The Nuclear Future That Never Arrived

[Javaman]

http://www.scitizen.com/screens/blogPage/viewBlog/sw_viewBlog.php?idTheme=14&idContribution=2161

The Nuclear Future That Never Arrived

Understanding how the great hopes of early nuclear power advocates eventually turned into great disappointment may shed some light on nuclear power's future.

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Today, France has 59 nuclear reactors producing electricity that satisfies close to 80 percent of its needs. Some of the power is even exported.

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Quite often nuclear power is portrayed as part of a path to energy independence. But France's domestic production of uranium has shrunk to zero, and some of the world's largest mines are in troubled places in Central Asia and Africa.

Uranium, the main nuclear fuel, is often portrayed as virtually limitless. But a study done by Germany's Energy Watch Group suggests that uranium supplies could be exhausted within 70 years even if now uneconomic deposits are taken into account.

[Bob Dobbs]

1. Peak uranium.

Wow.

[sabbat hunter]

2. however

if we reprocess "spent" fuel in breeder reactors, we can greatly extend the life of all known uranium and previously "used" uranium

[Javaman]

4. Sigh. did you even read the article?

"Of course, the world could always embrace breeder reactors which were mentioned at the outset of this piece. The problem is that such reactors breed fuel that could easily be used to produce nuclear weapons. That means they pose special security risks for operators, and their use would almost surely lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology. In addition, those breeders which have been built with the intention of producing electricity commercially have proven to be dangerous and uneconomical to operate. To my knowledge, no commercial breeder reactors are in operation today."

-Weapons grade material produced by breeder reactors is and always will be the problem with breeders. As a result, they will never be a viable option.

[phantom power]

5. Sure it's viable.

What you mean is, you feel the risk is too high. Which is a different statement altogether.

[Javaman]

8. I 'm not the only that feels the risk is too high, apparently the world does as well...

if one hasn't been built in at least 30 years, it seems as if the risk is very real.

it's like using the arguement that communism works on paper as your proof of it working.

[phantom power]

9. I certainly agree you aren't the only one who feels that way.

I question whether concerns over nuclear proliferation were the largest reason for not building them. For the last 30 years, reactors have had plenty of less-expensive fuel from existing stockpiles, re-purposed warheads and good old fashioned mining. Not much business case for building an expensive recycling plant.

Saying "the risk must be real because nobody built them" is somewhat circular reasoning. Using that line of reasoning, I would conclude that the risk from burning coal must be practically zero, since for the last 30 years humans have been building thousands of coal-fired generators. And we all know that's not true.

[Javaman]

11. LOL good one on the coal.

bottom line is: it really comes down to money.

coal is cheap and can make lots of money on what was once a relatively small investment.

if there was a way to suddenly make nuclear really really cheap, I mean coal cheap, we would be treated to the "clean fallout" argument.

[kristopher]

12. So where are you when

So where are you when proponents of nuclear energy use the same poor logic regarding renewables by saying that since renewables only account for a very small percentage of current production they can't meet our future needs?

Have you ever made that argument?

[phantom power]

14. I'm glad you asked that.

You may have noticed that I avoid claiming this or that energy technology will "never" provide X percentage of our energy. Because (1) "never" is a long time, and (2) I cannot receive faxes from the future Dwight Shroot.

I definitely am known for disputing predictions that this or that energy technology "will" provide X percentage of our electricity. Most especially claims containing the phrase "in 5 years" or "just around the corner" or "in the near future." Because (1) We've all been reading predictions like that for 30 years(*) -- at least the first 25 years of those predictions were wrong -- and (2) the people claiming that don't receive faxes from the future either.

I assume you are thinking of NNadir, who does claim that renewables will "never" produce a significant fraction of our energy. That is one point I happen to disagree with him on. I don't think it's an especially important point.

One thing I do agree with NNadir on: it matters when people predict that this-or-that energy scheme will be commercial in X years, and then they get it wrong. It matters because, for better or worse, the public bases its opinions on energy from these articles that get published. They'll band together to prevent nuclear power, because they have been told that renewables are "ready to go any time."

Five years ago, when I first started having this food-fight here on DU, this argument was still somewhat hypothetical, but it's quickly becoming real. For one domestic example, the people of Maine are about 2 months away from unaffordable heating bills. Very few of those people are going to benefit from renewable anything, in spite of all the predictions, five years ago, that renewables were five years from being cheap and widely available.



(*) or more. but I'll stick with my personal experience of 30 years.

[kristopher]

16. I know of no one 5 years ago making that kind of claim for renewables

At least, no one outside of some sensationalized reporting by sloppy mass media types. What I saw 5 years ago were predictions that were based on the declining price curves of established renewables juxtaposed against the rising demand for fossil fuels and predictions of climate change based carbon costs.

As to nuclear, there is nothing about renewables that has stopped the adoption of the technology - it has been nuclear's safety and environmental issues confronting the same obstacle as renewables - cheap fossil fuels. In fact, I think a fair review of the public debate would reveal that the issue of energy has been framed by Republicans, and their perspective has been to burn fossil as long as possible and not worry about low density renewable alternatives because there is always nuclear to fall back on when fossil fuels get too expensive.

Renewable energy sources are NOW cheaper and faster to deploy as a replacement for fossil fuels than is nuclear.

Renewable energy sources NOW provide a better energy return on energy invested than nuclear, and the disparity is rapidly increasing.

Renewable energy sources do not come with anywhere near the same level of energy security, environmental and safety risks that are part and parcel of widespread deployment of nuclear.

Simply put, there is no case for nuclear except for the fact that it doesn't require a restructuring of our grid, yet, even that argument has a severe weakness. The present grid is built around the profitability of central generating facilities operated largely by private for profit corporations. That is a recipe that results in an inevitable and unalterable push to increase consumption of energy with little to no consideration of the external costs of that energy.

Do you think that is the proper way to manage our culture's use of energy?

[Terry in Austin]

15. Viable, yes. Smart, no.

nt

[TheWraith]

3. The "peak uranium" nonsense is just nonsense.

For starters, like those projections that had us running out of oil by the mid 1990s, it assumes that no new uranium will ever be found. If you factor in these, the horizon extends to 270 years.

Second, it assumes we'll never reprocess our existing stockpiles, which could greatly reduce our production of waste, and increase the productive lifespan ten-fold.

Lastly, there's a supply of uranium available in sea water good for some thousands of years if we're willing to pay $300 per kilo for extraction. Considering that we're already paying $180, that's not that bad of a deal.

[struggle4progress]

6. At 3 ppb U(nat), one would have to extract all the U from a 55 mi x 55 mi x 55 mi cube

of ocean water to obtain enough U after enrichment to run a 1-GW plant for a year. Moreover, the 200 or so tons of U(nat) you hope to extract are masked by approximately 20 billion tons of other dissolved materials

For comparison, economic ores contain U(nat) at around 400 000 ppb

[NickB79]

7. A fourth point: there's also thorium to supplement reactors NT

[Terry in Austin]

13. Oh. Uranium will never peak?

Funny, I always thought it was non-renewable.

Wait -- you mean "it won't peak until after I'm dead, so I don't care?" Well, that's different, isn't it!

Seawater... ah, yes, seawater. The last cornucopia of the truly desperate.

Hey -- how about a pipeline to Titan, instead? Then we wouldn't even have to do that pesky switchover from hydrocarbons.

[phantom power]

10. When I read this article last week, I noticed...

that the author appears to be a nuclear energy advocate:

It is a sad commentary that so many who knew the planet would one day run short of fossil fuels were unable to convince the world to embrace nuclear power in a more thoroughgoing way. With enough development, with careful and serious attention to the waste problem, and with lower-cost, decentralized designs that maximize safety, nuclear power might have succeeded in making any decline in fossil fuel availability just another historical footnote--but only if deployed on a large enough scale and far enough in advance of such a decline.

Now it may be too late. The time for the development of the nuclear economy appears to have come and gone with few people even realizing it.