Besides Obama's prioritization of energy, there was another particularly striking moment in the debate. (And I'm not talking about McCain referring to Obama as "that one.")
In the midst of an answer on climate change, McCain said:
Now, how -- what's -- what's the best way of fixing [climate change]? Nuclear power.
Sen. Obama says that it has to be safe or disposable or something like that. Look, I was on Navy ships that had nuclear power plants. Nuclear power is safe, and it's clean, and it creates hundreds of thousands of jobs. And I know that we can reprocess the spent nuclear fuel. The Japanese, the British, the French do it. And we can do it, too. Sen. Obama has opposed that.
Now, set aside the preposterous notion that nuclear power is going to "fix" climate change. The transcript doesn't convey it, but this line -- "Sen. Obama says that it has to be safe or disposable or something like that" -- is delivered with a kind of bemused sputter, like he's trying to figure out some peculiar idiosyncrasy of Obama's.
High-handedly dismissing safety concerns about nuclear power struck me as jarring and a little bizarre. I'd be curious to hear how it played with independents. Was anyone watching CNN's little squiggly audience-reaction lines at the time? [UPDATE: Joe says uncommitted voters were not enthused.]
Watch:
For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow
Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7
Comments
View as Flat
Jon Rynn Posted 2:23 am
08 Oct 2008
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jimbeyer Posted 5:20 am
08 Oct 2008
Reprocessing fuel refers to burning it up in advanced reactors such as the Integral Fast Reactor, the development of which was canceled by Clinton in 1994.
Say what you want about nuclear power, but the fact remains that it's far easier to address a few square miles of land underground for nuclear waste storage, than trying to fix melting ice caps, and widespread methane-expelling permafrost as it heats up.
Wake up people!
Build plugin hybrids that run on renewable methane. That's all that's needed.
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vakibs Posted 6:00 am
08 Oct 2008
What McCain has meant by reprocessing is the PUREX reprocessing to yield Plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. The obtained Plutonium can be re-utilized in Light Water Reactors. PUREX is a 1970s technology, which is in vogue in several countries. It is however not the smartest way for reprocessing because of two reasons (a) It uses only 6% of the nuclear fuel instead of the 5% that is used in LWRs (b) This technology has several proliferation concerns.
The better way to do fuel reprocessing is via breeder reactors such as IFR: this is known as pyroprocessing. Breeder reactors use up 100% of the nuclear fuel. And drastically reduce the risk of proliferation. This technology is tried and tested, a commercial demonstration can be built in a couple of years if there is sufficient political will.
Nice geeky t-shirt message : "Yes to Pyroprocessing. No to PUREX"
A Scientific American article explaining the differences between the two.
McCain is correct in declaring that nuclear power is safe, even 2nd generation reactors are very safe. If anyone is complaining against power plants, let them first complain against coal plants and natural gas plants please..
But anyways, kudos to McCain for risking political backlash and speaking out in support of nuclear power !
@ Jim Beyer
Thumbs up, mate !
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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vakibs Posted 6:02 am
08 Oct 2008
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:10 am
08 Oct 2008
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 6:25 am
08 Oct 2008
Fission is the only proven non fossil energy source with unlimited expandability at an affordable price.
Seawater uranium can support 10 billion people for several hundred years using proven reactor technology at a fuel cost per kWh lower than coal. Fuel reprocessing is not necessary. See this and the following comment.
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4558#comment-413193
If all U.S. electric power was generated from fission it would produce 10 - 15 pounds of spent fuel per 80 year lifetime. Spent fuel becomes less radioactive than uranium ore in 0.13 million years. See page 5 of this document, page 18 of the pdf.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/TRS435_web. ...
Notice that fresh spent fuel is only about 1000 times more radiotoxic than uranium ore. Large quantities of ore are scattered throughout the earths crust with no engineered containment at all and EPA believes radon, a decay product of uranium, causes 20,000 deaths per year.
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/b1ab9f485b098972 ...
If humans provide 1000 times more reliable containment than nature, it is safer than ore right from the start and goes down from there.
The best place to put it is under deep seabed mud. That is where the uranium would have ended up by erosion if humans had not evolved.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/10/83934/8341#com ...
Breeder reactors like the integral fast reactor can generate an 80 year lifetime supply of electricity on 6 ounces of uranium and produce waste that is less toxic than ore in 300 years.
When the sun runs low on fuel and swells up to engulf the earth there will still be abundant supplies of uranium and thorium here. Fission is more renewable than wind and solar.
We should begin mass producing floating nuclear plants immediately.
http://www.atomicinsights.com/aug96/Offshore.html
Things Everybody Should Know About Energy
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GRLCowan Posted 7:28 am
08 Oct 2008
Look at it this way. Anything that fixes climate change by replacing fossil fuels is going to ruffle a lot of feathers, a lot of very plush feathers.
Nuclear energy is already replacing billions of dollars' worth of fossil fuel per week.
It may seem preposterous that anything that ruffles as many feathers as nuclear energy can be ramped up to make industrial civilization carbon-neutral, and in fact carbon-negative for as long as necessary, but there is nothing technically preposterous about this, and the political difficulties are exactly what anything that can really do the job will encounter.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, author of How fire can be tamed
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vakibs Posted 7:33 am
08 Oct 2008
Spent fuel becomes less radioactive than uranium ore in 0.13 million years.
Current generation of light water reactors will become obsolete very soon. I hope we will all be building 4th generation reactors such as IFR or MSR from 2015. But in reality, we might be delayed as late as 2050 if we continue with our stupidity. But not beyond that.
Breeder reactors use up all the actinides and leave only fission products as waste. All material will get down to natural levels of radio-activity in 300 years. (That is, in 0.0003 million years using your units.)
Even the nuclear-waste that is being produced by the current generation of nuclear reactors will be used up, no current nuclear waste will remain radio-active beyond 300 years from now.
Heck, I think we might discover cool transmutation technology in the next 100 (even 50) years and neutralize all this waste. We don't have to even wait for those mandatory 300 years.
And I think, we might never even need to mine sea-water for Uranium. We will discover much cooler energy technologies in the centuries to come. In all probability, we will be colonizing outer space.
If we don't destroy the earth in the meanwhile, that is !
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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David Roberts Posted 7:55 am
08 Oct 2008
Or at least that's what they stipulate at the beginning of every discussion.
And yes, yes, Very Special Future Pony Nuclear will have none of the problems of today's Actually Existing Nuclear. Those who raise issues with Actually Existing Nuclear simply lack the proper PonyVision.
We've been over all this many times.
grist.org
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GRLCowan Posted 11:22 am
08 Oct 2008
Yes, yes,
everyone with concerns about nuclear is twitterpated and emotional and irrational, ...
Moral cowards with an eye to the main chance ... goers-along to get along ... coldly rational reducers-to-practice of the theory that they won't be taking it with them because neither they nor anyone will be going, but in the here-and-now, baby needs shoes ...
And yes, yes, Very Special Future Pony Nuclear will have none of the problems of today's Actually Existing Nuclear. Those who raise issues with Actually Existing Nuclear simply lack the proper PonyVision.
That is indeed a kind of pro-nuclear argument that bothers me too. Don't they understand that the problems with existing nuclear energy are neither serious, nor believed to be serious by most who claim that belief?
Haven't they noticed Greenpeace researchers quietly scooting up the gangway of a nuclear-powered ship?
We've been over all this many times.
Then you should have no problem travestying some of my previous arguments.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, author of How fire can be tamed
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Duggles Posted 11:58 am
08 Oct 2008
Is it too immature to be taken seriously, or is it too obscure? Or has it already been covered in discussions on grist and I just missed it?
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Karen Street Posted 12:00 pm
08 Oct 2008
We both have shifted our thinking on this topic. A neighbor told me that he was concerned that Obama's support of nuclear power isn't strong enough, a major shift from his thinking a year ago. (I doubt that support for nuclear power will change my neighbor's vote.)
Reading the tea leaves: the more the media cover climate change, the less interest the public has in opposing nuclear power. Indeed, it now seems that the group is fairly small that still opposes nuclear power, worries about nuclear waste, and believes that we can make sufficient greenhouse gas emissions reduction without nuclear power, though a much larger group is still not sure. This based on the people I know, of whom a majority once opposed nuclear power.
Even in Germany, there is change: http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP_European_support_ris ...
It seems to me that the discussion opposing nuclear power is becoming louder with some groups (NRDC expressed concern about nuclear waste transport a few months ago, very strange), but increasingly irrelevant. What are the rest of you hearing?
A Musing Environment
Karen Street
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:47 pm
08 Oct 2008
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 4:40 pm
08 Oct 2008
You're making progress Dave, not even an attempt at a rational argument, just insults.
And yes, yes, Very Special Future Pony Nuclear will have none of the problems of today's Actually Existing Nuclear.
But you missed the point. The point is that the "problems" are not significant engineering problems, they are emotional and education problems. We don't need your VSFPN for hundreds of years. Primitive steroidal 1960 submarine reactors can do the job, but we should crank up R&D to get the advantages readily available.
We produce enough chlorine to kill everybody in the country several times each hour, and several people die each year from chlorine exposure. Do you call for banning chlorine?
Would you all agree that the best way to have a nuclear energy system like France is to nationalize the electricity industry, like France has?
What other industries would be better nationalized, airlines, food restaurants, farming, and automobile manufacturing. France succeeded because of the enormous advantage that uranium has in energy density.
Reactor technology is frozen in its infancy. Competition is the key to evolving the technology quickly to achieve maximum safety and efficiency in the shortest time. In the past we had GE, Westinghouse, Combustion Engineering and General Atomics in competition, each with a different design. Our goal should be to revive a completive environment in the private sector. A big government program to develop a standard design would freeze the technology at a low level of evolution.
Adding 2 cents to the cost of each nuclear kWh would raise about $16 billion per year which would support a magnificent R&D program and nuclear kWh's would still be among the cheapest in the nation.
Things Everybody Should Know About Energy
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Russ Posted 4:41 pm
08 Oct 2008
Yeah, they want to nationalize all that. But otherwise they're of course free marketeers, and we need to preserve fat profits for the utilities and mining companies. That part has to stay private; otherwise, what's the point of nukes?
Friends of the Earth said it best - what nuke supporters want is what they've always had to have - a "preeemptive bailout for the nuclear industry".
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vakibs Posted 9:18 pm
08 Oct 2008
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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GRLCowan Posted 9:25 pm
08 Oct 2008
Which is to say, it is a solution in search of a problem. Are we going to stop needing smoke detectors?*
--- G.R.L. Cowan, author of How fire can be tamed
* OK, maybe we don't need quite as many as the americium supply would allow.
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vakibs Posted 9:38 pm
08 Oct 2008
You raised an interesting question, and this is not just restricted to nuclear power. All forms of energy production needs to think about this issue seriously.
Should energy production be brought into the public sector or not ?
If you are not a laissez-faire fundamentalist, you will quickly realize that there are a few sectors which are profitable when brought into the public sector operation. One good example is health. Health is a common good. If you are healthy, it means that it increases the chance of me being healthy as well. Thus, the benifits of ensuring good health of the society are applicable to every single person in the community. So, there should be a public sector undertaking in health - atleast , to ensure that every single person has all the bare minimum health needs addressed.
Another example is education. It is not as much a public good as health is, but still the benefits of an educated society will influence everyone else. So it is in the interest of every individual to ensure good education reaches all people in the society. At the same time, education becomes a private good when we talk about professional education.
A third example is connectivity. It is in the benefit of every single individual to ensure that digital connectivity reaches all the persons in the society. The advantages of internet multiply as more and more people get optical fibre to their
homes.
Energy is not as obvious as the above three, but there are a few facets in which energy should be considered as a public good.
There are two reasons for this (1) the accessibility of energy for everyone is important to ensure good health, education and well-being. So there should be a bare minimum supply of energy ensured to every person in the society (2) there are environmental impacts associated with several forms of energy production, so it is in public interest to have a common democratic supervison over the modes of energy production.
Please note that my argument applies to all the forms of energy production, not just nuclear. It is an open question whether private enterprise is better or public sector undertaking is better. There are good and bad sides to both of them.
Currently, all the countries that are doing well in the midst of the energy crisis have nationalized the energy sector : the gulf countries have a strong state monopoly in the oil sector (along with Venezuela and Russia), chinese government builds all forms of power plants, and France has long nationalized its nuclear plants.
I think there are some advantages of handling power production by the public sector. There are some disadvantages as well : I think a mixed economy will be a good way of dealing with this situation.
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:39 am
09 Oct 2008
Vakibs, to get back to my main point, it seems to me that when you have something approaching a monopoly -- which an electric utility generally is -- then it becomes more expensive to have a private utility than a public one, because you have to have high profits and big compensation for top managers in the private firms. So a public utility can actually be more efficient/productive.
In addition, as in the French case, you have the benefit of central planning, that is, you can design the system as a whole. In the US, this will be critical if we want lots of wind/solar, because the transmission system must be well-designed.
In the US, the grid is in terrible shape as a result of the privatization of electricity. Sean Casten even seems to agree that nationalization would be better for the grid, he just thinks it's politically impossible.
In order to handle the Sean Castens and others that could provide electricity from private firms, and do it well, it seems to me that you could have utilities that were municipally-owned or national, but would be open to having private firms put electricity into the grid, thus getting the best of both worlds.
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Karen Street Posted 2:17 am
09 Oct 2008
I don't know whether national utilities make sense or not. However, what you talk about in France is to a large extent the advantage of going second. So often I have heard California's early venture into renewables as illustrating how not to do it.
There are two separate questions. Does nuclear power make sense? I would guess that the majority of Democrats say yes, and the majority of the remainder have a very weak no.
Does it make sense to have electricity supplied by the government, or by private companies with government regulation? This is a different question. Nuclear power has benefited economically from an NRC that concentrates on safety: as reliability improves, profits improve. Other sources of electricity are regulated or not by the EPA, and possibly by other parts of the government. I know little about how effective they are. I do know that the policies can be strange, so coal power emits radiation by far than does nuclear power. What would happen if all power plants had one uniform code on radioactivity?
For me, whether we should nationalize the utilities is a less interesting point than whether nuclear power makes sense here. Many of the problems of the old days (I want a nuclear power plant because my golf partner is getting one) are gone. Standardization of design is occurring. Utilities have relative few choices in nuclear power purchasing. This will change to some extent as the world moves from Gen III+ to Gen IV, at least it sounds like quite a few different models will be available soon--both large models and some that are pretty small scale.
It sounds to me as if your concerns about US policy have been taken care of by the current thinking everywhere, not just in France.
Meanwhile, I like so many others have difficultly focusing on the putative problems of nuclear power. Recent analysts so often say that it will take a major and difficult turnaround of the world economies and decision-making processes to limit increase to 2.4°C, so we cannot avoid many of the larger problems of climate change, and that was before the world economic meltdown. I am afraid, I grieve. And I don't understand why some focus on one of the larger solutions rather than focusing on climate change.
A Musing Environment
Karen Street
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jimbeyer Posted 5:24 am
09 Oct 2008
The main disadvantage of nuclear is the centralized nature of the technology. That can raise other concerns, and lead to problems (FirstEnergy).
It would be great to have wind or solar instead of nuclear, but there is no credible way this can be accomplished, not only at high cost, but at any cost.
In terms of tackling climate change, I find myself battling both sides, when in fact, the near-term technical answer is both reasonable and relatively affordable: build nuclear power plants instead of coal-fired plants. Some Swedes figured out the future contributions of GHG emissions from oil and NG will be minor, because we are running out of oil and NG. So climate change is really about not-burning-coal. And the least disruptive way to not-burn-coal is to use nuclear power.
Moving coal about also uses up about half of our rail capacity, so less coal also means more rail (instead of trucks) for moving goods.
Build plugin hybrids that run on renewable methane. That's all that's needed.
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:41 am
09 Oct 2008
It also points to another idea: that if we want to deal with climate change as quickly as possible, the government can probably do it faster, and it could also involve government-directed building projects for wind/solar/geothermal. I mean, if the government can support building nuclear, why not wind/solar?
I think that eventually the government is going to wind up owning much of the banking sector, at the rate things are going. So maybe the idea of owning parts of the energy system won't seem so outlandish.
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Karen Street Posted 7:28 am
09 Oct 2008
Perhaps since the government provides loan guarantees for so many sources of electricity, ownership makes sense, but I don't think it matters as much as getting the new nuclear + wind + etc out there. I've read quite a few people (I believe this list includes Holdren) who believe that we are better served by a number of decision-makers, rather than just one. Because we have a federal system today (or did a couple of weeks ago), getting to a national system isn't going to happen anytime soon.
I think that messing with who owns what and getting diverted into that discussion pretty much assures that we delay working effectively with the system we have.
(I wondered about this myself when I began looking at energy issues in 1995--I certainly went in with a belief that because the US is responsible if we pollute across borders, etc, the US should be making the decisions. I still wonder, but don't really think that this needs to be figured out today!)
Mostly I want to see decarbonizaton at a much faster rate.
Jon, disposal is national, though paid for by the consumer (0.1 cent/kWh). Insurance is paid for by the utilities. I'm repeating myself, but I so often hear talking points that really don't speak to me, and others: we want a focus on decarbonization. Skip reading the environmental groups and go the groups that IPCC Working Group 3 considers reliable, to see what they are saying. Example: International Energy Agency, Energy Technology Perspectives, 2008, looks at what is needed for a 2.4°C increase goal.
A Musing Environment
Karen Street
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Jon Rynn Posted 8:09 am
09 Oct 2008
By the way, I think emissions control will also have to cover the problem of carbon escaping from soil; and that would probably take a government-led effort to move toward a soil-building, as opposed to soil-destroying, agriculture. I'm not sure where IPCC is on soil emissions, I'll try to research that (in my spare time, har har!)
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Jon Rynn Posted 9:23 am
09 Oct 2008
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Karen Street Posted 10:46 am
09 Oct 2008
On the one hand I read International Energy Agency and similar reports, which see expanded nuclear power (actually all peer reviewed reports, so far as I know, see nuclear power expanding, from a little to considerably). This means that the authors have looked at the data and believe there is enough uranium. Then there are the claims, what about this and what about that and such and such could be a problem? I'm going with the tens of governments, hundreds of site managers, and thousands of academics and others doing climate change analysis, and the peer reviewed work they base their own work on.
If there are truly economic reasons to avoid nuclear power, or if we are truly running out of uranium, etc, no one would need to write anything opposing nuclear power, because there is no reason to convince anyone of anything. Utility managers do want to know that cheap uranium will be there in 80 years.
One more comment re France: governments have a lower cost of money than private companies do, so the loan guarantees provided wind, nuclear, etc wouldn't be needed. This would be a big advantage for a country supporting energy with high capital costs.
Karen Street
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anyone Posted 9:33 pm
17 Oct 2008
It's doubtful that nuclear will ever provide as much as electricity as renewables do. More hydro than nuclear power is already generated anyway. Wind capacity is currently growing about 20 times faster than nuclear. http://www.wwindea.org/home/index.php?option=com_content& ...
Wind is less costly than new nuclear:
This report funded by the nuclear industry states that new nuclear power production costs are between: 8.3 and 11.1 cents/kWh
http://www.keystone.org/spp/documents/FinalReport_NJFF6_1 ...(1).pdf
However this report assumed capital overnight costs of only $2950/kW and new nuclear power plants to be built in Florida already assumed capital costs of over $7000/kW.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8916 ...
According to the Department of Energy the costs of wind power are between 3 and 6.4 cents per kWh. Average capital costs of Windturbines are $1480/kW (2006).
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41435.pdf
South dakota alone has enough wind to power half the US:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/05/14/s ...
And interconnected Windfarms can provide baseload:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf
Thinfilm photovoltaics is claimed to reach costs of below $1000/kW by 2010.
http://guntherportfolio.blogspot.com/2007/09/oerlikon-sol ...
120,000 km2 of the US is built. If only 10% of that area has roof area, that leads to a maximum solar flux of 12,000 GW or 1,200 GW at only 10% efficiency.
92 x 92 sq mi (or about 8% of Nevada and less than 10,000 sq mi) is enough to power the entire US with solar thermal.
http://www.ausra.com/
HVDC can transmit power from coast to coast with losses of only 3% per 1000 km at costs of €70/kW per 1000 km (transmission line only).
http://www.abb.com/cawp/GAD02181/C1256D71001E0037C1256834 ...
http://www.iset.uni-kassel.de/abt/w3-w/projekte/LowCostEu ...
Aircrafts, trucks and commercial ships will still be oil powered in the future, but there's no reason to keep on powering heating systems and private transportation on oil.
Btw, China has significantly more solar hot water capacity installed than nuclear power:
http://www.ren21.net/pdf/RE2007_Global_Status_Report.pdf
because it is cheaper to heat water on ones roof than to build new nuclear power plants to power wasteful resistance heaters.
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anyone Posted 9:37 pm
17 Oct 2008
If Renewables can go without tax dependant institutions, so can nuclear power.
It's time for nuclear to learn to walk on its own feet.
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