GOP looks to lift ban on new nuclear plants

[kristopher]

Because the GOP is home to all the warm hearted real environmentalists who are sooooo concerned about climate change, donchya know...

GOP looks to lift ban on new nuclear plants

But Gov. Dayton has said the U.S. government must decide where to store waste before new plants are built in the state.

By ERIC ROPER, Star Tribune

Has Minnesota's nuclear power moratorium met its match?

Armed with majorities in the Minnesota House and Senate, Republican lawmakers in both chambers plan to introduce bills Monday to lift the state's nearly two-decade moratorium on building nuclear power plants, one of the most restrictive measures in the nation.

Similar efforts have been launched during recent legislative sessions with limited results, but the influx of newly elected Republicans into the Capitol may finally provide enough support for passage.

A House committee has already scheduled a hearing on the bill for Tuesday....

http://www.startribune.com/politics/local/113180954.html?elr=KArks:DCiUo3PD:3D_V_qD3L:c7cQKUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aU7DYaGEP7vDEh7P:DiUs

[madokie]

1. Why do some continue to advocate for more nuclear power when they have no answers

for the question of what to do with the highly radioactive and very dangerous waste. I'll take my chances with renewables, wind and solar any day. We were asking this question about the waste 40 years ago and getting a run around then same as now.
When pencil is put to paper there is no way that nuclear power can deliver us from CO2 continuing to rise in the near term and damn sure isn't in the long term.

+1
on edit: a lot of good my rec done, but then again I'm not surprised.

[joshcryer]

3. I believe in sustainable nuclear power that burns up nuclear waste.

I believe, actually, that it would be irresponsible to keep the level of waste we have around for 100k years when we can reduce the byproducts of that "waste" to a small fraction of what it was before with most of the radioactivity lasting 300 years.

[DCKit]

2. Symbolic gesture when you can't attract the $7billion in financing for each plant. nt

[joshcryer]

4. Maybe Minnesota can be convinced to invest in LFTR or IFR research.

Doubtful, as we're lucky when we have Democratic congressmen or senators who know shit about nuclear power (like former congressman Joe Sestak), GOPers even know less (McCain's knowledge on the subject was laughable). They just "like" nuclear power because "liberals don't." They never extend the actual loans necessary to get them building again.

[madokie]

5. If it was a smart choice

Minnesotans wouldn't need convincing.
Just sayin'

[jpak]

6. "the U.S. government must decide where to store waste" - why can't the nuclear industry decide?

Why must the taxpayers shell out billions to store and dispose this stuff?

Can you say corporate welfare?

Dumbass pro-nuke repug hypocrites

yup

[madokie]

7. exactly

They want their cake and eat it too.
If it wasn't for corporate welfare none of the nuclear power plants we have today would exist. I think that would be a fair statement.
If raygun and his goons hadn't scrapped/destroyed President Carters way forward concerning our energy we wouldn't be in this CO2 mess we're in today and thats a fact.

[Nederland]

8. Uh, because that would be illegal?

The Nuclear Industry lacks the legal authority to decide where to store waste--that decision can only be made by the federal government. Imagine the outcry in this forum if the nuclear industry did in fact have the legal authority to decide where to store the waste and said "Hey, we've decided to store our waste in the backyard's of jpak, madokie, and kristopher...".

As far as having the nuclear industry pay for disposal, I agree. However, are you aware that utilities pay a tax of one tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour generated in nuclear reactors, a tax that is supposed to pay for nuclear waste disposal? Are you aware that this tax has generated over 30 billion dollars in revenue since it was created? Yes, the federal government squandered that money and more in building Yucca Mountain, but you can't blame the nuclear industry for federal government screw ups.

Well, apparently you can...

[jpak]

11. Ummm - thanks to Ronald Reagen the taxpayers own that waste

and the Nuclear Waste Fund will ultimately bring in $30 billion for spent fuel disposal.

and the last estimate for building the Yucca Mountain spent fuel repository was $100 billion - and don't tell me that the nuclear industry would do any better.

The real government screw-up was to license nuclear power plants in the first place without any clear plan for spent fuel disposal.

Corporate Welfare

yup!

[kristopher]

16. +1

[Nederland]

18. Response

Ummm - thanks to Ronald Reagen the taxpayers own that waste and the Nuclear Waste Fund will ultimately bring in $30 billion for spent fuel disposal and the last estimate for building the Yucca Mountain spent fuel repository was $100 billion - and don't tell me that the nuclear industry would do any better.

Let's see... You think Ronald Reagan screwed up when he took possession of the waste, but you don't think the nuclear industry would do any better. So what exactly is your solution?

The real government screw-up was to license nuclear power plants in the first place without any clear plan for spent fuel disposal.

Now I get it. Your solution is to invent a time machine and then go back and prevent the nuclear waste from ever being created. Brilliant plan.

[jpak]

19. Can't fix stupid

nope

[Nederland]

20. So you have no plan to deal with the waste...

...and you oppose any plan to try and make the situation better.

Fair summary?

[kristopher]

23. The first step is to not make the problem worse.

From a presentation by John Holdren.

The nuclear option: size of the challenges

• If world electricity demand grows 2% /year until 2050 and nuclear share of electricity supply is to rise from 1/6 to 1/3...
–nuclear capacity would have to grow from 350 GWe in 2000 to 1700 GWe in 2050;
– this means 1,700 reactors of 1,000 MWe each.

• If these were light-water reactors on the once-through fuel cycle...
---–enrichment of their fuel will require ~250 million Separative Work Units (SWU);
---–diversion of 0.1% of this enrichment to production of HEU from natural uranium would make ~20 gun-type or ~80 implosion-type bombs.

• If half the reactors were recycling their plutonium...
---–the associated flow of separated, directly weapon - usable plutonium would be 170,000 kg per year;
---–diversion of 0.1% of this quantity would make ~30 implosion-type bombs.

• Spent-fuel production in the once-through case would be...
---–34,000 tonnes/yr, a Yucca Mountain every two years.

Mitigation of Human-Caused Climate Change
John P. Holdren

Repeating that conclusion: Expanding nuclear enough to take a modest bite out of the climate problem is conceivable, *but* doing so will depend on greatly increased seriousness in addressing the waste-management & proliferation challenges.

[Nederland]

29. Fair enough

It is logical for a person with your opinion of nuclear power to oppose new plants. That being said, even you cannot deny the problem of existing waste. Am I right in assuming that you oppose Yucca Mountain? If that is true, what is your plan for dealing with existing nuclear waste?

[jpak]

28. When one finds oneself in a hole, it is wise to stop digging

stop making it

Then bill nuclear plant owners for every penny it takes to dispose of this stuff.

and their kids

and their kids

and their kids

and their kids

until it has decayed away

yup

[Nederland]

30. Ok, so we stop digging

We stop building more nuclear plants. Then what? What is your plan for dealing with existing nuclear waste?

[jpak]

32. Why are you asking me? It's pro-nuclears that have to propose a safe means to dispose spent fuel

that doesn't cost taxpayers and ratepayers a penny and doesn't pick on small politically weak states/locales and ensures that those waste products will remain in place for 240.000 years.

yup

[Nederland]

35. Pro-nuclears did propose a solution: Yucca Mountain

Anti-nukes rejected it by requiring that waste products remain in place for 240,000 years. Since any claim that waste would remain "safe" for that long is impossible to verify, anti-nukes ensured that they would always have a reason to block any proposal--which is precisely what they wanted. For any given spot on the planet and any construction plan you come up with you can always find a geologist or an engineer that will tell you why it won't work. Find a good enough set of lawyers and you can keep any solution from being implemented indefinitely.

[jpak]

36. The geology was unacceptable, the Nuclear Waste Fund would only pay for a fraction of the cost

and it was foisted on Nevada against its wishes.

The nuclear waste problem is intractable for all the reasons you stated.

The pro-nucular plan - sweep it under the rug, make someone else pays for it, and make their great great grand children have to deal with the consequences.

yup!

[GliderGuider]

37. It seems to me that Oklo points toward a secure approach

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

It is estimated that nuclear reactions in the uranium in centimeter- to meter-sized veins consumed about five tons of 235U and elevated temperatures to a few hundred degrees Celsius.<3><5> Remarkably, most of the non-volatile fission products and actinides have only moved centimeters in the veins during the last 2 billion years.<3> This offers a case study of how radioactive isotopes migrate through the Earth's crust<6>—a significant area of controversy as opponents of geologic nuclear waste disposal fear that releases from stored waste could end up in water supplies or be carried into the environment."

Would two billion years meet with your approval?

[jpak]

44. Yeah - and remarkably all the volatile/soluble fission products migrated

try again

[GliderGuider]

46. It's not "the" answer.

It's pointer to the probability that an answer exists.

It's like bird wings. None of our commercial aircraft use flexible, feather-covered, muscle-powered wings. But their existence was a pointer to the fact that winged flight was possible. It was just a question of figuring out what qualities of bird wings were important, and which could be re-engineered to be more practical.

I see a parallel with Oklo.

[Nederland]

39. So you admit you believe the nuclear waste problem is intractable?

So you insist that nuclear industry come up with a solution for a problem that you believe has no acceptable solution.

This strikes you as a reasonable position?

Please, the problem is only intractable because you have defined it to be intractable. There is absolutely no reason to insist that a waste storage site have to safely store waste for 240,000 years. A site that can store waste safely for a mere 5000 years is way better than what we have today, so why not build to that requirement? The anti-nuke argument that because we cannot come up with a "perfect" solution we should do nothing at all is completely indefensible.

We are perfectly capable of doing better, but anti-nukes refuse to let the industry even try.

[GliderGuider]

41. It's like insisting that wind turbines must not ever kill a single bird.

It's just another way of being an obstructionist. It really looks like table-pounding.

"If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table."

[jpak]

47. Yes it is - so let's stop making it

FYI - the half-life of 239-Pu is still 24,360 years and will require 10 half-lifes to decay to negligible levels.

"but anti-nukes refuse to let the industry even try."

The nuclear industry will produce the cheapest easiest "solutiion" that benefits THEIR bottom line - not the "solution" that benefits current or future generations.

yup

[RC]

9. It has to do with being able to make nuclear bombs from the 'waste'.

That is why the government is so heavily involved. Corporate welfare? Can you imagine a nuclear BP dealing with its own nuclear waste?
I don't know about you, but I don't think that is a very good idea.

We are running out of fossil fuels. Renewable fuels are too energy dependent to take up the slack. Plus we need that land that they need to grow our own food.
Wind is not reliable. And solar is only part time. These can pick up some of the slack, but none are the answer, not even collectively.
That leaves Nuclear. France is doing a good job here. They also recycle the 'waste' into new fuel. We do not.
The new designs are quite efficient and safe. And they don't pollute. No scrubbers, no CO₂.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[GliderGuider]

12. "Pursuing nuclear power actually slows the transition away from fossil fuels."

Prove it.

[kristopher]

13. Prove nuclear is needed.

[GliderGuider]

14. Nice try.

Stupid and transparent, but I'll give you an "E" for effort.

You have claimed repeatedly that building nuclear power will slow down the transition away from fossil fuels. It's time for you to prove it.

[kristopher]

15. Nice try, but I did that on my first reply post this thread (#10).

That is precisely what "opportunity costs" means.

Now, prove that nuclear is needed.

[GliderGuider]

17. I've corrected your assertion about opportunity cost before.

In the context of a full program build-out of either nuclear or wind, the opportunity costs are insignificant.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=269039&mesg_id=269197




And from http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=269039&mesg_id=269202

Now, if we built 2 GWe of wind instead of one each of wind and nuclear, we would avoid (0.468*2)= 0.936 Mt of CO2. Since the nuke contributes 0 avoidance during the month, the opportunity cost of building one GWe each of wind and nuclear (in the scenario where 1 GWe of each is coming on line each month) is the amount avoided by building the second GWe of wind generation, or 0.468 Mt. This is the CO2 emission that could have been avoided if we had built all wind instead of the second nuke.

Now, let's give our derived figure of 0.486 Mt per month a bit of perspective. World emissions of CO2 are about 30 Gt per year, or 2500 Mt per month. That means that the CO2 opportunity cost of our current build program is 0.02%.

You have presented no evidence that two build paths are mutually exclusive or that the building of nuclear power will result in the generation of significantly more CO2 than a wind program (I claim that a difference of 0.02% is insignificant). Even Jacobson's statement about relative benefits is not quantified, and is a simple assertion.

Prove your point.

[joshcryer]

21. Nicely done, GG.

[kristopher]

22. You did nothing but make up a meaningless bunch of babble - as was shown to you

Let us know when you get that garbage through peer review (as Jacobson's article has been peer reviewed) and then we will know that you are right and I'm wrong. Of course, since you've produced nothing here but nonsensical garbage with a pseudo-scientific bent to it, we both know that any reviewer would reject it out of hand.

To repeat the relevant critique from below for emphasis:
Your supposed analysis completely fails to factor in the duration of the non-productive commitment of resources required to actually begin generating electricity. All you've done is use sophistry to try and hide your omission.
You have not performed an analysis of the opportunity costs of the relevant technologies; all you've done is try to hide the facts behind a lot of made-up nonsense that is designed to (falsely) portray nuclear as being equal to the renewable/efficiency path. Your supposed analysis completely fails to factor in the duration of the non-productive commitment of resources required to actually begin generating electricity. All you've done is use sophistry to try and hide your omission.

4b. Carbon emissions due to opportunity cost from planning-to-
operation delays

The investment in an energy technology with a long time between planning and
operation increases carbon dioxide and air pollutant emissions relative to a
technology with a short time between planning and operation. This occurs because
the delay permits the longer operation of higher-carbon emitting existing power
generation, such as natural gas peaker plants or coal-fired power plants, until their
replacement occurs. In other words, the delay results in an opportunity cost in
terms of climate- and air-pollution-relevant emissions. In the future, the power mix
will likely become cleaner; thus, the "opportunity-cost emissions" will probably
decrease over the long term. Ideally, we would model such changes over time.
However, given that fossil-power construction continues to increase worldwide
simultaneously with expansion of cleaner energy sources and the uncertainty of the
rate of change, we estimate such emissions based on the current power mix.

The time between planning and operation of a technology includes the time to site,
finance, permit, insure, construct, license, and connect the technology to the utility
grid. 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. The time between planning and
operation of a wind farm includes a development and construction period. The
develop- ment period, which includes the time required to identify a site, purchase
or lease the land, monitor winds, install transmission, negotiate a power-purchase
agreement, and obtain permits, can take from 0.5–5 yr, with more typical times
from 1–3 yr. The construction period for a small to medium wind farm (15 MW or
less) is 1 year and for a large farm is 1–2 yr.66 Thus, the overall time between
planning and operation of a large wind farm is 2–5 yr.

snip

Results of this analysis are summarized in Table 3. For solar-PV, CSP, and wind, the
opportunity cost was zero since these all had the lowest CO2e emissions due to
delays. Wave and tidal had an opportunity cost only because the lifetimes of these
technologies are shorter than those of the other technologies due to the harsh
conditions of being on the surface or under ocean water, so replacing wave and
tidal devices will occur more frequently than replacing the other devices, increasing
down time of the former.

Although hydroelectric power plants have very long lifetimes, the time between
their planning and initial operation is substantial, causing high opportunity cost
CO2e emissions for them. The same problem arises with nuclear and coal-CCS
plants. For nuclear, the opportunity CO2e is much larger than the lifecycle
CO2e. Coal-CCS’s opportunity-cost CO2e is much smaller than its lifecycle CO2e.
In sum, the technologies that have moderate to long lifetimes and that can be
planned and installed quickly are those with the lowest opportunity cost CO2e
emissions.

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security
Mark Z. Jacobson*
www.rsc.org/ees | Energy & Environmental Science

Full article available for download here:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm

All calculations on the technologies included refurbishing and retrofiting the technologies out to a 100 year window.

After calculating the emissions for all technologies out to 100 years they then take the technology with the least emissions and subtract from that the emissions of each of the other technologies. This yields the “opportunity-cost” CO2e emissions for those technologies.

Of course the lowest emitter has no opportunity costs.

[GliderGuider]

24. There's a difference between Mark J's analysis and mine that makes all the difference

Jacobson's analysis is for the construction of a single plant or wind farm, while mine is for a build program.

The salient fact about build programs is that they consist of large numbers of individual projects at different stages in the life cycle. This overlap of stages is what makes the difference. Jacobson's analysis is valid, but only for the construction of a single installation. The only way this result could be extended to a build program is if we were to assume that the construction of each subsequent installation was fully serialized (i.e. each build dosn't begin until the previous one is fully complete). In the real world this doesn't happen. In actual practice the non-productive planning and construction portions of one build are overlapped by the productive operational portions of previous builds that were done in parallel. The result is a massive reduction of the opportunity cost when the entire build program is considered.

Jacobson's analysis is technically correct but meaningless in practice.

[kristopher]

25. The "overlap" makes no difference.

Each committed dollar for a nuclear plant must wait 12+- years to begin producing electricity. it doesn't matter how they are staggered, the opportunity cost is still paid on a unit by unit basis. Jacobson's analysis is correct.

[GliderGuider]

27. Run the numbers.

Jacobson's analysis is technically correct, but in the context of the real world, it doesn't make any difference.

Why don't you run the CO2 numbers with a published set of assumptions and prove me wrong? Unless you do that, Jacobson's analysis remains qualitative, and your support is little but hero worship.

[GliderGuider]

33. Committed funds aren't unavailable for other purposes.

During the planning stages of a reactor project the funds that will be used for construction are not simply sitting idle. They would typically be simply re-invested (i.e. turned loose in the financial community to be loaned to other projects). Any project manager or CFO that allowed billions of dollars to sit idle for a decade would be fired on the spot.

Here's an example. Say I'm the CFO of a nuclear construction company that is contracted to build 102 nukes over 25 years. The planning delay will be 5 years per plant, and the construction period is 4 years. The cost per plant will be 5 billion dollars, with $0.2B/year spent during the planning phase and $1B/yr spent during the construction phase. The plan is to phase the build in batches of 6 plants, with each new batch starting a year after the previous one. The resulting program cash phasing is shown in the graph:



As you can see, the maximum cash requirement for the program is $30 billion, but due to planning delays doesn't reach that level until year 9. Now let's say the Board of Directors and the bank were complete dicks and insisted I borrow the entire $30B up front. In that case the blue part of the graph could represent a dollar-denominated opportunity cost (to distinguish it from the CO2 opportunity cost I examined in earlier posts). As a good CFO what do I do with the blue money - especially the first 9 years' worth?

Well, as a good CFO I put that money to good use. I know from the build plan how much I'll need in each of the first 9 years, and that I can re-invest any funds that are surplus to my yearly requirements.

Down the street is a wind company that also has a contract for turbines. I give their CFO a call and offer to invest any surplus funds with him for enough to pay the original interest plus a bit. He says sure, takes my money and begins building wind turbines with it. As the loans mature the wind company repays them, and I put them into my build program.

There is essentially no financial opportunity cost related to planning delays. The turbines get built, the nukes get built, CO2 is avoided and everybody is happy.

So we have a situation with no CO2 opportunity cost and no financial opportunity cost. I'm becoming more and more disillusioned with MZJ's acumen.

[RC]

26. That is a ridicules statement on its face.

"Pursuing nuclear power actually slows the transition away from fossil fuels."

Any alternative power source will help the move away from fossil fuels for power generation. Nuclear power for electrical power generation will free up coal/oil/gas for other uses than simply burning it for its heat content. This also will leave more renewables for where they are really needed as in mobile uses where you need a compact high energy source, as in vehicles that can travel 400+ miles @ 70 MPH, without refueling. Wind and solar can't do this. Batteries can't do it.

[Nederland]

31. Not really

I can't believe I'm actually going to defend Kristopher here.

While I disagree with him both on the dangers of nuclear and capabilities of wind and solar, I do believe that this statement is a perfectly logical conclusion if you assume he is right about a couple things. If you assume as he does that renewables alone can provide an energy solution and that building nuclear reactors will remain very costly and very time consuming, pursuing nuclear does slow the transition away from fossil fuels. This is because if you can build wind farms at a rate that is faster than nuclear plants, then building those nuclear plants instead of wind farms means you aren't replacing fossil fuel plants as quickly as you could. Of course, he is also assuming that construction resources are completely fungible (a very bad assumption - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility), but on the whole I understand why he says what he does.

[GliderGuider]

34. That depends on what the rate-limiting factor is.

There are lots of factors that go into building energy systems: money, physical materials, transportation infrastructure, specialized human resources, sites, policy etc. You end up in a "Liebig's Law of the Minimum" situation, where the first scarce factor is rate-limiting. What's the limiting factor in this situation?

It's not money. As I point out in a post above, both wind and nuclear programs can co-exist to some degree on the same money pot. In terms of capital cost per megawatt the two technologies are very similar.
It's not human resources, because the skill sets don't overlap - that goes to the fungibility point you raise.
It might be materials, but there the advantage goes to nuclear because wind power uses 8 times the concrete and 40 times as much steel as nuclear per generated megawatt. The same goes for the transportation required to move all the material out to the construction sites.
The siting question is pretty much moot - wind power needs open space and good winds, nuclear power needs cooling water.

As far as I can tell, that leaves policy as the main intrinsic rate-limiting factor.

[Nederland]

38. In the long run what you say is true

In the short run it is not. You skipped over one rate limiting factor: industrial capacity. Right now there are a limited number of factories that make wind turbines, so in the short term you have a limit to how many new turbines you can install every year. Likewise, for nuclear you have a limited number of forging facilities that can produce reactor vessels, which means you also have a short term limit to how many new reactors you can install every year. This limiting factor is more significant for nuclear because right now Japan Steel Works is the only facility in the world capable of forging a reactor pressure vessel. They can only make four new vessels a year, and they are fully booked for years to come. Yes, in the long run you can always build more industrial capacity, but I believe the time it takes to ramp up capacity for wind is much less than the time for nuclear. (Not sure about that, and I could be convinced otherwise given evidence...)

New, smaller output reactor designs that do not required special forging facilities could go a long way to rectifying this problem.

[GliderGuider]

40. Industrial capacity is always going to be a problem for big projects.

I looked up pressure vessel forging and found that JSW is listed as having an annual capacity of 6 and China has twice that. Others are on the horizon.

The very heavy forging capacity in operation today is in Japan (Japan Steel Works), China (China First Heavy Industries and China Erzhong) and Russia (OMZ Izhora).

New capacity is being built by JSW and JCFC in Japan, Shanghai Electric Group (SEC) and subsidiaries in China, and in South Korea (Doosan), France (Le Creusot), Czech Rep (Pilsen) and Russia (OMZ Izhora and ZiO-Podolsk).

New capacity is planned in UK (Sheffield Forgemasters) and India (Larsen & Toubro, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Bharat Forge Ltd). In China the Harbin Boiler Co. and SEC subsidiary SENPE are increasing capacity.

It looks as though people are expecting a surge in reactor construction, but even this won't keep the ice caps from melting.

[Nederland]

42. Interesting

My source for forging facilities was this: http://www.whatisnuclear.com/articles/renaissance.html

However, intuitively your source seems to make more sense to me. I find it extremely unlikely that Russia and China would be completely dependent on the Japanese for making new vessels. Do you have a link?

[GliderGuider]

43. Sorry, I left the link out. Here it is:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf122_heavy_manufacturing_of_power_plants.html

[kristopher]

45. the same dollar doesn't buy two products simultaniously

Your entire line of reasoning is specious. As you often point out when you are trying to bad-mouth renewables because of the scale of the task, the money to be invested is limited.

When that money is spent on renewables it produces electricity long before it produces electricity with nuclear.

When that money is spent on nuclear, it is sitting in the partially completed plant for years as planning and construction proceeds.

This means that far more capacity can be brought online faster with renewables than with nuclear. It matters.

Nuclear power’s potential climate solution is further restricted by its inherent slowness of deployment (in capacity or annual output added per year), as confirmed by market data below. And its higher relative cost than nearly all competitors, per unit of net CO2 displaced, means that every dollar invested in nuclear expansion will worsen climate change by buying less solution per dollar.
The reason is simple: you can’t spend the same dollar on two different things at the same time. (Economists call this “opportunity cost”—making any investment foregoes others.) New nuclear power costs far more than its distributed competitors, so it buys far less coal displacement per dollar than the competing investments it stymies. Let’s take this argument in two graphical steps built on the cost comparison in Fig. 1 above. One can quibble about many details of the numbers, but their qualitative message is incontrovertible. As the Italian proverb says, L’aritmetica non è un’opinione (arithmetic is not an opinion).

snip

Advocates often plead for “retaining the nuclear option” rather than “abandoning” or “closing off” new nuclear build. But “keeping the nuclear option open” doesn’t mean benign neglect or mere tolerance of free-market investments. Rather, it means, and has always meant, massive government intervention—ever-larger subsidies and other advantages to try to sustain or revive an industry dying of an incurable attack of market forces. Inevitably, such largesse comes at competitors’ expense in funds, attention, markets, and—most precious—time. In the United States, that opportunity cost is now reaching a critical stage as the industry, still unable to attract private investors, desperately seeks ever-greater public funding.

...As Keepin and Kats arrestingly put it in 1988, based on their reasonable estimate that efficiency would save ~7× as much carbon per dollar as nuclear power, “every $100 invested in nuclear power would effectively release an additional tonne of carbon into the atmosphere.” Thus, counting the opportunity cost of nuclear power vs. a reasonable modern efficiency cost of 1¢/kWh, “the effective carbon intensity of nuclear power is nearly eight times greater than the direct carbon intensity of coal-fired power.” That is, buying nuclear instead of coal-fired electricity saves carbon if those are the only two choices, but they’re not: efficiency is so much cheaper than either that buying 1¢/kWh efficiency instead of nuclear power saves about eight times more carbon than would have been released if the same money had bought new coal-fired electricity! Today, their 20-year-old estimate looks sounder than ever.

The Nuclear Illusion
AMORY B. LOVINS AND IMRAN SHEIKH
Available for download here: http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E08-01_NuclearIllusion

[GliderGuider]

48. Again with the efficiency fish?

That herring is probably red from embarrassment at being so ill-used.

Efficiency improvements are not tied to any particular energy technology. Efficiency gains are so cheap that they should be pursued no matter what generation technologies we build. I'm utterly in favour of efficiency programs. I think they are fundamental to the planetary future.

Efficiency, however, is not the issue here. The issue is: if we want to shut down our coal plants and natural gas turbines and oil-driven automobiles, what is the "best" (whatever that means) way to get the irreducible amount of energy is required to run our modern industrial civilization in the manner to which we have become accustomed?

No, you can't "spend the same dollar on two things", but there are two assumptions implicit in that statement.

The first assumption is that there only the one dollar. I have indeed claimed that a full build-out of low-GHG electricity to replace all fossil fuel usage within 40 years is too expensive to be realistic. That's the case whether the source is wind, nuclear or anything else. So we will obviously not be doing that. We may replace some amount of FF use with electricity, and if that amount is as small as I think it will be, money will not be the issue. We could quintuple the current build-out of both wind and nuclear and still not have a money problem. Multiplying it by 100 might be problematic, but we aren't going to do that. There will be plenty of dollars for both.

The next implicit assumption is that you would need to make a choice between the two things even if you only had one dollar. Phrasing it as a "need to choose" implies that one option may be enough better than the other that you would lose a lot by making the wrong choice. Since I see the primary villain as CO2 I don't see a significant advantage to going with one or the other. They are both low enough in GHG production to be worth consideration. There are problems with either technology. In the case of nuclear it's the issues of large-scale government-supported engineering (similar to hydro dams) and public acceptability (thanks to social engineering by the coal industry). In the case of wind power the problems include the small installed base, the huge quantities of construction materials required, the need for ancillary engineering related to generation variability, and public acceptability (thanks to social engineering by the tourism industry?)

Fortunately, since there's not "just one dollar" at this time we don't have to choose. If global money really does get tight, other forces will come into play, and the choices will be made regionally or nationally for reasons ranging from local resource bases to national pride.

I don't think the "wind turbines produce power sooner than nuclear reactors do" is enough of a factor to hang the argument on. The problem scope for both technologies is much bigger than that.

[kristopher]

49. SELF-DELETED BY MEMBER

This message was self-deleted by kristopher.

[GliderGuider]

50. Where does it mention that efficiency is tied to renewables?

What I see here is a BAU assessment.

Efficiency efforts usually gain traction only in regimes of high energy pricing. If energy prices stay relatively low, efficiency improvements don't happen. That's why there are fuel efficient cars in Europe but not in the USA.

Of course no economist or political or industrialist is going to recommend restricting energy supplies to force up prices and herd people towards efficiency. Instead they build out energy supplies to keep prices down. That's what your Citigroup C&P looks like to me. They don't make a profit by providing less power in the face of rising demand, their business is building power plants.

If an industrialist and his politician catamite saw that wind power was going to give a better profit margin than nuclear while still supplying projected demand they would switch horses in a heartbeat (or however long it took for them to get their new pork barrel in place). Then you'd see efficiency being mentioned in the same breath as a wind build-out instead of nuclear.

Given the current low cost of energy, in order to be motivated to spend their own money on efficiency improvements people have to see either cost savings or performance gains in other aspects of their activities than just direct energy costs. That's how it works when new building materials provide a more comfortable home environment, for example. People don't care if they are using gas or electrical resistance heating or geothermal. They care about two things: cost and comfort (aka functionality). They will pay more to get better functionality, or they will spend a bit to reduce their costs. If they are comfortable with both the cost and the functionality they will pay more only if it confers social status.

Nobody out there cares where the energy comes from, it's just geeks like us who get all attached to one technology or the other.

[kristopher]

51. Their business is investing and they DO NOT recommend nuclear.

This discussion highlights the fact that you really haven't a clue about the topic you are trying to pass yoursel off as an expert on.

The link between renewables and energy efficiency is so well established that I'm going to leave it for you to research. The same thing applies to the nature of centralized thermal (both coal and nuclear) and their role as a driver of increased energy consumption.

In a perfect world you might be able to divorce increased energy consumption from large scale centralized thermal, but in the real world where profits drive actions all you will accomplish by building more nuclear is increased energy consumption.

This is yet another example of you abandoning previously stated positions in your zeal to promote nuclear power. I remember well how you used to go on and on and on about Jevons; what happened to all that (equally shallow) "analysis" you did.

[GliderGuider]

52. Ah yes, Jevons

It turns out to be quite difficult to conclusively identify rebound effects in a modern industrial society. I learned a lot from that, thanks.

As far as I can tell, the only driver to increased electricity consumption is cost. Why on earth would the source of the power matter? What matters is the reliability of supply and the cost. If I get electricity every time I turn on the switch I as an economically driven consumer don't really care whether it came from hydro or wind or nuclear or even coal. It's 10 cents a kilowatt-hour and it's there when I want it, so I use it without a further thought. End of story.

Where is the mental linkage between distributed energy and efficiency supposed to come from in that scenario? The only place it can come from is advertising, and the only time the power generation/distribution industry will use advertising is to get people to reduce their consumption is if the price is going up or the supply is unreliable or declining relative to demand. Otherwise the profit motive takes over and the goal is to sell as much as can be generated. If the supply is reliable and the cost is acceptable to the consumer there's no incentive at all for me as a producer to try and get people to constrain their consumption. That's not my business.

That IS the business of the environmental movement, but their motives have much less to do with consumption per se, and more to do with the awareness of the externalities of both production and consumption. In environmental advertising consumption gets recast from an economic activity into a moral one. Environmental advertising tries to replace cost with conscience as a behaviour driver. As much as I think that conscience should be a factor and am all for people knowing where their food and energy comes from, most people are happy to be economic units. Which is why the pitch is such a tough sell for a fungible commodity like electricity.