Atomicrod’s Recent Comments

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  Dan wrote: However, I think that we need to be mutually supportive of a variety of methods for producing power and solve the technical challenges each offers. This might not be a popular thing to say, but I have a hard time thinking of reasons why other energy producers would want to be mutually supportive of a technology that can leave them in the dust in any kind of fair competition. It is much easier to see why other energy suppliers would be terribly jealous of nuclear energy's natural advantages and do everything in their power to hamstring and restrict their competitor so they have a breath of a chance of prevailing in at least some sales competitions. It is also much easier for me to logically conclude that the natural allies for nuclear energy are the rest of the vast population of people who use energy and desire an abundant life enabled by having controllable power available on demand from a reliable grid supplied by reliable power plants. As a consumer, I hate the idea of "demand side management", that translates to me to some distant grid controller deciding that he needs to reduce demand instead of increasing supply. The only way to reduce demand is to TURN OFF POWER to a customer who has already decided he needs it by turning on a device or a light switch. Energy discussions are not just about science and technology; they are about sales, revenues and political power enabled by wealth. Rod Adams Publisher, Atomic Insights Host and producer, The Atomic Show PodcastOn Stewart Brand's nuclear enthusiasm falls short on facts and logic posted 1 week, 5 days ago 159 Responses

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  Dan - interesting analysis. Here are additional options for producing 2.43 MW-hrs of electricity: Fission 0.3 ounces of commercial nuclear fuel in a second generation light water reactor (those 1960s vintage technology machines currently operating to produce 807 billion kilowatt hours per year.) Fission somewhere between 0.01 and 0.3 ounces of plutonium, depleted uranium, thorium, mined natural uranium, or used nuclear fuel in a fourth generation reactor using fast neutrons and liquid metal cooling, or molten salt, or high temperature gas with TRISO particles, or reduced moderation light water. When you fission those quantities of actinides, you will not consume any oxygen or produce any waste gases that need to be dumped into the atmosphere. All residues can be contained. If the reactor is sufficiently refined, like the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) that Steve Kirsch has mentioned on this thread, all of the used material can be safely stored for a few hundred years above ground until it has decayed to a level of radiation emission lower than the ore initially mined from the ground to produce the fuel in the first place. In contrast to devices that capture energy from the wind and sun which need to be very tall and touch either hundreds of millions of pounds of air or spread out over more than a dozen acres of land, the device required to produce 2.43 megawatts of electrical energy can be small enough to fit inside a two car garage. It can be controlled to produce exactly as much power as the humans who operate it want to produce. It can achieve a high level of reliability and only need new fuel every 30 years or so. (BTW - achieving that level of performance does not require cutting edge science with an unknown outcome. It does not even require much research, only solid engineering choices using known material properties. The US Army operated a couple of reactors at about that level of power output in places like Antarctica, Greenland, Wyoming and Alaska in the early 1960s. Our current generation of new submarines are loaded with enough fuel to operate for 33 years.) See why I get so enthusiastic about the value of investing in atomic energy? Rod Adams Publisher, Atomic Insights Host and producer, The Atomic Show PodcastOn Stewart Brand's nuclear enthusiasm falls short on facts and logic posted 1 week, 6 days ago 159 Responses

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  @Igmuska - You are confused about the Jevons Paradox - he recognized that increasing energy efficiency would lower cost per unit, thus allowing people to perform tasks at lower costs. Since there is always more work to be done, people would do more of the lower cost tasks, resulting in an OVERALL increase in the use of energy. Simple economic theory predicts that anytime the supply of a commodity increases to a position that is much greater than the demand, the price that consumers will pay per unit of the commodity will always drop because the suppliers will compete through lower prices to attract the customers. Of course, in a monopoly situation, economic theory can be overcome so that the single supplier can raise prices no matter what the supply/demand balance is. The key to lower prices is competition and plenty of supply alternatives. You are very definitely "uneducated" if you think that "nuclear generating corporations like Exelon, Entergy, FPL, Dominion Resources, Duke Energy are deeply indebted to foreign capital. They are traditional American companies often owned by "widows and orphans" looking for solid rates of return on invested capital. Rod Adams Publisher, Atomic Insights Host and producer, The Atomic Show PodcastOn Stewart Brand's nuclear enthusiasm falls short on facts and logic posted 2 weeks ago 159 Responses

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  Daniel Coffey produced a post (2:38 PM 24 OCT 2009) with some quotes that illustrate why it can be very frustrating for a nuclear trained person to try to reason with someone who is adamant that power sources like wind and solar energy can do the job of providing reliable energy. (When it comes down to it, the whole cost argument is goofy if one of the choices cannot even do the required job to begin with. Who cares if a plane costs more than an automobile if the mission is to get from New York to the UK in less than 6 hours?) Here are the quotes to ponder: "Note that the total US generating capacity for wind power is 31,300 MW as of the end of the 3rd quarter of 2009." Not much later in the same post he wrote: "Let's face it, 20% of US electricity is produced by nuclear, 48% from coal, 2% from renewable, and most of the rest from natural gas." So my logically driven mind asks - if we have so much wind energy CAPACITY, why is wind, which is only a portion of the "renewable" category, PRODUCING such a small portion of our electricity? Of course, the answer is that massive wind turbines can be profitably installed under current rules, regulations and tax structures, but they CANNOT be controlled by humans in such a way as to PRODUCE any more power than the weather will allow. They are wastefully IDLE or underused 70-80% of the time. Here is another couple of quotes to ponder: "Moreover, Sempra Energy, for example, installed a 10MW thin film solar project in Nevada. From go ahead to completion - switched on the grid - it took 6 months total. It requires one person to maintain." The concluding paragraph Daniel then stated: "I look forward to a better world, one in which stridency on all sides can give way to a commonly shared view that America needs to build more things, employe more people, and produce wealth more sustainably." Okay - so if a 10 MWe thin film solar project really can be completed in 6 months and requires only one person to be employed as an operator, WHERE is the "employ more people" part of the equation? That solar plant will only produce 10 MWe at the very peak of solar insolation; it will be a massive, weather exposed surface that will be IDLE or underused for 70-90% of its operating life AND it will only result in one employee who probably does not get much training. The contrast with the proven capability of nuclear energy plants to provide massive quantities of reliable electricity while also providing hundreds of jobs that pay wages suitable for raising a family is worth thinking about. Go and visit any one of the 50 or so communities where the local power plant is the anchor employer. Check out the schools, ball fields, cultural activities. Talk to the people who live there and find out why they are so supportive of the idea of building even more new nuclear plants in their communities. Then talk to the owners of the plants, read their annual reports and talk to the investors to find out why they like owning and operating nuclear power plants. Many in this thread have asked - if nuclear plants are so wonderful, why aren't more being built. There are a whole host of reasons for this, but here is something that many do not consider. The companies that are most qualified to build, own and operate new power plants already own the existing ones. In some cases they also happen to own a large quantity of coal and gas power plants that produce a major portion of their output and contribute to their bottom line. If (when) a lot of new nuclear power plants start coming on line, the available supply of electricity will increase. This will inevitably put downward pressure on electricity prices in areas where there is wholesale price competition. The revenues from existing plants will fall as a result of the "overcapacity" and there may even be pressure to completely shut down and decommission plants that have higher marginal costs like those that burn coal and natural gas. For the plant owners, this might mean a premature shutdown of a capital asset that will then turn from a revenue producer into a cost for decommissioning and disposal. For the fuel suppliers to those facilities, the shutdown will mean a huge loss of a revenue stream - the fuel suppliers to a power plant capture between 60-95% of the revenue generated at the facility. A significant reduction in fuel demand at power plants will lead to a drop in fuel prices, again slowing revenue for large, politically and financially powerful fuel suppliers. Now, do you understand a bit more about why building new nuclear energy facilities is not quite as popular in the business community as its technical advantages would lead one to expect? My mission is to try to get energy CUSTOMERS (including those large and powerful companies that manufacture cars, steel, aluminum, beverages, plastics, and airplanes or that engage in transportation activities) to understand the logic in the notion that increased electricity production is GOOD for them, but potentially a financial burden for the establishment power and energy business. That group has never learned from the high technology industry that creative destruction is the only way to survive. If the establishment will not move due to fear of the effect on their current position, then it is time for upstarts like NuScale, Hyperion and TerraPower to show the way. Rod Adams Publisher, Atomic Insights Host and producer, The Atomic Show PodcastOn Stewart Brand's nuclear enthusiasm falls short on facts and logic posted 2 weeks ago 159 Responses

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  RussellLowes made the following statement: "It was pointed out by STK that the MIT study said that nuclear could become economical, given more support and with carbon pricing. That study was done in 2003, and contained the ridiculous projection that reactors would cost only $1500 per kilowatt of installation. Amory, you said that estimates have tripled since then. However, we have seen estimates as high as $8,800 and $10,000 per kilowatt, much higher than a tripling. " I have pulled out the study from my library of documents. That statement is not true. Page 43 the 2003 MIT study titled "The Future of Nuclear Power" contains a table titled "Base Case Assumptions" that lists nuclear with an overnight cost of $2000 per kilowatt of capacity. It also makes a few additional assumptions that are not computationally favorable to nuclear energy: - return on equity investment of 15% for nuclear, but just 12% for gas and coal, - finance structure of 50% equity and 50% debt (at 8%) when coal and gas are structured at 40% equity and 60% debt (this assumption yields a significantly higher overall cost of money for nuclear than for coal and gas) - coal fuel cost of just $1.20 per million BTU - coal fuel cost escalation of just 0.5% per year - "high" price gas of $4.50 per million BTU escalating at a "high" assumption of 2.5% per year (there is also a low and moderate case run) (for a gas plant, as much as 93% of the cost of electrical power is the cost of fuel, so the fuel cost assumption is very important for competitive purposes.) - economic lifetime for all facilities of just 40 years (most nuclear plants operating in the US today will run for at least 60 years) - "high" case nuclear capacity factor of 85% - compared to an average over the entire US fleet of more than 90% for the past five years - "high" case coal capacity factor of 85% - which is pretty close to actual experience - "high" case CCGT capacity factor of 85% - which is about 2x the reality as measured in the marketplace over the past five years. Since gas has already experienced one peak of $13 per million BTU in just the first 5 years after the study was completed, what do you think the probabilities are that it will behave in the manner assumed? Coal prices have also increased much more rapidly than assumed - by the middle of 2008, the average price was well over $2.50 per million BTU on the spot market. In these days of spreadsheets, any moderately educated person can make the computations of how much electricity will cost over time once they make their initial assumptions. The key in the accuracy of the projection, however, is in the skill with which the assumptions are made and the closeness with which they approach reality. One thing that can be said about nuclear power plant costs is that the have not "tripled" since no one has actually built a plant in more than 30 years. The accounting has not been done so any discussion has to be about estimates. Since the news that we read includes numbers from vendors still engaged in price negotiations, there is at least some justification for assuming that the prices discussed are a bit on the high side. Why would a vendor who does not have a cost plus contract come in with a lower than necessary bid? Rod Adams Publisher, Atomic Insights Host and producer, The Atomic Show PodcastOn Stewart Brand's nuclear enthusiasm falls short on facts and logic posted 2 weeks, 6 days ago 159 Responses