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227 comments on Will Wartime Mobilisation Address Peak Oil?
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227 comments on Will Wartime Mobilisation Address Peak Oil?
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Theanphibian,
You mention expensive new nuclear builds and wind power.
Nuclear power plants are expensive partly because of ridiculously demanding safety requirements --- a response to anti-nuclear hysteria.
More here:
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2006/10/a-nuclear-reactor...
and here:
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/index.html
I'm not anti-nuke, but I am anti-poorly sited/built/maintained nukes. They are not something to mess around with, they absolutely, positively MUST be done right the first time. No exceptions, no excuses. If doing things right makes things more costly and takes longer than doing things wrong, IMHO that is a price worth paying. The ultimate cost of doing things wrong can be a hell of a price to pay.
I believe the problem is that a lot of the measures are mostly bureaucratic paper-filling, and often have a vast impact on cost, but little on safety.
I won't comment directly on whether the paper work is useful or not because I don't have direct experience with it.
But it strikes me that complex technologies with extreme consequences should they fail probably require checks and rechecks then checks on the checks. Equipment must be within tolerances, backup systems must be equal to the job they will take over if the main systems fail, security must be tight, personnel training must be excellent, etc., etc.
I think people like to blame the "bureaucrats" or "the system" and fail to look at the root cause: nuclear energy is, as currently implemented, a complex, high-risk endeavor with catastrophic consequence if the system fails.
Very far from implementing a row of wind turbines, say.
-André
Even with the extra costs nuclear remains several times less expensive than off-shore wind.
The case is different in the US, where good resources on land make wind a good option.
There is no one 'right answer', and as long as appropriate safety concerns are answered but no useless padding included to pander to those who are in any case entirely ideologically opposed to nuclear energy and whom no conceivable safety measures would satisfy then a variety of resources should be employed.
In the West the safety record of the nuclear industry is second to none, and way better than the coal industry which has been the real beneficiary of opposition to nuclear power - that is where Germany in reality gets most of its energy, renewables so far have added greatly to bills without providing a very large contribution.
DaveMart, do you have a source for your assertion re: offshore wind vs. nuclear? I'm suspicious because Buffet walked away from building a nuclear plant despite $18B in government loan guarantees and extra perks because his people could not find a way to make it economically viable.
-André
The DOE in 2006 estimated the costs of wind power as around $1 million MW installed on land and $2 million for offshore:
http://www.renewables-advisory-board.org.uk/vBulletin/attachment.php?s=0...
Unfortunately since then costs of many inputs have risen drastically, with steel being notable.
Here are the latest estimates I have seen:
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL1483748320080514?fee...
These still do not take account of the latest round of steel price increases AFAIK
From the Government paper it can be seen that the estimated capacity factor for off-shore wind in the UK is around 0.30, so you get a cost per MW of average hourly power generation of around $20million, or £10 million MW.
This does not include many of the costs involved in connecting up the turbines, or back-up capacity.
You can get a very generalised corroboration of these figures from the £100bn bandied around in the press as the estimated cost of the renewables commitment, which is overwhelmingly wind, although it does not include the full projected 33GW installed capacity for off-shore as much of that would not happen until after the time horizon, but does include a lot on cheaper on-shore wind.
Wind is a better resource than is indicated here as it is strongest in the winter when most needed by a factor of two, which helps a lot.
Unfortunately though you can get cold, windless snaps in the winter for several days, which means that additional back-up or transmission is needed, and also relies on natural gas for this, supplies of which are increasingly problematic.
For nuclear costs the highest estimate I have been able to find to date is from EON, who give a figure of up to £4.8 bn for an Areva reactor of 1.6GW:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilitie...
Nuclear reactors will cost twice estimate, says E.ON chief - Times Online
At a capacity figure of 90%, around current US practise that gives you average hourly output of just over 1.4GW (France gets lower capacity factors, but does not run its reactors for maximum output, as not all of it is always required) you come out with a maximum figure of under $7million MW average hourly production.
This would not include all connection figures, as the larger reactors would mean that that would need upgrading, but since they will be sited on existing sites that is by no means as challenging as connections for wind power..
No allowance is made either for cost reductions due to series build.
It is clear then that off-shore wind is around three times as expensive to build as nuclear.
Costings are very different for on-shore wind in the States, which has excellent wind resources, and things like speed of build and ease of finance help bridge any small gap in costings.
That gap is just too big in the case of off-shore wind in the UK for it to be bridged.
It would not be so bad if we were likely to retain our present earnings and ability to finance expensive projects.
As Euan has made clear with his articles, neither is likely to remain true, so in my view the projected build will simply not happen.
Does anyone have any info on how in(?)vulnerable nuke stations are to terrorist attacks of various sorts? One could imagine planes being flied into them like 9-11, or Jihadists getting critical jobs (due to need to avoid discrimination against Muslims), and thereby getting to do just about anything from inside.
We've only had one Chernobyl so far, and that was disastrous enough for Ukraine which was fortunately a rather spacious country. How about if six Chernobyls were simultaneously unleashed by anti-Western suicide terrorists? At an already power-critical moment of course.
This issue has been extensively discussed in the comments to this article on a grand solar plan for the US.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan&page=1
It boils down to nuclear reactors being quite tough targets, and heavily protected.
The containment vessel at Three Mile Island for instance, did its job and prevented major releases - even with terrorist control, which would not last long as members of the special forces would be told to take the kid gloves off, it would be fairly difficult to breach the vessel.
Bowing up a natural gas tanker or poisoning a water supply is by comparison trivially easy, as would pathogen release.
Imagine the world's government's going onto War time footing to combat Peak Oil -- and going in the wrong direction!
The EU is already destroying rainforests and sucking up the cooking oil supplies from the world to power their transport; and the US is doing the same to grain crops.
Why should we imagine that governments will make intelligent choices? From the evidence, it would appear that they are far more likely to increase the damage, than to alleviate shortages.