Why Not Nuclear Power?
Posted by Robert Rapier on August 2, 2007 - 10:30am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: barack obama, hillary clinton, John Edwards, nuclear energy [list all tags]
A couple of days ago I was reading the CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate transcript. Of course I am always interested to hear what the candidates have to say about energy. There were a lot of good comments, and the usual spattering of dumb comments. But I won't dissect them right now. What got me to thinking were the comments of John Edwards (on Page 2):
EDWARDS: Wind, solar, cellulose-based biofuels are the way we need to go. I do not favor nuclear power. We haven't built a nuclear power plant in decades in this country. There is a reason for that. The reason is it is extremely costly. It takes an enormous amount of time to get one planned, developed and built. And we still don't have a safe way to dispose of the nuclear waste. It is a huge problem for America over the long term.
I also don't believe we should liquefy coal. The last thing we need is another carbon-based fuel in America. We need to find fuels that are in fact renewable, clean, and will allow us to address directly the question that has been raised, which is the issue of global warming, which I believe is a crisis.
Following this, Barack Obama said that he favored including nuclear power in the mix, and Hillary Clinton said she was agnostic about nuclear power. She did play the "oil" card, which is to say that she thinks the solution to our energy problem is to take from oil and then let the government figure out how to spend that money on alternatives.
I have been accused occasionally of having various anti-nuclear views. This is amusing, given that I have never written anything negative about nuclear power. The main reason is that I am not well-versed in the pros and cons. My understanding is that the main pro is that nuclear can provide an abundant source of energy for quite some time. This is also a reason that I favor a transition to an electric infrastructure: We are going to run low on liquid fuels long before we run low on the ability to produce electricity.
As I understand it, the primary negative is still that we don't have a good solution for dealing with nuclear waste. Obviously, we can't just pile up waste indefinitely, and I am not sure how reactors around the world handle this problem. And of course historically there have been the occasional Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, which ensures that nobody is going to want a nuclear reactor in their backyard.
My feeling is that we will desperately need nuclear energy in the not too distant future. But what about the waste problem? How do other countries deal with the waste problem? I presume France, with all of their nuclear reactors, must have a solution that the population is comfortable with.
For an extremely negative view of nuclear power, see the recently published essay by anti-nuclear activist Rebecca Solnit:
CNN also presents a negatively slanted view in a just-published article, but they do discuss the waste issue a bit:
So which viewpoint is closest to the truth? Do the negatives outweigh the negatives of 1). Blackouts; and 2). Global Warming caused by coal-fired plants? Some people may not be aware of it, but all of the top point sources of CO2 emissions are from coal-fired power plants. (I had a list, but can't find it. If someone knows where this information resides, please post the link).
I would like some people knowledgeable in this area to provide some input here. My own view is that we are going to need nuclear power in the mix. But it may take frequent blackouts before the public starts to accept the necessity.
Given a choice between coal and nuclear, I would take nuclear, but the reality is that we are going to pursue every single energy source, in a full blown panic driven effort to bring more energy supplies on line.
Because in the long run, it is not sustainable. How many years have you people been yammering about a peak in a finite resource? What do you think is used to make nuclear reactors?
For all the brain power supposedly in cahoots here, you all fall several standard deviations short in common sense. It should be enough to observe the data flowing in from petroleum related activities for light to have dawned on Marblehead. Shoulda could woulda. Here's the crimp note:
The problem is not our activity, it's our proclivity.
You can wank away at alternatives all you want, but it does nothing to address the fact that humanimal can't seem to suss out the natural limits of the environment that gave rise to its existence. Armory Lovins certainly was on to something when he titled his rant "Natural Capital," but forgot to ask a prudent question:
Just because we can, should we?
The future of humanimal, if your goal is to get us as close to the eventual frying of this world by our star, is not going to be cultivating DVD players from organic carbon strings powered by pebble bed breeders. If we are to see another 10,000 years of "civilization," it is going to be based on low tech, low impact, low consumption and low wants. We need very little to survive: clean air, food, water, shelter from the elements and community. That was all the environment that gave rise to our existence promised when life emerged. It is our inability to be satisfied with that reality that has brought us here.
It is our collective inability to understand the true limits of our host, that continues to drive the supposedly with it to clamor for a continuance of the binge. Fools. Every last one of you. In the end you realize, your continued myopic behavior not only will consume your own life, but the lives of the innocent yet to reach an age where cognizance could be applied toward changing the psychotic behavior exhibited even here. Enjoy the soup. It comes at a heavy cost.....
LOL, thanks for making this clear. The future you just described looks quite like what the humanity had up to the 19th century. Are you applying for a landlord here?
Wretched Excess
I am not sure that rudeness, name calling and profanity are called for. Personally, "wretched excess", I found this comment offensive.
Offensive yes, but also totally inaccurate.
I'm no fan of nuclear power, but if I thought we had a choice between collapse / reversion to a pre-industrial world and using nuclear power to get us through the next 50 years, I'd reluctantly say lets starting building lots of nukes.
Fortunately I don't think that's necessary - we can meet all our current and projected energy needs with a combination of renewables and efficiency measures.
Go and do the sums...
Saildog,
Wretched excess has been a member for 19 hours, yet he criticizes TOD as though he has been a member for years.
The Oil Drm was started in 2005, so on the face of his comment, its a lie.
Its pretty clear that he's either an old troll returning or a new troll, possibly paid. At any rate the best policy is to ignore him, especially since he semms to want to start a flame war..Bob Ebersole
With all due respect I'm more offended from people that tell me what I have to want and what I have to need.
I say enough of self-appointed demiurges.
Yes, when the binky is pulled from an unprepared mouth screams will ensue. Sorry to disturb your slumber but a clue by four is sometimes the only method for bringing about a shift in perceptions. Time is not for dainty conversation over petit-fours. Time is to get serious. The only thing being done here is desperately trying to preserve the halcyon daze. The sooner the collective "in the know" step away from the bong the better. Do the freaking literature review before writing your treatise.
I'm an old troll; and if you think that anyone would pay to have this board disrupted your sense of self importance is way out of whack. Been poking your tender underside since the day you opened your door back on blogspot. Been resource scarcity aware for much longer. Been reading about civilization, energy use and political history even longer. Of course my thesis is going to rupture the committee. It don't toe the line. Then again most real breakthroughs in understanding never have. Get used to it. Of course if you are really sensitive you could try and play whack a troll and ban my MAC. That will be interesting in a lab of 200+ machines...
Wrong. Getting sustainable will require the sobering drying up of use of finite materials. Again, the wizardry of technology is not going to grow off of berry bushes. All the maths show that even at complete utilization of available fixes will not cover even half of what is currently the norm. The way is not through seeking continuity, the way is complete change.
Uh oh, psychopath label, better get out the troll stamp. How convenient that cliche is. Just label anyone who might have a dissenting viewpoint and we can all get back to the delusions. Unfortunately, delusions are not solutions.
If the majority of the posters here are a representative sample, the resounding answer is no. Levin would have us believe that it is perfectly reasonable to think that the way we currently live is done to meet needs. Wrong. The way we currently live is in thrall to desires fed by a completely untenable level of consumption; unless of course your goal is to eradicate most life off the face of the planet.
Sometime in the future, people will be looking to groups like this for answers to what has happened and solutions. What currently passes for reasoned debate is really no more than replacing the whip at the back of the lemming pack for a dog whistle at the front. You are still headed for the cliff. So much for evolution.
Every single individual that continues the lie that what we have become accustomed to can be patched sustainably is another voice of hegemony that will lead to a barren wasteland. Witness Iraq. Do you think wars will end because you put up solar panels? Wars will end when we stop being rapacious. Whatever slew of alternatives you propose will require inputs. Inputs that will not always be available in the quantity desired at the local level. Enter colonialism. We've been doing it for so long people no longer even bother to recognize it.
Just how do you think the shelves are stocked and the lights remain on in la la land? It is because in addition to the slaves we harness from hydrocarbons, we additionally rely upon the deprivation of billions across the globe to refine raw materials into widgets sans ecological impact considerations. Every single one of us is responsible currently for the conditions that exist in the slums and backwaters across the globe because of the lifestyle we are so irrationally attached to. That same lifestyle that we are trying desperately to maintain for the future generations. Bunk. The madness that is the civilized world is a madness that will render future generations impossible.
Go ahead be offended. The offense is actually yours...
Agreed, trolling-for-dollars.
Indeed, wretched-excess has gone on a rant, but in his defense, wisdom on this thread is not high. If we understand that oil is a finite resource, then why can we not understand that other resources, too, are finite. Only when resources are used at a rate less than replenishment is activity sustainable.
And that takes us to the crux: Our civilization uses more energy per day than comes to us from ANY combination of sources. Coal, oil, uranium--these are all drawing on the past to try to EXCEED sustainability. We can do it--indeed we have done it--but only temporarily. Our civilization is absolutely guaranteed to end, and all our quick fixes are just a junky who has run out of heroin mainlining ludes. It is sure to end badly.
Some people take offense at the idea of living like our ancestors. The truth is, we could do worse. Mid paleolithic people had a ten-hour work week, plentiful food (most of the time) and a network of meaningful relationships. Yes, frankly, their life was physically arduous, but humans are designed for that.
Of course, our life is comfortable, but that is not what is at stake. What is at stake is the simple fact that our comfortable way of life is going to end, and the most likely scenerio for its ending--a frantic consumption to exhaustion of available resources--will leave a desertified world with MUCH fewer survival possibilities than were offered to our paleolithic ancestors.
The most likely model for US is Easter Island. It would be very good to avoid doing what they did, but at this moment Easter Island is certainly what we are collectively trying for. It would be a mistake.
Nuclear power of course consumes large quantities of non-nuclear energy in plant construction, and in many peripheral activities. But the heart of the problem is that it is a literal dead end. When we say that the waste disposal is unsolved--after more than fifty years!--why would you understand that it will BE solved the day after tomorrow? Between the known laws of physics and nuclear energy's own history, the odds are that it will not. Ever. By the way, do you understand the effects of elevated radiation on human beings? Cancer is the least. Birth defects and immune disease are the real problems, and they never end. Unlike cockroaches and most other insects, humans just are not designed for the world we are invoking when we consider nuclear power. The outlook for cockroaches is good. The outlook for humans is not--and nothing will reduce our long term prospects more permanently or thoroughly than the nuclear route.
There is an attitude on this thread which just leaves me shaking my head--that we can tell nature what to do. Are you nuts? I can assure you it is the other way around, as we will learn, the easy way or the hard way. We can comply with nature's constraints, or we can die. It's a free choice.
It's a shame that this comment got so high up in the thread, because it is so very much not true.
Human beings can design systems that preserve, restore and regenerate natural capital, while providing services and resources to satisfy human needs. I have personally done so on a small scale, and I can see how it could be done on a large scale, if we choose to do so. All we need to do is accept:
1) That it's a priority, because it's necessary to our survival.
2) That it will slightly diminish short-term returns (in most cases), for the sake of long-term health.
3) That just because we can do something, does not mean we should.
If we could wrap ourselves around those principles, we could design a technological civilization for the ages. Alas, the discussion seems mostly divided between the "there's-no-problem" cornucopians and the "technology-is-fundamentally-unsustainable" doomers. There seems to be very little room left to consider the middle road.
Besides being a Lovins disciple, I guess this would make you a cornucopian as well. From your Live Journal page we come to understand that, beyond your link to the online version of NatCap, "I like technology. A lot. I like the ways it makes my life easier, more effective, more free, and more interesting. I also like the intellectual challenge of creating it, understanding it, and using it. About the only thing I don't like about it, is having to fix it. But I really enjoy figuring out how to design it so that it doesn't need fixing." See here's the thing, have you been able to get all your technology from fully renewable sources? You sure none of them rely on trace elements which are finite in nature? Oh, but don't let that deter your (benighted) enthusiasm.
The original affluent society, see Stone Age Economics by Sahlins, still holds the record for highest cultural EROEI and leisure time. It has been the steady encroachment of technological 'advances' that have required more time of each individual, and increasing reliance upon finite sources of energy, to provide a lifestyle. The early adopters of the sedentary lifestyle also lost their ability to fend against the wilds. Hence their hybrid-domestication of the nomad hunter by providing for his needs in exchange for protection; which is where royalty came from and we have been slaves to them ever since.
Point 1 being priority, score one for the home team. Point 2, that it will slightly diminish is a gross understatement. The only long term health to be had will come at a great decrease in the net amount of per capita energy consumption; barring a rethinking of how many people will live at any given time. History is clear. We went from wood to charcoal to coal to oil to splitting atoms. Unless the Stoernies blow open known physics, there ain't no free lunch on the other side of this feeding frenzy.
Done any math lately? If the latest attempt at solar farming is any indication, it will take the area of Connecticut to power residential use alone in the US. Forget industrial. Not a watt for commercial. Nada for schlepping their carcasses around. How many of these exercises need to be done at the end of the sustainability chapter before the lesson sinks in?
You know what long term was/is? That's the time in which we did not seriously jeopardize the holding capacity of our planet. How long do you seriously think there will be all those nifty metals around to enjoy so that your iPhone can be used to remind you that it's time to turn the compost? Ahhh the life of an engineer.
Aboriginal societies tested the limits of the system long ago. Those that survived came to live within them. Those that did not perished. Too bad about the opposable thumb and incipient desire to overreach. That is why we are here. Hello. We have the capability to manipulate far beyond the sustainable ability of the parent system to provide. Attachment. Bittersweet.
So, have fun. The other side of the century will be the proof in the pudding. Of course only those with a belief system that incorporates an afterlife will get to know the answer. The living will be far less fortunate given the inability of most to deal with reality.
By the way, your point 3? I think that was the main crux of wretched excess' comment. The problem being you are to attached to your technology to see the forest for the trees...
I think you misread my position, badly. But it's understandable, I guess, given the material I've put online. Maybe it's time to revise again.
If I'm a disciple of anyone, it would be much more Bill McDonough than Amory Lovins. To Lovins, solving a problem by design is a matter of engineering out all the waste. To McDonough, it's a matter of reconsidering the problem statement, figuring out what we actually want (e.g. cold beer and hot showers, not refrigerators and water heaters), and then designing a solution that works within the context of existing and potential natural systems. The key is respect for natural systems, and the selective and careful application of technology where it will do the most good.
I do agree that if humanity has a future, it will be based on greatly reduced per-capita energy consumption. That's OK. By conservative estimates, we waste 2/3 of our energy production, and 4/5 of our transportation energy. And those estimates are made within the context of currently prevailing design practice for buildings, generation/transmission assets, and transportation. In point of fact, our waste:service ratio is probably more like 20:1, when you consider that a well-designed building in most climates needs only a very minimal climate control system, for example.
I'm not particularly worried about depletion of non-renewable non-energy resources. Either we will learn to design and live with closed cycles (>90% recovery), in which case it won't be a problem, or we won't, in which case the law of exponential growth dictates that no amount of resources will be enough.
If we build our artifacts from carefully selected technological and biological nutrients, we aren't going to run short of materials. We've got plenty, if we're careful. All that we need then is energy, and that is actually a challenging but tractable problem if we can stop being so toweringly stupid and short-sighted at every turn.
As for my personal love of technology: Yes, I like it. But that doesn't mean I particularly care for the way that it has invaded every nook and cranny of every moment of our lives. I like having the ability to travel to distant destinations at high speed, but I don't want to do it every day. I like being able to communicate instantly with distant loved ones, but I'd much rather see them in person. I like having access to an abundance of food, but I'd much rather grow my own. And I will, and have, made what most people would consider sacrifices in order to live closer to these preferences.
I rely heavily on email and the web, because it facilitates my ability to shape the world in a positive direction, but frankly I'd be just as happy to give up much of that. I just don't feel that I, personally, as a white American male with an expensive education, have the right to go live on a mountain and tend my garden while the world goes to hell around me.
What I hope for in the long run is not millions of years of low tech civilization but mature biotechnology, nanotechnology and subcultures no one yet have dreamed of. So little have been done of what can probably be done but it wont happen overnight and we can not count on it to happen to solve todays problem with magic technology.
Now the game is to preserve and build upon what we already have in technology and culture capable of change and development. And to have a good time doing it while building for the next generation.
Nice points, Green.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
Just because we CAN do something, doesn't mean we WILL. Humans are dumber than yeast. Maybe they are inventive, have opposable thumbs and all, but philosophically, they have the wisdom of a starved raccoon. It's amazing to me that more of us aren't found lying on the sides of our own highways.
That's because sitting on the fence means two things:
1. You have to come down to eat.
2. You are an easy target.
3. (I can't count) There isn't much profit in the middle ground unless you are a lawyer who gets paid for not solving problems, or a politician that gets paid by crooks on both sides of the fence.
Doomers like me see the long term problems as the immediate need, because we've tried to see where compromise leads, and it leads to the status quo. Things have to change. One way or another, especially how decisions are made based upon the profit motive alone. The only thing wrong with the busload of lawyers going over the cliff is that it doesn't have their accountants strapped to the roof.
We can argue about the numbers all day, but if the plan to use nuclear is only compared to using coal, then there really isn't any choice. The real question is still this: "What are we using the energy FOR?" All the talk about current consumption, reducing consumption by 'x' percent, and finding sources to 'fulfill the demands of customers' never questions the actual results of what humans are doing. It's one thing to say "we have freedom", or "we will live in harmony with our environment", but you have to ask yourself, and others, "Then what?"
What is the Net Creativity of the human race going to be, when all is said and done? What do we contribute to the universe that makes it a better place for children to grow up in? Are they really growing up, or have we created a perpetual game zone for them to exist like yeast in a petri dish?
If the petri dish is going to be contaminated anyway, then let's just burn it up now and enjoy ourselves, right?
The petri dish has existed for hundreds of millions of years, with many Net Creative species (Perhaps that includes ourselves before our 200 years of industrial toys).
Are you trying to make a better petri dish or just minimize how fast we drain it (coal) or destroy it (nuclear)? To someone who is a cornucopian or windmill salesman, my rants sound anti-technology. I am not. I am against wrongheaded technology or technology being used for the sake of the technology, not for the sake of Net Creativeness. Any technology we adapt should provide more potential(to our grandchildren) usefulness than it uses up in resources. That's a pretty simple theory. See how the things you do add up in your own mind. Rationalize any way you want, because Nature will decide in the end, not us, unless we change.
Last one out of the dish, please turn off the lights (if they still work).
Humans are dumber than yeast. Maybe they are inventive, have opposable thumbs and all, but philosophically, they have the wisdom of a starved raccoon.
It sure seems that way. On the other hand, consider the degree of social evolution we've achieved in the last couple of centuries (e.g. a semblance of racial and sexual equality). We've come a long way, far enough that I can't rule out the possibility that we will be able to meet this new challenge.
In my mind, we are in the process of transitioning from being a pre-tech species to a technological one. As technicus, we are a juvenile species, and we look pretty hopeless. But teenagers tend to be that way, and if we gave up on them, there'd be no future for the species.
What? You see a transition from one type of species to another, more highly developed one within the current human population?
Give me a break! Evolution works with hundreds and thousands of generations, not two or three.
And what part of the human population are you talking about? People like yourself? And what about the other 99.9 percent of people who are oblivious to any understanding of world systems and the oncoming crisis due to lack of or bad education, daily fight for survival, lack of IQ, misinformation by the MSM etc.?
Wake up, man!
Davidyson
I do not think we have progressed in any degree of social evolution. We just have a few more educated people around who have time to consider social issues. Look at some of the writings in biblical times - Jesus (or whoever wrote or said those words) said things that were socially very advanced (and I don't mean manipulative religous messages) - his words seem far more socially advanced than many of the ones people spout today IMHO. Of course some things that were said at the time were also painfully socially retarded, but we make plenty of such statements today too...
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
I see no shame in it at all. I agree with just about everything he wrote, nor does it diminish what you wrote.
That we are not doing as you wisely think we should is one fact that better supports wretched excess's post than your ready dismissal of it. Until we do as you suggest and do so Big Time we'll be left hanging on the "If we could wrap ourselves around those principles" problem!
Right there is a Big Time problem, as exemplified by most of this nuclear rehash to solve problems that are at root ones of human excess. What's really telling is that your "middle road" concepts are no where on the publicly acceptable radar screen of what we can and should be doing. It's all mostly more of the same stupidity that got us where we are now.
There is no shame at all in pointing this out. Especially with respect to how nuclear power is getting trotted out for another look. What's to see that wasn't there the first time? It stunk then and it stinks now! Chasing after it just goes to prove how totally incapable we are at wrapping ourselves around the sane principles you wrote of to resolve our problems.
It's all about: Grab another mop & bucket, boys! The taps are on and we can't turn them off!
Insane.
"Insane."
Yup.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
I should like to correct something, which is:
It's all about: Grab another mop and bucket, boys! The taps are on and we can't think to turn them off!
I took some calculations that Robert and Nick started and polished (well at least sanded) them a little. Getting sustainable is pretty easy and saves money all along the way. Here is the link.
Chris
One of the problems with many nuclear proponents is an almost blind refusal to accept that we are part of a greater set of interrelated systems - not separate from the world. Anyone advocating anything close to current lifestyles is a psychopath.
We like to pretend we are separate from the world, because we've had the cheap energy to set aside normal constraints for a while... but all that ignorance will catch up with us, and if some things do not catch up with us, they will end up affecting our children or their children. Nuclear may stretch our current lifestyles out a bit, while making a few wealthy, but it'll come back and bite us later.
So we can choose. Do we take some responsibility for what we are doing or not? If yes, then ask serious questions:
The available productive area of the earth is 1.9ha per person. How much are we using? What is really sustainable?
We share that area with most other land-based organisms, and some of that area with non-organic resources. Whatever we extract from the earth that will not be replaced in the near (geological) future is a drawdown on mineral (and other) savings that future generations will not have the benefit of (except for the few enduring things we create).
So what level of energy use is sustainable?
What level of fresh water use?
Soil use at rates required to feed 6.5 billion and growing?
Plant and animal husbandry/natural ecosystems?
Mineral use?
Pollution?
Etc...
Why give lip service to sustainability? It will only drag things out... which answers the question - many of us will kid ourselves that we are doing something and just hope to leave it to our grandkids to suffer the worst of it.
And the answer is not in NO technology. Technology will always have its place. I just don't believe nuclear technology is part of the non-lip-service sustainable equation.
Solutions? Ideally, I think it starts with voluntary population reduction, coupled with uncensored education of the problems we are causing, looking at truly sustainable practices, and encouragement by government and citizens to reject our economic, consumer, money obsessed society... how do we do these things? That's the real question?
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
I basically do not care about the global average. For me the relevant question is how the local environment wich I have a chance to influence (Sweden) can be cultivated in a way that gives long term prosperity and makes the world better. We are 9 million here now, we will probably be 10 million in a not so distant future and we can export stuff that maks a small but notisable differense for perhaps a hundred million people or so. When we get more efficient we can do more but we will never save the whole world.
We will probably use at least 10 times the global average of water but that does not matter since we got the rainfall and the best we can do is let it aid us in industrial processes that gives goods that can benefit people. If we add plenty of electricity we can do more with the water we get, the biomass we grow and the plentiful minerals.
I would be content with such ambitions if they were common.
They dont give a fair world in absolute wealth levels but a lot healthier one where the resources will last a lot longer and some will last close to indefinately if technology and efficiency continue to improve.
"I basically do not care about the global average."
That says it all really...
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
Very terrible of me that I dont want to sacrifice myself and my community/culture for getting closer to global average. I only want to work very hard with being usefull and encouraging stuff that in the long term makes life easier for a large number of people. That wont help everybody but it sure betas beinga doomer or run to the hills as a survivalist or having ideas about working against individual self intrest.
There is nothing in power-down that is against self-interest, except perhaps having a large family and laziness. There is nothing in it that is survivalist or about running for the hills if it is a common societal goal. Living closer to the land, walking, using public transport, being open about the problems we face, having small families, changing our market culture - none of these things are bad, and I believe the overall benefits would far outweigh any perceived "sacrifices".
Why does everyone associate power-down with doom and gloom? That is an uninformed, narrow view, and it if is the best argument you can come up with, it only serves to support the proposition.
If you really want to argue against it, try asking how we go about changing the way people think in order to reach the goals of sustainability. That will be the hard part...
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
Power down and all that implies is coming. The real questions are: How well we accept and work within such a reality while relinquishing our humanistic arrogance of control over such matters as opposed to fighting against such submission as it occurs.
As Aldo Leopold put it: "The question is, does the educated citizen know he is only a cog in an ecological mechanism? That if he will work with that mechanism his mental health and material well being can expand indefinitely? But that if he refuses to work with it, it will ultimately grind him to dust?"
In short: Nature does not make political compromises with anyone.
In this sense power down is all about living within the means of creation as it is and not as we keep trying to make it. IMO, we've got a ways to go before we get it.
Some people can profit from a panic. Here is an only half in jest accusation that the reason we have loan guarantees for new nuclear power in the Senate Energy Bill is that Bill Richardson is just trying to preserve the southern electricty market for New Mexican solar power. Bait them with nuclear then switch in solar that they could have developed themselves with the taxpayers bailing out the unused nuclear plants.
Chris
You can just about guarantee that many "solutions" will be fueled more by money-making opportunities than anything else. People will delight in kidding themselves that they are making a difference AND getting rich!
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
The difference is that renewable solutions are solutions while depletable solutions are just postponing the actual solution. The renewable sourcing is getting permanently set now. There will be very little oportunity to change the future market because "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Oil, gas, coal and nuclear are all, by nature, temporary, and thus broken so they'll get fixed. Renewables are permanent and they won't.
Exxon, Peabody, and Excelon will continue to exist, but as supliers of lubricants, christmas novelties and smoke detector parts respectively. Most of their shareholders will have migrated. Even BP is going to end up with a small market share because they are trying to be incremental in an exponential market. They are trying to balance competing interests rather than committing to what the market can do.
Ruth, if you are reading this, please tell me I'm wrong about BP. We need you.
Chris
Except that nuclear is different than oil, coal and gas in that there is an essentially inexhaustible supply (one trillion tons of recoverable Uranium at high eroei with many times that if you consider Thorium and other fuel cycles). A solution that works for thousands or millions of years should be considered a permanent solution.
Not really, we experience a major disaster every forty years at the current rate of use. That implies a disaster every 10 years if nuclear is going to be a solution rather than just a nuisance. That means removing a circle of radius 20 miles from use for each accident. That exceeds the land surface area of the earth in 60,000 years, a shorter time than the areas can recover.
I also suggest that you are engaging in magical thinking to say that we know about much more than about 85 years of fuel at current use.
OOps, that should have been 600,000 years. Same point though.
You cannot be serious with that first comment. Chernobyl was a serious incident but there have not been others where there has been loss of life or environmental damage. We cannot learn anything in 60,000 years?
There was one period of exploration for Uranium in the 80s and they found about 100 years worth. Since then no one has been looking. You think that is the end of the story?
The issue of how much Uranium exists has been seriously debated here many times. You really should look into some of the previous threads, especially some of the comments by Dezakin. I for one am tired of making the same comments over and over when so many of the nuclear opponents are so impervious to the facts.
The one thing we seem to be unwilling to learn is that people make mistakes. So far, we have avoided sabotage. How much longer? People want whole new kinds of reactors and swear they are safe without any experience except that four of the prototypes had accidents. Do we make the mistake again of believing these people, or do we judge nuclear power on its actual performance? The performance does not match the promises in the least. Electricty is NOT too cheap to meter. Plants in populous regions are NOT operated in a safe manner. Yucca Mountain is NOT operational.
We have made a mistake promoting civilian nuclear power. It is time we admitted it so that the other mistakes that WILL lead to more accidents don't happen.
You may not be aware of critcality incidents that have led to fatalitites in civillian nuclear power but they have occured. Radiation released to the environment has also happened on many occasions. You may want to study this list. It is surely incomplete as there has been quite a lot of coverup going on in the industry. If you do not know these things, why are you complaining about the attention of others to facts?
Without new nuclear power, the probability of a meltdown that blows containment in the next 20 years is greater than 80%. You can do the math yourself from the near misses. Lessons learned do not help this much because these are complex systems and you are only as smart as your last problem, and not necessarily smart enough for your next. The failure modes have not all been excercised or even conceived. If we can't keep simple things like bridges from collapsing despite regular inspections, do you really think that no more serious nuclear accidents will happen ever? The only way to ensure this is to shut the reactors down permanently.
This statement demonstrates you are entirely ignorant of how containment works. The reason why Chernobyl was so bad was the lack of any containment to begin with.
A failure of the emergency core cooling system can lead to containment breach. Failure to avoid a hydrogen build up can lead to containment breach. Pick you system, it can fail.
You are of course incorrect that Chernobyl had no containment. It just did not have enough. There are circumstances under which other containment systems can fail as well. Take a look at what a jury-rigged system defence in depth is, how complex and, most of all, how deeply it has been penetrated in actual accidents and you'll see that another large accident is bound to happen.
Look, pilots and people who work in national security are very heavily screened. Yet we have pilots who crash planes deliberately and spys who betray their country. With all the extra active systems needed to avoid containment breach, why would you ever say that containment alone is adequate? A saboteur can make the active systems inoperative, open the containment deliberately, any number of things. Security drills at plants lead to penetration. We then try to fix the problems with that. Then another method works. Another large accident will happen. It is only a matter of time.
If you are not willing to acknowledge the risks, I would suggest that you keep as far away from the nuclear industry as possible. The most dangerous thing is to assume there is no danger.
You could, but you'd be wrong.
Its like you were incapable of reading resource estimates from 'World Uranium Resources' and skipped towards the end which really only discusses reserves. The IAEA number only uses rich known orebodies (with essentially no exploration for decades.) It doesn't take into account any nontraditional sources such as phosphates, shales or even flyash, nor does it account for reprocessing or double enrichment.
Reprocessing and double enrichment alone multiply the resource base by 4-10 without even opening one new mine.
Reprocessing is a job that few like to take on. The working material is pretty nasty. I would say that non-traditional sources sound quite a lot like the NPC report. You can belive it if you like, but you do not know. We do know of about 85 years of fuel at current use. A plan to replace coal with nuclear power had better be quite clear that the fuel could run out prior to the end of the design lifetime of the plants and include this in the rates that are charged. $0.08/kWh wholesale is about what would be required to account for this risk. Especially since the loans for construction will be guaranteed, this should be a clear requirement to ensure loan repayment.
So what? We have several demonstrated technologies and several industrial scale plants operating allready. Its not a problem that needs to be solved because its done allready. Fortunately uranium is so plentiful we don't actually need to do any reprocessing...
I have confidence in it the same way I'm confident that the world doesn't become very dense hamburger beneath the crust. I can't really know for certain because I haven't taken core samples to make sure there's no hamburger down there. I think your problem is you really don't understand the numbers you're quoting.
http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebHomeAvailabilityOfUsableUranium
Reasonably assured reserves (or proven reserves) refers to known commercial quantities of Uranium recoverable with current technonology and for the specified price. As well there are estimates of additional and speculative reserves in extensions to well explored deposits or in new depoists that are thought to exist based on well defined geological data. These are necessarily subject to a larger uncertainty, however, the historically low price of uranium over the past ten years has provided a disincentive to exploration.
Between 2003 and 2005 the world uranium reserves for 130$/kg U increased by 50% due to only modest exploration, to currently the '85 years' reserves with 500 years additional reserves. The uncertainty of the additional reserves doesnt mean additional reserves might not exist, but simply assigns probabilities of excess reserves in this price band.
This doesn't include 200 or 300 doller per kg uranium (still quite affordable for competitive nuclear power.) And it doesn't reflect the resource multiplication of modest price increases with simple process steps such as extra enrichment, reprocessing, and DUPIC.
But, look it up yourself. You're being deliberately obstinate. Avaliability of resources isn't ever going to be a problem in nuclear power in any timeframe worth discussing (clear the calender for the next thousand years). If you want to object on security, safety, relative risk, or even cost I respectfully disagree there; But at least there's two sides to those arguments. The resource avaliability canard is just being deliberately ignorant.
Now you are at 500 years at current use. OK. That gives 100 years as a solution to global warming, or less if energy use grows as anticipated, perhaps 50 years with population stabilization at 11 billion. Then you want the price to go up. But it does not matter when the carbon goes into the atmosphere so you are back to coal and have not solved anything. I still want accelerated loan repayment, there are other reasons to think nuclear won't last even 50 years.
I just don't know anyone serious who thinks of nuclear power as anything that should be permanent. It can't be for one thing, and everyone is aware that there are much better alternatives. Everyone would much prefer fusion to fission, for example. Why do you insist that it makes sense to replace one polluting energy source with another? Having a strange love for nuclear power just does not seem like enough to me. It is a facinating jumble of patches placed on splints attached to dohickees, but it is not beautiful or even practical, just very very dirty. Make a mess with neutrons....
The fuel price could triple without anyone seriously noticing any additional cost to nuclear power: Its all wrapped up in capital, not fuel. A simple doubling of price opens up roughly ten times the resources for exploitation.
Its also rather unlikely that fuel price needs to go up to expand resources beyond that. As was mentioned earlier, very little uranium exploration has been done in decades, and technology advances open up new resources at lower price points. DUPIC could be use today for relatively low costs, possibly even competitive today at todays prices (with lag time for setting up the systems.) And all of this is still before simple resource multiplication of doubling the enrichment step. Pyrometalurgical reprocessing methods developed at ANL could be far more economically viable than the aqueous methods currently favored (largely developed for weapons production.)
Its capable of filling a major role in the power production for human civilization for the next several centuries. We may very well have much cheaper solar or wind by then. Hell, Alan could be right and its cheaper today, but I still feel nuclear should be relied on as a demonstrated source of capable baseload power. Future fission power plants will almost certainly be useful in extreme environments and space exploration even if we move on to the next great thing; Unless that next great thing is truely revolutionary. (Say Bussards electrostatic fusion idea isn't all hope following hype)
I simply dont view nuclear power as any more polluting than wind. What it does generate is spent fuel, which I honestly feel is still likely a valuable resource even if we dont use it for nuclear fuel... in a hundred years we could be producing the majority of the worlds rhodium and xenon from nuclear alchemy.
I think what you are saying is that you will only accept a disruptive technology as replacement for nuclear power? In that case, are you willing to be disrupted enough to abandon the base load concept?
I think what he saying is that he would only accept a better technology that obviates the need for nuclear.
Check out this post:
Is Nuclear Power a Viable Option for Our Energy Needs?
If you have a bit of time google “Rubia reactor”.
Should that be Rubbia?
It should be Rube Goldberg. Using a particle accelerator to supply neutrons to maintain the reaction is not what I would call a good design. It sounds like a clever way to make money disapear.
In the land of the future where we all drive flying cars and particle GeV acceleratores an be made cheap enough to pick up at the local hardware store, its just barely plausible that this will be useful in some fast neutron reactors. It solves a problem that doesn't exist: reactor stability. Careful engineering of the core geometry does this allready to the point where you only have to worry about criticality excursions in fast reactors with tiny delayed neutron components, but here doppler broadening and negative reactivity coefficients reduce the problem to an engineering exercise.
I like Rubbia's idea for a graphite moderated fission rocket, where the fission fragments from the thin film Am242 fuel directly heat the hydrogen reaction mass. The temperature of the H can go very high, tens of thousands of degrees, so the specific impulse is also very high.
555, it's that time...
Nuclear salt water rocket sounds better to me. Of course, designing that is sort of like designing a continuous a-bomb more than an ordinary reactor...
My view is that we should build more nuclear power slowly and safely.
I do NOT want a Canadian Tar Sands type rush to nuke (others here do, see debate on July 30th Drumbeat).
There are a large number of supply issues in restarting an almost moribund industry (a few new nukes internationally + suppliers of maintenance needs). Large forgings are a critical issue, with other nations looking at new nukes as well. But the biggest problem is personnel.
The personnel to manage, engineer, build and regulate new nuclear power construction are few and mostly old in the USA. A limited number of the workers that travel from one refueling outage to the next can be brought into new construction (but not all, or else neophytes will be maintaining our nukes).
The recent restart of Browns Ferry I (down for 24 years after a fire) and the just announced restart on construction of Watts Bar II ($2.5 billion to finish a 60% complete nuke, work stopped in 1985) by TVA are great steps to train a new pool of experienced people at all levels.
A slow ramp-up reaching about 4 new nukes/year going commercial in 2027 seems about right to me.
I simply do believe the construction times and costs quoted by industry boosters for the next generation of nuclear plants.
IMVVHO, we should build secure containment for waste fuel for 500 or so years (not 10,000 years) with the idea that we will reprocess it at some point (for the platinum group metals produced by fission & zirconium if not for uranium). By 300 or so years all fission byproducts should have pretty much decayed and only the transuranics would be left.
Best Hopes for Slow, Safe New Nukes,
Alan
Perhaps the only way the problem of nuclear waste can be solved with the attention and respect it deserves is to require that it be stored in Washington next to the Capitol
Putting the spent fuel in or near Washington D.C. is a great idea. It will show ordinary Americans that the stuff is really not that dangerous. We will likely put our spent fuel within 150 km of our capitol.
We have, by the way, solved the spent fuel issue. If anyone is interested, check out my article here: http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/8/13/184016/739
To bad Edwards is so irrationally anti-nuclear and anti-CTL. I liked his message of redistributing wealth, health insurance and so on.
Best hopes for a radical nuclear rollout.
I wanted to clarify when edit was cut off by a reply:
About 4 new nukes/year in the USA, 6 to 8 new nukes/year in the rest of the world by 2027.
Alan
With the current 104 nuclear plants starting in the 1970s and assuming a 40 year lifetime, a large replacement/decommissioning/recommissioning cycle is in store over the next decade. At 4 nukes/year, we will basically replace the existing 104 plants in the USA in 26 years, past the time the current plants will be needing a substitute, thus, at your rate Allen, we will be running in place at best.
It is interesting to see in the NYT that the nuke industry snuck in the loan guarantees into the Senate version of the Energy bill, and that without the loan guarantees, they threaten that the nukes will not be built.
The nuclear industry already has the largest subsidy already--they are indemnified against any damages caused by a nuclear accidents. The role of the NRC is to police them to insure there will be no accidents. Without this insurance policy, no public reactors would have been built.
You were spot on in your earlier post Robert. The future is solar.
In the summer of 1969, I went to the States for the summer - I was at university in the UK at the time studying civil engineering.
A friend of mine took me to meet a senior manager at Bechtel in San Fransisco at their HQ. This guy showed us around and told us that Bechtel was currently building no fewer than 23 nuclear power stations in the USA!
I mention the above just to let some of you Americans know just how capable your elders were. Nowadays the "easy" option is always taken when confronted by a difficulty of that magnitude - I agree with Kunstler on that. It always seems to be easier to use the military as a first option when confronted by an intractable problem.
I am not a proponent of nuclear reactors - quite the opposite. I just want to make clear that sometime one has to make sacrifices to get what one wants or to avoid chaos and shortages.
When handwaving or preaching, at least try to keep to the facts. The fact is that there is a cap on the liability from nuclear incidents which AFAIK is $30bln. Are you suggesting that any nuclear incident would cost more than $30bln, or that $30bln. is nothing? Can you borrow me this nothing for a while?
LevinK, I wasn't trying to preach, and I admit guilt to not being as precise as possible (It has been a while since I examined the details of Price-Anderson). So, you are right, my use of the word "any" you have so 'boldly' pointed out was not exact.
My post was really to point out that (1) Alan's construction rate is basically replacement, and (2) the nuclear industry wouldn't exist without the government insurance subsidy. If only solar received such support...
My belief that the future is solar is not hard and fast and could change with more and better information. I've come to that conclusion as I've been trying to figure out how to insure myself against our oil predicament, and to do so in a way that doesn't generate other problems. Given the urgency of the situation, I believe that I can't rely on our friends in D.C. to fix it for me and my family.
I can conserve, and I have, but that still keeps me dependent on fossil fuels for such basics as heat, power, and food, and hence, I am still energy insecure by conserving. If the supply line to the Middle East is cut, conservation will revert to the Reagan definition: "Conservation means being hot when it's hot and cold when it's cold." But, by going solar, I can cost-effectively obtain adequate heat, and (less cost effectively) cover a significant fraction of my power usage. The reason I advocate solar is that I'm finding it can do the job for my family's basic needs. In short, practicality. By the end of next year, I should be covered in basic needs (except food) by solar. No need to wait for that government approval for the new reactor.
If you want preaching, read advancednano's posts.
Er, bullshit.
The most critical claims of this by United States Public Interest Research Group as an insurance subsidy rate it at 33 million per reactor per year, roughly the cost of the fuel, and would minimally impact the competitiveness of nuclear power. More realistic assessments of the value place it at roughly 2.3 million per reactor year.
Er, not b.s.
Without indemnity, there would not have been a nuclear industry, and if indemnity were to disappear (not likely), I'd be willing to wager that the nuclear power industry would also disappear. I'm NOT advocating that, btw.
For a good historical discussion, I recommend the wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price-Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity...
It is clear from the Supreme Court proceedings of the suit challenging the constitutionality of the P-A Act that the industry needed a boost.
In addition, you can look at the NYT online article regarding the need for loan guarantees:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/washington/31nuclear.html
Is this just pigs feeding at the trough, or do they really need them?
Pigs need a trough. The two senators who snuck in the loan guarantees have very high contributions from the electric power industry. With Domenichi they are trying to keep up with Oil and Gas. With Bingaman they come in right after lawyers and doctors.
It is pretty easy to calculate what the government will liable for in the case of a Chernobyl scale disaster say at Indian Point, which has had lots of problems. Take a radius of 20 miles, so an area of 1257 square miles or 800,000 acres. With $300,000 homes on half acre lots that comes to $240 billion. Now, depending on how the wind blows, you might have to cover Manhatten real estate as well. That gets you into much larger numbers. Large enough for the government to default I think.
Your home owners insurance excludes nuclear accidents because the government has assumed the liability. But, you won't be covered if the liability is as large as it could be.
Chris
tards without the gov there would be no nuclear power.
nuclear power will always be within the directed purview and regulation of the government, until people don't want to gain access to nuclear arms, or the need for power is greater than the need for bombs.
The Manhattan project, the single greatest project ever undertaken history, with likely the smartest group of scientists ever assembled in history gave us nuclear fission, fusion, breeder reactors, a bombs, h bombs, radionuclides, space probes, and power plants.
But...but...but...the free market is always the best way to develop new technology...right? Governments should never pick winners!
No way to know this counterfactual unless we had a window into the what-ifs of history. Maybe gov can pick winners, or maybe we lost opportunities letting the gov pick something that wasn't as good as would have come along.
Playing devils advocate here by the way; I dont know where the best line is to draw between government and markets, and my guesses and opinions aren't solid enough for me to argue with conviction more than mildly pro market.
I'm "mildly" pro-market myself, but we appear to live in a world that's so virulently anti-government that no-one will even consider massive-scale government funded and organised projects to help address energy issues.
It's very very hard to see how we would ever have mastered and commercialised nuclear power, or successfully launched payloads into orbit, if science and technology was left entirely to free enterprise with no government funding.
LevinK where did you get the $30Bn number? My understanding is that there is group self-insurance to the tune of $9-10Bln, the current amount in the insurance pool. After that, the liability is all Federal Govt.
Sorry about that, I quoted the number from memory. You are right, it is $10bln.
Many and probably most of the existing nukes are getting life extensions from 40 to 60 years. So retirements will slow down.
The oldest US operating nukes are in the 600 to 900 MW range, The first four new nukes are finishing Watts Bar II (1.2 GW from memory), 2x 1.7 GW and 1x 1.6 GW. Toshiba Westinghouse is bidding a 1.2 GW reactor. So basically two retirement = 1 new reactor.
Nuclear power production will grow in absolute terms and as a percentage of US generation under my proposal. Just not significantly till 2022 or so.
Four new reactors/year, 6.x GW is a significant addition. And I raised that estimate to 5 or 6 new reactors by 2027 based on new information.
Alan
Question though, after 60 years, what happens to the plant?
Is the entire infrastructure useless? How much effort is required to 're-build' it to last another 60 years (compared to the effort of building it initially)?
Since the plant has to meet security standards all thru its life it wont be all rotten after 60 years.
I guess the limit would be set by a realy expensive component such as the reactor vessel in combination with technical development. If making a new vessel and swapping out the old one dont make sense compared with installing the newest design in a completely new plant the plant is history and will be torn down and most of it recycled.
For instance it would not seem to make sense to build a new 600-700 MW BWR reactor vessel with piping and external circulation pumps when the cost for the kit ought to be about the same for a 1400 MW BWR vessel with internal circulation pumps.
The question is more or less if LWR reactor technology is mature and LWR reactors will be more or less of the same design in 2050.
Good question. The NRC and the industry engineers are modest enough to know that they do not yet know all of the effects of aging on the plant. That is why the license renewals are for a limited period of time (that and the fact that is the way the law is written.)
I would expect that when it comes time, there will be careful analysis of the plant condition and the economic aspects of operation. That will determine what happens next, a shutdown or a license renewal and continued operation.
Here is a thought project for those people who are so concerned about nuclear plant decommissioning. What does the coal industry do when a mine or a power plant wears out?
Rod Adams
Editor, Atomic Insights
What does the coal industry do when ... a power plant wears out ?
They remove any toxics that were not removed during operations (lead paint & asbestos usually, sometimes mercury in instruments). Salvage a few bits & pieces that could be used elsewhere and cut the rest up for salvage. Usually a profit after disposing of wastes.
If the building is near an urban area, it may have an adaptive reuse (such as an art museum). Otherwise usually torn down and turned into a park (cooling pond become a fishing lake, etc.
Alan
Best hopes for bridging the electric capacity gap in the next decade with extension of aging nuclear infrastructure whilst securing funding, govt and public approval for new, larger, and presumably safer nukes.
In the meantime, I'll be tying into the Sun.
...and I go mean Best Hopes.
The problem with large nuclear plants are the same as for large coal plants, when they trip you have to get alot of spinning reserve on line in a hurry. So while very large plants are possible, the reerve issues become more significant.
Now it really doesn't take all that long to fire up 5-7 large turbines (200-300 MWe each), but it's more than just building big plants.
See above. Double posted by "trip" in my router.