been clean enough to run inside a sealed submarine.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast
Founder, Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.
@tulcak - Actually, "green energy" jobs are outsourced all the time. Where do you think most of the components for wind turbines and solar panels come from? Most are produced in factories in China and Europe; only the very largest components that are hard to transport - like turbine blades - are actually "Made in America".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe statement that catastrophic accidents are impossible is factually correct, not because accidents are impossible, but because the systems have sufficient "defense in depth" so that even the very worst accident will not have catastrophic consequences. Look at TMI - there was a 20-30% core melt and no one even got hurt. The material did not only not melt into the ground water, it did not even melt more than 5/8 of an inch into the steel pressure vessel that is the second layer of defense. (The first layer, the fuel cladding, did fail.)
We are storing the used fuel in safe locations where we have stored it for the past 50 years - right next to the plants where it was used. The containers are simple and robust. They will last a very long time. The fuel form is also simple and easy to handle with the right equipment; it gets easier to handle as it ages. Someday, it will be as economical to recycle it as to extract virgin uranium from mines.
Rod Adams
i guess the point being is that I cannot imagine a "disastrous" or "catastrophic" accident at a wind farm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Over 9,900 MW of new wind power capacity was brought online in [the U.S.] 2009, up from 8,800 in 2008. In 2009 added new capacity was enough to power the equivalent of 2.4 million homes or generate as much electricity as three large nuclear power plants."
so, why invest in a dirty and dangerous energy source that would take decades to complete and bring online when green energy solutions are being implemented NOW are clean and cheap and provide millions of jobs that cannot be outsourced? (repair and maintenance can only be done onsite. SOME parts are being manufactured in China, but, this is why we must stop this and build here.
rodadam, have you ever seen a wind turbine up close? ALL the parts are huge and as for the size of the blades, don't you think the tower has to be even taller? some of the posts made here are obviously made by people who WANT things to be true to support their arguments and are not really factual.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisrodadam,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are storing the used fuel in safe locations where we have stored it for the past 50 years - right next to the plants where it was used. The containers are simple and robust. They will last a very long time. The fuel form is also simple and easy to handle with the right equipment; it gets easier to handle as it ages. Someday, it will be as economical to recycle it as to extract virgin uranium from mines.
everything in this quote from you is false. throughout the U.S. there are hazmat sites where radioactive materials produced from nuclear power plants are leaking and contaminating. the ground water. the storage containers are leaking because of their age and we have no national policy to deal with the waste.
Where do you live?? We don't have wind that will allow wind turbines to operate at more that 6% of capacity!! And that's on an annual basis!! Just because the blade is turning doesn't mean that it is putting out any power.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@JamesDavies
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not sure where your 2-year timeline for new hydro comes from. Every hydro facility I seen or been associated with has taken on the order of 5-10 years from the point of initial design and license application through construction to final commissioning. In reality it will take 10-15 years in the US to bring a new hydro facility on-line. A new hydro facility will receive intense scrutiny during the FERC licensing process to ensure any fish migration patterns, water rights, land usage, and other aspects such as access to ancestral grounds are adequately mitigated since thousands of acres will be flooded. And that licensing process is a necessary step.
PPL Montana is currently in a lawsuit with the State of Montana concerning the rights to the land under the dams PPL owns. This new legal issue involves millions of dollars. The State of Montana is declaring they are owed rent for the land PPL dams currently occupy.
This issue could have dramatic effects for the entire US hydro industry. The immediate effect may be increased costs of any pumped storage projects currently being proposed to offset windmill variability. If pumped storage facilities have to pay rent to the local governing authority then will pumped storage still be a financial option to offset those many times when the wind is not blowing sufficiently to generate significant amounts of power?
If you are referring to energy recovery hydro systems or small hydro where a dam already exists then those usually take 3-7 years from the point of initial design and license application to final commissioning. Additionally most hydro energy recovery projects are small scale on the order of 10 MW's or less. So while the total potential of small hydro is on the order of thousands of MW's, local water flow restrictions reduces the on-demand capabilities of each facility. Additionally, each individual site will face NIMBYism during the licensing process which every power generation project must face whether it is hydro, windmill, solar or nuclear.
Your initial comment about walking around radioactive and glowing is a typical anti-nuclear comment. No basis in fact, just hyperbole. Additionally, just because a project costs billions does not mean it automatically has no merit. Some projects due to their size, scope, upfront construction costs and anticipated life span require large scale financing which in todays dollars is in the billion-dollar range.
"Hydro, both fresh water and salt water, is still and always was the safest." Funniest thing. Yesterday I was just reading in Tom Blees' "Prescription for the Planet" that 171,00 people died in China in 1975 when heavy rains burst a series of hydroelectric dams. I'll bet if that had been a nuclear reactor we'd know about it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNukes make sense. But they are only part of the solution. Renewable energy and conservation are the other corenerstones to wean us off hydrocarbon fuels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou don't have to imaging the worst nuclear accident that can happen for a western designed nuclear reactor. It already happened at TMI. No one was killed. No impact on the environment. No China Syndrome.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, I agree that hydro is clean once it is built. I supplies 20% of our electricity. Too bad that there essentially no more available. It's percent contribution will therefore shrink. What about the other 80%? Windmills can't do more than 5-10% as demonstrated in Denmark. That leaves a big gap to fill and the only one that can fill it without greenhouse gas emissions is nuclear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPresently used nuclear power plants converting mass into energy are using either uranium ("fision") or hydrogen ("fusion"). Both mehods still suffer from severe drawbacks. Fision produces nuclear waste, fusion is operating at extremely high temperatures, which are not yet well controllable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy aren't physicists try to find a new method capable of converting ordinary materials like stones into energy instead of looking for the Higgs boson. Physicists at CERN, for example, should rather do this and, thus more useful work!
@tulcak, How would you outsource a nuclear power plant job? Or a coal plant operator job? Or a Natural Gas plant operator job? That argument is specious at best.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Fordi is essentially correct. The analysis has been done taking into consideration worst case everything and adding safety margins on top of safety margins. The analysis is equivalent to a peer-reviewed scientific journal article. The way to refute journal articles is to either write another journal article refuting the methodology used in the first analysis or offer an alternative method for analysis that is plausible and refutes the results. I welcome you to prove you are smarter than the thousands of engineers in numerous disciplines that have come to a conclusion different from your own. The probability that a health significant release of contamination from any event/accident is likely on par with somebody winning the lottery two drawings in a row.
@ikesolem, how would you propose we obtain the hydrogen for this storage? Seems to me that might take just a bit of water. And if we decide to use sea water to reduce the impact on water supplies, we end up producing massive quantities of chlorine gas which is very toxic. Additionally, the efficiency for converting water to hydrogen and then combusting that hydrogen to produce electricity is insanely low. For energy storage, you will quickly determine that heavy-metal storage cells are far better than hydrogen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Thim, how would you propose to convert any stored energy in a stone into a usable energy source. I would propose you need to refine the materials that have stored potential energy out of that stone and then utilize that refined source. That seems exactly to align with nuclear power from fission and is being done exactly that way and has been for decades.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpent nuclear fuel (what you called waste) is not a problem. Compare the volume of spent nuclear fuel produced per capita to the coal fly ash produced + CO2 emission + scrubber discharge, and I think you will find a significant disparity with the primary difference being the thousands of times more dangerous due to its volume waste from coal plants is never contained. Take a look at the Kingston fly ash slurry spill.
@ RobinMHolt
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, Uranium and Thorium are both stones that have great energy potential. Releasing that potential produces other kinds of stones that also have wonderful useful properties. Waste is that which cannot be used, but there is very little waste coming from a Nuclear Reactor, just new materials waiting to be used for energy or purification, or medical detection, or the destruction of cancer and many others.
@Fordi, 20% enrichment is not usable in a reasonable weapon. Weapons grade uranium is considered >= 90% enriched. 20% is typically used in research and medical reactors, but not weapons. A "dirty" bomb constructed of 20% HEU would have a very low yield, an extremely large size and extremely heavy weight. The Iran getting a weapon scare is really just a scare.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's becoming more an more apparent that the only environmentalists who are anti-nuclear are those that have not given nuclear an objective look (beyond the bumper sticker slogans).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe harsh reality that renewable advocates like to ignore is that there is still no example of an all-wind or even mostly-wind powered grid; on the other hand France currently gets 77% of its electricity from nuclear. The upper limit for wind penetration is hard to pin down, but the latest study from the US DOE NREL (the EWIT study) found that 20% wind is reasonable, but 30% is significantly more expensive. Ultimated, in a real grid, wind power must be diluted about 3:1 with dispatchable power (i.e. natural gas or hydro) .
nathan2go and robertmholt, your posts are FULL of non-facts. storing nuclear waste from nuclear power plants ARE a huge problem. it amazes me that you are making the claims that you are.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFACTS;
1. storage of nuclear waste is a huge problem and is getting to the critical point because of the leakage of aging storage containers. ground water is being polluted.
2. it takes decades to bring a new plant online and the cost of the energy produced is much higher than green alternatives.
3. green alternatives are being implemented NOW. In the decades it will take to bring new reactors online, we could be producing a substantial part of our energy from green alternatives.
4. "Us" anti-nuke environmentalists are against nuclear power BECAUSE we have educated ourselves with the FACTS and not wishful thinking.
nuclear power and fossil fuels are unsustainable, dirty, and dangerous to our environment and our national security. I think that your use of non-facts is highly irresponsible and does nothing to contribute to the discussion of solutions.
For those who dream of a breakthrough in solar energy, I have good news. The breakthrough is already here. I is called nuclear energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuclear energy comes from ancient suns. It is a gift given to us locked up in the ashes burned out suns. It can provide power for humanity for thousands of years, without greenhouse gas emissions. I say that is a pretty neat gift.
For those who worry about what to do with the waste should remember that man did not make the first nuclear reactor. They appeared all by themselves billions of years ago when U-235 was more abundant. They achieved critically when water entered the rock strata and caused fissions. They were self-sustaining because the heated rocks ejected the water as steam. No one was around to watch this phenomena, but it probably would have looked like the geisers at yellowstone park.
The point of this is that these natural reactors produced waste, and the waste stayed were it was generated; all this without a national waste repository.
Using this issue to stop the implemention of nuclear power is wrong. We should not allow that to stop us from using the gift of nuclear energy.
aggil13
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Compared to fossil fuels, nuclear power has a very low reliability; nuclear plants only operate 60-70% of the time due to maintenance."
Absolutely incorrect. The average capacity factor for the nuclear industry has continued to climb over the past 2 decades and in 2009 stood at 90.5%. Most plants perform refueling outages on a 18 month cycle with the majority of the rest at 24 months. The industry as a whole hasn't been as low as 70% for capacity factor since 1997.
And the reactor with longest continuous operating time is TMI-1 (you heard it right. It was the one that didn't have the accident). It operated continously for over 700 days. That's about 2 years. As an engineer I marvel that we can build anything that works continuously for 2 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistulcak
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour post is FULL of it - non facts included.
It amazes me that you are making the claims that you are. Likely you got them off one of Big Oil's disinformation sites.
FACTS;
1. Problems with storage of nuclear weapons waste have nothing to do with nuclear power. All the world's nuclear waste would fit on a football field buried 40 feet deep in a concrete containment casks Nuclear waste is valuable nuclear fuel for the Gen IV reactors in service and planned around the world except the USA. After powering the world on existing nuclear waste for hundreds of years the tiny amount of low level waste from these units would fit in a toolshed, stored for 30 40 years then burned up in a fusion reactor.
2. AECL finished a 2 reactor Candu 6 complex in Quinshan China in 2004, 4 years in construction. $2B/Gw -1.5 cents a kwh. Westinghouse has started a 4 year build of 4 American AP-1000 units (Vogtle twins), due for 2013 service at $1.2b/GW - 1.3 cents a kwh. With mass production enabling three year builds at a rate of more than a thousand a year,
nukes could have us off fossil fuels within ten years. For not so renewables look at the 10 years spent on Cape Wind now being subsidized with a feeding tariff going as high as 35 cents a kwh.
3.Studies have shown it would produce less GHG's if the not so renewables and associated fast spooling NG plant required for load balancing were scrapped and high efficiency CCGT gas generation was used instead. "Green" energy exists only to enhance massive sales of Big Oils dirty NG product.
4. "Us" anti-nuke environmentalists are against nuclear power BECAUSE - you are idiots?
Fossil fuels and not so renewables are unsustainable, dirty, and dangerous to our environment and our national security. Every year you of the nuclear denier religion delay the conversion of coal plant, another three million folks die from air pollution. Nuclear power is the only hope we have. I think that your use of non-facts is highly irresponsible and does nothing to contribute to the discussion of solutions.
Tulcak, we seem to disagree about what constitutes a "fact".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you look at the US department of energy EIA site: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/assumption/pdf/electricity.pdf#page=3 , they have data on the cost of various power sources. What it shows is that (allowing for capacity factor), nuclear plants cost $4.2 per average Watt delivered (cf=.9), wind costs $4.92/Wavg (cf=.4), and solar PV cost $34/Wavg (assuming 18% capacity factor). There are plenty of anti-nuclear activists claiming higher costs for nuclear, but the utilities buying power plants will put much more weight in the EIA data.
If you read the facts about the department of energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, you'll see that we have been safely and permanently disposing of (military) nuclear waste for more than a decade, 2150 feet below ground in a 250 million year old salt bed.
For the energy produced, nuclear waste is 10,000 more compact than fossil fuel waste. We can afford to engineer good systems to handle it safely. On the other hand, the giga-ton quantities of fossil fuel waste we create every year (including from systems that are 20% renewable) can only be dumped recklessly into the biosphere.
I agree that building reactors takes too long. Much of that time is clearly wasted, and can be shortened. In any rate, I'm confident that we can replace all of our coal power with nuclear within 40 years or so.
If we "go with renewables" instead, we'll end up keeping most of the coal plants, however. We'll replace some of the older ones with natural gas plants. Then all the fossil fuel plants will ramp up and down in response to the variability of renewable power. The result will be 25% renewables, 5% hydro, and 70% fossil fuel. Oh, and we'll need draconian conservation measures to put even modest reductions in our CO2 emissions.
tulcak says: "Some of the posts made here are obviously made by people who WANT things to be true to support their arguments and are not really factual."
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Absolutely, and quite telling when those posters cannot provide sources of their "facts" unless they are from BLOGS or industry sources. Everyone is entitled to their own OPINIONS but certainly not entitled to their own "FACTS."
It is absolutely ludicrous to continue with 20th century nuclear technology, and I certainly cannot support anything but 4th generation nuclear reactors like IFR's that use the current nuclear waste as fuel, or LFTR's that use thorium.
Luckily, renewable energy is a growing industry worldwide, and those using their own "facts" to dismiss it in any way, shape or form, are clearly misinformed and are pushing their own agenda completely counter to what we need in the 21st century. It is quite ironic that in the same week that BP unleashed their epic environmental disaster on the gulf, the federal government gave the Cape Wind Project its final approval, after years of wealthy Americans using every trick they could muster to fight clean and green renewable energy!
uli says: "as an engineer I marvel that we can build anything that works continuously for 2 years."
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WOW! Quite amazing.....2 whole years you say!!
I've used PV panels that worked continuously for over 25 years in the desert, and still, after another 5+ years in residential applications, are going strong, with no moving parts and producing 97% of their rated power output! These same PV panels that are over 30 years old now, have no moving parts, no emissions, no nasty radioactive waste, and became net-energy producers after their first couple years, and are still using FREE SOLAR power as their fuel.
Iakota1012 wrote:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Everyone is entitled to their own OPINIONS but certainly not entitled to their own "FACTS"."
I certainly agree, but it would be interesting to know what he considers opinion or fact. Here are some to put into the opinion or fact category:
Opinion or fact?
1. The wind does not always blow.
2. The frequency of electricity must remain constant in order not to destroy the appliances connected to it.
3. The electric grid does not store electricity to a significant extent. (There is no bathtub full of electricity as advertised by some renewable providers)
4. Managers of the grid must continously balance the power sources with the loads connected to the grid. (this is done every 5 seconds)
5. Transmission lines will always have losses so that it is more difficult to receive power from far away.
6. Managers of the grid must manage the power sources so that power lines don't sag or melt.
7. Adding intermittent sources to the grid requires adding power sources that can rapidly compensate for the power variation. This will mean adding natural gas power plants as most other plants are designed for relatively constant power.
8. Denmark is the country with the most windmills. It gets about 5% of its electricity from windmills. It gets its back up electricity from imported hydro (Scandinavia) and imported nuclear (France). Windmills have not been added lately not because of a lack of "political will" but for grid stability reasons.
Most reasonable people would agree that the first is a fact. The others are also facts, but they are best judged as such by people who have actual knowledge of the technology involved not by people who join anti-whatever causes.
Not all nuclear reactors require water to cool them. Some use liquid metal such as sodium or lead. Others use molten salt. One such design uses molten fuel dissolved in the coolant salt. The fuel can not meltdown is possible because it is already melted. Molten salt has the ability to use spent nuclear fuel without reprocessing. Just open up the fuel assemblies and dump them in the salt. The salt being a fluoride salt dissolves the metal. Any part of the fuel that is fissile will be used to make heat. The resultant waste has to be stored more on the order of 500 years not 100,000 of year.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe other nice part is the reactor vessel is not pressurized, at lest not like a pressurized light water reactor. This translates into cheaper , and simpler designs.
Iakota2012 has continuously operating solar panels. That is amazing! Getting them to provide power at night must be quite a feat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisuli says: "The wind does not always blow"
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Sure it does, and in some areas quite a bit more steadily and stronger than others, thus the reasoning behind site assessments for wind energy.
Wind power technology is rapidly evolving, as turbines continue to grow much larger with the ability to wring more energy out of the wind -- especially at lower wind speeds.
As a matter of fact, travelers used to count the OIL wells in west texass when passing through, but now they are counting the huge expansion of the number of huge wind turbines!
uli says: "Denmark is the country with the most windmills."
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Quite possibly, I suppose, since windmills are designed to PUMP WATER at lower wind speeds, and wind turbines of 5 MW capacity -- soon to be 7 MW -- are increasingly more efficient at much lower wind speeds than the older technology due to their larger swept area, produce electricity with FREE FUEL and no emissions at all.
uli says: Denmark is the country with the most windmills. It gets about 5% of its electricity from windmills."
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Again, windmills PUMP WATER and wind turbines create electricity from the FREE source of power called the wind. Today, Denmark gets 19% of its electricity from the wind -- almost 4 times your antiquated figure, 13% in Spain and Portugal and 7% in Germany.
You can continue to show your utter ignorance towards all types of renewable energy while continuing to spew your own "facts" due to your agenda, but worldwide wind turbine capacity has doubled in the past 3 years to 340 TWh or 2% of the worldwide electricity usage.
As a matter of fact, the state of Colorado, home to the NREL, after a voter initiative in 2004 known as Amendment 37, which required a 10% renewable energy requirement, was doubled to 20% in 2007, and since the industry was so far ahead of that schedule, decided this year to require 30% of all electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2030.
Initiatives like in Colorado and worldwide, will continue to grow the renewable energy economy, create thousands of new jobs and help protect consumers and ratepayers.
As a matter of fact, uli, after checking the latest 2009 statistics on wind power usage, Denmark gets 19% of all its electricity needs from wind power -- the highest percentage of any country -- but is still ranked 10th in the world, with over 3,500 MW of installed wind power capacity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere should be about 160 GW of worldwide installed wind generating capacity in 2010, up from 74 GW in 2006, with a net growth rate of 21% per year. That growth rate in the U.S. has been the highest over the past 3 years, at 45% growth in power capacity per year, to over 35,000 MW in 2009. Steady growth like wind power in the U.S. and around the world, will continue to dismiss the "facts" that naysayers will continue to spew along with their hatred of any renewable energy!
lakota2012 and Uli are both right. The variability of wind power, even when wind farms are aggregated over areas hundreds of miles across, is still an issue for the grid. However, it is manageable until wind penetration reaches about 20% of total electric generation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe US department of Energy has done a thorough study, including determining the required transmission and natural gas fired backup:
http://www.nrel.gov/wind/systemsintegration/ewits.html
The result was that 20% wind power can be made to work fine, but 30% is much more expensive. In the study, which covered the eastern half of the US, 20% of the electricity came from nuclear power. So 50-60% was from dispatchable sources (fossil fuel and hydro). Effectively, the wind power must be diluted 2:1 with dispatchable power.
So where do we go from there? 50-60% fossil fuel is too high for the long term. Energy storage is basically a requirement at that point, but is not currently affordable.
And roof-top solar has the same problem (variability), and no affordable storage.
The only way to power the whole country with renewable energy is with solar thermal energy including thermal storage. We'd also have to abandon distributed solar (especially wind and rooftop PV), and focus exclusively on solar in desert locations. This means being completely dependent on long distance power transmission. It also means being dependent on one region of the country, that will be asked to sacrifice a large amount of undeveloped wilderness area. Lastly, it is critically dependent on hoped-for but unproven future cost reductions in solar power.
With all of these issues, putting all of our eggs in the renewable basket is a plan with a high probability of failure. A clean energy plan needs a strong nuclear component to have a reasonable probability of success and cost effectiveness.
"Denmark gets 19% of all its electricity needs from wind power"??
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCheck to see if this is usage or generation. There is a big difference between the two. There is no limit to generation, because more windmills means more generation. It is more difficult to actually use all that wind generated electricity in the country where it is generated because the electricity demand and wind availability may not line up.
A small country like Denmark which is part of a very large grid can always get help from the nuclear generators in France and conventional power sources from other neighboring countries to avoid blackouts. Where would we in the U.S. get help from?
Hmm.... "The average production cost from a U.S. nuclear power plant in 2008 was 1.87 cents per kilowatt-hour, ..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBUT what is the CONSTRUCTION cost?
Last I heard, when you amortized the huge up-front construction costs, the huge back-end decommissioning costs, and the huge cost of financing, the cost per Kwh was closer to 8 cents. Invest $1billion in a wind farm now, and you can start producing electricity and reducing CO2 next year; invest $1billion in a nuke plant, and you won't see a watt for at least 5 years.
Sure we need to research nuclear power for the long run (there are a lot of problems to be solved), but we need to invest in wind (and other sources) power now, so we can start to solve the problems now. Perhaps by the time we get 20%-30% of our power from wind, double our energy efficiency, use all the wasted biomass (like sewage) for power generation, etc, just perhaps, nuclear power will be a cost&benefit effective option to replace our remaining dependence on fossil fuels.
@denswei
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOECD has American nuclear cost as 3 cents a kwh including capital and financing. Decom cost is included in the 3 cents and/or 1.87 cents as a per kwh charge assessed by the NRC.
http://www.egea.eu/congresses/wrc08/content/pages/congress/workshops/1/The%20Economics%20of%20Nuclear%20Power.pdf
Real nuclear costs:
Candu 6 build 2004 $2B/Gw, 1.5 cents a kwh
http://www.cnnc.com.cn/tabid/168/Default.aspx
AP1000 build $1.2B/Gw 2007, 1.3 cents a kwh
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&refer=asia&sid=aJPyNB5Q_Fr0
$2B/Gw Candu 2.0 cents a kwh with 5% finance
www.cnnc.com.cn/tabid/168/Default.aspx
$1.2B Westinghouse 1.5 cents a kwh with 5% finance
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&refer=asia&sid=aJPyNB5Q_Fr0
As Asia blooms with nuclear power, the cost is headed for $1B/Gw 1 cent a kwh. For the US that would leave plenty of cash to convert the US off fossil fuel with 2500 gigawatts of nukes at $2500B financed by the $800B paid every year into the coffers of Big Oil/Coal for their deadly product. Could be all done ten years from now.
Every year,not so renewable products defer the nuclear solution three million people die worldwide from coal pollution and we get another year closer to the as little as ten years away civilization ending climate/peak oil/ocean acidification meltdown that will kill billions.
We don't have time to wait.
&Nathan2go
The DOE study you refer to was done by wind lobbying organization AWEA and has been completely debunked.
http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/how-doe-awea-doa/
The cost assummed for wind power used in the study was 1.9B/Gw on shore and 3.7 offshore.
http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2010/01/innumeracy-in-news.html
http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2010/01/innumeracy-in-news.html
Real recent real wind costs
Offshore Cape wind $20/Gw with a current negotiated 24 cents a kwr rising to 38 cents over 15 years.
Onshore - Chinese built Texas wind farm - $12B/Gw., 12 cents a kwh.
@uli et al
denmark
#1 Wind Energy country, Denmark has the highest power rates in Europe and produces the highest CO2 emissions of 881 gm CO2 per kwh of electricity, #2 Wind Power Germany produces 601 gm CO2 per kwh, while Nuclear France produces 83 gm CO2 per kwh.
Denmark is going to have to start PAYING other countries to take it's Wind Energy:
http://www.nordpoolspot.com/Market_Information/Exchange-information/No162009-Nord-Pool-Spot-implements-negative-price-floor-in-Elspot-from-October-2009-/
aqgil13 - note that nuclear power is online over 90% of the time, not 60-70%. Nuclear power is the best answer to this countries energy needs. The other technologies cannot economically compete with nuclear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuclear power is online 90%+ of the time, not 60-70% as noted in previous comment. No other technology can economically compete with nuclear. Wake up, America. Lets turn away from oil and gas and commit to nuclear power.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiskapanen - the costs of spent fuel disposal is paid by the utility operating the plant each year of operation. You are misinformed in your comments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisuli says: "check to see....."
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Sorry, I gave you the figures since your agenda didn't allow the facts, and now you wish for others to continue doing your homework for you......while you're researching total wind power generating around the world, read-up on "smart grids" as well, since the U.S. grid is archaic at best, and certainly doesn't work well with clean and green renewable energy!
<a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/report.cfm?id=smart-electricity-grid/">Start your research here</a>
nathan2go, I definitely agree that putting all our eggs into one basket is a huge mistake, but so is not moving forward into the 21st century with 4th generation nuclear reactors, and diversifying our energy needs into renewable energy with a smart grid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@lakota2012 restricts his comment to repeating dogma from his nuclear denier church headquartered in one of the backrooms down at Big Oil.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll my comment is verifiable fact or based on it.. Is there one you dispute? Cape Wind feedin tariffs are wrong, the AECL nuke cost more, Westinghouse didn't sell for that price, the official Arcadia cost is wrong?there some error I made?
Smart grids are really just another way for utilities to gouge taxpayer for using energy when they need it. They barely increase efficiency and are of no real help in integrating useless not so renewables.
With 2500 ultradependable nukes spread out in load centers across the country the need for tens of billions in major grid upgrades disappears.
It is that incredible cost in millions of human lives, the risk of a civilization ending climate/peak oil/ocean acidification precipice, and the enormous waste in resources every year misinformed not so renewable religious acolytes succeed in delaying the nuclear solution, that drives me to try to penetrate the thickness.
The Smart Grid, together with Wind Energy is the Wall St. Financial Meltdown Specialists dream come true as well as the Oil/NG industry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWind doesn't significantly reduce fossil fuel consumption and may actually increase it. While depleting precious capital that otherwise would have been used to build the REAL fossil fuel reducing energy source - Nuclear. Cycling Wind energy causes increased fuel consumption in the shadowing fossil fuel energy source. See:
http://www.masterresource.org/2009/11/wind-integration-incremental-emissions-from-back-up-generation-cycling-part-i-a-framework-and-calculator/
http://ipams.org/wp-content/uploads/BENTEKStudy_How_Less_Became_More.pdf
But because Wind Power has a nasty tendency to go to nil when power demand goes to max, this will push the market electricity price sky high. This will allow Enron style power trading & skullduggery, with even foreign-oil-guzzling diesel generators selling power. Electricity traders will skim billions off the top, taking advantage of sudden dips in Wind Power. And with THE SMART GRID, the consumer will be forced to pay Market Price plus a surcharge, an effective, devious means of electricity rationing. So Wind is Nil, Heat Wave, consumers get stuck to pay $1.00 a kwh for power. The poor, of course will be hardest hit. And demand will fall to match the fluctuating Wind Energy, by making power too expensive for many to afford. And Industrial & Commercial users will switch to fuel guzzling NG Fuel Cells and small Turbine generators to supply their electricity - INCREASING fossil fuel consumption.
And Wall St. Blood Suckers are already making a killing on Wind Energy, due to the big tax incentives, including triple accelerated depreciation. Glenn Schleede:
"...Therefore, a "wind farm" owner using his own equity to cover 50% of capital costs (normally the equity share is lower) can recover his entire equity investment in less than 18 months and then enjoy (a) an infinite return on equity thereafter, and (b) in effect, an interest free "loan" for the balance not yet depreciated - all courtesy of US taxpayers...."
Ted Rockwell: "&Warren Buffet's MidAmerican Energy project calculates that it can break even after six years, WITHOUT EVER PRODUCING ANY ELECTRICITY. And Boone Pickens is offering his investors a 25% return on a 4000 MW wind-farm based entirely on federal tax credits&"
Enron & Sempra Profiteering on Electricity Trading:
http://www.democrats.com/node/3170
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/29/business/la-fi-sempra-20100429
sethdayal, you're comparing apples to peaches with generation II CANDU reactors and generation III+ AP1000 reactors, along with comparing the much less Chinese costs of full-scale mass production since they want 100 nuclear reactors, compared to much higher costs here in the U.S.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reported cost of the first 2 AP1000's in China was only $5.3 Billion, with the published cost of the first 4 AP1000's at only $8 Billion. Whereas the cost of those same AP1000's in the U.S. ranges from $9.8 Billion to $17.5 Billion for two in FL, SC or GA. That's considerably higher in the U.S., but since the AP1000 is modular, costs should drop as more are built, along with government financing and subsidies.
denswei says: "...research nuclear power for the long run (there are a lot of problems to be solved)..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNonsense. Nuclear builds way back in the 70's & 80's were highly successful. Wind and Solar have been a failure. Denmark is the Wind Energy capital of the World - 25 yrs of All-Out effort. Let's see the results of that Supreme Effort:
http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/DKTPES.pdf
The tiny little red line on top is Wind Energy ( most of which must be exported, only 1/4 to 1/2 is actually consumed in Denmark). See the huge purple, blue and green lines - that's dirty, filthy, GHG spewing Coal, Oil and Gas. The brown line is garbage and biomass (raped from the soil - where it should have been returned) burnt in smoke belching Thermal Power plants. Compare with France:
http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/FRTPES.pdf
See the big fat yellow line - that's Nuclear. The filthiest Coal line is mighty thin compared to Denmark's isn't it?
Here is USA Electricity Production 1971-2007:
http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/USELEC.pdf
See the rapid growth in Nuclear (yellow) vs the tiny growth of New Renewables (Red). See how Nuclear effectively displaced Oil as a Power Generation source.
Wind is an expensive, useless form of power generation, and is just subverting capital and effort from effective means of reducing Oil dependence and GHG emissions.
James Lovelock, the world's foremost environmentalist:
"...Windfarms won't cut it at all," he said. "It's better than doing nothing, but it's absurd, just gestures. Time is of the essence..."
http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/lovelock-wind-power.html
Peter Lang shows that the CO2 AVOIDANCE COSTS OF WIND, including necessary backup are $830 to $1149 per tonne CO2 avoided, vs Nuclear at $22 per tonne CO2 avoided, compared with a standard Black Coal Power plant:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/09/emission-cuts-realities/
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/lang_2010_emissions_cuts_realities_v1a1.pdf
sethdayal, nothing could be further from the truth with your religious remarks, since I truly believe we need a diversified approach to our energy needs, to put fossil fuels where they need to be -- buried for good in the 21st century! While you sing a very monotonous tone by putting all your eggs into one basket, I still say we need to keep expanding our renewable energy sources while also going ahead with nuclear, but preferably generation IV reactors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease don't put words in my mouth, just to make a point!
sethdayal says: "with 2,500 ultra-dependable nukes spread out in load centers across the country..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--------------------
Sure, at a cost of what, say $15 Trillion or so? If they were generation IV that were efficient and didn't produce the waste of the current crop of nuclear reactors or ran on thorium, I would agree to a partial amount. I imagine that many nuclear reactors sure would create a radioactive waste nightmare, with no place to put it.
@Lakota
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCertainly , I would hope large number of new nukes would be LFTR's. India is expecting to have a thorium reactor in service, and two more fast breeders by 2020 while we who invented them will have none. China and Russia as well.
There are some thorium funding moves in Congress but Big Oil campaign donations and lobbyist lolly keeps a flowing. Nuclear bad, but coal ng and not so renewables are all good for the Big Money down at Big Oil.
If you were more familar with the LFTR or the Candu you would understand that they can very easily burn nuclear waste from existing reactors without anything other than mechanical reprocessing.
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2010/23/c3481.html
All the worlds nuclear waste from the last 50 years of operation of the 500 reactors in use would cover a football field buried a few meters deep. The waste from our 2500 new reactors would stay on site in a garage until burned in new onsite LFTR's.
The cost of new mass produced gen 3+ reactors are predicted at $1B/Gw with 3 year build times by both Westinghouse and AECL and current Asian builds are trending to that number. An order for a few hundred nukes would certainly start the factory a going don'tcha think. Make the first thousand Gen 3 and the rest LFTR's or better still Focus Fusion or Polywell machines.
Ten years and $2.5 trillion - less than cost of the IRAQ war - paid for by eliminating fossils with a three year paypack and millions of deaths and sickness from coal pollution gone. The risk of a civilization ending climate/peak oil/ocean acidification precipice no more. You really need to think about it. We can't afford to wait.
Even you would admit that Germany is way ahead of us in renewables with hundreds of billions spent on solar and wind. End result- no decrease in GHG's and plans for a buncha new coal plants.
Every dime spent on not so renewables is a waste of time and treasure - really nothing more than an alternative method of funneling natural gas revenue into the vast maw of Big Oil.
dwbd with the typical anti-renewable energy, anti-smart grid rhetoric, again putting all your eggs into one lousy basket.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy should all energy providers sell electricity for the same price when demand is much higher in the middle of a weekday, especially during a summer heatwave? I truly think it should be higher as peak demand necessitates, just like businesses get charged higher rates than residential use. This would cause Americans that use far more kWh's than others around the world, to become more efficient and buy more efficient appliances, which would also help dramatically in our overall energy usage. By installing just a few PV panels, users could drastically cut their energy bills since they would normally be producing electricity during the peak demand period, and thus use more kWh's at night when it costs less.
BTW, my system is a hybrid, since solar and wind work so well in tandem, and I almost always have power from one source or the other, or both. Coastal wind farms like Cape Wind will produce almost all the time due to the coastal effect, but not as much as many other wind farms in the central U.S. that get stronger overall winds. By combining the wind farms with solar farms, the peak demand can be met with solar during a good percentage of the time, and as larger wind turbines with much larger swept areas are installed, they will produce good power in nominal breezes.
I'm glad that the powers that be are not being swayed by people so religiously against renewable energy, and that the U.S. is increasing wind power by about 45% per year, using free and clean fuel, and producing absolutely no emissions or radioactive waste with a disposal problem!
@lakota
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just gave you a link to show you how the Chinese love their 2006 vintage new enhanced Candu 6's latest tech and superior in a lot of ways to 1996 vintage AP-1000
I gave you a link to Bloomberg quoting the contract that was for 4 AP-1000's - READ IT. Is there some reason why we can't mass produce here as well?
The Chinese costs are for nukes built by American engineers overseas for public power companies instead of the attorney's, corrupt private power companies and pet politicians, and greedy wall street financiers building nuclear in the US.
Labor is a small portion of nuclear costs, balanced by the cost of importing and shipping from the US and Canada.
We can compete with Korea,Japan and China on many high tech items including wind, solar, autos, and aircraft but on nuclear power we are 3 times the cost and take twice a long. The American Power Act seeks to change that.
As for your renewables.
Higher peak rates do not push in the long term much load to off peak hours to any great extent. When you are too hot you turn on the air conditioner when too cold the heat. Puget Power in 2001 canned smart meter time of day pricing because there was a less than 2% move.
So when its 90 degrees cloudy and no wind 50 cent a kwh solar power or 35 cent a kwh wind power available do you shut down, let your freezer melt and heat to the beach because the 20% not so renewable power the utility depended on is not available to handle peak load. Renewables are of no use to the utility because they can't be depended on.
Nuclear power with costs currently 3 cents a kwh OECD figures and trending under 2 cents can be used off peak for
for hydrogen production, desalination, heating and cooling storage systems, vehicle charging and other time insensitive apps.
@sethdayal
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI certainly agree with the 4th generation reactors over the 3rd generation, but it seems like years away. The costs I'm seeing for the two AP1000's at Vogtle, for the Georgia Power Company, were estimated at $14 Billion plus $3 Billion for necessary transmission upgrades -- much higher than those in China.
We certainly need to trash the 2005 Energy Bill, and Congress needs to pass energy legislation for the 21st century -- not for BIG OIL and the rest of the fossil fuel industry.
While I know you have nothing good to say about renewable energy, I still support moving forward with both solar and wind in conjunction with modern nuclear reactors, preferably 4th generation, since it will produce American jobs that we desperately need, and diversify our energy requirements!
Maybe solar panels, windmills, geothermal taps, and tidal energy aren't so bad after all. At least they don't produce radioactive waste which nobody knows what to do with, which produces cancers in surrounding areas from venting, leaching, spilling.... And what if there WERE a terrorist attack?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLakota, you are putting all your eggs in one basket - the fossil fuel basket. Current World Energy consumption is 85% Fossil Fuels, and has been for over 100 years. Renewable Energy has been around for thousands of years and still has only managed 8% of World Energy production. I have already shown you in several different ways why Renewable energy will not significantly effect fossil fuel consumption. As-a-matter-of-fact Renewable Energy is not even remotely close to meeting the GROWTH in ELECTRICITY demand, never mind the growth in primary energy demand, never mind the need to rapidly start REPLACING existing fossil fuel demand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuclear can readily take over from fossil fuels, as it does in Naval Ships. Saying Nuclear is a single technology is even more extreme than saying Renewable Energy is a single technology or Fossil Fuels are a single technology.
Nuclear is a CLASS of energy. It has three subclasses 1) Fission, 2) Fusion, 3) exotic (i.e. antimatter, mach effect, zero point energy, blacklight pwr)
Just in the Fusion & Fission subclasses, I can give you long lists of VERY DIFFERENT technologies, that have great potential. It is absurd to state that the Nuclear class is not capable of supplying all of civilizations energy needs. France has almost done it, with minimal R&D and low effort. Mainly they need to complete electrification of transport. South Korea & Japan are going to do it. India is planning on doing it.
Nuclear is a much greater class of energy than Renewable Energy or Fossil Fuels. Can either of those claim to work effectively 1) Underwater 2) in confined spaces 3) upper atmosphere 4) the Moon 5) anywhere in Outer Space and 6) remote places where transport of fuel is impractical, such as the Antarctic.
Fossil Fuels require a giant air intake to supply the huge quantities of oxygen they require. Renewables, except Hydro, have an energy density of < .06% of Nuclear. Nuclear is the big kid on the block, ready to take over from the children, when they finish playing.
To understand the harsh reality of Renewables and why they are not even REMOTELY CAPABLE OF REPLACING FOSSIL FUELS, see:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/10/18/tcase4/
@lakota
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSummer 2 and 3 , and Vogtle are now coming in at budget figures of under $5B/Gw for twin AP-1000 units.
With labor a minor part of nuclear cost, it is the onerous regulatory load which makes American nukes so expensive.
The American Power Act will cause a major reduction in costs by addressing regulation
Specifically
...including regulatory risk insurance for 12 projects.....
... We improve the efficiency of the licensing process.
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2010/05/american-power-act.html
American nukes before the NRC used to be built for less than $1B/Gw in 2010 dollars
http://depletedcranium.com/why-i-hate-the-nrc/
@ nucnews
" solar panels, windmills," expensive, unreliable, increase GHG's because of load balancing NG
"geothermal taps" Large scale geothermal causes earthquakes and requires not yet invented high temp pump.
"tidal" so far way too expensive
Nuclear waste problem is long ago solved. See my earlier posts.
venting, leaching, spilling have to do with old reactors
Terrist's would have much more fun with an LNG tanker in say New York harbour to supply gas to load balance all those windmills you want to build.
Let me explain my lack of enthusiasm for windmills for producing electricity. The main objection I have is that they cannot be turned on to meet the peak load of the grid. If they could be turned on, then I would be more enthusiastic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you look at the energy output of a typical wind farm (I have attached a link below), you can see that the output is virtually zero when the wind speed is below 3 mph. In that particular wind farm in Colorado the wind speed is typically 5 mph and the farm is idle for a significant amount of time.
So what happens when the idle time happens to coincide with the time of peak demand? If you answer that other wind farms further away where the wind is blowing can provide some needed power. Maybe so, but if they are far away, there will be significant losses in the transmission lines.
I conclude that windmills cannot be counted on to meet the peak load of the grid. To me this means that we need to build all the conventional power sources to meet the peak load regardless of how many windmills are built. If that is so, then why have the windmills?
If someone can answer that question for me, I would appreciate it.
The argument that they are clean also is not clear to me. Sure, wind is a clean. However, in order to load wind power onto the grid, some other conventional power source needs to reduce its power. So there is a trade-off. Trading against hydro or nuclear does not make sense to me since neither emits greenhouse gases. The only benefit I can see is if the grid has a lot of natural gas plants. Then yes, there would be a reduction of green house gases. Is it worth the trouble?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Lee_Ranch_Wind_Speed_Frequency.png
@sethdayal: "renewables are of no use to the utility because they cannot be depended on"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this---------------------
That's not true, just like your nuclear advertising campaign that says, no sun, no wind, no power. I get decent power on cloudy days, and even made a few hundred watts when it was cloudy and snowing this past winter. There is a good chance that with a hybrid system, when it is cloudy or stormy without much solar gain, it will be windy.
I still like the mentality of the Colorado people that voted for utilities to provide at least 10% of their power from renewables back in 2004. That was doubled to 20% by 2020 in 2007, and the UTILITIES pushed to raise that to 30% by 2030 just this year since they were ahead of schedule. Sorry, but it sounds like the utilities owned by the fossil fuel industry are the only ones fighting renewables.
You know how BIG OIL and the rest of the fossil fuel industry stopped the nuclear program in its tracks back in the 1990's, so your beloved nuclear industry is fighting against all other forms of energy today including renewables, to get a bigger piece of the pie. I still say, the best strategy for the U.S. is a diversified energy program to eventually end fossil fuel burning. It certainly wouldn't upset me to see every coal-fired electricity plant replaced with either an IFR or LFTR.
I'm still promoting renewables because they are expanding like crazy worldwide, and will provide jobs just like the nuclear industry, while not spewing greenhouse gases.
@ dwbd: "you are putting all your eggs in one basket -- the fossil fuel basket."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-----------------
Sorry, but your comments have sailed past the absurd now, since it's a fact that I'm the only one here that is pushing diversity in future energy, and certainly not fossil fuels.
Personally, I'm glad to see the 45% growth rate in renewable energy each year over the past 3 years, and I'd love to see fossil fuels retired as quickly as possible.
Chisel this in stone: For the 21st century, we need to embrace as many renewable energy sources as possible -- solar, wind, water, biomass, etc....plus move forward with 4th generation nuclear reactors like IFR's and LFTR's, in order to steadily decrease our fossil fuel usage to absolutely minimal usage. This will grow our economy by diversifying past the fossil fuel age, creating many jobs and opportunities around the world.
Tell us when you have mastered the nuclear fusion for energy!
As dwdb has proven not so renewables are massive, super expensive spewers of deadly toxic GHG laden gas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDwdb has shown that not so renewables cannot replace fossil fuels at all. The 45% growth rate in renewable energy each year has actually increased GHG and wasted hundreds of $billions in subsidies.
Chisel this in stone: For the 21st century, if we were to embrace as many renewable energy sources as possible there will be no civilization left to welcome the 22nd century.
Not so renewables cost jobs because they will increase the energy cost in the economy ten times over nuclear.
PVWatts tells that Sioux Falls on a snowny day in January gets 46 watts at high noon for a 1 kw array. Since you get several hundred watts that would imply an 5 kw array worth about 25G's installed. Nice. But at $.35 cents a watt average not really economical compared to 1 cent a kwh nukes. If every building in the US could afford a unit like yours less than 2% of US energy needs would be met at sames cost as meeting all US energy needs with nuclear.
Bonneville with wind units covering most of the west coast had zero wind for two weeks in January with peak heating load and a tiny percentage of peak solar. Can you imagine if the fossil fuel plant had been replaced with a wide area wind solar grid. People would have frozen in the dark.
It sounds like the utilities owned by the fossil fuel industry are the only ones pushing renewables. Thinking of the massive natural gas sales with 30% useless renewables would have them salivating like a pack of wolves at a BBQ.
Certainly the good citizens of Colorado after reasoned debate if asked would have included clean and green nuclear power to the list of "renewables" that utilities can use.
Not so renewables destroy jobs while their backup NG plant spews deadly toxic greenhouse gases. Because of their unreliability, they can have no part of displacing coal.
Since nuclear is the only tech we have that can replace coal, every year wind and solar defer the nuclear conversion from coal is another 3 million dead from coal pollution. Unlike most nuclear deniers Lakota knows that the LFTR reactor will fuel the world for the next several hundred years burning up todays nuclear waste and that of a few thousand new mass produced Gen 3+ reactors.
Yet he is so callous that he thinks those certain deaths are a reasonable insurance premium against his irrational fears of Gen 3+ nuclear.
Hydro is not clean! In times of drought hydro dams leave an unsightly scar on the landscape. Hydro lakes artifically flood ecosystems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you want to talk CO2, hydro destroys vegetation (a CO2 consumer)
In addition to what aqgil13 said, reprocessing looks good from a hypothetical point of view but last I heard it wasn't economically feasible. So we still have no plan on how to dispose of the waste. I also find it somewhat ironic that the article starts by pointing out the dangers of fossil fuels. Mr. Horgan seems to have forgotten Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. More than twenty years later and Chernobyl is still contaminated and leaching radioactive materials into the environment and will be for millennia to come. Mr. Hogan is making the mistake of buying into the Nuclear Industry propaganda and forgetting about the implementation issues. Those that don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Rayonic, your ad hominen attack does nothing to support your position. It just demonstrates that you are irrational.
Reprocessing for Gen 3+ reactors isn't economically advantageous using todays process with uranium at its current price. Fuel is called MOX.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndia has a nuclear waste burned Gen IV 500 Mw unit going into service next year and has 3 more planned for service by 2020.
India (and China) definitely do have a plan on how to dispose of the waste, burning it as fuel in Gen IV reactors.The US has a panel working on it now but there really is no other solution.
Chernobyl is currently a park like setting teeming with wildlife. Compare that to the thousands of square miles of dead forever toxic radioactive coal ash and mine tailing dumps. Reactor physics makes a Chernobyl type accident impossible with today's reactors.
TMI was a 1960's reactor design where failsafe worked as designed and the nobody was injured or dangerous amounts of radiation released. Your chance of winning the top price twice in the 100 million Lotto are better than a TMI accident happening in a modern reactor.
Nuclear did learn a lot from the past and will not be repeating it.
Big Oil unfortunately is one accident after and another many of them exactly the same with the same causes.
Robert Schmidt said "Those that don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it". I might add that those who ignore the present are also doomed to repeat it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome renewable advocates pretend that their power sources have no risk. It isn't true.
1. Chernobyl type of accident cannot happen in western commercial power plants. Western plants require containment to prevent radioactive release in case of an accident. Chernobyl type reactors do not have a containment. In addition western reactors do not contain massive amounts of material which can burn.
2. At TMI no one was killed or injured as a result of the accident. There was no environmental damage , such as significant radiation releases
3. Wind turbines have accidents every year, and the trend is rising as we build more. In 2009 there were 106 accidents and 4 fatalities. Some of the major risks are due to blade failure, fire (too high to be put out), tower collapse and ice throw.
4. Solar cells are made out of toxic materials. Solar thermal systems have a risk of fire. There is also the risk of flying glass in high wind situations such as tornadoes and hurricanes.
Let's be real. All power systems have some risk. Some have more than others. For the amount of power output of renewables, the risk is much higher than nuclear on a per megawhat basis.
robert schmidt claims: "...reprocessing looks good from a hypothetical point of view but last I heard it wasn't economically feasible..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWrong:
"...Recycling accounts for just a few percent of the cost of one kilowatt-hour produced. In the U.S., a recent study carried out by the Boston Consulting Group revealed that the cost of including a recycling component to the repository program would produce life cycle costs comparable to a once-through repository strategy..."
http://us.arevablog.com/2009/03/10/some-questions-and-answers-about-nuclear-fuel-recycling/
"...Nuclear power produces about 1 ounce of nuclear waste per person per year with no fuel reprocessing. The bottom line here is that for each pound of nuclear waste we produce, we could be preventing the release of 322,000 pounds of carbon dioxide! The United States doesn't do any recycling of spent nuclear fuel. 95% of the spent fuel is Uranium or Plutonium that can be recycled and used for more fuel. France uses partial fuel reprocessing and only produces about 3/10ths of an ounce of waste per person. Better methods exist for reprocessing fuel, which should allow us improve the ratio of carbon dioxide to nuclear waste to 1,000,000 to one! What do you think is the real waste disposal problem: 1 oz of nuclear waste or 11 tons of carbon dioxide?..."
http://www.anupchurchchrestomathy.com/2009/06/straining-at-gnats.html
robert schmidt claims: "...seems to have forgotten Chernobyl...Chernobyl is still contaminated and leaching radioactive materials ..."
Wrong. Chernobyl is now a wildlife paradise:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4923342.stm
And TMI didn't do ZIP. Mr. Schmidt would rather have the DeepWater Horizon & Exxon Valdez spills which will occur at a frequency, by comparative risk assessment of about 100,000X more frequency than GenIII or GenIV nuclear power plants. And the Tiber Oilfield, source of the big Gulf Spill has only 1/2th the energy production of one NPP.
Learn the truth (not Big Oil/NG/Coal propaganda that Mr. Schmit spouts) about Chernobyl here:
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter7.html
The only positive side to nuclear power is that it allowed the production of nuclear weapons and the balance of terror arising from a possible mutual destruction between the USA and USSR. Unfortunately these superpowers continued the 'cold' war using other countries, so finally we are left with the plutonium stockpile and bayonette killings among boy soldiers in the starving third world countries. Man is stupid and ugly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@dwbd
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince you're using a blog as factual information, maybe you'll understand the following from YOUR SOURCE:
http://us.arevablog.com
Power Magazine: U.S. Used Fuel Policy is "Road to Nowhere"
"In an excellent cover story in this month's Power Magazine, writers James Hylko and Robert Peltier examine why the current U.S. policy for managing used nuclear fuel has put the country on a 'road to nowhere.'" May 14, 2010
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AREVA Statement on Introduction of American Power Act
"The energy and environment legislation offered today is very good for America because it would help our nation move toward using more clean energy, including more nuclear energy and renewables."
"We at AREVA hope Congress will give serious consideration to this legislation not just because it will promote clean energy and control greenhouse gas emissions, but also because it will spur investment in new clean energy projects and create American jobs." May 12, 2010
CEO of AREVA, Inc., Jacques Besnainou
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AREVA Congratulates Approval of First U.S. Offshore Wind Farm
"As an established provider of offshore wind turbines, AREVA applauds Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's approval of the United States' first offshore wind park." April 29, 2010
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Hey dwbd, instead of cherry-picking one line from AREVA that agrees with your preconceived ideology, you might want to read a bit further, and go beyond your tunnel vision of putting all your eggs into one nuclear basket, since even the pro-nuclear AREVA seems to promote diversity just like me!
@dwbd
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's another from YOUR BLOG SOURCE:
AREVA Solar (Ausra) named an Innovation All-Star by Fast Company Magazine
"When it recently acquired Ausra (now AREVA Solar) AREVA knew it was getting a proven technology and an experienced management team. Now AREVA can say it got an Innovative All-Star." April 16, 2010
http://us.arevablog.com/category/renewables
@dwbd
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPainting a wonderful picture of the contaminated area near the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is insanity at best.
Latest Study Reveals Larger-than-Thought Chernobyl Effects
The animals living in the contaminated area near the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine are much worse affected by radioactive pollution than it's generally thought, says a study made public Wednesday.
The study illustrates that the numbers of bumble-bees, butterflies, spiders, grasshoppers and other invertebrates were lower in contaminated sites than other areas because of high levels of radiation left over from the blast more than 20 years ago, Reuters reports.
The findings challenge earlier research that suggested animal populations were rebounding around the site of the Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine, which forced thousands to abandon their homes and evacuate the area.
"We were amazed to see that there had been no studies on this subject," said Anders Moller, a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research in France. "Ours was the first study to focus on the abundance of animal populations. "
Researchers said they had compared animal populations in radioactive areas with less contaminated plots and found that some were nearly depleted of animal life.
The findings challenge the view of Chernobyl as ecologically sound, despite the fact that Ukrainian officials have turned it into a nature reserve, with wolves, bison and bears.
www.mosnews.com/world/2009/03/18/chernobyl/
Lakota, I already showed conclusively how you have put all your eggs in the fossil fuel basket. Your renewables haven't done zip anywhere, in particular in the Germany, Spain & Denmark after two decades of massive subsidies. You just hide behind your support of renewables so you can pretend you're not-one-of-them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAreva, is indeed jumping on the Renewables Unlimited Subsidies bandwagon. After all, the EU fossil fuel lackeys, have required France to have 20% new renewables - pure corruption or idiocy - pick one. Also, you will be hard pressed to find big Nuclear Companies that criticize Renewables. Most of them, including Areva, Westinghouse, GE make money on both. It's like large companies were selling military hardware to all sides in WWII. Renewables are still one giant gravy train of subsidies and are also good publicity. That doesn't make them economically viable. They aren't.
Learn the truth about Chernobyl here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter7.html
"...For the first 2 days after the accident, the winds carried the radioactive dust over Finland and Sweden. On the third and fourth day, the wind shifted to bring it toward Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Northern Italy. It then shifted further southward to deposit the material over Rumania and Bulgaria...."
"...People all over the world were exposed to external radiation from radioactive gases and dust suspended in the air and settled on the ground. They were also exposed internally by inhaling these materials or eating foods contaminated with them. The average radiation doses to the public3 in millirems during the first year after the accident were 76 in Bulgaria, 67 in Austria, 40 to 60 in Greece, Rumania, and Finland, 30 to 40 in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Italy, 20 to 30 in the USSR, Poland, Switzerland, Hungary, Norway, and East Germany, 10 to 20 in Sweden, West Germany, Turkey, and Ireland, and less than 10 elsewhere (0.15 in United States and Canada). Note that in no country was the exposure higher than one-fourth of that due to natural radiation during that year...."
"....Some of the material on the ground will continue to be radioactive for many years, exposing people externally and internally through the food supply. The estimated average total exposure in millirems after the first year3 will be 120 in southeastern Europe, 95 in North and Central Europe, 81 in the USSR, 15 to 19 in Western Europe and Southwest Asia, 8 in North Africa, and less than 2 elsewhere (0.4 in North America). The sum of exposures to people all over the world will eventually, after about 50 years, reach 60 billion mrem,3 enough to cause about 16,000 deaths. Note that this is still less than the number of deaths caused every year by air pollution from coal-burning power plants in the United States..."
"...Since the mechanism for dispersing radioactivity over long distances was so efficient in the Chernobyl accident and is so inefficient in U.S. reactors, it is almost impossible to believe that an accident in a U.S. reactor can ever cause nearly as much radiation exposure at large distances from the plant..."
Chernobyl could not happen in a modern reactor. As-a-matter-of-fact Chernobyl or TIMI would not have happened if the industries of the day had just followed modern industrial safety procedure. You can't do zip without a Task Hazard Analysis, Safe Operating Procedure and approval by the Safety Dept.
Re
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRegarding Chernobyl as an accident is falsifying information. The chain of events in Chernobyl was criminal negligence of safety regulations while they were doing technical tests in the middle of night with insufficient staffing. So it was no accident and should never used as an example of what can happen in responsibly driven facility. Look at previous messages for link for explanation of what was going on there, before the situation escalated with tragic results.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just wanted to say I'm very happy people commenting on this site are rational and polite. Nice change of pace on the internet
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to say that, hydro is not completely "clean". The initial process of clearing a valley (coz' you do not want to let all those beautiful, mature hardwood to rot under water, do you?) eliminates thousands / millions of species of flora and fauna. If protecting the environment includes saving species from extinction, then hydro-power is not "clean" per-se.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe next problem comes with filling up the dam - the actual water reserve. This filling up, changes the landscape forever, again killing multitudes of things we have not ever dreamed of (think frog etc recently found in Indonesia). To mind comes the historic sites in China - ancient villages - that went underwater! If protecting the environment includes keeping heritage alive, then it not "clean".
Third, we have seen countless movies of well-connected spies blowing up well-protected dams. If one could choose to blow up a nuclear station, one could also choose to blow up a hydro-dam, just as well. And we would not have time to react to it.
The thing is, it is not about which technology or its danger factor. There will always be threats and there will always be solutions. We, of the present time, must have the foresightedness to think for tomorrow, such that today's decisions represents tomorrow's best choice. If we continue to make "economic" decisions, the odds will always stacked against us.
Having worked in the power industry for almost 30 years it cracks me up when people say build renewables (wind and solar) versus nuclear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisApples and oranges. Nuclear is base load generation. It runs 100% 24/7 about 90% of the time. The 10% down time is for refueling and maintenance which are planned. Unplanned outages are not zero but they are rare.
Wind and solar are available at most 30% of the time and their availability is unpredictable. Thus they have to be 100% backed up by reliable generation. Wind and solar will displace no generation and certainly not base load generation because of this. Since they do produce power when available they will reduce the consumption of natural gas since these plants are primarily used to load follow.
Wind and solar could never provide more than 20% of our power because of their variability. The grid must remain stable and there are limits on how much you can control variable generation. That limit is about 20%.
Im sure Ill hear replies like well use the smart grid. The smart grid is nothing more than giving utilitities the power to shut off your loads (ie air conditioner) when the demand for power gets too high. It will not magically solve the problem of how to merge highly variable generation to a grid that is required to be very stable and regulated. It will not fill in the 70% gap between the rating of a wind turbine and its actual output.
Nulcear, wind and solar really do not belong in the same discussion.
Nuclear energy is far from low in carbon emissions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would recommend the author to read the [Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security] study by Mark Z. Jacobson.
Regarding the relation between nuclear power and CO2 emissions, the study is a compilation of no less than 103 previous studies on that topic. The end result is that on average, nuclear is emitting 24 times more CO2 per KW than wind energy (yes, that's 2400%).
The hidden CO2 in nuclear energy production comes from mining, enrichment, transport and waste disposal as well as construction, operation, and decommissioning of the reactors.
@dwbd, "Mr. Schmidt would rather have the DeepWater Horizon & Exxon Valdez spills which will occur at a frequency" nothing in my comments either stated or implied that. Your comment is a deliberate misrepresentation of what I said which does nothing to support your point but instead demonstrates your low moral character.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@elukac
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCheck this out for a critique of the rationale Jacobson uses to dis nuclear power.
He claims nuclear war is caused by nuclear power so all the carbon in a nuclear war can be allocated to nuclear power.
http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2008/12/review-of-mark-z-jscobsons-review.html
For real lifetime carbon costs.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/comparativeco2.html
Gives nuclear less the half the carbon cost of wind and solar.
Now add in the carbon cost of Natural Gas load balancing for wind and solar - its as bad as coal.
http://www.masterresource.org/2009/11/wind-integration-incremental-emissions-from-back-up-generation-cycling-part-i-a-framework-and-calculator/
@dwbd says: "Chernobyl could not happen in a modern reactor."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this---------------
OK, and I suppose you also believe that terrorists could never hijack airliners and fly them into buildings killing thousands.
Sorry, but to say that we could never have a nuclear accident, but that if it did happen, the radioactivity would simply disappear without any harm, is ludicrous at best, and could only come from a delusional mind putting all their eggs into one nuclear basket.
Do you truly 'think' that renewables are the only energy source that is subsidized today?
@ sethdayal
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you want to have a little credibility with your obviously biased figures of "only nuclear is viable," you should probably use something different than 'world-nuclear.org' and 'thorium-energy blogspot.'
Sorry, I'm just not as rabid as you and dwbd that consider only a nuclear option, especially since generation IV reactors are in the distant future, and will still be heavily subsidized.
@lakota2012
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy don't you read Jacobsen's report then the thorium energy rebuttal and get back to us with you thoughts.
Do you think nuclear power today will lead to nuclear war?
Chernobyl is impossible today due to reactor physics.
But I suppose if a malevolent superhero from one of your comic books could somehow get a truckload of explosives along with a hundred tons of graphite inside the reaction containment and core and if they lived long enough to set them off we would have another Chernobyl .More people were killed this year so far in the US in industrial accidents related to fossil fuel than at Chernobyl.
He'd do a lot more damage a lot easier if he sneaked in to any one of the many Bhopal type chemical plants in the US and blew it up,attacked an LPG tanker (aka nuclear bomb) in New York harbor, or blew up the Hoover Dam.
And man what he could do with one of those fracked gas wells almost in downtown Philly.
Nothing compared to the millions of people who die and hundreds of million sickened every year, you can delay the nuclear phaseout of coal. But you don't give a rat's ass about them now do you.
elukac, that study you quote is farce. Udiv analyzed Jacobson's sources for nuclear CO2 emissions. His conclusion:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"....Is false. The paper cited gets the figure from citation #50, which points to this paper by the kook Sovacool. It "reviews" 103 papers, but it discards most of them, using a subset of 19 studies for the published average. (c.f. table #6). And as a measure of how likely those numbers actually are, simply note that e.g. three of them are by Storm van Leeuwen [ Club of Rome Elitist anti-Nuclear Fanatic ]..."
CERI – the Independent non-profit Canadian Energy Research Institute found a complete life-cycle analysis of Nuclear Power in Ontario (CANDU) to be 1.8 gms CO2 per kwh.:
http://www.ceri.ca/Institute/institute=index.asp
This is much better than Wind at 5-29 gms CO2 per kwh, not including the effect on the shadowing fossil fuel power supply.
An honest analysis of Lifecycle Emissions and Energy Inputs is here:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf11.html
At the end of the article it destroys Storm van Leeuwen and Smith's analysis, from which Jacobson gets his numbers.
Storm van Leeuwen's work is also ripped to shreds here.
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2008/01/van-leeuwen-and-smiths-egregious.html
With such intellectual dishonesty van Leeuwen cannot be considered as reputable on ANYTHING!
I really enjoy watching the zealots, of all persuasions, try to out insult each other. Such a waste.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is not enough hydro for our needs so we need to look further. Wind is clean but distribution and variability are an issue. Same for solar. Coal is cheap, easy, dirty and will run out. The nuclear options need to be used and improved. If the thorium reactor engineering can be worked out we can consume much of the waste and have a short half-life by product.
Because the wind doesn't blow all the time and the sun doesn't shine at night. Without economically viable storage, so-called Green Energy can not supply our energy needs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps in the ideal all cleanup costs are included, as stated by your expert, but just examine the current state of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plan and you'll see how badly underfunded the amortized cleanup costs actually are. Companies have ditched their responsibilities to the public with sales of their facilities to new organizations who use corporate shells and bankruptcy to avoid future obligations. Vermont Yankee's owners, Entergy, have stated that if they do not receive a 20 year operating license extension they will not have funds for cleanup, recent problems with plant leakage of radioactive cooling waters notwithstanding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf all public responsibility costs were included in the energy cost, it might look higher. Having said all that, even as a nuclear power skeptic I might be more prone to accept a nuclear future as part of a larger shift to clean energy if the whole fuel cycle issue were resolved in practice and not just in theory. However, I am opposed to government funding or guarantees for future nuclear development... it should stand on its own to attract future investment, or close down.
If you buy a few of these keychain fobs with a curie of tritium, bust them open and spread them around your backyard you will have a much worse nuclear cleanup problem than Vermont yankee has. We'll have to arrest you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://edcreviews.blogspot.com/2006/11/nite-tritium-glowrings.html
All nuclear plants pay a per kwh decomm fee to the NRC. It has so far covered all costs of decommissioning old nuke anywhere it has happened.
The best idea is to replace the old nukes with new ones since the number of units is going to be expanding exponentially.
The fuel cycle issue has been resolved for real with new Gen IV reactors. Just not in the US due to our governance by attorneys.
http://expressbuzz.com/nation/new-fast-breeder-reactor-to-power-up-in-2011/172658.html
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100509a4.html
I'd like to see the cost of one nuke plant put into developing geothermal using a continious heat transfer loop. Seems like there would be some material that could use the 20 degree heat differential to power a turbine, if you'd only dig deep enough.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot the public, a buncha a crooked politicians.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRead and learn the real story.
http://yesvy.blogspot.com/
If there is something you disagree with on the pronuclear sites they all have comment sections and they lover guys like you. So tell us where we are going wrong.
Don't know if this discussion is still alive but have any of the comments addressed the obvious for anyone who has any knowledge of electricity, generation, T&D, voltage/frequency control, load management.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can't compare nuclear to solar/wind. Nuclear is 24/7 reliable base load generation. Solar/wind are intermittent and therfore unreliable. It is certain that the sun shines and the wind blows but without an economical storage system these occurences do not have any relation to electrical load.
Presently solar/wind need virtually 100% back-up because of the unrelaibility and only displace load follow generation which is predominantly natural gas and some hydro (another renewable) and coal.
Because voltage/frequency need precisely controlled you can't have too many variables in the grid equation. Load varies but variable generation can only be handled to a certain extent (about 20%) before control becomes impossible.
It is politically correct to be green. Unfortunately going green in this instance does not make sense proving once again that the laws of physics are not politically correct. They just are.
aqgil13: You have to realize: it's a lot easier to make a nuclear weapon than you think. You don't need U-235, and, in fact, that's the hard way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBuild a neutron generator (see wikipedia for cheap and easy designs) with high flux and expose a moving target of natural uranium to it. About a year later, chemically extract the resultant 239-Pu from the target. Fashion it in the shape of a hollow sphere, wrap the sphere in classical explosives, and put it all in a steel shell.
Fill the hollow sphere with a Deuterium/Tritium mix, if you'd like it fusion boosted.
To fire: set of conventional explosives, but please, be as far away from it as you can be.
This is all information readily available on Wikipedia. Knowing that scares me more than any proliferation concerns related to reprocessing or nuclear power. Nuclear power, on the other hand, makes natural uranium - and all the stuff that can be made from it - a valuable resource, rather than some vaguely harmful bit of rock. It /decreases proliferation risk/.
aqgil13: You have to realize: it's a lot easier to make a nuclear weapon than you think. You don't need U-235, and, in fact, that's the hard way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBuild a neutron generator (see wikipedia for cheap and easy designs) with high flux and expose a moving target of natural uranium to it. About a year later, chemically extract the resultant 239-Pu from the target. Fashion it in the shape of a hollow sphere, wrap the sphere in classical explosives, and put it all in a steel shell.
Fill the hollow sphere with a Deuterium/Tritium mix, if you'd like it fusion boosted.
To fire: set of conventional explosives, but please, be as far away from it as you can be.
This is all information readily available on Wikipedia. Knowing *that* scares me more than any proliferation concerns related to reprocessing or nuclear power.
A nation with nuclear power, on the other hand, means that natural uranium - and all the stuff that can be made from it - a valuable resource. It turns weaponable material into a source better used to ensure the prosperity of that nation's citizens.
Let's face it: most wars are fought in terms of economic difficulty. The justifications are varied: religion, politics, pride, whatever - but you can't motivate the people to approve of and participate in a war without having fomented some kind of economic strife.
Nuclear power carries the promise to cover all nations energy needs in a sustainable manner - and in this world, where you can make nearly anything from anything else given the right information and energy, that is *everything*. We can remove scarcity. Let's do that.
"when was the last new plant built?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI did say, "Current and proposed". Currently built light water (built 30 years ago) cannot have catastrophic accidents. They can have accidents which shut them down, but the fallout is not "catastrophic" in the sense that a gushing oil rig, a collapsing mine, or and exploding natural gas plant can be considered "catastrophic".
TMI-2, the only US nuclear accident to release radiation, released less radioactive material during shutdown than a 500 MW coal plant releases each year.
So, no. US Reactors can not, by design, undergo any sort of transformation that could be considered "catastrophic".
"AND, where are we storing the spent nuclear material?"
If we can get the laws changed, in nuclear reactors, as new fuel. "Spent" nuclear material is just polluted nuclear material. If we're allowed to reprocess, we can remove the fission products that stifle the fission reaction and sell them.
Sell them as medical isotopes. Wait a year and sell 80% of them as stable rare earth minerals. Wait 10 and sell another 15% as stable industrial chemicals. We can figure out where to store the rest for another 300 years - but here's the things: without reprocessing, we have to figure out what to do with about 100 metric tonnes of spent fuel per gigawatt year for over 50,000 years. With reprocessing, that number falls to about 50 kg of fission products for about 300 years.
Carter's ban on reprocessing has caused both the waste issue in nuclear power AND the potential sustainability crisis that American nuclear power faces. All in the name of preventing nuclear proliferation - which can happen without nuclear reactors with less work.
@RobinMHolt
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot saying you could build a good nuclear weapon at 20% - just that's the threshold density at which a nuclear yield is practically feasible.
But yes, 20% is what's used to produce high neutron flux in research reactors.
Oh no, lili is experiencing a chain reaction on this discussion thread also!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI, for one, have grown quite accustomed to a steady supply of affordable electricity. Since all the renewables combined will not meet base load needs even if we had a smart grid, and fossil fuels are proven high risk sources of power (economically, politically, sustainably, environmentally), and whereas nuclear has proven itself to be very low risk, I think the case is closed.
Congradulations to the dedicated research and well cited sources in this discussion thread.
I would love to see us generate all our energy needs from sustainable sources, but the fact is can't do so yet. Until we can we have only two choices: high risk fossil fuel or low risk nuclear. I don't see any great difficulty in making this decision.
Seen this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9387000/9387395.stm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLooks like many here travelled to the Ukraine for research with the author!
Those with a standard brain will know what I mean! <g>
Hello, alflanagan, my little nuclear-powered bird-brained friend,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn reply to your ever so intelligent remark "OMG. You modified your views after reasoned discussion with another party? You know you can lose your blogging license for that, right? ;)"
Nope, his brain changed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9387000/9387395.stm
As did yours apparently. Fortunately your support of the US Health Care project might help substantially with paying for your brain scans.
my last comment was if all the pro-nukers still thought the same after Fukushima - WHY WAS THAT COMMENT DELETED? It was polite and right to the point. WHO THINKS (S)HE HAS THE RIGHT TO CENSURE UNWELCOME TRUTHS? Get a life whoever you are.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just realize something infinitely more bothering: all my comments about this article and countering some of the pro-nuke comments have been deleted except the last ones - someone must have felt really, really angry at being shown naked - but the main point is this: scientific american seems to consider it perfectly allright to delete comments that showed the commercial non-sense behind fission from a new point of view - how utterly disappointing that a magazine such as this one would resort to or allow administrators to resort to this kind of censure - lowers my opinion of the sci am online presence very considerably
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this