NY Times Energy Series: Nuclear
Posted by Glenn on August 22, 2006 - 4:52pm in The Oil Drum: Local
My growing (and worrying) conclusion is that we are headed back to the future with coal - either liquified for our cars or simply burning it for electricity. Perhaps somewhat cleaner coal, but even clean coal is more polluting in terms of global warming than most other forms of energy production.
Despite nuclear power's promise as a clean energy source that could hold down emissions of global warming gases, most environmentalists are skeptical of the latest claims by its advocates. They say that utilities, at best, will move ahead with a handful of plants that will receive lavish incentives from the government. But the risks of nuclear power are still so high, they argue, that no utility will be willing to put its own money into building a plant unless the federal government heavily subsidizes it.
It continues by pointing out that despite recent increases in the cost of all other forms of energy, Nuclear is still too risky to justify the investment:
because of high prices for natural gas and uncertainty about how emissions from coal plants will be regulated in the future, the nuclear industry is moving from near death to the prospect that perhaps a handful of plants will be ordered in the next few years. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission counts 27 potential reactors under consideration; 103 are now operable.For all the momentum behind the push, however, there is still a high degree of skepticism within the utility industry. There are better places to put the money of shareholders, Mr. Hecht of PPL said. At the moment he sees a much greater advantage in cleaning up his coal-fired plants, investing $1.5 billion to scrub out most of the sulfur dioxide. That would not only benefit the environment but also generate pollution credits PPL can profitably sell.
That decision was "dull and basic," Mr. Hecht said, but adheres to a paramount goal: maximizing shareholder returns. He won't rule out nuclear plants forever, Mr. Hecht said in an interview, but the business case would have to be a lot clearer than it is now.
"Technology often has zealots, it seems, behind it," he said of companies moving forward on nuclear power.
However, some are moving ahead, like Constellation Energy:
Constellation plans to apply for a reactor-operating license by the end of 2007, probably at either the Calvert Cliffs site in Maryland where it runs two nuclear reactors built in the 1960's and 1970's, or at Nine Mile Point, in Scriba, N.Y., on Lake Ontario, where it operates two reactors it bought in 2001.Its decision has implications beyond the corporate bottom line for the global environment. There are also arguments over nuclear waste and the risk of accidents. Around New York City, especially, there is concern over reactors as terrorist targets.
But the risk that really matters to utility executives is financial. Among the companies that would actually build these plants, executives focus more on uncertain factors like the future price of power, the cost of producing competing fuels, and the cost of cleaning up coal plants to meet standards for the pollutants that Washington does regulate -- sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and soot.
At this point companies do not face any constraints on carbon emissions.
That seems to be the critical point - Uncertainty. The main benefit of nuclear power, Less Carbon Emissions, lacks a clear economic incentive due to lack of regulation. A long term commitment to a Federal carbon cap and trade system or a simple carbon tax would be a great way to creat more incentives for lower carbon emissions. But until then, increasing the share of power from Nuclear does not seem to be in the works:
even if a few plants are built, industry insiders do not expect nuclear power to assume a significantly greater role. Roger W. Gale, an electricity expert and former Energy Department official, asks several hundred utility executives each year what they foresee in their industry.While they are convinced that a new plant will be ordered soon, the more than 100 senior utility executives who responded also said they do not expect "a future where nuclear generation represents a larger share of generation" than today.
And even with action now, it takes about a decade for a new nuclear plant to come on-line. Establishing a cap and trade system for carbon for sometime in the near future would help create incentives for all non-carbon emitting forms of power production.
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I am optimistic about the increased safety and cleanliness of modern nuclear fission reactors, as well as the potential for recycling of nuclear materials - I'm also hopeful that we'll have fusion reactors one day, or some other as-yet undreamed of energy source.
But even for the nuclear reactors we could start building now, as you rightly say, it will take years and years before they'll be up and running. And it sounds like the people who would have to invest in their construction are still apprehensive at even starting to build any.
Which brings us back to conservation and cleaning up our existing energy sources. I don't think there's anything else to be done.
And none of this touches on cars unless/until they shift to electric (batteries) or hydrogen (fuel cells) so we can just use our existing local power plants to fuel them. Until then, they need oil, so redesigning our cities and towns and reducing our car use is the only thing to be done.
Am I right? What am I missing?
Damek,
I don't think your far off, but at this moment, "non car" energy is not yet really in crisis, except in certain localities, and due to the greenhouse gas concern, much more than the "fuel supply" problem. It is "liquid fuel" problems, i.e., the car fuel problem that is most pressing.
Please check out some of the posts and links on down this thread on DG (Distributed Generation), it is an area in which we have not even began to scratch the surface of possible advances, incorporating "smart" grids, 'mini" grids, semi autonomous and part time stand alone power, energy storage on small flexible systems that can be used for power shaving, power smoothing, and streamlining the grid system to reduce line loss, incorporate renewables in various scales, use flywheel storage, ultra capacitors, thermal storage through cryogenics and ground coupled geothermal heatpumps, electrified transportation by hybrid and electric car and light rail and Personal Transport Rail, the list goes on and on.
Right now, for the planners and investors "in the know" of what is really going on technically, they are rightfully frightened of sinking billions into concentrated expensive nuclear. About the time, a decade or two away, when they finally get them built and running (as you rightfully point out it will take years and years), they look up and there is no market for expensive, centralized only semi-reliable power from a single massive source (remember, one major storm, or an equipment failure at one giant reactor and you could still be in the dark, completely reliant on ONE single utility and it's nuclear priesthood to maintain your lifestyle.)
Nuclear will just be so passe', it will seem so primitive! :-(
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
There is plenty of fuel to support a distributed generation model particularly if we de-couple and re-couple cooling, heating and lighting from electrical generation.
We decouple by using solar thermal, geothermal and daylight harvesting strategies and we loosely couple by using waste heat for heating and cooling (which moves efficiencies from 30% for small turbines to 80-90%)and thermal (ice) storage and pumped storage to take advantge of excess nightime capacity of large, centralized plants. In addition, as we re-design communities to be pedestrian-friendly we can create heating and cooling districts (heating & cooling are 50% of the load) that are substantially more cost-effective and efficient to operate than stand-alone HVAC systems.
Time-of-day net metering and breakthrus in thin-film PV (see Nanosolar) are the icing on the vake.
That is SOP in Sweden and it do anyway only add up to a few percent of the electricity production. In 2004 47.8 TWh of heat and 6.1 TWh of electricity were produced out of a total of 148.8 TWh electricity produced.
I think the district heating could about double and all of the electricity production potential is not used, 6.1 TWh could probably become 24 TWh in a very optimistic scenario.
We alost got biomass comming out of our ears, lots of hydro power but still need nuclear power. At least while we still have a lot of heavy industry making paper, steel, etc for quite a lot of people.
Energy markets are not homogeneous. In the US many older markets use NG for heating so the electric impact of districts is much smaller (though increased cooling demands are driving electric demands).
In the cooling-dominated climes of the sunbelt (e.g. Florida) heating and cooling is met predominately by electricity. And cooling represents 60-70% of peak demand.
You write:
My growing (and worrying) conclusion is that we are headed back to the future with coal - either liquified for our cars or simply burning it for electricity. Perhaps somewhat cleaner coal, but even clean coal is more polluting in terms of global warming than most other forms of energy production.
Precisely - and for that we should say `thank you' to the environmentalists.
Thank you for being clueless about relative risk.
Thank you for talking bullshit about the hazards of exposure to low-level ionizing radiation.
Thank you for making false, Cornucopian promises about the potential of renewable energy sources.
Thank you for objectively promoting the growth in fossil fuel consumption.
Thank you for helping to usher in the global warming era.
Of course, we know your intentions were good.
The human species is treading thin ice because it doesn't understand or respect natural limits. It has convinced itself that opposable thumbs annoint us as the crown of creation. The only three words we seem to understand are more, bigger, and faster.
Many enviros have been preaching reduced consumption, reduced population and avoidance of overly-complex and polluting technologies (like "Noo-que-lar" power) for decades -- mostly to an empty house. Now the chickens are about to return to the roost, just as predicted.
When I hear someone blame the environmental community for our current crises, I am reminded of one of my favorite bumper stickers: Plants and animals disappear to make room for your fat ass.
Nothing personal, mind you...
It strikes me that it is more like blaming the anti-war movement for the war.
Except for some influence in Europe, environmentalists have had little to do with the slowdown in nuclear plant construction in recent decades. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl did not change the attitudes of environmentalists, but sure put the fear of Satan into a lot of the unread. But like most things, it's mostly about cost and coal and natural gas have been providing electricity at a cost that nuclear has been unable to match, despite an earlier promise of electricity "to cheap to meter". I am reminded of this every month, when as a resident of Ontario I look at a significant premium on my electricity bill that is dedicated to a huge debt that nuclear facilities have imposed on us.
As an anarchist, my main objection to nuclear rests with the repressive political structure it requires: a caste of high priests who hold the knowledge and police/army who maintain security.
That's the problem. Tell someone that they don't need nucler and they use coal instead. The enviros keep thinking that one day they'll say "no nuclear" and the world will hear "don't use air conditioning" and agree. They are still waiting. The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and always expect a different result. It is never going to happen. Anti-nuclear is pro-oil and pro-coal, just as passivism on the eve of WWII was pro-facist. If there are only two viable choices (and the world seems hell bent on choosing one of them), then to degrade one is to help the other.
I agree with the grandparent. Thank you green party for being a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican party and keeping us breathing coal and diesel fumes for well nigh 40 years now. Keep up the good work. And when all the glaciers are melted, then you better believe people will be using their ACs like mad. The world will go nuclear (or solar, or whatever), but it looks like the bashing of new power production techniques guarantees that we'll burn up all the coal and oil first.
You sir don't actually understand natural limits all that well, at leas as they relate to energy. The UN proposes that human population will peak at around 9 billion people and then decline. Lets suppose that it remains at 9 billion people, and each one uses 3KW pretty much continuously. This is fairly close to what the US uses, depending on how you count energy, roughly 3KW (say, between 5 and 2) per person when you add up all the oil, gas, coal, wood, nuclear, hydro, and everything else.
This is (once again, very roughly) 10^11 joules per person, per year. 10 billion people would bring the grand total to 10^21 joules per year for the whole planet. This is actually entirely sustainable. There is more than enough solar, and nuclear could maintain that level far beyond the sort of time horizons we should concern ourselves with now (say, a few thousand years). Beyond that, fusion would render the entire exercise a waste of time, if we manage to get it in the next few thousand years, which I guess we probably will.
There are limits to human growth, but they have NOTHING to do with energy. Food, yes, space, yes, recreational land that isn't paved over, absolutely. Energy, not relevant. We will use all the oil (check), and gas (check), and then either proceed to use solar and nuclear or continue to use all the coal, and then use solar and nuclear. That's pretty much the options, and there's no reason why we will ever be short of energy, given the current state of technology.
Personally, I'd like to just jump the coal step and not completely screw up the planet. It's much harder to do that when the greens are screaming like prissy princesses about nuclear day and night. If you want something to scream about, scream about coal. leave nuclear alone. Maybe one day, in 50 years when all our energy infrastructure is nuclear, then, by all means have this discussion about people living in caves and not using energy. By all means, lets have that discussion then, or even now, but don't spend the days bashing nuclear in order to get there. Bash coal first, nuclear either later or never.
Wow - living in Germany, where the Green party in the later 1990s proposed a 10 dollar a gallon tax on gasoline, I hadn't realized that it was all a Republican plot to get an oilman elected in the U.S.
Or are we talking about the same Green party?
Because the one I know of played a major role in shutting down not only the domestic German nuclear industry, but East Germany's brown coal industry too. They have also been huge supporters of locally based agriculture, a typically Republican ruse. Let's not even begin to explore Green dedication to reducing consumption at all levels, from packaging on up, another typical Republican concern.
Actually, you get all your information about the Green Party and its politics from the American media, I would hazard to guess. Well, in that case, rest assured that it is a Republican ploy to help the Green party as a favor for the Greens helping the Republicans. Sort of like how feminists and fundamentalists are really just big buddies in the end.
And if you are standing on the opposite side of the planet day IS night. As a historical note - the Greens basically became an organized party ca. 1980 - they haven't even been around for 40 years. Of course, the Republicans and the Democrats have. Now that I think about it, maybe the Catholic Church is responsible for abortion, pacifists cause war, and people who live in America have nothing at all to do with the fact that a quarter of the world's fossil fuel consumption takes place in the United States.
Well, for a while there, I thought I would actually have to resist changing my worldview so as to blame environmentalists for McMansions, SUVs, and obesity. But I stopped myself - it really wasn't that hard.
And of course, the world is not in any sense running out of oil, and this peak talk is just crazy - and home prices always go up, too.
Ignoring reality is so much easier than dealing with it.
Partly bought by government money Vattenfall got as compensation for handling over a large share in the nuclear powerplant Ringhals to the utility Sydkraft now German E-on as compensation for our greens forcing a closure of the Sydkraft nuclear powerplant Barsebäck.
I dont like closing nuclear powerplants in Swedens since it is stupid due to environmental, economical and of course peak oil reasons but it gets realy disgusting when tax money used for this stupid idea ends up financing new brown coal powerplants.
I would for environmental and national selfish reasons very much enjoy a sale of these Vattenfall assets in Germany to finance new nuclear powerplants in Sweden. The official line seems to be that Vattenfall must be one of the largest players on the european market or they will otherwise be destroyed or perhaps loose the pee distance competition. My less advanced insights into such things is that well run and profitable trumphs big but I am of course poor and powerless myself and dont know what makes mega corporations successfull.
Well, I live next door to Germany (Luxembourg) and from my balcony I have a nice view of the wind turbines that grace the Saarland's skyline on the other side of the Moselle. So I am reminded every day of the aesthetically less pleasant aspects of implementation of some of the Green Party's policy proposals - but perhaps that's the price we have to pay. Thanks anyhow - rejecting the nuclear option makes the German countryside a more beautiful place, doesn't it?
Their proposal to raise gasoline taxes was certainly a saving grace, but I remember that in the 1980s they seemed to devote about 90% of their energy to demonstrating against nuclear power plants, which for them embodied evil incarnate - and they spent the remaining 10% on data-dredging-based hysterical scare-mongering about the alleged carcinogenic hazards resulting from exposure to miniscule and barely detectable quantities of chemical insecticides. Never in their literature did I come across any reference to relative risk either in connection with nuclear power or in connection with toxicological issues. Perhaps I didn't read enough.
I'm not denying their positive side.
Just saying they were pretty much a mixed bag.
Personally, I never found the few windmills on the Rhine in Karlsruhe a problem - but then, the coal power plant chimney, and the barges carrying coal into the Rhine harbor tend to be much more noticeable.
As for what the German Greens protested against - I would guess their anti-war stance took at least as much of their energy during the 1980s as any environmental concern. (The Greens are not Greenpeace.) Of course, some Greens tend to be hopelessly hysterical romantics, so I am not disagreeing with any personal observations. And living here in Baden is strange - the joke is that people here think Green, but vote Black (CDU) - this may mean that the Greens don't look or act as extreme here as in other parts of Germany, or that many Green concerns about sustainability are just considered normal.
It always interests me to see how the truly radical Greens of that time tend to get reduced to the most politically palatable level of environmentalism, which all major parties in Germany adopted, without discussing other major concerns which remain quite unacceptable to discuss it seems - such as blood for oil being morally wrong.
But then, gaining power does that to idealists. I tend to be a fan of the Greens to the extent they were true outsiders (they aren't anymore), and in the sense they seemed more capable of seeing a larger picture - again, as outsiders they didn't have to worry about insulting any other power blocs.
There are a number of transformational changes that are directly due to them. Waste management, energy conservation, transport, bioclimatic housing, solar and wind energy : these are fields where Germany leads the world.
The Greens didn't invent them, and we can imagine that they would have come anyway, sooner or later (though Germany would probably not have led the world in any of them by then); but they were, in fact, imposed by the Greens through tough political coalition-building, persuasion, compromise and (most of all!) proportional representation, which gave them political clout.
The nuclear issue is a tough one, but shouldn't serve to hide the huge and very positive overall contribution of the German greens.
We should be so lucky in France!
But they are no longer an outsider party, and one of the main reasons for their existence seems to have faded into the background of necessary police actions, or peace keeping, or whatever term works for sending soldiers to do something other than defend a nation from direct attack. The Greens had that debate, and the ones in power did what people in power normally do - exercise that power to remove opposition to what those in power feel is necessary and correct.
Sort of like how Green Rezzo Schlauch now sits on the EnBW board - even though the company is majority owned by EdF, the world's largest commercial operator of nuclear reactors (I believe - the U.S. may have more reactors, but they are owned by various companies).
I'm sure he thinks his reasons for being there having nothing to do with the check he receives, or the cover it gives EnBW to keep selling electricity generated in France using nuclear reactors. But then, he is an innocent politician, not a cynical citizen.
Come on. You claim to be concerned about peak oil, global warming, and sustainability, but you're going to oppose a key element of the solutions on the grounds of visual aesthetics?
Personally, I find them, without exception, beautiful. That may not be entirely unconnected with the fact that I actually care about these issues.
The greens in Germany are not the same as the Greens in PA, for instance, where they are entirely funded and staffed by republicans.
Hell, he got his supporters to donate 40 grand to the green party for the ballot drive. Do you really think he is doing this because he is a warm and fuzzy environmentalist?
If you vote for the green party candidate for senator in PA this Nov. you really need to have your head examined. Rick Santorum is the most vile thing that ever came out of PA and really, really needs to lose his job.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/15167552.htm
The two-party system is really neat!
It's TWICE as democratic as the one-party system!
Yes, and those greens are so competent and smart!!!!!!
They could challenge Hillary from the left, or Lieberman, or Kennedy, or Kerry, and in any of these cases they would have a significant chance of winning. In addition, they'd significantly advance their cause whether they won or not, and not severely hurt their cause if they lost. Do they do so, no, they do not.
Where do they challenge? Well, lets see, there's Pennsylvania, where without their help Santorum has about a 5% chance of survival, with their help perhaps 30%. In either case, the greens have roughly a 0% chance of winning. Sure looks like that'll help the environment, if they save the nastiest of the republicans from his day of reckoning.
Where else, well, they challenged in the presidntial race, and told everyone that a Gore presidency would be the same as a Bush presidency. Does anyone actually believe that? Do they even actually believe that? Two words, willful, ignorance.
Where else, looks like a challenge against Feingold to soften him up and make absolutely sure that we don't ever get a real liberal running for president, good, good.
In all of these cases, they had massive help from republicans. The campaigns are waged with republican money and republican volunteers. It shows, the corruption seeps through. The chief justice of the pennsylvania supreme court called their 2004 ballot petition (if memory serves) "the most horrendous fraud ever perpetrated upon this court.."
Hmm, seems like they're really saving the environment. Good thing we have them around. Without them there would be no Bush, and god only knows where we'd end up. Probably with very little CO2 emissions and vastly less dependency on foreign oil. At the very least we'd be in good financial shape. Good thing we have greens around fighting for the rights of endangered wingnut republicans everywhere.
The two party system isn't perfect, but it surely does far worse with a third spoiler party hell bent on underminig their own ideals.
A primary challenge within the democratic party can work, just look at Lieberman. Basically, the twoparty system works fine without massive election fraud and willful ignorance on the part of the major players. Even with these handicapps it will work itself out eventually anyway. The US isn't the only country to elect a nasty leader, Italy (twice!), and Germany spring to mind. Neither case can really be blamed on the convenient scapegoat, the two party system.
Nice illustration of my thesis.
I have no desire to defend the US greens. In the electoral setup you have, they have little hope of being anything but a spoiler. That's because of the two-party system, which is a travesty of democracy.
Contrast the Green Parties of Germany or New Zealand, where proportional representation gives them an influence, a hugely positive one.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1409304.ece
Particularly interesting -
'A short circuit at Forsmark caused an immediate shutdown in one of three reactors. At this point cooling must begin at once but only two of four diesel generators began the automatic process of pumping water to carry this out. Höglund said that "only luck" prevented disaster, as all of the generators shared the same construction error.'
'"It is surprising that this happens in Sweden, which has an extremely strict safety system for their nuclear power plants. I have been to Forsmark myself and there is a large difference between safety thinking there and, for example, in Russian plants," Bøhmer said.'
Of course, the people pointing these things out seem to be opposed to nuclear power. I wonder why that is?
Certainly has nothing to do with any facts, I'm sure, it's all more of that Republican ploy to discredit nuclear power to burn more coal since Greens are ignorant ninnies scared of a few more harmless backyard becquerels. And to think the Swedes just missed an opportunity to show just how harmless a nuclear accident really is.
Another link from another utterly biased source -
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,430164,00.html
At some point, the pro-nuclear people just need to prove that mistakes never happen, and we can all rest easy.
A good way to do that is to make sure that such little itsy-bitsy almost meltdowns don't get much attention.
Or build reactors which can't melt down - which is technically possible, by the way. It is just that apparently NO nuclear reactor currently being used commercially to generate electricity is so designed.
Please feel free to contradict that assertion with a list of facilities world wide which do use such designs.
My english summary and impressions of them are:
There were large cooling margins to dry boiling any part of the fuel.
Defence in depth and redundance worked and enough automatic systems started to cool the reactor core to keep the no manual actions required within 30 minutes rule. The idea with this rule is to give time for manual analysis so that operators dont make a problem worse by incorrect actions such as happened during the TMI accident.
But too manny things failed from a single source of failure, an overvoltage from the switchyard short circuit, showing that some "defence in depth" systems to allways have power to run the systems depended on each other in bad ways.
From reading reports nothing seems to have broken down inside the plant as in the magic smoke leaving the electronics. The problems were bad values set for overvoltage protection in UPS equipment, bad design decisions in how to feed power to some components and systems and faulty installation of some components.
I will stay with my earlier impression that the nuclear powerplant were not perfect but good enough to handle these faults. I enjoy the open information while they fix these faults and better the design procedures for plant maintainance and upgrades. It is quite like what has happened before in earlier incidents, a learning experince that will make the plant better and the lessons will be distributed in the industry.
I suppose the imperfections can be quite scary for those who are scared by nuclear power. It will never be perfectly safe, only very very safe and it is important to not depend on an illusion of perfect safety since that gets in the way of the work to make the safety better over time.
The problem with nuclear power essentially remains the problems of dealing with the waste and mistakes - and until you can build a system where no mistakes without catastrophic results occur, I remain a sceptic on nuclear power. And please, a nine minute margin for ruining a significant amount of the Swedish landscape for a significant number of years should not be comforting to you - unless you think that the two generators that started to run the pumps represent very very safe. I certainly wouldn't, and that is based on a very rational understanding that the benefits from running the plant do not compare to the results of a no longer exactly theoretical chain of events leading to the slagged core meeting the wider world.
It was the captain's considered opinion during our discussions that the newer, safer designs are unlikely to be built, at least in the U.S., since the risk of a new, hopefully 'safer' design would seem higher than building reactors of a proven design, even if that proven design has known flaws.
Any design that results in a meltdown after power is lost, measured in seconds, minutes, or hours, is a problem.
I do wish that advocates for nuclear power would, at a minimum, insist that new reactors not be so designed or built that a meltdown in a fueled core is the default setting, so to speak.
As for burning brown coal - yep, you can always tell who is the junior partner in a coalition government. The SPD understands coal miners very well, of course.
If even more things had gone wrong the emergency preassure release filter would have proven adequate or inadequate.
Btw regarding meted cores, melted salt reactors are intresting. It is probably possible to build quite efficient Thorium and Uranium breeders that give high temperatures needed for chemical hydrogen synthesis. Unfortunately I am afraid that I live in too small a country for us to research them on our own. It makes more sense for us to improve the reactors we got and hopefully build a few more, lack of power in a post peak oil world scares me much more then the small risk for nuclear accidents.
If that cant be avoided on a global scare I would very much like to live in a country that has lots of energy to export things that are valuble for the rest of the world to get political leverage to keep this courner of the world calm and the ability build up a good military defence if that is needed.
My minor fear is having living conditions far closer to our ancestors then the current ones. People can both kill and die to avoiding such a fate, I hope they also can work and make sensibe politics.
Deffeyes plotted uranium on a Hubbert curve once (Deffeyes and Macgregor, 1980, Scientific American). According to him we were only on the first 5 % of the curve. And that's without reprocessing, breeding, sea uranium etc.
Forsmark incident
How many died? Answer: zero
Three Mile Island incident
How many died? Answer: zero
Vaiont Hydroelectric Dam failure (Italy, 1963)
How many died? Answer: 2600
Machhu Dam failure (India, 1979)
How many died? Anser: 2000
etc
What would you antinuclear guys do without Chernobyl?
If it hadn't happened, you would have had to invent it.
Or is waste disposal not a problem. I keep hearing the "will figure out something" line. Usually that's said completely innocent of any recognition of the general incompetence of our decision-makers. We've already decided one way to "dispose" of the wastes we have already generated. Makes me wonder what ingenious plans we'll come up with when we have even more.
Consider the problem this way - when you throw something away, where does it go? Few people even consider anything more than getting their trash to the curb or dumpster for pick up by some one else.
That is like complaining about oil and cars due to the existance of tanks.
The local high level waste storage/disposal is in copper cannisters 500 m down in bedrock with a good chance for survining an ice age. About as good schemes are proposed for long term storage of quicksilver, its nice that the nuclear waste research inspires better handling of other kind of wastes. The latest envorinmental news in Swedens is BTW the location of sea dump of quicksilver rich catalytic mass mixed with concrete dumped in the 50:s and 60:s, about 3000 barrels found out of an assumed 20000. :-(
As for waste disposal, not all places in the world will be as careful as your locale. Here in the U.S. we like the idea of dumping it all down a big hole where it can leach out of rusted steel containers into the aquifer. For most places in the world I fear that it will be a matter of "out of sight, out of mind"
I am anti-nuclear for roughly the same reason I am anti blasting mountain tops to get coal - it is just so stupid in terms of short term / long term cost/benefit.
I have no problem, once the waste issue is reasonably solved, with nuclear fission as a way to generate steam to power generators (well, apart from the essentially silly application of 18th and 19th century concepts to generate electricity). Of course, saying the future will solve the waste issue is exactly how the problem is handled now - the future will unavoidably be dealing with it.
And don't forget, the cost for really long term storage (and that includes more than one ice age) hasn't been budgeted, to put it mildly.
Read the article and you'll learn about the financing (it's in the end). :)
Maybe budgeted was the wrong expression (after all, GM and Ford seem to have budgeted money they don't have)- who will be actually spending the money in the future? Promises to spend it are not the same.
And as a note - I heard on the radio earlier that the accident in Sweden war more serious than first considered, according to a government report of the incident. How comforting that the opinion of the former Vattenfall executive with direct experience of both the reactor in question and the nuclear program in general was confirmed - I do hope the latest official incident report is translated by the pro-nuclear side of this debate.
It should be fascinating reading for everyone advocating nuclear power. For those opposed to nuclear power, it is likely to be pretty boring - yet another series of mistakes, leading to a near meltdown. Nothing new in such a report at all. Unlike some people, I do not look forward to winning the debate by listing 100,000 victims of a reactor accident as proof of what I believe, as compared to only a couple of thousand up till now. And let's not be confused - the number of dead coal miners is not somehow a balance.
Actually, I do believe in uranium fission being a bridge technology - but only when it can be handled in a way which doesn't lead directly to potential catastrophe (pebble bed comes to mind, for example). We can both agree that an incident leading to thousands of dead will be a disaster, and part of the damage of that disaster will be a refusal to consider fission as a safe way to generate electricity, as it will be on public display that it isn't true as currently practiced.
And yes, this will mean a lot more dead coal miners. I never said otherwise. And yes, climate change through coal burning will be a greater collective tragedy than any single nuclear accident. This doesn't lead to accepting the idea that today's currently in service nuclear plants are a good way to generate electricity.
You do realize that opposition to nuclear power as currently practiced is based on more than superstition. It can also be based on the hardest tenets of engineering, such as failure chains and the German expression GAU - the largest imaginable accident. And in Germany, that includes things like several hundred tons of very nasty chemicals released into an urban setting from a BASF or Hoechst plant - nuclear is not unique in its potential for accidents leading to mass deaths and destroyed inhabitable land, by any means.
From my article:
"Clab (Central interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel) is where all Swedish spent fuel currently ends up, and this has been the situation since 1985 when Clab was completed.
Clab is located next to Oskarshamn nuclear power plant and houses vast, deep cooling pools blasted from the rock at a depth of 30 metres below the ground.
In these pools the spent nuclear fuel is stored for 30-40 years to cool and let the radioactivity diminish further. After the stay in Clab the radioactivity of the fuel has subsided to about 0,5 % of the levels it had when it was brought fresh out of the reactor.
[...]
Construction [of the deep repository] will begin in 2011 and finish in 2018."
In Sweden it's the nuclear waste fund which is controlled by a board of independent experts and government experts.
I guess it's the same in the US.
His opinion - that a meltdown was near - was not at all confirmed. Quite the opposite. And he was neber a Vattenfall executive, just a guy who had worked on the plant and in is a legal battle with the power plant because they won't hire his consulting company. I bet the "unbiased" media didn't say anything about that.
And the accident is extremely overblown in the media. Things happen. That's why we have numerous safety systems. It's called defence in depth.
This is the latest information from the nuclear power inspectorate: http://www.ski.se/extra/tools/parser/index.cgi?url=/html/parse/index_en.html
To quote the nuclear power inspectorate (translated from Swedish): "The incident in Forsmark was not heading for a meltdown, no emissions to the environment happened and enough safety systems worked. It has been graded as a 2 on the seven-grade [international nuclear accident] scale."
There was never any risk for a meltdown.
I notice that the long term solution is still in the future - which was exactly my point.
As for the unbiased news source - 'Swedish nuclear expert Lars-Olov Högland, who served as chief of construction for Vattenfall until 1986, put it far more dramatically. "It was pure luck that there was not a meltdown," he said. "It was the worst incident since Chernobyl and Harrisburg," a reference to the 1979 meltdown at Three-Mile Island in Pennsylvania.' from http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,430458,00.html
I won't argue about sloppy journalism (I have yet to find a perfect source of information), but 'chief of construction at Vattenfall' doesn't quite sound like 'And he was neber a Vattenfall executive, just a guy who had worked on the plant and in is a legal battle with the power plant because they won't hire his consulting company.'
What unbiased sources are you using?
'And the accident is extremely overblown in the media. Things happen. That's why we have numerous safety systems. It's called defence in depth.' And with such a casual attitude, I can tell you live downwind from the plant with your family. As I wrote in regards to BASF or Hoechst, it doesn't have to be a nuclear accident to cause industrial scale problems - and quite honestly, I am sure a number of workers or engineers at BASF or Hoechst also live downind of their workplaces - and up till now, only an alarmist would be concerned about it.
Until it happens, of course.
Again, any plant which is effectively designed with meltdown as the default setting is simply dangerous. And the quote 'and enough safety systems worked' is not exactly comforting. Quite honestly, it would be good to talk with someone who actually works with reactors because if they ever develop such an attitude, you are likely to be facing giant problems.
And a quick comment to Magnus - I simply meant that 10 years is certainly a valid planning framework, but in terms of how the world looks, 10 years is a long time - take 1930 to 1940, for eaxample, or 1980 to 1990 - major shifts occurred beyond the planning scale of either the Weimar Republic or the Soviet's Gosplan. Very major shifts.
As for 'Every incident is a near meltdown if you assume that a number of more things would have failed and additional mistakes made.' that is because of the design flaw with such reactors - they meltdown without intervention. Seeing how close you can come is not a smart game - as the Soviets found out (or if you have the time, check out how Savannah River - a DOE/military facility, admittedly - managed to retire itself after major repairs from another incident - the operators so mishandled the power up of K-Reactor, they slammed the system with 800% more pressure in the pipes than the system was ever designed to handle, is my memory from roughly 13 years ago).
You cannot design error out of a system as long as humans are involved. You live with the risk - and balance the risk with the costs and benefits.
In Sweden the waste is in pools in a bedrock bunker, exept small ammounts stored for a while in pools inside the reactor buildings to cool down before transportation.
No cannisters have been filled with real waste, there have been dozens produced to develop the cannister production and closu
re procedures and test the cannister handling and how the immediate surroundings in a bedrock storage reqacto to a
The requests for permits with detailed calculations, drwaings, environmental impact statements and so on to build the cannister plant, waste canning plant and the bedrock storage will be made during the 2006 to 2009 period and production started in 2018.
You can say that 10 years is beyond any scope of discussion but this is not the first time we build nuclear facilities in Sweden, schedules have been delayed with some years before but so far nothing has become a Yucca mountain.
The cost is recalculated every two years and the funds are set aside on a government account and btw, our government debt is shrinking. The large costs for building the plants and bedrock storage will be made while the current nuclear powerplants are running and providing a fresh cash flow.
Its 50 pages, I cant do that much quality work for free, its stops being fun after a few pages. Perhaps someone else will do it and it will be translated for other NPP:s n other countries.
I can second that this incident seems to be about as bad as the worst previous incident wich also resulted in the staff being important within less then 30 minutes if the incident had been worse. And also that were another kind of design mistake.
The old incident were about steam vented inside the containment ripping loose mineral wool insulation that clogged screens before pumps recirculating cooling water into the reactor core forcing the operators to back wash the screens to get the minerall wool out of the screens. A good example of operators handling a design mistake. Immediately after this incident five reactors with this kind of insulation were closed and not restarted untill it were fixed in such a way that it newer could happen again and a search for other simmilar problems concluded. The insulation were changed to foil insulation and the screens enlarged.
Every incident is a near meltdown if you assume that a number of more things would have failed and additional mistakes made.
The best science says bedrock repository works. And decisions should be based on the best science, no?
Anyway, after the repository is built, some canisters will be put in it for a couple of years as a last experiment to see if it all really works (though lots of experiments of that kind have already been performed at Äspö). If it doesn't work, well, there are other alternatives to test.
Economy, geology and politics should work. At least it's hard to see how they wouldn't. If something doesn't work, we have a hundred years to try again and find a better solution.
No matter if we expand nuclear power or not we will still have waste to take care off.
No. While Science attempts to be objective and definitive, in reality it is neither. Science is a human based endeavor and is limited to human scale observations. What may appear to be the operative norm now, may change at some point because human scale observation lacked scope. To tout a technology that has the capability of killing tens of thousands of years in the future, even if our observations now are correct and certainly if they are not, is criminal, reckless and utterly without moral grounding.
Futher, we should not make decisions solely based on Science because time and again Science fails to ask the crucial question: just because we can, should we?
Natural science is objective. Math is math. And the waste repository can not kill tens of thousands people in the future. But coal is killing millions today.
Wisdom. It should be apparent to anyone who can put aside their fear of losing out on the techno-orgy, that the modern industrialised way of life is unsustainable. The only sane, rational and sustainable future for humankind to survive here on the host is to dramatically reduce per capita per annum calorie consumption. Period. The only sane and rational choice is to wake up to the reality of origins and respect the limits of the host. Period.
Science has been very clever in expanding the material wealth of a portion of the population here, but it is hubris that allows the majority to think that Science can provide. There is only one thing to do, accept the fact that the techno-orgy was fun, but if humanity is to be responsible to those yet unborn, and expects to make it out of this century with an environment and civil structure that will last, it is over and it is time to return to our nascent state.
And the only way to stop that is to go nuclear.
I never said life would be a bed of roses. I've lived off the grid and in less than permanent shelter in a locale that got 80" of snow per annum. It wasn't easy, but it was perhaps the most rewarding/fulfulling time of my life. The point is simple, just because you want something, does not follow that it is possible. Yes, we in the west have created a pleasing milieu for living. However, it is not sustainable. Regardless of how many want it. The end result of any attempt to live the lie that is modern civilisation will be the reduction of life supporting capabilities of the host. You can remain in denial of that for the rest of your life. It will not change the basic structure and limit to that which gave rise to humane life.
There is a way to allow humanity to survive here on the host, but that will only come through correct assessment and adherence to actual needs in supporting life, as opposed to wants in a lifestyle. The choice is all of ours to make...
Certainly, nuclear war can do that nicely by reducing the population.
I am beginning to wonder why everybody is so upset, reducing population is a sure remedy to ressources shortage and there is so many ways we can have that:
- War.
- Starvation.
- Pandemics.
Peak Oil, Climate Change, Economic Melt Down, etc... are only means to an end, why worry?
I mean, look at us, we are all peak oil aware and still have vastly big diffences in what we believe should be done.
Try creating consenus on these issues with every one in the world. Consider how much your neighbours know about peak oil, energy or environment. And especially imagine trying to do that to the teeming masses of people who are clawing themselves out of the 18th century into the 19th, or even the 20th.
They are going to use coal. They know that it's better to live with climate change and have lives that are not completely awful than to live in a pristine world were they continue living in absolute squalor.
I guess the reason you oppose nuclear power is that it gives the hated modern civilization a chance to live on without destroying the environment and hence undermining itself.
When you can prove definitively that mining for the natural resources needed to create the thousands of plants required to just break even on current demand for electricity, when you can prove that humanity has the capability to effectively sequester the waste, when you can prove that the continued production of all the widgets that will use all that energy produced has zero impact on the environment, then you will have grounds to write what you just did. Until then, it is uninformed reactionary dogma...
But that is really beside the point. The point is that the alternative, the only realistic alternative, is the status quo. That's massive coal burning and climate meltdown. And I can prove that is worse than any alternative.
Except maybe the alternative of using neither nuclear or coal and going back to the time when life was nasty, brutish and short, as Hobbes put it.
People will not give up on modern civilization. They will rather destroy the planet. Only nuclear power can currently stop this.
Life is still ""solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The relative comfort that you relish is extracted upon the masses of the earth. They get to revel in more than their fair share of the misery so that you can reside comfortably in your myopic delusion.
People will not give up on modern civilization. They will rather destroy the planet. Only nuclear power can currently stop this.
People do not have to give up on civilisation. There is a middle ground between the stone age and now, and it can be a better life than is had now. It is your inability to accept this alternative that perpetuates the false dichotomy of coal/nuclear or barbarianism. As for nuclear being the only thing that can stop that descent, well, not only is it bunk, it lacks a full understanding that the ultimate impact of supporting the status quo will only lead to collapse. The simple fact is that even if your assertions about the safety, longevity and cleanliness of the power source are correct, it lacks the calculation of what consumption of that energy will entail. In short, it will require devices to consume that energy, whose production is not clean, not apt to be long lived (remember those finite elements that are required to produce) nor are the production processes clean. In addition, you must continue to feed all those consumers without petroleum inputs. Good luck on that last one.....
I do not at all deserve my wealthy, comfortable and well organized society to the poor masses of the earth, but to the hard work and ingenuity of my ancestors. The poor masses of the world are getting better life because they are becoming a part of the global marketplace, because they have political stability and economic growth, because they are getting clean water and electricity.
You talk about a middle ground between today and the stone age. I guess you mean the medieval age. I'd rather not go there.
And I don't see why there would be no petroleum for farming. I'd say that farmers are the last people who'll go without fuel, either due to the price mechanism or due to government intervention.
You are more naive than I feared, my friend. Please, do a little travelling before you start spouting this sort of trilateralist crap.
And I'd advice you to ask someone who travelled to Calcutta in the 70's and went back there today about the differnces. Or China for that matter. I really do.
Oops, didn't know that did you.
You really need to expand your horizons a little. Your assumption that opposition to your glorious technological global capitalist state could only be "post-colonialist pseudo-scientific marxist crap" is amusing. Your clinging to the Horatio Alger day dream is touching. But when it comes right down to it, the size of the global middle class is no larger today than it was 30 years ago (as a % of total population).
If you are all so sure fire certain that India and China are doing so much better, than tell me, please, why the suicide rate in rural india has skyrocketed in the last few years, or why the Chinese gov't admits to over 30,000 political "disturbances" last year alone.
That is a bit short for an answer.
Could you elaborate?
Wrong. The west is where it is because it had no compunction with respect to the rape and pillaging of aboriginal cultures in pursuit of the resources they sat upon after western powers had despoiled Europe and then America. Read some History. That is the legacy of westerners, and no amount of denial will change that.
The poor masses of the world are getting better life because they are becoming a part of the global marketplace, because they have political stability and economic growth, because they are getting clean water and electricity.
It is just this attitude of westerners that they are somehow improving the life of their 'little brown brothers' by introducing capitalist consumption that has added to the complexity and un-sustainability. Life needs are very simple: clean water, clean air, adequate food, adequate shelter and community. Before the west sought to conquer the globe, those needs were abundant. What has made all of them scarce is the west's insatiable appetite for more, more, more.
How long did the aboriginals manage to live in North America without fucking up the landscape? Tens of thousands of years. By all accounts they were quite satisfied with there life. The common perception then as now is that living in their manner was savage. I ask, what is more savage, managing forest, field and wildlife in a manner that provided thousands of years of balance in living without ever approaching mass extinction, or constantly drawing down resources in the pursuit of luxuries to the point that billions of people face starvation, war and death as we ride down the petroleum production curve?
Ask a person who went to Africa 25 years ago if they see any changes there. You might be surprised.
That is, stability and economic reforms. Or really if we look at China, I guess a large part of their growth comes just from avoiding having crazy leaders like Mao and the Emperors and warlords before him. No more Great famine or great leap forward, no more cultural revolution, a lot less dogmatic communism.
Just authoritarian, one could say fascist, crony capitalism. 10 % average growth for the latest 25 years have changed China completely, especially the coastal provinces.
Excellent, do it RIGHT NOW, you are our savior, but don't forget any, ONE miss is enough to screw it ALL!
- mining for the natural resources
- effectively sequester the waste,
- impact [of production of all the widgets] on the environment
On this last one, of course, don't try for "zero" impact, just NON CUMULATIVE impact, i.e. not getting worse and worse as time goes by.Waste: Do it like we do in Sweden. See the article I linked to earlier.
Widgets: Stop using stuff that emit carbon dioxide. I don't do it (except indirectly through buying food (I don't buy much else)) so no else really need to.
If all industrialized countries emitted as little CO2 as Sweden does we would all be in a much better situation. The only CO2 stuff we have left is some oil in industry (which peak oil will remove) and of course all the cars, which PHEV and trains will deal with.
When it comes to other stuff like chemical emissions, have really tough environmental regulation, both on domestically ptroduced goods and on imported stuff.
Waste: Speculative, you have been countered in this very thread.
Widgets: Awwww, shit! One more "dialectician".
I am NOT arguing about carbon dioxide.
I am arguing about GARBAGE DISPOSAL, where do all "obsolete" computers, rusted cars, broken household appliances, toxic chemical wastes, etc, etc... REALLY GO?
When it comes to other stuff like chemical emissions, have really tough environmental regulation,
So much that swedish mothers have, for decades on, not been allowed to breast-feed their babies for fear of poisoning them.
That was news for me, I am only 36 but governmnet PR in Sweden to brestfeed more has been strong for at least 10 years and probably longer. To brestfeed is an advice given to all mothers. Where did you hear or read this incorrect information?
What has been told for decades is to avoid fish from lakes that have noticable levels of quicksilver. The quicksilver comes from old coal burning and old sloppy industrial use of quicksilver for manny purposes.
Yes, not willingly...
They will rather destroy the planet.
No way "people" can do that, they will just destroy SOME life on the planet including their own.
Five millions years from now everything will look fine on the planet.
But I was thinking of the next few hundreds or thousands of years.
So let me rephrase it. They will rather destroy the planet for future human generations than give up on modern civilization.
Really? What would they be? If the geology is unsuitable over geological time frames, we pull out the canisters of contained solid waste and move them.
"Why not pursue technologies that are renewable and less risky - solar, wind, wave, hydropower, geothermal, biomass, etc.?"
They don't have problems?
To put it in perspective, can you guarantee that an engineered hydropower dam will not break for 20,000 years---no matter the climate or earthquakes---in the total absence of human repair or investigation? That's the level of attack that nuclear waste is subjected it to.
Biomass production could easily end up starving half the world, and deplete critical aquifers much much more quickly than nuclear waste could do anything.
Solar doesn't have the energy density or security, and what about all those toxic heavy metals, gallium & arsenic used in all the panels? Can you guarantee that every single person who installs a solar panel will take it to a toxic recycling dump after its lifetime is up, even if this is hundreds of years from now?
You see we have big problems already from other energy sources.
How many people killed injured from nuclear waste from commercial power plants in 2006?
How many people died from asthma in 2006, of which coal may be at least 1% responsible?
Besides, there are potential nuclear fuel cycles and plants called 'actinide burners' which transmute waste so that almost all of the long-lived radioactive elements are gone. This is compatible with the laws of physics and some reasonable engineering computations.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/accres.asp
I'm not suggesting we go 100% biomass, 100% solar, 100% coal, etc. The solution will have to be a blend of different solutions for different areas. Where there's a lot of sun, some solar (including passive water heating) is advisable, where there's a lot of wind, wind energy, etc. As for solar panels, those using heavy metals (as opposed to silicon) need to be more heavily regulated. (The widespread use of lead-acid batteries is probably a much greater problem in this regard.) The potential for heavy metal contamination is one of the reasons I'm lukewarm about solar energy. I would favor wind energy, wherever practical. I'm not advocating coal. In fact, I don't favor coal unless the sulfur, heavy metal contaminates, etc. can be removed. Even then, there's the C02/global warming problem. That's all theory. When you have a working "actinide burner" in operation, then tell me about it.
The high level waste from the Swedish nuclear program is not in liquid form, it is fuel bundels and used reactor core components.
If the storage starts to fail there is either something corroding the copper containers or some immense mechanical force from some where damaging them. Actual dispersal of the solid waste is then a very slow process after a container failure.
Btw the experiment of burying containers with electrical heaters simulating the waste, monitoring them and the surrounding clay and bedrock and then retrieving them is recently concluded.
Uh, no. You look at the repository and see if it is getting wet. You can do this with sensors.
If it gets in the ground, you then scoop up the ground that was contaminated. This doesn't happen very fast. If there is some leakage it is not too late if that leakage has gone a few inches, and yes that could easily be detected. And even so, the consequences could be very small. Nuclear waste is not infinitely dangerous.
A dam collapse, on the other hand.....Just google "dam collapse deaths".
One single dam in 1889 killed 2209. 80 more in Pakistan this year. 1959, hundreds in France. 1926, four hundred in Los Angeles. This is just a sampling from a tiny bit of Googling.
As far as Hanford goes, it was quite literally the first industrial scale nuclear plant ever built, and it was done in a frenzied wartime rush, and it was designed entirely for producing nuclear weapons plutonium and there were no environmental standards.
Nevertheless, dams have been far more lethal.
And well, I wouldn't calml biomass less risky. The emission kill at least ten times as many people as nuclear does, per kWh. This we know today (I still think we should use biomass, living is not possible without risks and tradeoffs). It's not some future risk that might manifest if everything we know about geology and metallurgy turns out to be wrong.
Population growth is interesting. I wrote this earlier today at another forum.
The repository and the materials have been chosen because they imitate nature. We are damn sure how it will behave. We have backups if it don't behave as we believe it will. And we'll have to deal with the stuff no matter what because it exists today. So, what are suppose to do with it now? You got a better idea?
And yes, many people "would rather see us reduce our energy consumption as much as possible rather than go whole hog for nuclear and/or coal."
But believing that's going to happen is incredibly naive. The reality is coal or nuclear.
And if you really believe that the oprtions are only coal or nuclear than you suffer from a lack of imagination.
If some other option start to measue up its time to have a great party to salubrate, we need every energy source we can find.
Alternative energy sources (including coal and oil) are not the only alternatives to an oil based economy.
Are you right that the future is likely to see lots of efforts to implement coal and nuclear? Probably
Will those attempts be successful? I'd bet against it.
I've said this before, but it bares repeating. Peak oil is not a technical problem. It is a social / cultural problem. The results, good or bad, of peak oil will be based on human responses, not on what is technically feasible.
But this toolbox lies mostly idle in some countries and its only partly mobilized in my own country. Getting the work started is a political/cultural problem and getting people lifestyles to work with what can be provided is a social/cultural problem.
The only purely cultural solution is from my point if view to sit and sing kumbayana untill the singers drop dead from dehydration.
Perhaps nerdy societies where politicians listen to technological people can be considered the technological solution. If other societies dont work in a constructive way with these problems I hope you at least die out in a way that dont stink up the place too much, not much can be done for you other then providing good examples.
And the last sentence above can be used by those that dont trust techy solutions, live your solution and provide a cultural example.
Yes, I know this is suggesting things you didn't mean. But that is my point. You don't get to choose these things. If you want to understand what will happen post peak, stop looking at the "technical toolbox" and start looking at how human beings behave.
You may be able to build your insulated island of civilization, but don't ever think that you won't then become a target - and not just of roaming dispossesed refugees, but of the ire of nuclear equipped nation states.
We do agree 100% on the need to live your solution.
People care about their own comfort, nice people also care about other people. I or my state cant make these definitions for people.
What I hope we will have less of in the rich part of the world is inefficient comforts. It seems like USA is soon to be hit by one of histories largest "cluehammers", I hope you make the best of it.
Its not intened to be insulated, its the other way around, its intended to trade with those nuclear equipped nation states and other. Immigration will probably become limited if we dont become masters at integration. The trick is for us to be more valube alive and in good order then nuked by bastardized nations. The same idea as the Swedish foregin policy during WW2 when we basically traded with nazi Germany in exchange for not being invaded. Morally so repulsive that we armed ourselves to the teeth but that process were about finished in 1955 when we had an army that could have repelled an invasion...
Sweden could probably survive by powering down to only hydro, wind and biomass power. But having a lot of nuclear power on top of that provides power to further refine the local natural resources and provide large volumes of goods that are valuble for other countries. And the local population can have a higher standard of living wich is quite popular. We are not ecological saints but we try to at least be smart from time to time and a lot of our environmental problems have already been solved.
And I am also a strong advocate of a sensible strenghtening of the Swedish civilian and military defences, of course done with a long term plan to have the same basic structure for manny decades.
But the main part of my global thinking is that having multiple "icelands of civilization" as you say that compete on being productive in an enviromentally sensible way provides for much more human happiness then recource wars. I want us to compete and mobilize in a way that benefits a large part of the world. I am not arguing for us to become volontary powerdown victims, I dont want it and its not a working suggestion.
A small band of zealots will change nothing.
So, does that small band include you?
Yes!
Yes!
Yes!
Yes!
Yes!
And more nuclear powerplants on top of that.
That we compared with other countries have good peak oil prepairdness in Sweden is party due to our greens and government trying to do that.
So do I!
So do I!
So do I!
So do I!But most of all I wish no one builds a coal power plant ever again.
It has been slowing for 40 years. Like I wrote at another place in the thread.
I agree fully! Making or society more efficent is moving forward. Going backwards is leaving the modern industrial welfare state and heading for something worse, like an agrarian society or a neoliberal crony capitalism (like certain elements of certain countries on the other side of the pond).Unless the "zealots" are the ones who SURVIVE through hard times.
Sure, black or white, nothing else!
You are spouting a lot of pro-nuclear "arguments", can we have your sources or is it just bogus/hearsay?
Can we also have an estimate of the budget/man hours necessary to collect and compare pro and cons of the "nukular" option versus coal, wind, solar, biomass.
It's an effect of what you mention, not really manhours, but price.
All the below numbers are of course approximate and change due to geographic location, infrastructure, environmental regulation, fuel costs and so on.
Nuclear: 3 cents per kWh. Extremely big fuel supply.
Coal: 2-4 cents per kWh. Very big fuel supply.
Natural gas: 2- really much depending on price of gas. And there isn't enough of it in the long run.
Wind: 4-6 cents per kWh. Big price differnce due to location. Can only supply a maximum of 20 % of total power due to grid instability issues.
Solar: 20-60 cents per kWh (or something like that). Maybe we'll see some wonderful technology breakthrough.
Stirling solar: Maybe as low as 6 cents per kWh.
Biomass: I don't really now, but maybe 4-8 cents per kWh. Limited annual potential. Feedstock should become more expensive due to competiton from cellulosic ethanol and such.
Hydro: Almost 0-3 cents per kWh. Nearly all sites already exploited.
Now, for a western consumer it doesn't matter much if you pay 3 or 6 cents for power costs as grid costs and power taxes can push the cost very much upwards and people can still take it. But people in the developing world can't take it and neither can western energy intensive companies (like paper, steel, aluminum etc) as they compete on a global market.
This means that countries without heavy industry (like Denmark) can build lots of expensive wind mills without wrecking the country's economy. Places like Sweden, where heavy industry is really big, can't. And nor can pretty poor places like China and India.
The vast majority of the world will base it's energy supply on either coal or nuclear just because it's cheap.
How would the electricity system of a non-fossil non-nuclear industrialized nation look like?
Let's take the US. 10 % hydro and a massive wind program on top of that, that's 30 % of demand. And then? There is not enough biomass around and stirling solar is intermittent and expensive so it won't work.
But what if there was a massive currently politcally impossible conservation program first? What if power demand was cut to a third of current levels (the Swedish conservation program only managed to slow demand growth). And on top of this power demand would grow as natural gas heating would be illegal and tranportation would be electrified. Anyway, in spite of these demand increases there would still be so much conservation as the new demand is only a third of the old.
Then hydro would generate 30 % of demand. Wind output would still be limited to 20 % due to grid stability (and so only a third as many windmills would be needed). Then we have 50 % of power demand fixed. But what about the rest?
It'll have to gas be (not much left and on decline in America) coal or nuclear. Today it's coal. It supplies 50 % of all America's electricity. I'd much rather see it be nuclear.
BOTH claims are unsubstanciated.
-
the cost is FAKE because of heavy subsidies hidden in military expenditures, undervalued costs of radioactive waste disposal and obsolete plants decommission.
- the "Extremely big fuel supply" is not ECONOMICALLY usable (see other comments in this thread).
Coal: 2-4 cents per kWh. Very big fuel supply.Excellent solution to get rid of all energy problems by Global warming triggered die-off.
Stirling solar: Maybe as low as 6 cents per kWh.
Thus "may be" competitive with REAL "Nuclear costs"?
And with an unquestionable inexhaustible fuel supply within the "reasonable " time span of, say, 1 BILLION years.
Alas, it is incremental, small units no big plants, no big money, no big government, no big profits, what a pity!
The vast majority of the world will base it's energy supply on either coal or nuclear just because it's cheap.
This is a PREDICTION not a PRESCRIPTION.
Are you a doomer at heart and do you wish for this?
What military expenditures?
The only directly realted military cost I can figure out is the sunk cost of basic research and technology development that were made for developing nuclear weapons. But that add no cost to nuclear powerplants, fuel factories or enrichment plants built today. Its the same way as with wind powerplants, it gives nothing to add the spent research cost to the cost of new windmills.
It is easier to argue that oil cost a lot in miltary expenditures.
The nice thing with this statement is that we probably will know if it is true or not within about 10 years since search for new uranium deposists is being started in a large scale and the development of new mines that probably have somewhat updated technology. This challange will propably result in the issue being investigated.
Its like the current peak oil scare, I think it is serious right now but within 10 years I will know for sure.
If you are right it will take more then 10 years to ramp up the nuclear powerplant building to a level where uranium runs out before the plants are old. This means that your argument is no reason to not floor the accelerator. But it could be an argumnet for developing multiple breeder designs in parallell ASAP.
Don't the military BUY the nuclear equipement and supplies they use?
Quite a BROADENING of the market for the nuclear industry, and as you notice they don't balk at the "sunk cost of basic research and technology development", did they STOP this?
But that add no cost to nuclear powerplants, fuel factories or enrichment plants built today.
EXACTLY, these costs are accounted as MARGINAL costs, not the true prices which will skyrocket if the volume of civilian nuclear increases a lot with respect to military nuclear, PLUS the costs of wastes safety which the military don't give a hoot about.
It is easier to argue that oil cost a lot in miltary expenditures.
Yeah! WTF does this have to do with an argument about the cost of nuclear power generation?
The nice thing with this statement is that we probably will know if it is true or not within about 10 years since search for new uranium deposists is being started in a large scale and the development of new mines that probably have somewhat updated technology.
Thanks for making the argument for me.
How do YOU know that it will be ECONOMICALLY usable?
Nothing questionable about my other points Coal and Stirling solar?
I dont know how much nuclear equipment and supplies the military buys. The production of nuclear powered submarines and carriers have slowed down a lot, my guess would be that this industry is much smaller then replacement parts for running civilian reactors and new powerplants. The nuclear weapon parts are probably done in completely separate factories.
Stop what? And why?
Civilian nuclear is probably already a lot bigger then military nuclear. That several military establishments have mismanaged their nuclear waste is in no way supporting the handling of civilian waste. The Swedish waste handling research has been paid by a small fee on each nuclear kWh sold. I dont know how other countries manages their development of waste handling methods.
If searching for new ore bodies and use of less concentrated ores can fuel a vastly larger fleet of nuclear powerplants, ten times the current one or more, that dont breed fuel from U238 or Thorium is still an open question for me. I dont worry about fueling what we can build in the next decade or two.
I did not read them throughly. I hope stirling solar will work out, every addition helps a little.
Of course, your biases are showing.
You did not deal either with my questioning of the COSTS of "radioactive waste disposal and obsolete plants decommission" .
Could you also give us your estimations for the cost (beside the RISK) of major accidents, see expat comment.
I dont hide my biases. But in this case I did not find the cost statement regarding coal and solar stirling power intresting enough to check or challange the numbers.
I trust the www.ski.se calculations.
A description can be found on:
http://www.ski.se/extra/tools/parser/index.cgi?url=/html/parse/index_en.html&selected=11&mai nurl=/page/5/9.html%3F17951
Scroll down and open the PDF file.
And more inforamtion on:
http://www.karnavfallsfonden.se/Engstart.htm
The fees thisn year are per kWh:
0.006 SEK, $0.00083 for the Oskarshamn nuclear powerplant.
0.007 SEK, $0.00097 for Ringhals
0.012 SEK, $0.00166 for Forsmark (closest to the cost for new powerplants when they are built. )
The first 25 years of fees per reactor is calculated to be enough and then is the fee much lower. This is complicated by the financial incommes from the state bonds and state accounts with intrest.
The fund held 34,800,000,000 SEK at the end of 2005, between 1981 and 2005 were 26,200,000,000 SEK paid to the fund by the nuclear powerplants and the financial incommes were 26,700,000,000 SEK, and 18,200,000,000 SEK were paid for waste handling, research and so on.
Neither of them are quantified, I am no research establishment.
My estimation of the accident risk for a large release of radioactivity from a Swedish nuclear powerplants is that it is neglible but it is anyway prudent to plan for such a releases since I can be wrong, it is good to have civil defence resources and another ex soviet RBMK could burn down while the winds blow our way.
It is even harder to say something wise about the cost.
The initial cost is higher if the radioactivity is released over a city then countryside since a lot more people will have their lives disrupted to handle the fallout with a minimum of health harm to them.
The long term impact is higher for countryside since a town can be washed, repaved and soft surfaces changed out but a farm can not be used for a long time.
It is probably possible to add up the worst case dispruption cost, decontamination cost and medium and long term loss of money flow from farms etc.
However I cant do this job in any meaningfull way, my guess is that it would be adequate if all "western" nuclear powerplants agreed to add a fraction of a cent to each kWh after an accident to cover the money flow needed.
I think it's very odd to add military adventures to the cost of a civilian power source. If we start going that route do we get to add the Holocaust to the cost of coal? After all, coal did indeed fuel the nazi war machine. Better to consider power sources on their merits, independent of what some pointy haired generals did with the technology on their own.
What I can never figure out is why more pro nuclear folks are not so keen to send their own children to work in the uranium mines, for this great patriotic cause...there is more to nuclear than the shiny well lit plant sitting by the river....a lot of "contamination" before the fuel rods ever get in the plant or the first leak ever occurs, know what I mean....
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
You write:
"But to blame enviros as a whole for our converging energy and environmental catastrophes is like blaming the anti-war movement of the 1960s for America's failure in Vietnam.
I do not blame enviros as a whole -- but there is a fair dose of 'cosmeticism' in that political community (to use Catton's term in 'Overshoot'). Environmental and ecological awareness are not quite the same thing.
My point is that environmentalists have lacked a sense of proportion by over-emphasing the hazards of nuclear energy (along with the pseudo-hazards of exposure to 1 part per trillion of dioxin, etc. etc.).
And their success is largely due to the availability of cheap oil. That's the irony.
The posters who say 'don't worry too much about radiation' do very little to ease my concerns. Others say this about GM foods and antibiotic overuse, too, which strike me as similarly ominous hazards. The dangers are invisible and carry the potential of spreading or cascading through biosystems, waterways or genetic developments/mutations which we might not even recognize until widespread damage had occurred (See Mercury & Lead for the prequels to this danger)
Besides this grand promise of 'untold riches' in Uranium supply seems equally overstated, when the access to this material requires more and more energy and processing, while current mining finds less and less pure sources of Uranium Ore..
It just seems way too easy to throw the axes at the people who have stuck their necks out to try to proceed with a real concern for a long future, refusing to dump our unsolved (and pass on our parents' unsolved) long-term hazardous wastes to the generations which will already have enough to try to deal with, without cleaning up after their parents..
Thank you for being clueless.
And all I'm asking some folks to do is change their lightbulbs and they say "but I don't like that kind of light".
How about this. The greens allow me to check a box on my power bill that lets me get all my electricity from nuclear, I'll pay for that. In return, I shouldn't have to breathe their coal smoke, fair deal? Give me that box, and I won't bash the greens.
If they want to get their electricity from wind, or solar, or whatever, more power to em. While their choices force me to breathe coal smoke, I will indeed blame them.
Beyond that, I positively guarantee that I use less energy than at least 95% of the people on this board. All my transportation is electrical, and my apartment is miniscule. It's easy to talk about others wasting electricity, but that's not the only reason people don't like the greens. I use less energy than nearly any green, just because of where I live. And yes, my bulbs are all CF. I just don't want to breathe their pollution, because that's what happens every time they get a nuke plant shut down. Thanks to their obstructionist lawsuits and general railing against nuclear, ohio is full of coal plants, and I get to breathe in their pollution every day. To say nothing of global warming.
There are no points for being terminally naieve.
I'm curious how much you use in a year - and no guessing, please. Your bill(s) should be very precise, after all.
Of course, we do have some advantages - no air conditioning, no TV, no clothes dryer, no dish washer, no electric hot water heater (the hot water is essentially on demand and uses natural gas) and the other appliances are high efficiency. The first CF bulbs I bought were ca 1995, by the way.
But then, living in a country where the Greens actually had a share of power in the government for years, what would you expect? Obviously, not what I live with.
But let's not be self-righteous - regardless of the relative ranking, we both use more energy than easily 90% of the rest of the world's population. You are welcome to start living like a Bangladeshi or Zambian farmer - though since you wouldn't have an Internet connection in all likelihood (or know how to read), we wouldn't be able to hear about it.
You are (weasel-word coming) probably an exception among the Greens.
In Luxembourg I know quite a number of them. Many are colleagues of mine. They are nice, educated people who say sorry if you bump into them.
They drive Saabs and live in MacMansions with solar panels on the roof.
Their ecological footprint is far greater than that of the average CDU or SPD voter and probably two orders of magnitude greater that that of the proverbial Indian peasant.
But their consciences are clear.
The Saab, the solar panels ...
They're not in any way like those ghastly Murcans with their vulgar SUVs.
But luckily, none of those Americans in their SUVs and incredibly still minimally insulated houses (I checked both houses I stayed at and the large number of houses under construction) are hypocritical like your Greens. They are unashamedly living the way they do, and care nothing, I was told by many, what anyone else in the world thinks about it.
Your choice whether the hypocrites are worse than those people. In their eyes, since they are the world's superpower, they can do what they want. I think even your undoubtedly hypocritical Greens are better neighbors.
I confess 1000 kW in a month sounds huge to me, relative to my electric bill. I used 2/3 of that last month, but my house is being rebuilt, I was powering a fairly large machine shop for most of the month, and I found the bill staggering.
Before I took an interest in this, I used about 8 KWhs a day. The only investment was going to home Depot and spending $20 on 12 CFLs (yes, they are that cheap now). The rest was just simple reduction measures - watching less TV, staying outdoors during daylight hours as much as possible, opening my blinds to allow natural light when I'm at home, etc.
To date, I've saved over $100 on my electric bill.
And how much would it have cost you to have workmen doing all that with hand tools?
Electricity used from April 1, 2005 to March 31, 2006 - 2,345 kWh
Natural gas used from February 19, 2005 to February 15, 2006 - 11,372 kWh
Though it is generally an advantage to use the same measurement unit for energy, at times it does lead to minor mistakes, like confusing heat for electricity.
This means my family of four is using roughly 6.42 kWh a day at home. I have read that the average American uses 1 kWh an hour, which if true, means that I am way behind in keeping up with the Jones - where the 4 Jones have consumed 96 kWh, I have only consumed 1/16th of their amount. Obviously, this number is a bit flawed - we certainly use electricity while at work, shopping, etc. So let's cut it in half to 1/8 to reflect all time spent out of the house.
Which means I am probably using something like 6.4 more kWh per day than a billion or two people. Hope they don't want to catch up with the Müllers, so to speak.
If this was a question for me, here is your answer:
6520 KW
I live in the desert southwest in a 720 sqft house with one other person. When we rehabilitated the late 1920's bungalow, given my perception of dwindling resources, I removed gas service. Neither did I upgrade the existing 100 amp electrical service. We have an on-demand hot water heater rated at 60 amps, which is one of the smallest you can purchase. We have a higher end ceramic top electric stove for cooking. I have never owned a clothes dryer, dishwasher or microwave. I still allow myself the luxury of a washing machine. We have an small lcd computer moniter which accepts line in to watch the occasional dvd. For two rooms of the house, what winter we get here is staved off by radiant heat in newly poured concrete slabs fed by the on-demand water. Additional heat comes from a very small wood stove. There was an eucalyptus tree on the property which had completely root bound the sewer outlet when I bought the house, so to avoid future trouble I had it cut down. That was two winters ago. I still have enough wood for at least one more winter before I have to find a new source.
I only connected the commode back to the sewer line, and it is never used as I compost all human byproduct. The shower, sinks and washer all are on greywater recovery systems. Rain water harvesting comes next. I am on year three of learning how to grow food. Not at unity yet, but hope to reach over unity on food production some day. Meat rarely crosses my lips and if it does it is usually in the form of fish. That is getting harder to justify as I read about the nature of fish stocks in the wild. I never buy farmed fish as it is too energy intensive and not sustainable.
My other and I share a civic. We both bike, or use the bus when unable to pedal, to work. We bike/walk to shop. The car gets use for longer needs and when things won't fit on the bike, which I hope to reduce once I have enough money for another bike ala SUB. Gas fillups are required about monthly.
My computing is done on laptop, and I have instituted a policy which I hope to live up to: as my consumer electronics gear dies, do not replace. This is going to be a tough one for the musician in me. Maybe I will have to learn to read and write music after all to preserve my compositions.
We have no debt, and own house/car outright. We are basically bad Americans. I have a fantasy to completely remove electricity consumption from my life by the end. We'll see if I get there. I have had little success in convincing the other that this is a necessary goal. I however think it is............
Boy, aren't you just. You will be the reason the whole thing collapses if you go on living like that.
Well, enough sarcasm - actually, the question was directed to slaphappy, who believed 95% of the readers used more electricity.
The threading mechanism doesn't work that well, not that I have any concrete suggestions for improving it.
OK, here's my bills....
Looks like (I'm just adding up in my head and rounding, not going to break out the calculator) 350 KWh/month (about the average of the little graph they draw me), which comes out to be about 4,200/year. Roughly. For a family of 2.
Of course, I take electrical mass transit, so my transportation use is about half yours, or less, if you own a car. As for heating and hot water, not sure, as it's provided by the building, but given the size of my apartment, and the fact that the heat is rarely used (body/computer heat is usually plenty), I'd guess that doesn't add a whole lot.
So, basically it looks like the two of us here in 'Merika use between 1/3 and 1/2 of the energy the four of you do, if not counting heating or transportation. On transporation, I imagine I have the edge, as for heating, I'm fond of long showers, so perhaps that evens the score a little, but my very new and well insulated (and small) apartment in a city with fairly mild weather would be hard to beat for space heating. We only very rarely have to turn on the heaters.
You aren't even close to my actual electrical use - this family of four uses about half of what your family of two does. But then, that is what to be expected, as Europeans use half (or less, in my family's case) of the energy of Americans. And considering the number of Europeans that post here, your 95% is pretty silly. But in all fairness, you may be better than a majority of American TOD posters.
well, that 11k of natural gas has got to be quite a bit higher than mine, but once again, I'm not sure how much I use due to the nature of the system here, so I can't really say much more.
Anyway, enough comparing who uses more energy. Were it not for seti-at-home, I'd surely use much less, but those aliens are in need of finding. :-)
Contrast this with living next to a coal powerplant. Everything you own gets coated in ash, you breath alot of sulfur dioxide, and you actually get 100 times as much released radioactives than if you lived next to the nuclear plant. So, I think an even better idea with a much greater impact on public health would be to require top management of coal generation to live within 5 miles downwind of their plant.
"...won't skip plant safety & maintenance if the boss is next door."
That is the gist of my statement.
You just need to ponder the probabilities :
- Nothing happens, everything is safe, you win.
- A "Chernobyl" happens, you will die relatively quickly, though not quickly enough for that not to be quite unpleasant.
- Some insidious leaks (never publicised of course) makes you ill over 20 years or so and you die a long and painful death.
- Some OTHER nuclear plant blows off, the economy is wrecked, "your" plant close down.
It is mostly the last two cases which have some higher probability AND nasty consequences.A "Chernoble" cant happen in a PWR or BWR reactor but a TMI can happen.
Since the chernoble accident were first discovered outside Soviet by workers bringing radiations into the Forsmark NPP in Sweden I am not worried about that. But I am a little weary about the chemicals in my food, new clothing and so on.
Chernoble dident close down the nuclear powerplants in Sweden.
Different technology, different kind of risk, but still a risk of disastrous contamination.
What was that swedish nuclear incident you wrote so much about recently, mmmmm...
Since the chernoble accident were first discovered outside Soviet by workers bringing radiations into the Forsmark NPP in Sweden I am not worried about that.
Lucky you! Not every place is Sweden...
But I am a little weary about the chemicals in my food, new clothing and so on.
Still assuming COAL, I guess?
Chernoble dident close down the nuclear powerplants in Sweden.
Why would they have?
It was a DIFFERENT technology, isn't it?
If some "standard" nuclear plant craps out badly ALL identical or similar designs will be halted worldwide.
Nope, sloppy chemical research with far to little simulation and animal testing to show that the stuff probably is safe to eat, wear and breathe the fumes of.
Not all industries are run as cautiously as nuclear industries.
That could happen, the standard procedure is halt-and-fix, it is fortunately not halt-and-give-up unless it realy cant be fixed.
A halt-and-give-up happened in Sweden 36 years ago. Our first large heavy water moderated reactor, the Marviken plant, were not started due to flaws in the design.
You are driving towards a precipice. The guy in a green teeshirt tells you to brake and turn left. The guy in a black suit tells you to put the pedal to the metal and straight ahead, there is no precipice, and even if there is you have to enjoy the ride. So you accelerate but turn a bit left. Now you see the precipice ahead of you, and there is not enough room to turn any more, ¿and now you blame the green guy?
Nuclear is not the answer anyway. Unless you mean ten megatons in the White House. Nah, that would not be the answer neither.
Yes, that's what they always say, that and conservation. Problem is, conservation won't reduce demand to zero unless people want to abandon technology and go back to a peasant lifestyle (people won't). And the scalable renewables are also intermittent and poorly suited to form the basis for the power grid, besides being very expensive. This was the point of the comment - environmentalists aren't dealing with those realities. By insisting that a perfectly clean, perfectly safe, perfectly scalable, perfectly controllable energy source be found, they are effectively supporting continued, even expanded, use of cheap, abundant coal.
I disagree with another poster that this issue is unrelated to the liquid fuels crisis. Many of the possible responses to it show the interlinked nature of energy sources. Shift transport needs to the grid? Where's the energy coming from? Ramp up CTL? How can we divert enough coal to such uses?
There are nonintermitent renewables, like biomass burning.
Intermitency is not that bad: the wind is always blowing somewhere.
Intermitent is not the same as unreliable. Solar only works at daytime, but that is also peak time, and it always works.
There are ways of storing energy for later (hydrogen).
All those are efficiency matters. You lose energy when you store it, so you have to generate more. But the oil economy is notoriously inefficient: moving two tons of metal to move a person is about the worst idea I can think of.
All that could have been achieved if research had been done in time, and money had been spent in time. Solar would be a big thing, if there were enough ultra high purity silicium factories around. We know from microelectronics how Si responds to economies of scale. And that is the ultimate renewable. If solar can work as microelectronics works, we will solve all our power problems in a couple of decades. We will not even need fusion.
But all that was squandered by the huge investment in oil. And everyone new that oil was dirty and finite. They should have taxed it to the skies. Just get some economists calculating the cost of killing ten billion people, destroying London and Manhattan and Shangai and Bangladesh and the arctic climate, and add it to each barrel of oil extracted, to be paid by oil companies. And the cost of building and maintaining all the roads and parking lots too. Oil is cheap if you externalize costs.
Coal and nuclear will be huge ecological mistakes. The climate is variable enough without us kicking it around.
TMI and Chernobyl were human accidents as much as they were nuclear accidents. After talking to the humans currently running the reactors I am not encouraged. They are under enormous pressure to squeeze every last drop of profit out the aging plants.
You can improve the designs of the plants, but you will never change human nature. We are greedy and short sighted. If you triple the number of plants on the planet, then you triple the chance of another disaster.
Will we go nuclear in a big way? Absolutely! In fact I would say that the decision has already been made. Only people outside the business think we are going to have a "discussion". I personally am not happy about it, but I'm enough of a realist to know it can't be stopped.
The Invisible Hand shall protect thee.
All the days of thine life.
(Short as that might be. Tisk tisk, hee hee :-)
That's what I am worried about...
I speculatively predicted years ago that Yucca Mountain will never hold any nuclear waste--it is the ultimate elite bunker WTSHTF. The earliest 'predicted' opening date for the actual receipt of wastes is far past Peakoil on March 31, 2017 PDF warning, and don't forget to read the disclaimers at the bottom. Here is a master link to Yucca Mountain: http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Not only would our uranium stockpiles last us a thousand years with advanced breeders, at such levels, vitrification of all high-level and transuranic waste is economically viable, removing the corrosion/leakage problems of hollow casks - vitrified waste is a geologically stable glass.
----------------------------------
Why hasn't this been developed already? It's a difficult technology to master (though the theoretical aspects have been around for years), and we just havn't had the motivation. I think the massive increase in nuclear power generation in the last 15 years without any new construction has shown us that mastery can take a while. The politics of Chernobyl, and the fact that those politics and a lack of post-cold war demand caused the price of uranium to crash into the basement, removed any market incentive to move forward with something that used much less uranium. And lastly, anything involving plutonium (even if the IFR never takes plutonium offsite) is now somehow fodder for anti-nuclear proliferation criticism, even as we create new nuclear weapons with the other hand.
The "theoretical aspects" of MANY, MANY alternate energy sources "have been around for years".
Having "been around" for more than 50 years WITHOUT any conclusive results is a liability not a reason to be confident.
ANY nuclear is indeed a difficult technology to master and THIS sinks the cost of operations.
This is the real "killing factor" of nuclear even more than dangerousness.
Nothing to do with the "motivation" !
There is room for improvement with nuclear operation, is my point, and breeders havn't been given any serious attention since Chernobyl because of cheap uranium and political factors.
The issue is that we can't just settle for blackouts on a windless night in the middle of a drought, particularly if we're going to base our transportation network on electricity instead of oil. The alternative is burning coal.
Our entire coal supply won't last us a century, a century in which we strip mine a significant portion of the world, raise sea levels by meters, and cause millions of deaths via air pollution and mining accidents.
Your page (from an organization whose only work appears to be anti-nuclear papers) says "Finally, the question of cost of electricity. Overall, the operating record of these reactors is indifferent. A few have operated reliably. Most have operated at medium to low capacity factors."
A few prototype plants of the experimental technology have operated reliably. A few havn't. Meanwhile, over a hundred conventional nuclear plants in the US have operated for decades, and we're still improving their net duty cycle a full decade after we finished the last one. Yes, using an ideal coolant (explosive sodium) complicates things, but if it's taken us this long to master using water without accidents, there's sure as hell room for improvement on breeders - and advanced breeders have benefits worth the hassle, in the long run - the waste storage problem is simplified, and we have fuel galore.
I'm not sure about this--it depends on who "we" are, and the timeframes involved. France, Japan, and China are heavily nuclear, and will be more so. Based on the industry sentiment shown in the NYT article, it looks like the amount of nuclear capacity in the US will be basically stable for the next 10-15 years. And there really isn't much point in predicting outcomes 15 years into the future.
Except for geothermal, nuclear remains the only carbon-neutral, 24/7, large output generation technology. I think we will contiue to generate lots of electricity, and I'd rather see nuclear than coal. But the timeframes, costs, and lack of technical capacity are likely to really slow down any nuclear increases.
At one time the only way to do large-scale computing was larger and faster mainframes. Today, the fastest, most cost-effective way to do large-scale computing is grid computing - distributing compution-inetensive problems to thousands of dispersed computers.
Mainframes haven't disappeared but the computer industry has been inverted so that mainframes now effectively serve as peripherals to "the network."
Similarly, a distributed generation topology can increase reliability and security, lower environmnetal impact and substantially increase energy yield via integrated trigen designs. Yes, we would still have large, centralized generating assets but the power system would be a network of tightly and loosly coupled heating, cooling, lighting and electrical generation technolgies driven by sunlight, heat, water, and wind.
Um, no.
Most real computational work is done by large servers that sit in air conditioned bunkers and run 24/7. Servers are exactly the antithesis of what you're trying to show. Probably even more so than power generation, real computation is done at sites custom built for that purpose. The internet (like our power transmission grid) makes this even more the case.
They aren't mainframes, for complicated technical reasons, but they are not dispersed through the network. They are in large clumps, and the network just connects these clumps together. For instance, a Fortune 500 company I did some work for (and which uses intense computation) has only about 3 real datacenters, even though it has offices all over the world. The computers are far more centralized and watched over by an anointed priesthood than even the people are.
You chose a bad example.
"real" computational work?
What, 1+1 if done by a microprocessor on a desktop isn't "real"?
Data centers are mostly big hard drive arrays and the CPU's there do nothing more than move data across a bus so some kind of sort or count can be done.
But hey, if you think GPUs and CPUs on desks don't do "real computational work" more power to ya slappy.
Well, lets look at the trend. Once up on a time, you would run a mail server on your own computer (which, granted, was in the basement of some university....), and use the mail reading client on the same system. Then came the great division, the mail servers went to computers housed in racks, and the mail clients went onto PCs.
Time goes on, and functionality migrates from the PCs to the servers. There was a time when the PC had baysean spam filters, and controlled the sorting, offline storage, and presentation of the email. What became of that, gmail, in a word. Now everything is done on the server. Filtering, presentation, storage, everything. The only thing a desktop PC does regularly is follow mouse clicks, and draw pretty shapes on the screen. Designing software, designing cars, trains, scheduling plane flights, housing your financial information, running the world markets, predicting the weather, storing your email, sending you a web page, all of these things are done by servers housed far away in giant clusters, even more so today than 20 years ago.
I suppose to be fair, you have to define "real" computation to exclude the rasterization of shapes onto a screen and the capture of mouse clicks, but then, yes, I think my example stands. The trend is not unambiguously away from servers to PCs, it is unclear, but if anything it is going in the other direction.
Errr, if you are trying to make an example here AND personalize it..... you have failed.
The MUA and MTA have been seperated for years. POP existed before most people were hooked up to the internet. POP came into existance because of locking issues with NFS sharing of email.
Time goes on, and functionality migrates from the PCs to the servers. There was a time when the PC had baysean spam filters, and controlled the sorting, offline storage, and presentation of the email. What became of that, gmail, in a word.
What?!?! The presentation of the email is still on the PC. The presentation has laways been on the machine in front of the user. And mail clients like thunderbird have not suddenly stopped existing because you claim gmail exists. Once the theory of baysean filtering was published, it got coded for the client end also.
There is a compelling design reason to put filtering on the end wehre the 24/7 data pipe is. You would like to let valid email to know that it was rejected. Hence the milter interface.
Perhaps you are confusing the network design/layout and the placement of big servers?
he only thing a desktop PC does regularly is follow mouse clicks, and draw pretty shapes on the screen. Designing software, designing cars, trains, housing your financial information, all of these things are done by servers housed far away in giant clusters, even more so today than 20 years ago.
Again, you really lack understanding.
But please show how Quicken on a PC == large server somewhere else. Same goes for CAD packages. And how could the open soucfe software revolution happen if individual coders where 'forced' into large severs? Same with packages like Visual C++.
I think my example stands.
If one knows what a MTA and MUA is without looking them up, then no....your example sucks.
But, tell ya what. I'm interested in you explaining the actual difference between "a large server" and a fine high end desktop.
A "large server" has gigabit ethernet connecting it to the net, a high end desktop has at most dsl. A large server has backup power, a desktop does not. A large server lives on a rack alongside 2,000 of its comrads, a desktop does not.
Certainly my loan option pricing code does a wee bit more than your quicken package. Having recently transitioned from Mail.app, I think I can say with certainty that gmail has more users than thunderbird. The only thing your computer does is display the pictures that the HTML tells it to draw. All the logic (mail is accepted/rejected, transferred, stored, etc...) happens on a foreign server.
It is not that coders are forced into large servers, but by and large their creations run on large servers, not desktops. Depends on the package of course. Obviously anything you're writing in visual C++ is probably only ever seen by your fellow l33t3r5, with the possible exception of Linux and Mozilla. Commons Math, though, probably does a sizeable fraction of the financial and mathematical calculations in the world at large.
GPUs drawing triangles though, surely that is a PC centered thing, and doesn't really happen on servers.
And banks with large mainfames have them connected to OC-3+ connections? (What a security nightmare)
How about the Pixar renderfarms? What good would they have with an OC3+ connections?
You claimed bulding software was 'a server task' and yet...how many software design houses have OC3's hanging off the developers machines?
You have(had?) a belief in your claim. Now can you show why your claim is correct about servers?
A good example. Though rare.
We shall see. Nuclear power is another system built on the hydro-carbon platform. It remains to be seen how many plants can be built from a sinking deck.
What's your point?
The safety advantages of producing many reactors of a standard model are huge. This is the lesson of the French industry, and I'm glad it seems to be the model adopted for a US revival, according to the article.
(Also glad that it's French technology they are using.:))
Capital cycles are faster for renewables than big power plants so they can grow in a fashion that is closer to exponential growth along a continuous curve rather than a discrete step-function.
They can go through design generations much much faster than nuclear or coal. Solar cells and wind turbines are built on assembly lines instead of being major one-off projects.
The financial risk of an individual renewable installation is far lower. This means insurance is vastly cheaper for one.
I commented on this last month here:
Incremental Capital Investment Advantage of Renewable Energy Sources
Here's my roadmap assuming no technological breakthroughs;
2010-2020 world economic slowdown but international carbon trading is introduced with major electrification of transport
2020-2050 building up to 40% nuclear primary electricity with coal being saved for CTL. Massive population rethink with heavy investment in renewables and energy storage
2050 - uranium depleted but we have a sustainable solar economy and smaller population.
I just wrote the same in an e-mail today. I wrote "My preference is that we leave coal alone because of global warming issues. However, what I prefer and what I expect are exact opposites."
It's going to happen. I am convinced of that. CTL is coming.
Rod Blagojevich, governor of Illinois, is hoping to get re-elected on a platform promising to "tap local sources of energy from crops to coal to satisfy half the Midwestern state's energy needs in a decade".
Corn and Soy into ethanol is the cornerstone of the plan. Let the harvest begin!
No bait. Sarcasm. The harvest I referred to was that of tax dollars to be thrown at non-solutions due to the fact that Americans are too stupid to fact check, too greedy to seek sacrifice and too gullable to realise it is just a ploy to get re-elected.
Yes..it begins next week with soybeans and corn mixed.
The semi's are ready. The combines are ready.
BUT they just tied up our only nearby bridge across the Mississippi for painting and it will be one lane with stop lights for 3 to 4 months.
This means 18 wheeler grain trailers backed up for loooonggg periods and way back to the next town. This means lost fuel sitting and idling and waiting and huge lines during the whole harvest. I am talking huge numbers of trips for 3 long months.
I suggested someone talk to a politico and get this work stopped. People just sneered and laughed at that suggestion.
This means as well that the haulers and farmers are going to be paying huge wages to idle drivers and perhaps blow most of their profit on 'input' costs.
In fact intermediatary grain bins will not be able to empty out in order to take new incoming grain. Some grain could be lost as a result.
Last year there were mountains of corn dumped on the ground at the bins across the river due to no barge traffic as a result of Katrina.
"Its always something."
There seems to be a common lack of interest for any large-scale capital investment. Oil companies are either uncertain enough of future demand or really believe in PO such that refineries aren't being built, pipelines aren't being maintained etc. Nuclear and CTL plants have high capital costs with long lead times, and too much uncertainty scares away the big money.
By the time the reality of PO hits, the competition for available resources for those kinds of mega projects will be fierce, and it's hard to believe that much more than a token number of these will happen.
I hold out hope that we can electrify transport and ultimately go nuclear/renewable, but it's the harder option.
I'm not convinced by CTL.
Yes it will be done. But how much will it really produce?
http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Testimony&Hearing_ID=1544&Witn ess_ID=3664
This makes sobering reading for anyone who thinks CTL will save us (I'm not suggesting this is your opinion) - and this guy is boosting the technology.
He costs a 100,000 barrel a day CTL plant at @ $7.5 billion to build. It would consume @ 66,000 tons of coal a day to produce 100,000 barrels of oil.
To make a significant impact on US oil usage will be, as he descirbes it, a project similar to the Apollo moon shots.
And the US - despite its large reserves - only has a net export of 12,000 or so tons. This suggests that all the coal currently mined has customers, and that infrastructure costs for CTL therefore must include investment for extra mining / transport capacity.
If you think I'm missing something please let me know, I'm only a dilettante when it comes to these things.
cheers,
BadOS
http://www.dilettantecollective.com
I'm not either. The environmental costs are too high. The financial costs are too high. We would be far better off investing that money into conservation and efficiency measures.
It's depressing but the more I read the more I realize that "it would be better to ...." almost never happens as opposed to "powerful people will get rich if ...."
There's no big lobby for conservation, as its benefits will be thin and dispersed.
And if you think it's hard to get a nuclear plant going (convincing maybe 100 people who really matter) how will changing the habits of 300 million people happen?
On the "it would be better to...." it would be better to aggressively pursue (Manhattan project level) plug-in hybrids and power the plug-in fleet with nuclear, and reduce peak electricity demand in hot places with solar.
It's contribution to global warming is a big question.
But the biggest one is this:
How will we fit CTL into the Hubbert curve and Hubbert Linearization?
Westexas, where are you when we need you?
It is unclear whether it generalizes to other things, and for the moment we ought to apply it exclusively in its domain of original application: conventional petroleum.
That is what peak oil is about.
Oil sands and coal are solid mining operations, and these could have depletion and production dynamics quite different from conventional petroleum.
Tuesday August 22, 1:06 pm ET
Freescale Semiconductor Inc. has issued an ultimatum to Austin Energy: fix your Oak Hill powerworks or else.
Freescale Vice President of Corporate Communications Tim Doke says "chronic power issues" -- specifically four power outages in the last four years -- have cost the Austin-based Motorola spinoff $20 million so far and Freescale is looking at its options.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bizj/060822/1334667.html?.v=1
What a great string, now we are getting somewhere!! :-)
billp, your link to the story on Freescale Semiconducters ultimatum to Austin Energy: fix your Oak Hill powerworks or else, is interesting, in that it raises more questions than points out answers.
So where will Freescale go? If "4 power outages in 4 years is unacceptable", I am hard put to think of any area that can do much better (we have good ole' dependaple coal here in KY, and my sister who lives in Alabama relies on the tried and true TVA, and we both expect easily 4 outages in less than a year...). California perhaps would be more reliable, or New York? (irony here, please don't take that seriously :-)
Now earlier up the thread, there is a reference, in the post by "Raymond" under the boldened heading "Large Scale Generation",
in which Raymond points out the advantage of "a distributed generation topology". He used the distributed nature of the computer/computational industry as an example and was immediately scolded for using a "bad example" in a reply from "slaphappy", who insisted that "Most real computational work is done by large servers that sit in air conditioned bunkers and run 24/7". he repeats the definitional "real computation" again in the sentence "Probably even more so than power generation, real computation is done at sites custom built for that purpose."
I would like to see some sourcing on the above thesis, and am most interested in finding out how "real computing" is defined (as opposed to "artificial" or "fake" computing?), because there are millions of distributed computer users (tens of millions actually) who are sure they are engaged in "real computing" and not encased in "air conditioned bunkers and run 24/7"
Such is the issue when we talk of distributed generation (DG) Is 10 kilowatt per hour "real power"? How about 100 kilowatt per hour?
"robbmcleod" then offered a post in which he made the very strong (some would call it radical, however) case that nuclear/coal is now just too slow to compete and outdated, and gave a link at 6:26PM to a blog he had written here:
http://entropyproduction.blogspot.com/2006/07/incremental-capital-investment.html
The subject being
" Incremental Capital Investment Advantage of Renewable Energy Sources "
If you did not read it, please do, because it is a fascinating discussion of how the small investment of renewables in small increments over time compared to the massive investment needed for large nuclear plants (or though he doesn't mention it per se, tar sand or CTL type plants) may give renewables a huge advantage in growth potential. This ties directly to a case made by Alvin Toffler some 26 years ago that in the advanced technology knowledge driven cultures, so called "economics of scale" (bigger centralized makes something cheaper per unit of output) could in fact be inverted or undone in the future by the advantage of decentrilization, diversification of and distribution of investment. In other words, build 10,000 or 100,000 photovoltaic cells, from say 500 separate suppliers would increase the competitive efficiency, enhance technical advance, and speed technical change as each 10,000 lot production run could incorporate the newest advances, if the system were designed to do so, as long as compatibility were not lost, so that the efficiency and output per cell of the 80,000th cell would be much greater than the first, and the 100,000th cell would be greater than the 80,000th. The risk factors are alos distributed, compared to say one giant nuclear plant, to which you are marrying yourself to it's performance, a one shot deal, and if the container turns out to have a crack a few years down the road, you get one catastrophic failure and lose the whole investment. Toffler argued in 1980 that the mark of a primitive energy system in the future would be standardized, centralized power production, and argued that this should be rejected almost out of hand.
Distributed Generation is coming. It is going to be BIG. It is happening much faster than most folks realize. it scares the shiit out of the powers that be, and absolutely enthralls the young "techno geeks" coming into the power generation game. If I were to advise a young person on a promising career choice, in an energy unstable and resource constrained world, this would be it.
Check it out.
http://www.distributedenergy.com/de.html
And by the way, what a useful and interesting string this has turned out to be, way to go NYC TOD!
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Hopeful pessimists such as me ("an optimist believes this is the best of all possible worlds, a pessimist fears this is true"), are well advised to support the widely, distributed-generation model.
Peak oil and gas in all probability will undermine the growth model (capitalism, which by all evidence necessarily ends in the concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of small elites). This could, as many here appear to believe, result in disaster for untold numbers of people and even accelerate environmental degradation. But the failure to deliver on the promise of jobs and junk for all could also de-legitimize these elites, their language and values, in particular, greed. And in so doing support the growth of a new social order and economy in which the markets and democracy become tools of the many instead of weapons of the few.
If I may presume to advise other revolutionary anarchists and our fellow travellers, I would say prepare for this opportunity by concentrating on three fronts: resistance to efforts to maintain current patterns of transportation and trade, support of locally generated heat and power, and reconnection to the insight of those who thousands of years ago recognized the centrality of love, learning and logic to the project of civilization. I assume you are already working to empower women, the surest route to getting a handle on the problem of overpopulation.
There is no known economically viable or environmentally sustainable solution to the impending shortfall in liquid fuels. Nor is one desirable. Beyond the million plus deaths per year and untold numbers of painfully injured delivered by motorized individual transport, year in and year out, the material requirements of this way of moving people and goods are eating us out of house and home, even before we ramp up the production of liquid bio-fuels, or for that matter battery/fuel cell technologies. But leave extremism to the defenders of the status quo. Some liquid bio-fuel and some liquid hydro-carbon fuel will be useful.
Concentrate on locally generated heat and power based upon local capital formation and local physical inputs. Develop the construction and management skills to build and maintain the facilities and institutions this model requires. Always seek ways to lessen consumption. A guiding ethic can be: Does this action unduly raise entropy?
But the failure to deliver on the promise of jobs and junk for all could also de-legitimize these elites, their language and values, in particular, greed. And in so doing support the growth of a new social order and economy in which the markets and democracy become tools of the many instead of weapons of the few.
That is extraordinarily naive. I can't think of any time in history where physical and economic deprivation coincided with superior political enligtenment.
Like it or not, capitalism and technological amelioration are the only things which will keep civilized society out of disaster. The death rates from fascism or warlordism will be enormously higher than motor vehicle accidents.
Revolutionary anarchists? That means death by bullet or machete. Screw that.
Concentrate on locally generated heat and power based upon local capital formation and local physical inputs. Develop the construction and management skills to build and maintain the facilities and institutions this model requires.
This is the whole reason why reasonably centralized power generation is a good idea. Few people are capable of effectively managing really complex and intriniscally difficult problems like power generation, all while keeping environmental degradation low. Wishful thinking otherwise is just like wishful thinking about the future of Ghawar.
Too spread out and it is too inefficient, effort is wasted. You're much more likely to have problems and environmental problems with spread out amateurism, and the environmental violations will be especially hard to stop.
Always seek ways to lessen consumption. A guiding ethic can be: Does this action unduly raise entropy?
Yes, very good ideas.
Companies are indeed reluctant to invest in expensive projects that take years to complete. Do you think the legal risks of our out-of-control NIMBYism might have something to do with that?
Hasn't anyone ever heard of economies of scale? Companies can get away with build smaller-scale operations that produce more expensive power because the existing rate system lets them pass on the cost to customers, especially if the source is favoured by policy. Scaled all the way down to the individual level, it's the most expensive way to produce power. Check into PV arrays for your home - I have, and it works out to over 25 cents per KWh. PG&E charges me 10 cents, and that's retail! Wholesale production from coal is less than 2 cents.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should not invest in PV. But let's be clear that it's expensive, and that absent a solution to intermittency it will only work against the backdrop of steady baseload and on-demand peaker capacity. And let's also be clear that while rich western countries can afford to spend 10x for clean power, developing countries can't and won't.
"Well, those incremental builds (in wind, PV) are producing power at much higher cost per KWh than coal and nuclear plants."
At this time, that is certainly true. But the cost of PV and wind have been trending down while the cost of coal/nuclear has been trending up (and I am aware of the recent upturn in PV and wind costs due to raw materials costs, and also am aware that the technology curve is still trending to them on cost, not away from them) We must also be careful in the cost counting. As long as no real penelty is assigned to carbon release and and to the cost of environmental issues in mining coal and uranium, they will have an advantage, these being costs that renewables come out greatly ahead on, and also we must count the cost of transporting the fuel, which is not expected to get cheaper, and then removing transporting waste that comes with coal, and even nuclear.
"If you think wind is going to own the future without nuclear and coal, how do you expect intermittency to be dealt with?"
The expansion into greater geographical and widely distributed area alone will help on intermittency, but I am sure that the efficientt storage of electric power can be done, and will be developed. It will have to be. By the way, is there any area of development than electric power storage that could be more revolutionary and groundbreaking that gets shorter shrift on investment and development? Excepting battery development, power storage, despite it's vast promise remains an almost moribound industry. Sadly.
Hasn't anyone ever heard of economies of scale?
Yes, but technical and informational advances are causing many to question it's validity in all cases. Big is not always best. Toffler quoted the man who wrote the book "Small is Beautiful" as saying "I wrote that because I lived in a world of big institutions. Had I lived in a world of small institutions, I would have written a book "Big is Beautiful". What he was asking for was a mix, a diversity of scale. Unlike another poster here I am not an anarchistist, and am not "anti big" on priniciple. I think a mix of scales and technologies is what will have the best effect. (all plants and animals are not the same size....what we need to be willing to look at is the way nature uses "appropriate scale" for the job to be done....it opens up possibiilities. Think of the tiny "toy like" Mars Lander. In all of 1950's and 1960's science fiction all the Mars missions involved giant, powerful landers....no ones mind even concieved of doing it with tiny scale explorers, they were locked into a worship of size!)
"But let's be clear that it's (PV) expensive, and that absent a solution to intermittency it will only work against the backdrop of steady baseload and on-demand peaker capacity"
It is expensive, but that may change quickly. It also has advantages and advanced possibilities, and quality sometimes costs money. Again, I do not endorse "doing away" with baseload and centralized power where it works and in places it's needed. But mixing in distributed power, and decentralization has huge possibilities in getting a mix of renewables, power diversity and distribruted power that will reduce waste in transporting power over unneeded distances, increasing redundency, and providing security, efficiency and safety. It is an industry rich in promise to help us in a energy constrained world, and increase our security and efficiency.
And, it's coming.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
I do believe wind installs is actually adding more power to the USA this year than natural gas installs. Solar is generally still small but wind is becoming quite significant. Intermittency is a different issue that will rear its ugly head as penetration pushes past 2 %.
Companies are indeed reluctant to invest in expensive projects that take years to complete. Do you think the legal risks of our out-of-control NIMBYism might have something to do with that?
NIMBYism is a fact of live. The large coal/nuclear/natural gas power plants all have to budget for large legal expenses involved in the permitting process. Many wind farms also face this obstacle: Cape Wind is a good example. Solar does not have this problem.
Check into PV arrays for your home - I have, and it works out to over 25 cents per KWh.
Obviously this depends a lot on how long you have to amortize your purchase. Which will die first, you or your PV array? Most arrays are guaranteed to produce 80 % of their rated power for 25 years and are expected to last at least 40 years. Which will appreciate faster, the price of electricity or inflation of the monetary supply?
I am real tired of hearing nuclear people say, without any supporting facts whatsoever "nuclear is the only carbon free power- solar and wind won't do" Don't let that remark go unchallenged. The SciAm and lots of other sources say that in the US, there is more wind power available than we use for electricity, by a lot. and that there is way way more solar power available than we use for everything.
There's gobs of sustainable power there to be got. Only problem is it is small and widely distrubuted and hence not readily grabbed by the money shufflers.
Intermittent? So am I. So is every farmer. sometimes I am working, sometimes I am doing nothing (like right now) That's the way the whole world worked for millions of years, and can do again. My house has a big thermal mass, and the temp goes up and down a little, but the input goes all over the place, depending on whether I want to get up off the couch and throw another log in.
And quit equating solar power with PV There's way more solar power from Luz-like layouts than all the PV there is, and it's cheaper (No, you look it up, I'm too old to do your work for you). And for a few megabucks I can make you a solar thermal thingy that sits on the outside of a bldg and outdoes a PV in watts/dollar. And so can any other engr who has the wattwit to do it.
And one more before I take a nap- thrown in absolutely free. Where have you guys been when you talk of hand tools driving us back to the stone age? Ever looked at a 16th century sailboat or cabinet? Good hand tools are easy to make, last a very long time, and do real good work. All you need to do is put your oatmeal's energy into one instead of pouring hot air into a computer. No slavery req'd. Peace.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/technology/14search.html?ex=1307937600&en=d96a72b3c5f91c47& ;ei=5090
Perhaps we could define "real computing" as everything other than the operating system just spinning in a loop waiting for something to happen.
Could be interesting to look e.g. at all the different software that folks run - which software chews up the most cpu cycles on the planet, or the most instructions? My guess would be video games - assuming that graphic processor instructions get counted too.
The counting gets tricky, since instructions often get interpreted by micro-code, which might be interpreted by micro-micro-code. Maybe we should just count bits of wire that switch between 0 and 1 states. That's a curious thing, that computation and thermodynamics are linked. Google's big facility is near cheap reliable hydro power - that's no coincidence!
Cheap, reliable - as long as our glaciers last!
I work for a fairly large engineering firm (I am not an engineer). The projects we are mostly focused on are coal combustion plants - some IGCC (small - less than 400 megs) - and recently CTL.
The transmission lines are the trick. Multiple jurisdictions from source to end user - multiple regs and loop holes - and NIMBYs.
While we have (and I believe are) working on the rail line for Yucca Mountain - that is the extent on Nuc. work I am aware of.
Is what you mean: the power plants themselves are routine enough, & no doubt some challenge to be close to a source of coal (e.g. a suitable rail line) & a source of cooling water, but the biggest challenge is to find a site where one can put up a high capacity transmission line and get connected to the grid to supply power to customers. The transmission line needs to snake through different jurisdictions etc.
Have I caught your meaning decently well?
I suspect GIS (Geographical Information System) tools get used for this? I'd be interested to understand the strengths and weaknesses of those tools!
Gee, Petopest, did you come by to cheer us up? If so, you may have missed your mark....:-)
It's all in the aesthetics, think "artful engineering", "appropriate scale", "human scale", "human design"
I once heard years ago the architect Phillip Johnson in an interview get very annoyed at an interviewer who asked why modern architecture was not more "human". Johnson almost shouted "of course it's human, what do you think we design buidings for, rats? It's humans that design them!" Only a few minutes later, the interviewer asked about energy usage (this was in the 1970's) and the environmental impact of modern architecture, and Johnson said dismissively, "that is the funtion of the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) contractors and the technicians, not the architect."
Never have I heard someone plead guilty to the charge in such a complete way, and so ironically, he did not even realize the contradiction of his own words! The energy consumption, the environmental impact of the building so completely impacted the human, but just not the paying client, or the ego of the architect, the humans that Johnson was most thinking of!
Think real "design" for all "people", you will be amazed how it will cheer ya' up! :-)
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
We as a species must and will keep beavering away on all possible options, and I do believe the complexity of the problem is getting through to some thinkers, if not necessarily to the policy-makers just yet. However, I have yet to see any proposal that goes beyond the personal "Move closer to work, buy a bike and put in CFLs" level that I find teribly convincing.
Given that Peak Oil is primarily a liquid fuels problem, I look aghast at the paucity of solutions that do not exacerbate other aspects of the problematique humanity is facing (e.g. CTL/global warming, biofuels/less food)), or require an intact fossil-fuelled infrastructure to implement (e.g. fuel cells or electric cars), and are simultaneously cheap enough to implement in the regions of the world that will be impacted first and hardest. The ones that avoid these pitfalls (bicycles, relocalization and telecommuting, for example) all seem to be hopelessly lacking in scale compared to the size of the civilzation that will be unravelling.
I have come to the conclusion that the solution to this problem is not going to be technical. It will involve population reduction and a forced change of attitude away from the growth imperative once it becomes clear that "growth" of the traditional sort is no longer an option.
My biggest concern is that trying to "fix" the problem by attempting to retain Business As Usual for as long as possible (and that is what most mitigation efforts, even the "soft landing" ones amount to IMO) will make other problems like global warming, pollution and the resource depletion so much worse that we will guarantee an environmental aftershock of even greater magnitude than PO is to begin with.
We need more thought on how to prepare people to change their worldview, and how to help them make the transition when it becomes necessary (i.e. TSHTF). IMO such efforts will ultimately bear a lot more fruit than trying to determine if we can all dance forever on the head of a nuclear pin.
That's true for everything---except large scale expansion of nuclear power and electrification of transportation.
That's why the people who push it are so vexed and very upset.
On one side, the path of powers that be is clearly titanic expansion of coal. In reality, that means climate death.
And on the other side, doomers who want to stop technological attempts to help for ideological reasons. In reality, that means grinding poverty, fascism and warlords.
Of course, the same could be said for the technocratic illumunati that you propose. There is a strong argument that the worst poverty is caused by our technological society, that technology controls our life more than any despot could hope and that corporate CEOs are just warlords by another name.
If the supporters of large-scale nuclear expansion want to win their case, they have to do it by convincing people not just that nuclear power is a good idea, but that the risks are low and well-understood. If you don't convince them of that, they will exercise their rights to vote against it in whatever forums are open to them. Telling opponents that they are superstitious scientific illiterates (even, or especially, it it's true) won't accomplish that.
I don't know what the answer is, but the one big outstanding problem for public acceptance is the waste disposal issue. The standard comeback is, "If it's such a slam-dunk, how come nobody has done it yet?" If you can convince those people that it's a solved problem, then they may let you build. Perhaps you need to be able to point to successful proof-of-concept installations, perhaps point to the fact that all the big investors, the site managers and their families all live in communities within the waste disposal sites themseleves. Until they are convinced one way or the otrher, people will continue to worry that one of Little Donny Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" will come up and bite their grandchildren on the butt.
People are incredibly risk averse when it comes to nukes, and you won't change that by telling them their fears are stupid, or by saying "Trust us, we're smart, we have this all figured out, and it's cool."
Apparently there are about 450 nuclear power stations in the world. It would seem a number of these are older and smaller ones, but those built most recently as far as I know now tend to be around 1 GW capacity.
Now according to http://www.mnforsustain.org/erickson_dell_minnesotas_energy_future_part_IIB.htm
(See section titled Ore Resources), it says: onsidering all sources, as of 1999 there were approximately 3.1 million recoverable tons of uranium ore. Excluding military stockpiling and use, nuclear reactors use more than 65,000 tons each year. Thus, excluding the military and assuming no increase in nuclear reactors, at best there remains less than 47 years before ores are exhausted. Apparently the ore figures are from the Uranium Information Centre (an Australian trade association for Australia's uranium mining industry)
Thus if the number of nuclear reactors was doubled to 800, that would seem to imply the uranium supply would last 23 or so years. Any higher and that goes lower and it surely seriously impact the return on investment which as we know never really takes account of long term problems like waste and cleanups from accidents.
After that the ores would have increasingly lower energy returns.
Finally somewhere else some mention the old tried and failed technology of breeder reactors to increase the supply 1000 fold. Well seeing that this has been tried for at least 20 to 30 years and has now been abandoned, presumably it would take just as long again with no guarantee of success. That still makes the nuclear option problematic at best.
BTW, I have seen figure on other sites, that suggest we would need somewhere between 1600 and 3000 1GW nuke reactors to run the global car fleet. Clearly and thankfully that is never going to happen.
Hardly any money has been spent on uranium exploration for about 30yrs - its only just restarting now.
There's plenty more uranium still to be found. Its quite a plentiful metal, unlike that black gunky liquid stuff.
Nuclear has a great future - don't believe the pessimists.
- There is musch more to find out there.
- Sea water extraction works on a laboratory scale. With it nuclear power becomes infinte and renewable.
- Reprocessing extends uranium resources by 20-30 %.
- Breeding increases fuel supply by a factor of 60(!).
- Thorium is an alternate nuclear fuel. It is three times as abundant as uranium.
Nuclear power has problems (mainly high capital costs and public opposition). Fuel supply is not one of them.The "much more out there" argument is naive nonsense. Let's talk about recoverability, not just technically, but economically. Typical estimates of how much is available are based on 1)some assumed economic value and 2) some assumed consumption level. So exhibit A says there's 100 years of uranium at $100 a ton at present usage rates. Exhibit B says thats 500 years because they assume $200 a ton. Exhibit C says 25 years because they assume a fourfold increase in consumption. Which is your exhibit?
Sea water extraction on an industrial scale is science fiction (nothing against sci-fi, I enjoy reading it, but we also mine the asteroids in science fiction).
Reprocessing is already figured into the equation in most assessments of consumption.
Breeders are fine... if you can perfect the technology for large scale use... something that hasn't happened despite 50 years of trying.
Thorium? More science fiction.
Fuel supply is not a concern for oil according to many "experts," including many in the industry. Do you believe them? Then why are you so ready to accept as given the same story about nuclear fuels? If you are using your own head to think about the petroleum issue, please do the same when it comes to nuclear fuel issues (again, not directed only at you, Starvid).
And no one has looked for uranium in 20 years. If no one had looked for oil in 20 years, I wouldn't worry about peak oil either.
No one is really sure how much uranium there is out there. And this is a good thing. It means there has not been any serious ideas at all about resource limitations in this field. As the price increases and new prospecting is done, we will get a much better picture of how much is out there.
What's interesting is that even low grade ores can be profitably exploited as the price of uranium is such a tiny part of the cost of nuclear electricty. If you build a new reactor it generates power at about 3 cents/kWh. Of this about 0,3 cents are the cost of fuel, which is 1/3 uranium, 1/3 enrichment and 1/3 fuel element manufacture. So even if the cost of uranium increases tenfold it won't really affect the price of nuclear power much. Think of how the fuel price increases would affect a coal or gas plant.
Sea water extraction works in the lab. It might work outside or it might not. If it does, is should soon be profitable if uranium prices keep climbing as fast as they have.
Breeders work well. The reason they have not been used is that they are unprofitable at the current low price of uranium. Deffeyes think we will never need to use breeders as there is so much uranium around.
Thorium is not science-fiction. You can use it in lightwater reactors (they did it at Shippingport). The Indian (not very successful) nuclear power program is a thorium program.
All these things work. Then why don't we use them? Because they are more expensive than what we do today. It's like saying in the 60's that oil sands don't work because we don't use them on an industrial scale, when the real reason they are not used is that there is so much light sweet crude around.
Think what the situation would be if we could reprocess oil waste to get back 20-30 % of the oil, extract oil from seawater, mine oil from any rock or put 1 barrel of oil in a machine and get 60 barrels back. For people who don't understand the economics, the mere fact that those inventions are not used would be a proof that they don't work.
Uranium may indeed be "all over the place" - tell me then, why aren't you out in your back yard digging it all up? Or is that one of those places they haven't looked? Maybe its because the electricity you get from it would be almost free (according to you), so its not worth digging up?
And why should I look for uranium? Its too cheap and abundant to do that, especially as there are lot of high grade mines coming on stream or being planned. And, I might add, I am not a geologist. ;)
I never said nuclear electricty is free. I said the price of nuclear electricty is quite unconnected to the price of fuel. What part of this don't you understand?
Some other sources:
http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionG.htm#uranium_supply
http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=374
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html
http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/publications/default/tech_papers/17th_congress/3_2_12.asp
- Indeed. They have been proved technically, and at least reprocessing and breeders have been implented on an industrial scale. If they are needed they will be built, at least in rational countries. If irrationality becomes the answer to peak oil we'll all starve to death.
- I believe the positive reports (or lack of bad reports really) of the uranium industry and not the positive reports of the oil industry. Why? Because the oil industry has failed to find large amounts of new oil, in spite of massive technological progress and massive investments in exploration. We have used more oil than we have found every year since about 1985.
There were no exploration for uranium between 1985 and 2005 (the amount of uranium exploration that has been done is usually compared to the amount of oil exploration that had been done before 1945 (or even 1900)). We'll see how they do in the new exploration wave. Some people tell me exploration technology has advanced quite a bit since 1985.Another thing is how mineral markets work. When an oil field is depleted it's depleted and that's it. You have to find a new one. When an uranium mine is "depleted" and the price has risen you just change the ore cut off grade, and bam! you have "new", albeit lower grade, reserves. It's the same thing for iron and copper.
At the same time, "new" potential mines pop out of the woodwork all over the place. It's a bit like this with oil to, with offshore, shale, oil sands and arctic oil, but oil is still handicapped that it only exists where there have been very specific geologic events. Uranium can be found pretty much anywhere, and in almost every country there are some "mines" that can be used in a pinch.
For example, if you look at uranium reserve statistics (cut off at $135/kg) you will see that there is no uranium in Sweden. In spite of that we had a uranium mine in the 50's and 60's. There really are quite vast amounts of low grade uranium in Sweden, most of it alum shale (which ironically was used during WW2 to extract tiny amounts of - oil).
The world has vast amounts of uranium reserves that are today not counted as reserves. We know where they are. And we are likely to find more.
Uranium exploration is once again starting up. And they are rapidly finding brand new uranium reserves, like in the golden age of petroleum,
The fundamental difference between uranium and petroleum is that uranium was there deposited in the minerals which originally formed the solar system. That's why Starvid, correctly, said that it is "everywhere".
Petroleum only happened as a result of specific biological processes and geology which were favorable into turning plant matter into petroleum. This is a much more rare process.
Think about it this way: why is petroleum in part prevalent in small states? By contrast, uranium is most prevalent and mined in the nations with the largest land mass with favorable geology typical for mining operations, i.e. Canada, Australia, USA and former USSR, e.g. Khazakstan.
Some of us are pessmisitic on petroleum because of scientific fact, not anti-technology ideology.
On technology - while the "if they are needed they will be built" line sounds poetic, its not very convincing. Do we need electric powered high speed passenger trains in the U.S.? Are they being built?
What you call the "mineral markets" is really the economics of mining (and despite what you believe it really is not that different from the economics of oil extraction), but I understand what you are trying to describe (as I'm sure most TODers do). What you don't seem to get is that this is the issue at the center of the idea of reserves. Just as we will not extract every last drop of oil, it is unreasonable to think we will process everylast bit of the planet's crust to extract uranium (or any other mineral that exists in trace amounts there).
Your "fake" quote above, Ill rather say it like this:
"we'll never run out of uranium, but even if we did there's lots of it, I don't know how much but Deffeyes does, and if the price goes real high we'll have more, but even if it doesn't we can make more."
Its a pretty depressing situation for uranium if one hopes it will stop nuclear power expansion.
What is needed will be built...
But America does not need electric high speed trains. You have you SUV's. When you can't afford driving you SUV's anynmore you'll need the trains and then you'll build them. Ideally, they would have been built before they were needed, but all nations can not plan for the future (almost no one can it seems).
And of course, we won't need to mine the whole planetary crust for uranium. It's not like we do need to increase or reserves 300 times over (or n-fold). We just have to slowly go down the ore grades, doubling, tripling, or quadroupling the reserves now and then.
Your rewrite on the fake quote sure doesn't comfort me, it amounts to the same thing. (And your trust in a single article written 25 years ago is amusing).
As for the U.S. needing trains - you proved my point without even realizing it. Consider who makes the decision that something is needed. How is that decision made? Perhaps when the SUVs are useless we will decide what we all need is to go on a diet and walk more. Just because something is apparent to you doesn't make it apparent to everyone. Doesn't even make it correct.
And yes, we can raise our reserves now and then, whenever nedded. Just like with oil, or food, or common sense. When ever its needed, it will be there. Sounds like something to base our survival on. Might as well start whistling "Don't worry. Be happy."
And I obviously do not trust a single article, I have posted several links top other sources in this thread.
It's a sad thing the US can not prepare for things like we do in Sweden (where we are investing quite heavily in railroads, biofuels, nuclear power and so on). But the US can hopefully cope with the problem when it arrives. It usually can when there is a crisis.
Anyway, the stake in the ground.
Let's say we don't expand nuclear power (we use coal instead). Then the reserves, without any new exploration, reprocessing, sea water extraction, breeders and depending on cut of grade, they last for 50-200 years. If other things happen the reserves can grow by several orders of magnitude.
The bottom line is that as uranium has been so cheap and abundant we only know the floor of the uranium reserves, not the roof. I'll start worrying the day when, during a sustained exploration effort, we'll use more uranium than we find, and all the fuel sustaining technologies either fail or are in full use. *
Like what happened with oil around 1985.
* Or when anyone manages to model how the future uranium production graph looks like, and we happen to be close to the peak.
Black or White, keep the blinders firmly tightened!
With increasing costs of mining and refining, decreasing EROEI, thus you haven't solved the problem of diminishing returns AT ALL.
You only get a reprieve from collapse.
Why bothering with an HYPOTHETICAL and DANGEROUS reprieve if the problem (of keeping civilisation going) can be solved?
Let's look at lower EROEI of lower grade uranium ore. Let's say we go down ore grade by one magnitude and increase our reserves 300 times over, like Deffeyes said. How will this effect the price of nuclear power (and as energy costs are included in that price, a steeply increasing price will signal a bad or negative EROEI).
The cost of uranium is about 3 % of the cost of nuclear power. Let's say 5 %. The energy cost for uranium mining are maybe 10-20 % of total uranium mining costs. Let's say they are 50 %. If we go down one magnitude of ore grade, energy cost should probably go up by one magnitude as we have ten times as much ore to mine, mill etc. This means uranium will cost about 5 times as much (as we guess energy is 50 % of the cost). The uranium will be 15-25 % of the cost of nuclear power instead of 3-5 %. This means a cost increase of 12-20 %, or an increase from 3 cents per kWh to 3,3-3,6 cents per kWh. Not that relevant really.
And this is a situation with rather pessimist calculations, when there is no new uranium found, no more reprocessing, no breeding, no uranium from the sea etc.
And I don't really see what this has to do with complexity. We are likely to have more energy in the future than we have today (at least after a few decades of depression) and the energy system should be more robust and simple, not more complex, as it should be based on simpler supply chains and technologies (think electricity instead of oil).
And sure, steady state economics might be a good thing, but advocating it before all the poor people in China, India and Africa have a good standard of living sounds very inhumane or outright criminaly evil.
Just plain NO, read Tainter.
And I don't really see what this has to do with complexity.
It is not complexity per se which matters but the COST of complexity, cost of OPERATING (energy, education of engineers) and cost of ESTABLISHING complexity (R & D).
I already argued about this at length and of course "nature complexity" is stable and costless to us if we don't screw it.
And sure, steady state economics might be a good thing, but advocating it before all the poor people in China, India and Africa have a good standard of living sounds very inhumane or outright criminaly evil.
An easy shot, but severely misdirected.
What about REDUCING your (our) consumption by 10 to 20% and giving the surplus to "the poor people" ?
Problem solved, at once!
Not "realistic"?
How realistic is it to suggest to INCREASE global consumption when ALL problems come from a demented "standard of living" ?
Though not solving the long term collapse threats, there are lots and lots of postings here at TOD were there is REALISTIC suggestions for maintaining a good standard of living while DECREASING the energy use and costs by factors of 2 or 3.
Why are these less "realistic" than moronic BETS on coal or nukular?
Because lots of fucking idiots, soccer moms and robber barons would feel some "unpleasantness"?
Let the "criminaly evil" die-off.
I would rather reduce our local consumption by 10 or 20% and use the surplus electricity to replace oil and produce goods for trade with "the poor people" and of course other rich people.
This is such a good idea that I prefer to both reduce "old" consumption and add new production. A few more NPP and more wind powerplants and more combined heat and power districh heating would be great. We could do much more then "our share" as counted with some kind of fairly meaningless world average.
Or do you pretend that :
us[ing] the surplus electricity to replace oil and produce goods for trade with "the poor people" and of course other rich people.
will bring China, India and most especially Africa to "a good standard of living"?
One very inhumane thing to do is to destroy possibilities of happinesss for other people. If you follow that thru to an ultimate end you end up with self sacrifice. I dont propose that but I find it wise to be efficient at producing services and goods regardless on what resource use level you are on. It is even better if people then can learn to be happier with less resource use.
This line of resoning have been used by local anti nuclear people proposing a national downsizing of our energy use until nuclear energy no longer is needed. But the world do not end at our borders, what ever "excess" of energy we have can also be used outside those borders exported via cable or as products.
Exporting these saved/produced recources makes living well easier for other people. But that only works well if the reagions you trade with are run in a sane and constructive way. It wont help Africa exept for those parts of Africa where people also help themselves.
Or in short, if you run a nuclear powerplants, use CF "lightbulbs" in the company office.
People also don't seem to have a good sense for just how small a concentration of a valuable metal can be economically extracted (economically means including all energy costs).
To put the uranium ore grade question in perspective, consider another valuable metal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold
Economic gold extraction can be achieved from ore grades as little as 0.5 g/1000 kg (0.5 ppm) on average in large easily mined deposits, typical ore grades in open-pit mines are 1-5 g/1000 kg (1-5 ppm), ore grades in underground or hard rock mines are usually at least 3 g/1000 kg (3 ppm) on average. Ore grades of 30 g/1000 kg (30 ppm) are usually needed before gold is visible to the naked eye, therefore in most gold mines you will not see any gold.
At approx. 32 troy ounces to the kg and $700/oz, it means gold can be mined profitably from even 1 ppm sources at approx. $22,500 / kg. That's a lot of scratch, but now consider silver, at $12/oz ($400 / kg) minable from sources as low as a few 100 ppm, or copper, at $3 / kg minable from sources in the 1000-8000 range:
http://reynolds.asu.edu/sierra_cobre/p_geochem_map.htm
So what about those uranium resources:
http://www.uic.com.au/nip75.htm
2000 ppm (0.2%) is considered low-grade ore. Sources below that aren't currently counted as "reserves". These low-grade ores are in the range quoted for copper, which at $3 / kg includes all energy costs associated with mining it. Uranium is in the $100 / kg range. Note that granite has 4 ppm uranium, which is in the same range as gold.
So much for ore, now to the energy side:
Uranium has 500,000 MJoules of energy / kg (compared to brown coal at 9 MJoules / kg or black coal at up to 30 MJoules / kg). In other words, 1 kg of uranium has the energy of 61 short tons (907 kg / ton) of coal, which is in the neighborhood of $3,000 on the NYMEX (at $50 / ton).
This link gives the economics of producing reactor fuel from the raw material (energy costs included):
http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm
The salient point is that 8 kg of uranium yields 1 kg of reactor fuel after about $900 in enrichment and assembly costs. This is 3400 GJoules at the reactor, or about the equivalent of 416 tons of coal, worth about $20,800. Subtracting the $900, uranium would have to cost around $2,500 / kg before, purely on fuel cost, coal would be more attractive. Again I stress that the price of the coal obviously includes the energy needed to mine it, as does the price of all the metals. This also assumes the cost of moving 8.6 million tons of coal to a plant is the same as the cost of moving 74 kg of reactor fuel to a plant (clearly it would take vastly more energy to move the coal).
Now, $2,500 / kg is about 1/10 the value of gold calculated earlier, so this would seem to indicate that it would not be economic to extract uranium from granite at 4ppm at a similar level of efficiency. This doesn't prove that it would be energy-negative, since I didn't bother trying to figure out how much of gold's $22,500 / kg price was due to energy costs. Still, it seems clear that in the 1000s ppm range for low-grade uranium ores, versus copper at $3 / kg, if a similar level of mining efficiency could be achieved, there is little question of economic recovery with a positive energy balance, even if the entire $3 was for mining energy costs. And in the range of 100s ppm verus silver, economic recovery of uranium in the $100s / kg still leaves a very large positive energy balance again assuming the entire cost of silver was energy used to mine it.
I'm not a metals/mining expert by any means - perhaps chemical tricks are available for the other metals that aren't applicable to uranium. Still I think the point's made - we routinely extract resources at far smaller concentrations for prices that seem to be well below the value of the energy yield available from uranium, and that's not even counting possible use of the depleted uranium in breeders.
Turning to the waste:
A 1000 MW coal-fired power station needs 8.6 million kg of coal / day, versus 74 kg of uranium / day for a nuclear plant. Assuming 100% of the uranium fuel eventually becomes waste, compare that to the coal plant's waste. There is no comparison. According to the DOE, complete combustion of 1 short ton of typical coal generates about 5,720 pounds of CO2. For you sequestration fans, as a solid at 96 lbs / cubic foot, the daily output from the coal station is a pyramidal slab of CO2 measuring 1000 feet by 1000 feet at the base and standing 1500 feet high. As a liquid at 63 lbs / cubic foot, it's a lakeful of CO2 1 mile in diameter 34 feet deep. Now there's a real waste problem.
- The choice is NOT ONLY between coal and nuclear.
- The collapse is only POSTPONED not avoided.
(I hate to repeat arguments within the same thread)The contention was that uranium reserves were not sufficient to provide more than a few decades of postponement, which isn't long enough for any of the things I just said to play out. The counter is that EROEI-positive uranium resources look sufficient to provide 100s of years of energy, if not 1000s should breeder technology be employed.
I still haven't seen the "other" option you refer to. I have thus far seen only the familiar non-options:
Come again. Sweet, sour, heavy, tar sands, shale...
And, as I said before, the price of uranium doesn't really matter that much for the price of nuclear electricity.
And sea water extraction seems to be energy positive (especially with breeders), if not currently money positive (like breeders).
it as a uranium and thorium ore
Trace quantities of uranium in coal range from less than 1 part per million (ppm) in some samples to around 10 ppm in others. Generally, the amount of thorium contained in coal is about 2.5 times greater than the amount of uranium. For a large number of coal samples, according to Environmental Protection Agency figures released in 1984, average values of uranium and thorium content have been determined to be 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively.
Triff ..
Interestingly, one of the key documents on uranium resources was authored by none other than Kenneth 'Thanksgiving' Deffeyes (see Deffeyes 1978 - Kenneth S. Deffeyes and Ian D. MacGregor, Uranium Distribution in Mined Deposits and in the Earth's Crust. Final Report, GJBX--1(79), Dept of Geological and Geophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ).
Readers who are open-minded about 'peak uranium' will find a treasure trove of information in the following 'Report to Congress on the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative' (dated May 2005).
Those comments of his can be found on the Energy Bulletin. I can find them if you'd like.
For a time, I'm going to remain worried...
Citations, please. Uranium was heavily prospected in the cold war, and the most promising deposits have already got mines. I've been reading The Oil Drum too long to be comforted by the "there's always more to find" argument.
I dislike mixing dollars and energy, but right now the cost of producing Nuclear Power is in the ballpark with coal, Natural Gas, and Wind. What happens to that cost (and EROEI) when the largest (Gawhar sized) deposits of Uranium have been mined and the ore must start coming from the smaller, harder to reach deposits?
Many experiments work in the laboratory, the question is can such a process scale to the levels required to fuel all the reactors we'd need, post oil. The second question is how much energy is required to extract uranium at a useful scale, and full cycle would that be net energy positive.
Reprocessing will certainly help.
The history of breeder reactors is quite poor. All of the commercial breeders ever constructed in the world have not bread enough new fuel to start up one more reactor. Breeders are more complicated than normal Nuclear plants, which leads to more operational problems.
Think of it this way, a breeder reactor is complex - think space-shuttle complex. Would you want to base the future of civilization on the space shuttle?
While there are experiments in Thorium reactors, like uranium it is a limited resource, and breeding Thorium has the same problems as breeding uranium.
Thinking out 100 years, it just doesn't make sense to me to step from one non-renewable resource to another. It takes an incredible amount of infrastructure and technology to keep the nuclear cycle going, and in one long lifetime we'll be out of the easy uranium and thorium, and have to find something else. Why not recognise this problem today, when we still have half the oil left, and put our efforts into wind and solar. Shall we doom the children of 2106 to live in a world strewn with derelict power plants, or should we look elsewhere to wind and solar for our power?
First, there are lots of unmined uranium deposits, including high grade. The worlds biggest uranium mine (Olympic dam in Australia, about 15 % of world production from that mine) is going to triple its uranium output. For example.
You write: "Why not recognise this problem today, when we still have half the oil left, and put our efforts into wind and solar."
Because the alternative is not wind and solar. It is coal or nuclear. Coal is unacceptable.
Olympic is the world's largest (known) deposit of uranium. It's the Ghawar of uranium, and its riches are included in the "47 years of uranium at present use rates".
If they triple the output, they are just depleting that resource at 3X the rate. (Sound familiar?)
Can anyone point to a list of the top 100 uranium ore deposits? It'd be interesting to see if the distribution of the deposits are similar to oil.
The high grade deposits are concentrated in Australia, Canada, Niger, Kazaksthan and maybe a few more countries. But low grade deposits are all over the place.
Interesting.
It seems to me that a significant portion of that added price per kilogram must be that it's taking more energy to extract the ore (It's not like we're paying a higher price to the Earth for it!) so there are two upward pressures on the price: The added energy per unit extracted, and the rising unit price of energy.
Anyone have a link for a bottoms-up analysis of how much ore can be economically and (to mangle a phrase) "energetically" extracted, and how long that will last?
I answered that already.
(I hate to repeat arguments within the same thread)
It would if that non-renewable resource was good for 100s or 1000s of years, because it buys you time to come with a better solution.
Why not recognise this problem today, when we still have half the oil left, and put our efforts into wind and solar.
Agreed, and we are, but those solutions, which are always the first ones thrown out in any anti-coal discussion that seeks to discount the nuclear alternative, have their own "unsolved" engineering problems, specifically, intermittency. At this point someone is going to wave their hands at that and assert that the problem is solvable with (and then fill in the blank, usually requiring a breakthrough in battery technology, flywheel technology, etc.). For the same reason you're uncomfortable with hand-waving about breeder technology, I'm uncomfortable counting on a breakthrough in power storage from intermittent sources that may take decades to show up, while in the interim burning more coal. Given a choice between dealing with the waste from another 30 years of nuclear power or the waste from another 30 years of burning coal, I choose the former.
A few energy intensive areas with vast hydro, geothermal, wind or uncommonly much nuclear power can have heavy industries for export of energy intesvie goods and a high energy lifestyle close to todays, the rest of the world cant if we are to handle both global warming and peak oil at the same time.
Not that I believe this will come about, but hey, everyone else is floating their fantasies about the future.
Of course, in my future their will be no cars, no air conditioning, no football on the weekend (unless its a pick-up game). But then, we won't be worshipping at the local Walmart and assessing our self worth based on the size of our paycheck either.
I agree with you. I think there can be big power savings with minimal societal changes.
The biggest change will be that people will drive less. This is actually going to lead to massive increases in productivity. People are going to go from 2 hour commutes, to 10 minute commutes. Would you offer your employer an extra 30 minutes of work/day in order to be able to telecommute? Local transport will probably be via 49cc scooters.
Houses will get smaller. This is happening all over New England with big Victorian houses being split into 2 or 3 condos. Houses will become more energy efficient. Yesterdays 2 car garages will become in law apartments.
Technology will move towards lower power consumption. TV's, electronics, refrigerators, computers. Recycling and reuse will become much more envogue. Electronic distribution of content will finally become ubiquitous.
And I do have hope that breakthroughs in Solar technology will yield positive results. If we can learn anything from the internet it should be the positives of a distributed model. Solar panels on every house in America, all tied into the grid, would be awesome. Hydro, Nuclear, and Wind will make up the shortfalls.
I honestly consider us to be lucky. After all "Peak Oil" is a far cry from "No Oil".
Just my little cornucopia. :)
[begin paranoic rant]
I sometimes wonder if by shutting the door to nuclear and pushing for renewable technologies that they know can't meet the need, some greens are actually trying to cause civilisation to collapse due to exhaustion of fossil energy sources.
[end paranoic rant]
I'm no believer in renewable energy as you think about it. But your belief that solving the oil problem will solve other issues is just naive. Oil is only the leading edge, the first presenting issue of a non-sustainable existence.
It must have been pure angst if your family and village had some illness or other problem hindering proper winter preparations.
But when people where happy they were happy, as they are now.
Of course, there are always issues of survival, but lets not fall into the trap of believing the early moderns' assessment of our ancient anscestors. And lets not attribute to them thought patterns that belong to modern cultures.
Remember that the era of civilization (approximately 6000 years) is put a small portion of the time that human societies have existed. And consider also that is even more recent that the control of civilization extended beyond a few small isolated locales.
How did all those people manage?
I am sure people were as much in love in each other back then as they are now but the margins were smaller, manny did not manage.
Sorry, I am no cornucopian (nor doomer BTW) but I don't buy that.
Also, primitivism was the SEED of civilisation "As We Kow It" and it will sprout again from there, except with poorer conditions and outcomes.
We should not miss the OPPORTUNITY to steer the cultural values to some "right path", whatever that is (it has to be debated).
Sustainable civilisation NOT "sustainable" growth (an oxymoron).
This is true only in the sense that civilization came from somewhere. However, the notion that there is some teleological necessity moving from "primitivism" to "civilization" is a remnant of early modernist political thinking (our friends Hobbes and Locke).
The reality is that human beings lived in non-civilizational settings for tens of thousands of years without succombing to civilizational impulses. We can toss back and forth lots of theories on why civilization arose in at least three discreet instances and never come to a definitive conclusion. But we also know that for thousands of years before civilizations developed there were hundreds of small settled horticulturally based villages that did not result in civilization.
In short, I have a hard time with these discreet phases of development approaches, the acceptance therein of the notion of progress and the idea that we are going forward or backward. Consider that from some future perspective the modern age may be seen as a temporary period of insanity unrelated to the general stream of history.
Think about it. If I wanted to "escape" the current global economic system what would I do. Since I was born in the U.S. my possibilities are probably more limited than others. There is literally no open land where I could go and simply walk out of the "system" (squatters get arrested). So my best bet would be to buy land (oops, I'm required to participate). But how much land do I need? Let's say I can get by on 20 acreas with a modest house. Depending on where I am that's gonna cost. Of course the better the land the higher the cost, but let's just say half a million for arguments sake. Now, suppose I can find a job that lets me get a mortgage on that land (Required to participate again).
Okay, forget that, I'll just save up the half million. Say I'm earning 45000 a year (average household income in the U.S.). How much can I realistically save out of that? After taxes, food, rent, etc., and let's assume I'm really frugal, say I can save 50% of my take home - say 20K a year. Well, at that rate I'll have my half million in 25 years.
And then consider what happens to someone who spends 25 years participating in this "system," exposed to the marketing machine, educated in its schools (see Ivan Illich's "DeSchooling Society") and its amazing that there are even those of us to aspire to escaping.
No, I'm afraid your notion that you don't care what I do is just so much nonsense. And that's probably why you get the impression that us bad people who despise your beloved "system" are so oppossed to you. Given the circumstances, we wind up thinking the only thing to do is tear the whole thing down.
And your notions about the Chinese and Indians are just more of that same self serving claptrap - they are already apart of the global economic system - in fact that poverty they are trying to get out of is a direct result of that "system." And if you really think all the boats are rising, think again - the size of the global middle class is no larger as a percentage of population than it was thirty years ago.
David,
You can get 20 acres in Maine for around $1000/acre. That would be $20k. I know of entire farms available (buildings and everything, plus 100 acres of land) for $300k.
Take up Organic Farming, and pay off the mortgage.
It's possible, if you really want to work for it.
Garth
Back in 2000 I started to become aware of the confluence of circumstances that are about to overtake us. I began to think that my contribution could be best done by going back to the land. Read some Nearing. Fell in love with the idea of pay as you go, alternative building, eating seasonally and living a simple life.
So, I found an architect that did timber-frames. Bought twenty acres. Learned how to sustainably harvest wood by selecting only mid grade for the building project, leaving the best for growth and seed, the worst for fire wood. Brought the logs out of the woods with horse and ox teams. Had a portable saw mill saw out all the wood needed, and started to build using only human powered tools. I was living on the land in a yurt at the time. It was my goal to supply as much of my life needs off that piece of land as possible, and bring in a small amount of money to cover the rest through side/part time work or barter. Long story short, I never poured a foundation. I took the appreciation in land value, moved, paid cash for my current place in a western city, and now make it on a half time permanent position. Why? Because of what was required by the status quo.
In order to legally inhabit my land, I paid cash for everything and never financed a step of my attempt to de-plug, I was required by law to have electricity, phone, well, septic system, at least one bedroom with a closet and numerous other small details. I was required to pull permits at numerous steps. Then there were the taxes on the land. In the end, I was beaurocracied out of dropping out. I wanted to compost humanure, use greywater recovery, and collect rain water; which is what I was doing already. Not legal. In order to continue my legal occupation of my land, I was required to permit, install and have inspected a well, a septic system, electrical service and phone line. This ate up huge amounts of money, because you just can't install anything, you have to have an engineer survey the land, do percolation tests, design a system, yadda, yadda, yadda. Long story short, it is not possible in this day and age to choose to live lower on the energy consumption ladder unless you are independently wealthy, jump through all the hoops, then let all the unnecessary stuff languish while you go about living simply.
On my 8000sqft lot, I grey water recover, compost and am gearing up to rainwater harvest. I only do so, because I bought an existing structure with cash and have not told anyone what I am doing. No-one in the 'hood is the wiser. It would be nice if those of us who really believe that the trappings of modernity are not necessary could live amongst you and pursue our goals. The fact of the matter is that there is no avenue for this. In the eyes of western systems and its attendent legislation we are criminals, and that in and of itself is criminal. If I could have, I would have. Now I try to compromise and hope for the best.....
I sometimes wonder if by shutting the door to renewable technologies and pushing for nuclear that they know can't meet the need, some
greensrobber barons are actually trying to cause civilisation to collapse due to exhaustion of fossil energy sources.[end paranoid rant]
It's WONDERFUL TO BE A KING!
Or a warlord...
Let's suppose we set out to reduce current per-capita energy consumption from X to X-delta = Y. We now need to come up with Y, a number smaller than X. So far so good, but where the argument breaks down is the assertion that delta can be so large, we can get Y entirely from renewables. Wrong unless delta is so large that it brings Y down to the range we can meet with hydro and geothermal. For anything greater (and in reality Y will be much greater), the rest has to come from something that will be both reliable and will scale out.
Hydro and geothermal provide reliable power but don't scale because you quickly run out of favourable sites. You are then left with wind and solar, which can scale (at least in the US), but are intermittent. I'm not aware of any commercialised renewable technology that is both reliable and scalable in the foregoing sense.
If you're proposing I further reduce my energy usage to 3rd world levels, then no thanks. I expect exactly the opposite to occur, as the population of the developing world rightly claims a better quality of life for themselves.
Perhaps I've misunderstood you, if so I apologise. Too often people have used the same words you just did to mean some sort of "new agrarian age". These people are too quick to give up some things that are so very beneficial to our lives, yet easily taken for granted (until you don't have them). The unsung technological triumphs of the 20th century I refer to are electricity and indoor plumbing. Abandon them at your own peril!
For a reason unrelated to actual amount of reserves, supply is a problem. There are a couple of large deposits in the United States. The second, but perhaps most lucrative because the ore is twice as rich as the largest deposit, happens to be within the Navajo Nation. At the end of April this year, Joe Shirley, Navajo Nation President, signed legislation outlawing any further mining or milling of uranium. So, will we have another genocide against the aboriginal peoples of America in the coming years because we sequestered them on the land that holds the nuclear solution?
If the Indians don't want mining on their lands that's their loss. There is money to be made. But if they don't want mining there'll I guess there'll be no mining.
GIS is used on all our projects. Yes you are correct - intra/erstate transmission lines are very costly (see the Frontier line - at several billion dollars), but alot of people and jurisdictions do not want these unsightly structures marching across their views. Like wind turbines - even though "green" - people do not want to see them - at least here in the US - in Aero Norway - they are openly accepted.
FERC has an answer of course - a hidden reg buried in the energy act of 2005 - allows for FERC to take private land and to trump agency decisions on transmsion line corridors of "national interest".
I think someone somewhere has read Dr. Duncan's work.
Environmental Impacts Statements (NEPA) have traditionally taken years to complete for these high voltage lines (see AEP 765kV line in VA/WVA; also see the NTP 500kV line in Arizona). Like civil liberties - our NEPA/"environmental" regs will continue to be culled to expedite the permitting of these lines.
I think that's a good idea. I'm certainly an environmentalist, but more than that I believe in scientifically informed proportionality.
Environmental "degradation" from powerlines is trivial next to real environmental harms---climate change and massive water disruptions being at the top.
Electrifying more industry from fossil fuels, especially transportation is a good thing and if that takes some effort to cut through the crap, I applaud it.
The year 2025, World wide oil production is now 30-50%less than in 2006. Most large scale organizations have broken down. Those structures include, The Global Economy, The $USD as the world reserve currency, Global Companies, Many large goverments, etc.
Everything is either produced locally or cost much money, if you can get it at all.
Delta, and everyother commercial airline is out of business, GM, Ford, Chrysler are out of business. NASCAR and every t-shirt, decal, and momorabilia are no longer being sold. In essence western life is over as we knew it.
Now, against that backdrop, what do you do with umpteen Nuclear Reactors and ALL THAT WASTE? Are they still running? Was the US GOV or what ever GOV of the countries that they exist dismantle them before funds and know how and DILLIGENCE to the task ran out? How many Chernoble's will there be around the world by 2025?
How many goverments/countries went under in a not so "Controlled" manner? Did they stop the Revolution, and say, First we have to dismantle this reactor before it does a "ChinaSyndrome" while all the people who work at the plant disappear to care for their own family?
Just a thought.
If you build it, it must be taken down sometime.
Will the "Time and Setting" of that out in the future dismatle date be "conducive" to the task?
Instead of, "You Break it, You Own It"
For Nuclear it's "You Build it You Own It"
JC
You put it in a hole and watch it. How much is "ALL THAT"? For the benfits you got, it is truly very very small.
Where do the put ALL THAT WASTE from coal plants? You did know that coal plants emit enormous megatons of fly ash laden with heavy metals which have a half-life of, oh, infinity! Do they vitrify it and put it in canisters? No, they just dump on an enormous mountain outside. What happens when it rains? It leaks.
Oh then some other parts of the waste is dumped right into the ocean without processing of anything, where fish eat it and humans eat the fish and it causes babies to be born stupid.
Are they still running?
Most of them.
Was the US GOV or what ever GOV of the countries that they exist dismantle them before funds and know how and DILLIGENCE to the task ran out?
probably.
How many Chernoble's will there be around the world by 2025?
You mean mega scale accidents? Zero.
experts predicted a Chernobyl couldn't happen in Western plants because of technical design. It didn't.
And what's the problem with Three Mile Island? it was a miniscule environmental problem and an economic one for the local utility.
See Egil Lilles (Powerpoint), or Google.
It is also claimed that such reactors can "incinerate" (i.e., transmute) radioactive waste, while possibly reclaiming energy.
Anyone know why this technology has not been developed?
Yes, it is feasible, in the sense that there aren't enormous thermodynamical barriers or problems with laws of physics (as there are, e.g. in grain-based ethanol).
The technology hasn't been developed because it would be very expensive.
What's holding back deployment of conventional nuclear reactors now would likely hold back those technologies as well, and they would cost more.
Only a long-term government project (e.g. India) would change things.
But there is a BIG difference between "critical" and "subcritical" reactors. The latter can never result in a runaway chain reaction; the nuclear reactions occur only as long as the accelerator that generates protons/neutrons is powered. The nuclear fear factor is effectively neutralized.
The radioactive-waste incineration capability could be a big money maker, independent of power generation. E.g., India or Russia could gain mega dollars/euros by accepting r-waste from western countries for a hefty fee. Or the US could develop their own r-waste incinerators, terminating the multi-decade "Yucca mountain" debate.
Is there good data on the energy efficiency (EROEI) of subcritical reactors? Could that be the reason this technology hasn't taken off? I don't understand why more research isn't being done on this, especially in India.
I see it as a much slower work of bettering the technology and showing that the security culture works and telling as manny people as you can about how it works and is run.
India is researching thorium breeders insired by having lots of thorium ore.
A couple more factoids about Olympic Dam. A decade before it was discovered the Brits exploded a 22kg plutonium dirty bomb in the area. The State premier (governor) is opposed to the nuclear industry but sucks it in on account of jobs and royalties.