There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts of tiny trumpets, we have met the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.
Walt Kelly
US animator & cartoonist (1913 - 1973)

Sums it up perfectly.  the enemy is ourselves, and our way of life.

Beautiful example in the Guardian today.  Swale Borough Council in Kent has blocked the London Array, a 1000MW offshore windfarm.  Why?  Because they don't fancy having a power cable come onshore on their beach.  Oh and it might spoil the view.

The locals are entirely rallied around this, and the law means Swale can block the interests of the nation.

Biggest wind power project is blown off course as residents fight back

Scheme that would provide 25% of London's power is bogged down in planning

Terry Macalister
Monday October 23, 2006
The Guardian

Martin Bellis dries himself off with his towel and gives a wry smile when asked if he is not just another Nimby objector looking after his own patch of beach against the potential encroachment of a wind farm near Faversham, Kent. "No, I'm really not. I am a supporter of clean energy and really care for the environment," he said.
"I just happen to think wind is a bit of a white elephant because it's so inefficient and I cannot understand why anyone would choose one of the best bird sanctuaries in Europe as a site."

I must admit I had this fantasy of building nuclear power plants in Kent as sweet revenge-- of course they will have to be on the beach (cooling water).  ;-).

Sucking Kool-Aid out of the Poll straws.

Think about that: if you build a nuclear power plant instead, you will replace that same coal plant you are trying to put CS in for much less money and will produce electricity for just 2.5-3 c/kwth. In the same time the total cost of coal would be 3 to 7 c/kwth. Who will agree to finance such a large scale waste of money?

You can't direct the final outcome except in the broadest ways.  I was looking at the blank sheet of the world in 2030, and thinking what it could look like, hence 'structuring' a solution.

Back to the reactor point.

It took the world roughly 30 years to build 460 opearting reactors (I think the total was about 800, including decomissioned, over about 50 years-- many of these were very small, eg Douglas Point, the first CANDU unit (about 30MW pace 850 for a current generation CANDU)).  The nuclear industry has shrunk in capacity to build since then.  It takes 10+ years to train an 18 year old to be a useful nuclear industry worker, and the average age in the industry is about 50.

There is no way that:

• in 26 years, we could build another 3000 reactors (which would produce 40% of world energy consumption assuming those reactors scaled in size at the same speed as world GDP)

• having built those reactors, fuel them (uranium industry has the same supply constraints, and currently only produces 60% of the uranium that is actually consumed, the rest comes from dismantled reactors and bombs).   Breeder reactors are fiersomely complex beasts, and none works commercially-- fairly sure the Sellafield Mox plant (a relatively simple process) will never run again.

- deal with all the proliferation, waste disposal and security problems that would create (remembering we haven't even solved the historic waste problem)

A reasonable guess is that we could build another 1000 reactors by 2050.  That's 50 a year, whereas the current build rate is closer to 2-3.  So doubling the size of the installed nuclear sector (but the existing reactors phase out 2006-2050).

Now the direction it will evolve is very easy to predict - nuclear is the only scalable, cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels. Yes, maybe renewables will also take some place but it will be marginal at best. You can't run a civilisation on an unreliable energy source.

So nuclear is not scalable, not on that scale.

Cost effective?

  I'm the son of a CANDU reactor builder, just to be clear.  My take on nuclear is that it has never produced low cost power, and it never will.  The UK has a £70bn decontamination liability, which is a crude proxy of the kind of costs that a nuclear programme incurs.  then there is the Price Anderson Act and its equivalents (insurance the private market won't provide).

You remember the 1990-1998 Non Fossil Fuel Obligation?  That was a 10% charge against UK electric bills, that paid to complete Sizewell B-- £8bn collected in total.  Sizwell B cost £4bn, 2 times over budget.

That kind of cost overrun is typical of nuclear power.  The Finns are already 18 months late on their new reactor.  that is why private capital markets will never underwrite nuclear power, without implicit or explicit subsidy.  In the case of EDF, it is implicit: a vertically integrated market where the customer pays, and the French state underwrites the R&D.  In the case of the Bush Energy Act, and the UK government plans, it is an explicit subsidy to new nuclear plant builders.

Nuclear power will never be cheap.  At a guess, 8 cents/ Kwhr (wholesale) is a reasonable bet.  Might be possible to get to 7 cents.  The numbers the nuclear industry quotes (down to 2 cents) are entirely fictional, based on running existing plants, full out, and writing off past costs (as a measure of how big those costs can be, in the case of Ontario, about $30bn written off into a fund underwritten by the taxpayer, for about 10GW of capacity).

Nor is nuclear power reliable.  British Energy has none of its 8 units running at capacity at the moment, due to cracks.  Ontario Hydro's problems are notorious (at one point, all of 14 reactors shut down).  This is the reason the National Grid Co capacity credit for nuclear is relatively low (about 65% I think ie 10GW of nuclear capacity offsets 6.5GW of 'firm' grid capacity) due to unplanned shutdowns.

Note the dangers of long production runs of identical reactors-- if one develops a new fault, you may have to shut down all of them.  This is the problem with the French approach.

proven reliable alternatives

 - Firstly there is wind.  There is no grid or other reason why wind cannot be 20% of the power generated in the UK, Canada and the USA.  Other countries perhaps less, some (emerging markets) perhaps more.

We've never pushed it beyond that to know what the challenges are.  My gut is we need some clever energy storage technology, plus hydro pumped storage, to get it above 20%.

- Wind is already economic and cost competitive (if you assume a price for CO2 emissions).  it is an attractive generation option for any operator, because it hedges the fuel price, and has a different operating profile.  

Note the attractiveness of wind is improved by the same thing that makes nuclear power in the 2000s possible, whereas it was not in the 80s and early 90s: lower real interest rates.  Your cost of power is all up front.

• Hydro is of course a no brainer, and actually older than fossil fuel as an energy technology. Hydro produces at least as much nuclear in the world's energy budget.

• Combined Heat and Power is surprisingly large.  Over 5% of the UK generating capacity, for example (who knew?)-- roughly 5GW on 70GW.  There is more to go for there, and in particular the home Stirling Cycle/boiler combination is little explored (starting to sell those in the UK).

• Solar isn't there yet, except solar water heat, which is already economic.  But solar is essentially a semiconductor technology, and the slope of that cost performance curve is steeply down and to the right: look at the microprocessor now v 1968 (storage and DRAM have fallen even faster).  Solar will surprise us, some day, with what we can do with it.

- Biomass (see CHP) to my mind only makes sense in a CHP context. Pure biomass isn't a 'win' in CO2 terms, as far as I can see, if your planetary carbon capacity is already overloaded.

Fundamentally my conclusions from the above are:

- nuclear has a role in the baseload.  It won't be cheap, and it's no panacea.  But the countries with a historic affiliation to it, plus the 'gone nuke' third world countries like India and China, will build new nukes.

As I have argued in other posts, nuclear is a 'complex closely coupled system'.  Translation is failure is inevitable.  The question will be how we cope with those accidents when they occur.  (bad failure: Chernobyl.  Good failure: Three Mile Island).

- renewables can be 30% of the electricity generation portfolio.  In a place like Canada, they already are (hydro).  The big upside is in wind-- the technology isn't even mature yet, and it is already cost competitive.

Whether it can be more than 30% of the portfolio I don't know.  Storage is the key issue, I think.

- You still have 30-40% of the generation pie which is fossil fueled.  Which means sequestration.

The technologies for wind and carbon capture and storage are there or therabouts, with lots of efficiency gains to come.  Nuclear technology is mature, and those other technologies will catch up.

For living in Winnipeg and Edmonton are probably preferred to Calgary.

but Calgary is in the mountains, is a very pretty city, with nice people.  That's why its population has exploded-- hence the traffic and the sprawl.  And it is the business capital of Western Canada (Edmonton is more of a government town).

So I really think if you are emigrating to Canada, you first choice in terms of personal opportunity is Alberta, and then Calgary and Edmonton in that order.  Alberta is the only province with no sales tax (vs. typically 8% in the rest of the country so 14% in total counting the Federal GST), and also has the lowest income taxes and a budgetary surplus.

If you want 'Europe in North America' then the choice is either Montreal or Quebec City.  But be prepared to learn French to a high degree of fluency.

Toronto is a big North American city.  I love it because it is my hometown, but it has no particular advantages in a world of Peak Oil and/or Global Warming, and it is one 5 million people supersprawl (with real downtown neighbourhoods, which most American cities just don't have any more).  The banking and commercial capital is Toronto, but a lot of companies have moved to Calgary to exploit the booming economy and lower taxes there.   Toronto appeals to people who want a 'laid back New York'.

For lifestyle, in Canada, there is really no beating Vancouver-- one of the world's most beautiful settings, with Whistler (the next Winter Olympics) a short drive away.  But career opportunities are less (fewer big companies).  People 'work to live' not 'live to work' there ie they consciously downshift.

Because of land shortages, housing prices are very high-- as high as Toronto.

And it rains, quite literally, every day for 6 months at a stretch, some  winters.

Sequestration (including transport to the injection field) will burn about 40-50% of total output.

so a 650MW unit will generate about 500MW of usable output.