On Friday, Matt Yglesias made the point that only socialist state control seems capable of creating a robust nuclear power industry. After all, the only countries building nuke plants these days are the ones where governments are making the decisions. David Frum replied with a series of wildly overbroad assertions ranging from false to highly misleading, with no evidence or links to support them. (Nuclear power has an impressive effect on conservative error-to-word ratios.) Matt replied in turn, and in doing so echoed a familiar misunderstanding:
That said, obviously you need a certain amount electricity that can be relied upon irrespective of how windy it is or whether the sun is shining. So I’d happily see the nuclear share of the pie grow at the expense of coal and oil as the provider of that baseload electricity.
This notion has really grabbed the public imagination. It’s become conventional wisdom that the grid can only incorporate a limited amount of renewable energy; ergo, we need coal and nuclear power plants for “baseload” electricity. Clean energy skeptics wave the word “baseload” around like a talisman.
There’s far less to the claim than meets the eye, though. As Amory Lovins points out, it’s a category error: baseload is a characteristic of aggregated demand, not of any particular kind of supply. He distills the counter-argument:
Baseload: The electricity system doesn’t rely on any plant’s ability to run continuously; rather, all plants together supply the grid, and the grid serves all loads. That’s necessary because no kind of power plant can run all the time, as Stewart says they must do to meet steady loads. I repeat: there is not and has never been a need for any particular plant or kind of plant to run all the time, and none can. All power plants fail, varying only in their failures’ size, duration, frequency, predictability, and cause. Solar cells’ and windpower’s variation with night and weather is no different from the intermittence of coal and nuclear plants, except that it affects less capacity at once, more briefly, far more predictably, and is no harder and probably easier and cheaper to manage. In short, the ability to serve steady loads is a statistical attribute of all plants on the grid, not an operational requirement for one plant. Variability (predictable failure) and intermittence (unpredictable failure) must be managed by diversifying type and location, forecasting, and integrating with other resources. Utilities do this every day, balancing diverse resources to meet fluctuating demand and offset outages. Even with a largely (or probably a wholly) renewable grid, this is not a significant problem or cost, either in theory or in practice—as illustrated by areas that are already 30-40% wind-powered.
Right now our power system might be characterized as Security Through Oversupply. We’ve built enough power plants to create the maximum level of power we might ever need at a given point in time; but since “peak load” times are relatively brief, most of the time dozens and dozens of large power plants are cycled down, sitting idle. As population and per-capita power use rise, the size of peak load is rising as well. The STO response is to build more plants.
The alternative will be Resilience Through Diversity: just-in-time, just-enough power from multiple, redundant, diverse sources spread over large geographical areas, managed by a reliable, intelligent power grid incorporating distributed storage. Peak load will be shaved by load spreading and efficiency; failures will be localized and self-healing rather than cascading and catastrophic; intelligence will replace brute power.
Utilities face, imminently, some very large investment decisions. Should they invest in nuclear and “clean coal” power because they will “have to” have some baseload power on the grid in 10-15 years when the plants are completed? No. For the next decade it will be a huge challenge just to get to the level of renewables integrated in Spanish and Italian grids today (30-40 percent). In the ensuing time, an enormous amount of money and engineering will go into grid resilience and intelligence. It is far too early to predict what level of renewables will be “impossible,” but whatever that level turns out to be, it is certainly far distant.
This is the green pitch to utilities: Rather than spending the next decade or two building nuke and CCS plants, with all the attendant management hassles, public opposition, lawsuits, and cost overruns, why not spend it reducing demand, creating a more resilient grid, and diversifying the generation portfolio? The former is just a more expensive version of what exists now. The latter is a revolution, a platform for innovation that will make the internet look like, um, the electricity industry.
A pitch isn’t enough, though. For a fusty industry like utilities, revolution is to be resisted, not celebrated. The key is not just asking utilities to use full cost accounting, but to start building such accounting into markets via regulation, legislation, and large-scale investment. Once the financial and legal incentives are correctly aligned, even utilities—slow and regulator-dependent as they are—will respond. Until then, until they really start trying, we shouldn’t trust them about what parts of the old system are “necessary” in the new.
(For a longer and more detailed response to the “baseload” shibboleth, see Lovins’ “Four Nuclear Myths” [PDF].)
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Comments
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Sean Casten Posted 7:12 am
09 Nov 2009
This is pretty wrong, for reasons that are hard to distill into a blog post. To be sure, baseload power doesn't have to equal nuke/coal (biomass, geothermal, recycled energy, natural gas, hydro, biogas - all can and do provide be baseload power.) But the grid does need baseload generation.
The statistical averaging argument is only valid if you have a population of generation that is not likely to have coicident outages. Solar obviously fails this test. Wind does too, despite claims of many that "it's always windy somewhere". We have a national grid, but grid management is a regional challenge. Voltage falls as a function of distance, and absent some massively over-built transmission infrastructure, we're always going to have bottlenecks on the system somewhere (for the same reason that you have a preferred way to drive to work every morning: you can't have a system where every node has a direct path to every other, and traffic jams are inevitable.) As a result, what matters is the wind in a given region, not nationally.
The best case I know for the problems with intermittent wind is made inadvertently by BPA, which has brought a huge amount of wind on it's system. Note this link (http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx), which shows their instantaneous load-balancing authority (e.g., how much power they have to provide to their customers) and the instantaneous output of all the wind on their system at the same time. Maintaining adequate supply on the system and keeping the voltage up force them to dial back on hydro-electric capacity so that it can quickly ramp. In other words, we are dialing back on renewables in the name of installing renewables. Not the end of the world, and certainly not intended as a bash on wind - but simply to point out that the idea of a massively set of statistically independent outages based on a relatively small number of renewable technologies doesn't wash. The wind will go out at the same time over large areas, and the grid has to have something to accomodate.
Like I said at the start - one can argue that this shouldn't be nuke or coal. But one can't argue that we have a responsible way to build a grid without baseload generation.
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amazingdrx Posted 8:18 am
09 Nov 2009
The fly in the ointment? Nuclear waste. It's there. everywhere a nuclear power plant exists. Here in the US in used nuclear fuel rod "swimming pools".
This waste and the decommisioned parts of nuclear plants can't be safely and economically transported, the two are mutually exclusive. A "glow train" (as the nuclear cask carrying trains are nicknamed) can't stop anywhere on it's path because it is like a giant portable x-ray (gamma too) machine. Stop the train and the surrounding community gets a bigger and more dangerous radiation dose the longer the train is stalled.
The casks can't be constructed with heavy enough shielding to cancel this effect, because that would makle it too expensive to transport the waste. So it's either too expensive or too dangerous. Furthermore, too dangerous..actually means too expensive. Why? Because the sort of radiation accident from a stalled, derailed, or worst case cask destroying train accident, can't be insured. No company will write the policy, what with nearly unlimited damages.
So the alternative is to treat the waste in place, within the nuclear plant containment. That will take new waste neutralizing "fast neutron" reactors, installed at existing plants. That means the nuclear nughtmare will be with us for awhile, it would be an inter-generational crime to leave it for the future.
We won't need baseload nuclear power (once the transition to the new smart grid is acomplished), but we are stuck with it. As long as we are operating waste neutralizing reactors, the power from them should be used to shut down coal, oil, and natural gas powerplants ASAP.
Even Amory can't beat this argument.
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Sean Casten Posted 8:28 am
09 Nov 2009
There is a rich conversation to be had about the pros & cons of nuclear, but that's really not my point. I have never seen any compelling argument that we will not need baseload generation, in the present or the future. It's a fantasy. Stipulating that superconducting smart grids will eliminate the need for baseload generation is no more intellectually robust than stipulating that colonization of Mars will render population control irrelevant. They are equally invalid, irresponsible arguments; neither technically defensible nor helpful to address real near-term challenges.
To be sure, the arguments (which I believe Amory has made quite compellingly) that many locally-sited generators are statistically unlikely to go down at the same time, and therefore we don't need central station baseload are valid. But that is not an argument limited to a few intermittent resources - that's one about many small cogen plants, standby units AND local renewables that have very different outage patterns (many of which are de facto baseloaded.) It does not therefore parse that intermittent central generators that have high coincident outage risk render the need for baseload generation moot.
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David Roberts Posted 11:40 am
09 Nov 2009
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Sean Casten Posted 1:01 pm
09 Nov 2009
I'm responding specifically to this:
"This notion has really grabbed the public imagination. It’s become conventional wisdom that the grid can only incorporate a limited amount of renewable energy; ergo, we need coal and nuclear power plants for “baseload” electricity. Clean energy skeptics wave the word “baseload” around like a talisman.
There’s far less to the claim than meets the eye, though. As Amory Lovins points out, it’s a category error: baseload is a characteristic of aggregated demand, not of any particular kind of supply"
I agree that doesn't de facto mean we need nuclear, but the framing I understood you to be taking is that we can get by without baseload generation.
In other words, I don't believe there is a category error. The error is simply the assumption that the entirety of the category is coal+nuke. If that's the point you were making, I stand corrected. I understood you to be saying that we don't need baseload generation though.
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:07 pm
09 Nov 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/oct/19/monbiot-nuclear-waste-economy
I don't feel very confident that we can build a grid capable of stringing together enough wind and solar to keep the lights on without some baseload power. There is an element of risk in putting all of our eggs into that basket, I say this not so much as a pundit blog commenter, but as an experienced mechanical engineer.
There is an error band associated with everything, which is why the IPCC assigns them to their analysis.
"...The question is whether the purported need for baseload power is a good argument for building nuclear plants..."
The argument comes down to "What are the odds we will need baseload?" And if the odds are high, what options for baseload do we have?
The odds that we will need it are quite high and some nuclear power would not negate the need for an updated grid.
There is also the risk that nuclear proponents will hog up government funding that should go to renewables, defunding the new grid as well. That would have to be guarded against.
But who are we kidding? There isn't enough political will to even retrofit coal plants to natural gas as a temporary measure while we build up renewables (or nuclear for that matter).
"The "necessity" for large centralized coal and nuke plants is the myth at issue here."
This issue does not really belong in the myth category. Without baseload power there would be no solar panels on any buildings today ...none. The size and location of baseload is driven by economy of scale and other costs. We can use less "large" baseload that is less "centralized" if it is the cheapest way to do baseload.
The energy gird, like the solar panel grid on a house, is composed of many elements, some more expensive than others. Baseload power is probably going to be one of the more expensive elements.
Some might argue that you don't need a backup propane heater or generator for when the sun isn't shining. By running power lines to enough neighbors somebody will have sun shining on their roof. At what point does the cost curve of doing that cross the cost curve for a backup?
This graph from a recent WWF report puts things into a rather shocking perspective:
http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/Graphics/img34.gif
as does this one:
http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/Graphics/img33.gif
Although any means of generating continuous uninterrupted power fits the definition of baseload, it is an unproven hypothesis that we can do that with wind and solar strung together with a sufficiently sophisticated grid. I have learned from experience that hypothesis often don't pan out when you move from the paper stage to the real world.
Having said all that, I think we should try the grid first with renewables, retrofitting coal to gas in the mean time. If we find we need nuclear we can always build it later. Anything but coal.
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amazingdrx Posted 10:46 pm
09 Nov 2009
A national grid would only need high voltage direct current transmission, a technology developed in the 1930s. the stabilization produced by all the dsifferent reneewable sources in diverse locations would make on huge baseload power system, taken all together, as this national grid could allow.
As we know from experience centralized grids shut down quite often. They aren't perfectly reliable.
I submit that a renewable grid with distributed storage in each building and distributed emergency backup capacity of 200 watts per home would be more reliable than the present central grid.
Think of it like the emergency power system on a submarine. In every sub movie when the depth charge hits, disrupting the main power circuits, backup circuits automatically kick in. This is the sort of system I'm talking about.
It doubles as an emergency system right down to the individual building and a distributed storage and generating capacity that smart grid computers can use to smooth reneable supply and adjust demand.
Backup biogas/natural gas cogeneration plants for every 100 to 1000 homes or equivalent load, located in factories, on farms, at landfills, at municipal waste facilities, and larger buildings would stabilize the grid better than central baseload power does now. And a national HVDC grid is much more reliable than any sigle coal or nuclear plant.
What might seem fantastic now, might just seem obvious a few years into this 20 year transition from fossil and nuclear power to renewables. By the time it's obvious, the real money will have been made. I want in on some of the juicy trading before the bubble bursts, hehey. Bring on the earnings expectations!!
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Sean Casten Posted 6:47 am
10 Nov 2009
There is much good academic discussion to be had about going to a DC system. (Some old colleagues of mine at A.D. Little did some really interesting historical digging, noting that our initial push to AC was for reasons that are increasingly inappropriate as all our loads become DC and many emerging technologies - fuel cells, batteries, microturbines, etc. - naturally want to make DC power.) In that sense, I agree with you. But that's sort of like saying that if you had a clean sheet of paper, you could craft a better tax code. So stipulated... but for the fact that we don't have a clean sheet of paper. We may have a great end-state, but that's only relevant to the degree that we also have a path (and the committment) to get there. In the interim, we've got to make the most of the clunky old AC system we've got.
That said, I fully agree with your suggestion for more local generation and storage. It solves many problems, and does so in a way that is quite compatible with the current system. That's very consistent also with many of Lovins' ideas - but that is fundamentally a local vs. central argument, not a baseload vs. intermittency argument.
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amazingdrx Posted 8:01 am
10 Nov 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents
Tesla was right about AC for local grids, transformers are the key to adjusting for line loss voltage drop. With Edison's DC local grid voltage dropped the further away from the generator the customer was, then that made it impossible to mass produce motors and other devices that work at a standard specific voltage.
Transformers easily conquered that problem, but they only work with AC. So AC is the right way to go for the power that enters your home.
Long distance transmission is different, the losses due to AC transmission are double those of DC, this becomes a major efficiency factor in a system that would span a continent to smooth renewable power variations. Furthermore, the conversion systems in local areas that tap the HVDC lines and turn the DC into AC for the local grid solve compatability problems with different AC phase, frequency and voltage in the local systems.
The conversion also allows local grids to compatably feed excess power back onto the national HVDC grid. This makes distributed generation and storage act like a central power plant in terms of reliability and it makes the super grid act like a huge power plant (without the one-way nature of central power plants).
Another advantage of DC over AC for long distance transmission is the capability of burying HVDC lines with the same low losses of overhead HVDC. AC transmission losses soar with underground/underwater installation because of capacitance to ground in the cable. AC looks at a capacitor as low resistance and that long cable with a ground sheath around it acts like a giant capacitor.
DC looks at a capacitor as a high resistance storage device, which means that HVDC actually incorporates some extra storage in the buried cable. And of course HVDC buried lines face much less NIMBYism. No stray voltage, no unsightly overhead wires.
And another benefit, HVDC as a buried cable wind or solar power collection network that picks up power right from the renewable energy devices, automatically readjusts voltage, frequency, and phase before the power gets into your home or factory.
HVDC could be buried in a right-of-way dispute-free zone, federal highway freeway median. The NIMBY lawsuits for AC overhead lines would be similar to the delays encountered with projects like cape Wind and the construction of new nuclear plants. Interminable lawyering/fiddling while the climate burns.
All about HVDC, invented in Sweden in the 1930s, first deployed in Russia in the 1950s, in use all over the world now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
ps. I'm a former television transmitter engineer, my first job out of college. Thus my fascination with high voltage electricty. I'm a real geek from an early age, reading all about Edison and tesla, building Tesla coils, reading about the birth of nuclear power and the Manhattan Project and nuclear submarines in grade school.
I was right there (in spirit) with the guys under the squash court in Chicago piling up graphite blocks to build the first nuclear reactor during WW II, even though I was a couple decades late to the party. My b-day is 7 years to the day after the first bomb test. Like many of my classmates, taught to "duck and cover" in school, I dreamed of a mushroom cloud on the horizon out the school windows. What a nightmare.
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amazingdrx Posted 8:59 am
10 Nov 2009
Power capacity of overhead lines is determined by resistance heating in those lines, when too much power is carried on an overhead wire, it heats up, sags, and eventually fails.
Underground, HVDC transmission systems can consist of cable that carries cooling fluid, so that when an emergency overload ocurrs, fluid can be pumped down the core cooling the cable and preventing failure. This allows underground HVDC to carry far more electrons at normal transmission levels, but also to safely exceed normal power levels in case extra transmission capacity is necessary in an emergency. Pumps can respond to rising cable temperature, dumping heat to the ground using heat exchange or evaporative cooling in an emergency.
Overhead wires rely on passing air for cooling, not as reliable in peak situations like ultrahot summer cooling loads. Also overhead wires are vulnerable to storms of ever increasing severity (given climate change), 300 mph super tornadoes are here already. Should a national grid be exposed, overhead to these storms? Even ice storms can bring overhead power down.
A safe and reliable national grid must be buried.
AC transmission can't be done efficiently underground.
Therefore: A national grid must use HVDC. Debate over, hehey.
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Gene Preston Posted 12:43 pm
10 Nov 2009
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David Bradish Posted 11:27 am
09 Nov 2009
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David Roberts Posted 11:49 am
09 Nov 2009
It's about reliably meeting demand. Coal and nuke plants don't create some special kind of electrons. Their priveleged status is a myth, and the fact that the myth is so familiar that it has a Wikipedia page doesn't demonstrate much.
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neosapiens Posted 11:51 am
09 Nov 2009
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skitters Posted 11:59 am
09 Nov 2009
http://envirogy.wordpress.com
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neosapiens Posted 12:59 pm
09 Nov 2009
The chart at your link is also misleading, since it oversimplifies the cost issue in several ways. It doesn't reflect the full cost of coal or nuclear (externalities and decomissioning are ignored). It doesn't reflect the declining cost of renewables, and it doesn't include any of the other options (efficiency, conservation, demand management, etc.). The chart reflects outmoded thinking.
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David Bradish Posted 12:22 pm
09 Nov 2009
It IS relevant what kind of plants feed into it. How do you make a grid reliable to meet the demand if variable technologies like wind and solar supply a huge portion of it? It's called gas plants and the grid needs a lot more of them to back up variable technologies than it does for coal and nuclear.
I find it a bit odd that baseload is considered a myth here when the grid relies on coal and nuclear for 70 percent of its annual power. I find it even more odd that utilities shouldn't be trusted "about what parts of the old system are 'necessary' in the new." Utilities are responsible for maintaining the grid and are the ones most knowledgeable about it and their expertise is dismissed here as if us bloggers are the experts.
If baseload is a myth, why do the wind folks believe in it (p. 89)?:
The units with the highest capacity factors—nuclear (75% CF) and coal (62% and 71% CF)—are the workhorses of the system because they produce relatively low-cost baseload energy and are fully dispatchable.
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neosapiens Posted 1:17 pm
09 Nov 2009
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David Bradish Posted 1:32 pm
09 Nov 2009
Nuclear utilities pay for all of these costs already with existing plants, even insurance. New plants wouldn't be any different.
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Sean Casten Posted 1:44 pm
09 Nov 2009
It is a separate matter though as to why we run the stuff we have: because the fuel is cheap. You may have a sh*tty car that you'd never again consider buying, but that doesn't mean that you wouldn't still drive it to work so long as it was a cheaper marginal decision than buying a new car. So too with our coal and nuclear fleet. Investors have spoken loudly by not building new plants, but they continue to run them for the simple reason that we haven't yet built anything else to replace them.
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amazingdrx Posted 8:36 am
11 Nov 2009
As in WW II when people pitched in and sacrificed for the war effort, we still have patriotic green citizens enough to acomplish this kind of national effort again.
Cure frequent outages with emergency backup storage in homes and those homeowners would be glad to cooperate. It would mean our vital home systems could still function during storm outage. During ice storms for instance, when we need heat, circulating pumps or furnace blowers would still keep our homes warm enough to keep us and the pipes from freezing.
Replacing frozen plumbing is a mortgage busting expense when one is on the edge of bankruptcy wondering when job loss or medical emergency will make a family homeless.
The growing storage, used with smart grid technology to smooth supply/demand mismatch, could gradually eliminate the need for "spinning reserve" (coal or nuclear turbines are kept spinning, producing no power, wasting fuel).
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Clifford Wells Posted 1:15 pm
09 Nov 2009
Along comes "alternative clean power" which really doesn't seem to be either a baseload or for peaking. It is just electricity, as everyone says. But the hidden agenda is that when alternative clean power comes online, the winds pick up or the sun shines or a new "geo" plant is added, you want the rest of the network to compensate. What that really can mean is that you want to shut down some baseload coal power plants that aren't needed then, something of that ilk.
This is where "smart grids" come to play. It is a computer programmers wet dream come true, all your outlets connected back to the generator sources so demand is measured instantaneously. I don't know of many that really work, and there is a great deal of opposition to smart grids, but that way, you can get power from alternative clean power when needed. The system can also "brown-out" your house if the load balancing is not equal, if you consume too much power, or don't pay your electric bill (nice touch). To confuse the issue even more, there are household smart grids, city smart grids, regional smart grids, and interstate smart grids, each of which can be very different with respect to data aggregation.
And no matter how you mince your words, it is simply connecting the consumer to a blend of base load, peaking, and clean alternate power.
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David Roberts Posted 1:54 pm
09 Nov 2009
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David Bradish Posted 2:30 pm
09 Nov 2009
Nearly all nuclear plant shutdowns are planned ahead of time and they're usually for scheduled maintenance or refueling outages. In 2008, US nuclear plants had a forced loss rate of only 1.3%. "This indicator measures a plants outage time and power reductions that result from unplanned equipment failures, human errors or other conditions when the plant is expected to be generating power."
Do you have any facts to support that wind/solar can be predicted with greater than 98.7% accuracy? Last I read, NERC was still helping the electric industry to develop forecasting tools that aren't quite all there yet (pdf). If wind/solar can be forecasted with 100% certainty, it still doesn't mean more electricity will be generated by them, though.
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Sean Casten Posted 2:50 pm
09 Nov 2009
To be clear, I'm not advocating for more nuke & coal - I'm just trying to make sure that we don't misrepresent their benefits in a rush to get rid of their costs.
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Bob Wallace Posted 11:49 pm
09 Nov 2009
The other two gigs, the intermittent stuff, take all the power generated when the farms are producing more than two gigs, store that third gig, and feed it back when output is between one and two "natural" gigs and now you have two baseload gigs from a wind farm.
OK, downsize a little for efficiency loss, say 15% for pump-up hydro. 1.85 baseload gigs.
And if you want to talk 24/365, no shut down reliable take away some more to equal that 15% "coal plant outage".
Perhaps 1.6 gigs of 100% 24/365 reliable power from 3 produced gigs of wind.
Now the great thing about that stored gig, it's despatchable. It can be stored up during off peak or when the tides are running strong, or when the sun is really shining and fed back into high demand times. (And you can store excess solar, tidal, whatever power the same way.)
Cost? Craig Severance calculates that wind generated electricity stored in a CAES facility would cost the grid about $0.13 per kWh. Dispatchable, low CO2 electricity for thirteen cents a kWh would seem to be attractive, would it not?
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Sean Casten Posted 1:38 pm
09 Nov 2009
1. David Roberts is absolutely right that there is nothing special about coal or nuclear-derived electrons. However, kilowatt-hours are only one of many things that the grid has to provide. It also has to provide voltage, precisely oscillating current, power factor stability (the relationship between the way that the voltage and current oscillate), peak capacity and any number of other ancillary services. Those services are not uniquely provided by coal/nuclear, but they are affected in different ways by different generation technologies/operating modalities. Broadly speaking, it's a lot easier to make sure the grid does all those other things well when it is relying on lots of baseload generation.
2. The point that Amory Lovins has often made, which I quite agree with (but I fear may be misrepresented here) is that these needs are usually met more cost-effectively by small generation sited near the load than by big remote plants. A power plant in your basement can deliver power with no distribution losses and with very little voltage/current distortion to your air conditioner motor. On the other hand, a remote generator must be over-sized to accommodate transmission losses, and must have a grid that has all sorts of protective features built into correct for all the ways in which that initial, pure, 60 cycle-per-second power tends to degrade as it runs through the system. This is one of the core arguments of "Small is Profitable", and quite accurately captures the fact that the local generator tends to invert many of the economy-of-scale benefits that we lazily ascribe to big central stations. It also goes to the crux of the argument that what we need to serve is our load, not our generation (e.g., our goal ought not to be to maximize the utilization of our existing fleet, but rather to serve our energy needs as cleanly and as cheaply as possible - even if it means shutting down central power stations.)
3. Those benefits are generally NOT realized by central power plants, no matter how much we may like to believe otherwise. The remote wind farm / CSP facility is also subject to all those distribution inefficiencies. And the superconducting smart grid can't make them go away. It is tantamount to arguing for lane additions on the interstate as a solution to traffic jams. Bigger pipes and less traffic congestion in the short-term, but it does not address the fundamental problem of a grid that preferentially places generation at sites that are a long way away from the load.
4. Not all intermittent generators have the same cost/benefit characteristics. As several commenters have noted, we have lots of gas-fired generators that operate intermittently, but they are brought on line when needed to provide grid support services. That is quite different from a intermittent renewable that comes on when the wind blows (which may or may not be coincident with when the power is most needed.) That gas plant can be confidently operated in a way to make the grid more reliable. The wind turbine cannot be operated in that way - and so it's installation requires that some other generation pick up the grid stability job. Put another way, the fact that it's always windy somewhere doesn't do anything to address the immediate problem of over-voltage in central Maine that is concurrent with under-voltage in southern Connecticut. Grid operators today faced with those challenges have to make real time decisions about which generators to shut on or off, which transmission sections to open/close, which DSM programs to call forward and - in the extreme case - where to start rolling blackouts. Wind conditions on the South Carolina coast during that moment is as relevant as traffic conditions on I-95 when you're stuck on I-80. Supergrids do not change that reality.
I fear I'm rambling too long here, but hopefully the larger point is clear that there is a big value in baseload generation, and an even bigger value in baseloaded local generation. By contrast, intermittent, remote generation creates real problems that we cannot wish away, nor solve with high-tech supergrids.
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grussell Posted 2:41 pm
09 Nov 2009
intensively for quite some time. I would urge Grist readers to have a look.
A series he is currently running is a useful leadin to the discussion.
http://bravenewclimate.com/category/tcase-series/
Also relevant is:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/16/solar-power-realities-supply-demand-storage-and-costs/
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HealthyHiker Posted 2:54 pm
09 Nov 2009
In the case of nuclear power, the raw materials alone pose cancer risk to workers and neighboring communities. Breast cancer among Navajo uranium mine workers is just one tragic example of the hazard nuclear raw materials pose.
Following the raw materials extraction is the risk that nuclear plants pose in their low level radioactive emissions and waste that cannot be disposed of safely.
Coal's problems have been well documented on Grist. Heavy metal contamination and acidification seem to be nearly unavoidable in coal production and in coal ash disposal.
Let's focus on reducing our energy consumption overall. Conservation needs to be the hallmark of our federal energy policy.
I also like the idea of harnessing human energy to power buildings (one example is bicycle powered electricity in gyms.)
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grussell Posted 8:22 pm
09 Nov 2009
I realised the nuclear industry isn't what it used to be. It hasn't stood
still for 30 years. I spent some months reading and reevaluating.
If you want to close down uranium mines and get rid of nuclear waste,
then paradoxically, a nuclear technology may be the best option.
IFR (Integral Fast Reactors) use nuclear waste as fuel and there is plenty
to run them for a long time (hundreds of years for the entire
planet).
My conversion from a lifelong opposition to nuclear is described
here:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/30/rethinking-nuclear-power/
As for radiation risks from reactors.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9509
Further information on IFR is available here:
http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power/
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/19/radiation-facts-fallacies-and-phobias/
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Biodiversivist Posted 10:19 am
10 Nov 2009
The Russians are presently designing two breeders to sell to the Chinese ostensibly based on the aforementioned reactor but nobody knows if they will be economical to run once the design inadequacies start coming to light.
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amazingdrx Posted 9:00 am
11 Nov 2009
A new R and D effort will need to be mounted, and not simply to recycle unused fuel, these reactors will need to neutralize waste with "fast neutron" reactions.
The industry should not be allowed to proceed with new reactors unless they both recycle and neutralize existing waste, are passively failsafe (with all power shut off anywhere in the operating cycle, the reactor shuts down safely), and they do not produce new nuclear waste or contamination problems.
This might take a decade ot two, given the fact that just permitting financing and building a known and approved design nuclear plant right now usually takes over a decade. That will be too late to head off climate change. Nuclear needs to go on the back burner, with R and D carefully directed to these new goals.
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kuke Posted 5:34 pm
09 Nov 2009
"Nuclear power stations and coal-fired power stations usually provide base load electricity - they are run all of the time because they take the longest time to start up."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/ocr_gateway/living_future/3_fuels_for_power_print.shtml
"An electricity supply system cannot be built out of base-load power stations alone. These stations take all day to start up from cold and in general their output cannot be changed up or down quickly enough to handle the peaks and other variations in demand. They also break down from time to time."
http://www.foe.org.au/resources/chain-reaction/editions/100/the-base-load-electricity-fallacy
Summer air-conditioning is the primary cause of peak demand in Australia often causing brownouts. Coal does a bad job of regulating this:
"Other generator types are even more expensive, and some, such as wind
generators, photo voltaic cells, brown and black coal generators are really not well suited to peak generation. "
"Curtailing demand is a far better alternative than building more infrastructure; its just that as a society we have been conditioned to think that if we use more energy then we need to build more power stations"
http://www.energyresponse.com/uploads/managing peak demand by m zammit.pdf
The best solution for us in Australia is to move to localised solar thermal to meet the directly proportional demand for peek air-conditioning during summer and use natural gas and increasingly geothermal to iron-out the troughs.
Coal and Nuclear simply don't cut it.
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wolfger Posted 6:34 pm
09 Nov 2009
I believe that the future is in more local production as is currently being instituted in Germany with residential cogeneration. The latest approach is residential heating with waste heat from small scale in-house generators remotely controlled. Since both the generator's waste heat and the generated electricity are being used, efficiencies in the high 90 percentile are achievable. Natural gas is the primary energy source so far.
http://reason.com/blog/2009/09/30/german-company-wants-to-genera
http://www.lichtblick.de
This approach seems to provide a great "base load" in winter but I don't know about summer when the hot water isn't needed as much. It could be a good transition approach.
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:44 pm
09 Nov 2009
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Sean Casten Posted 8:14 pm
09 Nov 2009
It is only partially an issue of cost. The larger issue is technical. Let's pick just one issue - that of power factor. You may recall from an early physics class way back when that power = volts x amps. In an alternating current system, the voltage oscillates back and forth (60 times per second in our 60 Hz system) between positive and negative voltage. That means that the current (the amps) must also oscillate at precisely the same frequency. (Electrical engineers speak in short hand of current "flowing" through a wire, but in our AC system, it is really more accurate to say that it oscillates; the electrons don't "flow" per se.) "Power factor" is a measure of how well the system is synchronizing the current and voltage oscillations.
This oscillation is fairly easy to manage in a rotating generator: poles in the generator windings are arranged such that as the generator spins at a constant speed, the voltage swings back and forth and current compensates. Unfortunately, everything else on the grid tends to screw up that perfect overlap. Motors cause current to accelerate relative to voltage. Capacitor banks do the opposite. In a perfect world, we'd have lots of small, synchronous generators scattered around the system to compensate. What we actually have is lots of capacitor banks and inductive coils that grid managers install to compensate, at significant cost and with efficiency penalties. Batteries of all types (sodium sulfur or otherwise) don't really help that, as DC sources. With power electronics, they can do some pretty neat things, but create other grid management challenges (harmonics, most notably) of their own.
In the interests of a blog post, I'm greatly simplifying, and only picking out one of many issues associated with grid management. Simple version (lest anyone think otherwise) is that electrical engineering is really freakin' complicated - and not something that is simplified with any single silver bullet. But broadly speaking, those issues are much more manageable if you have a large volume of baseload power providing a solid base for voltage, power factor and harmonics stability. You can still have smaller intermittent sources working within that context, but it's really hard to manage a system that is dominated by intermittent resources.
Perhaps the best analogy is to water. Give me the ocean and it's predictable wave pattern and I can confidently stand astern a boat, quickly figuring out how to adjust to the rhythm of the rocking boat, regardless of what else is going on in the ocean. Put the same boat in a lake and you find yourself having a much harder time as a gust of wind, small motor boat or falling tree branch disrupts the motion on the water surface. Our oscillating, AC grid is much the same way: it's a lot easier to manage if there is a big, coordinated wave pattern (baseload generation) than if many small systems are cutting in and out at random spots throughout. In theory, you could install some sort of a massive wave storage device that would store wave energy up on one cycle and disperse it when the waves lost their synchronicity, I suppose. But it's bloody hard... and that's essentially what your battery system would have to do.
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Clifford Wells Posted 8:47 pm
09 Nov 2009
LOL, I can remember living in Austin when the peaking gas turbines fired up on a very hot summer day, and circuits would start popping all over town. Harmonics? I'm not an E-E dude. The best thing Austin did was to pool power with their coal powered facilities, some natural gas units, some hydro from the Lower Colorado River Authority, and the South Texas Nuclear Project. Big baseload power is good, and served us well. Distributed power, or D-E, works best for sole users, remote places, or emergency stuff.
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:23 am
10 Nov 2009
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Sean Casten Posted 7:38 am
10 Nov 2009
There is nothing about heat recovery that is predisposed to AC or DC. The type of power made is a function primarily of generator technology (I use the word generator here in it's most precise sense: the thing that converts mechanical energy into electricity). Rotating generators, of the type that most of us are most familiar are naturally predisposed to AC power. Copper wires spin around magnets which are located at fixed positions within the generator stator causing voltages to cycle very predictably as the generator spins, passing positive and negative poles with each rotation. Thus, if you're using a piston-engine, a steam turbine, an organic rankine cycle, a gas turbine or any other rotating mechanical device, you are likely making AC power.
DC, by contrast is made most naturally from generators where you have a non-rotating source of energy - like a fuel cell, solar panel or battery - that is creating a steady current flow through a chemical (as opposed to mechanical) process. To be sure, it is possible to generate DC power from a rotating device - Nikolai Tesla developed rotating DC generators at the advent of the electric era, and if you have a device that does not naturally want to rotate at 1800 - 10,000 rpm or so, wherein you can gear to a 3600 rpm/2-pole or 1800 rpm/4 pole generator, it can be easier to generate DC. (This is why wind turbines - very slow rotation - and microturbines - very fast rotation - generate DC that must then be "inverted" to connect to our AC grid.) But in all cases, note that the AC/DC distinction is caused by the type of energy generated and speed of mechanical rotation - not by fuel selection or heat recovery.
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neosapiens Posted 9:47 pm
09 Nov 2009
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Sean Casten Posted 6:42 am
10 Nov 2009
But let's not lose sight of the fact that we do need baseload power. We used to get it from hydro, then we got it from coal and now we get it from a mix of coal and nuke. Maybe someday in the future we'll find another source (I'm personally rooting for CHP and recycled energy), but the future hasn't happened yet, and we do need a plausible bridge.
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David Bradish Posted 8:16 am
10 Nov 2009
And in those three decades, nuclear's capacity factor increased from the mid-50s to over 90 percent today. More electricity per plant on average comes from nuclear than any other source. As well, US nuclear plants have been able to supply about 20% of the US' electricity since the late '80s by keeping up with electricity demand. You call it lobbying, I call it presenting the facts.
No doubt the industry will be needing certain subsidies to grow again. Can anyone name one energy source that doesn't need subsidies but also thrive in competitive markets? I haven't found any.
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Sean Casten Posted 8:39 am
10 Nov 2009
That's an apples:oranges comparison. There is no doubt that nuclear is bloody cheap to run once it's built. So are solar panels. And if that was the only measure of a generation technology, we'd be awash in PV. We overbuilt all of our generation stock (not limited to nuke) in the 60s-70s, and saw the capacity factors of the whole fleet increase through the 80s-90s (to the great benefit of ratepayers, who were suddenly getting their average rate blended down by marginal production costs that didn't have to bear the costs of new capital amortization.) The key though is that nuclear per se doesn't deserve any great credit for that. Coal plant capacity factors also picked up during the period, for the simple reason that both had a lot of "room to give". If anything deserves credit for the nuke plant pickup, it's wholesale market deregulation that suddenly made it economically compelling to run the cheaper generators more often. To this day, if you want to know the capacity factor of your state's nuke fleet, look no farther than the restructuring status of your state. The much higher capacity factors that Exelon (IL) achieves relative to Southern Company (GA, AL) are not due solely to differential operator training, after all.
The question I'm much more interested in is whether investors judge that the profits of that technology are sufficiently compelling to invest in new assets - and in the case of nuclear, that simply hasn't happened. Quite the contrary: the companies (like Exelon) that have made a lot of money on nuclear have done so by buying assets on the cheap from distressed owners and then running them better - not by building new plants. And now that the fleet is at 90% capacity factor, it's ability to keep up with future load growth is contingent upon investors making new investments. Understanding nuclear's challenges going forward require us to ask why those investments haven't been made, not wash them away because of the capacity factor gains earned at the expense of a prior generation's overbuild.
To be clear, I am not as critical of nuclear as many on this website; but I don't think that it's a silver bullet any more than PV is a silver bullet. If our goal is for all technologies to compete on their merits, then let's allow that to happen. If our goal is to subsidize some technologies at the expense of others, then let us be absolutely clear about why that technology-specific subsidy is justified. Far too often, those subsidies confuse goals for paths and impose massive economic inefficiency on our capital allocation processes.
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David Bradish Posted 9:20 am
10 Nov 2009
I'm not here claiming nuclear is a silver bullet either. It certainly isn't perfect. I'm just here to challenge the conventional thinking that nuclear is bad and renewables are oh so good.
If our goal is to subsidize some technologies at the expense of others, then let us be absolutely clear about why that technology-specific subsidy is justified.
The main subsidy the nuclear industry is asking for are loan guarantees. Much of the reasons why nuclear plant costs increased in the '80s was due to licensing delays and regulatory uncertainty from the NRC. Since much of the risk in building new plants lies with the federal regulator, it's not much to ask that the federal government bear some of the risk. Here's from our link that explains more:
The loan guarantee program is self-funded through loan guarantee fees charged to participants. A well-managed loan guarantee program will cost the taxpayers nothing, but will create significant value by increasing the country's energy supply and reducing emissions.
Renewables currently have more loan guarantee volume at their disposal than nuclear. NEI added it up.
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Bob Wallace Posted 10:02 pm
14 Nov 2009
No, accepting risk has a cost. That's just basic Finance 101.
There is significant risk in building nuclear plants. Just look at what Moody's had to say when they warned municipalities that becoming engaged in nuclear construction could severely damage their credit/bond ratings.
And look what happened back 30 or so years ago when companies walked away from around 100 nuclear projects and left the US taxpayers holding the bag for millions and millions of dollars which had used to pay the loans which had been guaranteed.
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tomlewis Posted 6:17 am
10 Nov 2009
1) As long as we have a grid, however "smart," we're going to have dumb greed trying such things as wheeling -- surging enormous amounts of current around the grid from cheap production to expensive consumption -- as the boys of Enron demonstrated.
2) As long as we try to make the grid work, we are accepting unacceptable levels of risk, because all economies of scale (accomplished by enormous generating stations) also concentrate risk, and waste. The only solution that can save us from the accumulating consequences is making our electricity where we use it. Renewable isn't sustainable if it's industrial. I have more on this at http://thomasalewis.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/renewable-is-not-sustainable/#more-140
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Gene Preston Posted 8:48 am
10 Nov 2009
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Bob Wallace Posted 11:35 am
10 Nov 2009
And there is something interesting happening in the Southwest. Sounded at first to me like another one of those interesting ideas with not much more than a Photoshopped image for support. But it actually seems to be going forward...
"The Tres Amigas Project would act as a hub to connect the three major electricity grids in the U.S. and a conduit for solar and wind power, according to a press release. New Mexico governor and former energy secretary Bill Richardson is expected to lay out the details of the plan at a press event in Alburquerque, N.M.
The U.S. has substantial renewable energy potential, such as wind power from the Midwest and solar in the southwest, but the bulk of electricity demand is far away from those resources. To take full advantage of the available renewable energy, more transmission lines need to be built, said Tres Amigas CEO Phil Harris, who used to head PJM Interconnection, the largest grid operator in the U.S."
They are talking costs of one billion to be able to move 5 gigawatts around the nation. Chump change.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10373880-54.html
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neosapiens Posted 2:09 pm
10 Nov 2009
"New nuclear plants could save carbon, but two to 20 times less per dollar and 20 to 40 times less per year than the market winners — micropower and efficiency" (Amory Lovins).
http://www.rollcall.com/features/Mission-Ahead_Copenhagen/ma_energy/40317-1.html
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Bob Wallace Posted 10:23 pm
14 Nov 2009
Here's a bit from Wikipedia...
Notable Breeder Reactors
Experimental Breeder Reactor I (U.S., decommissioned 1964, world's first electricity-producing nuclear power plant)
BN-600 (Russia, end of life 2010)[12][13]
Clinch River Breeder Reactor (U.S., construction abandoned in 1982 because the US halted its spent-fuel reprocessing program and thus made breeders pointless)[14]
Monju (Japan, being brought online again after a serious sodium leak and fire in 1995)[15]
Superphénix (France, closed 1998)[16]
Phénix (France, operational since 1974, stopped its grid electricity production as of March 2009, prior to decomissioning)[17][18][19]
And Britan's breeder is being decommissioned as we speak....
http://www.dounreay.com/news/2009-11-09/fast-breeder-was-britains-man-on-the-moon-moment
They're kind of like pebble bed reactors, sounded good on paper, but not so good when tried in the real world....
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Gene Preston Posted 11:11 pm
14 Nov 2009
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Gene Preston Posted 10:08 am
16 Nov 2009
* This is a stupid argument. All it takes is ONE counter example to prove the point.
* We know building fast reactors is hard. So focusing on the failures doesn't prove it can't be done.
* Russia's experience proves it can be done commercially. Their fast reactor has been operating for decades serving commercial power. And their fast reactors are among their best performing.
* And whilst the BN-600 is scheduled to close in 2010, the upgraded BN-800
(880 MWe) will replace it, with a further two units sold to China and
scheduled to begin construction within the next 3 years.
* Also, none of the units he cited are the IFR -- none use metal fuel or
pyroprocessing. Indeed, he/she failed to cite EBR-II!
* The SuperPhenix reactor, after a few years of start-up
problems, was finally working very nicely when it was shut
down entirely for political reasons.
* The Phenix unit, a low-power semi-experimental
reactor, worked pretty well for 35 years.
* The sodium fire at Monju did not damage the reactor or
hurt anyone. The mess was soon cleaned up, but the reactor
was kept off line for years by a combination of political reasons
and management snafus.
* But the main reason the post is nonsense is that IFR technology makes it a new ball game.
* Someone from our group should put together decent wikipedia entries. Some anties go in and edit the various relevant entries to put a particular spin on the message. We need someone to correct those misleading entries.
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Bob Wallace Posted 10:59 am
16 Nov 2009
* We know building fast reactors is hard. So focusing on the failures doesn't prove it can't be done.
Lots of things we haven't yet done. Some of them will probably happen, some most likely not. Like pebble betd reactors, the true believers have a lot of faith but that faith hasn't exactly yielded a lot of results.
* Russia's experience proves it can be done commercially. Their fast reactor has been operating for decades serving commercial power. And their fast reactors are among their best performing.
To argue that anything built by the socialist Soviet Union is proof that "it can be done commercially" is highly suspect. Just as suspect as saying that nuclear energy is cheap because China is building some.
First, without an open and operating market system we don't know the actual costs. We don't know the hidden costs such as financing, labor costs, advantageous materials accounting....
* And whilst the BN-600 is scheduled to close in 2010, the upgraded BN-800
(880 MWe) will replace it, with a further two units sold to China and
scheduled to begin construction within the next 3 years.
China also has been working on pebble bed reactors and recently sort of admitted major problems. Again, just because someone is going to give it a try does not mean that it is something proven. We can't afford to base our transition away from fossil fuels on something that might work. We need to move forward with what has already been proved to work.
* Also, none of the units he cited are the IFR -- none use metal fuel or pyroprocessing. Indeed, he/she failed to cite EBR-II!
* The SuperPhenix reactor, after a few years of start-up
problems, was finally working very nicely when it was shut
down entirely for political reasons.
From Wikipedia. And make sure you read the last sentence...
"Power production was halted in December 1996 for maintenance. However, following a court case led by opponents of the reactor, on February 28, 1997 the Conseil d'tat (Supreme State Administrative Court) ruled that a 1994 decree, authorizing the restart of Superphnix, was invalid. In June 1997, one of the first actions of Lionel Jospin on becoming Prime Minister was to announce the closure of the plant "because of its excessive costs". Jospin's government included Green ministers; pro-nuclear critics have argued that Jospin's decision was motivated by political motives (i.e., to please his Green political allies) rather than rational considerations. However, the reactor did not produce electricity most of the time in its last ten years because of malfunctions[4] (in fact it was consuming substantial power to maintain sodium above melting temperature)."
* The Phenix unit, a low-power semi-experimental
reactor, worked pretty well for 35 years.
"Pretty well", is relative. "Pretty well" seems to have meant "sort of" in this case.
* The sodium fire at Monju did not damage the reactor or
hurt anyone. The mess was soon cleaned up, but the reactor
was kept off line for years by a combination of political reasons and management snafus.
Oh, yeah. No one died. No problem.
Near misses don't count.
I am so friggin' tired of hearing this from the nuclear fanboys.
* But the main reason the post is nonsense is that IFR technology makes it a new ball game.
There's always a new solution just over the horizon that is going to change the world. Fusion is only 20 years away. And has been for the last 50 years.
And do remember, even if IFRs can be made to work they only deal with spent fuel. They do nothing to clean up the 91 million gallons (345 million liters) of high-level waste left over from plutonium processing, millions of cubic feet of contaminated tools, metal scraps, clothing, oils, solvents, and other waste. And with some 265 million tons (240 million metric tons) of tailings from milling uranium oreless than half stabilizedlittering landscapes.
If we continue down the nuclear pathway we simply create more and more of this dangerous stuff for which we have no solution. We are currently "storing in place" hoping that someone will think of something. For every nuclear plant we build we create one more rot in place dangerous problem for those who follow us.
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wyrick Posted 9:24 am
10 Nov 2009
Baseload power plants provide reliability, but more importantly they provide reliability at a relatively cheap price per MWh by having high utilization factors. Sure we can utilize a large enough basket of renewable energy to supply more of the so called baseload demand, but at what cost? I see two general scenarios to accomplish this:
1) Utilize smart grid and demand management technology unproven at such a large scale to better match demand to supply. During the transition and most likely afterward, we will have to accept brownouts in less than critical applications, such as our homes. The inevitable increase in energy costs with less reliability will be a hard pill to swallow.
2) Utilize the current strategy of peaker generation (gas, cogen, batteries, etc) to cover the variability in generation and demand. Now lets use some numbers above and perform a thought experiment here:
-Assume a utility is mostly transmission isolated and has a peak demand of 1000MW. Also assume they have a basket of renewables with a capacity of 1000MW (on the best of days the utility is 100% renewable, YAY).
-As stated above for wind, this basket of renewables is large enough that 333MW is nearly always available for use around the clock even on the worst of days. In order to maintain the reliability we are use to, we have to cover the difference on the worst of days. That is 667MW of dispatchable generating capacity.
The maximum utilization of the entire portfolio would be 60%; not the best of investments in my opinion. The added environmental and economic costs of the excess capacity needed to maintain reliability would be relatively enormous. Additionally, the MWh cost from the dispatchable generation could be orders of magnitude more expensive as they are for current peaking plants. Imagine waking up tomorrow to find out that your electricity will cost 50 times what you expect.
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Jon Rynn Posted 9:54 am
10 Nov 2009
Argh 2 is, we could cut a huge part of baseload by installing geothermal heat pumps under all buildings, as I argued a while back. Much of baseload, in fact much of capacity -- particularly for peaking -- goes for air conditioning and heating, which geothermal heat pumps are exactly set to take care of. If you put solar panels on the buildings and some set of batteries in the building, you could completely take heating/cooling off the grid. But yes, that would also be very expensive, although I don't think it would be prohibitive.
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Bob Wallace Posted 11:49 am
10 Nov 2009
Hot rock geothermal - drilling a number of holes down to very hot but dry rock areas, pouring water down one hole and extracting the resulting steam from the others - is experiencing engineering problems. The holes need to be much larger than what are commonly drilled for gas and oil wells.
There are two companies that have promising new drills in development.
Here's one - Drilling with Fire and Flame...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090912144809.htm
And here's one which seems to be a bit further along - Drilling with Water...
http://thinkgeoenergy.com/archives/1358
--
The earthquakes? Minor. California and Nevada experience multiple tremors of the same magnitude every week.
We've known for 80-100 years that drilling can cause minor tremors based on oil well drilling.
--
And, yes, I agree with you on ground effect heating and aircon.
I expect that costs will drop as the technology improves. Right now costs make no sense to me.
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:15 pm
10 Nov 2009
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Gene Preston Posted 12:32 pm
10 Nov 2009
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Bob Wallace Posted 12:47 pm
10 Nov 2009
Sure, there are test holes that don't pan out. Are you willing to say that we can't drill for oil because some holes are dry?
BTW, early test holes for dry rock geo are being revisited. 'Back then' they found heat but not enough. Now with newer dual cycle turbines that lower heat might be economically harvested and added to the grid.
And, as for tremors, so far they have been very minor quakes and seem to be connected to introducing the fracking liquids into the holes.
The largest quake problems were in Bern, Switzerland where hot rock geothermal was installed in a known earthquake zone. It was a case of engineers and managers not doing due diligence.
Because of these tremors there will be a lot more pre-study done before holes are drilled and it's unlikely that we will try to drill any holes close to urban centers until more is known.
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Gene Preston Posted 1:25 pm
10 Nov 2009
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dhsu800 Posted 10:42 am
10 Nov 2009
Despite Amory Lovins' assertion that balancing the intermittentcy of wind power does not represent "a significant problem or cost", actual experiences doesn't seem to show this to be the case.
Previously, it was thought in Texas that the intermittency of wind would be balanced or averaged out over a sufficiently large area (i.e., the whole state). In 2008, a rather ordinary cold front showed that it was possible for wind to die in a correlated fashion over the entire state, causing brownouts:
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/02/28/no-breeze-the-day-the-wind-died-in-texas/
In another very different region, here in the Northwest, a significant amount of hydropower has to be allocated in order to back up intermittent wind resources. As Sean Casten pointed out (in his first comment), the BPA link and graph is pretty telling, and we will be dialing back one renewable just to use another.
http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
Finally, there is the issue of actually matching intermittent renewable supplies and demand. Not only do wind power supplies have significant temporal and geographic correlation, but so do end-use demands. For example, when everyone comes home, they turn on their lights and appliances and heat (or air conditioners) at around the same time.
There is no reason to think that the intermittency of wind power can be "easily" shaped to this load without significant investments in distributed storage, demand response, or spinning reserves like combustion turbines. Even though this is also a problem for "baseload" plants of any kind, to finish where I started, there's no reason to think that the answer is going to be any easier or more predictable with a statistically fluctuating, aggregated wind resource.
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Bob Wallace Posted 12:16 pm
10 Nov 2009
Whatever route we choose to get us off fossil fuels is going to cost significant money. The question, to me, is what is the fast, least expensive, and safest route?
Looking at the cost projections that Craig Severance has made we see that new nuclear should generate electricity at $0.17 to $0.22 per kWh plus operation and fuel costs.
http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nuclear-costs-2009.pdf
Wind with CAES storage should be around $0.13 per kWh.
We can build wind much faster. And it creates zero radioactive waste.
Cheaper. Faster. Safer.
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Gene Preston Posted 12:40 pm
10 Nov 2009
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dhsu800 Posted 12:49 pm
10 Nov 2009
I agree with you in that we should pursue the fastest, least expensive, and safest route.
Mainly, I'd say that both realism and research is going to be necessary before we can rule out any technologies. Nuclear is certainly hard to justify right now because of the costs and waste, no argument there. But given that it's carbon-free, I don't think it makes sense to rule it out, either. For example, according to this interesting report modeling the implications of energy storage, it could actually increase use of "baseload" plants because it allows easier shaping of that load to peak demand.
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy08osti/43510.pdf
P.S. I'm curious about where your estimate of cost for Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) comes from, simply because I am not familiar with many working facilities.
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amazingdrx Posted 10:08 pm
11 Nov 2009
Great way to cut through the capacity factor, fuel cost mess Bob. Per kwh cost! I discovered this too a few years back debating renewable energy haters.
Anyway, really great work, very inspiring watching you take on all comers. We're gonna win, we got physics on our side, hehey.
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Bob Wallace Posted 10:37 pm
11 Nov 2009
http://energyeconomyonline.com/Utility_Scale_Storage.html
-----------------
Here's a company that is planning on compressing air with wind turbines, skipping the electricity stuff.
Store the compressed air and then use it to produce dispatchable electricity. Dispatchable, I understand, is the most desired type of power at the moment.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10026958-54.html
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ghostlly Posted 11:15 am
10 Nov 2009
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Bob Wallace Posted 12:02 pm
10 Nov 2009
And hooray for them. A little bit of unspoiled land left for our children and grandchildren to enjoy. Man does not live by video game alone....
There are lots of untapped existing dams that can be converted to electricity producers. And even more important, lots more that can be converted to pump-up storage.
In addition, we are developing slow flow hydro which means consistent power feeds from rivers.
We're developing "run of the river" methods in which some water is extracted from a stream and used to generate power and then returned to the stream further down the hill. No dam needed, no fish run harmed.
We're developing tidal generators and due to the staggered time of tides along coasts that power approach 24/365.
Finally, don't forget that it is the environmentalist who supported wind, solar, tidal and all the other green energy methods in their infancy. It certainly wasn't Exelon and Florida Power and Light.
Why don't you send a thank you note to environmentalists?
They've been busy saving your bacon....
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Gene Preston Posted 12:28 pm
10 Nov 2009
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Bob Wallace Posted 12:55 pm
10 Nov 2009
"Nearly all the hydro power available has already been developed."
Here's a list of existing federal dams that are not currently producing electricity and are feasible converts to generators. It does not include state and private dams which would greatly expand the list.
http://www.usbr.gov/power/data/1834/Sec1834_EPA.pdf
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Gene Preston Posted 1:39 pm
10 Nov 2009
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amazingdrx Posted 9:19 am
11 Nov 2009
River current power generation is a huge untapped distributed power source too. Either underwater "wind" mill type devices in deep enough water or conveyor belt drive hydro-generator systems installed on existing concrete areas (these would not interfere with boats or wildlife).
Another great new hydropower source could be tapped by installing dams in the sides of rivers that drain flood water off into river lowlands (many former wetlands, now cities or farmland) then allow water to flow back through side dams further down the river when flooding subsides, turbines or conveyor belt dgenerators could then tap the flow both ways. Into and out of wetland resevoirs.
This would also restore aquifers and clean flood waters. Wind powered pumps could even be used to store hydropower in wetland resevoirs and move water back up the water gradient to wetlands further away from the river. Imagine the power and water conservation possibilities available in the large river systems, it's huge.
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Bob Wallace Posted 1:03 pm
10 Nov 2009
"Nuclear is certainly hard to justify right now because of the costs and waste, no argument there. But given that it's carbon-free, I don't think it makes sense to rule it out, either."
When talking about carbon-free we should be looking at carbon footprint over the complete lifecycle for sources of electricity...
A study done for the UK Parliament found the carbon footprint over the complete lifecycle in gCO2/kWh to be greater than 1,000 for coal, 5 for wind, 5 for nuclear.
Japan's Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry found 975 for coal, 29 for wind, 22 for nuclear.
Vattenfall reported for Sweden 980 for coal, 5.5 for wind, 6 for nuclear.
Vattenfall reported for Finland 894 for coal, 14 for wind, 10-26 for nuclear.
Wind causes CO2 release during construction. Making the steel and concrete, site preparation, road construction, etc. use fossil fuel.
Nuclear causes less CO2 release during construction but generally catches up or exceeds as fuel it extracted and refined.
Of course, one might want to factor in the years of coal burning avoidance that wind provides over nuclear. Let's say 60 year life for a coal plant, 16.6 per year times 10 years, 166 gCO2/kWh less for wind.
That would make wind significantly CO2 negative compared to nuclear.
BTW, solar comes in at more CO2 emitting than either wind or solar but 90% to 95% less CO2 emitting than coal.
Wind and nuclear equally low CO2.
Wind - cheaper, faster, safer....
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Gene Preston Posted 1:51 pm
10 Nov 2009
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Bob Wallace Posted 10:14 pm
14 Nov 2009
Nuclear can not be built for those prices any longer.
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Bob Wallace Posted 1:12 pm
10 Nov 2009
"I have learned that their plan is to completely burn up the nuclear waste until there is no long life waste at all. It requires a special kind of nuclear reactor that exists on paper but has not been tested."
I do believe that the Magic Electricity Producing Fairy exists on paper. I seem to remember seeing a picture of her supplying the entire grid with her magic wand. ;o)
Recycling nuclear fuel can be done. It doesn't return all the 'spent' fuel to use, it still leaves some waste behind.
And it does nothing, zero, nada for the tons and tons and gallons and gallons of non-fuel radio active waste that we've made in our plants and mines to date.
Here's a summary from National Geographic. And who do you trust more than National Geographic who furnished guys like you and me our titillation in our youth?
"What's to be done with 52,000 tons (47,000 metric tons) of dangerously radioactive spent fuel from commercial and defense nuclear reactors? With 91 million gallons (345 million liters) of high-level waste left over from plutonium processing, scores of tons of plutonium, more than half a million tons of depleted uranium, millions of cubic feet of contaminated tools, metal scraps, clothing, oils, solvents, and other waste? And with some 265 million tons (240 million metric tons) of tailings from milling uranium ore—less than half stabilized—littering landscapes?"
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0207/feature1/
Some of the spent fuel can be recycled.
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Gene Preston Posted 1:55 pm
10 Nov 2009
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Bob Wallace Posted 1:27 pm
10 Nov 2009
Here's Craig Severance's article on storage.
http://energyeconomyonline.com/Utility_Scale_Storage.html
Craig is a numbers guy and he describes himself as conservative. He's got a new article up today on the nuclear build question not being a left wing or right wing issue, but a financial issue.
http://energyeconomyonline.com/Nuclear_Not_Red_or_Blue.html
I think people who view the solution to our energy needs in association to their political leanings should consider putting the left/right stuff aside and think with their adding machines.
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Bob Wallace Posted 2:09 pm
10 Nov 2009
Show us that there is a significant waste problem with either wind or solar. You're starting to be a waste problem with your throwing unsubstantiated stuff into the comments.
BTW, wind and nuclear tie for CO2 emissions over complete lifecycle. Solar is some higher but less than 10% of coal.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf11.htm
Coal just friggin' needs to go away....
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Gene Preston Posted 4:22 pm
10 Nov 2009
I agree with you about coal going away. But we need to replace it with another source of 24/7 power and wind and solar aren't up to the task.
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Bob Wallace Posted 7:05 pm
10 Nov 2009
Studies show that windfarms average less than one bird death per year per turbine.
I would imagine that there are places where we shouldn't build wind farms due to migration patterns, but that is part of the permitting process these days. We learned that lesson long ago at Altamont.
And if environmentalists are fighting a wind farm in that site you might look to see if the fight is being made on actual collected migration data or if it's a bogus stance on their part. Even the best intended sometimes make mistakes.
Solar cell, actually silicon wafer manufacture does involve lots of nasty chemical, but the are contained in the processing system. We are not dumping them in preschool playgrounds.
You are misreading your linked post. It does not support your position.
Actually, I love this paragraph...
"Released last week by green technology watchdog Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, the report details the toxic nature of photovoltaic cell production and proposes that solar vendors take back spent panels for clean recycling."
What spent panels? Have you ever seen a solar panel that quit working, except for a few that were physically destroyed? Those puppies just keep on ticking....
Read back through the posts. Making solar and wind "baseload" via storage has been well explained.
Now, how about telling us that the Earth is flat....
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Karen Street Posted 3:05 pm
10 Nov 2009
Here's a question for a good number of people in this discussion: we depend on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the sources they depend on, to get our science information. Why not do the same for the policy recommendations? There were a number of assertions in here that were not peer-reviewed, let alone accepted by discernment over time. I have never seen Lovins assertions on nuclear power in a peer-reviewed journal.
The Italian and Spanish grids are 30 - 40% renewables? I went to World Nuclear Association to learn more.
Italy (http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/default.aspx?id=342&terms=italy): In 2007 local production was 314 billion kWh gross, 53.5% from gas, 12% from oil, 16% from coal and 12% from hydro. Imports of 45 billion kWh net (effectively, some 14% of its needs) are required, mostly nuclear power from France.
So 6.5% of production is unaccounted for and presumably comes from renewables including hydro and biomass.
Spain's numbers (http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/default.aspx?id=374&terms=spain): Power production in 2007 was 306 billion kWh gross, 18% of this from nuclear power, 24% from coal and 31% from gas.
That leaves 27% unaccounted for, so counting hydro and biomass, Spain does supply a lot of its electricity from renewables.
Italy is planning to build lots more nuclear power. Spain "plans" to close its current nuclear power plants but hasn't planned what will take its place.
That said, the basic points re base load have been dealt with.
A wind question: since all uber-plans for large scale deployment of wind power show it schlepped long distances, do those strongly in favor of local electricity oppose those plans?
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Bob Wallace Posted 6:06 pm
10 Nov 2009
Chernobyl was made in the Soviet Union.
Are you saying that worst practices in one country cannot be (and are not being) avoided in another?
BTW, China is opening a silicon ingot/wafer plant in Oregon. (They will assemble the panels in Mexico.) Do you think the Chinese will create big messes in Oregon?
And let's be fair to China. They are cleaning up their act. We made some terrible messes in our early days of making computer chip wafers.
--
Spain just had a nice windy weekend. They got 53% of their power from wind. The capacity that they had in 2007 is two years in the past.
Shipping long distance vs. local generation is going to be mostly a financial decision. It costs to ship power. It costs to build transmission. And even with best technology a little power is lost.
But there are times and places where power can't be generated locally. We couldn't generate locally even if we went all-nuke. Nuclear needs a water supply and there are places that can't supply reasonably priced volumes of water.
It will make sense to do a lot of rooftop solar in summer sunny places where hot day aircon stresses the supply. It will make less sense to install rooftop solar in places where sun is rare and hydro is abundant.
Buffalo's best source is Niagara-hydro, Chicago's is Great Lake and Great Plains wind, Tuscon's is solar. But they all will need some ability to import energy from time to time.
Take a look at Europe's SuperGrid. They are going to link solar from Spain, Italy, and North Africa, with wind from the Atlantic coasts, with geothermal from Iceland, with hydro from Scandinavia, with existing nuclear from France, with tidal from the UK and with whatever other stuff they install as they go along.
We might learn things from the rest of the world if we weren't so ethnocentric.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/01/solar-power-sahara-europe-desertec
Open the link and you can see a pretty picture....
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jfarmer9 Posted 7:20 pm
10 Nov 2009
You made an excellent point about peer review. Peer review allows for a discussion to push aside outlandish ideas and concentrate on the possible. What it can do for our countries energy debate is to make sure we do not invest our limited resources on the impractical. Can it really be said that America will get a second chance at this considering our current economic situation? I don’t think so. If we fail economic demands will once again make coal king for quite sometime.
You might notice that since you brought up peer review you will see the Bob Wallace’s and Amory Lovins’ running for the hills. It is very clear that this CASE study by Servance which Wallace loves to sight and has never been peer reviewed.
It is funny a thing how when you put the web and someone’s diatribe together many people think you have facts when in reality you only have ones aspirations. It has always amazed me how ones beliefs makes ones perception. All I have to say is thank god for peer review. It is the time tested way to keep intellectual debates honest and on point. Let’s hope our Senators and Representatives will base their decisions on peer reviewed evidence and not hopeful speculation. As for my own aspiration I will add this
Viva the Nuclear Renaissance,
Jfarmer9
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Bob Wallace Posted 7:28 pm
10 Nov 2009
I live in the hills. Why would I be running there?
Have you read Lovins' articles? Probably not, otherwise you would know that they are well supported with published research.
But, if you have read Lovins or Severance, can you point out significant factual errors?
And you might notice that there is a post from me right after Karen posted and over an hour before you accused me of running.
Oh, and I hope you enjoyed the nuclear renaissance.
I think it's already over...
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David Bradish Posted 5:26 am
11 Nov 2009
There are tons of significant factual errors with both of their analyses.
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jfarmer9 Posted 7:45 pm
10 Nov 2009
You are right there is a cost when transporting power and that cost is the loss of power from point A to point B. If Pickens ever again found it economically feasible (i.e. .. more government subsides in the form of tax credits or mandated usage) to start up his Midwest wind farms only 7% of the electrons would be able to make it to the costal areas.
I noticed that you sighted the new proposed Euro grid. I wonder if this is included in Craig Severance non peer reviewed estimates of wind power “with CAES storage..”that”..should be around $0.13 per kWh.” By the way Bob how does one comes up with dollar figures for the cost of an unknown technology like CASE? You can’t say that yours and Craig Severance advocacy of wind power did not influence these numbers.
Jfarmer9
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Bob Wallace Posted 8:06 pm
10 Nov 2009
Pickens was hoping that the being built HVDC transmission line would be close enough to his site for him to hook up.
Pickens, I don't believe, ever projected building the line himself. Since the line is taking a different route he is downsizing the number of turbines at that particular Texas site and looking for other locations around the nation where transmission either exists or is scheduled to be installed.
Obviously you don't understand HVDC when you say "only 7% would be able to make it". In fact, only 7% or so would be lost. Read up, please. Wikipedia can help you.
CAES is a known technology. There are two operating sites in the world, one in the US. There is a new CAES installation underway in Iowa and PG&E is planning one in California. Interestingly the existing CAES facilities make money by buying cheap low demand power and selling it into peak hours. There are many pump-up hydro facilities that earn profits using the same model.
Craig's articles are on line. Read them yourself and find out how he generates the numbers. And let us know if you find errors.
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jfarmer9 Posted 8:08 pm
10 Nov 2009
The fact is Lovins and I suspect you are one the few remaining anti-nukes left in this country. Or have you not heard about Stewart Brand seeing the light. I don’t know your beliefs but Lovins has on one or more occasion stated his support for king coal over that of nuclear power. Hey, I am not solely blaming old man Lovins for the deaths of thousand of Americans via particulate air pollution produced by coal. I am sure others are also responsible for caring the king coal’s banner.
So I guess you can say there is one factual thing that I find wrong with Lovins reasoning. And that is I don’t like how he has helped king coal kill thousand upon thousands of Americans.
Let’s save the planet with 500 new nuke plants now,
Jfarmer9
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Bob Wallace Posted 8:17 pm
10 Nov 2009
"So far geothermal has not made much progress. When do you think we will begin to see some real projects come on line? By real project I am talking about 1000 MW, not some little piddly 5 MW plant."
Here's a bit of info for you from Wikipedia...
"The first commercial geothermal power plant producing power to the U.S. utility grid opened at The Geysers in California in 1960, producing eleven megawatts of net power. The Geysers system continues to operate successfully today, and the complex has grown into the largest geothermal development in the world, with an output of 750 MW."
"The Geysers has 1517 megawatt (MW)[5] of active installed capacity with an average capacity factor of 63%."
So the opener was "2x piddly". And the largest US site kicks out 750 MW. I'd say we're there.
As of August '08 the US had more than three gigawatts of installed geothermal with 103 more sites being developed.
And we have seen a lot, a very lot, of new startups this year.
And, just so you understand why geothermal is taking off....
"This quotation was from a March, 2009 article from http://www.scientificamerican.com "The newest report, from international investment bank Credit Suisse, says geothermal power costs 3.6 cents per kilowatt-hour, versus 5.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for coal.""
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy_in_the_United_States#Plants
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Gene Preston Posted 5:04 pm
12 Nov 2009
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Bob Wallace Posted 9:30 pm
14 Nov 2009
Dry rock is being held up by drilling problems. One needs larger diameter holes for dry rock than for oil/gas wells and simply upsizing conventional style drill bits doesn't work well. The bits tend to get stuck and prices soar.
There are two new approaches which have been proved in pilot/lab type studies which are now on their way to real world tests.
One is from Potter Drilling which uses extremely hot water to cause spallation in rock.
http://thinkgeoenergy.com/archives/1358
The other uses heated oxygen, ethanol and water to induce a steep temperature gradient in rock causing spallation.
The heat from the flame causes the rock to crack due to the induced temperature difference and the resulting linear thermal expansion
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090912144809.htm
Dry rock is particularly interesting as it can be installed close to point of use minimizing transmission costs.
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Bob Wallace Posted 8:35 pm
10 Nov 2009
Even the major nuclear companies in the US such as Exelon and Entergy say that nuclear is too expensive to build. Duke recently updated their cost estimates for their new plant and pushed off the construction start date until some unstated date at least three years out.
The CEO of Exelon says that he can't see more than four new nuclear plants, at most, being built in the next decade and Exelon isn't going to build any of them.
That's #1, #2, and #3 out of the business of building new.
Ontario and San Antonio recently got some "no tricks, no risk" bids for new nuclear and said "No thank you".
As far as I can tell only Southern is moving forward with new construction in the US and I read a quote today by their CEO that sounded like he was having second thoughts.
Exelon is moving into solar for their new construction investments. Interesting, eh?
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Bob Wallace Posted 9:01 pm
10 Nov 2009
Southern, as you know from my previous post, might build a couple of reactors in the next several years. But today Southern broke ground on a new biomass electricity plant in Texas.
It's a 100 MW plant, not very big, but smaller might be sweeter when it comes to biomass as it would cut the distance fuel would have to be transported. It's going to run largely on wood waste from the surrounding area. (We've got one running here on sawmill waste.)
Price between $475 and $500 million. Time to completion about 32 months. Not a dissimilar to the construction cost of nuclear, but very much faster which greatly reduces the overall cost.
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Jon Rynn Posted 8:34 am
11 Nov 2009
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Karen Street Posted 9:22 am
11 Nov 2009
I don't know that most progressives are anti-nuke, not any more.
Of those who were anti-nuclear power a year ago, quite a few told me that they changed their mind after reading this article:
with footnotes: http://www.quaker.org/fep/FJ-Nuclear-Energy-Debate.html
without: https://www.friendsjournal.org/nuclear-energy-debate-among-friends-another-r
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amazingdrx Posted 10:46 am
11 Nov 2009
The power generated in the meanwhile is welcome as a replacement for coal.
The question is: will the industry put up with real regulation and R and D on a new mass producible "fast neutron" reactor design that can be retrofit into existing nuclear power plants so that the waste can be recycled and neutralized onsite?
Build out of "self"(un)regulated nuclear power in its present form is unacceptable. This generation needs to cleanup it's nuclear mess.
Nuclear industry leaders, lobbyists, and bought and paid for legislators and "regulators" will need to come around to save nuclear power. So far I see zero movement on their part, for instance, huge nuclear booster John McCain won't even accept nuclear waste transport through Arizona, but he is still in favor of a waste repository?
Just ignoring the waste and contamination is not an option, onsite waste cleanup must be the central feature of any new generation of nukes.
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Bob Wallace Posted 11:05 am
11 Nov 2009
Information is rapidly spreading through the community on how we solve our energy problems for less money, quicker, and safer without building any new nuclear.
And even the people who are major sellers of nuclear energy are quickly backing away from building new plants. The number one, two, and three largest nuclear companies have pulled out of plant construction.
The two largest, Exelon and Entergy have no plans to start a new build in the next decade but are leaving the door open if things change 10-20 years from now. Duke Power has pushed off the start of their new build for at least three more years.
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:40 pm
11 Nov 2009
We ought to be pouring money into all kinds of different alternative energy systems, and if it isn't too expensive, probably IFRs, but maybe that's too expensive, I don't know. But Obama is about to send more troops to Afghanistan, and between them the military and health care insurance companies are going to chew up about a quarter of the GDP. If there was lots of money to throw around on infrastructure, and you also didn't have the financial industry feeding at the trough, then ironically it might actually be better for the nuclear energy industry. But it might actually work out better, in a way, for the wind and solar industry to have dribs and drabs of capital available, because they're much easier to scale incrementally than nuclear. In other words, it's easier to build up to a billion or two dollars in wind farms, by just adding a few here and there, then to say you'll spend so many billions on a nuclear reactor.
That's why you need "socialism" to build nukes. It's very capital-intensive. You couldn't build the Interstate Highway System without the government doing it, and you couldn't build a French nuclear industry without the government doing it. I have always advocated trillion dollar governmental spending to upgrade the infrastructure to be green and effective, and if you're interested in nuclear construction, you're going to have to make that part of your pitch, me thinks.
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Sean Casten Posted 1:54 pm
11 Nov 2009
Good points, but I want to highlight a point that (I think) you are making about markets and wind. And if I've over-connected dots for you, my apologies in advance!
The fact that private investors are building wind ought not be taken as proof that non-socialist markets favor wind. Quite the contrary: Wind would not be built but for technology-specific tax credits, RPS incentives and subsidized transmission/grid-support services that are all a long way from market purity (in the sense that many technologies that create the same or greater social benefits as wind but do not benefit from the same technology-specific incentives have not been built, not out of some market-ideal, but simply because the extra-market incentives flowed disproportionally.)
Note that this is a larger problem than wind, and perhaps even larger than energy markets: markets that are set up to clear at the marginal cost of production by definition do not provide an incentive to invest new capital - the reason that no one is building new power plants in response to RTO/ISO energy and capacity prices is fundamentally the same reason that no one is building steel mills in response to wholesale steel costs. Namely, because if that's the extent of your revenue, the return on invested capital sucks.
Enter RPS markets, production tax credits and numerous implicit & explicit grid subsidies to facilitate a greater revenue flow to wind assets which has driven investor behavior accordingly. To the extent that our goal was to build wind, they worked. But the mechanism is a long way away from a purely "market" approach.
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amazingdrx Posted 9:32 am
11 Nov 2009
It seems to actually be a helpful influence? Is that some sort of sign that the cultural/political meme is shifting our way? Re-frame it and they will come..around, hehey.
The discussion re-framed into a green jobs and manufacturing initiative to let US compete on a global scale again and free our economy up from the weight of periodic imported energy price spikes, the usual denier/delayer talking points fall to the floor and wriggle, gasping for air.
I think the secret is to not reply directly to trollishness, simply reply to a cooperative commentor, and refer to the talking point in passing only. Passing on to a positive addition to the dialectic.
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Bob Wallace Posted 2:15 pm
11 Nov 2009
"The fact that private investors are building wind ought not be taken as proof that non-socialist markets favor wind. Quite the contrary: Wind would not be built but for technology-specific tax credits, RPS incentives and subsidized transmission/grid-support services that are all a long way from market purity..."
Explain to me why non-socialist markets would choose to build nuclear or coal plants when they can build wind farms that produce electricity for roughly $0.05 per kWh before any subsidies?
You're not suggesting that someone could build a coal or nuclear plant and sell the power for a nickel are you?
--
Yes, there is a roughly $0.02 per kWh feed in tax credit for wind. That was necessary to get wind manufacturing built up to a minimal level.
That's no longer needed, but the extraordinary profit (that's an economics term, not a value judgement) creates additional movement of additional players into the game which the government thinks a very good thing for getting us off fossil fuels.
Same for assisting wind farms by helping to build transmission lines. It's money invested by the government up front in order to give us access to cheap power for generations to come.
----
And, can someone tell me why sometimes I get "Reply" buttons and sometimes not? Site bug?
EDIT:
Here's a possible hint. When I entered this conversation and posted this unedited comment I got here from clicking on an email notification link.
When I posted this comment and the page refreshed I got the Reply buttons.
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Sean Casten Posted 2:54 pm
11 Nov 2009
I quite agree that unfettered markets wouldn't build coal or nuke either. That's why I said that this problem is bigger than wind. I make the comment from the perspective of looking holistically at the whole energy sector and noting that no one anywhere is building anything (clean, dirty or somewhere in between) in response to pure market signals; wholesale power prices, where they exist have done a great job at rationalizing dispatch order, but have done nothing to encourage new investment, for the simple reason that they aren't big enough. (Pick any technology: the ~$50 - 60/MWh you get on most energy markets nowadays plus the $5 - 10/kW-month you can get on capacity markets just aren't enough.)
Wind's notable investment success has come in lieu of those markets, not because of them. It's earned production tax credits (the $0.02/kWh you mention), but also RPS rules that have facilitated long-term PPAs with utilities who do not have an incentive to pay PPAs at those same prices with other comparably clean - but not RPS-sanctioned - technologies, and an awful lot of grid support services, from the spread of transmission expenses across the rate base to the voltage support provided by other systems during outages (which started this whole thread)!
That to me suggests not that we attack wind, and I hope you didn't take my comments in that spirit. Rather, it suggests that we need to take a hard look at what market tools that are designed to drive costs down to the margin are reasonably expected to do. Let's not presume that a market as heavily regulated as our electric sector ever builds things for "pure market" reasons. And at a bigger level, let's not fall into the trap of confusing the presence of private investments with proof of a perfect market.
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Bob Wallace Posted 4:31 pm
11 Nov 2009
First, tell me what market is "pure". Perhaps the tomatoes at our local farmer's market, but that might not even be true. One of the stands might be able to sell for less because the farmer has an outside job. ;o)
I suspect that market expectations are one of the driving forces behind the wind build out. I think the market has a very high expectation that there is going to be some cost added to carbon and when that happens they are going to be able to make very good money off of underselling coal.
The feds and various state governments are sticking thumbs in various places on the scales, but there's also some pure market in the mix.
Part of the reason, perhaps most of the reason, that private money is quickly backing away from new nuclear is that they look at the time to construct and then the time to payoff before a profit stream begins. We're talking a lot of years.
Then when they look at what is happening to the cost curves of renewables they realize that they would be incurring some very large risks tying up all that cash for so long when there are other suppliers who could quickly cut the market out from under them.
That's why, I think, nuclear folks are asking for huge government loan guarantees. I suspect that they are thinking that if, say, concentrated solar with storage or wind with CAES/pump-up hydro drop below $0.15 they can walk away and leave the taxpayer holding the bag.
Remember, we've seen that scenario play out before a few decades back...
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Sean Casten Posted 7:36 pm
11 Nov 2009
By pure, I'm referring to the Econ 101 definition: no barriers to entry, no barriers to exit, perfectly transparent costs/prices, all societal benefits are reflected in cost/value, etc. It's an ideal that almost never exists, I realize. But the point to keep in mind is that the entire premise of economic theory only applies in the cases where those conditions are met. Which in turn means that if we're going to talk about people "rationally allocating capital in response to market signals", we are only talking about these idealized markets.
It's a perspective that - in my experience - responsible economists and policy makers appreciate. And in turn appreciate that their role is primarily to identify ways in which market rules can be modified to more closely approximate that perfect ideal. Unfortunately, those responsible folks are the exception. The much more common approach is found by the "if it's such a good idea, someone would have done it already" crowd. (e.g., if technology x is being deployed by technology y is not, it must mean that technology x is innately more valuable, and who are you to question the market's innate wisdom?) That latter perspective - while prevalent - confuses the facts of economic theory (in a perfect market, capital is rationally allocated) with the dream of economic theory (all existing capital has been rationally allocated).
Apropos of the wind comment, my point is simply that we not confuse capital allocation processes in a distorted market with some idea of market perfection. Wind is what is getting deployed in a highly distorted market - but let's not therefore conclude that it is being deployed in response to some supreme market wisdom. I quite agree with you that the nuclear crowd would like more distortions to flow their way. So too with every other lobby. No one lobbies for pure, competitive markets, and there's no sense in us getting all moralistic about that. (Does anyone ask for regulatory changes that will give their competition a leg up?) So let's accept the ubiquity of that human foible - which in turn means not presuming that the distortions that have led to wind deployment are somehow more noble than the distortions that other lobbies want for themselves. Much more intellectually honest, I think, to ask what technologies would be favored by a completely level playing field, without prejudice to any particular outcome, and then ask what we can do to facilitate that outcome.
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Bob Wallace Posted 7:59 pm
11 Nov 2009
You are saying that currently wind is being built because of market distortions.
Those, I would guess would be the $0.018 feed in subsidy, and that entities other than the wind farms are building regional transmission lines? Any others?
If we were to remove that two cent distortion and charge transmission back to the farms do you think private money would start building nuclear which would have to command a $0.17 - $0.21 per kWh price?
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Sean Casten Posted 8:09 pm
11 Nov 2009
Probably not, but it's close. Nuke has higher capex, but also much higher capacity factor, and nearly comparable fuel costs (that is to say, near zero). Setting aside questions of externalities, that suggests that they ought to be pretty comparable. That said, nuclear has a pretty robust history of cost overruns while wind is much more predictable, so my guess is that on a completely level playing field, nuke would still lose out.
I want to be clear though that my point in all this is not to favor nuke over wind; it's simply to avoid us drawing conclusions about market preference based on current investment preferences. (After all, if we applied that same logic 30 years ago, we'd conclude that nuclear was unbeatable, right?)
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Bob Wallace Posted 9:12 pm
14 Nov 2009
That would be 1979. By 1977 the US had started walking away from nuclear as a source of affordable energy. It had become obvious that nuclear was an idea that wasn't going to work.
Three Mile Island in 1979 took us from a wakj to a full gallop.
We abandoned something like 100 nuclear projects around then. Taxpayers got stuck for millions of dollars for defaulted loans that had been guaranteed by the government.
(Federal loan guarantees for nuclear plant construction. Seems like I've heard something lately about that....)
But I'm nitpicking..... ;o)
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Bob Wallace Posted 8:59 pm
11 Nov 2009
And I can't make $0.05 per kWh and $0.17 - $0.21 per kWh approach anything like "pretty comparable". So, I'll agree, "nuke would still lose out."
Oh, that $0.05 for wind? That's the price of wind without the subsidy. With subsidy wind drops close to three cents.
And we haven't added in the existing subsidies for existing nuclear, such as non-reimbursed federal security, free liability insurance, a pass on waste disposal, cheap government fuel(?), and others?
--
Now, 30 years ago nuclear looked...
No, 40 years ago nuclear looked unbeatable. Too cheap to meter, we were promised.
By 30 years ago, even before Three Mile Island, the reality of what nuclear really costs had already soured the market.
Three Mile Island only sped the demise of a dying construction business.
Here's a bit of a very interesting read...
"A repeat of the financial fiasco of the 1970s and 1980s would be devastating. During that period, ratepayers and taxpayers were saddled with billions in extra costs when the industry was crippled: half of the reactors ordered were
cancelled or abandoned; those reactors that were completed took, on average, twice as long to build as originally planned and cost twice as much as originally estimated; four-fifths of the utilities that undertook nuclear
construction suffered large financial downgrades and all suffered substantial financial distress; and investments in new reactors resulted in spectacular bankruptcies of both investor-owned and publicly-owned utilities."
http://evworld.com/currents.cfm?jid=47
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Bob Wallace Posted 10:23 pm
11 Nov 2009
Here's the brief version...
http://www.vermontlaw.edu/Documents/11_03_09_Cooper-All_Risk_No_reward__Issue_Brief_1.pdf
And here's the full report if you like to dive in...
http://www.vermontlaw.edu/Documents/11_03_09_Cooper All Risk Full Report.pdf
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Sean Casten Posted 7:15 am
12 Nov 2009
I think you're confusing costs vs. what it takes to build. I don't dispute that the cost of wind is $0.05/kWh, or maybe even less. But that doesn't matter if it's insufficient to build it. I know of no examples where anyone built a new wind turbine in response to a 5 c/kWh electric contract. (At $2000/kW and a pretty generous 40% annual capacity factor, 5 c/kWh revenue pays $175/kW/year, or a 6% return over 20 years. No one builds new generation for that kind of money, wind or otherwise.)
To be sure, no one builds nuke for that kind of money either, coming back to my larger point: we are building wind right now not because of some holistic evaluation of fundamental value, but because you can earn revenues of $0.12 or higher once RECs and PTCs are factored in, getting to the kind of returns that are necessary to pull the investment forward, effectively getting rates that are above US retail rates ($0.095/kWh), but without having to bear the transmission and other grid support costs.
The key isn't that I'm disputing your 5 cent number - simply that no one builds assets of any type for cost recovery alone; they also want capital recovery and profit. Wind, somewhat uniquely, and due to a lot of wind-friendly regulation, is able to get rates high enough to cover costs and give investors a healthy return on their investment. Not so for many other technologies, for reasons that have as much or more to do with regulation than inherent economics.
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:42 am
12 Nov 2009
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Sean Casten Posted 7:54 am
12 Nov 2009
Where an opportunity exists to earn competitive returns on investment (say, 15%+), the private sector will rush in, put money at risk and you and I will benefit regardless of whether or not they earn those returns. (Witness Calpine's bankruptcy: they didn't earn the returns they were looking for when they built all those gas plants, but the assets are still there, and providing electricity for many today in spite of the fact that their investors lost their shirts; in essence, we got the benefit of the asset without the cost of the liability. Ditto for many of the nuke plants that were built in the 60s/70s and never delivered on their anticipated returns.) By contrast, if government is going to step in and put that $ up at risk, you and I - and our kids - bear the costs if those investments don't deliver as promised. (In financial speak, returns are meaningless independent of risk, and there is no such thing as a risk-free investment. 6% is the number in the spreadsheet if there are no capital cost overruns, the wind delivers as promised, maintenance schedules keep the system on line for 20 years, etc. Many ways to miss that target.)
This matters because the numbers here are massive, well in excess of government's ability to provide. We have about 1000 GW of generation in this country. How much do we want to replace with wind (or whatever other technology you favor)? 20%? 50%? Let's say 30%, just for illustrative purposes. That's 300 GW, or 300,000,000 kW. At $2000/kW, that's a $600 billion investment. That's a big number, even for the government. Yeah, we just dropped that much on bank bailouts, but not without understandable concern about the impact on deficits, and as far as I can tell, there's no appetite to regularly commit government resources of that size, for pretty good reasons.
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:00 pm
12 Nov 2009
As for deficits, my newest Brilliant Idea is that, in order for an issue to be Serious, it has to massively increase the deficit. Apparently wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and financial bailouts, are Serious, so deficits be damned. Health care is not Serious, so it can't add "one cent" to the deficit, as our President said. So I say, if global warming really is serious, it should add trillions to the deficit. Which leads me to a different rant, which is, it actually doesn't have to be a deficit if the government prints the money as legal tender, instead of borrowing it from the Federal Reserve and paying interest on it...after all, money should reflect created wealth, and new wind systems, for instance, are real wealth...
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Bob Wallace Posted 8:58 pm
14 Nov 2009
According to AWEA that 5 cent average includes capital costs, debt service, maintenance, operational cost, and land leases.
They quote 3.6 cents for large wind farms in best sites.
Now, those are 2005 numbers and may be somewhat higher in the last year or two as the scarcity of turbines has allowed manufacturers to raise prices. (Which should be a temporary blip as additional manufacturing comes on line.)
And, yes, it is a cost of production figure. It does not include profit.
But for terms of this discussion it seems that cost of production is the most relevant number. We are discussing how the US, and the world, should spend limited funds to replace fossil fuels.
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ghostlly Posted 6:42 am
12 Nov 2009
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amazingdrx Posted 8:24 am
12 Nov 2009
Wind powered pumps storing energy behind existing dams and in new resevoirs, established in river wetland flood zones that were drained for agriculuture, would be a stabilizing addition to a national power grid and also help restore depleted aquifers.
Increasingly severe climate change related drought and flooding will mandate much better water management and conservation. Energy storing wetland resevoirs that refill aquifers could be the key to facing glacial melt and the drying up of traditional international water supplies.
Think of a nation like India, not to mention the US southwest, where will their water supply come from once glaciers dissapear? Flood waters will need to be captured, purified, and stored in wetland resevoirs and aquifers. Glaciers and a very few insufficient man made resevoirs are our storage now, climate change will end that in a few short years.
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Gene Preston Posted 11:18 pm
14 Nov 2009
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Gene Preston Posted 11:14 pm
14 Nov 2009
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dalbert Posted 4:19 pm
14 Nov 2009
The article proposes that wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world's energy, eliminating all fossil fuels -- that includes transportation fuels as well as electricity. Once we overcome the sunk cost of our existing energy systems, the proposed wind, water and solar systems would actually cost less (the fuel is free). The greatest obstacle identified in the article is political will. Shortages of specialty materials must be overcome -- some potential technical workarounds are mentioned. Certainly, it makes sense to pursue a plan like this aggressively, rather than sit back and speculate that we won't be able to do it. Use water, wind and solar energy sources in sustainable communities with mass transit, Vehicle to Grid, net-zero energy buildings, and aggressive energy conservation, and we are there.
Our current (and unsustainable) throwaway consumer and car culture is less than 100 years old. We are blinded by our own preconceptions -- the systems we depend on now are not the only possibility. Burning fossil fuels has brought unprecedented disaster to our grandchildren. We must transition quickly to sustainable energy sources and land use, or risk leaving an unlivable planet for future generations. This will require original thinking, and global cooperation. Read the article carefully, and tell me "why not?"
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Gene Preston Posted 10:26 pm
14 Nov 2009
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Bob Wallace Posted 10:44 pm
14 Nov 2009
Come on Gene. Have you no intellectual integrity?
J&D perform an analysis of how much renewable power we have worldwide and offer an example of what we might build to harvest it.
Building where and when is not part of their analysis.
BTW, you seem to have a bug up your butt regarding CA.
Tell me, which is likely to meet more resistance in CA - beefing up the Pacific Intertie, Intermountain, and some other transmission lines as well as building a few new lines?
-OR-
Building a bunch of nuclear plants?
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Bob Wallace Posted 10:32 pm
14 Nov 2009
Here's a study showing the existing Federal dams that could be converted to power production.
http://www.usbr.gov/power/data/1834/Sec1834_EPA.pdf
This is only the Federal dams, it does not include all the private and state dams which could also be tapped.
BTW, if you read it you might notice that they talk about all the dams which are not suitable for year-round power production, but could be used for pump-up hydro storage.
EDIT: Well, another placement failure.
This should follow Gene's incorrect statement that there is no more hydro to be had.
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Gene Preston Posted 10:13 am
16 Nov 2009
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Gene Preston Posted 11:40 pm
14 Nov 2009
California's blocking new lines pretty well speaks for itself. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=california+opposes+new+power+lines&aq=f&oq;=&aqi;=
If there is more hydro available, why isn't it already developed? This is an example of a souce of power that is hyped up and then when you look at it in detail, there is not really much left to develop. If it were attractive, it probably would have already been developed, especially hydro.
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Bob Wallace Posted 12:19 am
15 Nov 2009
"Cost to Generate and Transmit Power in 2020".
Jacobson and Delucchi, Scientific American, November 2009, Page 64.
You're telling us what isn't in the article when you haven't read the article?
--
Then -
From the FIRST article on your linked Google page...
"San Diego Gas & Electric's Sunrise Power Link has been approved by the California Public Utilities Commission to travel from near El Centro, Calif., in Imperial County, to San Diego, a distance of over 100 miles. Plans for a line that would bring electricity from Imperial County to Los Angeles, dubbed Green Path North, remain in the early planning stages.
The original route for Sunrise Power Link would have gone smack through a wilderness area in California's largest state park, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, but advocates succeeded in having the path diverted."
Summary - line was originally routed through a state park. Now it's going a different route.
People happy. Line being built.
(And Anza-Borrego is a beautiful place. A very wrong place to route a power line. There's lots and lots of not-beautiful desert.)
--
Why isn't more hydro being developed? Perhaps because the numbers don't yet work. (You didn't read the article, did you? If you had you wouldn't be asking that question.)
Once a price is put on carbon then it will make financial sense to run line and install turbines on dams not currently being used.
There are 80,000 dams in the US and only 2,400 are currently being used to make electricity. Not all will be suitable, but many of the ones not up to making significant power can serve for pump-up hydro storage. Two pump-up hydro sites are being brought on line at the moment.
Remember, we've had a lot of coal power and it has been very, very cheap. Cheap as long as we didn't count the real cost. That's likely to change.
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Gene Preston Posted 2:47 pm
15 Nov 2009
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gregor.us Posted 1:11 pm
15 Nov 2009
More importantly, however, I have to agree with the portion of the post that addresses the investment decision, now facing utlities:
This is the green pitch to utilities: Rather than spending the next decade or two building nuke and CCS plants, with all the attendant management hassles, public opposition, lawsuits, and cost overruns, why not spend it reducing demand, creating a more resilient grid, and diversifying the generation portfolio? The former is just a more expensive version of what exists now. The latter is a revolution, a platform for innovation that will make the internet look like, um, the electricity industry.
Indeed. It's much more likely that making power transitions now will be less expensive than the future, especially because liquid fossil fuel (oil) will be the primary construction fuel. We need a model that shows all mitigation strategies, especially because we are talking about such large scale transition, will only escalate as we go forward, owing to higher oil prices. On the other side of this equation, I would suggest people look at some of the work on Scale that's been done by the MIT solar group. For example, they take a look at the investment/timeline horizon to the point where one can finally manufacture new solar capacity using power exclusively derived from solar.
Good thread, here. Very high quality.
G
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Bob Wallace Posted 1:35 pm
15 Nov 2009
I agree with that. Whatever route we choose to get us away from coal is going to require thought and planning. We will have to weight the cost of nuclear against the cost of renewables plus enough storage to make them baseload/dispatchable.
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David Bradish Posted 5:39 pm
15 Nov 2009
By 1977 the US had started walking away from nuclear as a source of affordable energy. It had become obvious that nuclear was an idea that wasn't going to work.
Not true. The main reason why utilities canceled many nuclear plants was because of a decline in electricity demand which was initially projected at around 10% per year in the '70s. Source is from an EIA document titled Costs, Causes and Consequences of Nuclear Plant Cancellations. Many coal plants were canceled as well.
You also said:
We abandoned something like 100 nuclear projects around then. Taxpayers got stuck for millions of dollars for defaulted loans that had been guaranteed by the government.
You're either making this up or you're confusing taxpayers with ratepayers. Loans to build the first 100+ nuclear plants were NOT guaranteed by the government therefore taxpayers did not get "stuck for millions of dollars for defaulted loans."
And then you said this:
accepting risk has a cost. That's just basic Finance 101
Utilities will be paying for that cost in order to receive a loan guarantee, it's called the credit subsidy cost.
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Gene Preston Posted 10:29 am
16 Nov 2009
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Bob Wallace Posted 11:20 am
16 Nov 2009
That's certainly true.
"a plant that is now one of the world's top performers, running about 99% of the time?"
Please document that. Nuclear plants operate about 90% of the time. They have to be shut down at times for refueling.
"but if you look at AEs load forecast, it shows a flat topped energy growth, with a small growth into the future, in spite of Austin's economic activity being hot and Austin is one of the most rapidly growing cities in the US. Its a disconnect, nearly a lie, to show no growth in energy."
It is possibly a lie. But it might also be, and quite likely is, the truth.
You're overlooking the role of energy efficiency and conservation going forward. Texans use twice as much electricity per person as people in the least consuming states. And even the least consuming are expecting significant usage declines.
"And AE hasn't even honestly factored in the increased load due to electric cars, which I estimate could easily double the total energy AE needs in the future."
This is an extremely incorrect estimate. Extremely incorrect.
I'm trying to work up some accurate numbers and am waiting for some data from DOE. Even without more precise numbers it's fairly clear that switching a car from gasoline to electricity will free as much electricity from oil extraction and refining as the EV will use.
We might (likely will) see a net energy gain by changing from oil to electricity.
"I would say that the current plans showing unrealistic low energy growth will insure that AEs 600 MW of coal power will never be retired."
Never is such an absolute word.
I would say that it is fairly likely most or all of our coal plants will go away within 30 years. And I'd say "extremely likely" in 50 years.
"And AEs shortage of base load energy will also prevent sufficient growth in conversion to electric vehicles. All this put together is a recipe for disaster. The current planning reports like Jacobson's unworkable plans, and AE unreasonably low forecasts of energy needs in the future guarantee we will keep buring coal until we all wind up with a hellatiously hot planet."
Well, if we don't get busy we will cook ourselves. And if we rely on bad assumptions and faulty reasoning like that in the previous paragraph we will make things worse before we make them better.
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Bob Wallace Posted 11:24 am
16 Nov 2009
"And AE hasn't even honestly factored in the increased load due to electric cars, which I estimate could easily double the total energy AE needs in the future."
Please show your math.
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Gene Preston Posted 2:03 pm
16 Nov 2009
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=south+texas+project+sets+record&aq=f&oq;=&aqi;=
Pebble bed reactors are losing interest in the nuclear engineers because they have better designs now.
Russia and China just signed an agreement where Russia would build two new breeder reactors in China and China would build a high speed rail system in Russia. Russia and China are making faster progress on new nuclear designs that the US is. So is India who will be developing a new Thoriu based breeder reactor since India has had problems with coal and they have a lot of Thorium so that is the direction they are heading. S Korea just announced they are going to start reprocessing to get rid of their waste because they have nowhere to bury it. They are also interested in the breeder reactors.
Phoenix could not have used substatial energy to keep the sodium liquid because the metal melts at a low temperature. This is just BS for non engineers to get all excited about.
I'm sorry you are not wanting to listen to nuclear because you better get ready to hear a whole lot more. Half the world is switching to nuclear to solve the climate change problem and the other half is going into poverty.
With IFR there is no plutonium processing at all. The plutonium is created and burned up within the reactor. It never leaves the reactor. The other waste you mention is just low level, like medical waste. Its not high level. Yes, it has to be safely stored, but not like high level plutonium. I suppose you would use your witchcraft ideas and cause all nuclear in hospitals to also be banned. It's never going to happen. Grow up and meet the world's challenges, not shrink from them, which means learning to live with nuclear, not abandon it. See I can be as ugly as you are. Pleasant isn't it. Discussing things at the gutter level like you like to do.
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Bob Wallace Posted 8:53 pm
16 Nov 2009
Interest is waning in pebble bed reactors because no one has figured out how to make them work. Period.
South Africa recently gave up. China is now talking about how them might change their plans and make a couple of small ones rather than the big one they were working on. Read that as they can't figure out how to make one work.
Additionally, half the world is not going to nuclear. There are less than 40 plants now under construction, 10 of those in China, and those aren't even enough to replace ones scheduled to be shut down.
A little nuclear will be built, some people who can't do math will have to build one in order to find out that they just don't make financial sense.
Even the major nuclear corporations in the US (Exelon and Entergy) have said that they aren't going to build any more reactors. They are just too expensive.
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Gene Preston Posted 7:00 am
17 Nov 2009
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Bob Wallace Posted 10:24 am
17 Nov 2009
Nuclear plants and solar panels do not produce the same "kind" of electricity. Nuclear is 24/7 while solar PV/thin film is power while the sun shines.
Nuclear is less expensive per kWh than solar. No one makes the argument to the contrary. It would be quite expensive to build solar and the storage to make it 24/7 if what we needed was around the clock power. Obviously we'd build wind plus storage for around the clock power in order to spread our money as far as possible.
But in many parts of the country we just don't need anymore late night power. We don't need any more cool day/cloudy day power. It's the hot sun that drives our need to increase power production. Hot summer days are when our grid strains to supply demand.
Building nuclear or wind/storage and then using that power only on sunny, hot afternoons makes little economic sense. Build a nuclear reactor that churns out $0.20 per kWh power 24 hours a day, simply toss away 18 hours of that unneeded power and the 6 hours that you do use now costs you $0.80 per kWh. Toss away all the power for 8 months of the year and the price soars into dollar per kilowatt.
Solar can successfully compete against that eighty cents power.
---
A couple of notes on your details...
The cost of manufacturing thin film solar is now under $1 per watt. Installation, once there is a bit more advancement in methods, should add no more than $2 to the price. Seven dollars is a current "what the market will bear" price. It does not represent larger scale utility installations.
Solar can be installed close to point of use and generally tied into the existing grid for little to no cost in grid upgrades. Nuclear has connection costs. FPL's Turkey Point reactor build was projected to incur a half billion dollars or more costs simply to hook to the grid.
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ghostlly Posted 11:43 am
16 Nov 2009
hurt anyone. The mess was soon cleaned up, but the reactor
was kept off line for years by a combination of political reasons
and management snafus."
This was a major leak that that was so hot it melted steel structures in the room where the leak occured and leaked nearly 2 tons of sodium (highly reactive) The alarms went off at 7:30 and it took them until 9pm to order a shutdown 2 1/2 hours later. The fact that it was a secondary system and nobody was killed was pure luck. This could have been a meltdown and then they tried to cover it up and put a gag order on employees. The reason it was shut down is because it wasn't safe.
From wikepedia
"On Dec. 8, 1995, the reactor suffered a serious accident. Intense vibration caused a thermowell inside a pipe carrying sodium coolant to break, possibly at a defective weld point, allowing several hundred kg of sodium to leak out onto the floor below the pipe. Upon coming into contact with the air, the liquid sodium reacted with oxygen and moisture in the air, filling the room with caustic fumes and producing temperatures of several hundred degrees Celsius. The heat was so intense that it melted several steel structures in the room. An alarm sounded around 7:30 p.m., switching the system over to manual operations, but a full operational shutdown was not ordered until around 9:00 p.m. Fortunately, the leak occurred in the plant's secondary cooling system, so the sodium was not radioactive. However, there was massive public outrage in Japan when it was revealed that Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (PNC), the semigovernmental agency then in charge of Monju, had tried to cover up the extent of the accident and resulting damage. This coverup included falsifying reports and the editing of a videotape taken immediately after the accident, as well as the issuing of a gag order to employees regarding the existence of the real tapes"
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ghostlly Posted 11:47 am
16 Nov 2009
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ghostlly Posted 12:14 pm
16 Nov 2009
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ghostlly Posted 9:38 am
17 Nov 2009
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Bob Wallace Posted 10:32 am
17 Nov 2009
(Misleading title on that article.)
The need that solar thermal nicely meets is post-sundown peak demand. Those hours between when people get home and turn everything on and when they shut stuff off and go to bed.
Thermal solar plants are being built with a few hours of storage, not enough for around the clock or multiple days (although that could be done). The market that will pay for power from these plants is evening peak hours, not late night/early morning.
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ghostlly Posted 9:38 am
17 Nov 2009
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Sean Casten Posted 9:54 am
17 Nov 2009
Your comment that "Transmission line cost are no more for a wind farm than for a new coal or nuclear plant" is true only in a narrow, and not especially relevant sense. True in the sense that the cost of the wires is not appreciably different. But not that relevant because the cost of power is a function not just of construction cost, but also utilization factor. Wind, by running ~40% - 50% as often as nuclear or coal has to recover all construction costs (generation and transmission) roughly twice as fast to achieve cost-parity, before consideration of fuel costs. Thus, if I have a $20 million transmission line and need to recover my capital in 5 years (=$4M/year) it's going to cost me twice as much per MWh from a 40% capacity factor wind farm as from an 80% capacity factor nuke/coal plant.
To be sure, some of those transmission resources can be shared between other assets, and the name of the game in cost-effective transmission/distribution planning is figuring out how to get a maximally diverse generation mix upstream and consumption mix downstream. But in the narrow case of a line section that is dedicated to a baseload generator vs. a line section that is dedicated to an intermittent generator, the cost per MWh will be lower for the baseloaded asset.
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