Everything you could possibly want to know about nuclear power -- and its (limited) potential as a potential climate solution -- can be found in the new Keystone Center Report with the less-than-captivating title "Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding."
Reuters is confused in its article on the report, "Nuclear Power Can't Curb Global Warming -- Report," and actually overstates the case for nuclear:
Nuclear power would only curb climate change by expanding worldwide at the rate it grew from 1981 to 1990, its busiest decade, and keep up that rate for half a century, a report said on Thursday.
Specifically, that would require adding on average 14 plants each year for the next 50 years, all the while building an average of 7.4 plants to replace those that will be retired, the report by environmental leaders, industry executives and academics said.
Incorrect. You would need 8 to 10 times faster growth (3 nuclear plants built each week for 50 years) and some 100 Yucca Mountains to store the waste for nuclear to curb global warming on its own. How did Reuters get it wrong?
The huge growth in nuclear power examined in the Keystone report amounts to only one of the so-called "stabilization wedges" needed to fight global warming. The "wedges" idea, created by Princeton's Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, has become a term of art in the climate debate which you can read about here (PDF).
The short version is that a wedge represents a climate solution that starts slowly but then rises in impact over the 50 years and ultimately avoids the emission of one billion tons of carbon per year. If the average car on the road in 2057 got 60 miles per gallon, that would be one wedge.
The world needs 8 to 10 wedges, starting now, to avoid catastrophic global warming. Interestingly, the report makes clear that:
For nuclear power to be even one wedge we would need 10 Yucca Mountains to store the waste.
We would have all of the proliferation risks associated with spreading nuclear power across the planet.
And the power isn't cheap: 8.3 to 11.1 cents per kilo-watt hour.
So nuclear is not a climate cure-all. Even climate advocates like John McCain get this wrong. In a March 2006 interview, he stated he would demand legislation to expand U.S. nuclear power as part of his efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: "It's the only technology presently available to quickly step up to meet our energy needs."
Incorrect. As the Keystone report makes clear -- and as former Vice President Al Gore told Congress earlier this year -- nuclear may be a part of the solution, but probably only a very limited part.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Climate-news poem: Breath-catching edition
How fast can the US electric sector reform?
Comments View as Flat
Karen Street Posted 4:00 am
19 Jun 2007
3 a week?
Hmm, there is so much here that is fascinating, it's hard to figure out where to start.
First, one wedge of nuclear would be increasing today's 350 GW to 1,000 GW or so. Assume that the average plant to be built in the future 1.4 GW, some are larger, some are smaller. So 1.4 GW/plant x 3 plants/week x 52 weeks/year x 50 years comes to more than 10,000 GW.
I've showed you my arithmetic, can you show me yours?
The 14 plants/year assumption (with China committed to adding close to half, the rest of the world adding a wee bit over half) are assumed to be the same size as today's plants, about 1 GW.
I do want to ask why you assume that the world needs 8 to 10 wedges. Socolow and Pacala assumed 7 to stabilize, but cutting emissions 80% or more is probably preferable, plus they ignored positive feedback. I doubt that any climatologist wants to see only 8 to 10 wedges.
A Musing Environment
Karen Street
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GRLCowan Posted 4:07 am
19 Jun 2007
No Yucca mountains are needed ...
Experience suggests the waste that the Yucca Mountain project is meant eventually to take has, over decades and hundreds of storage sites, been entirely harmless. Fossil fuel taxation means career civil servants profit from carbon monoxide deaths; these have no nuclear analogue. Or to speak more precisely, they have, in nuclear waste-related injuries or deaths, a theoretically possible analogue whose real-world occurrences so far number zero.
I gather the Keystone Institute is fuel-tax-funded.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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Charles Barton Posted 4:30 am
19 Jun 2007
Nuks
Generation IV reactors can be mass produced for under a billion dollars a MW. The deal with mass production is that the more you produce the less each unit costs. Solving a big problem means thinking big. Is it possible to mass produce 50 reactors a year? Certainly. How about 100? Yes, why not? The only problem here is an unwillingness to think creatively, to use a little imagination to solve a problem, instead of wringing our hands and saying it can't be done. We will be defeated by a lack of courage and a lack of will, not by a lack of human capacity to solve our problems.
Charles Barton
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Nucbuddy Posted 4:35 am
19 Jun 2007
Keystone Center funding
G. R. L. Cowan:
nei.org/doc.asp?catnum=4&catid=1043
From the report (Page 3):
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JMG Posted 4:46 am
19 Jun 2007
Well done, Keystone
In addition to fully disclosing the identities of the funders, the group has quit a bit to say about independence on its website. Apparently they recognize the importance of full disclosure of funding sources and don't consider questions about that issue stupid or insulting.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Karen Street Posted 5:28 am
19 Jun 2007
Keystone paper
Both pro- and anti-nuclear people participated in the writing of it, which meant that there were relatively few areas of agreement, from what I've read. Eg,
A Musing Environment
Karen Street
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David Roberts Posted 5:36 am
19 Jun 2007
The question isn't stupid and insulting, JMG,
the presumption of industry shillery, in the face of a multi-decade record of thoughtful activism, on the basis of a failure to respond to two random blog comments? That's stupid and insulting.
And it's bullying, based on the fact that he takes a position you don't agree with. It's not something you belligerently demand of everyone who participates here.
I don't want this place becoming an echo chamber. When I invite guests here and they're immediately met with vitriol, snotty aesthetic critiques, and attacks on their integrity -- all of which have been on display here over the last week or two -- it pisses me off, not to mention embarrasses me. I'm happy to absorb all blows anyone wants to direct my way, and return them, on the assumption that we're all family here, and there are no hard feelings. But when new visitors come in our house, I'd prefer we give them a chance to get comfortable before we start pissing on their shoes. Or else they won't come back, and we'll be left here slapping each others backs over how damn smart and superior we are.
grist.org
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Patrick Mazza Posted 5:50 am
19 Jun 2007
Nuclear capabilities
If Gen IV nuclear reactors could be mass produced at $1 billion a pop, as Charles Barton says, why aren't they? Is this some kind of conspiracy? Not likely.
Full disclosure - I was one of the 27 members of the Keystone factfinding. And there was general agreement around the table, from the enviro to ratepayer advocate to nuclear industry side, that Gen IV is at least 20 years out from commericalization, if that. That is why the process focused on expected technologies. The general expectation is that reactors built over coming decades will be advanced variants of the light water reactors in use today. This is what the industry's own understandings and projections reflect. Yes, the South Africans are developing a modular pebble bed reactor, but that will have to be proven out.
Joe has it right that Reuters had it wrong. The report looks at one Pacala-Socolow Wedge (=14% of needed carbon reductions to avoid doubled concentrations, which probably still is 100 ppm CO2 over where we need to be, and finds that for nuclear to reach even one an extremely heavy lift, equal to the best construction rate the industry has ever acheived and well below authoritative industry projections.
Place on top of that the finding that new nukes would cost 8-11 cents/kilowatt hour delivered at the plant, before around 2.5 cents delivery costs, and what emerges is that nukes are a very costly option at least 2 cents/kWh over new wind. And UCS has criticized that number as too low! So any nuclear revival would require public policy support, probably in excess of the $6 billion the feds put on the table in Energy Act 2005.
Bottom line question as the political debate ramps up - Is nuclear really what we want to subsidize? Or are there better investments the public can make such as mass-scale wind and energy efficiency that do not have the associated waste and proliferation problems?
Patrick Mazza
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:52 am
19 Jun 2007
Noone has ever suffered from radiation poisoning
Bull.
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GRLCowan Posted 9:15 am
19 Jun 2007
A less than 99 percent reduction in body count?
I have a slow connection. Describe the video and explain how, if your introduction of it as evidence is wholly truthful and relevant, it weakens my argument that for every hundred gigawatt-years of delivered energy, fossil fuel waste kills many while nuclear waste kills none.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html --
oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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dezakin Posted 9:16 am
19 Jun 2007
Expensive nuclear is expensive everything
With the assumptions that drive nuclear power end costs to some 10 cents per kw/hr, you end up easily driving wind to 20. They have the same top heavy capital cost requirement except that you get more KW more reliably from nuclear power and have to spend less on dispatchable power subtitutes (peaking natural gas or pumped hydro systems) along with plant operating lifetimes at least 2-3 times as long.
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:19 am
19 Jun 2007
Heh
Fun how you switched it from injuries AND deaths.
To only deaths.
"We didn't kill them, we just gave them luekemia"
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dezakin Posted 9:33 am
19 Jun 2007
Leukemia and waste?
Could you post a cite to something that isn't sensationalism? I've seen no epidemilogical studies linking spent fuel or nuclear waste to luekemia.
The only thing that has direct correlation in nuclear power production is when Chernobyl blew in an area with iodine deficient children with no stay indoors orders; A thyroid cancer spike. But this isn't indicated in any studies from spent fuel or more generic nuclear waste.
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:42 am
19 Jun 2007
Sure, but first.
Sure thing
But first, can you name me one active nuclear waste repository from nuclear power production.
?
Didn't think so.
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:49 am
19 Jun 2007
Second thought
Easier than I thought
http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press1139.htm
Not quite so risky when it's wrapped in steel and concrete. It's the other parts which are the problem.
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Nucbuddy Posted 9:59 am
19 Jun 2007
60 Minutes says Hanford waste would kill diners
GRLCowan wrote: I have a slow connection. Describe the video
It is a 60 Minutes piece ("Lethal And Leaking") on Hanford and also Bechtel's nuclear-contracting in general. It includes no health-physics information other than the statement: "...the waste is so lethal that a small cup of it would kill everyone in a crowded restaurant, in minutes."
The complete transcript is available here:
cbsnews.com/stories/200
6/04/27/60minutes/main1553896.shtml
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Nucbuddy Posted 10:09 am
19 Jun 2007
Why Gen IV nuclear reactors are not produced
Patrick Mazza wrote: If Gen IV nuclear reactors could be mass produced at $1 billion a pop [...] why aren't they?
Generation IV reactors do not exist.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor
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dezakin Posted 10:10 am
19 Jun 2007
No leukemia/spent fuel link
Every onsite lot for dry casks is a repository, and good enough for centuries to come. Geologic repositories are a waste of time and money.
And where in the New Scientist article (not exactly lacking in sensationalism) are there any links for anything related to leukemia caused by spent fuel or even mine tailings. The most there is mention of is nominally highe rate of lung cancer by uranium miners... not necissarily caused by what we normally define as nuclear waste unless you consider granite a nuclear waste also with it feeding radon into unventilated basements.
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GRLCowan Posted 12:32 pm
19 Jun 2007
I remember seeing that
Uranium that was being roasted at Hanford for bomb production purposes might have included enough gamma-emitting fission fragments a few minutes after removal from the reactors there -- one of which also produced electricity, although perhaps not very much -- for the story about the cup in the restaurant to be true. Unable to do any calculations on how much dilution resulted from the dissolving in acid that was done to free the plutonium, unable to figure out how much the radioactivity would have spent itself between that time and now, "60 Minutes" apparently decided it wouldn't be a lie to just assume neither factor made any difference. Maybe they considered their audience. Who would know?
Between 10 minutes and 40 years, for a two-month irradiation time, the radioactivity reduces itself about 100,000-fold. A more conscientious Lesley Stahl would have said that a large vat of the waste liquid would, assuming it absorbed no more of its own rays than the original cup-sized piece of irradiated uranium did, would give everyone in that restaurant a dose within a few hundred thousand minutes, if they stayed, that would kill them if received quickly.
The diminution of radioactivity over time is hard to calculate. For times less than a century it's closely given by the Untermyer and Weills rule, where 'T_0' is how many seconds a piece of uranium was roasted and 't' is how many seconds it has since cooled:
Failure to do this legwork amounted to one lie, perhaps it seemed like a little one, in a good cause. But in fact it's not a good cause, because it is all lies.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
How shall cars gain nuclear cachet?
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Nucbuddy Posted 1:05 pm
19 Jun 2007
Hanford waste health-physics assessments
Hanford waste kills kittens.
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JMG Posted 3:29 pm
19 Jun 2007
No, not kittens
But the Green Runs (intentional release of tens of thousands of curies onto an unsuspecting--and unwarned--public) didn't do any humans any good.
Nor are the waste plumes heading for the Columbia (already detectable in very trace amounts) doing anyone any good.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Nucbuddy Posted 3:36 pm
19 Jun 2007
n
JMG> wrote: Nor are the waste plumes heading for the Columbia [...] doing anyone any good.
Would you quantify that, please?
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Charles Barton Posted 2:27 am
20 Jun 2007
Generation IV reactors do exist
"Generation IV reactors do not exist."
Depending on how you look at it, the Westinghouse AP 1000 is either an advanced generation III reactor, or a true generation IV reactor, with generation III roots. The simplisity of the design, coupled with greatly improved safety features, makes the AP 1000 a true breakthrough in reactor design. The AP 1000 can be mass produced, and using modular construction techniques, it can be constructed within 36 months. The NRC has approved the final design certification the AP1000. Mass produced the AP 1000 will cost one billion dollars or less.
http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/AP1000/index.shtm
It would be criminal if the environmental community did not push for the replacement of coal fired power plants, with highly sophisticated and safe reactors like the AP 1000.
It is also acknowledged that the Molten Salt reactor is a generation IV product, yet three generations of Molten Salt reactor were designed and produced by ORNL in the 1950's and 60's.
Charles Barton
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Charles Barton Posted 2:39 am
20 Jun 2007
Health and the Nuclear community
My father who worked at ORNL from the 1940's to the 1970's, likes to tell the story of how he walked from one building to another with an unshilled Plutonium sample attached to the end of a long pole. During much of the 1950's, he worked up close and personal with Plutonium every day. He is 95, and has never had cancer. His story is typical of workers in the nuclear industry, who upon retirement have higher than average life expectancies, even if they can be observed to glow in the dark! Hay, having one in the family cuts down on lighting expenses.
Charles Barton
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Patrick Mazza Posted 2:55 am
20 Jun 2007
Waste, cost, etc.
The key issue with nuclear waste is not whether it has killed anyone to date. A series of incidents surrounding Russian nuclear weapons materials operations at Chelyabinsk probably did. The fundamental issue is whether material that will exceed the radioactivity of the original source materials for 15,000 years is a legacy we should leave the next 4,000 or so human generations. That is a moral debate complicated by the fact that our fossil emissions are also leaving a long-term footprint on the future, from centuries of sea level rise to biodiversity losses prospectively unseen since the extinctions of 65 million years ago. Ideally, we should choose energy sources that do not leave any such footprints.
There are geological structures we can project will stay stable for 15,000 years and much longer based on the geological record. Unfortunately, Yucca Mountain is rife with uncertainties, including water in an oxidizing environment and seismic activity. It was chosen as a product of politics, long before Harry Reid became Senate majority leader. That gets to a very basic issue - Longterm geologic storage looks is technically feasible, but is it politically feasible? (Finland is on track to complete a geologic repository, but their politics are different.) In the interim, waste will be stored in dry casks, and probably remain at over 100 little waste repositories at current, former and future (?) reactor sites indefinitely. Those with an agenda for reprocessing waste will be secretely satisfied.
In response to deezakin, no, the factors that are driving nuke to 8-11 cents kWh are pushing wind to about 6.5 cents, and that includes grid connections and balancing resources. Add another 2.5 cents to the nuke cost for a comparable figure. Also note that wind prices are up not just because of the general run-up in materials costs, but because wind is booming and the supply chain is still being built.
The test of the Westinghouse reactor linked in Charles' post will be if it can play in the marketplace. Energy Act 2005 puts up $6 billion in production credits on the table for the first new nukes to be built in the U.S. A number of utilities are circling around this and looking at Southeastern sites. China also has major reactor construction plans announced. Test of time and the market.
Patrick Mazza
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Charles Barton Posted 3:25 am
20 Jun 2007
Get real
Patrick, the concern about nuclear waist disposal is a chicken little game. Nature conducted an experiment a long time ago which demonstrated that nuclear waist can be safely contained for at least a billion and a half years:
http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.shtml
Even in the unlikely event that reactor waist is not contained, would the consequences be worst than a 3 or 4 meter sea level rise during this century? We will solve the nuclear waist issue if we want to badly enough, just as we will solve the problem of Greenhouse gas is we want to solve it. Our problems will not be solved as long as we give in to anti-nuclear hysteria.
When advocates of wind power tell us that reliable, unlimited wind power can be had for $.065 a KW hour, I want to pull out my shovel. In what real world is that possible? TVA reports that there is enough wind on Buffalo Mountain, one of the most windy spots in Tennessee to generate electricity 7% of the time in Augst, a peek demand month, in air conditioner friendly Tennessee. How far are you going to string your grid to bring reliable power to Tennessee in August pray tell? Certainly you are going to have to go far beyond the South Eastern United States, which has the same wind conditions you find in Tennessee. The wind plus grid idea is a pipe dream. Get real, and lets get on with the solution.
Charles Barton
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Patrick Mazza Posted 4:21 am
20 Jun 2007
Wind grid
Wind power is abundant as a Stanford study shows:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/07/15/wind.power/
We would need a Smart Grid to operate mass intermittent renewables, along with new transmission lines from wind reservoirs such as the Great Plains. Ackowledged, the Southeast is wind-poor and other options are needed.
If you read my post carefully, I ackowledged long-term geologic storage is feasible.
Patrick Mazza
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Charles Barton Posted 5:36 am
20 Jun 2007
Smart grid and reliability,
Patrick, The smart grid is an unproven technology. If it is viable, it might provide us with a solution of part of a solution, We ought not to count on unproven technologies for our solutions. Proven technologies should get preference until new technologies have proven reliability.
Charles Barton
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dezakin Posted 5:38 am
20 Jun 2007
Makes the flowers grow
In comparing costs of wind to costs of nuclear, you're being incredibly disingenuous. You're taking the worst experiences reactor cost overruns in a heavily regulated environment prone to disruption and capital mismanagement with low expected reactor lifetimes and comparing them to the best anticipated scenarios for wind. You're anticipating a ridiculously high interest rate and very long build times, and yet with wind you're anticipating everything working smoothly, that supply chain disruptions will fix themselves where for some reason they wont with nuclear power.
And still not factoring in additional infrastructure cost for dispatchable storage to counter winds behavior as a negative load rather than a base supply.
Experience with massive nuclear infrastructure projects in France shows nothing of the 8-11 cents per kw/hour that you're inventing, and yet wind shows no sign of being less expensive baseload than nuclear anywhere.
In short... you're lying; Cooking the books for a desired outcome.
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dezakin Posted 5:44 am
20 Jun 2007
Discounting and waste
Fretting about several thousand tons of spent fuel is innumeracy at its finest. Anyone who understands the very basics of discounting can see why.
Stick the dry storage casks in a parking lot. Check on them in another 100 years an reseal if necissary. Chances are in several hundred years at the very latest we'll strip out the actinides for fuel anyways, in addition to the xenon and platinum group fission products.
Geologic repositories are misdirection solutions to a nonproblem. They arent necissary and never were.
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Charles Barton Posted 6:29 am
20 Jun 2007
AP 1000 mass production
If Gen IV nuclear reactors could be mass produced at $1 billion a pop, as Charles Barton says, why aren't they?
The NRC approved the AP 1000 design in 2006. 3 are on order in the United States and 4 more in China. This is a very impressive step toward the demand that can lead to mass production.
Charles Barton
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Rune Posted 9:20 am
20 Jun 2007
Promises, promises . . .
I've been waiting all my life for even one nuclear power plant to produce energy that is too "cheap to meter." I'm still waiting.
Sounds even better than the claims being about safe, clean, cheap nuclear power being spun today. But in the real world and, especially in the political, business, and security climate of the United States, it's difficult to take such dreams seriously, now.
As I understand it, we are all agreed that protecting the environment and enhancing the virtues of living in a more or less free and more or less technologically advanced state are primary considerations in evaluating a combination of new and existing energy and conservation measures to carry us forward. Shouldn't we be looking at the full spectrum of possible consequences of significantly expanding nuclear power in these terms instead of staying within the frame the PR firms pushing nukes find most comfortable as of late?
Has anyone given some serious thought to the implications of much more widely distributed nuclear fuel and waste in the context of terrorist threats, dirty bombs, infiltration of supposedly secure facilities, and the overwhelmingly dire response to just one such event in the U.S.? Before we even think about building and supporting more of these things, I think it makes a great deal of sense to truly clean up and secure the ones we already have, then use that effort as a basis for calculating the real world cost of doing the same may times over for new facilities.
I am sure there has been some work done in that area. And I am sure we remain in a vulnerable situation. So, where do people stand on this? Are we supposed to just hope for the best and ignore the implications of what is likely to happen if that changes?
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GRLCowan Posted 11:18 am
20 Jun 2007
Why is he sure we remain vulnerable?
The results of the first hundred billion barrels of oil replacement are encouraging. (Excel file.)
Many, I suspect, will remain sure of nuclear power's vulnerability to "terrorist threats, dirty bombs, infiltration of supposedly secure facilities" no matter how much negative evidence accumulates. They will demand we "truly clean up and secure the ones we already have" as a clever way of suggesting they aren't already clean and secure. Sure, they are in practice, but not in theory.
Perhaps the theory is incomplete. "Much more widely distributed nuclear fuel" isn't really possible, because nuclear fuel is uranium. It's everywhere. It has always been everywhere.
Unless future revenues on hundreds of billions of barrels of oil are for some reason important, it surely is a persuasive bit of theory that no amount of putatively security-related hobbling of the nuclear enterprise will make any worthwhile difference at all once it is easier for miscreants to find their own uranium and proceed entirely independently of it.
What is the evidence that this isn't already true?
I think "the overwhelmingly dire response to just one such event in the U.S." doesn't give the people of the US enough credit. After the Oklahoma City bombing, they continued to tolerate fuel oil shipments, and ammonium nitrate shipments. They didn't assume every such shipment was actually both, mixed, and didn't declare the fertilizer and fuel-oil industries forever and inextricably linked to terrorism.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html --
oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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Nucbuddy Posted 12:12 pm
20 Jun 2007
Group immunization and the masochistic drive
Rune wrote: As I understand it, we are all agreed that protecting the environment and enhancing the virtues of living in a more or less free and more or less technologically advanced state are primary considerations
In that case, you understand incorrectly since the outlook you describe is humanist, and not everyone is a humanist.
Rune wrote: Has anyone given some serious thought to the implications of much more widely distributed nuclear fuel and waste in the context of terrorist threats, dirty bombs, infiltration of supposedly secure facilities, and the overwhelmingly dire response to just one such event in the U.S.?
Yes.
thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/11/build_more_nucl.html#comment-25220524
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GreyFlcn Posted 12:23 pm
20 Jun 2007
24...24...24....
Because we all know America would go to war over insults from foreign nations ;D
_
Anyways, sounds like a plot from an episode of 24.
Jack Bauer shall save us!
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GreyFlcn Posted 12:31 pm
20 Jun 2007
uhg
Since when is hydrogen the same element as uranium?
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Nucbuddy Posted 12:57 pm
20 Jun 2007
Nuclear terrorism and uranium-distribution
Rune wrote: Has anyone given some serious thought to the implications of much more widely distributed nuclear fuel and waste in the context of terrorist threats, dirty bombs, infiltration of supposedly secure facilities
GreyFlcn wrote: Since when is hydrogen the same element as uranium?
What does your question have to do with the nuclear terrorism that Rune was talking about?
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:04 pm
20 Jun 2007
re: NucBuddy
The more pressing question should be what does Hydrogen have to do with the availibility of Uranium.
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Nucbuddy Posted 1:52 pm
20 Jun 2007
The availability of uranium
GreyFlcn wrote: The more pressing question should be what does Hydrogen have to do with the availibility of Uranium.
Please clearly-explain how you arrived at that conclusion.
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:33 pm
20 Jun 2007
re: NucBuddy
Perhaps you should ask Cowan
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/6/18/161052/155#com ...
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advancednano Posted 3:32 pm
20 Jun 2007
Nuke proliferation has killed no one
Nuclear proliferation has killed no one but fear of nuclear power has meant coal has not been displaced which kills millions
Mostly adding nuclear power in places that have both nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors. What is the incremental risk ? Compare the risk with actual deaths from coal and oil pollution.
Scaling up:
The world is completing about 2 coal reactors every week. Coal reactors can take almost as long to build as a nuclear reactor. So the scale of construction is feasible.
Research shows we can safely up power all water based reactors by 50%. Donut shaped fuel and nanoparticles in the water for higher temperatures for boiling. (MIT study)
So the reactors would produce a lot more power.
Also, historically, the US completed 12 reactors in 1974,10 in 1973, 8 in 1972. There were years in the eighties with 8 completed. Before 1968 only small reactors were built. Only two had over 400MW, but most were less than 100MW. 1969, 1970, 1971 had 3-4 each year, then in 1972 the 8 reactors. So from a relative standing start the scale up was rapid to the peak of 12/year of the last build cycle. We are in a better position now because US rebuilt a new nuclear plant and is switching on Browns Ferry 1 this year.
Overall, renewable energy (1993 to 2005) in the United States has increased at a rate of 1,000 thousand megawatt-hours/per year. The nuclear energy figure is 16,203 thousand megawatt-hours per year for nuclear even without building a new plant. This is from operating efficiency gains.
There are now 286 nuclear reactors in the world construction pipeline. Up 20 from last month and up from 219 in February.
http://www.uic.com.au/reactors.htm
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Nucbuddy Posted 9:04 pm
20 Jun 2007
The availability of uranium, revisited
Nucbuddy wrote:
GreyFlcn wrote: Perhaps you should ask Cowan
gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/6/18/161052/155#comment33
Please clearly-explain how you arrived at that conclusion.
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Patrick Mazza Posted 5:45 am
25 Jun 2007
Low level mudslinging from dezakin
No, I'm not lying when I contrast nuclear and wind figures. The nuclear figures are based on latest construction experience and the figure of 8-11 cents new nuclear power was agreed to by all members of the collaborative including the nuclear industry. No cooked books. The wind figures are also based on current constuction experience.
Calling someone a liar because you disagree with their statements is low level mudslinging, dezakin. You should learn some respect.
Patrick Mazza
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dezakin Posted 6:20 am
27 Jun 2007
Omissions and Statistics.
You think I didn't read the paper? The study admitted to a very low sample size with a variety of issues that interfered with the final costs of each plant.
Also from the same paper:
'If we examined the cost of construction for a coal or wind plant, we would expect to find similar cost increases'
But the study did not examine the cost of construction of either. You're lying about making a valid comparison. The grid integration costs for wind would be huge for the simple reason that supplying the dispatchable power (often in the form of pumped hydro or natural gas) incurs much higher capital costs than nuclear.
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