Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[DRBUZZ0]

Actually I did misinterpret your response now I read it a second time, probably because only assuming that you thought all waste was alpha emitting made any sense of your remarks.

Allow to withdraw my previous comment and substitute this: You did not think all waste was alpha emitting waste, you just missed the point completely to a degree I find baffling.

This may very well be the first impassioned personal argument on matters of integrity and honor ever to occur over the decay mode of a nucleotide in the history of the world..

 

[Schneibster]

I don't believe it's a matter of prioritization. I see windmills as something power companies need to do, and solar as something individuals and companies need to do. Big installation solar plants, as opposed to solar panels, I think are something power companies need to do, but we've got to be judicious about that just like wind. Nobody's putting any solar power plants in Alaska. OTOH, they should be putting them down near LA and San Diego and all over Arizona and Utah and New Mexico for obvious reasons. You start to get into Texas and you're into tornado country, so I don't know about that, and the Gulf Coast is subject to hurricanes, so that's probably not the greatest idea ever conceived, for either wind or solar. We need all the power we can get, any way we can get it.

If I thought it was going to come down to a choice, I'd have to think about that harder than my current position. I don't think it will, so I haven't. That's not to say I couldn't be wrong, but for now, my support is for ALL reasonable power sources. In fact, there is a conversation to be had about fusion on this thread, but I wanted to see all the fission smoke cleared away first. I may know some things about fusion that will surprise even some of the technically sophisticated here, and certainly I don't get the impression that there's wide knowledge of precisely what fusion entails in different regimes (by which I mean different methods of using it and different methods of accomplishing it) among the more environmentally-minded like yourself, luddite. There's a lot there I think you should know.

 

[Ziggurat]

I've seen proposals as high as 80% in the long term.

That simply is not possible without drastic decreases in standards of living. For some groups, that outcome is acceptable. But it will not happen, because it isn't acceptable to most people.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Moving right along, it might be helpful to attempt to summarise the points so far I think we can agree on:

Existing nuclear fission is cheaper per unit energy than existing renewables, but produces waste which is dangerous in the long term.

Existing nuclear fission fuel supplies are known to be good for fifty years, perhaps a little more. Past that point efficiency decreases and before too long fission will not be advantageous compared to renewables. There are unproven proposals to get more uranium from other sources, but nothing that has yet been demonstrated to be cost-effective.

Unless there does turn out to be another source of fission fuel which is economically viable, building more fission plants will just mean we hit the wall sooner.

I think we've got consensus on those points, but I could be wrong.

So the solution to the future shortage of fission fuel is to find new sources of uranium like getting it out of seawater (if it works, great), or reprocessing the existing leftovers. However this too is more expensive than mining and refining uranium ore.

Question One: How do the numbers stack up comparing reprocessing nuclear leftovers to building more of the existing renewables? I take it as given that any cost breaks you assume for reprocessing (scale, technological advances and so on) apply also to the renewables.

Next point, conventional breeder reactors have inherent safety risks and proliferation risks. It's been stated that other alternative reactor models can be built so that they do not produce material which is ideal for weapons, can use existing leftovers and/or produce more fuel fission reactors can use.

Question Two: Ideally we'd have a reactor that used existing leftovers, was proven cost-efficient compared to renewables without convenient assumptions, and could not be used as a stepping stone to nuclear weapons by a state that was so inclined. Is there any such beast?

If the answer to those questions is "Yes, reprocessing waste is proven to be cheaper than building solar panels (or whatever)" and "Yes, there's an ideal reactor model that solves all our problems at once" then the case for nuclear power would be close to ironclad.

On the other hand if there is no reason to believe that nuclear is going to be any cheaper than renewable in fifty years time however you work it, and that nuclear is always going to be a proliferation risk if deployed outside the existing nuclear weapons club, then the long-term solution to the world's power needs has to be based on wind, solar or something of the sort with nuclear only being used in the niches where renewables cannot be made to work cost-effectively.

 

[luddite]

That simply is not possible without drastic decreases in standards of living. For some groups, that outcome is acceptable. But it will not happen, because it isn't acceptable to most people.

I have real doubts about this too. The people promoting it may actually think of it as not affecting their standard of living, but I don't think everyone shares their assessment. And I'm not about to impose luddite standards on everyone unless there is absolutely no alternative.

But I do know people whose electrical consumption is less than half the average and you wouldn't know it if they didn't tell you. It's the industrial uses that will be the most challenging.

I'm editing this because I think I'm actually wrong. I know people who are advocating 80% cuts from conservation, but I think that's overall. I suspect the electrical sector takes a slightly smaller share. And if we move to electrify transportation, the overall generation requirements may not change so dramatically at all.

 

[Belz...]

Lonewulf, in my experience in real life, all the nuclear proponents who push nuclear as a salvation to global warming have been pushing nuclear for decades and virtually none understand the scale of the problem.

Which is funny, considering that the alternatives you're proposing are even less likely to help.

 

[Belz...]

I have real doubts about this too.

Rrrreeeallly ?

 

[luddite]

Thanks for the summary, Kevin.

I don't agree that nuclear is cheaper. In Canada, there's widespread recognition that nuclear is a very expensive option. It's the reason behind a huge public debt we're slowly paying off on our energy bills with decommissioning costs yet to come. And as I said, the OPA, even as they went with nuclear, recognized that the overall costs are greater than wind. I don't think there are unbiased cost studies out there at all. I could be made to believe that nuclear is cheaper, but I haven't been convinced yet.

I would happily pay a premium for generation sources that are cleaner or safer. The main reason price is an issue with me is that it affects what we can do. Our kids will be burdened with enough of our stupidity that we shouldn't be saddling them with unnecessary debt on top of it. And acting quickly means putting money where it's most effective. So if I believed that nuclear was much cheaper, I'd invest in that. But, as a for instance, in Ontario it's pretty clear that nuclear comes out more expensive. So my guts still tell me "so why are we bothering with it?"

Just went over your post and I have to add that I don't think there's agreement on the 50 year supply of fuel. That's what I think, but I think the others disagree.

 

[luddite]

Rrrreeeallly ?

Sure. That's a decision for the future, anyway. We need to throw a lot of resources into retrofits, public transit, better efficiency standards in everything from cars to refrigerators to standby modes. We have so much work that obviously needs doing anyway that we don't really need to think about the exact proportions of our ultimate energy mix. And I do hope we'll be helped along with new ideas. But I think 80% emissions cuts from conservation/efficiency would be hard for most people so I certainly hope it won't be necessary.

 

[luddite]

I don't believe it's a matter of prioritization. I see windmills as something power companies need to do, and solar as something individuals and companies need to do. Big installation solar plants, as opposed to solar panels, I think are something power companies need to do, but we've got to be judicious about that just like wind. Nobody's putting any solar power plants in Alaska. OTOH, they should be putting them down near LA and San Diego and all over Arizona and Utah and New Mexico for obvious reasons. You start to get into Texas and you're into tornado country, so I don't know about that, and the Gulf Coast is subject to hurricanes, so that's probably not the greatest idea ever conceived, for either wind or solar. We need all the power we can get, any way we can get it.

If I thought it was going to come down to a choice, I'd have to think about that harder than my current position. I don't think it will, so I haven't. That's not to say I couldn't be wrong, but for now, my support is for ALL reasonable power sources. In fact, there is a conversation to be had about fusion on this thread, but I wanted to see all the fission smoke cleared away first. I may know some things about fusion that will surprise even some of the technically sophisticated here, and certainly I don't get the impression that there's wide knowledge of precisely what fusion entails in different regimes (by which I mean different methods of using it and different methods of accomplishing it) among the more environmentally-minded like yourself, luddite. There's a lot there I think you should know.

Sounds reasonable to me. Thanks Schneibster.

 

[Schneibster]

Luddite, you have GOT to learn some economics. Not only that, you need to go a lot further around that site than the first page you see. There are six billion people on this planet, and they have to eat something; people aren't importing grains for fun.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Schneibster, merely repeating "you've got to learn economics!" without supplying a sound economic argument is empty rhetoric.

You are not an authority, and even if you were an authority an appeal to you would still be a canonical fallacy.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

I have real doubts about this too. The people promoting it may actually think of it as not affecting their standard of living, but I don't think everyone shares their assessment. And I'm not about to impose luddite standards on everyone unless there is absolutely no alternative.

The question is do you mean conservation is in more insulation and better light bulbs? That's all well and good. At issue is that a huge amount more is needed and the plans you've put forward thus far are all based on enducing an energy shortage as a means of forcing conservation.

The problem with reducing standards of living and consumerism is the economic rational. You may say we need to stop being greedy and bite the bullet, but when you have a shrinking economy it ends up hurting everyone. There's more crime, less money for the government to spend, it's just a very bad situation. Economic downturns really lead to social downturns.

We don't want that and ultimately it won't help the environment either. It's been said that "enviornmentalism is a luxury." That's sorta true. Go to Fiji and try to walk on the side of the street. I have. You can barely breathe. The cars are poorly tunes. This is why you don't want to destroy the economy, because it forces people to take their own welfare to the expense of things like the environment. Furthermore, the population just isn't going to put up with it.

Every item you've brought up is based on making a shortage and really... that's going to hurt bad.

But I do know people whose electrical consumption is less than half the average and you wouldn't know it if they didn't tell you. It's the industrial uses that will be the most challenging.

it is the industrial users for one, but also these individuals probably make a point of this. And they probably pay for it. This doesn't work for everyone and forcing it through rationing is going to hurt.

I'm editing this because I think I'm actually wrong. I know people who are advocating 80% cuts from conservation, but I think that's overall. I suspect the electrical sector takes a slightly smaller share. And if we move to electrify transportation, the overall generation requirements may not change so dramatically at all.

Wait... what? what? Most of the plans for reducing global warming whih have credibility require moving to electric-centric transportation, yes that is true.

I personally think the "Plug in hybrid" is the best bet for the semi-near future for cutting gas use dramatically. The others are to move indusrial users of fossil fuels to electricity. To create hightly hydorgenated fuels, to advocate more electric-based transportation like electrified light rail in place of busses and to encourage the use of it. Possibly even moving heating toward a hybrid thermal heat-pump/stored thermal mass system.

But this will increase electrical demand. So even if energy use overall is reduced, electricity only plays a MUCH larger role.

 

[Lonewulf]

Lonewulf, in my experience in real life, all the nuclear proponents who push nuclear as a salvation to global warming have been pushing nuclear for decades and virtually none understand the scale of the problem. Which is why our provincial government has produced a plan that theoretically addresses global warming by reinvestment in nuclear, which will unfortunately delay closure of existing coal plants and result in overall emissions increases projected for the next 2 decades.

Wait wait wait wait...

WHEN do you actually plan on making everyone go all-solar, all-wind, and all-geothermal again?

And WHEN do you plan for everyone to "start cutting back" on MAJOR things, including mass-scale transportation and industrial/commercial changes?

If it's overnight, or even within the next year, then how do you understand the scale of the problem?

 

[luddite]

First of all, an apology. Yesterday, as I thought about it, I couldn't remember a single energy plan for climate change that included nuclear. I do now. Ralph Torrie's study for the Canadian Round Table for the Environment and Economy that I've mentioned before and included links to. That was a study commissioned by the government of Canada and targeted 60% emissions reductions by 2050. Not great, but getting there. Ralph included nuclear reluctantly because he was told to. What he found was that even though the investment in nuclear was one of the largest, the emissions reduction was the tiniest sliver of the lot. He is currently, with the other authors, producing a similar report on his own time that takes out nuclear. He believes that by freeing up the investment, he can economically provide even deeper emissions cuts.

When I asked him why this was, he said that it's because nuclear has high capital costs and long lead times. And whatever it's replacing has to remain online. It makes no sense to build a nuclear plant and then demolish all the windmills you've put up. So you need to actually keep coal plants around so that you can close them when the nuclear plant starts operating. Now maybe this is irrelevant in parts of the U.S. or China. There are so many coal plants anyway. But in Canada, we've got a lot of hydro power that could provide baseload. And in Ontario, we've got nuclear plants as well. In other words, if we really rolled up our sleeves, we could get rid of the coal plants long before we could build a single reactor.

 

[luddite]

Schneibster, merely repeating "you've got to learn economics!" without supplying a sound economic argument is empty rhetoric.

You are not an authority, and even if you were an authority an appeal to you would still be a canonical fallacy.

Thank you Kevin.

 

[luddite]

Wait wait wait wait...

WHEN do you actually plan on making everyone go all-solar, all-wind, and all-geothermal again?

And WHEN do you plan for everyone to "start cutting back" on MAJOR things, including mass-scale transportation and industrial/commercial changes?

If it's overnight, or even within the next year, then how do you understand the scale of the problem?

Overnight would definitely be best. What are we waiting for? Every study indicates that the faster we start the less painful it will be.

Scale of the problem. 80-90% emissions cuts in the next 30 years is what I'd like to see. That was considered a radical goal 2 years ago. It's rapidly becoming completely mainstream. And I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out not to be enough. That's definitely the pattern with climate change. Every time we settle on a target, some time later we hear it isn't enough. It's a lot harder to get the last 10% cuts than the first 10%. Plus anything you spew into the atmosphere now you have to make up for with even more abrupt changes later. So you target big reductions in the beginning. Let's say 40-50% cuts in the next 10 years. I'm open to any realistic plan that gets us there.

 

[Lonewulf]

Overnight would definitely be best. What are we waiting for? Every study indicates that the faster we start the less painful it will be.

Wait. So you actually do believe that we can cut energy emissions enough so that we go from needing 50,000,000 windmills to 1,250,000 windmills... overnight?

And you feel that you can dare make this claim about anyone else?:

virtually none understand the scale of the problem.

Please give me a reason to not start ignoring you right now?

 

[luddite]

Wait. So you actually do believe that we can cut energy emissions enough so that we go from needing 50,000,000 windmills to 1,250,000 windmills... overnight?

You misunderstood that link from Robinson. 50,000,000 was the number of wind turbines that would be required to harvest all the available best winds. 1,250,000 was the number required to meet our current demands. And I'm proposing somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of that ultimately. In the meantime, we encourage efficiency and conservation, build up what we can and rely on existing sources of generation, taking the worst offenders offline as soon as possible.

We'll be building generation up faster in the second decade than the first, as our production capabilities improve. So in the first decade, when the biggest cuts are made, an even greater share will fall on conservation. If we do what the Germans are doing, we can retrofit 5% of building stock annually, targeting the least efficient structures first, all to standards where no heating/cooling is required. After a decade, we will have done half, and it will be the worst half. So we get to 40-50% emissions reductions from home heating, and a good dent in electricity demand. That enables us to take off the most polluting generation sources.

We target cars by raising energy prices. My favorite is the carbon tax, offset by a corresponding reduction in income and other taxes. You end up with the same disposable income, but a built-in incentive to do things differently. Carpool, move closer to where you work, use public transit, bicycle, whatever. You can also introduce or raise road tolls and reduce them for carpoolers. You can introduce or raise taxes for new vehicle purchases and reduce them for the most efficient models. Or you can do what the British are considering and introduce a carbon quota.

You also need to give people better alternatives, so you need to build up the public transit systems to reach more people. The public transit system of the future is very likely to be electric. But you can get combustion powered buses up a lot faster and they still make a big dent in transportation emissions. So we build up bus routes immediately and electrify them as we can. We start building in the infrastructure for electric cars, which are responsible for fewer emissions even when the ultimate power source is a coal-fired plant. And we need to build up the rail system for freight.

To get 40-50% emissions cuts from transportation in the first decade, it's going to be a combination of people moving around less because they live closer to their jobs, greater efficiency in the vehicles that get them there and pooling of resources so as many as possible are in each vehicle. This process will just continue after the first decade.

Clearly we need to stop building big box stores in the middle of nowhere. There may be some hope for some of them as hubs accessible by public transit. But there's going to be a resurgence of corner grocery stores. Monbiot recommends that all stores offer delivery service, too. And a lot of other things will be locally made. No more ice cream from California in Toronto, yummy as it is. No more parsley from Mexico. Specialty pasta imported from Italy made from Canadian wheat will become even more of a specialty. We'll buy more local wines, local cheeses, local furniture, locally made clothes. We'll be manufacturing toothpaste locally again.

I could go on and on. Whatever you do, you need to build in incentives now and make it clear that the incentives will only be stronger in the future.

So if you're asking when the ultimate targets will be reached, I suspect we'll find that there are cuts to be made for the remainder of the century. But the bulk of it should be done over the next 3 decades. If you're asking when we should start, that's the wrong question. We should have started at least a decade ago.

And as to ultimate hardship, it's hard for me to see. Local economies are good. We'll live in better houses in more integrated communities with daily necessities accessible by walking. The streets will be safer, the air cleaner, the water drinkable, or at the very least less smelly.

 

[cloudshipsrule]

1,250,000 was the number required to meet our current demands.

Imagine the energy needed to create, install and maintain that number of windmills.