Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

But you'll have to pry my computer from my cold, dead hands.
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Goodness, I hope it won't come to that. How could we have these rousing discussions? Obviously, it would be a hardship to me too if gracious living required giving up computers.
 
Lonewulf said:
You'd need a 1625% increase in the effectiveness of the three technologies, which is asking quite a bit.
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Not that it refutes your argument, but that's not really asking much. 20% growth over 15 years would achieve it. I don't know actual growth rates for those technologies but those kind of growth rates, or even better, are not unheard of.
 
Sure, and building more nuclear power plants would increase nuclear's influence as well. Both cost money.
 
Texastwister said:
Please source.....thats a strong statement without any justification
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uranium in coal means that your average coal power plant will dump more radation into the enviroment that your average nuclear plant.
 
Look, I'm not saying nuclear is perfect, or the end-all, be-all. However, if we use nuclear to it's full capabilities, it can last us a long time and be a primary or near-primary source of energy for most of our needs. Geothermal, Solar, and Wind energy would have to take a LOT of investment to EVER be able to not only completely replace nuclear, but also manage to surpass it. I think that we need both forms of technology.
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Whereas it would be my hope to avoid nuclear.

I'm very skeptical of the safety of nuclear. We had also better develop much more respectful extraction methods if there is to be any nuclear future at all.

But most of all I'm unconvinced about the economics of nuclear. When Ontario Hydro privatized its operations, it sold off its nuclear plants for less than the estimated decommissioning costs, and the insurance is still the responsibility of the government. If it's so cheap in theory, why is it bankrupting us in practice?

No nuclear plant is ever insured. I'm not aware of any company that promises to decommission reactors. Storage issues have not been resolved anywhere. And every reactor I hear about seems to be behind schedule, over budget and shorter lived than planned.

You quote nuclear proponents extensively. I don't trust them.

When you say it's hard to imagine renewables taking up the slack, I hear and understand you. But it's still difficult for me to get enthusiastic about nuclear or embrace using it to "its full capabilities". Why would we want that?

And at least in Ontario, the experience has been that the nuclear industry has actively interfered with renewable development. And at least here in Ontario, the nuclear industry has historically been absorbing a great deal of public investment. Putting in a similar investment in renewables would be an excellent start. In fact, it would be a big help just to stop putting up roadblocks to renewable penetration.

Governments like big power projects. They're not interested in little power producers here and there. So until this year every single wind turbine or solar installation in Ontario was put up privately. Renewable proponents encountered enormous barriers to acceptance. They weren't allowed to hook up to the grid, or weren't paid if they did. Meanwhile the subsidies to the AECL kept flowing.

And still some people put up wind and solar. Even though it was privately insured, it was still economical in some cases. No nuclear company can do that.

Now the Province has finally developed Standard Offer Contracts for renewable power. But in order to secure a place for nuclear, the lands with the best wind in the Province have been declared off limits, because they are on transmission corridors the Province wants to reserve for future nuclear development. Meanwhile, even by the conservative estimates of the Province, economically recoverable on-land and Great Lake wind capacity amounts to over 700 GW, well over 20 times the provincial peak. Winds off James Bay are even better. If the city of Toronto covered just 10% of its roof space in solar panels, it could produce all the energy it needed. We are awash in energy.

At least in Ontario, the reason renewables comprise such a small portion of the load is a historic preference for big power projects, active interference from the nuclear industry and perverse subsidies for nuclear. I suspect this pattern is repeated all over the world. In jurisdictions that commit to greater renewable penetration, like your own country, renewables comprise much more than the 0.4% world average.

Nuclear proponents also actively interfere with DSM programmes. No big surprise. The rationale for a new power plant requires big demand. So while every government office accepts the fact that conservation dollars go a longer way in meeting new demand than generation, the plan is to throw $100 billion at nuclear and natural gas and leave renewables to private developers to a limit of 5% of the load. And I speak to nuclear engineers who wring their hands wondering whether the grid can support so much "unreliable" renewable power. It would be funny if the stakes weren't so high.
 
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Luddite said:
You quote nuclear proponents extensively. I don't trust them.
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And yet, I don't trust you.

You have quoted nothing.

You have verified little of your data.

You have merely brought up claims again and again and again.

I at least have a source, and that source could lead me to other sources as I know how to contact him. He's actually linked towards other trusted sources if you even gave half a look at his webpage. All of his claims are verifiable.
 
Let's deal with these one at a time, okay?
1) That nuclear energy is so incredibly more expensive than geothermal, solar, and wind power.

I need a cite on the cost per Kw/h of all of these processes. If you're going to add stuff like mining materials, then I will have to know all the costs of mining materials for the creation of the other mentioned plants.

I provided an article that demonstrated that nuclear power was far below renewable resource power in cost per kw/h. You dismissed it out of hand, but I'm afraid I'll need a bit more information before I accept your rebuttal so readily.
 
I think it's fair to state that it is unlikely that there will be a single source of energy (whether it for electricity generation or for the operation of motor vehicles) that is suitable for every single community or application. We can see that communities source their energy needs by exploiting (although I hate to use this particular word because there are so many negative connotations) their natural surroundings: countries such as Australia would naturally attempt to exploit the fact that they are constantly exposed to solar energy. For regions that dont have this luxury (whether you see extended sunlight as a beneficial luxury), other sources of energy must be developed and I think nuclear energy is one of those sources. Obviously there are detrimental effects of the use of nuclear energy on the environment and society, I don't see the reason for immediately casting the idea of nuclear energy aside. I can't begin to imagine the effects of shifting all electrical generation to fossil fuel burning. I think nuclear energy, whether it be fission or fusion (a possibility that I would absolutely love to come to commercial fruition), is a viable source of energy for humanity for the next few centuries. Of course everything I've just said is a thought and welcome any constructive criticism.
 
Baroque_On said:
I think it's fair to state that it is unlikely that there will be a single source of energy (whether it for electricity generation or for the operation of motor vehicles) that is suitable for every single community or application.
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100% agreed.
 
Lonewulf said:
Let's deal with these one at a time, okay?
1) That nuclear energy is so incredibly more expensive than geothermal, solar, and wind power.

I need a cite on the cost per Kw/h of all of these processes. If you're going to add stuff like mining materials, then I will have to know all the costs of mining materials for the creation of the other mentioned plants.

I provided an article that demonstrated that nuclear power was far below renewable resource power in cost per kw/h. You dismissed it out of hand, but I'm afraid I'll need a bit more information before I accept your rebuttal so readily.
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Here's the first quote I found. The source is the Pembina Institute.
pubs.pembina.org/reports/Nuclear_CC_brief_editedMW.pdf

Nuclear is one of the most expensive options available for responding to climate change.
Nuclear represents one of the most costly options available for reducing GHG emissions. Using figures from the Ontario Power Authority and CIBC World Markets, the Ontario Clean Air Alliance calculated that offsetting a tonne of emissions from a coal-fired generating station using nuclear power costs $29.76. This is significantly more than the cost of using wind power ($18.85) or combined cycle natural gas generation ($4.11).9 Improving energy efficiency and productivity to reduce GHG emissions would be cheaper still; experience in other jurisdictions demonstrates that such programs can cost far less than supply options (while increasing economic efficiency and lowering net energy costs). With a per capita electricity use that is 60% higher than in neighbouring New York State, Ontario has no shortage of lower-cost opportunities to reduce its need for electricity and the GHG emissions that go with supplying that power.
Determining the true cost of nuclear power is difficult. To attract private investment into nuclear projects, governments have had to provide complex webs of market, price and return-on-investment guarantees, and assume risks and liabilities related to everything from construction cost overruns and waste disposal and decommissioning to accidents and fuel costs. Even with all of these types of extraordinary guarantees in place, Ontario’s Provincial Auditor noted that the province’s October 2005 deal for the refurbishment of reactors at the Bruce Nuclear Facility still was not rich enough to draw one of the original partners in the private sector Bruce Power consortium — Cameco Ltd., a company whose major business is uranium mining and nuclear fuel production
— into the deal.
Other low GHG emission options don’t need these sorts of extraordinary guarantees of profits and absorption of risks and liabilities by ratepayers and taxpayers to attract private capital investments.
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luddite said:
I lived in Brazil. No air conditioning is not only possible, it's more comfortable than the modern air conditioned house if done properly. And it's routinely done properly even by poor people in countries where energy is too expensive, too erratic or unavailable.

Eliminating windows is not part of the process. You need expansive windows to cool at night. You just need proper shading and appropriate walls.
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Oh, I see: just rebuild half the houses in the US. That's a good solution.

Sorry, that's simply not feasible. Furthermore, Brazil's climate isn't the same as the US, and what you were comfortable with doesn't equate to what other people will be comfortable with given the option of air conditioning. And windows make a hell of a lot of difference when it comes to heating, which my house also needs. I don't recall hearing reports of snow in Brazil, but I get those here along with 100 degree humid summers. And I don't have the option of shading my whole house. If you're suggesting I just plant a tree, well, I don't have a hundred years to wait for it to grow big enough.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Not that it refutes your argument, but that's not really asking much. 20% growth over 15 years would achieve it. I don't know actual growth rates for those technologies but those kind of growth rates, or even better, are not unheard of.
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In brand-spanking-new technologies, sure. But wind, solar, and geothermal are not new. Wind power has been around for hundreds of years, and solar and geothermal are decades old. Wind power will see increased deployment, but not by multiple orders of magnitude. Same with geothermal: digging deep into the ground is always going to be expensive, there's no way to make it cheap. The only hope for something like that is a breakthrough in solar power. But don't count on it. It's physically impossible to get efficiency improvements of more than a factor of about 4, and even that's bloody unlikely, and wouldn't even matter if the cost went up (which it probably would in order to get much better efficiency). It will have to be a cost breakthrough. But there aren't any on the horizon which would fundamentally change the equation. And we cannot and should not plan on a breakthrough that may never happen, or may happen a hundred years from now.
 
Luddite, that quote doesn't answer Lonewulf's question.

He wanted to know about the cost per kilowatt-hour (presumably after every single relevant cost is factored in). Your quote talks about the cost to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Greenhouse gas emissions should be one of the relevant costs that are factored in, of course, and if you view reducing greenhouse gas emissions as a necessity rather than a luxury then that argument alone would convince you that nuclear is a white elephant.

I suspect, however, that Lonewulf's question is too general to actually have an answer. The cost per kilowatt hour of putting up solar panels in an Australian paddock next door to the solar panel factory is going to be different to the cost per kilowatt hour of putting them on top of an isolated mountain where it rains all the time. The cost per kilowatt hour of wind, tide and geothermal is also going to be highly sensitive to the location chosen.

The question is whether a variety of targeted non-nuclear solutions are between them a better energy production strategy than building a few big nuclear plants, once grenhouse gas emissions, the storage problem, decomissioning costs and so on are factored in.
 
Oh, I see: just rebuild half the houses in the US. That's a good solution.
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Rebuilding is not necessary. I'm planning to add exterior insulation to my house this coming spring. The capital cost should be repayable within ten years through reductions in energy costs.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Not that it refutes your argument, but that's not really asking much. 20% growth over 15 years would achieve it. I don't know actual growth rates for those technologies but those kind of growth rates, or even better, are not unheard of.
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According to this source:

http://www.renewable-energy-world.c...693/121/ONART/none/MARKT/The-'tipping-point'/

Between 1993 and 2003 wind grew at 30% per year on average, solar grew at 20% per year on average.

So the rate of growth you need to eclipse nuclear in fifteen years is the rate of growth we had last century. If we put more effort into renewable energy sources there's no reason we couldn't bump that growth rate up much higher.
 
He wanted to know about the cost per kilowatt-hour (presumably after every single relevant cost is factored in). Your quote talks about the cost to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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Yes. Sorry.
I'm afraid what I see repeatedly are statements about what's generally not included in the stated costs of nuclear. I've never actually seen these quantified. The big ones are liability and decommissioning. There may also be substantial environmental costs related to mining. I think the environmental/health costs from plant operations are actually modest compared to coal. My understanding is that the health effects are mostly around increased cancer risks, but the deaths from asthma attributable to coal are far higher.

For the record, I never disputed Lonewulf's base costs. I only pointed out what they didn't include. I also pointed out that without excluding decommissioning and liability, private developers were unwilling to build nuclear power plants. This strongly suggests that inclusion of these costs would make nuclear power unprofitable.
 
Nuclear costs per kWh

Here's another source that says the same thing - that in a competitive market, nuclear doesn't survive unless decommissioning and liability costs are excluded.

eng.decomatom.org.ru/?q=node/67


And here's Tom Adams of Energy Probe disputing the nuclear industry's claims that all-in costs including decommissioning brought nuclear power to 5.5 cents per kWh. He points out that the all-in costs don't include cost overruns, interest and debt servicing charges related to the fact that the nuclear plants operated for just half their expected life-span. He readjusts the cost to 8-11 cents in 1997 Canadian dollars, but notes that even this cost still doesn't include liability exemption, subsidies through loan guarantees or subsidies for nuclear research.

energyprobe.org/energyprobe/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=285


Here's an article from the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, which estimates the cost of nuclear in New Brunswick at 10.92 cents per kWh as compared to 7.33 cents for small-scale wind. The article doesn't state what the cost includes, but it almost certainly doesn't include federal subsidies for nuclear research.

elements.nb.ca/theme/nuclear_energy/david/coon.htm
 
luddite said:
Rebuilding is not necessary. I'm planning to add exterior insulation to my house this coming spring. The capital cost should be repayable within ten years through reductions in energy costs.
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That seems quite optimistic. Do you already have energy efficient windows?
 
Good work, Luddite. That pretty much agrees with everything I've heard on the subject from sources I trust: nuclear is only competitive if you can hide a lot of the true costs, and it's only a long-term solution if you include fairy-dust technologies like thorium or fusion that don't actually exist and may never exist.

On the other hand renewable energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal and tide power are already being used to generate useful amounts of power without the same kind of voodoo accounting.

What I also think is interesting is that in Australia (and I think the UK), significant numbers of people have been willing to opt in to schemes where they pay more for electricity but the electricity comes mostly from renewable sources. So even if it did end up costing more than nuclear, and I don't think the evidence says it will, there is still a market for it because people want to know that their power comes from sustainable sources.

I like high-tech solutions, but I think in the case of power generation the high-tech solution is going to be big factories mass-producing solar panels, not big power plants running nuclear reactors.
 
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