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301 comments on Is Nuclear Power a Viable Option for Our Energy Needs?

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polytropos on March 1, 2007 - 11:21am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

France made the right decision 30 years ago and is now 70% nuclear.
Nuclear is not an option, it is THE option

But i am sure it will take people 10 years to adjust to this way of thinking.

Let the debate continue

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AlanfromBigEasy on March 1, 2007 - 11:26am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Wind turbines + pumped storage are competitive with nuclear + less pumped storage in many locations today. The future trends seem to favor wind. Nuke will be useful in low wind resource areas.

Alan

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PaulS on March 1, 2007 - 2:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Just on account of geography, I don't understand where we could possibly put the vast quantity of pumped storage that would be needed to sustain the USA during a relatively windless July when the unmoving high just parks and sits over much of the country, as happens every now and then. And that's before we even consider the vast powers we've foolishly ceded to the small handful of NIMBY and BANANA Luddites, who have been blocking wind power along with every other conceivable power source.

It seems inconceivable that this could work on a scale large enough to make a substantial dent in overall energy supply.

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AlanfromBigEasy on March 1, 2007 - 10:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Cheapest solution is to manage Great Lakes within natural ranges and lower them during calm spell (as well as Lake Winnipeg, build out 5 more GW of hydro in Manitoba). Also drain reserviors on Columbia River, etc.

Geothermal could be made into peaking & emergency power rather than baseload. Drill 4x more wells, add turbines and use resource 25% of the time, including during calms.

I can easily design limited pumped storage that can run for one month. Long tunnel with several thousand feet differential. Large upper reservior.

No high/calm hits the entire continent. Perhaps a majority of population but not majority of land area. Sea breezes peak in summer for example and there is no stopping them.

More in my incomplete plans (53% wind, 23% nuke, 20% hydro, -19% & +15% pumped storage, etc. when I post them here.

Best Hopes,

Alan

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Valuethinker on March 2, 2007 - 9:57am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Ontario is looking at using disused mines.

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atomicrod on March 10, 2007 - 3:38am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Alan:

As a native Floridian, I wonder where you plan to find a "several thousand feet differential" in my home state? (The highest point in the whole state - which had a population of nearly 16 Million people in 2000 - is less than 400 feet above sea level.)

I also wonder how the people who live and work on the Great Lakes feel about your plans to make their levels fluctuate even more than they do currently.

Rod Adams
Editor, Atomic Insights

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GreyZone on March 1, 2007 - 3:50pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Personally, if we react as a civilization in time, I would expect a mix of wind and nuclear with nuclear providing a guaranteed minimum base generating capacity and wind/solar providing everything over that. This would buy additional time to refine or develop new technologies to address the episodic nature of wind/solar power generation.

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Mark B on March 1, 2007 - 7:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Timing is everything. I think the alternatives are there. The question, per the Hirsch Report, is did we start ramping them up soon enough?

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Ian Down Under on March 1, 2007 - 9:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

True Poly,

But i am sure it will take people 10 years to adjust to this way of thinking.

A recent debate has been raging here in Sydney (Australia) about the problems of fresh water. Our dams are around 30% and falling. It is critical that we get new fresh water supplies since rainfall is less reliable. There are two proposed options:
1. Recycle sewage
2. Desalination.
Everything weighs toward recycling.
But, for the only point that matters, a desalination plant will be built.
The one point: public opinion on drinking someone else's toilet water.
The committee decided to go with the worst, desalination, option because there is no hope, without 10 years education, of getting the public to accept the other option. And the need is critical.

Now, when we get to nuclear power, a truly controversial issue. Just how long will it take to win the public over?

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realist on March 2, 2007 - 12:06am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

You forgot about water. France had to shut down reactors last summer because the intake water was too warm from excessive heat. They are ok in cold climates but much of the world population lives in hot areas with limited water resources.
It is a moot point anyways becusae you won't be able to build them fast enough to keep up with depletion.

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Ian Down Under on March 2, 2007 - 12:41am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

No worries Mate,
We'll build a coal-fired power station right beside it to create electricity for a water-cooling facility.
Next problem to solve?

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alistairC on March 2, 2007 - 7:37am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The answer to that is build them on the coast. That's where the Australian population is anyway.

(the seaside plants in France don't have to reduce power in summer, only the riverside ones)

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slaphappy on March 3, 2007 - 12:31am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

They didn't generally need to shut down, it just decreased their output. The french shouldn't have gone quite so cheap on the cooling systems and then this wouldn't have happened, case closed.

The same thing would happen to any thermal plant (coal fired, for instance), and to a lesser degree to combined cycle natural gas, if you go cheap on the cooling systems.

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fallout on March 6, 2007 - 10:46am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The Union Of Concerned Scientists certainly do not seem to agree:
"New Report: Long Shutdowns Prove Nuclear Power More Dangerous and Expensive than Necessary
Neglect of Safety Costs Ratepayers, Stockholders $82 Billion"
http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/new-report-long-shutdowns.html
"Nuclear Reprocessing: Dangerous, Dirty, and Expensive
Why Extracting Plutonium from Spent Nuclear Reactor Fuel Is a Bad Idea"
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_terrorism/extracting-pluto...

At least some prominent Australians (such as Professor Stuart White, director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney) disagree with the positions put forth in the header article:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/more-threat-than-panacea/2006/10/0...
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/The-nuclear-power-option--expensive-i...

The Rocky Mountain Institute (Amory Lovins) doesn't care for it, not surprisingly:
http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid305.php

Of course members of Greenpeace have some good points:
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1802.shtml

Finally, read the EIA's own paper on the matter:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuclearenvissues.html

The articles are all worth reading, regardless of your position on the pros or cons of nuclear power.

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Dezakin on March 6, 2007 - 4:16pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The Union Of Concerned Scientists certainly do not seem to agree:

They're an explicitly anti-nuclear orgasation...

Most of what you're posting is either irrelevant (nuclear reprocessing via PUREX process) or just hatchet job anti-nuclear activism.

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fallout on March 8, 2007 - 6:26pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Duplicate post

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301 comments on Is Nuclear Power a Viable Option for Our Energy Needs?

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