<DrumBeat: November 10, 2008 The Oil Drum Jeremy Leggett discusses the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security >

102 comments on New Cabinet Position-"Energy and the Environment"?

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BlueTwilight on November 10, 2008 - 2:21am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

For the nuclear fission power plants you ignore the effect of inflation on the price, the cost of carbon sequestration/tax/credits related to the concrete, the cost of disposal of radioactive waste (the cost is dumped on the tax payer) and the cost of nuclear accidents. Did you factor in all the NIMBY lawsuits? Let's say a law is passed requiring the corporation to maintain a fund of $500 trillion to compensate anyone who is adversely affected by their toxic power system. How much would it cost then? Also the death penalty should be mandatory for all executives if their toxic power system ever kills someone. With accountability for murderers, how much would it cost? If we put all the toxic radioactive waste into rockets and shot them into Sun rather than bury it placing the cost of contamination on future generations, how much would it cost then?

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Charles Barton on November 10, 2008 - 8:49am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

For the nuclear fission power plants you ignore the effect of inflation on the price, the cost of carbon sequestration/tax/credits related to the concrete, the cost of disposal of radioactive waste (the cost is dumped on the tax payer) and the cost of nuclear accidents.
Quite the contray, I apply the same inflation analysis to the cost of nuclear that I apply to the cost of renewables. The same inflationary factors are at work on all forms of new power construction.

The cost of nuclear waste storage and decommissioning are included from electrical sales. In fact there is a large surplus in the Nuclear Waste Fund at present, and if "spent nuclear fuel" is recycled in the nuclear process, the nuclear wast fund can be rebated to the utilities. With an efficient fuel cycle spent reactor fuel is no more radioactive than natural uranium 300 years after it leaves the reactor. Many valuable and rare minerals are found in spent nuclear fuel, and they can fe profitably recycled in industry. Long time radioactiv isotopes are useful in medicine, industry, agriculture, food preservation and sanitation.

Your fantasies about the lethal danger of nuclear power are just that, fantasies. New reactor designs are incredibly safe. The likelihood of a major natural disaster costing millions of human lives is far higher, than an accidental fission product release from a reactor that would cost one human life.

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falconeri on November 10, 2008 - 1:40pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The reason that there is a surplus in the US nuclear fund is that no disposal has yet been undertaken.
I'm assuming that you are stateside and that Yucca Mtn, Nevada will be your friendly local nuclear repository. OK, I wouldn't expect anyone to break into Area 51 to check that its being laid out yet, but as far as I know its not been constructed yet.

According to your own Department of Energy figures this facility will take $42m per year just to deal with corrosion of its own workings. OK, that ain't a hill of beans in Texas, but start to ramp it up with a real world discount rate over the 300 year period that you quote for reactor waste to get down to 0.7% U-235 activity (equivalent to naturally occuring uranium) and it doesn't look so rosy. I doubt that you'd want your kids to sit on a couch made of 0.7% U-235 by the way. Start to add some nice warm waste with added meaty chunks of plutonium from those reactors that aren't efficient (i.e. those working now) to deal with and the figure is anybody's guess.

The UK experience with reprocessing using the ThORP plant does nothing to encourage the view that cheap and efficient reprocessing is anywhere near economically viable. If you take a look around the world at nuclear disposal options you will see that the storage/geological disposal option is preferred by those with access to the detailed costings. Even the super-efficient Japanese are going down this route.
FYI, the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Agency has just started recruiting for geological disposal techs after the experience with ThORP. Send any signals ?

Danger, schmanger ! Nuclear power is bankrupt before it even starts. A wind turbine can fall down and be replaced, a hydro dam can break drown a town and be replaced, a gas turbine can blow up and be replaced, a solar panel can revert to being simply a panel, but radioactive waste is an expensive friend for its lifetime, no replacements necessary.

I'd love to know what those useful long-lived isotopes are by the way. To the best of my knowledge most of the applications that you quote are supplied by 'research' reactors specifically jigged to produce those particular 'topes not to produce power.

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Dezakin on November 13, 2008 - 9:55am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The reason that there is a surplus in the US nuclear fund is that no disposal has yet been undertaken.

And it never has to be either. Dry cask storage is good for several centuries at least. Either we have a better solution by then or we reseal the casks at a fraction of the price.

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102 comments on New Cabinet Position-"Energy and the Environment"?

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