A cautionary tale for all those who think nuclear is the answer to climate change. The Washington Post reported yesterday that drought conditions are affecting nuclear production capacity.
[Plants] could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate.
But wait, there's more ...
An Associated Press analysis of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors found that 24 are in areas experiencing the most severe levels of drought. All but two are built on the shores of lakes and rivers and rely on submerged intake pipes to draw billions of gallons of water for use in cooling and condensing steam after it has turned the plants' turbines.
And the irony just keeps on coming ...
"Currently, nuclear power costs between $5 to $7 to produce a megawatt hour," said Daniele Seitz, an energy analyst with New York-based Dahlman Rose & Co. "It would cost 10 times that amount that if you had to buy replacement power ... especially during the summer."
Now how do we fit this kind of uncertainty into our assumptions about the benefits of nuclear power to combat climate change? Since both curbing carbon and bringing nuclear plants online will take decades, we could find ourselves building plants that can't deliver on their promises (as if they ever have, but that's another story).
New nukes? A fair shot, not a free ride
David Frum says ‘Conservatives Heart Nuke Power.’
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Sean Casten Posted 1:15 am
25 Jan 2008
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Karen Street Posted 1:21 am
25 Jan 2008
In a drought, hydro is harmed, eg, hydro is down 70% in the southeast. All fossil fuel and nuclear and solar thermal and biomass plants--all thermal plants--suffer from lack of cooling water. The fossil fuel plants have the additional advantage that they help cause droughts, see IPCC Working Groups 2 and 4, plus recent analysis (preliminary) that the US Southwest and northern Mexico might move into a dustbowl. See May 25, 2007 Scientific American. So hydro will suffer in the western US, Australia, and elsewhere (apparently the US southeast.)
Thermal plants in many parts of the world (coal in Alberta!) will need to be designed differently for a world changed by coal and other fossil fuels.
Given all this, you are focusing on the problems of old designs of nuclear power. Why?
A Musing Environment
Karen Street
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JMG Posted 1:57 am
25 Jan 2008
A power reactor, on the other hand, has decay heat, which tails off gradually from about 7% of full power output (which, on a 4500 MW(thermal) plant is not a trivial heat load) after shutdown. A big reactor that has been operating for 9-10 months has a huge inventory of decay products that generate a substantial amount of heat, heat that must be removed and sent somewhere. If your designs have depended on a liquid cooled heat sink, then you have a serious problem when that heat sink evaporates.
The air cooling option means that this is not an insoluble problem for new plants necessarily, but its definitely one that has a significant effect on the cost of the plant and its financing.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Sean Casten Posted 2:13 am
25 Jan 2008
At core though, the issue is that if the bulk of your fuel gets thrown away as heat and you do that in a steam cycle, you've got a problem. You can air-cool, but at the expense of overall plant efficiency (e.g., fewer MW). If you happen to be next to a river or big body of water, you can heat up the local water rather than draw in freshwater that you then evaporate - but this is geography specific. (And indeed, part of the reason why this problem is so pronounced in the southwest is because of the aridity of that particular geography. To wit: there are no Great Lakes in New Mexico.) So if you're not blessed with an existing cold water source and don't want to limit plant output, you're using a cooling tower. Unless you decide preferentially to build a more efficient and/or non-thermally based plant.
To get the scale though, steam cycles make up about 70% of all US generation (50% coal, 20% nuke). Water is going to become a truly massive issue unless we make a comparably massive course correction.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:15 am
25 Jan 2008
Nuclear, coal, and fuel farming all are dependent on massive quantities of water. Polluting and contaminating it all the way. 4.5 gallons of water are wasted per gallon of ethanol gas guzzling.
Wind pumped hydro power storage could capture flood waters in wetlands to serve as extra hydro dam power and a backup for river flow levels. Low levels threaten endangered species, mainly fish, in these river ecosystems.
Extra wetland/resevoirs restore groundwater aquifers, depleted by irrigation and backsup rivers depleted by metroplolitan water use.
Solar power can be used to recycle city water and other water conservation techniques, like drip irrigation and manure/biomass/biogas production save and recycle huge amounts of water while actually increasing agricultural production and quality.
These new, improved nuclear reactors that use no water? Well, give the nuclear industry time to build a few of these, that also reprocess nuclear waste. In 10 years rexamine the issue of nuclear power, after the data from these fully functrional experimental reactors is available.
A completey transparent process that the public can trust would be needed. These must be sabotage and theft (of nuclear materials) proof too. It's a big design challenge. I think it is more likely that renewable smart grids, conservation devices, organic farming, and plugin hybrid transportation will beat nuclear in terms of time to deploy, cost, and safety.
And economic revival. Instead of trillions of dollars to nuclear contractors. The money would go to local businesses. The gallon of gas you buy now, from oil company mega multinational taps, replaced by 75 cents worth of electricity bought from a farm down the road, over the smart grid. Or free from the solar panels on your home.
Anyway, the money would now stay in the local community, instead of in Dubai. That is anti-globalization. Relocalization. It magnifies throughout the local economy, from business to employee to business.. and so forth.
Nuclear and coal power dissappears the cash into shady multinational corporations that bribe local governments to pollute and contaminate at will. Agribizz mega lobbyistys get the cash from fuel farming. Destroying conservation carbon sink land to guzzle more gas. But it's a green gas? Duuuh..
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:58 am
25 Jan 2008
In a drought, hydro is harmed, eg, hydro is down 70% in the southeast. All fossil fuel and nuclear and solar thermal and biomass plants--all thermal plants--suffer from lack of cooling water.
But not all thermal power plants are created equal, when it comes to water use.
A natural gas power plant, for instance, uses far less water than coal fired power plants.
A coal plant is considerably less water intensitve than a Nuclear power plant.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10/29/154917/21
I'll have to dig it up, but I would imagine that SolarThermal/Geothermal are less water intensive than natural gas power plants.
_
Now if we want to get Nuclear specific.
The easier answer is "It just costs too damned much".
http://greyfalcon.net/costlynuclear
http://greyfalcon.net/h2nuke
http://greyfalcon.net/nuclearvideo
When industrial renewables are reaching for the $2000/KW and lower mark.
http://greyfalcon.net/solarthermal
http://greyfalcon.net/geothermal
http://greyfalcon.net/wind
Nuclear is pushing $4000-$6000/KW
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GRLCowan Posted 3:21 am
25 Jan 2008
Not quite right to say that nukes and other thermal/ rankine plants face the same issues. If you turn off the boilers in a coal plant, you can stop cooling it almost immediately.
A power reactor, on the other hand, has decay heat, which tails off gradually from about 7% of full power output (which, on a 4500 MW(thermal) plant is not a trivial heat load) after shutdown. A big reactor that has been operating for 9-10 months has a huge inventory of decay products that generate a substantial amount of heat ...
What does it add up to, in terms of full power hours, in the first week after shutdown?
How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?
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Matt G Posted 3:30 am
25 Jan 2008
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Nucbuddy Posted 4:11 am
25 Jan 2008
Why is it that electricity in Denmark costs about 30 cents per kWh, while in France electricity costs about one third of that?
Denmark had the highest prices in the 18-country survey, as taxes added as much 66 per cent to consumers' bills, INRA said.
Danish charges up to four taxes on bills including a power distribution tax and an environmental tax designed to curb electricity demand and promote the use of green energy.
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Nucbuddy Posted 4:19 am
25 Jan 2008
Does it have a bigger inventory, after operating 9-10 months, than it did after operating for only an hour?
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Nucbuddy Posted 4:26 am
25 Jan 2008
How water-intensive is a nuclear powerplant with a cooling pond?
A power plant with an electric output of 1,300 MW needs a pond with a cooling surface of about 10km2 to be able to maintain a cooling water temperature of 21°C at humid air temperatures of 8°C (12°C dry, relative humidity 57%).
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Charles Barton Posted 4:47 am
25 Jan 2008
But solar has a big problem with night, which comes every day while droughts of such magnitude come to the southeast rarely. Wind plants do not operate when the wind does not blow, which is 70% to 80% of the time.
"The air cooling option means that this is not an insoluble problem for new plants necessarily, but its definitely one that has a significant effect on the cost of the plant and its financing." - JMG
Actually gas and air cooled reactors like the PBR and the MSR achieve much higher thermal efficiency than water cooled reactors, cost less to build, and are not effected by drought.
Charles Barton
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:54 am
25 Jan 2008
Well certainly, do have fun looking into it.
The numbers I'm quoting largely come from a study commissioned by the nuclear industry itself.
How's that for irony?
http://www.keystone.org/spp/documents/TKC%20Nuclear%20Fac ...
http://www.keystone.org/spp/documents/ExecSummFinalReport ...
http://www.keystone.org/spp/documents/FinalReport_NJFF6_1 ...(1).pdf
The Moody's investor one might be a bit pricey though.
$550 for the report. Atleast that shows they are rather serious.
http://www.alacrastore.com/storecontent/moodys/PBC_104977 ...
A 60-year lifespan
Last I checked, there's this thing called interest, and discount rates.
Not to mention a 8-12 year build schedule where it's producing 0 KWh.
Why report in $/KW? Constantly producing nuclear KW is a lot different than a variable output solar or wind KW.
Well as you would likely admit, Geothermal doesn't have that issue.
http://www.geo-energy.org/publications/reports/May2007GEA ...
But lets say worst comes to worst, we need double or triple the nameplate capacity with solarthermal/wind.
It still pencils in around the same cost as nuclear.
_
Without all the nasty geopolitical side-effects
(Which also have their own inheriently large costs)
http://greyfalcon.net/yellowcake
http://greyfalcon.net/iraqvsenergy.png
http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/briefi ...
http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/briefi ...
http://www.alternet.org/audits/48890/?page=entire
And of course the externalized cost of dealing with the waste
The money rate given to the Fed hasn't been adjusted since the 1970's
But more importantly the Feds effectively haven't collected an additional thin dime for dealing with waste since 1998 due to lawsuits over Yucca Mountain
http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/site_down/ipfmresear ...
3. And from the look of it, it's going to be costly
http://climate.weather.com/articles/yucca100507.html
4. If it happens at all
http://www.grist.org/news/2007/09/25/yucca/index.html
5. Any excess and the tax payers get to pick up the tab
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ataremove Posted 5:00 am
25 Jan 2008
The thing about pressurized water reactors is that you always have to keep the reactor pumps running to circulate the reactor water to keep the heat content of the reactor plant balanced for any short-term (less than a month or so) shutdown. This alone subsumes any issue/problem with post-shutdown decay heat generation.
Yes, during shutdown there is heat generation from long-lived fission products and some naturally occuring fission. But this is more than offset by heat loss to the air surrounding the reactor vessel.
Non-trivial is the fact that there are energy-using shutdown, and startup, activities which are necessary to control the stresses from heat and pressure differentials, primarily on the reactor vessel. That would also hold true for a coal-fired steam-driven plant, although not to the extent that is needed in a similar nuclear plant.
The point about Rankine cycle from the initial comment is huge compared to startup/shutdown energy needs. From my Navy days, steam-driven plants transfer at best 33% of the energy into usable work. The rest is waste heat. Regardless of the heat source: nuclear or fossil fuel. That's the harsh reality of the Mollier diagram.
at a remove
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Nucbuddy Posted 5:15 am
25 Jan 2008
Last I checked, there's this thing called interest, and discount rates.
What would a long production-lifespan have to do with interest on loans that are paid off within the first 15 years? Are you meaning to imply that if a powerplant does not fall apart -- and, hence, continues to produce value -- it ends up costing more because of that? Would nuclear power be cheaper if the plants fell apart after only 5 years?
GreyFlcn wrote: solarthermal/wind [...] pencils in around the same cost as nuclear.
Wind turbines last 60 years? Source, please.
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:43 am
25 Jan 2008
What it might cost to replace a power plant a quarter to a third of a century from now?
About 25 years for wind
About 35 years for solar thermal
And 45-50 years for geothermal
_
Interesting to note though, your document right there estimates a nuclear plant lifespan of 40 years.
http://www.anl.gov/Special_Reports/NuclEconSumAug04.pdf
While it might have somewhat of an advantage over wind, thats pretty neglible compared to solarthermal/geothermal.
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:50 am
25 Jan 2008
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Matt G Posted 6:09 am
25 Jan 2008
Lifespan. It's a bit odd to try and convince us that nuke plants only last 40 years, considering we haven't built one in over 30.
Re: "double or triple" the $/KW cost for solar. Let's assume the best case: Solar with sun tracking. At most you'll get an average of about 60% of the rated power throughout a sunny day (since when the sun is anywhere but overhead you're filtering the light through a long distance of atmosphere). Cut that in half due to less-than-sunny days. Cut that in half again because the sun isn't available for half the day. Where are we at? 15%. So that's 6.7x the cost per KW, without even looking at lifecycle.
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Matt G Posted 6:13 am
25 Jan 2008
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Nucbuddy Posted 6:15 am
25 Jan 2008
Why do you act so hostile toward me? Please stop.
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Nucbuddy Posted 6:25 am
25 Jan 2008
Source, please. What proportion of 2+ megawatt wind turbines have lasted longer than 10 years?
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Sean Casten Posted 6:28 am
25 Jan 2008
But here's the rub: the current retail rate includes a lot of cheap stuff that's averaged into the mix (hydro, pre-clean air act coal, fully amortized nuke, etc.) The good news is that this keeps our power price down - but by definition, it's already built and it isn't competing at the margin either. So there are really two questions:
Q1: What power sources are sufficiently cheap to deliver attractive equity returns and still produce power at less than the prevailing retail rate?
A1: Energy efficiency, cogen, select opportunity fuels and not much else. Note that coal, nuclear and gas don't make this list - as evidenced by the fact that no one is actually building them right now (they're just trying to get subsidies to build them).
Q2: What power sources could deliver attractive equity returns if they were allowed to compete against those technologies which are competing to serve new load growth (e.g., coal, gas and to a lesser extent, nuke).
A2: Lots of stuff, including most renewables other than solar PV - plus all the stuff ID'd in A1. The problem is that in the current regulatory model, getting new expensive stuff built is easy if you have a monopoly and a utility regulator who is willing to declare your investment "prudent". But if you're just a guy trying to do the right thing, you don't have that luxury - until the expensive stuff gets built and drives up the retail rate.
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birdboy Posted 8:01 am
25 Jan 2008
What is our goal- feeding a ravenous economy bent on poisoning the Earth, or creating a healthy, harmonious relationship with our little planet?
a liberal in redsville
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Matt G Posted 8:13 am
25 Jan 2008
* assuming you can find solar made from tomato-canning-grade materials
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:00 am
25 Jan 2008
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birdboy Posted 9:14 am
25 Jan 2008
Our goal should be to convince the world that we can live productive, healthy lives with a small fraction of our current energy use- without fossil fuels or foolish fission.
a liberal in redsville
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Tasermons Partner Posted 1:00 pm
25 Jan 2008
Though nuclear plants create more power, the amount of materials needed to make 'em (particularly concrete ans steel), as well as the energy needed for construction, mean that nuclear plants typically take years to cover the energy used for their production/construction.
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 1:23 pm
25 Jan 2008
4.5 gallons of water are wasted per gallon of ethanol gas guzzling.
actually it takes about 2000 gallons of water to grow and process the corn for 1 gallon of ethanol.
Some people believe that uranium kills between 8,000 and 45,000 Americans each year.
http://www.epa.gov/radon001/risk_assessment.html
Leaving it in the ground is more dangerous than converting it into short lived fission products and burying them under the seabed.
Suppose we derived all our electricity from fission. An average American would be responsible for converting 5.3 ounces of uranium to nearly 5.3 ounces of fission products over an 80 year lifetime. During that life most fission products will decay to stable atoms, leaving 0.67 ounces of radioactive fission product atoms at end of life, not enough to fill a shot glass.
In 270 years it is less radiotoxic than uranium ore.
If we derived all our energy from fission, an 80 year lifetime would convert 13 ounces of uranium into fission products and leave 1.63 ounces of radioactive atoms at end of life.
The natural decay of 13 ounces of natural uranium to stable lead produces about seven times the radiation produced by the decay of 13 ounces of fission products. In the end, the natural process leaves you with 13 ounces of lead that remain toxic forever, whereas most fission products decay to non toxic atoms.
The point is that nuclear reactors do not make nuclear waste, they convert long lived naturally occurring nuclear waste into short lived nuclear waste, while releasing enormous quantities of useful energy.
Earth probably has a few billion years of life left. Because of nuclear power, for nearly all of those years earth will be less radioactive than if humans had never evolved.
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GRLCowan Posted 1:41 pm
25 Jan 2008
...Typical windmills will cover the energy costs for their production within 6 months (in other words, within 6 months, they create enough renewable energy to equate to the energy needed to produce, transport, and assemble 'em).
Though nuclear plants create more power, the amount of materials needed to make 'em (particularly concrete ans steel), as well as the energy needed for construction, mean that nuclear plants typically take years to cover the energy used for their production/construction.
Actually they're a little better than wind turbines in that respect.
I had thought 'Tasermons Partner' was one of the smarter ones.
How shall cars gain nuclear cachet?
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Tasermons Partner Posted 1:51 pm
25 Jan 2008
As you'll note, I said that nuclear power plants produce more power, and they do, in fact last longer, so even though they consume more materials to start with, they'll still produce more energy to offset it over the course of their lifetime.
However, that still doesn't change the fact that windmills will offset the energy used for their production/construction sooner than nuclear plants do. It still takes nuclear plants years to offset the energy for their construction, they just end up makin' more energy in relation to those materials over the longer lifespan of the nuclear plants.
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stopgreenpath Posted 2:10 pm
25 Jan 2008
there was a hearing today at ivanpah. i hope they send them home ashamed for even applying and we can all enjoy the perfectly balanced ecosystem of the greater Mojave, slap some panels on our roofs and turn off a few danged lights when we leave the room.
this is seriously ridiculous that in 2008 we are still poisoning, dynamiting, dehydrating, mining, nuking, and paving over wilderness so we can live in McMansions and get even more obese, selfish and boring. not ridiculous, actually, more like repulsive.
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:30 pm
25 Jan 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moss_Landing_Power_Plant
Coal, More
Nuclear, More
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Nucbuddy Posted 9:24 pm
25 Jan 2008
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:17 am
26 Jan 2008
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Diablo-Canyon-Open-Air-Stor ...
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Nucbuddy Posted 3:20 am
26 Jan 2008
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:30 am
26 Jan 2008
In Gallons per MW, Diablo ain't that bad compared to Moss Landing.
MILLION GALLONS PER MEGAWATT
2.142857143 : Moss Landing
1.157407407 : Diablo Canyon
0.087500000 : Luz II
Is is interesting to note, that apparently Luz uses about 13x less water though.
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Nucbuddy Posted 3:46 am
26 Jan 2008
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 4:36 am
26 Jan 2008
Wow, for a minute there I thought maybe you found the cure for sea level rise, until I looked up the quote.
"Each day, roughly 1.2 billion gallons of water are cycled through the power plant."
A nuclear power plant releases about 2 kWh of heat for each kWh of electricity produced. For the worst case example lets assume all our electricity comes from fission and all the heat goes into evaporating water.
The average American lifestyle uses 1,550 watts, 37.2 kWh / day. The waste heat would be 74.4 kWh / day. 1 kWh = 3,412 Btu, so the waste heat is 254,000 btu/day. It takes about 1,100 btu to evaporate 1 pound of water starting at 80 deg, so the worst case evaporation rate is 230 pounds per day, 27.6 gallons per day. Since most of our electricity comes from steam plants we probably evaporate a substantial fraction of this now.
In year 2000 the U.S. used 408 billion gallons of water per day.
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/waterproperties.html
Assuming a population of 295 million that is an average of 1,338 gal / day / person, of which the worst case evaporation rate would be about 2%.
This is a drop in the bucket compared to the water needed to grow a substantial amount of bio fuel, even cellulosic bio fuel.
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