There have been several good entries in the never-ending nuclear debate lately. I'm pulling several together into one post, so all the vicious arguing can center in one comment thread. Fun!
In a long, detailed, and devastating cover story in The Nation, Christian Parenti asks, "What Nuclear Renaissance?" Peeling away the hype and PR, he discovers that there's much less than meets the eye:
This much seems clear: a handful of firms might soak up huge federal subsidies and build one or two overpriced plants. While a new administration might tighten regulations, public safety will continue to be menaced by problems at new as well as older plants. But there will be no massive nuclear renaissance. Talk of such a renaissance, however, helps keep people distracted, their minds off the real project of developing wind, solar, geothermal and tidal kinetics to build a green power grid.
The Congressional Budget Office recently released a report on the costs of new nuclear plants [PDF] in light of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (which contained beaucoup subsidies). On his blog Green Energy War, ex-California Energy Commissioner John Geesman has three great posts digging into the report -- one, two, three. Here he summarizes the top-line conclusions:
• In the absence of both CO2 charges and EPAct incentives, conventional coal and natural gas technologies would most likely be the least expensive source of new electricity generating capacity.
• CO2 charges of about $45 per metric ton would probably make nuclear competitive with conventional coal and natural gas technologies as a source of new baseload capacity, even without EPAct incentives.
• At CO2 charges below $45, natural gas is probably a more economic source of baseload capacity than coal. CO2 charges would have to be less than $5 per metric ton for coal to be the lowest cost source of new capacity.
• EPAct incentives, even in the absence of CO2 charges, would probably make nuclear a competitive technology for a few of the 30 plants currently being proposed.
• Regardless of the incentives provided by EPAct, uncertainties about future construction costs or natural gas prices could deter investment in nuclear. In particular, if construction costs "proved to be as high as the average cost of nuclear plants built in the 1970s and 1980s, or if natural gas prices fell back to the levels seen in the 1990s, nuclear would not be competitive."
• CO2 charges "would probably have to exceed $80 per metric ton in order for nuclear technology to remain competitive under either of those circumstances."
Geesman deems the report too optimistic about costs.
Speaking of those costs, the News & Observer reports:
The estimated cost of new nuclear power plants has tripled in the past few years, with projections now hitting $6 billion to $9 billion per reactor. Cost estimates are expected to continue escalating. Soaring costs make the prospect of new nuclear power even harder to sell to a public that will ultimately pay for new plants through rate increases.
Meanwhile, BBC reports that costs will rise further as high-grade uranium declines and mining for it becomes more costly and energy-intensive.
Obviously I'm not unbiased, but in my experience the basic pro-nuke argument tends to be repeated over and over again, almost verbatim, despite obvious weaknesses. Take this one in Discover. You've got all the typical ingredients:
- The assertion that enviros are coming around to nuclear power, supported by citing James Lovelock and industry shill Patrick Moore. (If greens are really coming around, shouldn't there be some new examples by now?)
- The deceptive framing that our choice is between coal and nuclear.
- The hand-wavey assertion that renewable sources can't supply a substantial percentage of our power because ... they don't currently supply a substantial percentage of our power. Of course it's arguable how much and how fast renewables could scale up, but the striking feature of these pro-nuke articles is they don't even make a pretense of addressing the issue seriously. It's "renewables are 1 percent and intermittent!" and that's it. As though building a nuke plant a week is no biggie.
- The careful avoidance of the main argument against nuclear: its crippling cost and inability to attract private investment.
And finally, last but not least, don't miss a brief, pointed, and utterly devastating article from Amory Lovins, Imran Sheikh, and Alex Markevich: "Forget Nuclear." I won't start quoting parts, 'cause I'll end up quoting the whole thing. Suffice to say, micropower and efficiency are kicking ass and attracting enormous private investment; nuclear is attracting none. And there's a reason for that. Read the whole thing.
Coal-nundrum and Ex-gas-peration
Comments
View as Flat
racc Posted 2:45 am
01 Jun 2008
High Speed Rail
At $6 to $9 billion a piece for nuclear plants for the cost of 30 such beasts we could build a great high-speed rail network across the country providing people with much better transportation and reducing emissions.
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PRC1 Posted 6:49 am
01 Jun 2008
Cost of nuclear construction
It is true that the cost of construction of nuclear power generators has gone up dramatically. It is also true that costs of constructiong wind turbines has gone up proportionately as well because they use the same materials. On a watt for watt generated basis it takes ten to one hundred times the material (concrete, steel, aluminum, copper etc) to build wind turbines versus nuclear power plants and wind turbines last for 20 years, reactors last for 60 or more years.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 7:25 am
01 Jun 2008
Still...
On a watt for watt generated basis it takes ten to one hundred times the material (concrete, steel, aluminum, copper etc) to build wind turbines versus nuclear power plants and wind turbines last for 20 years, reactors last for 60 or more years.
Yes, but wind turbines can be constructed much quicker, and bring their energy online faster.
Plus, wind turbines offset the emissions from their construction much faster than nuclear plants do. The average wind turbine takes less than 6 months to offset all emissions from construction/production.
For nuclear plants, it can take almost a decade to offset the emissions from construction/production.
And though cost of materials have gone up for both, wind turbines return their investment much faster than nuclear does.
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emil Posted 8:03 am
01 Jun 2008
"Main argument against nuclear" ?
"The careful avoidance of the main argument against nuclear: its crippling cost and inability to attract private investment."
Surely the main arguments are (a) safety and (b) safety of waste storage. After this comes cost, etc. Isn't this why environmentalists have always been against nuclear??
I agree that the economics are bad, especially when the cost of storing the waste for thousands of years is factored in, but surely this must rank second after public safety?
(Also, personally I don't favor private investment for public services.)
Emil
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:47 am
01 Jun 2008
Hmm
I wonder, what impact would rate structure decoupling, similar to what PG&E uses, have on nuclear power?
http://www.uberpulse.com/us/2008/01/pge_wants_you_to_cons ...
http://www.narucmeetings.org/Presentations/Risser.pdf
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Wolverine Posted 8:49 am
01 Jun 2008
Good One, Emil
The posts here are a perfect example of why environmentalists should not get caught up in meaningless crap like economics. What's meaningful to us real enviros is life, not money. The main environmental arguments against nuclear power are first and foremost the destruction from mining uranium, which has many sub-arguments, then the radiation emitted by nuclear power plants, and finally the radioactive waste generated by these plants. All else is trivial, environmentally speaking.
We environmentalists should not allow the left to hijack our issues or arguments. The main arguments against nuclear power have nothing to do with economics, as much as the left is obsessed with those arguments.
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GRLCowan Posted 8:57 am
01 Jun 2008
False premise
Environmentalists have not always been against nuclear energy. The shift seemed to happen, for those for whom it happened, when nuclear energy lost its subsidies and still kept taking market share from fossil fuels in the early 70s.
Safety and waste were never anything but excuses. Environmentalists who wish to get around the Arctic, and have the choice of diesel or nuclear icebreakers, quietly choose nuclear.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html
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GRLCowan Posted 9:14 am
01 Jun 2008
Devastating
Interesting use of the word. It also appears in The final nail ... from two years back.
Does Roberts wonder what might have happened to uranium reserves in that time? Let's give him one guess.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:15 am
01 Jun 2008
Excuse me
When did Nuclear power "lose it's subsidies"?
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mmmtashty Posted 9:25 am
01 Jun 2008
what can All State do for Nuclear?
Economically speaking, most of the bases were covered when it comes to the downsides of nuclear energy. However, no one really mentioned how the nuke indusrty desperately relies on heavy federal subsidies to water down huge insurance costs (you can probably guess why they are so high). On another note, it always baffles me why people want to invest so much in a mature industry (nuclear)when they could invest in wind, an industry in its infancy, which has been proven to be incredibly profitable/ environmentally benign in so many countries.
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Erik Hoffner Posted 10:05 am
01 Jun 2008
refining costs
Good roundup, David.
What also bothers me about nuclear is the energy costs involved in refining uranium. How is it refined? Usually by burning enormous amounts of coal.
And these refining plants are allowed to emit radioactivity, according to Helen Caldicott.
The whole thing is reminiscent of a coal-fired ethanol plant. Not too bright.
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,200+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
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GRLCowan Posted 10:32 am
01 Jun 2008
Fuel prep
Well, so is she; and she is allowed to lie. Encouraged to, in fact.
You commit a fallacy of equivocation. If coal-fired plant were the only source of electricity for a gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment plant, it could support 50 or a little more times its capacity in nuclear plants; if enormous amounts of coal are burned, the amounts that would be burned directly, were the 50 plants coal-fired, would be 50 times more enormous.
Also, we in Canada use natural-uranium fuelled plants, and for these, fuel preparation takes ~0.00 percent of its energy.
Read up on the MTOE production figures in various countries and think again about your comparison to coal-fired ethanol plants. The USA's cumulative nuclear electricity production exceeds that which 4 billion tonnes of oil could have produced. That would be, like, six gigatonnes of ethanol.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html
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KenG Posted 10:44 am
01 Jun 2008
Just the Facts
I don't really ever expect hard core environmentalists to accept nuclear power. By it's very nature it requires centralization, major corporate involvement, etc. I also don't expect hard core environmentalists to be very important in the decision process if the anti-carbon movement succeeds. There just won't be any practical alternatives. Maybe I'm wrong and there's a wind/solar success path around the corner but I don't see it.
However, I wish we wouldn't keep seeing the same silly untruths. 10 years for energy break-even? It's about 1 year and established by many diverse well documented studies. I'm very skeptical that wind can achieve a 6 month breakeven given the huge amount of concrete per unit of electrical generation.
Also, Caldicotts "factoid" about the coal power required for Uranium enrichment is about 40 years out of date. Most Uranium is now enriched by the centrifuge method instead of diffusion. In a few years all will be from centrifuge plants unless the even more efficient laser enrichment process takes over. The energy required is at least 20 times less than Calcicott assumes in her assessments.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:05 pm
01 Jun 2008
6 to 9 bucks per watt
That's without 10,000 year waste storage, clean up of the site, transport of the waste, decommissioning, entombment of the core, clean up of groundwater around the site..I figure add at least another 9 bucks per watt for all that.
The there's still fuel costs, ever higher with rumors of nuclear revival.
Compare it to under 1 dollar per watt solar and wind that competes with coal. With no fuel costs ever.
Seems kind of nutty to advocate nuclear over renewables.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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maxgladwell Posted 3:41 pm
01 Jun 2008
How much energy do we need?
Any discussion about energy should start with how much we need and will need over the next 50 years. This data from Professor Nate Lewis (http://nsl.caltech.edu/files/energy.ppt) of Cal Tech is the best I've seen. Though it's a few years old, most of the numbers are still accurate. We need to add a lot of TW of capacity while reducing GHG emissions. One can take the idealistic approach and hope that renewables will not only be able to provide ALL of this extra capacity but also replace all of the current fossil-fuel capacity...when it only accounts for 1% so far. Or we can get real.
What happens when cars switch to electric? That isn't even factored into Lewis' numbers. Where will energy come from when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't out? I know, storage devices that haven't been invented yet.
With oil at $135/barrel, all low-carbon options should be on the table. How many people have died from nuclear accidents in the industry's 50-year history? Exactly 58, all from Chernobyl. How many have died from fossil-fuel-related pollution? How many will die from it in the future? Nuclear won't play a big role simply b/c there isn't that much fuel available. But we do know that nuclear can supply a given amount of base-load capacity. With renewables there is much more unknown than known. Do we err on the side of caution and build new nuclear power plants or do we err on the side of optimism and hope that renewables will fill the void, while risking rolling blackouts or worse...more coal plants?
Our low-carbon energy future will be a patchwork. Nuclear will be a part of it. So will wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, hydro, ocean wave, and carbon sequestration (among others, we hope).
MaxGladwell.com The Nexus of Social Media and Green Living
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Wolverine Posted 5:30 pm
01 Jun 2008
To Paraphrase A Sentient Reptile Alien
You humans make me sick. You think you're god's gift to the universe just because you stand upright and have developed self consciousness. And what's more, your blood it's red. Yuck! Green wasn't good enough for you, huh? Etc. (Sorry, can't remember his exact words, it's been a few decades.)
This thread presents a good reason for that outburst. God forbid humans should be willing to use less energy especially after they see how environmentally and ecologically destructive consuming it is! Noooo, they must create even greater amounts by further destroying the planet and causing every other form of life to suffer.
So yeah, let's mine coal and uranium and rip up the Earth. And lets emit more radioactivity from all aspects of nuclear power. No wonder humans are the most hated species in the galaxy!
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Max8806 Posted 6:44 pm
01 Jun 2008
Honesty about Economics of Nuclear
The argument here that "micropower and efficiency are kicking ass and attracting enormous private investment; nuclear is attracting none," completely misses the point. Efficiency/renewables are getting more private investment because they are the low hanging fruit. But the bummer about low hanging fruit is that it runs out.
Even the relatively large amounts of $ investments in renewables/efficiency are broken up into relatively small projects here and there. Renewables are never forced to slide up the marginal cost curve. Eventually, if you are serious about reducing the nation's emissions, you have to power a city. In fact, many, many cities. So, since when considering nuclear power you are inherently considering such baseload power, Amory Lovins' numbers are irrelevant. Don't take nuclear's GWs and chop it down into $/kwh and see how it compares with efficiency/renewables. Presume you need a GW or more to power a city, and consider alternatives. Turns out you can't power a city off of negawatts. Or wind farms, unless you want to pave over the rest of the state with wind turbines. So in some situations you actually are stuck in large part between nuclear and conventional fossil fuels.
Does this mean nuclear is "better" than renewables/efficiency? No, of course not. They serve different purposes for the grid. But the point is that like it or not you need baseload power. Its certainly a good point that in projecting baseload power needs, we should try to mitigate the increased demand before we try and supply it. But at some point you gotta supply.
Also, lets be clear about government support of renewable energy. While subsidies for conventional/nuclear are more than for renewables, that's because conventional/nuclear supplies so much more energy. For a realistic assessment of how government support actually affects profitability (and so deployment), the important measure is $ per unit energy. According to recent (2007) EIA numbers, wind and solar each got over $23 per MWhr in FY2007. Compare this to the wholesale price of electricity at the end of FY2006 of $53 per MWhr. That's almost half. Nuclear got 1.59.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/subsi ...
In fairness most of EPAct2005's pro nuclear provisions won't kick in until new plants are built, so those provisions are not covered by the EIA study. However, those subsidies are hardly as egregious as renewables enthusiasts allege. The direct subsidy was merely extending to nuclear the same tax credit renewables already enjoy. And the infamous Price-Anderson Catastrophic Insurance fund doesn't actually hit the public dollar until $10 billion is paid out from private insurance from nuclear plants.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets ...
Finally, since efficiency/renewables and nuclear both are undersupplied by the market because they aren't compensated for the substantial positive externality of pollution abatement they provide, its sorta irrelevant to debate energy economics without first positing a cap on national emissions. In that situation, while a lot of the first low hanging fruit reductions would indeed be renewables/efficiency, does anyone really doubt that the private market would then turn to nuclear, in a big way? Its also worth noting that a cap on emissions would lead to a significant increase in the cost of steel/concrete, which would hit wind/solar way harder than nuclear, on a per energy delivered basis.
If you want to debate issues with nuclear, there are legitimate debates worth having. But Amory Lovins' 'death by incurable market forces' prognosis for nuclear just makes him look like a fool when interest does indeed spike after considering a potential emissions cap.
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Charles Barton Posted 9:43 pm
01 Jun 2008
The myth of unsolvable problems with nuclear power
David Roberts, trots out his tired old slogan, "Save the world from global warming, no nuclear power!" I wonder if the fellow is really a stooge of the coal industry, despite all his anti-coal protestations. Roberts recites the same tired old anti-nuclear lines he was chanting a year ago. Meanwhile thinking among pro-nuclear advocates has increasingly been directed to solving the problems, but Roberts, with his fanatic opposition to nuclear power, does not want the problems to be solved.
In my blog "Nuclear Green", I recently concluded a series, "The Keys to Lowering Reactor Cost." http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html
In this series I demonstrate that reactor construction costs can be dramatically lowered, that new materials derived from common and plentiful resources, can replace expensive metals in reactor structures. That reactors can be built in far shorter times than the current manufacturing method allows, that reactor construction costs can be dramatically lowered by use of well understood manufacturing techniques, that new approaches to financing reactor construction are in the interest of society, that now approaches to reactor siting can lower construction cost, make reactors safer, and protect reactors from aircraft, and other terrorist attacks. I also demonstrate that the problem of "nuclear waste" can be solved by well understood changes in the nuclear fuel cycle, that inherently safe reactors are possible and that the construction of inherently safe reactors would lower the cost of reactor construction. It is my conclusion that if policy makers start thinking outside the box, all the problems of nuclear power can be solved.
Charles Barton
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Erik Hoffner Posted 11:55 pm
01 Jun 2008
re: refining
Well, good to hear that not all nuke fuels are being refined thanks to coal these days, I guess.
Max: re: "How many people have died from nuclear accidents in the industry's 50-year history? Exactly 58, all from Chernobyl."
Check the thyroid cancer rates associated with Chernobyl, and add the number of folks who've had their thyroids completely removed, obligating them to receive thyroid hormone treatment daily for the rest of their lives or else.
Also the wards full of malformed children.
These people may not have died, but what is the quality of their living?
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,200+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
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amazingdrx Posted 12:09 am
02 Jun 2008
Bottom line
The bottom line argument can't be overcome, that's why we use it. It's their mode of argument, nuclear power advocates.
They have claimed that renewables and conservation are too expensive all along, mainly conceding the other points critiquing nuclear on mining devestation, waste disposal, leaks, proliferation, and safety.
Now finally the facts on cost comparison are being addressed by mass media, will government have to admit the huge cost disparity between renewable power and nuclear now? With nukes approaching 10 times the cost of renewables and conservation.
GHG free, clean, and one tenth the cost. But government still favors nuclear power. All that lobbying for nukes has payed off in the past, but for how long?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 12:21 am
02 Jun 2008
Yabbit
"...if policy makers start thinking outside the box, all the problems of nuclear power can be solved."
That newer, safer nuclear power design would need to be built and tested, this is going to take at least 10 years.
I think the best plan is to let the nuclear industry/government (non) regulating agencies try a few of these. Compare the cost and safety to renewables and conservation after that experimental program, in a decade or so.
Then and only then should new nuclear plants be considered. By then solar may very well be 10 cents per watt. The newer nuclear design will probably come out around 10 dollars per watt. 100 times the cost, instead of 10 times, that's my guess.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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BlackBear Posted 4:12 am
02 Jun 2008
At the end of day...
Despite the rhetoric and the "figurin" I still can't in good conscience approve of nuclear power for two basic reasons:
- It is a nonrenewable resource. Any way you slice it, there is a limited amount of suitable radioactive materials on earth for nuclear power. The fact that these elements must also be strip-mined just furthers my point. Remember, people said that we'd never run out of coal and oil, too.
- The waste from nuclear power is not merely toxic, it is painful death to any organisms unlucky enough to encounter it. Since no one can intelligently guarantee that a nuclear burial site will remain perfectly sealed for 10,000 years (so that it can safely decay) it is irresponsible to pretend otherwise.
At the end of the day, irregardless of whatever "fast math" you employ, we have a responsibility to ourselves and any/all future generations to do the best with what we know. Repeating the mistakes of the past with new fuels isn't it.Permalink
GRLCowan Posted 4:57 am
02 Jun 2008
Comfort
But it's a mighty comfortable limit. With oil over $120 per barrel, uranium is at $1.56 per barrel-equivalent. In recent months, as the oil price has been rising, uranium's has been going the other way.
This probably reflects the fact that when it got over $2 a few years ago, the annual, or is it biennial, IAEA "Red Book" reports began to show known reserves increasing at a rate near 100 million barrel-equivalents per day, ten times the rate of use.
(Convert the pound price given at the UXC link to a barrel-equivalent price by multiplying by 0.026. A barrel of petroleum yields the same heat as 0.026 pounds U3O8.)
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 8:20 am
02 Jun 2008
Wow, what an amazing collection of disinformation.
" The deceptive framing that our choice is between coal and nuclear. "
List all the proven low emission technologies that can replace and dismantle coal plants at an affordable price, give examples.
For 20 years the U.S. built 5 nuclear power plants a year, at a time when fossil fuel was abundant and cheap. France ramped up to 80% in a similar time frame, and has some of the cheapest electricity in Europe.
Romm says we will need 700 GW of high capacity factor power in the future. Name the alternate energy sources that can produce this much reliable high capacity factor energy year-round. What does it cost?
" The main environmental arguments against nuclear power are first and foremost the destruction from mining uranium, which has many sub-arguments, then the radiation emitted by nuclear power plants, and finally the radioactive waste generated by these plants. "
"It is a nonrenewable resource. Any way you slice it, there is a limited amount of suitable radioactive materials on earth for nuclear power. The fact that these elements must also be strip-mined just furthers my point."
Coal plants release 100 times more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear plants. But the radiation is insignificant compared to the other hazardous material released by coal plants.
How does the mining of the uranium compare with the mining of coal? We only need ¾ pound of uranium per person per year with existing reactor designs vs. 14,200 pounds of coal. We only need a half pound of uranium per lifetime with advanced reactors.
The uranium supply is effectively unlimited.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/2/75132/75324#com ...
" What also bothers me about nuclear is the energy costs involved in refining uranium. How is it refined? Usually by burning enormous amounts of coal. "
If it takes so much energy to make reactor fuel, why do reactor fuel assemblies costs less than ½¢ per kilowatt-hour, especially considering that the energy cost is just a small fraction of that?
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p2.html ...
" The waste from nuclear power is not merely toxic, it is painful death to any organisms unlucky enough to encounter it. Since no one can intelligently guarantee that a nuclear burial site will remain perfectly sealed for 10,000 years (so that it can safely decay) it is irresponsible to pretend otherwise. "
We are in contact with naturally occurring radioactive material all the time. Our bodies experience about 15,000 decays each second, yet it is responsible for only a small fraction of all cancers.
The natural decay of a uranium atom releases about seven times more radiation than the decay of a uranium atom's fission products. Fission products become less radioactive than uranium ore in about 270 years. Most fission products are nontoxic, whereas uranium ore decays into toxic lead. Splitting uranium atoms into fission products and storing them in a safe place for a few hundred years will make the world less radioactive that if humans had not evolved.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/meetings/PDFplus/2004/gcsfSe ...
I support the elimination of Price Anderson, and treating nuclear power like any other industry.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/2/75132/75324#com ...
Things Everybody Should Know About Energy
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:54 am
02 Jun 2008
Honesty indeed
Except that metric makes absolutely no sense!!!
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/15/104213/829
Comparing the largely 1970's era built capacity, to ONLY the 2007 year subsidy is a disgusting misrepresentation of economic reality.
http://www.awea.org/newsroom/pdf/Alexander_EIA_Two_Pager_ ...
If you want to talk about Total Capacity as a normalizing factor, then compare it to Total Subsidy. (Except that's an argument you would lose)
_
If this kind of tortured logic is the best that the industry can come up with, it's rather pathetic, and representative that they know that their economics really really suck. And are left to resorting to outright dishonesty to make their case.
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:27 am
02 Jun 2008
Credit where Credit is due
I should credit the tortured logic specifically towards Tennessee Republican Senator, Lamar Alexander.
http://www.cleanenergy.org/mediaRoom/index.cfm?pressID=3& ...
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=308 ...
The one particular Senator who requested the report, and insisted that it cherry pick the numbers in the exact way it did.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/appen ...
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Peterblose Posted 1:56 am
03 Jun 2008
Kool-Aid
Do you remember what it was like way back in the days before we invaded Iraq? To any intelligent person the arguments supporting the invasion were clearly without merit. The invasion was illogical. It was against our national interest. Many intelligent and well-informed people spoke out against the invasion. There were even protests before the war started. And yet... invade we did. In the face of overwhelming evidence and popular opinion the United States of America is still in Iraq and not likely to leave anytime soon no matter who the next president is.
Do you remember Jim Jones? Despite the obvious insanity, hundreds of people - searching for salvation - drank the Kool-Aid.
My greatest fear is that history is about to repeat itself. The United States Congress and all three of our presidential candidates - searching for a solution to global warming - appear more than willing to drink the Kool-Aid now being offered by the cult of nuclear power.
Call your US senator today. The Lieberman Warner climate change bill is currently being debated on the Senate floor. John McCain is pushing hard for amendments to further subsidize the nuclear power industry. Ask your senator to oppose any amendments supporting nuclear power as a solution to global warming. Specifically, any subsidies to support the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership or the reprocessing of nuclear waste.
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jkearns Posted 3:09 am
03 Jun 2008
The Real Energy Crisis
The real energy crisis is that we have too much energy, not not enough.
We have so much energy we use it wastefully and destructively. If we had less we'd be better off.
http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2007/06/20/the-crisis-of- ...
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Max8806 Posted 3:49 am
03 Jun 2008
A ridiculous way to measure subsidies
GreyFlcn,
Your point that subsidies should be measured against total installed capacity is not only pretty foolish, but it just highlights another economic disadvantage of wind/solar. That's because with coal/nuclear, installed capacity and actual power output are pretty close, due to capacity factors above 90%. With wind and solar, you're lucky if you get 30%. That means a 100MW wind farm is not 1/10 the power of a 1GW nuclear plant, its more like 1/30.
I don't understand how you could possibly say $ spent per power delivered ($/kwh) is a less accurate measure of subsidization than dollars spent per power delivered+power not delivered but theoretically would have been if the wind always blew and the sun always shined. Which is what your suggestion of using $/total installed capacity would be. But please feel free to enlighten me.
Also, you quoted my saying nuclear got $1.59 and then lambasted me for that number being out of context, even though I explain right after (though you choose not to show) that that number is out of context because pro-nuclear provisions of EPAct2005 won't kick in until new plants start to get built. The point is while given that the number is off, its not 3000% off. But also, coal got way less, like 50 cents or something, and theres no Price Anderson or massive subsidized loan guarantees for coal.
The point here is not that coal is better than wind/solar, or even that nuclear is. But like I said, the scalability of renewables is always assumed but for no good reason, and the role of government subsidies in providing their economic competitiveness is never admitted. This doesn't help the debate and it doesn't help us find pragmatic solutions. Obviously coal gets a huge subsidy in virtue of its free waste dump on the public commons (atmosphere), but exaggerating the extent to which small scale renewables can take the whole load over does no one any good. And it dodges the crucial question of supplying clean, base load power for this century, which is a real serious question, even if you accept nuclear, and much less if you don't.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 4:03 am
03 Jun 2008
How long?...
But it's a mighty comfortable limit.
Yeah, but for how long? The more nuke plants get built, the quicker it gets used up.
Not to mention that many of the "easy: reserves are bein' depleted quite rapidly, and more than half are gone. Yes, there are other reserves, but they are extremely hard to get to, and their mining would involve much more destructive practices than have been used thus far to get to the "easy" reserves.
Not to mention that the vast majority of the reserves are not in the United States, so in terms of people who think energy independence is important, you're just shiftin' the focus from foreign oil to foreign nuclear fuel.
Not to mention most other countries aren't exactly strict when it comes to mining laws concerning the environment, even when the material is nuclear fuel.
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Max8806 Posted 5:01 am
03 Jun 2008
Renewables too...
Tasermons,
When you consider it on a per unit energy delivered basis, which is the most relevant way, an incredible amount of emissions intensive and mined resources go into solar and wind energy - copper, steel, aluminum, etc. There's no free lunch.
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maxgladwell Posted 12:37 pm
03 Jun 2008
Nuclear Re-Branding
Our contribution to this debate: http://www.maxgladwell.com/2008/06/nuclear-energy-needs-a ...
MaxGladwell.com The Nexus of Social Media and Green Living
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gzuckier Posted 12:09 am
04 Jun 2008
look at the resources longterm
used up wind turbines, etc. are recyclable.
used up reactors are high and low level radioactive waste
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amazingdrx Posted 12:51 am
04 Jun 2008
Waste
The core from the first nuclear reactor to be decommissioned now lies in an unlined trench in a South Carolina landfill. Radiation is leaking into groundwater and the nearby river from this horrific disaster perpetrated by the nuclear power industry/government (non) regulatory, revolving door cabal of the nuclear priesthood.
These fellers have a lot to answer for, before any new reactors are permitted.
Institute the compromise. Give some new people, some really competent nuclear engineers, unsullied by corporate cronyism, a chance to fix this. Build a few different experimental waste recycling, safer reactors.
Then and only then consider more reactors, based on cost and safety considerations in competition with renewables, conservation, and a smart grid.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 1:12 am
04 Jun 2008
The Great Compromise
Just substitute nuclear power for the female role in this sad tale. We need to make a new compromise with nuclear power. Our future has been compromised by nukes, hehey.
The Great Compromise, John Prine
I knew a girl who was almost a lady
She had a way with all the men in her life
Every inch of her blossomed in beauty
And she was born on the fourth of july
Well she lived in an aluminum house trailer
And she worked in a juke box saloon
And she spent all the money I give her
Just to see the old man in the moon
Chorus:
I used to sleep at the foot of old glory
And awake in the dawn's early light
But much to my surprise
When I opened my eyes
I was a victim of the great compromise
Well we'd go out on saturday evenings
To the drive-in on route 41
And it was there that I first suspected
That she was doin' what she'd already done
She said "johnny won't you get me some popcorn"
And she knew I had to walk pretty far
And as soon as I passed through the moonlight
She hopped into a foreign sports car
(repeat chorus)
Well you know I could have beat up that fellow
But it was her that had hopped into his car
Many times I'd fought to protect her
But this time she was goin' too far
Now some folks they call me a coward
'cause I left her at the drive-in that night
But I'd druther have names thrown at me
Than to fight for a thing that ain't right
(repeat chorus)
Now she writes all the fellows love letters
Saying "greetings, come and see me real soon"
And they go and line up in the barroom
And spend the night in that sick woman's room
But sometimes I get awful lonesome
And I wish she was my girl instead
But she won't let me live with her
And she makes me live in my head
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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gzuckier Posted 6:08 am
04 Jun 2008
"only 58 nuke fatalities"
"How many people have died from nuclear accidents in the industry's 50-year history? Exactly 58, all from Chernobyl. "
That thought ballon's easy to burst:
- Two workers killed in the Manhattan Project in two separate incidents when hand assembled fissile material got too close and reached partial criticality.
- Operator killed in Los Alamos when plutonium recovery process reaches criticality.
- Three workers killed in Idaho Falls as they adjusted fuel rods in preparation for routine reactor startup. They are so heavily contaminated that their bodies had to be buried in lead coffins and their hands treated as high level radioactive waste.
- Explosion at Kerr McGee nuclear reprocessing plant in OK fatally contaminates lungs of one worker.
These are just direct immediate unmistakable radiation related deaths, not including delayed deaths from cancer, etc. statistically attributable to contamination of many workers during the numerous "small accidents", or simiilar deaths in the public statistically associated with released radiation, such as:A ten fold increase in childhood thyroid cancer of a very aggressive type reported downwind of Chernobyl (Vasili S. Kazakov et al., "Thyroid cancer after Chernobyl", Nature, Vol. 359, 3 September 1992);
University of Pittsburgh researchers estimated that Three Mile Island alone can be linked to over 400 excess infant deaths; researchers at Columbia University found a 64% increase in leukemia and other cancers after Three Mile Island (Maureen C. Hatch et al., "Cancer Near the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant," American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 132, no. 3, pp. 397-412 (1990); Maureen C. Hatch et al., "Cancer Rates After the Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident and Proximity of Residence to the Plant," American Journal of Public Health, vol. 81, no. 6, pp. 719-24 (1991); Evelyn O. Talbott et al., "Mortality Among the Residents of the Three Mile Accident Area: 1979-1992," Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 108, no. 6, pp. 545-52 (2000); Evelyn O. Talbott et al., "Long-Term Follow-up of the Residents of the Three Mile Island Accident," Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 111, no. 3, pp. 341-48 (2003); Stephen Wing et al., "A Re-Evaluation of Cancer Incidence Near the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant," Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 105: pp. 52-55, (1997) http://www.tmia.com/images/wingmap3.jpg).
Of course, these are susceptible to the same "you can't PROVE it" defense as tobacco-related deaths and CO2-climate change. So you can be reassured that there will NEVER be any deaths of this kind PROVED attributable to the nuclear power industry, no matter what. But bear in mind that releases of radioactivity of comparable size to TMI also occurred at Indian Point in CT and Oyster Creek in NJ, in addition to innumerable smaller releases, not always reported.
Of course, this does not include non-radiation related industrial accidents in the industry, radiation deaths attributable to mining or the highly radioactive and toxic uranium mining tailings, etc.
I tend to suspect any form of advocacy, pro or anti any particular policy regardless of its liberal-conservative orientation, which relies too heavily on too-good-to-be-true urban myths alien to the human experience; particularly those which can be easily punctured by a little research (which can nowadays be done quickly, easily, and in the comfort of home via the internet) were the True Believer not inclined to avoid anything which might instill some doubt. Experience teaches us that human beings get sloppy and careless, and that big industry cuts corners in search of profits; "statistics" that whitewash this need further inquiry.
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birdboy Posted 10:56 am
04 Jun 2008
Trust your Uncle Nuke
I'm gigawatts of unbested power
My breath is pure and sweet,
I'm there for you at any hour,
I wouldn't dream of trapping heat.
There's no time for wind and solar,
we're facing an emergency!
They're fickle as the weather,
and need a great big subsidy.
I'm the one that you can trust;
leave your children in my care.
Let the coal plants go to rust,
and spread my power everywhere!
So go unearth my precious ore,
and divert the river's flow
deep within my reactor core
to keep my temper low.
Pour your taxes in concrete walls
and high barbed-wire fences;
until the cost of insurance falls-
I'm not to blame for those expenses.
Build for me a secret tomb
to await my long decay;
post the sign of death and doom
and all that's living, keep away!
Nevermind my radiation,
soon to spread across the nation.
It keeps the gene pool from stagnation
with a bit of random mutation.
Your safety I can simulate-
I'll create a federal agency,
and they'll pretend to regulate
to keep me from complacency.
Trust your Uncle Nuke, I say.
Put your faith in science;
never doubt that I'm the way
to energy self-reliance.
But if you find you're losing hair
and often need to puke,
you'd best kneel down, and say a prayer
to trusted Uncle Nuke.
a liberal in redsville
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GreyFlcn Posted 11:43 am
04 Jun 2008
Historical Subsidies
I'm not talking about $/GW, I'm talking $/MWh
Catch being; To be honest, you have to account for the past half century of subsidies to Nuclear power.
http://www.komanoff.net/nuclear_power/Subsidies_Wind_vs_N ...
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/15/104213/829
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Max8806 Posted 6:46 pm
04 Jun 2008
Still a bit off, GreyFlcn
Actually, we haven't had massive subsidies for nuclear power for the last half century. That's why so many of the companies that built the nuclear power plants operating today went bust. Then someone else inherited/bought them and made a ton of money because they're very profitable to operate. But the factors that led to those failures in the 70s don't all exist today. And some that do are still as ridiculous.
For example, most of the construction delays for nuclear power happened when projects got tied up in Court by opponents. They sued at every level of government, down to getting local land use boards to deny permits for building supply roads - all sorts of random stuff just to hold up construction. In a time when inflation hit 10%, obviously having a capital loan out of a billion dollars is a killer if you're tied up in court and so prevented from going online and collecting any revenue.
The greens always trumpet the construction delays and cost overruns as inherent to nuclear power, without ever acknowledging their direct role in it. This political opposition and promise of litigation is as big a deterrent to companies as anything economic, because as the 70s showed, it translates directly to economics.
How many wind farms went up in place of those nuclear plant orders that got canceled or went bankrupt in the 70s/80s? Congratulations Greenpeace, take your medal as one of the largest greenhouse gas contributors in the world.
Bottom line is when the federal government is subsidizing almost half the cost of the wholesale price of power for renewables (in $/MWh like you ask), and not to mention significant state subsidies, and they're still only 1% or w/e of generation, lets be a little more honest about how on the verge of being economically viable on a mass scale they allegedly are.
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:34 pm
04 Jun 2008
I agree
Of course they are very profitable to operate if
- They get built way over production cost
- US tax payers soak up all the debt financing
- Another utility buys the plant up for 1/3rd the cost of a conventional power plant
- Operates it with little operating cost
On the flipside, if the same thing had occurred for a renewable power plant, it'd be even more profitable, due to having no fuel costs._
Considering Nuclear has gotten over half of the electric power R&D budget for the past half century, where does your "Nuclear hasn't gotten massive subsidies" come from?
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/nuclear ...
http://greyfalcon.net/energyresearch.png
Or was federal financing, federal purchasing programs, federal debt clearance, and federal high speed depreciation schedules not enough when the plant fully paid off it's capital, and had hardly any operating cost?
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080512/parenti
Or are you still clinging to your "Assuming the entire nuclear industry was built in fiscal year 2007" scenario?
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Max8806 Posted 7:20 pm
05 Jun 2008
What Nuclear Expert?
It's worth mentioning that the major subsidies that get objected to, the loan guarantees, only kick in if the project fails. And while certainly many failed before, 1) that was the first generation of our doing this, and while we've shut down the world hasn't. There's plenty of additional experience in construction from the very companies that would build here; 2) many that failed because of cost and schedule overruns did so because of activists' litigation. Its such a cyclical argument to take a project to Court for years, preventing it from ever earning any revenue, and then arguing that when it can't pay off its bonds its inherent to the project. Which never gets completed in many cases directly because of the people who insist it could never get completed.
That article was also just pretty poor in general. First, any discussion of the economics of energy without positing a price on carbon will find that any energy source is uneconomic on a large scale without massive government subsidies. Even with massive subsidies, for renewables as much as nuclear.
Second, though no new nuclear plants have been built, we've been adding nuclear capacity for decades. Existing plants have been upping capacity (uprates); how do you think nuclear kept its 20% market share of electricity over 20 years while electricity consumption goes up all the time.
Finally, fission does not power the sun, fusion does. Atoms don't get smashed by neutrons in fission, every reactor has a moderator (water in most) which is there specifically to slow down the neutrons because slow neutrons split U235 way better than fast ones. These aren't major arguments of hers of course, but if you're going to say the process is so complicated that its inherently uneconomic, and then you go on to describe the process completely wrong, its just kinda reflective of general shoddy journalism.
And I dont know what you have against R&D. That's a proper role of government in just about any industry. I would certainly support more for renewables, but asking for less for nuclear just shows you don't understand the scale of the energy problem at all.
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mwildfire Posted 11:27 pm
11 Jun 2008
twelve step program
Lots of good comments, many over my head--but i do want to throw out a couple things. First, on a couple of competing lists of "the first reason we oppose nukes," one of the two I assumed was most obvious was mentioned--the accumulating piles of horribly dangerous waste which still have no acceptable repository. But still nbobody has mentioned how handy nuclear power plants, and uranium refineries, and spent fuel, and nuclear materials in transit, are to terrorists.
I also want to object to the early comment about the "facts," given with appropriate citation, of how many TW we will "need" in some future year. Sure, you can extrapolate a continued trajectory in both population and power use per capita and come up with such numbers, but if you continue those lines very far at all you come to the death of our species and most others on this inconveniently finite planet. Such thinking, that we have gotten used to an ever-increasing fix of power use and we "must" keep getting more and more no matter what the cost, is classical addiction thinking. No we don't need more and more power--we need a twelve-step program to get us off this destructive drug before it kills us. Yes, we still need renewables, because we have to replace the fossil fuels which have turned out to have unacceptable side effects, as well as limited supply. Because of US coke-heads, people in Colombia live with endless violence. Because of US oil-heads, the people of Alberta watch their clean farmland turned into a cesspool of tar sands processing.
Thanks for the poem, birdboy. Poetry in comments sections usually sucks, but this was one of the best comments.
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GRLCowan Posted 12:00 am
12 Jun 2008
Which lie is least tired?
If either of these concerns were genuine, the other would be unnecessary.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html
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