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58 comments on The Trouble With Energy - Part 3.
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58 comments on The Trouble With Energy - Part 3.
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There's an unstated assumption in the figures for nuclear that I would call everyone's attention to:
Fission of 1 tonne of metal yields approximately 1 GW-year of electric power (depending on the thermal efficiency of the rest of the system). Actual fission of 65,000 tons/year of uranium would indicate a nuclear electric power production of roughly 65 TW, give or take.
Obviously, actual nuclear electric generation is a tiny fraction of this figure. This shows that the above figures assume (but do not state) a once-through cycle in thermal-neutron reactors. Fast breeder reactors could increase the available energy by a factor of roughly 100. (The resource figures may also assume no increase in the price of uranium, which is only a small part of the total price of nuclear power. The price of uranium could increase tenfold and not increase the cost of power noticeably. This would obviously increase the amount available.)
Last, thorium is not listed as a resource. Thorium-232 is 100% convertible to U-233, which is fissile (only 0.7% of natural uranium is fissile). Also, thorium is about 4x as abundant as uranium. The addition of thorium to the nuclear energy base increases the total energy supply by a factor of roughly 400 over the once-through thermal-neutron uranium cycle.
Engineer poet
You are correct the assumption is based on current conventional once through light water reactors.
I agree, thorium breeder reactors present a means to significantly increase generation capacity and fossil fuel resource life. They were not included because they currently do not exist as an option. They will almost certainly be part of the energy mix when we are through with coal, oil and gas.
The purpose of this analysis was to highlight the need for some serious consideration of these energy alternatives that will bridge the time gap between fossil fuel exhaustion and a fully renewable energy based economy. Realistically, if we started on a thorium breeder reactor program today (I believe India has commenced some work) it will be 15 years before the first full scale reactor is operational and 30 years before they are being commissioned in sufficient quantities to have a mitigating effect on the problem we are trying to address.
phoenix,
There are reactors operating now as breeders and some designs such as Candu reactors can use thorium/U238 not as a breeder but to stretch out U235 fuel. They don't have to be operating now, we have lots of uranium available, even at today's relatively low prices. When prices rise to $300-500/Kg then breeders and thorium reactors will make more sense.
Here is a link to Barry Brook's post on the topic
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/30/rethinking-nuclear-power/#more-1316
The other consideration is China's plans for nuclear are fairly ambitious at least after 2015 assuming the present 25 or so reactors planned or under construction are completed on time and on budget.
There's a small company called Thorium Power who are pushing a nuclear rod design that uses Thorium and can be inserted in existing reactors if 'm reading their marketing schpeel correctly... Sounds like a possible stop-gap...
I don't think we have scratched the surface of what can or will be done yet -nuclear is going to be a big chunk of the solution IMO because:
1. It is a base-load technology
2. It is scaleable to the sorts of power levels we need
3. It was the solution we went for before, France has proved it can work and BIG GOVERNMENT can control it.
On the negative side its an electrical solution and it has -shall we say- "an image issue"...
Nick.
"On the negative side its an electrical solution and it has -shall we say- "an image issue"..."
It does indeed. Today, nuclear proponents here and elsewhere are saying that it is perfectly safe and will be essentially free (especially given the scientific breakthroughs that are "right around the corner") and will not be targets of terror or sources of material for nuclear weapons.
It seems to me that I have heard this before from the same industry. How many times should we fall for this? You nuke proponents certainly have your work cut out for you.
All it will take is one serious breakdown and that is the end of the nuclear industry. One terrorist bombing, one shipment of fuel diverted to a 'rogue state' one core containment 'event'.
The costs associated with building conventional, light water plants cannot be wished away. Added to this is the uncertainty over liability. For some strange reason, the US tolerates + 40,000 fatalities on the highway every year. The same public will not tolerate less than fail safe performance of reactors.
Until the liability issues are resolved it is hard to see any public embrace of nuclear power. Some of the new designs show a great deal of promise, but these must be tested and assurance given that this inherent safety isn't compromised by scaling of plant production.
These are all stupendously expensive plants, who will pay, both for the plants themselves as well as cover the all important liability? The government is heading toward insolvency. The ratepayers won't shoulder the cost and allow themselves to be stuck with liabilities at the same time.
This is a concept killer. It put Shoreham in Long Island out of business. It is the reason no new nuclear plants have been built in the US since Three Mile Island. Electric utilities sell convenience. Selling anything else is difficult ... unless the power industry can figure out how to put nuclear power stations into the backs of peoples' cars.
On the other hand, strong opinions will soften when the beer gets warm and the television goes off.
You think so?
I didn't mean to make this whole thread about nuclear, but we really do need to separate the facts from the propaganda.
Gotta admit, though. The whole thing keeps lots of lawyers rich, and politicians are almost always lawyers...
Who knows? Maybe because cars and trucks are quite practical and nuclear power plants are actually not the only option to generate energy for a hot coffee or a warm shower or some lighting.
So if the huge capital costs were not to blame, why did they have to pass laws forcing consumers to pay for the capital costs of new nuclear power plants in advance?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89169837
They don't exist as a commercial offering, but thorium/U-233 has been tested as a fuel both in a light-water reactor (Shippingport) and a molten-salt reactor (the final run of the MSRE). The MSRE already proved out the metallurgy, chemistry and neutron economy needed to verify the concept, so the next step could be commercial-scale even after 40 years of no work.
MSRs lend themselves to rapid construction (the MSRE was built in 4 years), so a large-scale deployment starting in 2015 is far from impossible.
Currently fission of 1 tonne of uranium yields 0.0045 GW-year of electric power:
Total nuclear electricity production 2006 worldwide:
2,658,000 GWh
Total uranium demand worldwide:
67,000 tons
http://www.cfr.org/publication/14705/global_uranium_supply_and_demand.html
= 0.0045 GW-year
This is not the case with nuclear reactors commercially available now:
stockinterview.com/News/06082007/nuclear-fuel-conference-uranium-price.html
Dr. Kim opened our eyes.
He told his audience that fuel is four to five times the ‘hyped’ cost of nuclear power – between 20 and 25 percent instead of the mere five percent.
He announced, “At $1000/pound for uranium, a nuclear utility’s fuel cost would rise to $70/MWH compared to $5/MWH at legacy contract prices of about $20/pound.
Dr. Kim shot down the premature conclusion that utilities would rather pay the high prices instead of going through a costly decommissioning process. He said, “There is no compulsion to immediately decommission – stations can be held in standby or cold shutdown.”
Finally, he took up the matter of ‘utilities not caring about fuel costs.’ He pointed out, “Take $900 million from your company’s annual net profits. See how happy your management is.”
Because of what we've previously been led to believe, we questioned his numbers and conclusions. So we asked TradeTech’s Gene Clark for a second opinion. Clark emailed back and confirmed Dr. Kim’s calculations were accurate, writing, “At $1000/lb U3O8, I get $86.6/MWh total, but $16.6 is the carrying cost. Without the carrying cost, it’s exactly $70.”
Besides that fast breeder reactors are not commercially available (even though they have been working on them for decades), it's doubtful that they can compete with the capital costs and building speed of renewable and efficiency options which are available NOW and do not need to buy any fuel at all.