6 Reasons Why Nuclear Power Can't Save Us

[garybeck]

A new book shows that it is not just the cost of nuke plants and their deadly waste that is the energy source's only problems.

The following is an excerpt from The Transition Handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience by Rob Hopkins

1. Length of time to come on stream

Commissioning and building new plants is a time-consuming business (at least twenty years), so they would have little or no impact on cutting emissions over the next twenty years, nor build any resilience in the face of peak oil.

2. Insurance

The insurance industry refuses to underwrite nuclear power, a gap it looks like the government will have to fill, resulting in a huge invisible subsidy for nuclear power.

3. Waste

Nuclear waste is a huge problem. The UK alone has 10,000 tons of nuclear waste, a pile which will increase 25-fold when the existing plants are decommissioned, with no solution in sight other than deep burial. The disposal of nuclear waste requires a great deal of embodied energy, including that in the materials used to maintain the disposal facilities (i.e. concrete and steel). It is often said that nuclear waste has a half-life of 100,000 years…it is worth remembering that Stonehenge was built only 4,000 years ago.

A society in energy descent, dependent on local, lower embodied energy building materials, will struggle to maintain nuclear waste sites with cob blocks and straw bales.

4. Cost

A new programme of nuclear power would be staggeringly expensive. Amory Lovins has calculated that 10 cents invested in nuclear energy could generate 1kwh of nuclear energy, 1.2- 1.7kwh wind-power, 2.2-6.5kwh small co-generation, or 10kwh of energy efficiency. Also, having sufficient money to invest so unwisely assumes an economy which is still growing, an increasingly unlikely prospect.

5. Peak Uranium

At the moment, there are about 60 years’ worth of uranium left. However, if electricity generation from nuclear grows steadily, this figure will fall, to the point where if all the world’s electricity were generated with nuclear, we’d have around 3 years supply left.

6. Carbon Emissions

Nuclear is often said to be a carbon-free way of generating electricity. While that may be true for the actual generation, it is not when the entire process is looked at. The mining, processing, enrichment, treatment and disposal all have significant impacts, equivalent to around one-third those of a conventional- sized gas-fired generating plant.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/116854/6_reasons_why_nuclear_power_can%27t_save_us/

[sabbat hunter]

1. answers

1) That process can be greatly speeded up
2) proof/links
3) if we reprocesed the fuel like we should, it would eliminate almost all the waste
4) as we invest more money in new technology, ides the price to build reactors will come down
5) We have more than 60 years of uranium left, far more actually. And if we reprocess "Spent" fuel that number is greatly extended. Plus newer nuclear reactors can use other fuels than uranium
6) with reprocessing (At breeder reactors) those emissions from initial processing go down, even with that added in the amount of CO2 emissions is still far lower than in conventional energy plants

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. please elaborate more about #5

60 years is not very long in the scheme of things. Can you make an educated estimate as to how many more years over the afore mentioned 60 that we might can expect?

[Dead_Parrot]

5. It depends on a number of assumptions...

...which I've tried to summarise in post #4: I'd suggest http://www.withouthotair.com/ as a good place to go for real numbers and a more in-depth look.

[bananas]

8. LOL!

:rofl:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=177963&mesg_id=178019

Page 211:
"Engineers at a UK electricity
generator told me that the capital cost of regular dirty coal power stations
is £1 billion per GW, about the same as nuclear"

[Dead_Parrot]

9. Ummm

...which affects uranium reserves how?

:shrug:

[bananas]

11. wikipedia has a couple of long articles on this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_depletion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium

[Dead_Parrot]

13. That's nice

Anything else?

[MannyGoldstein]

3. 2 Is An Actual Problem That's Not Necessarily A Problem

Insurers won't insure reactors because if the things had a catastrophic failure, the costs would be so great that the insurer would be bankrupted. So, even if the a catastrophic failure is very, very unlikely, the insurers can't take the chance. However, our government could absorb the hit.

[Dead_Parrot]

6. Insurers get insurance for that sort of thing...

They take out policies with other insurance companies against a big payout, spreading the liability (some companies like Swiss Re do nothing else but re-insure insurance companies)

There's trillions of dollars in insurance co. assets to tap if they do it right. Unless you are AIG, of course, in which case you just go to the treasury and fill your pockets with cash.

[bananas]

7. All of these are real problems

and wishing them away won't change that.

[MannyGoldstein]

12. Au Contraire

Implementing nuclear electricity generation is solving the problem, not wishing it away. Perhaps other ways to generate power are better solutions - I personally don't know.

[bananas]

20. All of these are real problems for nuclear electricity generation

and some people try to wish them away and pretend they aren't problems.

Yes, there are better ways to generate power.
In 2007, the IPCC concluded that renewables would provide much more electricity than nuclear:

In terms of electricity generation, the IPCC envisage that renewable energy can provide 30 to 35% of electricity by 2030 (up from 18% in 2005) at a carbon price of up to US$50/t, and that nuclear power can rise from 16% to 18%. They also warn that higher oil prices might lead to the exploitation of high-carbon alternatives such as oil sands, oil shales, heavy oils, and synthetic fuels from coal and gas, leading to increasing emissions, unless carbon capture and storage technologies are employed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report

Since then, nuclear has dropped to 14%, and in September 2008 the IAEA estimated it will stay between 12.5%-14% for the next several decades:

But while projections for nuclear power´s future rose, its share of the world´s electricity generation today dropped from 15% in 2006 to 14% in 2007.

"The reason is that while total global electricity generation rose 4.8% from 2007 to 2008, nuclear electricity actually dropped slightly," Rogner commented.

The main reason that nuclear generation dropped was an earthquake in western Japan on 16 July 2007, which shut down all seven reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant - the seven units total 8.2 GW(e), almost one sixth of Japan´s nuclear capacity. There were also several other unusual outages and reductions experienced in Korea and Germany. Finally, the increases in the load factor for the current fleet of reactors appear to have plateaued.

According to the IAEA´s 2008 high projection, growth in nuclear generation will match the 3.2% per year growth in overall generation, and nuclear power´s share therefore will hold steady at 14%. In the low projection, overall electricity growth is lower, but nuclear power´s growth is lower still, and by 2030 nuclear power´s share of global electricity is projected to drop to about 12.5%.

http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2008/np2008.html

Every serious analysis has come to the same conclusion - nuclear will only be a small part of the solution.
If there's another major accident, we might realize it's not needed at all, that we could scale up each of the other parts of the solution a little bit and fill that 12.5%-14%.

[PVnRT]

18. How can it be sped up, short of getting rid of regulations?

It's taken about nine years now to get to the point where we're building a demilitarization plant for chemical weapons here in Kentucky, and the stockpile here is fairly small. The red tape can get cumbersome, but it's there for a reason. If things go wrong with my industry or a nuke plant, it can go VERY wrong.

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Good grief.

Since this is a book from a UK author and UK publisher, and he mentions UK waste, I'll gear my comments to the UK situation:

1. Commissioning and building... At least 20 years
The last reactor built in the UK was Sizewell B, which took 7 years to build: The next reactor likely to be built is an EPR (Sizewell C) built by EDF: The Flamanville 3 EPR reactor was started in 2007 and is slated to finish in 2012. I have no idea where he's getting 20 years from unless he's planning some epic lawsuits. Hey, he probably is.

2. The insurance industry refuses to underwrite nuclear power
Simply not true. UK nuclear liabilities - reactors, fuel shipments reprocessing et al - are managed by Nuclear Risk Insurers Limited, and underwritten by Lloyds. A lot of countries use similar schemes, although the US equivalent is slightly more complicated: The operator is liable for the first ~$100m, the industry's own fund covers the next ~$10b, and the government covers anything over that. To be honest, Price-Anderson dates to the 1950's and probably needs an overhaul.

3. waste is a huge problem
"It is often said that nuclear waste has a half-life of 100,000 years…" Shit, where do you start? It is often said "The Earth is 6000 years old" but that doesn't actually make it true. "Nuclear waste" covers every thing from ²⁴¹Am (in smoke alarms, `430 years half-life) to unused ^99mTc (in medicine, 6 hours half-life - probably more for an irradiated syringe but I'll be buggered if I'm doing more research than this moron). There are also used fuel rods (although the UK has a recycling plant, so it's only "waste" from a skewed perspective), and a small quantity of recycling by-products. It's anybody's guess which he thinks he is referring to.

4. Amory Lovins has calculated...
Amory lovins also said he'd have a hydrogen powered hypercar in showrooms by 2001. And that Wall-mart is green. Now he's saying that an EPR costs $70 billion: It's a wonder he can find his office in the morning.

5. Peak Uranium
Over the years, I've heard everything from 4 years upwards. If we stopped recycling and kept the same number of reactors and the same technology, known reserves add up to about 500 years. Switch to breeder reactors and that goes up to 30,000 years (or 60 times as many reactors for 500 years). Add in ocean uranium and we're pretty much home and dry so long as rocks keep eroding.

6. equivalent to around one-third those of a conventional- sized gas-fired generating plant
Interesting way of measuring it - is that per GW, per reactor, for the UK, or the whole world? What is "conventionl-sized"? And of course he carefully avoids the emissions from other forms of generation... Happily, the real figures can be found from ExternE, which anybody can google up. Hydro is best, Nuclear and wind tied for second, and everything else worse. PV is the worst non-fossil generation.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

10. Wind is a renewable resource and I say we should produce

as much of it as we can.




Funny you should mention "come to steam".

www.blacklightpower.com

[TheWraith]

14. Sigh. From the top...

1. Length of time to come on stream

False. The actual build time is about 5-7 years, not 20.

2. Insurance

The insurance industry DOES underwrite nuclear plants, all the time.

3. Waste

Compare the amount of well-sequestered waste from a nuclear reactor--30 tons per year--versus the amount of waste from an equivalent amount of coal-fired power: 693,000 tons of fly ash and sludge, all of it simply dumped into the environment.

And those who "often say" describe nuclear waste has a half-life of 100,000 years are "often" wrong. The largest amount of the radiation comes from isotopes with half-lives of around 30 years.

4. Cost

Amory Lovins is a greenwasher whose entire career is built on making sure that nobody really sees a need to change the way we produce energy. He bolts solar panels onto a Walmart and declares it environmentally friendly. His biggest financiers are BP, Chevron, Dow Chemical, GM, Monsanto, Royal Dutch/Shell, Wal-Mart, et al. He's paid to tell the public that everything's a-okay and a dozen or so solar panels 50 years from now will fix everything, and that it's far better to keep polluting with coal and lead than to look at real alternatives. His "figures" are a fantasy.

5. Peak Uranium

No, by all agreements there's about 400 years supply of uranium left, and--even by the most pessimistic estimates--50 years of reserves to supply all world energy. That's not counting replenishment of reserves, or the fact that the technology has been developed to extract uranium from seawater... yielding a supply in excess of 4,000 years. And that's without counting reprocessing.

6. Carbon Emissions

By that standard, there's no such thing as "clean" energy. The same factually dubious qualifications can apply to wind and solar power. In reality though, attributing outside emissions due to construction, et al is the wrong way to go about it since with other clean forms of energy these emissions can also be replaced with non-emitting methods.

[kristopher]

15. And how long did planning siting and permitting take?

Nuclear is not a preferred solution to global warming:

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering impacts of the solutions on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, reliability, thermal pollution, water pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

To place electricity and liquid fuel options on an equal footing, twelve combinations of energy sources and vehicle type were considered.

The overall rankings of the combinations (from highest to lowest) were
(1) wind-powered battery-electric vehicles (BEVs),
(2) wind-powered hydrogen fuel cell vehicles,
(3) concentrated-solar-powered-BEVs,

(4) geothermal-powered-BEVs,
(5) tidal-powered-BEVs,
(6) solar-photovoltaic-powered-BEVs,

(7) wave-powered-BEVs,
(8) hydroelectric-powered-BEVs,

(9-tie) nuclear-powered-BEVs,
(9-tie) coal-with-carbon-capture-powered-BEVs,

(11) corn-E85 vehicles, and
(12) cellulosic-E85 vehicles.

The relative ranking of each electricity option for powering vehicles also applies to the electricity source providing general electricity. Because sufficient clean natural resources (e.g., wind, sunlight, hot water, ocean energy, etc.) exist to power the world for the foreseeable future, the results suggest that the diversion to less-efficient (nuclear, coal with carbon capture) or non-efficient (corn- and cellulosic E85) options represents an opportunity cost that will delay solutions to global warming and air pollution mortality. The sound implementation of the recommended options requires identifying good locations of energy resources, updating the transmission system, and mass-producing the clean energy and vehicle technologies, thus cooperation at multiple levels of government and industry.


4b.
...The time between planning and operation of a nuclear power plant includes the time to obtain a site and construction permit, the time between construction permit approval and issue, and the construction time of the plant. In March, 2007, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the first request for a site permit in 30 yr. This process took 3.5 yr. The time to review and approve a construction permit is another 2 yr and the time between the construction permit approval and issue is about 0.5 yr. Thus, the minimum time for preconstruction approvals (and financing) is 6 yr. We estimate the maximum time as 10 yr. The time to construct a nuclear reactor depends significantly on regulatory requirements and costs. Because of inflation in the 1970s and more stringent safety regulation on nuclear power plants placed shortly before and after the Three-Mile Island accident in 1979, US nuclear plant construction times increased from around 7 yr in 1971 to 12 yr in 1980.63 The median construction time for reactors in the US built since 1970 is 9 yr.64 US regulations have been streamlined somewhat, and nuclear power plant developers suggest that construction costs are now lower and construction times shorter than they have been historically. However, projected costs for new nuclear reactors have historically been underestimated64 and construction costs of all new energy facilities have recently risen. Nevertheless, based on the most optimistic future projections of nuclear power construction times of 4–5 yr65 and those times based on historic data,64 we assume future construction times due to nuclear power plants as 4–9 yr. Thus, the overall time between planning and operation of a nuclear power plant ranges from 10–19 yr.



Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009 DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=EE&Year=2009&ManuscriptID=b809990c&Iss=Advance_Article

[TheWraith]

16. Try looking in a country whose regulators aren't controlled by the coal industry.

You'll find that it's not nearly as difficult as you'd like to believe.

[PVnRT]

19. That's build time. What about design? Regulatory approvals?

Those things take years and multiple rounds of government reviews.

[Dogmudgeon]

17. Number Seven

#7: Most musicians, actors, and aging counterculturists (a.k.a. "plastic hippies") don't like nuclear energy.

It can't save us because, doggone it, we don't LIKE it! And what we don't like must not be permitted!

--p!
We're so sincere, we CAN'T be wrong!

[Laelth]

21. Sounds like nonsense to me.

The following is not nonsense (for those who are interested):

We do know, however, that from a design perspective, 4th generation nuclear facilities will cost substantially less, as we are no longer relying on LWR technology. We also know they won’t produce a waste issue, since they are designed to recycle their own waste, and, indeed, will solve our existing waste issue, as it would be used as fuel. Once we make the shift to thorium from uranium we won’t even face non-proliferation risks.
What we should do is declare a moratorium on existing 2 gen facilities, such as what Areva wants to build here in the US. Areva prefers old technology because they have built their business around it (both front end and back end). Instead, let’s go ahead and build new 4 gen facilities, with both Fast Reactor technology and Thorium. Let those two compete for market share.
You will then find nuclear to be far more cost competitive, and far better for the environment. And, yes, we can do it before 2020. In ten years we can have them up and running. All we need is some leadership.

http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/05/study-cost-risks-new-nuclear-power-plants

Wind Power BLOWS.

See the following:
http://www.keepersoftheblueridge.com/faqs.html
http://www.nortexwind.org/index.htm
http://www.stopillwind.org/index.php
http://windconcernsontario.wordpress.com/
http://www.savewesternny.org/
http://www.epaw.org/

Or just watch this series of videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNxvkrgoPLo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_utFV2ukOtU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOd5tSZF3A4&feature=related

There's more, but you get the idea. :)

The United States is a LIBERAL Country.

:dem:

-Laelth