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209 comments on Some Thoughts on the Obama Energy Agenda from the Perspective of Net Energy
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209 comments on Some Thoughts on the Obama Energy Agenda from the Perspective of Net Energy
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George et al - The issue of the depth of ERIO (guy's) analysis is fundamental! I was recently directed to an examination of the prospects for nuclear expansion by Dr. J.M. Pearce of Queen's University (Kingston, ON). Dr. Pearce has published several journal articles on what he calls "Energy Cannibalism" - the energy drawn from that produced by new installations in order to maintain "growth" in that sector. A recent paper is:
"Thermodynamic Limitations to Nuclear Energy Deployment as a Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Technology", International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology 2(1), pp. 113-130, 2008
The PDF is available here:
http://me.queensu.ca/people/pearce/publications/documents/as15.pdf
As I read this paper, Dr. Pearce is most interested in addressing claims that nuclear energy is "carbon free" - claims that have been well smashed at this site and others. His analysis is particularly interesting (IMHO) in putting numbers on the increased energy inputs required to mine lower-grade ores for uranium, and in calculating the actual quantity of nuclear required to replace carbon-based (c. 10.5% per annum globally for the next 40 years). Much of the increase is due to the energy needed (needing to be cannabalised) in order to build more nuclear plants (and to supply them with uranium). Eventually, of course, one will hit net zero returns. (What was that about extraction from ocean water?)
(Thanks to David E. of torontopeakoil [Feb. 1] for the reference.)
Best hopes for depth in analysis.
sm
Unfortunately Dr. Pearce does not extend his investigation to the carbon consequences of switching from a uranium based fuel cycle to a thorium based fuel cycle. Thorium can be converted to fissionable U-233 are ratios of 1 to 1 in thermal reactors, and at a higher ratio in Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactors. The Indians plan to use a system of LMFBRs and CANDU type heavy water reactors. The indians can mine thorium simply by picking up beach sand in South India, loading it into dump trucks and hauling it to refineries. The EROEI in the Indian Thorium based nuclear system would be very high, no subsurface mining would be required for over a thousand years, and India can have a high energy thorium based economy, that would give the average indian a standard of living similar to that now enjoyed in the United States or Wester Europe.
The LFTR operates even more efficiently than the Indian nuclear system, would produce even less CO2, and no subsurface mining for thorium would be required for several thousand years.
The man's either an idiot or a con-man. Look at the abstract:
How is it erroneous, misleading and/or fraudulent? Let me count the ways:
This is wrong not once, but twice:
We can safely assume that this study uses a once-through LWR cycle, because the USA and perhaps much of the world could run for several centuries on uranium that's already been mined using fast-breeder reactors. Given that these enormous amounts of uranium were mined for weapons use without making a huge bump in world energy consumption, it's also likely that the projections of energy requirements for mining are unduly pessimistic.
The influence of greenhouse gases from fossil-fuel combustion (1°C today, perhaps 3-5°C to come) utterly swamps the trivial contribution from direct human energy use (~0.01°C). This is trivially provable via the blackbody equation, and use of this claim by someone who should know better proves beyond all doubt that the intent of the author is to mislead.
Perhaps you should publish a paper in a peer reviewed journal to that effect.
Maybe in that paper we could be shown how much in today's money it cost to achieve the 8% nuclear.
Where the funding came from, what was the revenue gained and what are the ongoing costs.
Tell us how much it will cost to build out 6.5% nuclear per year to 2050 and where the funding will come from and where the revenue will come from to fund ongoing costs.
Any calculation has to include retired reactors. New nukes to replace old nukes.
Past nuke building left about 50 partially completed reactors/piles of junk around the USA, and several more that retired quite early.
In retrospective, the existing nukes were "bad deals" economically; mainly because of the failed builds and horrific cost overruns.
The free market prices for used nukes have been small % of their inflation adjusted book values.
Alan
Some of those "retired" reactors either have been or are being "un-retired". Brown's Ferry Unit 1 comes to mind.
Yes, there were bad deals. The original conception of the Midland Cogeneration Venture failed due to fraud in the construction (improper soil preparation by a contractor) plus retroactive requirements changes by the NRC, but that's not an indictment of nuclear power; it could happpen to literally any project (Big Dig, anyone?).
Zimmer, TMI, Trojan, Bellefonte, Black Fox, WHOOPS 1,3,4,5 and dozens and dozens more !! About 50 nukes started construction and were abandoned ! Watts Bar 1 & 2 will be/are completed after decades of invested capital sitting there rusting. There is "talk" about Bellefonte using portions of the built infrastructure (non-safety related admin building & warehouse, the slab, cooling tower) but most of them are complete 100% wasted writeoffs ! About 50 abandoned, partially completed nukes !
BF1 is the *ONLY* "retired" nuke to reactivated that I know of, and no others are even possible now. Dismantled.
Alan
The 75% complete Satsop plant is now a little used "amusement park". Cheaper than demolition of a 3/4 completed nuke.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/16488
Best Hopes for never repeating the "Rush to Nukes" mistakes,
Alan
AlanfromBigEasy. there is more than talk of using the the shuttered Bellefonte construction site. TVA has filed an application to build to new reactors on the site, and in addition it is seriously planning to take advantage of the several billion dollars it has aleardy invested in construction at Bellefonte by completing the original two reactors. The reason TVA is doing this is obvious. During the first year of operation of its Watts bar Unit 1, TVA was able to add $800 million to its income from that one unit. Since TVA only spent $2 billion on its reconstruction, the TVA investment in Browws Ferry Unit 1, will be repaid in under 3 years. Such a rate of return makes even new reactors economically doable, and the rehabilitation of retired reactors an extremely attractive proposition.
the TVA investment in Browns Ferry Unit 1, will be repaid in under 3 years.
BS !!
TVA invested about $1 billion from 1966 to 1973 to build BF1 (I toured it when it was under construction). It operated from Dec. 20, 1973 till as fire on March 22, 1975 (16 months with low capacity factor). Patched and restarted in 1977.
Then ALL THREE BROWNS FERRY REACTORS were shut down in 1985 for "managerial and operational issues". BF2 stayed shut down till 1991 (six years), BF3 till 1995 (ten years) and BF1 June, 2007 (twenty-two years mothballed).
TVA cannot borrow money at 0% interest. The original costs of construction have accumulated massive interest costs. Browns Ferry 1 has been a major money loser for TVA (and poor capacity factor throughout). From 1974 through 2008 (34 years !) BF1 was nominally operating for just over ten years, but poor capacity factor make actual generation closer to seven years (out of 34 years).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Power_Plant
TVA gave up it's construction permit on Bellefonte in 2006. Given the rumored poor quality of construction at Bellefonte (And the manufacturer, Babcock & Wilcox of TMI fame is long out of the nuke business), the odds are "not good" for NRC approval to restart.
Non-safety related construction (admin building, cafeteria, warehouses, parking lot, cooling towers, transmission lines) are likely to be reused at Bellefonte and will save some money.
Bellefonte 1 was 88% complete and $2.9 billion (TVA guess) to complete, Bellefonte 2 was 58% completed and $4.1 billion GUESS to complete. these numbers do NOT support your hypothectical construction costs for all new nukes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellefonte_Nuclear_Generating_Station
Watts Bar 1 took 23 years and $6.9 billion to complete
Watts Bar 2 was 80% complete, $2.5 billion estimate to complete (started)
Reality.
the rehabilitation of retired reactors an extremely attractive proposition.
Not in the USA !! EVERY decommissioned plant is being disassembled and cannot be restated. ZERO chance of a license.
I was a bit sad to see the Trojan cooling tower demolished (shut down after just 16 years of operation) go down. I thought that parts (such as the cooling tower) could be reused for a new nuke. Bad design bad repairs uneconomic at Trojan.
One last sad note about nuke economics from Trojan.
Last line at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Alan
I am familiar with the history of Browns ferry. TVA had no return on its its investment in Browns Ferry any time in its operation prior to last year?
I seriously doubt that TVA covered their compounded interest costs for any year at BF1 except for the first 16 months of operation before the fire.
$1 billion in 1973 with interest "adds up".
Alan
i assume TVA regarded its investment in Browns Ferry 1 as a write off during its prolonged shut down period between 1985 and 2002. As you are no doubt aware, TVA had a multitude of problems between after 1973 which effected its ability to manage its overly ambitious reactor plans. I am not sure that S. David Freeman offered TVA the best possible leadership in the management of its problems with building new reactors. Current management seems to be doing a better job. It seems to me that one factor in the very high estimated cost utilities are now attaching to new nuclear projects isthe desire to not get flat footed by inflation as they were in the 1970's and 80's. If you are goint to recite history, you ought to look at the question of what current actors might have learned from the past, rather than to assume that that past patterns will always be repeated in the future.
I think such assumptions of "better management" as unwarranted and unproven in making realistic policy plans.
Murphy does live and simply assuming that he does not/assuming him away leads to unrealistic and unbelievable proposals.
BTW, given the on-going disaster of nuke building at TVA, pulling the plug on 11 nukes was TVA's only viable alternative to avoid bankruptcy.
You appear to not realize the fundamental lesson learned from the nuke building fiasco; new nuclear construction rate cannot exceed the personnel and industrial base that can comfortably support it. Another "Rush to Nuke" will very likely have the same result (see 75% complete Satsop nuke "entertainment park" that no one visits).
Alan
Oh I think that legitimate questions about the quality oof management that an anti-nuclear fanatic like S. David Freedman gave to TVA's nuclear program which was a wreck when Freedman left TVA.
Such characterizations are 1) untrue 2) irrelevant and 3) self defeating.
Chairmen of the Board do NOT "manage" anything, the board as a whole (not just the Chair) just set policy and hire Presidents.
TVA management got in WAY over their heads (TOO many nukes, too many problems, not enough good experienced managers) and was sinking very badly and Freeman rightfully pulled the plug to keep from killing TVA.#
"anti-nuclear fanatic" ??? What proof for that claim ?
A nuke building industry that fails to recognize that they committed hari-kari and blames others (those evil ...) for their own faults is doomed to repeat the same errors.
# At the time, I thought TVA should have kept building at least one new nuke out of the 11. Kind of like WHOOPS #2 was completed in that comparable fiasco (or did anti-nuke fanatics infiltrate that nuke only organization as well ?)
Alan
Note the initial date: 1966.
That was very early in the ramp-up of nuclear power in the USA, and there has been a lot of experience accumulated since then. Yet despite everything that was not known at the time, it was a good business move to put BF1 back on-line. The 40 years of experience accumulated since then have shown how to operate these plants, and how to build better ones.
The ones at end of life should be, but they've paid their investments back (the earlier, smaller ones paid it back in experience, like Big Rock Point).
Even the pieces of some plants that will never operate are now productive; one of the reactor pressure vessel heads from Midland is now at the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio, and the steam turbines have been running for years (albeit fired by gas).
They were paid back in times of great economic growth, population expansion and energy demand.
Do you care to forecast the economic outlook for "payback" now. I suggest you buy shares in the utility, as they say....you jump first.
Maybe just tossing out the numbers is sufficient or saying "they should".......... trust me I know best.
Real world politics and economic fundamentals are trifling when all you have to do is show there is enough iron ore in the ground to start the ball rolling.
How it will be achieved wouldn't be your concern...would it. Telling us it can will do.
I know it's troll reply but that's how your cornucopian ideals make me feel.
I've been an owner (and reinvestor) in utilities for quite some time, thank you. I'm in for the long haul.
Well that figures......"an owner".
I suppose you gotta look after #1, X has less gall than you.