Doubts raised on nuclear industry viability

[Javaman]

http://www.physorg.com/news177839133.html

(PhysOrg.com) -- The investment in nuclear power has been growing around the world over the last few years, being viewed as a means for countries to control their energy security, avoid the price fluctuations of other energy sources, and reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, but concerns are now being raised.

>snip<

New York Times energy reporter Matthew Wald, writing in Technology Review, said new reactors would be unable to pay for themselves because of the massive cost of construction and competition from emerging alternatives that could affect the energy price. Wald compared the costs per kilowatt of capacity of nuclear ($4,000), coal ($3,000) and natural gas ($800), which makes the nuclear option a big financial gamble. The future cost of fossil fuels is unknown, and could also affect the nuclear industry's viability.

[phantom power]

1. Can't wait to see how Matthew's coal/NG plan works out.

Probably, we're going to find out.
:(

[kristopher]

7. The snip in the OP distorts what the article says...

PhysOrg.com) -- The investment in nuclear power has been growing around the world over the last few years, being viewed as a means for countries to control their energy security, avoid the price fluctuations of other energy sources, and reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, but concerns are now being raised.

A scientist from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology predicts that supplies of uranium are running out and countries relying on imports of uranium may face shortages by 2013, while a New York Times journalist suggests new nuclear power plants are an "abysmal" investment that will never pay for itself without government financial support.

Dr Michael Dittmar, a physicist with CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), said in the fourth and final part of an essay on the world's nuclear industry published this week that civilian stockpiles of uranium could be depleted by as early as 2013.

According to Dittmar civilian and military stockpiles and re-enriched or reprocessed uranium sources contribute 25,000 of the 65,000 tons of uranium used globally each year. The rest is mined directly, but Dittmar claims nobody knows where the mining industry can find enough uranium to make up the shortfall, and disputes the Nuclear Energy Agency's estimates of reserves of Uranium.

Dittmar is unconvinced that fission breeder reactors can provide a solution, saying that their inefficiency, high construction costs and poor safety ...

http://www.physorg.com/news177839133.html

[AuldLochinvar]

65. U-235 is scarce, U-238 and Th-232 are plentiful

That's why the IFR (look it up, or visit http://skepticva.org/EnergyIndependence.html )
is necessary.

The US government runs its capital ships on highly enriched nuclear fuel, saving enormous amounts of petroleum (or, heaven help us, coal) thanks to Admiral Rickover, the hero of Jimmy Carter's book "Why Not the Best"

Dittmar is right about fusion energy prospects, but why hasn't he read the stuff at Berkeley and Frontline on the success of the IFR?

[kristopher]

8. This is the relevant environmental and resource data - nuclear ranks with coal

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[joshcryer]

10. nuclear ranks with coal-CCS

[phantom power]

12. Do you have the whole paper?

I'm curious about how the author assigned these weights, and what the impact categories were, and how he clustered his scenarios. Etc.

But I confess I'm not willing to pay £27 to drill down on it, tightwad that I am.

[joshcryer]

13. Fortunately Jacobson has all of his papers on his site:

Bunch of related stuff here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm

Direct link here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/PDF%20files/ReviewSolGW09.pdf

I love it when authors of papers have them on their CV site. Many authors don't do this.

[AuldLochinvar]

18. Jacobson's papers

I am very convinced, having worked for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission when California fired its Governor, that the enthusiasts for non-schedulable power sources do not understand the importance of responding to peak loads.
Jacobson's papers seem to think that if you have enough apparent generating capacity, the problem is solved.
The cost of a demand load that is more than the distributor can bring on-line in a hurry is the loss of synchronization of supply sources. The overburdened ones slow down, and a discrepancy of one 120th of a second is enough for the positive output on one generator to cancel the output of another. So a distributor is willing to pay lots more for someone's gas turbine peaking power than it is actually worth to the reckless consumer.

Photovoltaics in sunny California can supply power to a load peak that is mostly air-conditioning, but they can't keep you warm at night. Wind turbines are entirely fickle, because the power of the wind is proportional to the cube of the wind speed. Even a huge improvement in transmission lines (which are also worth more to consumers than to power companies) will merely add together many random numbers, which by definition gets you a random number.

California's Altamont Pass wind turbines, which make the pass visually an industrialized area, kill thousands of birds for less energy per year than a single nuclear plant.

How would I schedule the output of a nuclear plant, which really likes to run at near full capacity all the time? All it needs is a customer who will take all the unused output to smelt aluminum, or maybe supply all the hydrogen economy that the automobile industry is bragging about.

[kristopher]

24. False Nuclear Energy Institute boilerplate talking points...

Jacobson is well aware of the requirements for integrating renewable energy into the grid. His paper is not designed to address that issue so attacking it for something that isn't a part of the intent of the paper is dishonest - it is clear you have a preference for such argument by misrepresentation.
Experience in Europe has shown that you are vastly overstating the significance of the intermittency issues. Also when new generation is brought on line in the US it is standard policy to evaluate the cost of integration; it usually is less than 1/2 cent per kW.

As you say "a nuclear plant... really likes to run at near full capacity all the time". Your bias and lack of concern for objective evaluation is made plain when you make that statement immediately after you make the argument regarding peaking power as that is actually much more of an Achilles Heel for nuclear than it is for renewables.

Here are earlier posts that addresses the point of peak power and nuclear energy.

The total nameplate capacity of our electric generating fleet is 1,087,791 megawatts. That is roughly the amount of capacity we need to duplicate if we were to expect nuclear to provide all our continuous and peaking electric needs. That compares to the hourly average of 45,662 megawatts that was indicated by Stat's original argument (this is derived from his claim that looks at the need to produce 4,000 TWh per year as if it were the most meaningful metric by which to judge the solution to the problem).

So your claim is that since wind only produces 20% (post 16) or 25% or 33% (post 13) of the maximum amount it could potentially generate, it is going to be more expensive than nuclear, which currently averages above 90% of potential peak generation, right?

You claim we must build 3X-4X (in your post 13) or 5x (in your post 16) the nameplate capacity in wind to deliver an amount of power to equal what nuclear delivers.

You also link this to the total electricity consumed (4,000 million MWH).

What is the pattern of generation that actually occurs over a 24 hour daily period? How about over the course of a week? What about monthly or seasonal variations in demand and generation profiles?

Your argument presumes that this variability in demand doesn't exist. It assumes that we need to deliver 45,662 megawatts continuously over the course of a year's 8760 hours. That isn't the case. The swing between minimal and maximum demand is extremely large.

This pattern of variability in demand strongly affects the implicit assumption of steady demand that underlies your logic behind the value of a high capacity factor argument. The fact is that we need to build enough noncarbon generation capacity to meet the peak demands of our system. This means that those sources of electricity used to meet the ramps and peak demand period are going to be operating at a much lower capacity factor than they are capable of. For example, it isn't all that unusual for a natural gas plant to operate at a capacity factor of less than 1%.

Your argument also presumes that "the variable pricing model" is only relevant as it provides an extremely limited niche for renewables. Nothing could be further from the truth. The variable pricing model is a result of the fact that our system must recompense those who build generation capacity to meet all parts of this variable demand - whether that is natural gas, wind, solar or god help us, nuclear. I mean, can you imagine the amount of capacity in nuclear that you'd have to install in order to meet peak demand? First, it would drop nuclear's capacity factor down to something similar to wind. I mean, for many of these plants you'll only turn it on for one hour per day each weekday during the hottest part of summer - maybe 60 total hours per year - right? That means you have to factor in the cost of building these plants with a 0.0068% capacity factor. Presuming this is a 1 GW nuclear plant, it is going to have to recoup its entire cost on the back of 60 GWh of electricity per year. Considering the price of a new 1 GW plant is pushing past 12 billion dollars just how much do you think the homeowner is going to have to pay to turn their AC on at 2 PM on a summer day? I'll use your number from post 13 where you state that the average nuke plant recoups its cost by selling 8234 GWhs of electricity per year. The new plants are pushing past $0.20 kwh because of the soaring costs of building them (10-12 billion/GW). That means that the electricity in those select peaking plants will run a minimum of $27 per kwh.

This is an earlier post I wrote that speaks (from a slightly different slant) directly to the issue of the relevance of "baseload" power.

"Baseload" is an interesting phenomenon. People tend to believe that it is an indispensable element of a power grid, but that is an assumption that requires scrutiny. Bear with me as I review some basics for those who may not be as familiar with them as I know you are.

In linguistics 'back formations" are cases of words that are culturally created through misapplications of accepted rules of grammar. For example, there is growing acceptance of the word /conversate/ in some US subcultures. Those who employ the word derive it as a verb from noun /conversation/. Standard American English (what is used by newscasters is the benchmark for SAE) of course, offers the verb /converse/. However, if that word is unknown to (or not readily recalled by) the speaker it is understandable that /conversation/ would be yield /conversate/ based on the relationship of words such as /gravitation/ and /gravitate/, or /hesitation/ and /hesitate/.

I offer that because the development of 'baseload' power as a component of the grid has followed a similar pattern. In order to meet rising demand within a central, thermal generation based grid, a natural path of development was to make the centrally located generators ever larger. Eventually the size of these generators became so large that their size related operational characteristics started affecting how power was marketed.

A large generator is a long metal shaft with a large amount of wire wrapped around it. This shaft spins within a magnetic field and generates electricity. This shaft is very long and the windings are very heavy; so heavy, in fact, that if it is allowed to stop spinning the shaft will sag in the middle and develop a curve that must be eliminated by *very slowly* commencing rotation and allowing the weight of the windings to eventually center the shaft so that power production can commence. This process can so long to accomplish that it becomes prohibitively expensive to stop one of these large turbines from spinning if it is in daily use to help meet the varying demand for power. So rather than shut down and restart, it is more economical to keep the turbine fired up.
This forms a "base"level of generation for a given locale. Another word for "generated power" is 'load'; that gives us our "baseload".

What this leads to, of course, is an oversupply of power related to demand. The natural reaction to such an oversupply is to attempt to recoup money from some of the unused power. That drives a trend in pricing that causes industry with flexibility to orient itself around the availability of this less expensive source of energy.

So our existing (and near term projected) system does rely on this structure, however it isn't the only configuration that a grid could assume and still meet the needs of an industrial society.

An alternative is to conceive of a system where the power needs of any given user, including industries, is evaluated and met independent of central power generation. For example, an auto plant may use a small (compared to the generator described above) natural gas generator to back up a large photovoltaic array on their roof. This system would work with a much more flexible grid composed of many other, similar small distributed generating set-ups to allow the investment in equipment made by the auto plant to be more fully utilized; thereby spreading around the capital costs.

So when you say that solar can't provide baseload, I would have to question the foundation of the statement. I realize the scenario I describe is where we are going, not where we currently are; however the discussion is about where we invest our scarce dollars in infrastructure investment to meet our future needs. While the existing nuclear fleet is an important part of our grid now and going forward, it isn't prudent to plow more money into nuclear generation if our goal is prompt action on climate change. Those dollars deliver much greater bang for the buck with wind and solar.

[bananas]

57. You worked at FERC while they where screwing us over?

You worked there at the time? Thanks a lot, buddy. You're no friend of mine.

http://archive.democrats.com/preview.cfm?term=california%20energy%20crisis

Bush-Cheney and the Great California Rate Payer Rip-Off
24-Nov-02
california energy crisis

The front pages were buzzing with fresh reports of one energy company and the great California Rip Off -- "deliberately keeping a power plant from generating electricity so the company could take advantage of sky-high wholesale electricity prices the state was forced to pay to keep the lights on. (The evidence was sealed by Bush's FERC. It was Paul Krugman who first wrote about the Williams tapes cover up. How could FERC keep this smoking gun concealed for a year? Easy -- it wouldn't have jibed with Bush's energy policy.) It's highly unlikely that Bush, Cheney and members of the energy task force were kept in the dark about the Williams scam, especially since the findings of the investigation by FERC took place around the same time the policy was being drafted. (This is why it's crucial that Cheney release the energy policy list of names.) Cheney's stonewalling tactics have bought the administration some time. But the heat is on."

:mad:

[AuldLochinvar]

60. Why do you think I retired early?

Actually, those of us who took our jobs seriously were very unpopular with the management.

[JohnWxy]

114. I'm afraid I must take issue with your statement re adding a large number of random numbers.

"Even a huge improvement in transmission lines merely add(s) together many random numbers, which by definition gets you a random number."

Actually, if you get a large enough number of random numbers, if they are random with respect to each other, according to random number theory they will average out to a quite stable value (in the aggregate). If they do not balance each other out, then they are not random with respect to each other.

YOu raise a very good point about peak power needs but the one thing you left out of your analysis of non-scheduleable sources is....storage. Admittedly, something that needs to be worked on, but an engineering problem and workable.

I still find the notion of nuclear power being "safe" as largely a theoretical concept as in practice it keeps failing the emperical test.

Just recently, Three Mile island sprung a leak. NOw, it wasn't a big one, but what troubles me is they don't know where the leak is!

[AuldLochinvar]

73. BEVs

The wildlife loss from wind turbines, per kilowatt-hour of energy, is quite alarming. Look up the statistics for the Altamont wind farm. The cost of batteries has not been mentioned. The CO2 cost of construction is large.
Carbon sequestration is vapor-ware, it has neither been shown nor costed in any respectable way. The volume per thousand megawatt-year (gigawatt-year) is prodigious, millions of times the nuclear waste problem.

The yield from biofuels cannot exceed the yield of a sustained-growth woodland, for example coppiced willow, on a three year cycle. To produce the equivalent of one gigawatt-year of energy in a year, my best estimate from the willow-coppice promotion sites is 500 to 1000 square miles of continuously harvested coppice (woodland).

[kristopher]

78. Thank you.

As I said, you depend wholly on dishonest arguments.

Altamont Pass was one of, if not *the* first large wind farm in the country. It was sited poorly and the now discarded lattice tower design attracted raptors as a nesting area. Extrapolating the avian impact of wind from that sample is as dishonest an argument as I can imagine.
For comparative purposes here are other causes of avian mortality:

• Vehicles: 60 million - 80 million
• Buildings and Windows: 98 million - 980 million
• Powerlines: tens of thousands - 174 million
• Communication Towers: 4 million - 50 million
• Wind Generation Facilities: 10,000 - 40,000


And here is the history and position of California Audubon on wind power:
http://www.ca.audubon.org/chapter_assets/wind_handbook_030609b.pdf

Jacobson's analysis included an HONEST assessment of wind's impact on wildlife in his analysis.

[AuldLochinvar]

2. nuclear fuel

Aha! I just noticed that Wald gives "cost per kilowatt of capacity".
That makes "natural gas" turbines cheap to build, but they're expensive to run. That's why they're used for peak power. Some of the cost of nuclear reactor construction is the cost of fighting ill-informed legal suits brought by people and organizations totally ignorant of the abominable nature of the alternatives.

The estimates about cost of all the alternatives in the physorg article are based upon wildly varying and illogical degrees of public tolerance. If the poison gases and ash, and carcinogenic airborne particulates of coal burning were subjected to the same level of prohibition as the putative health risks of nuclear power, it would cost a devil of a lot more to make electricity from it.
That's before you consider the thousands of millions of tons of carbon dioxide emitted, and the millions of tons (or is it also billions?) of verdant hillsides blasted into rubble to get at the coal.

If the vaporware Carbon Sequestration technology were demanded of every planned coal burning power plant before allowing it to be licensed, there'd never be another one built.

Of course, if you want a successful solution to the energy problem, you'd be far better to do it as a publicly owned project, like our big hydroelectric projects, or France's nuclear industry. It's not as if corporate "enterprise" and "innovation" has had all that stellar a record in the last 12 years.

The USA's own Integral Fast Reactor design, canceled in a fit of stupidity by the Democrats in 1994, could generate 1000 megawatts per reactor, for about 50 years, at a capacity factor of over 90%, starting with a year's worth of the typical present reactor load of enriched uranium, and an equal quantity of unenriched uranium. That means it gets more than 100 times as much energy per ton of uranium as the reactors which presently provide us with about 20% of the world's electricity. And they do it, accidents included, with far fewer fatalities per gigawatt-year than coal, natural gas, or even hydroelectric and wind turbines. Also far less visual pollution than 600 foot high wind turbines, of 6 MW capacity each and a capacity factor of 25% if you're lucky.

See my website at http://skepticva.org/EnergyIndependence.html
or Frontline at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

[phantom power]

3. Welcome to DU!

[hunter]

4. Welcome to DU!

Don't forget to wear your protective devices.

[GliderGuider]

5. Welcome to DU!

I like your style, kid.

:popcorn:

[jpak]

6. The Twit Democrats!!!1111

:rofl:

[AuldLochinvar]

16. twit democrats

Hey, I am a democrat. And an anti-nuke. But I distinguish nuclear power from nuclear weapons. I'm even a socialist. If I were a Christian and believed in Heaven, I'd expect to see Maggie Thatcher burning in the other place for privatising Britain's Central Electricity Generating assets.

[joshcryer]

17. You are the opposite from almost every pro-nuclear power guy I've talked to online.

You're cool by me. :D :hi:

A pro-nuclear power democratic socialist against nuclear weapons, what are the odds.

[kristopher]

20. What are the odds that those are greenwashing claims

That is much, much more likely.

[joshcryer]

22. I read his website. Guy's practically a commie. ;)

No offense new guy! :D

DU might actually be too conservative for ya. ;)

[kristopher]

26. So PR firms don't know how to make phony websites?

Rachael Maddow on the way climate deniers are using astroturf techniques
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=rachel+maddow+astroturfing&aq=1sx&oq=rachael+maddow+astroturf&aqi=g-sx2

Report by Union of Concerned Scientists on TACTICS used by ExxonMobile in their war against action on climate change.
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/global_warming_contrarians/exxonmobil-report-smoke.html

[joshcryer]

29. I could do without more conspiracy stuff today, especially in light of the CRU hack.

edit USC -> CRU, was thinking of a different organization

[kristopher]

33. This isn't conspiracy - nuclear energy is the child of the Republican party tactics

And there are TRILLIONS of dollars at stake. The UCS paper shows what the fossil lobby overtly does to promote their interests. Rachael shows the way this same strategy has extended itself into the internet.

[joshcryer]

35. Do you have any evidence with regards to the poster? Otherwise it's conspiratorial insinuation.

I'm not saying this isn't possible, only in this case that I find it unlikely.

[kristopher]

38. This is a Democratic forum

The position of the Democratic party is that nuclear power is not the solution to our energy needs. The arguments being made are totally dishonest (for example would the Audubon Society support wind if Altamont Pass was representative of the industry?) and are the standard fare by promulgated by Republican think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation.

If you are here arguing a Republican position then your bona fides are automatically suspect.

[joshcryer]

Just slander really. And Obama is marginally supportive of nuclear power.

Expect Democrats to get lots of funding from nuclear interests just like the Republicans have in the past, in the coming years.

[AuldLochinvar]

58. Incoming solar

Yeah, that's why I want Democrats to follow the example of France, and take a good look at where 12 years of unfettered "private" "enterprise" has got us.
Oh, by the way, the eye Hurricane Andrew passed over the reactors at Turkey Point in Florida, releasing energy (back into space?) at a rate 5000 times what the reactors are rated for. But it's damned difficult to capture all these exajoules.
Yeah, the reactors survived. Wind turbines and sun-following mirrors probably wouldn't have.

[kristopher]

63. It also passed over the wind turbines on Guantanamo

They did just fine.

[AuldLochinvar]

66. I'm surprised. How tall are they? I presume they were shut down for safety.

[kristopher]

69. That's like being surprised at a prop airplane being able to fly faster than 100mph.

They are modern 80m+ turbines. They feather the rotors in high winds.

[AuldLochinvar]

74. Yeah, making no electricity.

[kristopher]

79. By its nature a distributed generation grid (wind, solar)

is much less vulnerable to power outages than a centralized system.

What good is centralized generation without power lines?

[Dead_Parrot]

90. You got that backwards

Distributed generation requires a lot more grid infrastructure than centralised production: The points of generation in a centralised model tend to be physically close to the points of consumption, For a distributed model they could be anywhere: For a distributed & renewable model the generation is where the resources are, which is usually not where the people are.

[kristopher]

91. That is completely false.

http://www.oe.energy.gov/epa_sec1817.htm

Section 1817 of the Energy Policy Act (EPACT) of 2005 calls for the Secretary of Energy to conduct a
study of the potential benefits of cogeneration and small power production, otherwise known as
distributed generation, or DG. The benefits to be studied are described in subpart (2)(A) of Section 1817.
In accordance with Section 1817 the study includes those benefits received “either directly or indirectly
by an electricity distribution or transmission service provider, other customers served by an electricity
distribution or transmission service provider and/or the general public in the area served by the public
utility in which the cogenerator or small power producer is located.” Congress did not require the study to
include the potential benefits to owners/operators of DG units.1 The specific areas of potential benefits
covered in this study include:
• Increased electric system reliability (Section 2 of the Study)
• An emergency supply of power (Section 2 and 7 of the Study)
• Reduction of peak power requirements (Section 3 of the Study)
• Offsets to investments in generation, transmission, or distribution facilities that would otherwise
be recovered through rates (Section 3 of the Study)
• Provision of ancillary services, including reactive power (Section 4 of the Study)
• Improvements in power quality (Section 5 of the Study)
• Reductions in land-use effects and rights-of-way acquisition costs (Section 6 of the Study)
• Reduction in vulnerability to terrorism and improvements in infrastructure resilience (Section 7 of
the Study)
Additionally, Congress requested an analysis of “...any rate-related issue that may impede or otherwise
discourage the expansion of cogeneration and small power production facilities, including a review of
whether rates, rules, or other requirements imposed on the facilities are comparable to rates imposed on
customers of the same class that do not have cogeneration or small power production.” (Section 8 of the
Study)

[Dead_Parrot]

93. So you quote a paper discussing UPS systems, standby diesel and NG plants?

Ahh, but I'm forgetting who I'm talking to.

Yes Kris, you can indeed have distributed generation at the point of use so long as you are happy burning fossil fuels.

But what about the wind farms? Or are you conceding that point?

[kristopher]

94. You must not have read the paper.

The idea is one I've mentioned several times in the past few days - there are two basic configurations for the "machine" that is the grid.

One is large scale centralized generation and the other is distributed generation. The specific energy source isn't particularly relevant to how these two configurations manifest their operating characteristics related to reliability.
What seems to have you confused (a seemingly permanent condition) is the use of large scale wind and solar as part of a distributed grid. While we will be building large projects they are not the entirety of the system. The large scale resources are, like natural gas, much more important in the transition phase than they are in the final configuration. They (*large scale* wind and solar and wave) end up serving as one of the technologies for plugging holes related to the variability of wind and solar than they do as a backbone power supply.
Your assertion that distributed generation was less reliable was completely refuted by the paper.

Brief History of DG
DG is not a new phenomenon. Prior to the advent of alternating current and large-scale steam turbines -
during the initial phase of the electric power industry in the early 20th century - all energy requirements,(1)
including heating, cooling, lighting, and motive power, were supplied at or near their point of use.
Technical advances, economies of scale in power production and delivery, the expanding role of
electricity in American life, and its concomitant regulation as a public utility, all gradually converged to
enable the network of gigawatt-scale thermal power plants located far from urban centers that we know
today, with high-voltage transmission and lower voltage distribution lines carrying electricity to virtually
every business, facility, and home in the country.

At the same time this system of central generation was evolving, some customers found it economically
advantageous to install and operate their own electric power and thermal energy systems, particularly in
the industrial sector. Moreover, facilities with needs for highly reliable power, such as hospitals and
telecommunications centers, frequently installed their own electric generation units to use for emergency
power during outages. Traditionally, these forms of DG were not assets under the control of electric
utilities. However, in some cases, they produced benefits to the overall electric system by supplying
needed power to those consumers in lieu of the local electricity provider. In such cases, utility investment
for facilities and/or system capacity that would have been used to supply those customers could be re-
directed to expand/upgrade the network.

Over the years, the technologies for both central generation and DG improved by becoming more efficient
and less costly. Implementation of Section 210 of the Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act of 1978
(PURPA) sparked a new era of highly energy efficient and renewable DG for electric system applications.
Section 210 established a new class of non-utility generators called “Qualifying Facilities” (QFs) and
provided financial incentives to encourage development of cogeneration and small power production.
Many QFs have since provided energy to consumers on-site, but some have sold power at rates and under
terms and conditions that have been either negotiated or set by state regulatory authorities or non-
regulated utilities.

Today, advances in new materials and designs for photovoltaic panels, microturbines, reciprocating
engines, thermally-activated devices, fuel cells, digital controls, and remote monitoring equipment
(among other components and technologies) have expanded the range of opportunities and applications
for “next generation” DG, and have made it possible to tailor energy systems to the specific needs of
consumers. These technical advances, combined with changing consumer needs, and the restructuring of
wholesale and retail markets for electric power and natural gas, have opened even more opportunities for
consumers to use DG to meet their own energy needs.

At the same time, these circumstances can allow electric utilities to explore the possibilities of utilizing
DG to help address the requirements of a modern electric system. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
has supported research and development in an effort to make these “next generation” DG devices more
energy efficient, reliable, clean and affordable. The aim of these efforts has been to accelerate the pace of
development of “next generation” energy systems, and promote greater energy security, economic
competitiveness, and environmental protection. These “next generation” systems are the focus of this
study.

(1) While there are many documented examples of how DG (particularly from those systems that use renewable
energy and combined heat and power technologies) could enhance environmental conditions, Section 1817 does not
include an analysis of the potential environmental benefits of DG. As such, the study does not address this issue.

[Dead_Parrot]

97. Yes, Kris

We've noticed you pushing fossil fuels recently, and it really isn't a surprise to see you doing so again. A paper discussing the benefits on on-site diesel generators with no regard to environmental impact fits your purposes perfectly.

Again, I will assume you are trolling on the grounds that nobody is that stupid, and leave you to it.

[kristopher]

99. Your claim regarding distributed generation was false.

Trying to hide the ignorance revealed by your claim behind a lie related to my priorities is typical for someone with your lack of ethics.

Again, from the DOE paper on distributed generation, the benefits of a grid built around distributed generation (no matter the energy source) are:
• Increased electric system reliability (Section 2 of the Study)
• An emergency supply of power (Section 2 and 7 of the Study)
• Reduction of peak power requirements (Section 3 of the Study)
• Offsets to investments in generation, transmission, or distribution facilities that would otherwise
be recovered through rates (Section 3 of the Study)
• Provision of ancillary services, including reactive power (Section 4 of the Study)
?? Improvements in power quality (Section 5 of the Study)
• Reductions in land-use effects and rights-of-way acquisition costs (Section 6 of the Study)
• Reduction in vulnerability to terrorism and improvements in infrastructure resilience (Section 7 of
the Study)

That flatly contradicts your assertion that distributed generation is LESS RELIABLE than centralized generation. This is important because the concept being discussed - the basic way we provide power - is so fundamental that your ignorance of it proves your opinions on all matters related to providing energy are based on complete lack of knowledge regarding the problem you are dealing with.

The discussion in the paper is a comparison of distributed generation, not a discussion of the way to integrate renewable energy into a system of distributed generation:
"Today, advances in new materials and designs for photovoltaic panels, microturbines, reciprocating engines, thermally-activated devices, fuel cells, digital controls, and remote monitoring equipment (among other components and technologies) have expanded the range of opportunities and applications for “next generation” DG, and have made it possible to tailor energy systems to the specific needs of consumers. These technical advances, combined with changing consumer needs, and the restructuring of wholesale and retail markets for electric power and natural gas, have opened even more opportunities for consumers to use DG to meet their own energy needs."

This makes clear - even for you - that the power sources are not the central issue when comparing distributed generation to central generation. An array of solar w/storage on every home and business is distributed generation every bit as much as a small scale fossil generator would be.

You really are pathetic.

[Dead_Parrot]

70. What, did it fall through a time warp or something?

Hurricane Andrew: 1992
Guantanamo turbines: 2005

Edit: Oh, and it missed Guantanamo by quite a margin:



But yeah, apart from that, those turbines really toughed it out.

[GliderGuider]

72. Hmmm. Inconvenient fact-checking, that...

I'm surprised k got something so elementary wrong...

[Dead_Parrot]

81. Not terribly important

Although of course, we'll have to copy-and-paste a link to this cock-up in every post for the next week. It's traditional.

[GliderGuider]

83. Traditions are very important.

And right now this forum seems to be honouring some some ancient usenet traditions...

[bananas]

105. Usenet! From 1994 - when the IFR was debated in Congress!

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.energy/browse_thread/thread/8561812ea1d92a5c/34d0f5034b1d65ab?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22integral+fast+reactor%22#34d0f5034b1d65ab

*Both* sides of the IFR debate are laid out in great detail in the
House floor debate, which can be found in the June 30, 1994 issue of the
Congressional Record.

Does anybody want to look that up?

[Dead_Parrot]

106. Here you go:

http://frwebgate1.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/TEXTgate.cgi?WAISdocID=794738328187+0+1+0&WAISaction=retrieve

If the link doesn't work, go to http://www.gpoaccess.gov/crecord/search.html, select 'CR vol 140 1994' from the list and enter "integral fast reactor" as the search terms - it's the top result.

Looks fascinating.

[bananas]

112. Congressional Record: June 30, 1994

Some excerpts from John Kerry:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=115&topic_id=217701&mesg_id=217883

Congressional Record: June 30, 1994

<snip>

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, a few moments before the quorum call was
put into place, the Senator from Idaho asked Senators to listen
carefully to this debate, because it is about the future, the future of
nuclear power, and about the interests of the United States with
respect to the control of plutonium.

<snip>

The reality of the ALMR, the advanced liquid metal reactor, is that
it is a waste and that it is a danger, that it is fiscally
irresponsible, scientifically irresponsible, and irresponsible with
respect to arms control and nuclear waste. And every single independent
study--independent study--confirms what I have just said: OTA, National
Academy of Sciences, GAO, and so forth.

Now let me frame this debate, if I may, by reading a letter from the
President of the United States sent to me yesterday. I will just read
the first paragraph which is relevant.

Thank you for your letter supporting our decision to
terminate the Department of Energy's advanced liquid metal
reactor program, including the integral fast reactor project.
I want to assure you that this administration does not
support the IFR and will oppose any efforts to continue the
funding for this reactor project. The IFR has no foreseeable
commercial value and its continuation would undercut our
international nuclear weapons nonproliferation efforts.

<snip>

The question is squarely before the U.S. Senate: Do we have the
courage and the foresight to be willing to cut a program that every
single analysis has deemed a waste, which the President does not want,
which the Secretary of Energy does not want, and which so clearly
threatens the proliferation concerns of this country?

<snip>

This kind of irresponsible effort for fundamental pork barrel
purposes undercuts every single effort of the United States in the
international community.

<snip>

My colleagues are going to come to the floor and say you can
eliminate all of that because this technology is going to chew it all
up. Wrong. Wrong. The National Academy of Sciences tells you: Wrong and
unnecessary. That is the most important thing I ask colleagues to focus
on. When we come to the floor of the Senate and we are asked to make a
judgment about a program--you may have the most incredibly highfalutin,
wonderful program of creative technology, but it could be absolutely
unnecessary because you have a far simpler, more readily available,
safer technology at your hands. And that is precisely what we have.

<snip>

This is not a vote for or against nuclear power and it should not be
confused as that. I support light water reactor technology. I support
the advanced light water technology that is proposed in this bill.

<snip>

Now we could dig out those old reports from OTA, National Academy of Sciences, GAO, and so forth.
Or we could look at the 2007 NAS report and the 2003 MIT report which came to the same conclusions.

[kristopher]

75. Fair enough.

I wasn't paying attention to the name of the storm. The Guantanamo turbines were installed in 2004-5 and have withstood all the storms that have passed over since. I'll leave it to you to let us know why Andrew has to be the benchmark.

[Dead_Parrot]

77. I think the point was the eye-wall wind speeds

I'm sure any cat-5 hurricane directly hitting a wind farm will serve as a suitable rebuttal.

[kristopher]

80. Feel free to show that none of the cat 5s we've had have hit Gitmo.

And be sure to include the justification for the selection of Andrew as a benchmark.

[Dead_Parrot]

87. lol

I have already explained why there is nothing special about Andrew. You can either:

a)Find an example of a cat-5 hurricane hitting a windfarm which survived intact, thus negating the point;
b)Find an example of a cat-5 hurricane hitting a windfarm which did not survive intact, thus proving the point;
c)Declare that such an event has not happened, therefore calling the point into question through lack of data;
d)Declare that such an event has happened multiple times with different outcomes, therefore calling the point into question through indeterminate data.

For (c) the onus will fall on others to find examples. Be careful here, someone may already have one...

For all of these you may question the relevance of the point, regardless of the truth of it.

Now, let's see if you can do your homework. Oh, I forgot option (e): Chuck some insults around and fly off at a tangent. That gets you a failing grade.

(Incidentally, feel free to include the justification for the selection of Guantanamo as a benchmark. ;))

[Dead_Parrot]

45. Well, that's the ad hominems out of the way

Can we have some walls of irrelevant copy-and-paste now?

[joshcryer]

46. :(

Done with this thread now. Going to just get worse from here. Enjoy the show. :)

Hope this new guy doesn't get run off. He seems like a good guy.

[Dead_Parrot]

51. Awww

;)

[AuldLochinvar]

43. fossil energy

I want rid of fossil fuel dependency. I am convinced that renewable fission energy is the way to go. Uranium isn't a fossil fuel, it'll be around (about half as much of it) when the Sun runs short of hydrogen.

[kristopher]

47. Actually you want to promote nuclear, not displace fossil.

Your argument is absolutely clear; you want to build more nuclear power generation. If you wanted to displace fossil fuels the HONEST arguments that support renewables show that at the very least you should also embrace them.

Using dishonest arguments in an attempt to discredit renewables makes your motives crystal clear.

From your website:

Inadequacy of the Popular Renewables

These figures for solar, wind, and biofuels can be checked, if you have sufficient determination, using the various estimates by their promoters. It is necessary to ignore imprecise nonsense about the number of "homes" that can be supplied. Look at the area of the project, compute the expected megawatt-hours per year, and then look at the ability of the project to match its output to an actual demand.
Wind, in particular, is totally unable to be summoned for the purpose of meeting a sharp increase in demand. When the windspeed drops by 5%, the power supplied by the wind drops more than 14%. And if it's blowing hard when there's no demand, unless you're pumping water out of a polder in the Netherlands, it's useless.

For biomass in particular, the energy available, no matter what clever organic technology you devise, cannot exceed the energy that the organic biomass would supply if it were directly oxidized. In actual fact, you cannot convert simple sugars to ethanol with better than 67% energy efficiency. Yeast fermentation consumes one in three carbon atoms in the conversion. That's why champagne is fizzy, and bread rises. The fizz is carbon dioxide.

If you are a conspiracy theorist, you might wonder if the left wing opposition to nuclear power is being funded clandestinely by the petroleum industry. It is my opinion, and theirs, that coal and oil will never be replaced by wind, solar, and biofuels. So the only threat to their profits comes from nuclear, and in my opinion it would need to be nationally owned, like the great hydro dams of the Columbia watershed.

The government of France, which has never had much coal or oil, committed France to nuclear power instead. Not only does Électricité de France supply 75% of France's electric consumption from nuclear, it can afford to export electricity to Britain and Germany. In Britain, a flourishing nationally owned electric generation system was "privatised" in the Thatcher regime, and what seem to have been perfectly adequate nuclear power plants when nationally owned, now seem to be a liability to their private corporate owners. Perhaps they deteriorated under private maintenance, or perhaps the regulated profit allowance upon the capital, which is the biggest part of the plant investment, makes it unattractive. The company "British Energy" is now owned by and is part of Électricité de France.

The thing is, that solar power is so dilute that the best way to collect it is hydroelectricity, and it doesn't emit any carbon dioxide after you've built the dams and machinery. But it's not entirely benign environmentally.
What on earth makes people think that wind turbines are environmentally harmless?

[AuldLochinvar]

53. promoting nuclear

I have no reason other than my belief that it is best for the environment, to promote nuclear.
There is a question at my website, how many square miles of (alternative X) will you need to shut down the fossil fuel burners that produce 70% of the nation's energy.
The only answer I can find is nuclear breeder reactors, and the USA had a perfectly good design in 1994.

Can you find a single error in the data you quote from my website?
Unless you can, and I admit that the conclusion is disheartening, you have No Right Whatever to call my arguments dishonest.

[kristopher]

54. Your website is riddled with errors in argumentation.

I'm not going to waste my time going over all of them again as I've already responded to more than enough on this thread to make my point.

Feel free to respond to what I've already critiqued.

[AuldLochinvar]

28. None taken

joshcryer,
You're dead right, but be fair, what I want will offend my erstwhile friends of Greenpeace and the UCS, as well as all the folk that think the Guvmint can't get anything right.
And you can't have read ALL my website yet.

Do read "In Praise of Idleness" at http://skepticva.org/Russell/idleness.html
Come to think of it, I've got to put up a copy of Bertrand Russell's 1920 opinion on Lenin and the Soviet Union. It shocked his British socialist colleagues.
Lenin reminded Russell of self-denying, vindictive True Believers in any religion.

But we digress.

[joshcryer]

31. Love it. Reminds me of The Abolition of Work.

Only without the ridiculously stupid Luddite message (in Abolition of Work, by Bob Black).

You and I seem to be ideologically similar. :) Hope you enjoy DU, we have a *very* diverse type of "liberal" or "leftist" community.

[AuldLochinvar]

37. greenwashing? D'you mean me?

Dear kristopher,

I beg you to consult the actual data on actual 'green' energy projects at the promoters' websites, such as the excellent one by California's leading photovoltaic and solar engine promoter, Southern California Edison.
And at either GE's wind turbine pages, or any of the European ones. Check how much you can find about coal and gas turbines being displaced.
You can also find, as I did, stuff on willow coppice fuel production.
It is my conclusion that both ethanol and biodiesel are a fraud, and that wind turbines greatly exceed hydroelectric dams in terms of environmental impact per gigawatt-hour.

My daughter and son-in-law are biologists, and my late brother was the chief environmental officer at the Dinorwig pumped storage plant in Wales. It is now in private hands,and you can look up its website.

You can, of course, find links to some of these at my website http://skepticva.org/EnergyIndependence.html

[kristopher]

41. Yes I mean you.

You are a new poster on a Democratic website arguing for a SOLIDLY Republican position.

Every argument you've made is dishonest.

That pretty much clinches it.

[AuldLochinvar]

48. I would not waste my time arguing with Republicans

Did you not notice my saying that we need a nationalized nuclear energy plan?
That the IFR was a government project?

Once again, private industry is an abject failure at the use of nuclear power, and all of the studies that talk about its cost do so in terms of the private investor.

The only country with over 70% of its power consumption supplied by nuclear is France, and it was done by a nationally owned company.

It is my position that opposition to nuclear power is suicidal for the Democrats, because the damned Republicans are right about the inadequacies of wind, biofuels, solar, and even frugality http://skepticva.org/frugality.html and they'll either do nothing, or give monstrous subsidies to the lousy energy firms to let them do nuclear at four to ten times what it should cost.

[kristopher]

52. OF COURSE you want the government to finance nuclear - it's a boondoogle!

Moody's has this to say about the possibility of private investment in nuclear power:

June 2009 Moody’s Global Infrastructure Finance – New Nuclear Generation: Ratings Pressure Increasing

Overview
It has now been three decades since the last, serious nuclear construction cycle. The 1979 accident at
Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant appears to have permanently affected the nation’s views
about building new nuclear power generation. As a result, substantial new regulatory procedures were
implemented. Development and construction costs soared, recovery was challenged, and for many issuers,
financial deterioration and ratings downgrades followed. For some, ratings recovery took years.
But while nuclear power remains a thorny political and policy issue today, the concept of building new facilities
has gradually reawakened in recent years, offering a buffer against foreign energy dependence, unpredictable
commodity prices, and heavily polluting fuel sources. As a result, several of the largest U.S. power companies
in recent years have announced plans to pursue new nuclear generation.

This may eventually boost the country’s options for power generation. But from a credit perspective, the risks
of building new nuclear generation are hard to ignore, entailing significantly higher business and operating risk
profiles, with construction risk, huge capital costs, and continual shifts in national energy policy. Project risks
are somewhat more clear today than during the last build cycle, in the 1970s, since we now have a track
record that measures nuclear power’s operating performance; strong plant economics due to low fuel cost;
proven efficient and safe operating capabilities; new and refined regulatory procedures; and more certainty
over reactor designs before construction begins.

Less clear today is the effect that energy efficiency programs and national renewable standards might have on
the demand for new nuclear generation. National energy policy has also begun eyeing lower carbon emissions
as a key desire for energy production—theoretically a huge benefit for new nuclear generation—but the price
tags associated with these development efforts are daunting, especially in light of today’s economic turmoil. It
isn’t clear what effect such shifts, or changes in technology, will have for new nuclear power facilities.
Credit conditions are yet another question. Few, if any, of the issuers aspiring to build new nuclear power have
meaningfully strengthened their balance sheets, and for several companies, key financial credit ratios have
actually declined. Moreover, recent broad market turmoil calls into question whether new liquidity is even
available to support such capital-intensive projects. (The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) first
Construction and Operating Licenses, or COLs, are expected to win approval in roughly 24-36 months, after
which investment in these projects could well increase significantly.)

Moody’s is considering applying a more negative view for issuers that are actively pursuing new nuclear
generation. History gives us reason to be concerned about possible significant balance-sheet challenges, the
lack of tangible efforts today to defend the existing ratings, and the substantial execution risk involved in
building new nuclear power facilities.

Nuclear’s “bet-the-farm” risk
The NRC says about 14 companies to date have submitted COL applications, proposing numerous new
nuclear reactors for power generation. The first of these COL’s is expected to be approved beginning in mid-
2011. Many of the COL license applications include partners, but the next table lists the primary holding
company entity behind each project, and our view of the activity level associated with the endeavor.
From a credit perspective, companies that pursue new nuclear generation will take on a higher business and
operating risk profile, pressuring credit ratings over the intermediate- to long-term. Even so, we also believe
companies will ultimately revise their corporate-finance policies to begin materially strengthening balance
sheets and bolstering available liquidity capacity at the start of the construction cycle. In addition, we believe
regulators will generally continue to support the long-term financial health of the utilities they regulate, and will
authorize recovery of investments and costs over a reasonable timeframe.

New Nuclear Generation: Ratings Pressure Increasing
Moody’s believes there is a significant difference between new nuclear plants located adjacent to existing units
from those that are greenfield projects. In our opinion, brown-field projects benefit from the existing
infrastructure (including security plans), local political support and historical operating record of the existing
units. We believe the U.S. Department of Energy also recognized this as well in the selection of the Southern
Company’s Vogtle; NRG’s South Texas Project, SCANA’s Summer and Constellation’s Calvert Cliffs / Nine
Mile projects. We ascribe a “high” activity level for these projects....

Conclusion
The likelihood that Moody’s will take a more negative rating position for most issuers actively seeking to build
new nuclear generation is increasing. With only about 24 months remaining before the NRC begins issuing
licenses for new projects and major investment begins, few of the issuers we currently rate have taken any
meaningful steps to strengthen their balance sheets. Considering these new projects tend to raise an issuer’s
business and operating risk profiles, the utility’s overall credit profile appears weaker.
Most issuers still have some time to revise their financing policies. Even so, we are concerned that the turmoil
in the financial markets, continued uncertainty associated with Federal loan guarantees, and the general tenor
associated with bank credit facilities and liquidity will make such revisions more difficult in the future.

[AuldLochinvar]

56. boondoggle

Enough of this nonsense.
I've already said that only France could get it to work. Actually, it worked just fine in Britain until it was "privatized".
Indeed, even the out of date (since 1994) technology that the private sector uses in the USA quietly produces 19% of our electric energy.

But here's a scary thought: When peaking power was so scarce in California (because the snowfall behind the hydro dams had been inadequate) that it commanded exorbitant prices, some of us at the FERC suspected that companies might be taking their nuclear power plants out for scheduled maintenance, in order to make money from the peak prices. No such suspicion was ever proved, but in theory, a supplier could make money by NOT running their nukes.

Check out the plans for subsidized wind turbine construction here
www.auchencorth.org.uk
for a real boondoggle.

[kristopher]

62. Nuclear is going to deliver peaking power?

That argument was made and answered here. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=217701&mesg_id=217766

Also, it is now well known that the problems with California centered on Republican driven deregulation of utilities that allowed Enron to game the system so much that if ceased to function.

As to the subsidies, there are two different goals involved. If, as you say, you worked for FERC then you know that the grid is a machine designed around the premise of central thermal generation. In the case of nuclear government money goes to perpetuate the existing system that is poisoning the planet. Renewable generation requires a total rethink of the grid and a total redesign of the way it operates.

This redesign places emphasis on meeting user demand for power with tailored, distributed generation tied together with a smart grid. Government money spent on renewables is designed around the premise of building a new machine around renewables and therefore will have a positive effect on our current needs for carbon elimination while laying the groundwork for a much greater positive long term impact on our future needs.

Put simply it's the difference between giving someone a fish and giving them a fishing pole and taeching them how to use it.

[AuldLochinvar]

76. Gaming the system, and peaks.

When clouds cover the sun, or the wind drops a teensy bit, your solar powered generators drop their output. That is every bit as inconvenient as a hundred consumers switching appliances on when the TV takes a commercial break. My point is that undependable power supply has the same trouble as you get from peak loads.

Certainly Enron gamed the system, and yes, I blame the Republicans and the general "free market" (it wasn't) propaganda. That's why I'm here at a Democrat website trying to undo the harm that the Clinton administration did in 1994.

A total nuclear capacity of perhaps 80% of our peak load, maybe more, could meet not just the peak load, with some help from photovoltaics, but it could use its energy in off-peak hours to provide either hydrogen or battery power for all these improved non-petroleum vehicles.

[kristopher]

82. Or we could accomplish more

...for less money, with less environmental impact, and more quickly and with renewables.

The variability issue is pure bullshit - it simply isn't a factor except to a grid operator that is too lazy to get off their ass and respond. IF you worked for FERC you should know that.

[joshcryer]

85. Check out "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room." Not sure if nuclear was involved, but some were.

I'll never get over the guy calling up the power plant and saying "hey, turn off the power for a few hours K?"

The plant obliged. It was inconceivable how this was allowed.

[XemaSab]

95. Welcome to E/E!

"Traditions" were mentioned above.

Arguing with a certain poster is an age-old E/E tradition. :P

[Dead_Parrot]

49. Welcome to DU, Al

Don't mind Kris. His standard approach is to suggest Gas as being better than coal, then accuse everybody of being a republican. Oh, and attempt to bore you to death by endlessly copy-and-pasting the same response which doesn't actually address the point.

You'll get used to it.

:hi:

[kristopher]

9. I certainly understand why you recommend government build nuclear

Since private investors are far too liable to do their homework and are immune to the bribes that work on politicians.

Business Risks and Costs of New Nuclear Power
Craig A. Severance
Several U.S. utilities are now advancing proposals for a new generation of nuclear power plants. Though massive cost overruns and construction delays in the 1970's and 1980's caused U.S. utilities to cancel over 130 nuclear plant orders 1, the nuclear industry is now hoping to ride a wave of concern over global warming. Can new nuclear power help the U.S. electric power industry cut greenhouse gas emissions, at a reasonable cost?

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
It has been an entire generation since nuclear power was seriously considered as an energy option in the U.S. It seems to have been forgotten that the reason U.S. utilities stopped ordering nuclear power plants was their conclusion that nuclear power’s business risks and costs proved excessive.

With global warming concerns now taking traditional coal plants off the table, U.S. utilities are risk averse to rely solely on natural gas for new generation. Many U.S. utilities are diversifying through a combination of aggressive load reduction incentives to customers, better grid management, and a mixture of renewable energy sources supplying zero-fuel-cost kWh’s, backed by the KW capacity of natural gas turbines where needed. Some U.S. utilities, primarily in the South, often have less aggressive load reduction programs, and view their region as deficient in renewable energy resources. These utilities are now exploring new nuclear power.

Estimates for new nuclear power place these facilities among the costliest private projects ever undertaken. Utilities promoting new nuclear power assert it is their least costly option. However, independent studies have concluded new nuclear power is not economically competitive.

Given this discrepancy, nuclear’s history of cost overruns, and the fact new generation designs have never been constructed any where, there is a major business risk nuclear power will be more costly than projected. Recent construction cost estimates imply capital costs/kWh (not counting operation or fuel costs) from 17-22 cents/kWh when the nuclear facilities come on-line. Another major business risk is nuclear’s history of construction delays. Delays would run costs higher, risking funding shortfalls. The strain on cash flow is expected to degrade credit ratings.

Generation costs/kWh for new nuclear (including fuel & O&M but not distribution to customers) are likely to be from 25 - 30 cents/kWh. This high cost may destroy the very demand the plant was built to serve. High electric rates may seriously impact utility customers and make nuclear utilities’ service areas noncompetitive with other regions of the U.S. which are developing lower-cost electricity.

download entire paper at http://166.70.111.77/files/u2/Severance2009.pdf


Craig A. Severance, CPA is co-author of The Economics of Nuclear and Coal Power (Praeger 1976), and former Assistant to the Chairman and to Commerce Counsel, Iowa State Commerce Commission. His practice is in Grand Junction, CO.

[joshcryer]

14. MIT has also updated their 2003 study.

Update of the MIT 2003 Future of Nuclear Power Study

The track record for the construction costs of nuclear plants completed in the U.S. during the 1980s and early 1990s was poor. Actual costs were far higher than had been projected. Construction schedules experienced long delays, which, together with increases in interest rates at the time, resulted in high financing charges. New regulatory requirements also contributed to the cost increases, and in some instances, the public controversy over nuclear power contributed to some of the construction delays and cost overruns. However, while the plants in Korea and Japan continue to be built on schedule, some of the recent construction cost and schedule experience, such as with the plant under construction in Finland, has not been encouraging. Whether the lessons learned from the past have been factored into the construction of future plants has yet to be seen. These factors have a significant impact on the risk facing investors financing a new build. For this reason, the 2003 report applied a higher weighted cost of capital to the construction of a new nuclear plant (10%) than to the construction of a new coal or new natural gas plant (7.8%).

Lowering or eliminating this risk-premium makes a significant contribution to making nuclear competitive. With the risk premium and without a carbon emission charge, nuclear is more expensive than either coal (without sequestration) or natural gas (at 7$/MBTU). If this risk premium can be eliminated, nuclear life cycle cost decreases from 8.4¢ /kWe-h to 6.6 ¢/kWe-h and becomes competitive with coal and natural gas, even in the absence of carbon emission charge.

The 2003 report found that capital cost reductions and construction time reductions were plausible, but not yet proven – this judgment is unchanged today. The challenge facing the U.S. nuclear industry lies in turning plausible reductions in capital costs and construction schedules into reality. Will designs truly be standardized, or will site-specific changes defeat the effort to drive down the cost of producing multiple plants? Will the licensing process function without costly delays, or will the time to first power be extended, adding significant financing costs? Will construction proceed on schedule and without large cost overruns? The first few U.S. plants will be a critical test for all parties involved. The risk premium will be eliminated only by demonstrated performance.

Link (PDF): http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/pdf/nuclearpower-update2009.pdf

IMHO the AP1000 holds the fate of the nuclear industry in its hands, if it can live up to the hype, then it becomes competitive.

[kristopher]

19. AP 1000 and safety issues

October 19, 2009

Secretary of Energy Chu
U.S. Department of Energy
1000 Independence Ave., SW
Washington, DC 20585

Mr. Richard Frantz
Director, Loan Guarantee Program
U.S. Department of Energy
1000 Independence Ave., SW
Washington, DC 20585

NRC Reveals AP1000 Nuclear Reactor Design Problems,
DOE Must Halt Issuance of Conditional Loan Guarantees to Utilities Pursuing AP1000

Dear Secretary of Energy Chu and Director Frantz:

In a surprise move with potentially serious impacts, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
revealed on October 15 that the AP1000 nuclear reactor design may be lacking ability to meet
regulatory safety requirements. Thus, any announcement of conditional loan guarantees
being considered by the Department of Energy (DOE) for issuance to utilities utilizing the
unproven AP1000 design must immediately be halted.

Not only will the NRC news impact the already delayed review of the AP1000 design but will
also possibly negatively impact the license applications of utilities which have applied for
combined licenses based on the Westinghouse AP1000 design. The Southern Company and
South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) appear to be at the top of DOE’s loan guarantee short list
but a number of other utilities pursuing the AP1000 also applied for loan guarantees, as you
well know. This situation demands that DOE fully consider the implications of any move to
issue loan guarantees involving all reactor designs under review and move to assure the public
that utilities considering questionable reactor designs will not be backed by DOE.

In its unprecedented news release entitled NRC Informs Westinghouse of Safety Issues with
AP1000 Shield Building, the NRC said that “staff has informed Westinghouse that the company
has not demonstrated that certain structural components of the revised AP1000 shield building
can withstand design basis loads,” and stated that the unsuccessful efforts to secure
information had gone on for a year. The NRC went on to say that “This is a situation where
fundamental engineering standards will have to be met before we can begin determining
whether the shield building meets the agency’s requirements.” This strong language, in short,
makes it clear that there are grave doubts if the protective structure of the AP1000 nuclear
reactor can withstand hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and the impact of a commercial
airliner, as required by the NRC’s regulations. Additionally, questions have arisen about the
shield building’s ability to support the emergency cooling water tank on the top of the
structure, which would up to 8 million pounds of water.

Given that the action by the NRC is so serious in nature, it is imperative that the Department of
Energy immediately halt the issuance of any conditional loan guarantees to any utilities which
are basing their plans on the AP1000 reactor design. Issuance of DOE loan guarantees at this
time to companies which are considering a reactor which may well have serious design
problems would not only heighten public concern about DOE’s regard of oversight of nuclear
reactor safety but would also further call into question the methodology applied by the DOE’s
Loan Guarantee Program as it considers which reactor applications garner a loan guarantee
subsidy.

That the LGP has been considering issuing loan guarantees to reactors that do not have final
certification and also do not have construction and operating licenses is now clearly revealed to
be an extremely risky approach. As we now see that it is far from certain if reactors or
combined licenses will win regulatory approval, any move to now issue conditional loan
guarantees is premature and opens DOE to justified criticism.

The dramatic move by the NRC makes even clearer that there is now no established review
schedule for the AP1000 design. On August 27, in a letter to Westinghouse, the NRC pointed
out that the company had failed to respond to “fundamental questions” concerning issues
related to cooling water circulation and went on to advise the company that a “revised
schedule” for reviewing the reactor design would have to be established. While it is not clear if
a new review schedule can ever be established, it is clear that a cascade effect of negative
impacts to possible AP1000 reactor licensing is at hand and we urge extreme caution on the
part of DOE’s Loan Guarantee Program.

Given the serious issued now raised by the reactor regulatory agency itself, we call on DOE to
immediately halt issuance of conditional loan guarantees and take action to publicly assure the
public that this is the case.

Sincerely,

Tom Clements, Friends of the Earth Washington, DC

Michael Mariotte, Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS) Takoma Park, MD

[joshcryer]

21. Concern won't delay nuclear reactor

http://in.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idINN1636755620091016

NEW YORK, Oct 16 (Reuters) - After U.S. regulators raised safety concerns about the design of a new Westinghouse nuclear reactor, a company that owns part of Westinghouse said on Friday it did not expect a delay in certification of the reactor design

<...>

Shaw said in a release all issues outlined by the NRC could be addressed and the remaining steps to certify the AP1000 design should continue as scheduled.

[kristopher]

27. So politics and money outweigh the science?

[joshcryer]

More that this was merely an expected design stage.

A Westinghouse spokesman said the company was cooperating with the NRC. Westinghouse said in a release it "fully expected that the NRC would require additional analysis, testing or design modifications to the shield building."

Big whoop.

[kristopher]

34. If it were just this case maybe.

But such issues have been a large part of why nuclear power failed to become capable of the assembly line dream.

[joshcryer]

36. The MIT study says the verdict is still out on that one.

We'll see in 4-5 years.

[kristopher]

39. Actually we've "been seeing" for 50 years and it's a failing grade for nuclear.

[joshcryer]

42. They're just now starting to build the things again.

We'll see if they can do it and succeed.

[joshcryer]

11. What do you think of TWR and is it similar to IFR?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor

I read your Frontline explanation of IFR, it looks quite nifty.

Also, welcome to DU! :) Don't let the hate get to ya.

[AuldLochinvar]

23. TWR

Joshcryer
I thank you for the TWR reference. It explains many of the principles I find in the IFR.
It seems to differ from the IFR chiefly in not having as much actual demonstration done.

Note that the present US ban on reprocessing cripples the entire idea of breeder reactors, and Jimmy Carter, whose mentor Admiral Rickover design the Navy's nuclear power that saves all our capital ships from dependence upon oil, should have known better.

The IFR's EBR 2, was something like 50 MW electrical, which is as good as 10 great big wind turbines, except that it can average over 90% rather than under 25% nominal capacity.
It showed, by deliberate test, how NOT to melt down -- a week or two before Chernobyl did just that.

The theory of the TWR :
"The reactor is fueled primarily by depleted uranium, but requires a small amount of enriched uranium or other fissile fuel to initiate fission." is essentially the same as the IFR.

Wikipedia's Fast Breeder Reactor site mentions two options each for fuel rod fabrication and for coolant design. The IFR seems to have preferred the molten sodium pool, and certainly espoused the all-metal fuel rod option.

The neat thing about metallic rods and metallic cooling is that the thermal expansion gets rid of neutrons and shuts down the reactor if the regular cooling system fails. I think that the pyroprocessing of the fuel rods is also made easier, or even requires it.

[joshcryer]

25. Thanks for the response, very cool stuff.

[kristopher]

30. Unfortunely the energy costs of nuclear, especially with reprocessing, is prohibitive.

With once through fuel cycling energy return on energy invested for nuclear is about 1:15 - it takes one unit of energy to produce 15.

With reprocessing that drops to about 1:5 - one unit in only returns 5.

That sucks.

[AuldLochinvar]

40. costs

These costs are all computed from the point of view of private investment, where the cost of nuclear fuel doesn't include the cost of disposal.
The US government, on behalf of the taxpayer, has assumed these costs. As long as reprocessing is forbidden, they are infinite.

The existing laws permit coal and methane burning to release gaseous poisons, not including CO2, into the air for no cost.

The real cost of digging 25 thousand tons of uranium are necessarily far less than the millions of thousands of tons of coal dug up for the same energy.

[kristopher]

44. That is false.

What I wrote of are energy costs, not economic costs.

The once through energy costs are also increasing as uranium becomes more scarce. The petroleum industry started at about 1:100 and as the easy to access resources were consumed the energy cost to locate more has steadily declined. The are now at about 1:15 to 1:20 depending on the field.

Solar is 1:20 to 1:40 depending on the technology.
Wind is 1:25 or so for older technologies; 1:50 or so for state of the art terrestrial technologies, and 1:80 or so for offshore technologies.

Since renewables do not have the problem of a diminishing fuel source they are ALL on an upward trend regarding EROEI as the extraction technologies improve.

[AuldLochinvar]

59. renewables

" renewables do not have the problem of a diminishing fuel source "???
Wood is the oldest of biofuels, if you don't count hay for oxen and oats for horses.
Or the abominable whale oil for lamps.
The Industrial Revolution in Britain, and the rise of coal and then petroleum,
was exactly the consequence of the cutting down of the forests.
Why?
Because they couldn't keep up with the energy demand.

[kristopher]

64. ROFLMAO

You've crossed into the realm of the absurd...

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[bananas]

50. NAS gave thumbs-down to reprocessing in 2007, John Deutsch called it a "goofy idea"

Carter made the right decision then - and the National Academy of Sciences confirmed that it's still the right decision.
As pointed out by the Federation of American Scientists:

A telling point is that almost no independent analysts, that is, those not working for the Department of Energy, have anything good to say about the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. In the Greenwire article cited above, Deutsch called GNEP a “goofy idea.”

[bananas]

109. Bad link - here's the correct one

I just realized that link was bad.
I guess nobody bothered to look anyway.
Here's the correct link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=200775&mesg_id=200782
Additional informative links in that thread.

[bananas]

104. That Frontline report has numerous inaccuracies

http://www.nci.org/l/l61997.htm

June 19, 1997

<snip>

We have received your letter of May 12 replying to the Nuclear Control Institute's rebuttal of your April 22 "Frontline" program, "Nuclear Reaction." Most of your responses miss the point or are exercises in equivocation.

<snip>

The reference in your May 12 letter to the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) suggests that this breeder could solve the plutonium and actinide problems. In fact, Congress killed the IFR program in 1994 because the reactor design lacked realistic promise as a solution to either the nuclear waste or warhead-plutonium disposition problems (according to studies by the National Academy of Sciences and Office of Technology Assessment), and, as a "fast reactor" originally designed to breed more plutonium than it consumed, was inconsistent with U.S. non-proliferation policy.

The points in your May 12 letter regarding the economics of nuclear power are baffling. We did not claim in our rebuttal that cost was "a moral issue." We simply point out the reality of the future electricity market in the United States: for the foreseeable future, nuclear power is not a competitive alternative. Unless the federal government is willing to provide billions of dollars in Federal subsidies (maybe in the form of a large program to use warhead-plutonium MOX fuel in commercial reactors), this will remain true for the foreseeable future. But in our view, a Federal subsidy program to get nuclear power plants to use uneconomical and dangerous plutonium fuel can only hurt the industry's chances of survival.

You are correct that NCI does not oppose nuclear power using a once-through, low enriched uranium fuel cycle. However, the numerous inaccuracies in "Nuclear Reaction" served only to muddy the waters of the important debate about the future of nuclear power. As a public-interest "watchdog" group, our mission is to provide accurate information on nuclear issues to the public. We were therefore repelled by "Nuclear Reaction" and compelled to respond.

<snip>

[AuldLochinvar]

15. Nuclear fuel costs and supply

The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), which in April 1986 proved itself immune to meltdown from operator neglect, consumed its own long-lived radioactive products, and required only an initial load of enriched uranium to enable it to use ²³⁸U for the rest of its life (50 years or more), would make the supply of raw uranium last for 140 times as long, and could equally well use thorium. There is enough of these in the ash from a year's worth of coal combustion in a 1000 MW (electrical) power generator to run a 1000 MW IFR for at least three years.

There is enough uranium and plutonium cluttering up dump sites to supply power at the present rate for hundreds of years, and the fission-product-only waste from a reactor that does on-site reprocessing disappears in hundreds of years, not hundreds of millennia.

see http://web.archive.org/web/20071009064447/www.nuc.berkeley.edu/designs/ifr/anlw.html
or http://skepticva.org/EnergyIndependence.html
or http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

[bananas]

55. IFR's were cancelled because they'd be even more expensive than LWR's

LWR's are going to be the cheapest form of fission for a long time, and they're too expensive.

[AuldLochinvar]

61. LWR vs IFR

I do not think you've read any of the actual data, nor have you checked out what France charges Britain for the electricity that Britain imports from France's nuclear plants.

The main argument was nuclear proliferation, which is rubbish as the Frontline interview shows. Civil reactor plutonium is lousy for bomb-making.

[kristopher]

67. Maddow interviews Gore on issue of nuclear energy

I'd say Gore's opinion is more informed and objective than what you offer:
MADDOW: Are you worried that a big expansion of nuclear power may be part of what's needed for a political compromise in order to pass legislation here?

GORE: I think there probably will be a provision added to the bill in the Senate to increase yet again the subsidies for nuclear power.

MADDOW: And you say "yet again," because it's already a heavily subsidized...

GORE: It is very heavily subsidized. But I do think it's responsible to research and develop new generations of nuclear power. I think that the market has turned thumbs down on nuclear power. There's also a weapons proliferation risk.

The new technologies for enriching nuclear materials shorten the distance from reactor fuel to weapons-grade material. And during the eight years I worked in the White House, every single nuclear weapons challenge that we faced was connected to a reactor program. Look at what's going on in Iran right now and North Korea right now.

So it's not an option that's scalable very easily on a global basis. And in developed countries, there is yet another problem that's probably even more formidable, and that's cost. The present generation of nuclear reactors are very expensive. They've been a huge disappointment to the utility industry.

They only come in one size - extra large. And utilities don't want to bet the farm or their whole construction budget on an uncertain prospect. Not a single reputable engineering firm in the world that I know of is willing to back up an estimate of how long it will take to complete one of these plants or how much it will cost to do so.

The cost has been increasing 15 percent per year for quite some time now. A lot of reasons behind that. There may be some solutions. But no matter the size of the subsidies, I think the market is highly resistant to this choice, particularly as conservation and efficiency and renewables begin to capture a progressively larger share of the energy marketplace...

[AuldLochinvar]

68. No, my whole point is that Gore, Clinton, and Kerry don't do their arithmetic properly

[kristopher]

71. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggghhhhhhht.

Gore actually has a secret agenda to just sell renewable energy and his concern about carbon is just a cover for that that concern.

I think his bona fides are established enough to discredit that theory along with the idea that he "didn't do his arithmetic properly". I'm betting:
1) he has access to more talent and knowledge than everyone here combined and
2) that his concern about global warming is real and his absolute first priority and
3) that he has examined nuclear and found it a poor choice to meet that goal.

[bananas]

88. And MIT and the National Academy of Sciences! They got their math wrong, too!

:rofl:

[joshcryer]

98. *If* the AP1000 is built to expectations, it does change the numbers game, though.

Most projections and analysis is based on older designs, and "known real world application."

AP1000 is arguably at the lower end of Jacobson's "CO2 from nuclear" margin (of which is pretty wide and not as narrowed down as other polluters).

To base future nuclear builds on archaic designs, I think, is unfair.

[bananas]

101. The AP-1000 is based on archaic designs

It's based on the AP-600.
Remember how Gore always says one of the many problems with nukes is that they only come in one size - large?
The AP-600 was supposed to change that.
It was only 600MW!
It was a streamlined version of the old LWR reactors.
In other words, a streamlined archaic design.

But nobody wanted to buy it.
Why?
Because it was too expensive on a $/kWh basis.
So they scaled it up, trying to get an economy of scale, to reduce the $/kWh.
Unfortunately, it's still expensive on a $/kWh basis, and not everything scales up linearly - scaling up the "passive safety" features has introduced new design flaws, which is why the NRC still hasn't approved it.

The 2007 Keystone report is based largely on the AP-1000, I hope you've read it,
it's very informative, I described it here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=217399&mesg_id=217674

edit to add: the Keystone report can be downloaded here: http://www.keystone.org/spp/energy/electricity/nuclear-power-dialogue
Get the full report.

[joshcryer]

103. We'll see. They haven't even built one yet.

But the dismissive tone is expected.

[bananas]

84. Page 5, MIT's 2003 report "The Future of Nuclear Power"

Page 5, MIT's 2003 report "The Future of Nuclear Power":

We have not found, and based on
current knowledge do not believe it is
realistic to expect, that there are new
reactor and fuel cycle technologies
that simultaneously overcome the
problems of cost, safety, waste, and
proliferation.

Our analysis leads to a significant conclusion: The once-through fuel cycle best
meets the criteria of low costs and proliferation resistance. Closed fuel cycles
may have an advantage from the point of view of long-term waste disposal
and, if it ever becomes relevant, resource extension. But closed fuel cycles will
be more expensive than once-through cycles, until ore resources become very
scarce. This is unlikely to happen, even with significant growth in nuclear
power, until at least the second half of this century, and probably considerably
later still. Thus our most important recommendation is:

For the next decades, government and industry in the U.S. and elsewhere
should give priority to the deployment of the once-through fuel cycle,
rather than the development of more expensive closed fuel cycle
technology involving reprocessing and new advanced thermal or fast
reactor technologies.

I guess those stoopid anti-nukes at MIT haven't read the actual data on the magical IFR!
:rofl:
Two of the main arguments are cost and proliferation.
There are many additional arguments.
But there's no reason to even debate them.
Cost alone is reason enough: Citigroup reports on Nuclear Economics – the "corporate killer"

[joshcryer]

86. Why the irreverence? Oh wait...

...forgot where I was.

[bananas]

100. Irreverence! Blasphemy!

Oh noes! Bananas has blasphemed the nucular religion!
Heretic! He refuses to bow down and worship Uranus!

My first posts in this thread were snark-free.
See my posts #50 and #55.
The reason I've gotten snarky is because the guy has fallen for ALL the Republican pro-nuclear anti-science propaganda.
NAS in 2007 and MIT in 2003 confirmed that once-through LWR's are the way to go for the next few decades.
But he comes in here claiming stoopid Democrats can't do math - naming Carter, Clinton, Kerry, and Gore.
Yet Carter, Clinton, Kerry, and Gore have been validated by MIT and NAS.
This is supposed to be a website for Democrats,
I don't like it when people come here and trash some of our best Democratic politicians,
especially when they spout Republican anti-science talking points.

[joshcryer]

102. The guy worked on IFR. It's like mocking Bussard for his work on Polywell...

...and his belief that it would be workable. It's for kicks, nothing more.

Note that the irreverence claim isn't pointed squarely at you. I find most of the data on nuclear power as far as costs suspect because we haven't been building them the right way, well, ever. Economies of scale has simply been backseated with regards to nuclear power production. But now they're building them in spades in China and India. The numbers are changing, which is precisely why the 2009 MIT report is easier on nuclear power than the 2003 report. They still err on the side of caution, though, because it's too early to tell if the new production methods are going to pan out.

That said I am not saying to go with IFR or that the MIT paper is wrong, I'm just saying the irrational reactions to certain claims is ridiculous.

[bananas]

108. Exactly where did he say he worked on the IFR?

Are you saying that AuldLochinvar worked on the IFR?
I haven't seen him say that in his posts or on his website.

[joshcryer]

111. Sorry, you are correct, I thought he said it.

I thought the Frontline interview was him. Apologies. (I still don't think the level of derision is necessary here.)

[bananas]

113. Good. Now look at post #112. nt

[bananas]

89. France is importing electricity from Britain and other neighbors

July: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article6626811.ece
November: http://www.expatica.com/fr/news/french-news/Electricity-imports-hit-France_s-energy-autonomy-_58216.html
In 2003 and 2006, reactors were shut down across Europe because of heat and drought.
In 2007, a US reactor was shut down because of heat and drought: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/aug/18/heat-wave-ignites-problems-in-et/
http://www.wral.com/news/state/story/2343605/

[bananas]

110. "utilities haven't been especially supportive. They say the thing is just too expensive."

From the Frontline article:

http://skepticva.org/IFR.html

<snip>

Q: Curiously, a number of the people in utilities haven't been especially supportive. They say the thing is just too expensive. Why aren't they ordering IFRs?

A: Well, I think that there's really two different cases to be made. It's very easy, I think, for those who simply oppose nuclear energy outright, to if you like, soften their statements to the (innocent ear) by saying, "Well, really it's too expensive," without having any sound basis for making any assessment (to) whether it's too expensive or not.

Horsefeathers - the utilities did their own independent analysis and concluded the IFR was too expensive. That's why they weren't interested. There was no point in continuing the project, because there was no market for it.

The price of nuclear energy today, if the plants were properly built and properly run, would be perfectly competitive with coal and gas. If the plants cost far too much in the building, even through regulatory or inefficient management or whatever, then the price of that would (increase). But there's no intrinsic reason why nuclear in general, even today, should not be very competitive.

Horsefeathers. In 2003, MIT's "Future of Nuclear Power" concluded that the new super-cheap AP-1000 reactors would not be competitive without a huge carbon tax. In 1994, that wasn't even a consideration. And we now know that the 2003 cost estimates were way too low.

The reuse of recycled fuel in the IFR is where the potential great benefits lie, in the solution of the waste problem, in the sense that the waste is much easier to get rid of. And then the plants don't have to, as they do today, simply build up the spent fuel in pools and wonder what on earth are they going to do with it. There's nobody today who can tell you how much it's going to cost to get rid of that spent fuel. The utility today, because of agreements, can give it to the Department of Energy, and at a very low price, if they can convince the Department of Energy to take it. And it seems to me they will succeed and are succeeding in doing that. But now the Department of Energy has got a problem. And how much that will cost the nation there's no way of predicting. The IFR gets at those problems.

Here I agree with him - the nuclear industry is getting a sweetheart deal on waste disposal. I'm glad to see he admits that nuclear energy would be much more expensive if they had to pay the real cost of waste disposal. The costs are potentially unbounded: "There's nobody today who can tell you how much it's going to cost to get rid of that spent fuel."
:applause:

[DU GrovelBot]

32. ## PLEASE DONATE TO DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND! ##

This week is our fourth quarter 2009 fund drive. Democratic Underground is
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[Liberation Angel]

92. k&r

[Liberation Angel]

96. Turkey Point is killing children (and adults) (Study- Important)

http://www.radiation.org/spotlight/nrc_comments.html


Radiation and Childhood Cancer in Miami-Dade County

1. Turkey Point operations and environmental radioactivity

In March, 2001, RPHP released a Special Report on the Florida Baby Teeth Study, entitled Environmental Radiation from Nuclear Reactor’s and Increasing Children’s Cancer in Southeastern Florida, (the "Florida Report") which noted that:

The Turkey Point 3 and 4 nuclear reactors located approximately 25 miles south of Miami have been operating since 1972 and 1973, respectively.

From 1972 to 1993, Turkey Point reported the emission of 6.69 trillion picocuries of radioactive chemicals (including Sr-90) into the air, nearly half of the total released during the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.

The highest average Sr-90 concentration in five U.S. states has been documented in 86 baby teeth from persons born after 1979 in Miami-Dade County.

For persons born in Miami-Dade during the period 1988-94, the average Sr-90 level in baby teeth was 21.5% greater than the average for the seven previous years.
2. The Link Between Radiation and Cancer in Southeastern Florida Children

The rate of childhood leukemia and cancer in Miami-Dade County plus four counties to its north has risen to become one of the highest in the U.S., suggesting a link with the area's high Sr-90 levels.

The cancer incidence rate in Miami-Dade children under age ten rose 6.8% from 1981-87 to 1988-94, an increase roughly comparable to the Sr-90 trend.

Annual rises and declines in cancer incidence in Miami-Dade children under age five match those in radiation detected in local precipitation.

Infant mortality declined 19.1% in Dade and Broward Counties in 1983-84, when Turkey Point's defective steam generators were being replaced and the reactors were mostly inactive. The following two years, when the reactors re-started, the infant death rate increased 1.2%.

Cancer in children under age 10 in Miami-Dade and four other southeastern Florida counties (the region where four nuclear reactors are located), rose 35.2% from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, but declined 8.1% in the rest of the state (which has only one nuclear reactor).

[philly_bob]

107. UNREC If OP is true, no new nukes. Why argue?

If corporate accountants see price of nuclear is $4,000/kw, coal $3,000/kw, gas $800/kw, they won't build nuclear plants.

But I strongly suspect the cost figures will change. This thread is all heat and no light, very unenlightening.