Nuclear power is expensive

archie Posted 8:23 pm
13 Jun 2008

The price is never nice

Let's not forget that oil is still cheap compared to what it's going to cost in a few years.

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GRLCowan Posted 11:01 pm
13 Jun 2008

Jim Harding

A search on that name finds oil and gas shillery -- "Uranium: Anything but Clean and Green", for instance.

It is of course clean, safe, and effective -- the very opposite of green. Per tonne, it now costs US$153,000 -- and replaces about $6 million in natural gas. That means a loss, to government, of natural gas royalties much exceeding the whole cost of the uranium.

So while neither gas-fired nor nuclear electric generation is subsidized, government much prefers gas, despite its death-dealing ways.

--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html

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Laurence Aurbach Posted 12:48 am
14 Jun 2008

Yes there are two paths you can go by

Even with billions in dollars in loan guarantees backed by U.S. taxpayers, the private sector is not stepping up to invest in U.S. nuclear.

Coal plants that simply meet 1971 Clean Air Act standards are very expensive. Coal plants that sequester carbon dioxide are not yet commercialized and are projected to be prohibitively expensive.

U.S. natural gas production peaked in 1973 and is on the decline; LNG imports are expensive; global natural gas production is projected to peak soon and then decline -- after which prices will shoot up even higher than they are now.

It looks like our basic choice is 1) Cheap, dirty, climate-wrecking coal, or 2) the green energy program of efficiency, demand reduction, and renewables.

Houston, we have a problem... and an opportunity.

Ped Shed Blog

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amazingdrx Posted 2:42 am
14 Jun 2008

Hehey

That's a shame. Forget the compromise nukers, just go away.

And the cost of renewables and conservation keeps on dropping as mass production proceeds naturally to meet demand.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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GreyFlcn Posted 4:15 am
14 Jun 2008

re: Cowan

We don't measure the cost of electricity purely on the cost of fuel.

And if we did, Sunlight and Wind would be the only "fuel" we would use.

_

If you want to be serious, Levelized costs are a far more accurate way to compare different technologies.

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GreyFlcn Posted 4:28 am
14 Jun 2008

Rome wasn't built in one day

estimated capital costs for nuclear of $3600 to $4000/kW including interest

That of course if the "overnight-cost". A fictitious metric which assumes that a power plant could be built in 1 day.

It's a handy metric which can be accurate given those assumptions.

However this type of metric gets rather distorted when you start comparing long-project-build-schedules, versus short-project-build-schedules.

_

Now if you start comparing "overnight-cost" versus "total project cost" (aka "all-in-cost") then the price for Nuclear power doubles.

Here for instance is part of the recent paperwork for the Turkey point, Florida nuclear power plant.
http://www.nirs.org/images/fplturkeypointcostchart.jpg

Pay attention to the difference between overnight and total.

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Nucbuddy Posted 5:05 am
14 Jun 2008

Which fuel requires no infrastructure?

GreyFlcn wrote: if you start comparing "overnight-cost" versus "total project cost" (aka "all-in-cost") then the price for Nuclear power doubles.

Relative to what competitor? Are there electrical-production technologies that do not require the electrical infrastructure that you included in nuclear all-in costs?

As Gristmill-commenter David Bradish noted two weeks ago:

Even with nuclear's high construction cost estimates, FPL still finds it to be cheaper than the alternatives in the long run. You're obviously deceiving readers here by not including that important piece of information.

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GreyFlcn Posted 5:36 am
14 Jun 2008

Build Schedules

Are there electrical-production technologies that do not require the electrical infrastructure that you included in nuclear all-in costs?

That wasn't my point.

Nuclear power has notoriously long build-schedules. As long as 10-15 years.

Renewables have notoriously short build-schedules. Often measured in months.

It's highly inaccurate to compare overnight costs between technologies with radically different build-schedules.

For a simple example, can you tell me what the commodity cost of concrete will be 10 years from now?

________

As for David Bradish.

I'm sure you're aware that he's an author for the Washington Lobbying firm Nuclear Energy Institute.

Right?

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GreyFlcn Posted 6:44 am
14 Jun 2008

Also as I'm sure you're aware

FPL assumes "in the long run" that the cost of carbon will be the major factor that makes them competitive.

That previous to a strong carbon price-signal, Nuclear power will remain uncompetitive.

And that FPL doesn't really see any advancement for US Nuclear power until 2020 by the earliest.

Kind of like how car companies say that Hydrogen will be competitive, "in the long run".

_

Or as John Maynard Keyne's put it:

The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs.
In the long run we are all dead.

Which is quite apt considering the clock we're on with global warming.

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Wolverine Posted 8:17 am
14 Jun 2008

Eat, Drink, & Breathe Money

It's infuriating that conversations about nuclear power almost always degenerate into debates about little green pieces of paper. What about the Earth? The immense harms done by mining, and specifically by uranium mining? By "enriching" uranium, i.e. by making it into the most toxic substance known? And by further polluting our planet with more radioactivity?

These are the real issues. Remember, it's not the little green pieces of paper who are unhappy, so moving them around won't solve anything. Money has nothing to do with the natural environment.

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Nucbuddy Posted 9:17 am
14 Jun 2008

Windfarm cancelled -- too expensive

GreyFlcn wrote: Nuclear power has [...] build-schedules [...] As long as 10-15 years.

Untrue. Where did you get that information?

GreyFlcn wrote: It's [...] inaccurate to compare overnight costs between technologies with [...] different build-schedules.

If time-value is priced-in, then cost-comparisons between time-distanced strategies are not necessarily inaccurate.

GreyFlcn wrote: [Epithet deleted] have notoriously short build-schedules. Often measured in months.

If you mean wind and solar, please provide a recent example, with cost. For wind, here is an example from Texas:

a [cancelled, because it was too expensive] 500 megawatt Texas offshore windfarm would have cost "in the billions".

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GRLCowan Posted 10:19 am
14 Jun 2008

Lamps in daylight

... What about the Earth? The immense harms done by mining, and specifically by uranium mining? By "enriching" uranium, i.e. by making it into the most toxic substance known? And by further polluting our planet with more radioactivity?
These are the real issues.

No, I don't think they are. Enriched uranium dioxide isn't noticeably more toxic than natural uranium dioxide, which some reactors run on. The people who promote fear of radioactive pollution tend to strain at gnats, if they're oil-and-gas-threatening gnats, and swallow camels if the camels do not pose any threat to those interests.

If all the uranium mines, nuclear waste caches, nuclear fuel plants, and nuclear reactors were moved to a low-background-radiation region, the total radiation levels there would still be low; the industrial contribution would be to the total as a street lamp that stays on in daylight is to its and the day's summed brightness.

'Wolverine', I predict, doesn't know or care whether he is in a naturally high-background or low-background region, even though the difference be millions of neighbourhood reactors' worth.

--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html

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RichardR Posted 10:51 am
14 Jun 2008

Solar is more expensive

Mr. Romm:

Your estimates for nuclear capital costs range from $4,000 to $8,100 per kW, with costs per kWHr between 8.9c to 17c. This you call "so expensive the company raises your rates before the power even gets to the meter!"

And yet in a post on this blog less than three weeks ago, Solar land use: less than coal, Gar Lipow wrote about Nevada Solar One that by the calculations of commenter Skeptico, cost over $17,000 per kW. And commenter Sean Casten calculated the cost per kWHr at somewhere between 16c and 31c Lipow admitted in a reply that the only way he could get to his claimed cost of 10-12c per kWHr was with "subsidies".

What that in mind, how do the costs you quote above show that nuclear is priced out of the market compared with, say, solar?

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Gar Lipow Posted 11:26 am
14 Jun 2008

Price

...by the calculations of commenter Skeptico, cost over $17,000 per kW.

By including this, rather than going directly to per kWh calculations you expose yourself as a dishonest arguer. I rebutted that in the same thread. Skeptico took the kWh per year, treated them as baseload, and calculated capacity based on treating a peaking plant as a baseload plant. I pointed this out. An honest arguer would either not have used Skeptico's calculation or explained why treating a peaking plant as baseload was the right way to do the calculation.

And commenter Sean Casten calculated the cost per kWHr at somewhere between 16c and 31c Lipow admitted in a reply that the only way he could get to his claimed cost of 10-12c per kWHr was with "subsidies".

I looked at this particular plant because it happens to be the most recent plant. But it is only 64 MW - tiny and not able to grab the full economies of scale needed for CSP. There are some 25 KW CSP systems out there with even worse numbers. But CSP of 300 MW or greater is normally considered to pen out to a levelized cost (with interest) of 9-12 cents per kWh

http://www.energylan.sandia.gov/sunlab/overview.htm

Scroll down to or search for the "What does it cost" section near the bottom.

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Nucbuddy Posted 11:46 am
14 Jun 2008

Original post is plagiarism

Joseph Romm,

Your post is a result of plagiarizing this Salon.com article:
salon.com/news/feature/2008/06/02/nuclear_power_price

Since journalism's main currency is public trust, a reporter's failure to honestly acknowledge their sources undercuts a newspaper or television news show's integrity and undermines its credibility. Journalists accused of plagiarism are often suspended from their reporting tasks while the charges are being looked into by the news organization.
The ease with which electronic text can be reproduced from online sources has lured a number of reporters into acts of plagiarism: Journalists have been caught "copying-and-pasting" articles and text from a number of websites.

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Nucbuddy Posted 2:03 pm
14 Jun 2008

Cement supply is expanding, demand is falling

GreyFlcn wrote: can you tell me what the commodity cost of concrete will be 10 years from now?

Currently, the price is crashing from recent highs.
cement.org/econ

The cement industry is currently engaged in an aggressive $6 billion capacity expansion. More than 4 million metric tons of new clinker capacity is expected to come on-line this year. An additional 10 million metric tons of new clinker capacity is expected to come on-line during 2009. The capacity expansion coincides with the onset of an economic recession. Imbalances are expected to characterize the market during the next three years, resulting in elevated inventories, import reductions

In the long run, all commodity prices approach zero.
juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource
juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAQ02A.txt

The potential supplies of all the important minerals are sufficient for many many lifetimes, on the basis of almost any assumption about these minerals' abundance on earth. This material-technical assessment is entirely consistent with the historical economic evidence of falling prices relative to wages for all raw materials, showing a trend of increasing availability and declining scarcity, as discussed in Chapters 1, 5, 8, 10, and 11.

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amazingdrx Posted 3:42 pm
14 Jun 2008

Please

He wrote the Salon article buddy, just say duuuh. Hehey.

You are sounding a bit desperate, wish you would have endorsed my compromise now?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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amazingdrx Posted 3:52 pm
14 Jun 2008

Good one Gar

Wind is around 4 cents per kwh now? Is that correct? What does biogas cost in large farm operations?

And what about the thin film PV, at 1 dollar per watt now and expected to come down to 10 cents per watt, and IBMs new concentrating PV cooling system going to cost? It takes one tenth the solar PV area to produce the same amount of electric power.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2008/6/13/ ...

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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GreyFlcn Posted 4:00 pm
14 Jun 2008

As it would have it

If you mean wind and solar, please provide a recent example, with cost. For wind, here is an example from Texas:
a [cancelled, because it was too expensive] 500 megawatt Texas offshore windfarm would have cost "in the billions".

Hehe.

It's funny because you're acting like:

1) Nuclear power plants don't cost billions.
http://www.nirs.org/images/fplturkeypointcostchart.jpg

2) Boone T. Pickens didn't end up buying the wind turbines.
http://earth2tech.com/2008/05/15/t-boone-pickens-orders-2 ...

Well both of those assumptions would be wrong.
And forget 500MW, this guy is going for 1000MW now, and later 4000MW.
Then again, what does Boone T. Pickens know about making money?

_

By comparison, Warren Buffet spent $13 million dollars doing cost estimates on Nuclear power, only to end up canceling the project because Nuclear power is too expensive.
http://www.sunvalleyonline.com/news/article.asp?ID_Articl ...

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GreyFlcn Posted 4:12 pm
14 Jun 2008

Yeap.

GreyFlcn wrote: Nuclear power has [...] build-schedules [...] As long as 10-15 years.
Untrue. Where did you get that information?

I'm including the citing and permitting process.

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GreyFlcn Posted 4:20 pm
14 Jun 2008

Fun new report out

For those wonkish enough to care about this stuff
http://www.nirs.org/falsepromises.pdf

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Nucbuddy Posted 11:03 pm
14 Jun 2008

Pickens wind-investments -- none offshore

GreyFlcn wrote: Boone T. Pickens [ended] up buying the [cancelled 500 megawatt offshore] wind turbines.

T. Boone Pickens has neither invested -- nor proposed investing -- in offshore wind. Here is the press-release you ultimately linked-to. It says nothing about offshore wind. What are you talking about?

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RichardR Posted 1:37 am
15 Jun 2008

Er, who's being dishonest?

By including this, rather than going directly to per kWh calculations you expose yourself as a dishonest arguer.

Joseph Romm was quoting cost per kW. I was comparing solar cost per kW with Mr Romm's cost per kW. This would seem to me to be completely honest. In fact, your claiming this is dishonest, would seem to be dishonest.

Skeptico took the kWh per year, treated them as baseload, and calculated capacity based on treating a peaking plant as a baseload plant. I pointed this out.

You didn't refute the argument. Skeptico took your own quoted annual power figure of 134 gW to arrive at a 15mW plant. Clearly this is less than the 64mW nominal capacity quoted by Solar One, but that would be because it doesn't produce anything at night, produces less at dawn and dusk, and in the winter, so the lower figure is the correct comparison to use if we are comparing it with nuclear.

An honest arguer would either not have used Skeptico's calculation or explained why treating a peaking plant as baseload was the right way to do the calculation.

Explained above.

I looked at this particular plant because it happens to be the most recent plant. But it is only 64 MW - tiny and not able to grab the full economies of scale needed for CSP. There are some 25 KW CSP systems out there with even worse numbers.

Well, I was going with the most recent plant too. What else should I do?

But CSP of 300 MW or greater is normally considered to pen out to a levelized cost (with interest) of 9-12 cents per kWh
http://www.energylan.sandia.gov/sunlab/overview.htm
Scroll down to or search for the "What does it cost" section near the bottom.

Maybe I misunderstood your link, but I don't see it detail any actual power station built that achieves the numbers you mention. This seems to be an overview of what they think is possible. And they quote solar technologies as costing 9-12c pr kW/Hr, as you did, except you wrote that this was only achievable with subsidies. So is it only achievable with subsidies or not? Not that I object to subsidies - but comparisons should be made before subsidies if they are to be meaningful.

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Nucbuddy Posted 2:15 am
15 Jun 2008

Wind and solar "mar the landscape"

RichardR wrote: Skeptico took your own quoted annual power figure of 134 gW to arrive at a 15mW plant.

That works out to a capacity-factor over 100%. Assuming 8,760 hours in a year, a capacity-factor of 95% would imply a 16.1 MW plant. A capacity-factor of 90% would imply a 17.0 MW plant. The cost quoted (that does not include the needed transmission lines) is $260 million. If we assume the plant is equivalent to a 17 MW baseload plant, that works out to $15,294/kWh.

By the way, from the above link:

[Walt Kuver, representing the Southern Nye County Conservation District, said,] "Renewable energy sounds like a good deal. Part of the renewable concerns, project concerns, is water consumption. Some solar power projects are sloppy and use a lot of water. We have to discourage that."
Kuver explained water is used to cool the fluid going through the turbines powered by solar power to make electricity.
Kuver talked about the difference between "dry cooling," which may use only 15 to 20 acre feet of water per year for a 100-megawatt plant, to "wet cooling," which could consume 1,200 to 1,500 acre feet. An acre foot of water is about 320,000 gallons, or enough water to supply two families for a year.
Nevada Solar One near Boulder City uses 400 acre feet of water for 64 megawatts of power.
Kuver said he expects protests to be filed by federal agencies on water applications for renewable energy projects in Amargosa Valley.
The big renewable energy projects are in the middle of the Valley Electric Association service area, which Kuver said is "not a high-powered utility company."
"It's rural. They still give out jelly recipes and fly swatters at the front desk, and now all of a sudden they have to wheel this power out of the Nevada grid, or as expected, a lot of it will go to California. There are transmission corridor issues," he said. "There are a whole host of things that have to be dealt with."
Brian Brown, a member of the Amargosa Conservancy, mentioned massive solar and wind power projects are proposed in the Desert Southwest, with applications to use over 1 million acres of public land all the way to the Mexican border.
"Now if you take 1 million acres of anything, and you remove all the plants, and you level it, and you cover it for tens of square miles, obviously that's going to have a significant impact on the environment and the whole ecosystem in that region," Brown told attendees at the workshop.
[...]
Some solar power facilities have significant water needs, while he said some green energy projects with massive wind turbines could mar the landscape.
"Those have all sorts of implications, especially when you're talking about gigantic acreages. [...] Whenever you do a facility like this, you've got to get electricity into the grid so you've got to have transmission lines. You've got to have roads to maintain all this stuff. There are significant impacts of renewable energy."

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Max8806 Posted 2:37 am
15 Jun 2008

Misrepresenting the FPL report

David Bradish's point that Joseph Romm mischaracterized the FPL report is apt, whatever his affiliation. In fact, in reading the reports, he was probably even pretty charitable.

First, I'm not sure where Mr. Romm got $5,500 to $8,100 per kilowatt from (for the FPL plant), all I keep seeing (in both the FPL request for determination of need, and the Florida Commission document granting it) is $3208 to 4540/kw, which appears over and over again. It is also mentioned (in both) that that number includes significant investments in transmission improvements. Also, Romm attributes the range of costs for just 2,200MW generation. However, the cost range is partly due to the fact that FPL is still deciding on what kind of reactors to build. The capacity would be between 2,200MW - 3,040MW, depending on whether they build a couple of GE ESBWR's or Westinghouse AP1000's. Only citing the low end of generation, while including the high end of cost, disingenuously inflates the per-unit costs.

Second, what comes across most after reading the FPL documents is that the nuke plants are being pursued only after significant investments in alternatives that still just won't come close to meeting demand. From the request for determination of need:

"By 2020, FPL expects that it will need approximately 6,200MW of additional power supply, after taking into account approximately 1900MW of additional DSM [Demand Side Management]" plus 414MW uprates of existing nuke plants, 300MW of new renewables (specified later as solar thermal) they plan to build, and 287 MW of renewable generation they would purchase.
...
"Even if renewables and conservation are achieved at levels far greater than expected, FPL's need for Turkey Point 6 & 7 will not be eliminated."- Because there will be a shortfall of "3120MW to 3960MW even with the addition of Turkey Point 6 & 7."
...
"In short, there is no reasonable scenario under which the projected need for Turkey Point 6 & 7 will not manifest itself"

Objections were also brought up during the Commission's deliberation over whether to approve the request for need, ranging from economics to life-cycle GHG emissions. Below some quotes from the Commission's findings.

"The evidence in this proceeding supports that efficient and renewable technologies currently available cannot satisfy FPL's demand for base-load capacity...Witness Silva testified that FPL has investigated solar in various forms and has not been convinced that the capability exists to make solar a base-load type of generation."

"The evidence presented in this case shows that the nuclear generation option bears the lowest amount of life-cycle emissions compared to other generating technology available in Florida. Moreover, life-cycle emissions for nuclear generation are low compared to non-emitting renewables and are equivalent to wind generation and are three times lower than solar generation."

And finally, "There are no renewable energy sources and technologies or conservation measures taken by or reasonably available to FPL which might mitigate the need for Turkey Point 6 and 7."

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Gar Lipow Posted 3:40 am
15 Jun 2008

cost

<blockqoute>
nd they quote solar technologies as costing 9-12c pr kW/Hr, as you did, except you wrote that this was only achievable with subsidies.</blockquoute>

I wrote that in regard to a particular example, not about solar costs in general. In terms of the source I cited, as far as I know they are talking about costs before subsidies. But before subsidies is not a valid comparison to nuclear in any case. The number of commercial nuclear electricity generation plants built without some sort of liability limitation not given to other power sources is - zero. That includes the French examples nukeheads are so fond of.

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GreyFlcn Posted 3:51 am
15 Jun 2008

again

First, I'm not sure where Mr. Romm got $5,500 to $8,100 per kilowatt from (for the FPL plant), all I keep seeing (in both the FPL request for determination of need, and the Florida Commission document granting it) is $3208 to 4540/kw, which appears over and over again.

http://www.nirs.org/images/fplturkeypointcostchart.jpg

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Max8806 Posted 4:42 am
15 Jun 2008

1 down, many to go

Thanks GreyFlcn, wanna take a crack at any of the other points? Eventually you saturate the market on DSM/conservation. Its one thing to presume 3-4GW of renewables will come online to plug the existing shortage. Banking on 6GW of reliable baseload to fill that demand plus eliminating the new nukes seems awfully ambitious.

If it can be done though, there's still time. FPL will be installing new Natural Gas CC capacity every few years (the dates were something like 2012, 2014, 2016) to keep meeting the incremental demand. FPL clearly is generally averse to any more Natural Gas CC than necessary, because their 50% and climbing reliance on it has exposed them to serious price volatility. And obviously they're planning for carbon pricing. I would love to see some of those modular new solar thermal plants spring up instead of those nat gas CC's. But if the economic case isn't made to even offset the nat gas going up, its hard to then argue that they can offset the whole expected demand shortage by 2020. Much less even the projected deficit, plus an extra 2GW of planned nuclear, plus the 20% reserve margin, which is what you need to argue for not building Turkey Point 6 & 7.

I sincerely hope it can be done. But in the (I think likely) even that it can't, then this continued opposition to nuclear is quite literally hindering a needed option in a limited portfolio. Green opposition killed the nuc industry here once, and Greenpeace can be proud of innumerable tons of GHG emissions they created. Making the same mistake again, when we all know how pressing global warming is, would be beyond ridiculous.

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Wolverine Posted 5:06 am
15 Jun 2008

No Respect For Nature

GRLCowan,

Your post shows that you have no concern or respect for the natural world. Whether humans live in areas that are naturally high in background radiation is irrelevant. What's relevant is that, among other things, creating electricity from uranium causes more radioactivity to be emitted, and any extra amount is bad; there is NO safe level, period.

Moreover, the mining of uranium is a highly destructive activity. I've seen pictures of uranium mines and the immense ecological destruction made my skin crawl.

And then we have the radioactive waste, for which NO ONE has a reasonable solution. Destroy another natural environment by burying it in Yucca Mountain? Yeah, right! Not to mention what would happen in the likely event of an accident transporting it there, or anywhere else.

Unfortunately, your attitude is typical of that of the average person in this society, which is a total lack of proper respect for the Earth. On this issue, you'd do well to live on the Dine (Navajo) or Hopi reservation in northeast Arizona for awhile, and let those people teach you why it's wrong to dig into the Earth for uranium or anything else. Like the vast majority of people in modern society, you learned all the wrong things in school and none of the right ones.

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Nucbuddy Posted 5:44 am
15 Jun 2008

Nuclear power reduces total radioactivity

Wolverine wrote: creating electricity from uranium causes more radioactivity to be emitted

Actually, the opposite is true.
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter12.html

When uranium is mined out of the ground to make nuclear fuel, it is no longer there as a source of radon emission. This is a point which has not been recognized until recently because the radon that percolates out of the ground originates largely within 1 meter of the surface; anything coming from much farther down will decay away before reaching the surface. Since the great majority of uranium mined comes from depths well below 1 meter, the radon emanating from it was always viewed as harmless. The fallacy of this reasoning is that it ignores erosion. As the ground erodes away at a rate of 1 meter every 22,000 years, any uranium in it will eventually approach the surface, spending its 22,000 years in the top meter, where it will presumably do great damage. The magnitude of this damage is calculated in the Chapter 12 Appendix, where it is shown that mining uranium to fuel one large nuclear power plant for one year will eventually save 420 lives! This completely overshadows all other health impacts of the nuclear industry, making it one of the greatest lifesaving enterprises of all time if one adopts a very long-term viewpoint.

If one wants less radiation in the world, then one might want nuclear power.

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GRLCowan Posted 5:47 am
15 Jun 2008

Radon spas

Your post shows that you have no concern or respect for the natural world.

False.

Whether humans live in areas that are naturally high in background radiation is irrelevant. What's relevant is that, among other things, creating electricity from uranium causes more radioactivity to be emitted, and any extra amount is bad; there is NO safe level, period.

If you believed that visible light was bad for you, and therefore feared the day, you would prefer cloudy days, even if, on cloudy days, the streetlights stayed on; you would understand that cloud-filtered sun plus streetlights was essentially the same as cloud-filtered sun by itself.

If you -- or anyone -- believed your foolish no-safe-level remark, you would similarly prefer low-radiation regions of the Earth, even if they had uranium mines and nuclear powerplants.

--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html

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GRLCowan Posted 6:06 am
15 Jun 2008

Actually, that was a two-fer

Your post shows that you have no concern or respect for the natural world.

'Wolverine' was really hitting on all cylinders with that one. If I had no concern nor respect for the natural world, my post would not have shown it, and I do have such concern and respect.

--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html

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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 6:56 am
15 Jun 2008

Failure is not an option

People are just beginning to realize how much damage coal-fired power plants have been doing for several decades, and they are resisting the construction of new coal plants.

We have seen what happened to oil prices when the supply tightened up. As demand grows, excess generating capacity is gradually being used up, setting up conditions for electrical prices to skyrocket in the next 5 to 10 years in a similar way that oil prices have skyrocketed.

Put yourself in the position of a grid manager. Your job is to maintain voltage and frequency 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Reliable dependable baseload kilowatt hours are worth far more to you than intermittent unreliable kilowatt hours from wind and solar. The author's analyses treats intermittent kilowatt hours as if they are equally valuable as reliable baseload kWh's.

What are the other proven commercial sized sources of low emission reliable baseload kilowatt hours besides nuclear? While nuclear power plants seem expensive by today's standards they will not be expensive by tomorrow's standards.

It is interesting how people can see enormous room for improvement in solar wind and other renewable technologies but assume that there is no room for improvement in our 1960s designed steroidal submarine reactors. These analyses never take credit for the fact that the building of nuclear power plants can be streamlined by the application of mass production techniques, reducing prices dramatically.

Each 1¢ increase in the cost of kilowatt hours costs Americans $40 billion per year. It would be in our best interest to put some serious money in research and development to streamline the construction of floating nuclear power plants, to develop the best possible source of reliable and dependable predictable low emission kilowatt hours.

Reducing U.S. emissions is not important. Developing a low cost replacement for fossil fuel that the entire world can afford should be our goal. Wasting money on mass production of impractical expensive systems is counterproductive.

We need a comprehensive solution.

The United States should have a three part energy policy, short term, intermediate term, and long term, all operating in parallel.

The short term policy is drill, drill, drill. For each barrel of new production we keep $100+ in this country, reducing the rate at which our money is the devalued. It also shows the world that we're taking action on the high cost of energy, which will immediately curtail the substantial speculative part of oil cost.

The intermediate term policy is to rapidly implement proven technology that can reduce our energy consumption, and increase supplies of clean energy substantially.

The long-term energy policy should increase R&D to $90 billion per year (only 2.25 cents/kWh) and push every technology as hard as possible. That would include building at least one full scale commercial size plant of every promising technology. Actual performance data would give companies and individuals confidence to make rapid large scale investments in new, well proven technology.

We should create a totally level playing field by including all external costs and deleting all subsidies for every energy source, and allow prices to rise as necessary to meet the demand? This policy will automatically select the best energy system possible at the lowest cost.

Any one of these three approaches by itself is impractical. We need all three running in parallel at maximum capacity to solve the world's energy problems.

Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

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Nucbuddy Posted 7:08 am
15 Jun 2008

Oil supply is not tight

BILL HANNAHAN wrote: We have seen what happened to oil prices when the supply tightened up.

The oil supply is loose, and demand is down, Bill.
google.com/search?q=%22there+is+no+gas+shortage%22

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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 7:47 am
15 Jun 2008

I understand NB.

" The oil supply is loose, and demand is down, Bill. "

That is why I wrote

" It also shows the world that we're taking action on the high cost of energy, which will immediately curtail the substantial speculative part of oil cost. "

Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

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RichardR Posted 3:05 pm
17 Jun 2008

We need some honest cost comparisons

I wrote that in regard to a particular example, not about solar costs in general. In terms of the source I cited, as far as I know they are talking about costs before subsidies.

Yeah maybe, but not of actual plants operating now. Nevada Solar One is one of the biggest plants I've heard about so far and so should be the most efficient, and yet its costs are way over the costs Romm quotes for nuclear that he implies are too expensive to consider. And it's typical - other costs I've read about for solar, compared with the relatively puny outputs, are if anything worse.

But before subsidies is not a valid comparison to nuclear in any case. The number of commercial nuclear electricity generation plants built without some sort of liability limitation not given to other power sources is - zero.

Well I would assume Romm used cost before subsidies, but I don't really know. But meaningful comparisons should be before subsidies or, well, they're not meaningful. I think we need a more honest evaluation of the options, and I don't feel that Romm's various anti-nuclear articles are that.

Look, I'm not against solar, and I'm not saying nuclear alone is the answer, but the costs so far of solar, and the relatively low outputs it provides, seem to me to be more of a problem than the cost of nuclear. As someone wrote above, we haven't really tried more efficient ways to build nuclear plants. And although the cost of solar is sure to drop as the technology improves, it seems to me the low output and thus the power / unit cost is always going to be a problem.

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Nucbuddy Posted 1:13 am
20 Jun 2008

40-trillion-tonne uranium supply - still cheap

GRLCowan wrote: [Uranium] is of course clean, safe, and effective -- the very opposite of green. Per tonne, it now costs US$153,000 -- and replaces about $6 million in natural gas.

The uranium spot price has been steadily dropping, and is now 18% lower:

US$57.00/lb = US$125,400/tonne.

The entire 40-trillion-tonnes Earth-crust supply -- 100 billion years' worth, at current nuclear-electric production rates -- of uranium can now be purchased for only US$5.016e18 (US$5 quintillion). If, in the future, prices were to rise to US$1 billion/tonne, and if we were to include thorium, the total Earth's crust supply of fission fuel would be worth US$.5 octillion.

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GRLCowan Posted 2:47 am
20 Jun 2008

That's for U3O8

Multiply the U3O8 pound price by 2.600 to get the kgU price.

--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html

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Nucbuddy Posted 4:11 am
20 Jun 2008

Hey, you're right, it's $153,000/tonne

Thanks again, Graham.

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