jimbeyer’s Recent Comments

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  Let's try a different approach. I've been investigating the nuclear power question for awhile, and the main issues that keep coming up are waste storage, proliferation, and cost. In all fairness, it should be pointed out that all of these problems were sufficient to scare most utilities back to the coal mines until the issue of global warming came along. (That being said, I don't appreciate the strip mining, mercury dispersal, and even radiation dispersal associated with coal use.) With respect to waste storage, this is a visceral problem which simply does not sit well with the human psyche, but which is in fact not a huge issue. Yucca Mt. turned out to be sort of a disaster, but that's mostly because the Feds kept moving the goal posts of what it was supposed to do. You can't just mandate a longer storage period in the middle of such a project without dire consequences. In any case, the use of IFRs (Integral Fast Reactors) is probably a better fate for such waste than mountain storage anyway. Proliferation, in my opinion, is also a valid complaint about nuclear power. Perhaps the best one, in fact. Iran could not push for its reprocessing desires without the guise of nuclear power to support it. On the other hand, if the U.S. dropped nuclear electricity generation as a technology, I doubt that would change the mindset of the Irans, the North Koreas, and the Syrias of the world either. The genie is sort of out of the bottle. We just have to deal with it. The final issue is cost. Also a valid issue, and probably the most inscrutable. The pro-nuclear folks says the cost is low, and the anti-nuclear folks say it is astonishingly high. What is the likely truth? Well, the EIA is pretty clear about RUNNING costs, which tend to be around 5 cents or so per kW-hr. But they have no information about total costs, which would include paying off all the bonds needed to construct the things. As others have mentioned, 1/10 of a penny is paid out per kW-hr to deal with waste storage, so that is not a big issue cost-wise, though it is obviously problematic politically. Some critics such as Lovins would include the cost of failed projects (Cherokee, Zimmer) in the overall cost of nuclear power. This is perhaps acceptable, but it more relates to the politics of nuclear power, and not the technology. In the same way, one could cite the NIMBY backlash on wind power (Cape Cod) as an added cost to wind. Anyway, if you paw through the numbers, you will find the overall cost of nuclear power is probably somewhere in the area of 8 to 12 cents per kW-hr. Quite a bit higher than anyone would like, and quite a bit higher than coal. It's also a rather broad range, which reflects a great deal of uncertainty about costs, which is also bad. Unfortunately, IFR plants, which would address both waste storage concerns and Uranium fuel supply concerns (which are a bit of a red herring), will cost even more than the current Generation III reactors. On the other hand, once these bonds are paid off, the plants are quite profitable. This can be seen in how so many plants get their licenses renewed and extended. The United States builds nuclear power plants very poorly. Each one seems to be an individual design effort, which means novel construction, novel materials and components, and novel operating procedures. Given the amount of paperwork and regulation needed to operate these things, this is madness. We should agree on one design (or maybe two, the blue team and the green team) and just go with it. If we had the same basic reactors running in different locations, we could correct design and procedural issues faster. Construction costs could be contained. Basically, we should build them the way France does. A final point on the canard about Uranium supply. This is really not a valid complaint. First, fuel is such a tiny cost of nuclear power plant operation anyway, the fuel cost could rise by 10X or more and have little effect on generation cost. Second, IFR design would reduce fuel use by up to 100-fold. And finally, third, if Uranium did become scarce, we always have Thorium to fall back on. There is plenty of that around. There are valid complaints about nuclear power. Uranium ore depletion is not one of them. Storage is a largely political issue, which has technical solutions. Proliferation is the horse that got out of the barn. The main valid complaint, in my opinion, is cost and the uncertainty of cost. And to be fair, the true cost of some renewable sources are not so clear as well.On Stewart Brand's nuclear enthusiasm falls short on facts and logic posted 1 month ago 162 Responses

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  Of Lovins 4 "Myths", the last three are rather meaningless (no, footprint is not a major issue; there are lots of rooftops and farmland for solar and wind; yes, economics and technical soundness should ultimately dictate the choices we make; yes, the role of government in nuclear power, or any other enterprise for that matter, can be problematic for myriad reasons), but his comments on the first myth, baseload, are confusing and border on being specious. Everything he says about baseload is true, but little of it is relevant. What might be relevant to mention is that the capacity factors for nuclear (and coal) are about 90%, whereas the capacity factors for wind and solar are usually below 20%. What does this mean? Well, for one thing, more wind turbines and solar panels must be built, up to and exceeding 5X the nameplate capacity, to properly service the grid (and this makes the rather generous assumption that all of these sites will have independent capacity curves temporally -- a hard assumption to support given that it tends to get dark at night pretty much all over). Well, ok. That might be an issue, but nothing that more money can't fix, right? Well, yes and no. As was shown in Texas in February 2008, sudden drops in wind can be hard to manage, even with a small penetration percentage of wind power on a grid. (Demand response played an important role in averting more severe problems in that case.) This begs the question as to how loaded our grid can actually be with production sites with such low capacity factors. If Texas can have a few grid wobbles with a capacity of less than 4%, what will it be like with a national grid at 30%? Or 100% ? Some cite the Danish wind capacity of how such grids can work well. It's great what the Danes are doing, but their wind capacity (about 20%) is backed up numerous non-wind power sources in Finland, Germany, and Sweden. Collectively, they represent an energy grid that provides about 100 times the power that Denmark uses. There is lots of "cushion" there to fall back upon. In the end, it is really all about cost. It probably would be possible to run the grid entirely with wind or solar, but the cost compared with other alternatives is highly questionable. Nuclear, for all its problems, is more contained and predictable with respect to costs compared with replacing all of our power sources with low capacity alternatives. Basically, if you can get a nuclear plant built and up and running, you are home free, at least in the United States. The cost overruns might make the payback 50 years instead of 30, but you at least have a producing resource. (Just don't let FirstEnergy run the thing.) This view is supported by the high rate of service life extensions applied for by nuclear power plant owners. Once the plants have been built and paid for, they are basically cash cows for the owners. The trick (and it's not an easy one) is to get to that point. On the other hand, what is it really like to run a significant grid with wind as 30% of the power sources? And no "big brother" like Denmark has to source or sink energy imbalances? To say the least, there's a huge amount of uncertainty in this proposition. I'm sure we will learn more when and if we get the grid to 10%. Given that, it seems to make sense to carry forward the nuclear option at least a bit longer.On Stewart Brand's nuclear enthusiasm falls short on facts and logic posted 1 month ago 162 Responses

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  If Uranium runs out, there's plenty of Thorium. You can pick it up with your hands on the beaches of India.On Stewart Brand's nuclear enthusiasm falls short on facts and logic posted 1 month ago 162 Responses

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  No, it is due to Moore's Law. Mainly being able to make thinner circuit lines on the silicon. I daresay your $400 PC does not use 1000s of times less power than your older $4000 model. No, we don't need to invoke Moore's Law with respect to PV improvements. But Lovins did, and he shouldn't have.On Stewart Brand's nuclear enthusiasm falls short on facts and logic posted 1 month ago 162 Responses

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  Mr. Lovins makes a scary comment on page 9 of his "Four Myths" paper that deserves some attention, as others have said the same thing. He says that PV technology will ride down a "Moore's Law-like" curve in lowered costs. I am hopeful that PV technology will indeed become less expensive with new technology and higher volumes. But it won't be like Moore's Law. No energy technology will. Moore's Law was a comment on how many transistors can be jammed on a chip. Historically that number has doubled about every 18 months, though it might be slowing a tad at this point. Many pundits have argued the same thing about PV technology, how the cost per Watt will halve every few years or so. I certainly hope that happens, but it is not likely to. The problem is that Moore's Law is a measure of an abstraction; a transistor monitoring a single bit of logic. This really isn't tied to any real entity. In the extreme, a logical bit could be represented by the presence or absence of an electron. I guess at that point, Moore's Law will reach its limit (but I wouldn't bet even on that). For energy products, the situation is completely different. A Watt is a Watt; a very tangible thing; namely when 6.242x10^18 electrons flowing passed a point with the potential of 1 volt. That's a Watt. You can't make it any smaller by making a gate smaller. As for PV, you can make the materials cheaper, thinner, and more efficient, but you will never get more power out than the sun provides, and you can't get it to produce power when the sun isn't shining. Even if PV gets to $1 per Watt (installed) it will still be pretty pricey to the typical consumer, and more expensive than existing technology (coal, nuclear, even wind) albeit with no CO2 emissions during use.On Stewart Brand's nuclear enthusiasm falls short on facts and logic posted 1 month ago 162 Responses