Solar plants in Southern California: Electricity Too Cheap To Meter?

[NNadir]

Those familiar my tenure here at DU (and in my earlier tenure at SmirkingChimp, where I've resigned from posting) are probably aware of my strong advocacy, on environmental grounds, of nuclear power. It may be less clear that I am also a strong advocate of solar power, even though I believe that in most cases, solar power is somewhat more dangerous than nuclear power.

Both forms of energy are the subject of some mystification in my view, but the mysticism, at least on the left, takes different paths: Nuclear energy is thought of darkly and with inappropriate suspicion, whereas solar energy is often presented in often credulous and overly optimistic (dare one say overly "bright") terms.

If a person on the political left advances, as I do, the desirability of the rapid expansion of nuclear fueled generating capacity, several rote usually objections present themselves. Readers of the posts of my critics will be familiar with most of these.

One of the more questionable criticisms launched against nuclear energy is that it is not "too cheap to meter." This criticism is based on a remark made in 1954 by a US government official who suggested that this would be the ultimate result of nuclear generated electricity. Although there is currently no form of energy "too cheap to meter," somehow some people believe that this criticism, when applied to nuclear energy alone, is an argument for shutting it down. It seems not to matter to some that there were no commercial nuclear plants anywhere in the world at this time the remark was made, so the it had no experimental data to support it. Very clearly the official was confusing the cost of fuel (which is, in fact, almost "too cheap to meter" today) with the cost of capital equipment (the plant itself and its debt servicing) which remains expensive. Often my critics, while raising this point that nuclear energy is NOT too cheap to meter, will make the point that "solar energy is free."

Recently a poster here directed me (thank you) to consider that not all solar electricity is derived from PV cells, which are still very, very expensive. Some solar electricity is generated by steam produced from solar energy focused by parabolic mirrors. I looked into it. It happens that this form of solar energy is already commercial in Southern California, where 354 MWe of capacity has been installed. This capacity is equivalent to about 1/3 of that of a typical nuclear plant. The difference between the nuclear capacity, and the solar capacity, of course, is that the solar capacity - ignoring the ability to fuel these plants with fossil fuels at night - is only available during the day when the weather is good.

These plants are described in this report: http://www.volker-quaschning.de/downloads/VGB2001.pdf

Included in this report is a figure for the capital cost of construction of this capacity: 1.2 billion dollars. This means that the cost of constructing a solar plant is $3.4 million/MW. Construction costs for US nuclear power plants in the 1980s ranged between $2 billion and $6 billion depending on the need to retrofit the designs to satisfy the increasingly unlikely failure scenarios imagined by people who styled themselves (dubiously in my view) as "environmentalists." These construction costs were part of the reason that utilities in the United States stopped building nuclear plants.

What this all means, of course, is that cost of installing the Southern California solar capacity is roughly in the mid range for a nuclear plant (even without opposition): To install 1000 MWe of parabolic solar capacity will cost about 3.6 billion dollars. Thus we see that the criticism that nuclear power is not too cheap to meter cannot be improved upon by the installation of solar capacity.
(To be fair, however, solar stations are simpler to build inasmuch at they can be built in a modular fashion: One doesn't need the whole 3.6 billion at once.)

I note that in France and Japan, largely because of superior administrative policies, nuclear capacity is far less expensive to install than it was historically (at least in the late phases) in the United States.

None of this is meant to denigrate parabolic mirror solar electricity power plants. I don't think that 3.6 million per megawatt is an unacceptable cost for greenhouse free energy. I am very happy that this solar capacity exists, and though I don't have a very good idea of it's external cost, I suspect that this capacity is probably very very clean, possibly comparable with the cleanest electricity of all, wind, and possibly better than nuclear energy. These types of plants are probably only suitable in sunbelt/desert areas, but I applaud their use. I do however want to note that they are not free.

[NMDemDist2]

1. I'm a solar partner for APS in Arizona

http://www.aps.com/my_community/Solar/Solar_22.html

[Bdog]

13. APS to Construct Solar Trough Power Plant

http://www.hydrogennow.org/HNews/PressReleases/APS/APS%20to%20Construct%20Plant%20in%20AZ.htm
March 24, 2004 March 24, 2004

Red Rock, AZ -

APS today broke ground on Arizona’s first commercial solar trough power plant and the first such facility constructed in the United States since 1988.

Located at the company’s Saguaro Power Plant in Red Rock, about 30 miles north of Tucson, the APS Saguaro Solar Trough Generating Station will have a 1-megawatt (MW) generating capacity, enough to provide for the energy needs of approximately 200 average-size homes. The plant is expected to come online in April 2005.

[Leprechan29]

2. Both options are excellent

Though I lean toward nuclear power because it is much more developed, and it too is greenhouse gas free, solar power, if developed would be a boon to the US energy capacity.

Simply put - We need more nuclear plants (solar too).

[NNadir]

3. Thanks for getting my point.

[Spinzonner]

4. Some questions about your cost analysis

which is sketchy to say the least.

It's highly problematic to quote only the capital costs when comparing technologies, especially when one is dealing with a high-risk technology like nuclear power.

Where are all the costs of operation and maintenance being evaluated, including those of retiring the reactor components - and the plants - SAFELY and SECURELY ? If this is being pawned off to the taxpayer - who is also the consumer - then the true costs of nuclear power are not being presented honestly.

And this, of course, ignores the risk costs associated with nuclear power which you rather cavalierly dismiss as 'unlikely failure scenarios'. What will be the financial costs of a plant failure - especially in light of the risks of terrorism - and who will bear them. Please consider both the immediate costs, the cleanup costs, and the long-term health costs.

And compare this to an equivalent scenario for Solar Power.

This is not to claim the Solar Power is a panacea. I just think your comparison, as presented, is superficial.

[NNadir]

8. The completely loaded costs of nuclear energy has been covered

extensively. I have addressed these issues in the body of my work here, and am satisfied with the results. I have now come to the point in my tenure here of simply referring to my earlier thread in which the EU analyzed the complete external cost of energy: It can be found in this section and is called "What you pay with your flesh: The external cost of energy." According to this major study, which I am, for your convenience kicking up again, nuclear power considered from a fully loaded cost by which I mean, fuel, infrastructure, "waste," environmental impact, environmental degradation, is in most European countries the cheapest form of energy. Here you will find some discussion of the external costs of solar energy, which include heavy metal usuage, the costs of material production (very high volume watt for watt) etc, etc.

Please note that I started this thread by admitting that I do not have any idea of the external costs of parabolic mirror technology. I suspect that it, like wind is superior, to nuclear energy in external cost. However this technology, like wind, is also subject to intermittent availability, hence it is a peak load rather than base load technology. (The only environmentally acceptable base load technology in my view is nuclear energy and, to a lesser extent, some hydroelectric systems.)

I apologize for wearying of demands like yours which I address over and over and over again. Let me state it succinctly. Nuclear electrical generation has not killed anyone in the United States ever in a clearly demonstrable way. (I repeat my frequent challenge: If you can prove me wrong, do so.) Therefore it is rather silly to obsess on the "risks" associated with this technology. One doesn't need a sophisitcated analysis to state that the risk is much lower than say, the risks of eating a McDonald's, which does result in loss of life (from obesity), or the risks of flying in aircraft, or the risks of skateboarding. Given this state of affairs, I am rather mystified why I constantly must be badgered on "considering both the immediate costs, the cleanup costs, and the long-term health costs." If the standards applied to nuclear energy were applied for these same issues to any other form of energy, we would live in a very, very, very, fine world indeed. It would be very nice for instance if coal plants were required to limit their release of radioactive materials to the same level as nuclear plants:

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

One nuclear plant was destroyed by an industrial failure: Three Mile Island in 1979, which as I count it is 25 years ago. The dismantling of that plant has not been abnormally risky, no one has died from its disposal. There have been no deaths associated with operations there. It is very worthwhile to note that failure analysis in this single case has been so spectacularly successful that the accident has never been repeated. This contrasts very nicely with other high tech devices like aircraft, space shuttles, oil tankers and automobiles, all of which involve risk.

Maybe you would like to demonstrate an instance where taxpayers are bearing the costs of nuclear operations. I invite you to do so. I am tired of trying to disprove a negative; maybe it would be better for you to prove a positive: I challenge you to prove that nuclear operations are currently subsidized by the government, that nuclear operations would collapse without government support. When you do so, I challenge you to demonstrate that these subsidies exceed say the subsidies on coal, oil, and solar energy both in total dollars or in dollars per joule (or kilowatt) produced. I also would like you to demonstrate which subsidies result in the greatest loss of life and treasure to the general populace. (I think oil wins here.) Please don't cite Yucca Mountain, when you do this, since Yucca mountain has been funded by surcharges placed on the nuclear industry and is included in the internal cost of power generation (meaning it appears on your utility bill.) Nuclear energy is unique among most forms of energy in that 100% of it's waste cost is included in the billing. You subsidize coal plants for instance, with your lung tissue. You are of course subsidizing oil not only with your lung tissue, but with your moral tissue as well, since the United States in currently engaged in killing and stealing for oil.

For the record though, I, unlike the Bush administration, believes that it is a proper sphere of the government to subsidize technologies that improve our common living space, meaning our air, our water, and our land. This is why I support nuclear energy and why I believe that it SHOULD be subsidized, and subsidized in a very big way. Japan, India, and France all subsidize technologies like nuclear transmutation systems. This is why the future belongs to them, whereas our future will consist of smugly choking ourselves to death in coal debris while we waited for the 100% solar future.

People often tell me that we can't say if people will not be injured in the distant future by present day nuclear operations. I return that we can't say whether people will be killed by the disposal of solar cells in the future. (They have a limited lifetime and contain many toxic substances. Also many toxic substances must be disposed of as a result of their manufacture.) I know that people will be dying for many generations to come (just as they are dying now) from coal and oil operations.

[Spinzonner]

9. Ignoring your dismissive and patronizing tone ...

Your response is full of detail and misses the point(s).

The completely loaded costs cant have been covered because they havent been quantified. Claiming that someone's estimate/prediction of such costs is in fact the reality is sophistry. With half-lives in the 10's of thousands of years, the long term consequences and costs of dealing with nuclear waste have not been reliably quantified.

You casually dismiss the experience of Three-Maile Island with the assertion that no one died. That is speculation but even if true, ignores the seriousness of the accident and dismisses what could have happened but didn't. And it hasnt been repeated in part because some of the high risk reactors had to be decommissioned or plants operationally abandoned.

You efforts to compare small scale accidents like aircraft, space shuttles and the like are silly because of the scale of their consequences. The wonderfulness of its failure analysis is rather a silly measure since the costs of a major nuclear failure are so immense.

And you havent addressed the risks associated with purposeful failures such as terrorism and failures of neglect such as the detection of seriously compromised reactor vessels and associated equipment due to corrosion.

Again, you cant claim the Yucca Mountain - if it ever opens to waste - has been fully funded by the industry since the true cost hasnt yet been established and the period and long-term nature and costs of operation are unknown. They are someone's projections and such things are notoriously underestimated by those promoting them. And even that ignores the uncertainties associated with the unknowns engendered by a project that has to be reliable for thousands of years. Where are your industrial risk studies for projects of that duration ?

Yes, fossil feuls have a dismal environmental/health record associated with them. That hardly justifies promoting a replacement technology with potentially astronomical costs of its own and a risk lifespan of thousands of years. How does that compare to the half-life of the effects of fossil feuls.

And with respect to subsidies, its very true that the real costs of fossil fuels are hidden by them. But one has to ask where solar and other technologies would be with repect to efficiency and environmental costs if even a fraction of the subsidies given to both fossil fuels and nuclear power over the years were applied to them.

[NNadir]

14. The decay properties of 100% of all radioisotopes in nuclear waste

are well known.

I will patronize you once more to look over my posts on all your rote responses. In a nuclear actinide recycling program, the planet will be less radioactive in 1000 years time than it is now.

Get data, don't ofer unsupported opinions. To see about the long term radiation effects and total planetary radioactivity and nuclear power, I suggest Wiley Stacey's "Nuclear Reactor Physics" Wiley 2001, the nice graph on page 228. It just can't get any clearer than that.

I'm sorry, but I'm too busy and tired to go over this again. You are arguing from a religious and not a technical point of view and have produced no data. I'm sorry that you find it patronizing, but I find your response completely uninformed.

For the record, I have opposed Yucca Mountain on the grounds it is completely stupid to bury nuclear material. Japan will be making hundreds of millions of dollars selling rhodium, ruthenium and palladium obtained from their "nuclear waste."

[Bdog]

15. And radiation hormesis...don't forget that.

"Japan will be making hundreds of millions of dollars selling rhodium, ruthenium and palladium obtained from their "nuclear waste.""

They will all live healthier and longer lifes...with a lower rate of cancer. Because the will all be getting more than the background level of radiation.

[NickB79]

16. Sarcasm?

Because if it was, I found an interesting statement regarding Hiroshima survivors cancer rates:

"A-bomb survivors (from Hiroshima and Nagasaki) who had large doses—greater than the equivalent of 150 years of background—had a slight increase in cancer. In the last 50 years there was an average of fewer than 10 radiation-induced cancer deaths per year in about 100,000 A-bomb survivors. A-bomb survivors who received a dose less than the equivalent of 60 years of background showed no increase in the incidence of cancer. Survivors in that dose range tended to be healthier than the unexposed Japanese. That is, their death from all causes was lower than for the unexposed Japanese. The improved health of those with low doses more than compensated for the radiation-induced cancer deaths, so that A-bomb survivors as a group are living longer on the average than the unexposed Japanese controls."

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/articles/12071-3.asp

So yes, it appears they very well may live longer and healthier lives with a lower rate of cancer.

[treepig]

17. no, i suspect it was the information i presented over in the other thread

namely, in these links:


http://cnts.wpi.edu/RSH/Data_Docs/execsum98.html


http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/1998/cohen.htm

i must say it's gratifying to see a former detractor jump on the bandwagon


:thumbsup:

the bottom line is, that if you believe in evolution, it's not a big leap to accept radiation hormesis. for example, if you check out the information i presented in post #12 of this thread, mother nature herself was apparently operating a fission reactor in africa for several hundred thousand years during early stages of life. consequently, all life - including our very own ancestral forms of life - is well equipped to live in an environment considerably more radioactive than our current one. once again to be clear, i'm in no way advocating deliberate exposure to excess radiation based on current levels of knowledge - the evidence, however, is quite overwhelming that a daily commute through grand central station, or drinking water laced with the epa-allowed 30mg/m^3 level of uranium, is not all that dangerous. in fact, it's quite conforting to think it may be beneficial, for the placebo effect if nothing else.

[Bdog]

20. data at low doses have large error bars

and can be fit to mathematical models that show a threshold, no threshold, reduced effect, and in some cases even a beneficial (protective) effect, depending on the model one picks. Apparently, some people will go even farther and misrepresent the data and give the false impression that radiation events are harmless or beneficial.

http://www.rerf.or.jp/top/healthe.htm
Excess cancer, including leukemia, is the most important late effect of radiation exposure observed among atomic-bomb survivors. For cancers other than leukemia, which will be discussed separately, we now know that excess risk associated with radiation began to be exhibited five to ten years after exposure. This was first noted by a Japanese physician, Gensaku Oho, in 1956, and led city medical associations in Hiroshima (1957) and Nagasaki (1958) to create tumor registries for comprehensive analyses. As the survivors have aged, these excess risks have increased at about the same rate as, ie, in proportion to, cancer risks in an unexposed, or so-called "zero-dose", population. Significant excess risks are seen for all cancers as a group and, when considered separately, for many specific types including cancers of the stomach, lung, liver, colon, bladder, breast, ovaries, thyroid, and skin, as well as multiple myeloma. Although not statistically significant, excess risks are seen for most other types of cancer. Thus, the survivor data provide support for the notion that radiation can be associated with excess risks for virtually all types of cancer.

[NNadir]

21. Apparently, some people will go even farther and misrepresent the data and

imply that low doses of radiation are responsible for millions upon millions of deaths. It is alleged in this (as usual unreferreed) link that over a forty year period 339 out of 4687 cancer deaths in a population of 50,113 were attributed to radiation exposure to the atomic bombs radiation. No effort is made to explore confounding factors, but let's take 'em at their word. This means that every year on average 8.475 people in this sample of over 50,000 died from allegedly radiation induced cancer from a deliberate attack with radiation, or 0.017%. This is a far lower risk than is associated with many other activities, including living next to a coal burning plant or a biomass burning plant. Driving a car is almost as dangerous. Going into a smoky bar day after day is certainly more dangerous.

Also, this study makes no allowance for the fact that among atomic bomb survivors, many other confounding possibilites for disease exist. Their cities burned and they were exposed to huge amounts of toxic smoke and chemicals. They went without health care for weeks in areas that had not only radiation, but many other toxic substances, many with their primary protective organ, their skin, badly damaged.

Nor does this study provide a real accounting of intensity of exposure, relative shielding or time, since is very unlikely that they have tracking data for the movements of 50,000 people in the weeks after the most disorganizing event of their lives. It may be that low levels of radiation distributed constantly have very different health effects than large doses made all at once.

Of course, if you are singularly myopic you will cruise the internet rather mindlessly finding links to support your bias, ignoring the wisdom of critical thinking, you will certainly draw expected conclusions.

I could do the same thing: "Dr. Y. Okumura and Dr. M. Mine of the Atomic Bomb Disease Institute, Nagasaki University School of Medicine, report (1997) on survivor death rates that:

"Among about 100,000 A-bomb survivors registered at Nagasaki University School of Medicine, male subjects exposed to 31 - 40 cGy showed significantly lower mortality from non-cancerous diseases than age-matched unexposed males. And the death rate for exposed male and female was smaller than that for unexposed. It was presented that the low doses of A-bomb radiation increased lifespan of A-bomb survivors...
...The above data suggest that small doses of A-bomb radiation decreased death rate and relative risk and that increased lifespan of A-bomb survivors (Kondo 1993)."

http://cnts.wpi.edu/RSH/Data_Docs/1-2/1/1212ok97.html

My mindless link has, if you look in the references pages, oh, about 4 or 5 hundred references to scientific journals attached, not that I would expect science ever to effect religious beliefs.

[madrchsod]

5. my uncle worked in the second

nuke power plant built in Illinois. after the last one was built here at Byron he stated that according to some in the engineering dept. that Byron will be the last big plant built. from the engineers stand point more smaller units would have been a better idea. also here in Northern IL the power company was test drilling into the granite rock in the far northwest counties for feasibility studies for pumping water several miles into the rock thus heating the water in a closed loop system to turn turbines..
northern il also has several wind farms and one village that uses solar power to provide electricy to the residents and business

[AndyTiedye]

6. Nuclear Power is not a good deal

> One of the more questionable criticisms launched against nuclear energy is that it is not "too cheap to meter."

The words "too cheap to meter" came from nuclear power industry propaganda.
You cannot blame us for thowing those words back at them,
when the actual costs are so high.

> I believe that in most cases, solar power is somewhat more dangerous than nuclear power.

based on what?

[Massacure]

7. Solar panels require extremely pure silicon

Making it to such high specifications requires a lot of chemicals and energy.

Personally I have no problems against nuclear power. I just want the fuel to be recycled down as much as possible. That stuff takes so long to get rid of.

[slor]

10. I saw a post a few months ago...

that revealed that scientists had discovered a way to make solar panels more efficiently because the cells in the panels did not have to be as uniform or as neatly structured. I wonder if it also less chemically intensive.

[phantom power]

11. this is the most efficient process I'm aware of

but I believe it still requires pure silicon as an input:
http://www.evergreensolar.com/egsolar1/eg_technology.htm

[treepig]

12. but what if mother nature herself

chose to operation a natural fission reactor, as she has done in the past ( http://www.ans.org/pi/np/oklo/ )

that'd avoid all the start-up capital costs, right?

in any event, suppose we should all be thankful mother nature had a long-term strategy for dealing with the resulting radioactive waste:

http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/centre/waisrc/OKLO/Why/Why.html

[NNadir]

19. Can't happen. When the Oklo reactors operated, all of the earth's Uranium

was enriched. It is no longer enriched because U-235 decays much faster than U-238. The enrichment was then about 3%, typical of the fuel used in some reactors today. Today the natural enrichment is about 0.7%. Because of the relatively high neutron capture cross section of "protium" or hydrogen-1, it cannot maintain a high enough multiplication factor to sustain a chain reaction in natural uranium. Modern water moderated reactors can only operate when the water is deuterated, aka "heavy water." Since heavy water does not naturally occur on earth, uranium ores cannot go critical as they once did.

The Oklo reactors do demonstrate nicely the geological behavior of fission products and are being studied extensively for understanding the issue. As is often the case in nuclear affairs, the risks of fission product leakage in geologic formations appears to have been overstated.

[treepig]

22. ok, good point

and i'll claim my usual "i'm just a cell biologist" defense to explain my ignorance.

in any event, upon further review i see i got interupted when posting the message in question (and obviously forgot to come back and edit the post). the point i intended to make, in my usual almost-incomprehensible and long-winded way, was to continue by saying that "mother nature" most likely did not do a good job of preventing radioactive "waste" from becoming widespread throughout the environment during this natural fission event - hence early life on this planet was indeed subject to what some forum participants term "man-made" isotopes (and evolved mechanisms to cope with quite well, as described in the links i post #17, for example).

[JM]

18. Anyone look at Solar Stirling Generators

Solar Stirlings are Stirling Engines mounted at the focal point of a parabolic mirror. The heat from the focal point heats the hot end, and you wind up with a block of ice at the other end. The power generated can be sent directly to the system with no additional conversion, and you can retrieve the water at night...

Less polluting than silicon used in panels, less dangerous than nuclear, no emissions, a net gain of water pulled from the air...

JM