Is nuclear the way to go?

[WhiteBlue]

If a private investor wants to waste his money, fine, but don't touch my tax-money.

I'm sure the investors of Fukushima Daiichi will not agree.

[WhiteBlue]

If a private investor wants to waste his money, fine, but don't touch my tax-money.

The fact that few, if any, private investors are touching them unless there is a serious government subsidy involved should tell us all we need to know.

London Array ownership is 50% DONG Energy, 30% E.ON UK Renewables and 20% Masdar. This is all corporate and sovereighn wealth funds. No public ownership involved.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Arr ... -ingdong-2

The subsidies of nuclear have by far outstripped those into renewables. No amount of complaining will mislead any serious reader about that. Wall street will not touch nuclear with a barge pole unless it is feathered with subsidies to the hilt.

Since 2008, proposed reactors have been quietly scrapped or suspended in at least nine states — not by safety concerns or hippie sit-ins but by financial realities. Other projects have been delayed as cost estimates have tripled toward $10 billion a reactor, and ratings agencies have downgraded utilities with atomic ambitions. Nuclear Energy Institute vice president Richard Myers notes that the "unrealistic" renaissance hype has come from the industry's friends, not the industry itself. "Even before this happened, short-term market conditions were bleak," he tells TIME.

Around the world, governments (led by China, with Russia a distant second) are financing 65 new reactors through more explicit nuclear socialism. But private capital still considers atomic energy radioactive, gravitating instead toward natural gas and renewables, whose costs are dropping fast. Nuclear power is expanding only in places where taxpayers and ratepayers can be compelled to foot the bill.....

By contrast, investments in more-efficient buildings and factories can reduce demand now, at a tenth the cost of new nuclear supply. Replacing carbon-belching coal with cleaner gas, emissions-free wind and even utility-scale solar will also be cheaper and faster than new nukes. It's true that major infusions of intermittent wind and solar power would stress the grid, but that's a reason to upgrade the grid, not to waste time and money on reactors.

Anyway, there aren't many utilities that can carry a nuclear project on their balance sheets, which is why Obama's Energy Department, a year after awarding its first $8 billion loan guarantee in Georgia, is still sitting on an additional $10 billion. A Maryland project evaporated before closing, and a Texas project fell apart when costs spiraled and a local utility withdrew. The deal was supposed to be salvaged with financing from a foreign utility, but that now seems unlikely. (See how fundraising helped shape obama's green agenda.)

The utility was Tokyo Electric.

Another Perfect Storm

Pundits keep saying the mess in Japan will change the debate in the U.S., but the BP and Massey disasters didn't change the debates over oil drilling and coal mining. And the nuclear debate seems particularly impervious to facts. Obama wants to triple funding for the already undersubscribed loan guarantees, but Republicans still accuse him of insufficient nuclear fervor. So don't expect the U.S. to copy German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who just shut down seven aging plants. GOP Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma has already rejected the idea of "a nuclear problem," suggesting that "once in 300 years, a disaster occurs." That's true if you don't count Chernobyl and you're sure nothing will happen for the next 250 years.

The industry's defenders may ignore Fukushima Daiichi, but the industry will not. It's serious about public safety, and meltdowns are bad for business; no company wants to lose a $10 billion reactor overnight. But additional safety measures cost money: in 2003 industry lobbyists beat back an NRC committee's recommendation for new backup-power rules that were designed to prevent the hydrogen explosions that are now all over the news.

It may sound unrealistic to require plants to withstand a vicious earthquake and a 25-ft. tsunami, but nobody's forcing utilities to generate power with uranium. One lesson of the past decade, in finance as well as nature, is that perfect storms do happen. When nukes are involved, the fallout can be literal, not just political.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article ... 53,00.html

[myurr]

If a private investor wants to waste his money, fine, but don't touch my tax-money.

I'm sure the investors of Fukushima Daiichi will not agree.

Because obviously it is normal for your investment to be wiped out by a tsunami. You do realise that that plant is a couple of decades old and still hasn't suffered a significant leak?

You also realise that modern designs are capable of automatically shutting down in the event of a coolant failure, such as pebble bed reactors. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety

This negates the threat from a terrorist attack on the infrastructure around the core, as any damage will at worst put the plant out of action until repaired.

You also mention converting electricity to hydrogen for storage and later consumption to aid with the peaks and troughs in wind power generation. You have not included costs for the infrastructure to make this happen nor have you allowed for the inefficiencies.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated that it would cost $5.55 per kilogram of hyrdogen produced by wind power, which roughly equvalent to one gallon of petrol. That does not sound like a particularly energy efficent process (some quick googling suggests that electrolysis is around 50% efficient), and doesn't take into account the additional infrastructure required to store and use that hydrogen to cope with demand.

[marekk]

Photovoltaics are really too expensive to be useful to supply any significant portion of our energy need.

It's just silicone. It's everywhere.
If you throw a very small fraction of dollars put in nuclear (including military) and conventional energy sources in last 50 years at it, you can have it for few cents/kW.
And Sahara has an area of 9,000,000 km^2, lot of sunshine and covered mainly with silicon oxide. No tsunamis and no earthquakes either.

[xpensive]

The subideries to these kind of activities come in disguise. In Sweden you get 3.5 cEUR per produced windpower kWh.

Our nukes have to pay for the above through a very intriguing punishment arrangement, but still, private money is planning for a new reactor through a consortsium. Stoopid they must be not throwing 3-4 GEUR into the sea instead, eh?

[myurr]

And Sahara has an area of 9,000,000 km^2, lot of sunshine and covered mainly with silicon oxide. No tsunamis and no earthquakes either.

And is surrounded by nice and stable governments in an incredibly safe and peaceful region...

And the infrastructure costs for building and supporting all that, and then how do you ship the electricity generated across the continent / world. If you use cables then what would the losses be? If you generate hydrogen and ship that then you how dangerous would it be to ship that much gas, how much cost would be involved, etc. etc.

[xpensive]

You can begin yourself be reading up on today's debate so far, it strikes me that you are jumping in without background.

[Shrek]

i wonder about burning methane(from cow #2/from trash) if that could work and if it can, why hasn't it been metioned for an alternative energy?

[marekk]

And Sahara has an area of 9,000,000 km^2, lot of sunshine and covered mainly with silicon oxide. No tsunamis and no earthquakes either.

And is surrounded by nice and stable governments in an incredibly safe and peaceful region...

And the infrastructure costs for building and supporting all that, and then how do you ship the electricity generated across the continent / world. If you use cables then what would the losses be? If you generate hydrogen and ship that then you how dangerous would it be to ship that much gas, how much cost would be involved, etc. etc.

Stable enough to source most of our gas/oil. We can always help a little with our F-18's and tomahawk's.

Infrastructure costs - what's your estimate of total spendings on power generation infrastructure in Europe/Middle East/Africa for lets say last 10 years ?

Cable loses are not that significant, if your energy is almost free.

Gas shipping - we do it already, Quatar alone did 10,000,000 tonnes of liquid LPG last year. We can do it with hydrogen and on much bigger scale.

I don't think there will be one single nuclear plant working today without all this effort and money from governments searching for new weapons. Maybe we've been unlucky with nuclear fusion bombs not that good for tactical/strategical reasons - with all this resources behind it, fusion reactors could be reality long time ago.

I'm in no illusion - we will not see Sahara Solar Plant Co until last drop of oil, but the possibility is there.

[WhiteBlue]

The big turning point is the cost avalanche of nuclear coupled with massive cost down of off shore wind and the respective difference in construction time.

Siemens and GE have virtually deserted nuclear and are massively invested in wind. Both biggies in global power infrastructure have made the decision in their board rooms in the last years. The world will never be the same for the nuke lovers.

[Roland Ehnström]

i wonder about burning methane(from cow #2/from trash) if that could work and if it can, why hasn't it been metioned for an alternative energy?

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

[Ray]

The big turning point is the cost avalanche of nuclear coupled with massive cost down of off shore wind and the respective difference in construction time. The world will never be the same for the nuke lovers.

How many people have nuclear accidents killed versus the numbers killed in wars over control of oil fields? I imagine the two aren't even close to comparable. I'm not a 'nuke lover' per se but with massive growth in energy needs what's an alternative that doesn't require basic environmental destruction before even a watt of power is generated? Wind isn't a very viable solution because it's at the mercy of prevailing weather conditions and can only really be viable where the weather makes it economical. Yes, economical because the wind doesn't blow simply because we want it to and windmills aren't cheap. I keep hearing how long it takes to build a nuclear plant/windfarm (tens of years) and yet nothing is done and 20 years later the subject is brought up again about how long it would take to build them and getting them producing power. If we'd quit dicking around and construct the damn things we'd have been producing power for 20 years already. Cost/construction/time is an irrelevant point when it keeps getting brought up every few years and we'd have done it the first time it was talked about we'd be done and on another generation of nuclear plants/windfarms that were more efficient and safe than the last!

The problem with nuclear power these days is sensationalist media and people who outright dismiss nuclear power generation by means of safety issues. The real safety issue is that all the shouting and fear mongering of the media has left alot of very old nuclear plants in dire need of replacement by much safer designs, much more efficient designs and ones that can even consume the waste products of nuclear plants in operation today. For cripes sake the nuclear plant in Fukushima suffered at least an 8.0 earthquake without a single glitch, and a 23 foot tsunami is what took out the power backups. So far the situation is bad but there is a --- ton of horribly wrong information being spread. I sincerely wish I was in the iodine tablet business on the west coast of the United States right now, I could be a millionaire overnight. Fear sells newspapers, fear sells agendas, fear takes away all reason and critical thought. It's a shame that an industry with a very good track record is being destroyed by those that have no clue what they are talking about and setting back a possible power generating process that needs very much attention to bring up to current standards.

[xpensive]

...
The problem with nuclear power these days is sensationalist media and people who outright dismiss nuclear power generation by means of safety issues.
...

Great post Ray, but don't forget the self appointed forum xperts whom after probably hours of web-search have no fear beginning their posts with "As I earlier xplained...", "We have already agreed...", or "I have already told you..."!

[Ray]

...
The problem with nuclear power these days is sensationalist media and people who outright dismiss nuclear power generation by means of safety issues.
...

Great post Ray, but don't forget the self appointed forum xperts whom after probably hours of web-search have no fear beginning their posts with "As I earlier xplained...", "We have already agreed...", or "I have already told you..."!

My post is simply my opinion and I see what you are saying X, I know how to do research and be objective (not all the time for those who have been around and seen my *ahem* passion for what I believe in). There are those that around here that look at one grain of sand in the hourglass and throw their hands up in desperation and immediately shut out reason and fact.

I have zero vested interest in nuclear power. I don't know anyone that works in that industry, and none of my family has worked in nuclear plant. Matter of fact I have an uncle who is an Engineer with Shell (I think he does right now, he's worked for a few oil companies) at a petroleum plant in Louisiana. I know truth from bullsh!t when I see it or hear it, after all I was in the Marine Corps for a few years. 99% of what's in news media is exactly that. Fear sells papers, fears get eyeballs on tv to stay for the commercial breaks. Is nuclear power the safest option? It's pretty high up on the list. Could you be killed crossing a busy street going to lunch? Absolutely. The risk is far higher walking across a street to eat lunch than living next door to a nuclear plant. Are people going to stop going to lunch because of that? No, and they shouldn't.

I will say this to all of those asking about who would want to live next to a nuclear plant. I raise my hand as far as my arm can get it in the air. I'd love to walk around inside one of them just to check it out. It would be fascinating to see the innards of a nuclear power plant to me! It's a shame that an industry with a very very good track record is being ruined on a daily basis by those that refuse to look objectively on facts and figures while ignoring the deaths simply to control the territory where oil is underground. Hell, how much money could the NATO countries that attacked Libya today spend on improving their nuclear plants back home? (which I'm extremely mad that happened)

[segedunum]

Wind and wave farms as well as solar panels are at the mercy of the weather and cannot generate produce energy on demand, so massive amounts of storage and backup is required. They also produce a miniscule amount of power in national grids for the amount of money invested.