Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[robinson]

Considering that technology doesn't stand still, I'd say quoting a fifteen year old book... doesn't constitute strong evidence to support your view.

I did the math. He is right about the rate of building to replace coal plants with Nuclear. We would need at least 4,000 power plants. That is around one every three days, for 40 years.

 

[Hindmost]

I guess I should have added a smiley. While looking at the list, I noticed just how many reactors have been shut down/decommissioned or entombed. Nuclear reactors are very expensive, a short term solution, and a long term danger*.

*Same for radioactive waste.

While we have been discussing/ranting about how great it is, or could be, the bottom line doesn't add up. Nuclear Power isn't a solution for the United States. If nuclear power plants were profitable, we would see a new one go up every 2 years in the US.

Public Health concerns don't stop construction of far more dangerous industries. Or actions. Popular opinion didn't stop the US from continuing to build Nuclear reactors. Financial reasons did.

The fact is that nuclear plants are profitable. The capital cost for building the plants back in the 70s and 80s was very prohibitive due in part to escalating cost and a very high cost of capital due to interest rates at that time. Utilities have to borrow all the money and can't recover it in rate increases until the plant goes on line--that costs a bunch. In addition, when the oil 'crisis' hit, energy conservation helped significantly. Electrical power growth dropped from 7-8%/year to negative and then grew only at 1-2%. This eliminated the need to build any plants. With adding north slope oil and its price dropping to less than 20 dollars a barrel, the entire energy scene changed--it is changing again...and fast. CEOs of utilitie got burned real bad when told building a plant would cost 500 million dollars and the eventual cost was 5 times that initial number. The reason for stopping was the cost of construction along with licensing delays due to TMI back fits and public resistance. There are thirty plants on the boards of utilities today--will have to see what happens. The fact is that nuke plants produce the lowest cost electricity over their lifetime with the exception of certain hydro plants. The reactors that are being shut down are older units...most due to size concerns...the plants less cost efficient when they are small due to fixed cost of operation. Bigger is cheaper.

Some plant were shutdown solely due to public pressure. Trojan, fort st vrain--although this one had operation issues, shorem...and others I can't remember.

glenn

 

[Lonewulf]

With so much misinformation being spread around, it's a wonder how anyone in the energy industry actually gets anything done.

 

[BenBurch]

Zion 1 & 2 also shut down mostly due to public perception. It was on the watch list, yes, but there was nothing wrong at that plant that could not have been rectified.

Dresden 1 was kept shut because though they had built a decontamination plant, and could have decontaminated the plant, renovated it, and used it for another 20 years, the cost of the environmental protection plan and survey exceeded the profit to be gained from doing so!

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

I did the math. He is right about the rate of building to replace coal plants with Nuclear. We would need at least 4,000 power plants. That is around one every three days, for 40 years.

I've seen recent reports that China is building a major coal fired plant every 7-10 days. I would think that means the world is building coal fired plants at a rate nearly what the Senator cites. So we shouldn't reject nuclear just because we think that sounds like a lot of building to be done. We've got to build at a similar rate no matter which way we go.

As a world wide venture building a nuclear power plant every three days doesn't seem like that big a deal. The 9 trillion he cites works out to about a quarter trillion a year. Energy is a multi trillion dollar industry. For comparison: the approximately 30 billion barrels of oil consumed on the planet are 2.4 trillion dollars a year at $80 a barrel. Worldwide generation of electricity is 15 trillion KwH anually. Don't know what worldwide rates for electricity are but that's got to be nearly a trillion dollars.

My guesstimate is that the program he's citing would require a greater capital re-investment than usual, but not by an impossible amount.

BTW here's a link that seems to relate to the quote from the Senator:

http://www.mothersalert.org/globalwarming2.html

It claims "31.48 trillion" as the "cost" of generating electricity. Sounds a bit disengenuous to me since I would think that is actually the value of the electricity generated by that 9 trillion dollar investment, IOW I think its the return on investment.

 

[Hindmost]

I am not convinced. When we discovered oil, it could have been used to clean up the environment, rather than destroy it. It could have replaced coal in industry. That would have cleaned up our cities and made them pleasant to live in so rich people didn't feel the need to own country homes away from it all. Natural gas could have replaced existing space heating requirements and lasted hundreds of years, making cities even more pleasant.

If we had recognized that our fossil fuel inheritance was a precious trust that should be safeguarded for future generations and limited its use, progress in building design and insulation would have meant that a lot of energy "needs" would never have come up. And maybe our industrial base would have been somewhat smaller. We would have fewer cars and maybe no cheap plastic toys from China at all.

It is my observation that energy "needs" rise to meet any availability. As long as cheap oil was available, we kept coming up with new and creative ways to use it. We now spend more time in traffic and service fees for our homes cost a lot more because we've scattered them across the countryside.

Nuclear was supposed to deliver power "too cheap to meter". Again, we just discovered a raft of new uses for the electricity it produced. If we had invested in more nuclear as well, I'm convinced we'd have an even greater dependence on electricity today, with no decrease in our dependence on cars at all. If TMI and Chernobyl hadn't happened, governments may have been more complacent and not as supportive of nuclear research. So current reactors may have been more dangerous and research into new technologies might have been further behind. We may well have had an even deeper climate crisis because mining, transporting and refining uranium still use a lot of fossil fuels, and nuclear plants rely on coal for backup. And we'd be even more desperate today, because we'd have less uranium remaining and our perceived energy "needs" would be even more astronomical.

I don't think the solution is to keep giving the addict his fix.

I'm also concerned about the lecture on "dissing" nuclear power. The first article I quoted stated that Ontario Power Generation was



The whole point of a democracy is to have an informed and engaged electorate judge the pros and cons for themselves. It is contemptible to keep information from them, yet you suggest that it is revealing the dangers of nuclear power that is somehow morally reprehensible.

What I think we need to do instead is inform the public about the dangers of global warming, inform the public about the dangers of all the various generation options, make reasonable assessments about what life will be like if we commit to the various options and let the public judge. My friends enjoy the challenge of reducing personal emissions to negligible levels. There's a big challenge around food supply that's hard to solve at a personal level, but that can be addressed as well with the necessary political commitment. I don't like the presumption that we know how much energy people need, what risks they should be willing to take.

I'll agree that most people are unaware of the magnitude of the upcoming energy crisis, but in my experience, when apprised of their options, most people prefer to focus on reducing their energy dependence first and investing in renewables second. That would change if the alternative was starving in the dark, but it's not. It means you give up such luxuries as standby modes on television and sweep instead of vacuuming sometimes. You hang your clothes to dry and it smells nice as a result.

But my biggest complaint about nuclear is that in practice it competes directly with conservation. I know there are a lot of people on this forum that believe the two can and should coexist. But the reality is that governments have energy budgets. Nuclear involves huge capital cost outlays. It creates budgets that make people's heads spin. And it is always based on models of energy "needs" founded on the current model. It presumes that in a low-carbon future we will continue to produce cars, electric weed trimmers, golf carts, can openers, little electronic dolls and other crap at the same rate. It presumes that our houses will continue to be poorly insulated and that we'll continue to commute from ever more distant suburbs. It presumes that populations will continue to expand. It always presumes that living with less is impossible. So the monetary commitment to conservation is a pittance, even though conservation is widely accepted as the cheapest, fastest, most reliable and safest way of reducing demand. Where a nuclear fix is not an option because of public resistance, the result is a greater investment in conservation and renewables to keep the lights on.

It seems that you are dismissing any arguement that shows nuclear to be viable. The "too cheap to meter" comment came at a time when the first plants were build without containments and safety systems back in the 50s and capital costs were minimal. Coupled with the fact that fission releases a million times more energy than any chemical reaction, that statement was thought to be reasonable. Obviously it belongs with statements such as...there is only a need for 3-4 computers in the US...etc

TMI and chernobyl didn't affect the downturn of nuclear power in the US. Utilities abandoned before those issues. 10CFR50 along with ASME codes and reg guides determine how a plant get built in the US. The government wasn't complacent before TMI and they certainly weren't after those problems. And again...nuke plants have a better capacity factor than coal plants...so it is the coal plants that rely on nukes, not the other way around. The Toronto star printing one sided articles against nuclear does not mean that nuke plants are unreliable and coal plants aren't having maintenance problems. Any plant always has maintenance tasks and issues to deal with on a daily basis. Actually, you never really get any rest working at a power plant...I speak with experience.

When you indicate that energy demands rise to meet availability, what evidence do you have for this. Demand comes first. Looking at world wide electricity growth, it is the expanding economies in India and China along with population growth have caused the increase in demand. Utilities do not go out promoting consumers to buy energy draining stuff like plasma tvs...Utilities didn't invent dryers. Utilities actually don't like building plant due to risk...right now, natural gas plants are the cheapest to build and don't have a great risk associated with them. The market comes first.

I agree with your posts related to conservation, but there still will be a certain amount of energy needed that is not considered luxury just too keep the world economy going. Conservation can't stop this demand...and current technology for wind, solar and geothermal power just won't supply the energy. Nuclear power doesn't compete with conservation. If wind and solar power were cheap and available, energy demand would increase.

glenn

 

[BenBurch]

Yes, one plant every three days.

And we'd better get started; the consequence of not doing so is the fall of our technical civilization, and the death through exposure, starvation and chaos of you, your loved ones, basically 95% of all humans living now.

 

[luddite]

Actually, it couldn't. You apparently don't know much about the manufacture of steel, or of cement. The use of a liquid fuel for either one would have required the use of a completely different type of plant. And that would have been a very large capital investment. And from the point of view of global warming, it would have made no difference at all.

I'm not sure why you think natural gas isn't used for heating houses; I'm looking at a natural gas fired forced air heating system in my garage right now. As it happens, it's going to be replaced shortly with a higher-efficiency unit, partly because it needs to be replaced, and partly because I want to cut down my carbon footprint. That's merely one of the measures I'm taking.

My apologies. I meant it could have replaced some coal, not all. Though I understand Brazilian steel is made using charcoal, so coal is not absolutely necessary. I know most houses are heated with natural gas. We've also largely eliminated coal powered trains for transportation. My point is not that there has been no fuel-switching. My point is that it's had no impact at all on the use of coal. We've just found other uses for the coal.

I also think you're not really thinking about what that "industrial base" actually provides.

I'm not trying to be difficult here. But all I've seen is assertions that the industrial base requires a lot of electricity and is structurally resistant to efficiency improvements. That much I know. I've said before that I don't have a lot of knowledge and I'd appreciate more. Industry also has widely varying requirements. So tell me what you know. I'd be glad to learn.

Because without specific examples, I come to some of my own conclusions. The auto industry is being bailed out again, for example, in Canada. When we should be worrying about reducing our emissions, this seems profoundly wrong.

Some industry should even grow, energy intensive as it is. We need more wind turbines, for example.

But I know industry will be profoundly affected in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Big final emitters are being targetted in every country that's serious about climate change. George Monbiot recommends auctioning off the carbon allocated to industry. Whatever mechanism you use, energy intensive industries will suffer. Doubly so if they make energy guzzling end products.

I've never seen anyone make an assessment of what industries are likely to survive, which will grow, which will shrink. But I think that planning on energizing the current industrial base in a low-carbon economy is a little myopic.

It is my observation that energy "needs" rise to meet any availability. As long as cheap oil was available, we kept coming up with new and creative ways to use it. We now spend more time in traffic and service fees for our homes cost a lot more because we've scattered them across the countryside.

Do you have any evidence to support this assertion? I've looked your posts on this thread over, and I don't see any. I also see evidence to support the opposite view, evidence you've ignored or passed over. Certainly I don't see a credible response to that evidence from you, and here you are making the same assertion again, in defiance of apparent reality. If you want to have a conversation, you need to respond to what other people say, not just ignore it and keep saying the same thing.

Do I really need to substantiate the fact that pumping water to houses separated by 30 metres door to door requires more infrastructure than pumping water 6 metres door to door? And what evidence do you see to support the opposite view? What I've seen is a lot of unsubstantiated assertions that demand comes first. Hindmost has also claimed repeatedly that utilities resist expansion and promote conservation for this reason, again without support. I've pointed out that many utilities are paid to promote conservation. And I've suggested (without support) that while they may be risk averse and reluctant to invest in increased infrastructure, that doesn't mean they want to see dramatic demand decreases. And when they build a new power plant, they want to see it working to pay itself off. To my knowledge, nobody answered this at all.

It may well be a chicken-and-egg question.

All of this is frank speculation, and all of it is unsupported, and basically unsupportable by any facts, because it didn't work out that way.

That's what it was meant to be. My point was that your ideas about what might have happened if TMI and Chernobyl had not happened was equally speculative. We just don't know. But I think the idea that it would have necessarily resulted in an emissions reduction is very optimistic.

I don't think the solution is to starve a billion people because of an unsupported characterization.

As I've said, if that were the only alternative, I wouldn't raise a single objection to anything that needed to be done. But neither have you supported your claim that a billion people would starve. That's a pretty heavy hammer to throw.

The recommendations I've seen you make on this thread sounded pretty restrictive in terms of personal freedom. I'm a liberal, but I'm also anti-authoritarian, and it sounded like the carbon police to me. And it's the carbon police to avoid using a perfectly reasonable solution, which is unjustifiable. If you could have shown that there was no choice, well, OK, I guess we gotta do what we gotta do. But in the absence of proof of that, I think you're imposing a bunch of regulations in order to avoid a perceived danger that's less than you make it out to be.

Actually, I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can avoid a "carbon police" situation. I'd much rather control emissions through market mechanisms and give people a lot of freedom about how they trade off their various priorities.

What happens is that when people say "Hey it's impossible to live without air conditioning" and I say "No, it's not, it's been done", they assume that I want to dictate the exact conditions of what they will do. I don't.

But we have a lot of bad options. If you live in a suburban frame house in the desert with air conditioning powered by coal, realistically you need to expect something to change. There are a lot of options on the table. You can move. You can insulate. You can concentrate by moving several families into a single house. Or you can change the source of the electricity. I'd rather not tell people what to do. But when asked, it has been my consistent experience that when people understand that insulation can take care of things, that's the first option they pick. The second is changing the source to solar or wind. Many people would rather move than generate from nuclear.

And a lot of my point is that saying "We'll build a nuclear power plant because people obviously demand air conditioning" is equally presumptuous and intrusive.

If you look at the links to the two English articles I sent, there was a study which indicated that you cannot attain the required emissions reductions without basically retrofitting all existing housing stock. So even though I'm not proposing which mechanisms are to be used, I'm prepared to go out on a limb here and say that addressing global warming will force almost all of us to make significant energy retrofits. If we don't embrace this soon, carbon police may have to force us. When we do it ourselves, we have a lot more freedom about how it's done.

But if you think that's going to solve this problem, or that you're going to get the Chinese to let people starve because you're afraid of nuclear energy, I'd have to say that I haven't seen you present any evidence to support your views, and they strike me as pretty unrealistic.

Why do you bring up Chinese? When have I ever suggested that anyone should starve? What view am I supposed to present evidence for?

You've been shown evidence to support the assertion that this will not be enough, and ignored it. If you have some evidence to present to support this point of view, then present it; otherwise, this is just more smoke.

I have? Lonewulf has expressed doubts that the 0.4% share of renewables could rise to 100%. Glenn has claimed (unsupported) that we could not conserve our way out of our industrial demands. Several people have complained that wind sites are limited, the sun is weak in the north and renewables are intermittent.

I've actually responded about why things may be more hopeful. For example, I pointed out that renewables have a much higher penetration in countries that take coal reduction seriously and storage technologies are rapidly maturing as a result. Also I've pointed out that the wind studies for Ontario give a conservatively estimated potential many times our load. And I pointed out that reducing the load through efficiency and conservation is the priority. It's cheapest, fastest, safest and most reliable. I supported all these statements. Then there's sun and biomass and geothermal and other delights.

But Lonewulf's comments were equally speculative anyway. Can we or can't we? This isn't a question that has a rigorous, testable answer. It depends a lot on where we put our energies. You've pointed out yourself that ramping up nuclear would not be without its own challenges.

I don't think there's been any compelling argument presented for why it would be impossible to avoid expanding nuclear. Sorry if I've missed something. I want to note that I'm not demanding such compelling evidence either. I think all this is an exercise in envisioning future possibilities. There is no slam-dunk argument.

What I'll admit to is that envisioning a renewable future requires more imagination. It requires a careful scrutiny of where our energy goes and where and how it could be reduced. It requires doubting the assumption we've all gotten used to that energy needs will necessarily climb. It requires thinking about priorities a lot.

What I've been trying to say is that this kind of thinking will have to permeate our thoughts anyway, whether or not we invest in a nuclear renaissance. There are some people on this forum, mhaze and Dr. Buzzo, for example, who see nuclear potential as essentially inexhaustible. Whereas I'm convinced that even if we fail to address global warming and invest in nuclear, we're still very likely to have a major energy crisis.

I've seen people inspired by the realization that unheated structures could actually be more comfortable than heated ones. I don't want this to be an argument between entrenched sides about whether nuclear is necessary or not. That's pointless. I only want people to realize that there are other ways of looking at things than meeting the demand for x kilowatts and that, at the very least, different perspectives can go a long way to reducing our energy dependence. So we'll need less nuclear, at the very least. But I think it's an interesting challenge to see if we can get to the point where none is necessary.

And in a spirit of fun, I'll suggest that those who begin with the premise that all generation from coal needs to be replaced with an equivalent amount of generation from another source are the true unimaginative luddites.

what you've got is some half-baked ideas about saving the world that, if they were implemented, would result in a carbon police state with brown people on the other side of the world starving to death.

I don't think the brown people on the other side of the world have to worry. If you look at carbon emissions per capita, we're the ones who will have to make the greatest changes in our lives. If we lead by example, it will only make it easier still for them to copy us. A couple months ago, I sat down with a couple of friends over charts of petroleum consumption per capita by country and realized that for much of the world, oil could disappear tomorrow with little appreciable difference.

I got politically involved with climate change because I recognize it as the greatest human rights crisis we've ever faced. I've been concerned about human rights my entire life. So if I believed your prediction, I would be horrified.

Perhaps what you mean is that if we don't build nuclear plants, we'll have to build coal plants and that will cause widespread droughts. I question the premise that if we don't want to build coal plants the only alternative is to build nuke plants. And it seems rather harsh to suggest "take your nuclear pill or a billion Africans will starve". I've said all along that my priority is reducing emissions drastically now. Eliminating coal is a huge part of the challenge. I would never support a coal plant over a nuclear plant. I try to make that abundantly clear to everyone I speak to.

People aren't going to give up their cars willingly; and they aren't going to vote for anyone who tries to make them. The solution that will work is to stop burning oil in them. That means electric cars. The electricity has to come from somewhere, and if we burn coal to make it, that just transfers the problem somewhere else. Renewables aren't going to handle what we already use, even if we conserve all we can; and the evidence to support that assertion has already been presented here. How can we expect renewables to handle the extra load that using electric cars will present, if they can't even handle what we already have? Nuclear solves that problem, at least for now, while we figure out the permanent solution, which is fusion.

I know rather a lot of people who would love to be able to give up their cars. And they vote for politicians who promise to invest in more public transit, among other things. They also recognize that cars have emissions associated with manufacturing, road construction and disposal that remain even if the car is electric.

I've pointed out why I think a significant expansion of nuclear power is unlikely to occur quickly enough to power up our fleet anyway (and I referenced it).

Try and see if you can't give some answers to the questions I posed above, instead of writing a radical environmentalist screed. This is not the political forum.

Oh. I may well be on the wrong forum. I'm still rather new here.

 

[luddite]

It seems that you are dismissing any arguement that shows nuclear to be viable

I am? How so? I don't mean to deny this. I just don't know what you mean by viable. Clearly I'm aware that nuclear plants can be built and produce power. They would lower emissions somewhat under current conditions, and more so if extraction and processing of fuel could be done with less fossil fuel.

I think that on the balance we'd be better off putting our energies elsewhere.

When you indicate that energy demands rise to meet availability, what evidence do you have for this. Demand comes first.

As I mentioned to Schneibster, this may well be a chicken-and-egg question. But is it really conceivable that we would have built up a suburban auto culture without the availability of oil?

When you indicate that energy demands rise to meet availability, what evidence do you have for this. Demand comes first. Looking at world wide electricity growth, it is the expanding economies in India and China along with population growth have caused the increase in demand. Utilities do not go out promoting consumers to buy energy draining stuff like plasma tvs...Utilities didn't invent dryers.

Of course not. But nobody would have invented a handheld hair dryer if it cost $20 a minute to run the thing. If energy was rare and precious, we would use it more carefully. And once utilities commit to building a power plant (and as you say, they want to make sure the need is really there first), they definitely want to see it recover the investment in energy sales.

I agree with your posts related to conservation, but there still will be a certain amount of energy needed that is not considered luxury just too keep the world economy going. Conservation can't stop this demand...and current technology for wind, solar and geothermal power just won't supply the energy. Nuclear power doesn't compete with conservation.

And this is where it's a guessing game. Yes we need to keep the economy going. Conservation and renewables investment would be very good for the economy. Imagine what it would take to reinsulate 5% of the building stock every year. Imagine the fibreglass manufacturing involved.

And that, by the way, is part of the reason I'd like to start now, because when we're energy starved it will be a lot harder to do these necessary things.

Obviously, I hope that renewables can fill the need. I also have doubts about how much nuclear can do. I'm receptive to arguments that we need both, because I can't know what people will be willing to do. But most people can't imagine having an unheated house. That doesn't mean they'd be unwilling to live that way if it were possible to do so comfortably.

The argument that nuclear power competes with solar is a common one here in Ontario. Here's a paper from the Rocky Mountain Institute that says the same thing:

Empirical data also confirm that these competing technologies not only are being deployed an order of magnitude faster than nuclear power, but ultimately can become far bigger. In the U.S., for example, full deployment of these very cost-effective competitors (conservatively excluding all renewables except windpower, and all cogeneration that uses fresh fuel rather than recovered waste heat) could provide ~13–15 times nuclear power’s current 20% share of electric generation— all without significant land-use, reliability, or other constraints. The claim that “we need all energy options” has no analytic basis and is clearly not true; nor can we afford all options. In practice, keeping nuclear power alive means diverting private and public investment from the cheaper market winners—cogeneration, renewables, and efficiency—to the costlier market loser.

http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E05-08_NukePwrEcon.pdf

If wind and solar power were cheap and available, energy demand would increase.

So you've come to agree with me?

 

[luddite]

Perhaps the right answer is to get people in charge who will put enough regulations (and regulators) in place to ensure it's done right. But again, that's not a thread on SMM&T.

Remember also that no utility wants to own the next Chernobyl- if they're lucky, they'll only get shut down and their pants sued off. If they're not, they might get strung up to the nearest lamppost. Or wind up entertaining Bubba for the rest of their life. Not to mention, their multi-billion dollar investment is a puddle of radioactive slag. And remember finally that the nuclear engineers running it will be on-site; nobody wants to die of radiation poisoning, and a nuclear engineer will have the disadvantage of knowing precisely what's going to happen. It's a very ugly process.

I find this comment very interesting.

While most pro-nuclear authors here are arguing that nuclear is perfectly safe and nothing could possibly go wrong, this suggests that the reason we should be reassured is precisely because nuclear is so dangerous that people will be careful.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

While most pro-nuclear authors here are arguing that nuclear is perfectly safe and nothing could possibly go wrong, ...

This will hardly help all those pro-nuclear authors take you seriously.

 

[luddite]

People aren't going to give up their cars willingly; and they aren't going to vote for anyone who tries to make them.

I'd also like to point out that during the second world war, civilian car manufacturing ceased entirely and fuel was rationed in the United States. I believe that global warming is a greater world threat than naziism.

I do not want to force people to do things unwillingly. But I'm willing to recognize that in a crisis, people rise to meet the challenge, and that this may yet be necessary.

Achieving these goals was possible only by converting existing industries and using materials that previously went into manufacturing civilian goods. Nowhere was this shift more dramatic than in the automobile industry, which was at that time the largest concentration of industrial power in the world, producing 3-4 million cars a year. Auto companies initially wanted to continue manufacturing cars and simply to add on production of armaments. They agreed only reluctantly—after pressure from President Roosevelt—to a wholesale conversion to war-support manufacturing.14

...

The year 1942 witnessed the greatest expansion of industrial output in the nation's history—all for military use. Early in the year, the production and sale of cars and trucks for private use was banned, residential and highway construction was halted, and driving for pleasure was banned.17

In her book No Ordinary Time, Doris Kearns Goodwin describes how various firms converted. A sparkplug factory was among the first to switch to the production of machine guns. Soon a manufacturer of stoves was producing lifeboats. A merry-go-round factory was making gun mounts; a toy company was turning out compasses; a corset manufacturer was producing grenade belts; and a pinball machine plant began to make armor-piercing shells.18

In retrospect, the speed of the conversion from a peacetime to a wartime economy was stunning.

...

The harnessing of U.S. industrial power tipped the scales decisively toward the Allied Forces, reversing the tide of war. Germany and Japan could not match the United States in this effort. Winston Churchill often quoted Sir Edward Grey, Britain's foreign secretary: "The United States is like a giant boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate."20

A rationing program was also introduced. In addition to an outright ban on the sale of private cars, strategic goods—including tires, gasoline, fuel oil, and sugar—were rationed beginning in 1942. Cutting back on consumption of these goods freed up resources to support the war effort.21

This mobilization of resources within a matter of months demonstrates that a country and, indeed, the world can restructure its economy quickly if it is convinced of the need to do so. Many people—although not yet the majority—are already convinced of the need for a wholesale restructuring of the economy. The issue is not whether most people will eventually be won over, but whether they will be convinced before the bubble economy collapses.

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB/PBch11_ss3.htm

 

[luddite]

This will hardly help all those pro-nuclear authors take you seriously.

Sorry. It's not like I don't understand.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I just want to add that the last post is not definitive, and was just based on data that I could quickly gather; it's also not quite edited for purtiness. I'm rather pressed for time overall, so I'm not capable of giving a definitive extensive post. However, I feel that the last post is at least a way to start in on a reasonable discussion involving cost expenditure and overall energy efficiency of solar energy vs. nuclear energy.

Great post Lonewulf.

I do have a few comments of my own to add.

One is that it seems a bit unfair to ask the New York metropolitan area to cover the power needs of the whole state. I'm unfamiliar with US geography, but I imagine there's more to the state than just the city.

Another is that Dr Buzzo's figures ignore solar hot water heating. Solar hot water heating is a lot more efficient than using solar power cells to create electricity to heat water, and heating water is a significant chunk of a household's energy budget.

I think we can take 1/30th of the state's power needs as being a plausible lower limit to what current solar could do, for back-of-the-envelope purposes. If we let New York take care of itself without having to carry the state by itself, added solar hot water systems and maybe stuck wind power installations on the roofs for good luck (lots of wind there or so I am told) I think it's plausible you could to a lot better than 1/30th.

That's still only using "free" real estate. We're just sticking solar panels on buildings that are already there anyway. We haven't even started putting up wind farms or solar farms outside the city limits.

To go even further, I imagine that New York is something of a worst case scenario when it comes to the ratio of population to surface area. Less urbanised places are going to have more roof space per person to put panels on and so are going to do proportionally better.

We still haven't touched the issue of relative cost - I still see the pro-nuke posters claiming that nuclear is cheaper per kilowatt-hour than other sources, and I'm still pretty sure that the reputable sources I've seen say that's total rubbish without huge government subsidies and special exemptions.

 

[Hindmost]

I am? How so? I don't mean to deny this. I just don't know what you mean by viable. Clearly I'm aware that nuclear plants can be built and produce power. They would lower emissions somewhat under current conditions, and more so if extraction and processing of fuel could be done with less fossil fuel.

I think that on the balance we'd be better off putting our energies elsewhere.

I have posted links that show nuclear is more reliable than other forms of generation and is supported by capacity factors. You have indicated nuclear is supported by coal when the reverse is true. All plants require maintenance...when the toronto star shows a one-sided point of view, it doesn't properly present the facts that coal plants are shut down periodically with numerous problems.

As I mentioned to Schneibster, this may well be a chicken-and-egg question. But is it really conceivable that we would have built up a suburban auto culture without the availability of oil?

I agree, cheap oil has made suburbs...but it was henry ford putting a car in everyone's hands that created the demand. Very few people today don't want a car.

Of course not. But nobody would have invented a handheld hair dryer if it cost $20 a minute to run the thing. If energy was rare and precious, we would use it more carefully. And once utilities commit to building a power plant (and as you say, they want to make sure the need is really there first), they definitely want to see it recover the investment in energy sales.

It as if the utilities have done too good of a job. When I was in Houston back in the 70s, energy demand was growing so fast, the utility had trouble building plants fast enough. When that growth ended, they were relieved. The utility will always try to build enough to match the demand plus spinning reserve...they would rather people conserve than have to take the risk of building a plant due to cost overruns, and the difficulty of getting qualified help.

And this is where it's a guessing game. Yes we need to keep the economy going. Conservation and renewables investment would be very good for the economy. Imagine what it would take to reinsulate 5% of the building stock every year. Imagine the fibreglass manufacturing involved.

And that, by the way, is part of the reason I'd like to start now, because when we're energy starved it will be a lot harder to do these necessary things.

Obviously, I hope that renewables can fill the need. I also have doubts about how much nuclear can do. I'm receptive to arguments that we need both, because I can't know what people will be willing to do. But most people can't imagine having an unheated house. That doesn't mean they'd be unwilling to live that way if it were possible to do so comfortably.

The argument that nuclear power competes with solar is a common one here in Ontario. Here's a paper from the Rocky Mountain Institute that says the same thing:


http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E05-08_NukePwrEcon.pdf


So you've come to agree with me?

I have indicated agreeing with you on conservation and developing alternate energy sources. But wind power and solar power are like harnessing mosquitoes. I have always believed that. Until recent technology development, wind power wasn't competitive. It still needs subsidies now. At least they are not the maintenance nightmares they used to be.

The Rocky Mountain institute is difficult to understand. The assertions stated are not supported by calculations. The stuff is so nebulous I can't understand and I have a degree in Nuclear engineering so I can really read graphs and that first graph is just confusing. This statement

In the U.S.,for example, full deployment of these very cost-effective competitors (conservatively excluding all renewables except windpower, and all cogeneration that uses fresh fuel rather than recovered
waste heat) could provide ~13–15 times nuclear power’s current 20% share of electric generation—all without significant land-use, reliability, or other constraints.​

First, they advocated using natural gas and I disagree with using it. Plus production has been going down in North America. Now, 13 to 15 times nuclear power's current 20% share is the equivalent of over a million Megawatts of installed capacity...with no calcs to support this, it just doesn't seem real. However, they do indicate how difficult it is to build nuclear plants quickly...and I have stated that several times. They are exaggerating a bit since some places, like South Korea are doing a great job of bringing plants online. But I don't agree that time should be a factor. If we are sinking under global warming, then burning fossil fuels is throwing an anchor to a drowning person...with nuclear...even if slower to install, it would be better long term.​

glenn​

 

[Schneibster]

My apologies. I meant it could have replaced some coal, not all. Though I understand Brazilian steel is made using charcoal, so coal is not absolutely necessary.

Steel is iron that has had carbon added to it; it's then quenched, which rapidly reduces its temperature, making it very hard, but also brittle. If it must be both hard and strong, then it is tempered, by re-heating it until it is red hot and then cooling it slowly.

The process of adding carbon to iron can be combined with smelting the iron ore. This results in a considerable savings in energy, and, as it happens, also in carbon emissions. Furthermore, the heat from this process can be used in tempering, resulting in even further savings of both energy and carbon emissions. Coke and iron ore are fed in; the carbon in the coke combines exothermically with the oxygen in the iron ore, and carries it off, leaving molten iron; some of the carbon remains in the iron, turning it into steel. The steel is quenched, hardening it, then reheated using heat from the next batch of ore and coke into the converter and finally tempered. Hardened, tempered steel comes out the far end, and as little carbon is emitted as can be, and as little coal is used as can be. Ideally, all of the oxygen to fuel the burn comes from the ore; in practice, very little of it comes from the surrounding air.

The reasons this type of process is used is because it makes the most product for the least money, and the owner of the plant produces a high-quality product for a low price and makes money, which is, from their point of view, an important part of the point of doing it. Designing this process to work with a liquid instead of solid coke would not be child's play; I'm sure it could be done, but why use more expensive oil instead of less expensive coal?

During the manufacture of cement, a component of concrete and also the material used to stick bricks or stones together into structures and surfaces, powdered limestone is mixed with clay and heated; the calcium carbonate in the limestone and the magnesium carbonate in the clay both release carbon dioxide as they decompose and combine with the silicon oxide and aluminum oxide in the clay. Furthermore, coal is commonly burned to heat the mixture. Cement manufacture is therefore a strong global warming contributor, almost as much so as power generation, and there are not good ways to avoid the release of carbon in the industrial process. This carbon will therefore need to be sequestered, as it will need to be in power generation that uses fossil fuels. This will make cement, and concrete, more expensive.

Concrete and steel are the two most important materials for industrial civilization. Our cities are quite frankly impossible without these materials; we use them to bring water and food into the cities, to remove waste, to build buildings, and to provide routes for transportation of people and goods in and out of them. The reason our society is one of the richest in the history of the world is because we can do these things easily and cheaply. This leaves time and effort for the further creation of wealth, and for social services, neither of which would be possible but for the ease of commerce that cities provide, and the economic advantages of being able to put up a building without having to conscript a hundred thousand people to do it. A modern skyscraper can house workplaces for fifty thousand workers, and can be built by a crew of less than a thousand people, in a couple years or less. Take away this capability, and most people will have to spend much more time getting food and water, and will have correspondingly less time to create wealth. You can see the results of this in the third world, and in history exhibits.

In addition, all the machinery of modern agriculture, which is needed to grow enough food to feed everyone, uses steel; and the plants where the food is prepared are made from concrete. The food is transported on roads and railroads, built with steel and concrete, and more steel and concrete is needed when they must be repaired. Steel is needed to make the trucks and the railroad cars to transport all of this food. And if the food is going overseas, then steel and concrete are needed to build and repair the ships that transport it, and the docks where it is on- and off-loaded. If any of these things stops happening, people are going to starve. And the people who build many of these things live in the cities, as do the ones who make sure that everyone who does everything gets paid, and that the food goes where it needs to go. So the cities can't stop either. "Just grow it locally" isn't an option for many people around the world; the US ships food all over the planet. People will starve if we stop.

This may just begin to give you the idea of how interconnected things have become all over the world. There is very much more just like it. What we have to do is figure out how to do all this without making as much CO2 as we do now; we can't stop doing it, because people will starve if we do. That's how things are. We can wish all we like that they weren't, but they are, and that's that.

So when I see you talk about conserving energy, and using renewable energy sources, it seems like a good idea, but I know it's not going to fix things; we have to figure out how to not only make up the difference between what we can conserve and what we currently have to burn coal to get, we also have to figure out how to get all that transportation done without burning any more coal or oil than we can figure out how, and electricity is what's going to do that for us. Unless you want to see a billion people starve. We can't stop doing all this industry; it's where the food, and the clothes, and the medicines, and the houses, and the buildings where all the business that gets the food distributed gets done, and the factories where all the machines to grow it and transport it get built, all come from. Stop and the whole dang thing falls apart, like a house of cards, and a billion people starve to death, and if they've got nuclear weapons, maybe they shoot some of them off first. And that is not hyperbole. Ask an economist some time.

I know most houses are heated with natural gas. We've also largely eliminated coal powered trains for transportation. My point is not that there has been no fuel-switching. My point is that it's had no impact at all on the use of coal. We've just found other uses for the coal.

Yeah, like for growing things for people to eat and transporting them.

Part of the reason I'm so harsh about this stuff is that I see a lot of people who just don't get the fact that there are people depending on all of this stuff getting done. And they'll die if it stops. So when someone says, "We should just stop doing all this industry and stuff, it's bad for the environment," my response is, "Yeah, it doesn't matter if all those brown people we're feeding starve to death." And that's nasty and sarcastic, but it's the truth.

We can't go back to an agrarian society unless a couple billion people die off. That's how the world is. And those people, they're going to have kids, so there's going to be more people. At some point we have to do something about that, but right now, we've got a more pressing problem, which is global warming. Once we've got that solved, then we can worry about population control. Until then, we'd best figure what to do about generating the energy we need to keep all those people fed, without making any more CO2 than we can help. Renewables sounds great. Conservation sounds great. If you've got some alternative to nuclear up your sleeve or under your shirt or something, by all means let's hear about it; but stop trying to tell me we can just stop doing industrial things and it will be OK, because it won't.

I'm not trying to be difficult here. But all I've seen is assertions that the industrial base requires a lot of electricity and is structurally resistant to efficiency improvements. That much I know. I've said before that I don't have a lot of knowledge and I'd appreciate more. Industry also has widely varying requirements. So tell me what you know. I'd be glad to learn.

The most important parts are above. I wish I saw an alternative; but I don't.

Because without specific examples, I come to some of my own conclusions. The auto industry is being bailed out again, for example, in Canada. When we should be worrying about reducing our emissions, this seems profoundly wrong.

If we could use electric cars and generate the electricity without making too much CO2, that would help, don't you think? As a matter of fact, there is a company in Canada called Zenn Motors that is getting ready to make electric cars that use a technologically advanced supercapacitor, that is to be supplied by a company in Texas called EEStor, for electricity storage. This supercapacitor doesn't pollute like lead-acid batteries do, and lasts a lot longer as well. If this works, both companies will get rich and electric cars will take a quantum leap. And gasoline powered cars will be nothing but an evil memory.

But in order for that to happen, there have to be auto workers who can build the cars, and until the design is ready, and the general public has decided they want these electric cars, those auto workers have to eat, and people will need cars until then, too. If the Canadian government doesn't bail out the auto industry, all those auto workers starve. And when it comes time to build the electric cars and get rid of all the old gas guzzlers, who will build them? Nobody, because the people with the skills will all be dead or have other jobs. If you'd like, the government could let the auto industry go to hell in a handbasket and pay all those people to twiddle their thumbs until the electric cars are ready; but I don't think the taxpayers would like that much, nor the auto workers, and I bet the people who own the plants would scream bloody murder.

There are going on (perhaps over) six billion people on this planet. They all depend on one another for things. If those things stop, you're gonna have a hell of a problem. So when you set about making changes, because you've found that some really essential thing is causing a big problem, you have to go about it slowly, and not rock the boat too much, because otherwise you're going to create the ****edest mess you ever did see. Welcome to Economics 101.

Some industry should even grow, energy intensive as it is. We need more wind turbines, for example.

Yeah, and more trucks and trains and ships to ship food, and more factories to process it, and more machines to harvest it, and cultivate the soil, and more fertilizer to grow it with, and all the people who make all that stuff and operate it all have to be fed, and clothed, and have medical care, and...

Am I getting through here at all? Do you understand yet what we're talking about here? You can't just go start shutting down coal power plants without providing something in their place, you'll have worldwide riots. Wars will start over this. Would you not consider it an act of war if you stopped getting food for your people and they were considering having a riot and stringing you up? Seriously, this is the real world here. We are way, way beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth for a simple agrarian society. We can't get back without a lot of people dying.

Like I said, if you're gonna ride the tiger, don't let go of the ears.

But I know industry will be profoundly affected in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Big final emitters are being targetted in every country that's serious about climate change. George Monbiot recommends auctioning off the carbon allocated to industry. Whatever mechanism you use, energy intensive industries will suffer. Doubly so if they make energy guzzling end products.

Yep. And that's as it should be. There's no other way to do it that people will respect.

I've never seen anyone make an assessment of what industries are likely to survive, which will grow, which will shrink. But I think that planning on energizing the current industrial base in a low-carbon economy is a little myopic.

If we don't, people starve, and we get wars and riots and so forth. And anybody tells you they know which industries will do what, don't give 'em any money you can't afford to lose.

Do I really need to substantiate the fact that pumping water to houses separated by 30 metres door to door requires more infrastructure than pumping water 6 metres door to door? And what evidence do you see to support the opposite view? What I've seen is a lot of unsubstantiated assertions that demand comes first. Hindmost has also claimed repeatedly that utilities resist expansion and promote conservation for this reason, again without support. I've pointed out that many utilities are paid to promote conservation. And I've suggested (without support) that while they may be risk averse and reluctant to invest in increased infrastructure, that doesn't mean they want to see dramatic demand decreases. And when they build a new power plant, they want to see it working to pay itself off. To my knowledge, nobody answered this at all.

If you haven't gotten it by now, you never will. And here's a question for you: how are you going to build all those houses 6 meters apart? Out of what building materials? Plaster? Well, got news for you: plaster contains gypsum, and so does wallboard, and guess what? Gypsum manufacturing is a major source of CO2. Are you absolutely sure you want to rebuild 500 million houses? Think about it. The Europeans have the right idea: retrofit. Make it as efficient as you can.

It may well be a chicken-and-egg question.

Until you've read and comprehended what I've written above, you don't know what the chicken-and-egg question is. There are a couple billion people alive on this planet that wouldn't be if we hadn't provided enough food and the hope that their parents could have kids, and now they need to be fed, and that's how it is. A bunch of companies, you see, decided they wanted cheap labor, so they went over and gave these people jobs, so they got married, built houses, and had kids, and there you have it. So what do you want to do now?

That's what it was meant to be. My point was that your ideas about what might have happened if TMI and Chernobyl had not happened was equally speculative. We just don't know. But I think the idea that it would have necessarily resulted in an emissions reduction is very optimistic.

I don't. That's because I understand what's driving this, and you don't. Or perhaps by now you do. Please think your way though this. It's not some game people play in order to pretend they're important, and it's not some plan someone came up with to take over the world. It's just people doing what they do, just like you and me, and this is the consequence of it. And now we can't turn it off.

As I've said, if that were the only alternative, I wouldn't raise a single objection to anything that needed to be done. But neither have you supported your claim that a billion people would starve. That's a pretty heavy hammer to throw.

Perhaps by now you might see why I say that. I certainly hope so.

Actually, I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can avoid a "carbon police" situation. I'd much rather control emissions through market mechanisms and give people a lot of freedom about how they trade off their various priorities.

Well, as long as you're not trading off the little pleasure other people get in between what they have to do to make sure their family eats, and that other people eat, I don't see a problem with it, but make sure you understand what you're talking about.

What happens is that when people say "Hey it's impossible to live without air conditioning" and I say "No, it's not, it's been done", they assume that I want to dictate the exact conditions of what they will do. I don't.

But we have a lot of bad options. If you live in a suburban frame house in the desert with air conditioning powered by coal, realistically you need to expect something to change. There are a lot of options on the table. You can move. You can insulate. You can concentrate by moving several families into a single house. Or you can change the source of the electricity. I'd rather not tell people what to do. But when asked, it has been my consistent experience that when people understand that insulation can take care of things, that's the first option they pick. The second is changing the source to solar or wind. Many people would rather move than generate from nuclear.

And a lot of my point is that saying "We'll build a nuclear power plant because people obviously demand air conditioning" is equally presumptuous and intrusive.

I think you've got a pretty inflated idea of how much difference it's going to make. Data have been presented in this thread that show that. I think it will get done, but I don't think it will make enough difference to not need nuclear.

And you've forgotten a couple of important things. First, we have to get rid of as much of the fossil fuel power generation as we can. Second, we have to replace all the cars. And we're not doing that without a significant source of energy, and the only thing there is is nuclear. The air conditioners are aside from the point.

If you look at the links to the two English articles I sent, there was a study which indicated that you cannot attain the required emissions reductions without basically retrofitting all existing housing stock. So even though I'm not proposing which mechanisms are to be used, I'm prepared to go out on a limb here and say that addressing global warming will force almost all of us to make significant energy retrofits. If we don't embrace this soon, carbon police may have to force us. When we do it ourselves, we have a lot more freedom about how it's done.

Sure, but the problem is, that's not all that has to be done.

Why do you bring up Chinese? When have I ever suggested that anyone should starve? What view am I supposed to present evidence for?

I think you'll have a pretty good idea what my answer is from the above.

I have? Lonewulf has expressed doubts that the 0.4% share of renewables could rise to 100%. Glenn has claimed (unsupported) that we could not conserve our way out of our industrial demands. Several people have complained that wind sites are limited, the sun is weak in the north and renewables are intermittent.

I've actually responded about why things may be more hopeful. For example, I pointed out that renewables have a much higher penetration in countries that take coal reduction seriously and storage technologies are rapidly maturing as a result. Also I've pointed out that the wind studies for Ontario give a conservatively estimated potential many times our load. And I pointed out that reducing the load through efficiency and conservation is the priority. It's cheapest, fastest, safest and most reliable. I supported all these statements. Then there's sun and biomass and geothermal and other delights.

The problem is, the people who are going to build all that infrastructure, and the people who analyze what those people do, say you're wrong. They say that the efficiency of solar and wind power is too low. And if you think I want to see bird species going extinct because they get chopped up along their migration path in a wind farm, you got another think coming. These things take land, and that land has things living on it. You get out there with tractors and bulldozers and build a wind farm, or a solar farm, you're going to have environmentalists (and I'm one of them) fighting you every step of the way. I'd far rather see nuclear than that.

Again, I don't think you've thought your way through this.

But Lonewulf's comments were equally speculative anyway. Can we or can't we? This isn't a question that has a rigorous, testable answer. It depends a lot on where we put our energies. You've pointed out yourself that ramping up nuclear would not be without its own challenges.

You want my opinion? We need everything we can get. We need nuclear, we need conservation, we need wind, we need solar, we need electric cars, we need geothermal and tide power, and we're all going to have to tighten our belts to get through this. I don't think we can afford an either/or approach. I think we need to do everything we can- and I think we have the resources to do it. I'm not absolutely certain about that last part, and that's pretty scary, because the consequences are dire indeed. And we need fusion, and we need it soon, and ITER isn't soon enough. We need to pump money into every crackpot fusion scheme we can find. And we need advanced power storage technology. And we better hope the coal and oil and solar and wind and geothermal and tidal and nuclear and everything else holds out until we get fusion plants going, because if they don't, we're going to be in very, very serious trouble. Think Book of Revelations.

I don't think there's been any compelling argument presented for why it would be impossible to avoid expanding nuclear. Sorry if I've missed something. I want to note that I'm not demanding such compelling evidence either. I think all this is an exercise in envisioning future possibilities. There is no slam-dunk argument.

You're right, it is such an exercise, but you've forgotten economics, and you've forgotten that it's how people eat, or starve. That's the slam-dunk argument.

What I'll admit to is that envisioning a renewable future requires more imagination. It requires a careful scrutiny of where our energy goes and where and how it could be reduced. It requires doubting the assumption we've all gotten used to that energy needs will necessarily climb. It requires thinking about priorities a lot.

It also requires that a couple billion people die off, and I seriously doubt they will go gently into that good night. I rather suspect they will rage against the dying of the light.

What I've been trying to say is that this kind of thinking will have to permeate our thoughts anyway, whether or not we invest in a nuclear renaissance. There are some people on this forum, mhaze and Dr. Buzzo, for example, who see nuclear potential as essentially inexhaustible. Whereas I'm convinced that even if we fail to address global warming and invest in nuclear, we're still very likely to have a major energy crisis.

We agree here, but I don't think you have quite grasped what "major" could mean.

I've seen people inspired by the realization that unheated structures could actually be more comfortable than heated ones. I don't want this to be an argument between entrenched sides about whether nuclear is necessary or not. That's pointless. I only want people to realize that there are other ways of looking at things than meeting the demand for x kilowatts and that, at the very least, different perspectives can go a long way to reducing our energy dependence. So we'll need less nuclear, at the very least. But I think it's an interesting challenge to see if we can get to the point where none is necessary.

I think we'll need all the nuclear we can get, and we better hope it lasts long enough.

And in a spirit of fun, I'll suggest that those who begin with the premise that all generation from coal needs to be replaced with an equivalent amount of generation from another source are the true unimaginative luddites.

I think you are probably beginning to see why I think what I think by now. I certainly hope so.

I don't think the brown people on the other side of the world have to worry. If you look at carbon emissions per capita, we're the ones who will have to make the greatest changes in our lives. If we lead by example, it will only make it easier still for them to copy us. A couple months ago, I sat down with a couple of friends over charts of petroleum consumption per capita by country and realized that for much of the world, oil could disappear tomorrow with little appreciable difference.

You forgot where their food and clothing comes from. And a whole lot else they aren't going to give up without a fight. It's an amusing exercise, but please don't confuse it with real economics.

I got politically involved with climate change because I recognize it as the greatest human rights crisis we've ever faced. I've been concerned about human rights my entire life. So if I believed your prediction, I would be horrified.

I hope you're beginning to get horrified enough to think about what you can do; I am, and I'm doing it. When I'm not screwing around on forums on the Internet.

Perhaps what you mean is that if we don't build nuclear plants, we'll have to build coal plants and that will cause widespread droughts. I question the premise that if we don't want to build coal plants the only alternative is to build nuke plants. And it seems rather harsh to suggest "take your nuclear pill or a billion Africans will starve". I've said all along that my priority is reducing emissions drastically now. Eliminating coal is a huge part of the challenge. I would never support a coal plant over a nuclear plant. I try to make that abundantly clear to everyone I speak to.

Good. But try to keep in mind that a) there are other brown people in the world than Africans, b) there are a hundred million gas guzzling cars we need to get rid of, and c) people need to keep eating while we do it.

I know rather a lot of people who would love to be able to give up their cars. And they vote for politicians who promise to invest in more public transit, among other things. They also recognize that cars have emissions associated with manufacturing, road construction and disposal that remain even if the car is electric.

Sure, but you can minimize a great deal of that if you do it right- but only if you have enough electricity. I'd love not to have to drive much. It's a hassle. And in fact, I don't drive much. But I think you'll find that works much better in cities than in the country, and I think you'll find that a lot of people don't want to live in cities. And if you try to make them, you're going to encounter a political problem that you don't have a solution to.

I've pointed

out why I think a significant expansion of nuclear power is unlikely to occur quickly enough to power up our fleet anyway (and I referenced it).

I see things happening that are making it appear you are wrong, and they're being done by people who make a lot of money, and who are investing a lot of money in doing them. That's sufficient to make me doubt that your reference has quite as much figured out as they think they do. You should check the US NRC web site and see how many applications for combined construction and operating permits have been granted lately. Seems that there are quite a few of them. So I'd say the argument is probably moot, at least as far as the US goes.

Oh. I may well be on the wrong forum. I'm still rather new here.

I've taken this conversation considerably into political and economics territory, but I think that's necessary to understand what we are facing. Please understand that I don't think that conservation is a bad idea, or renewables- I just don't see the capacity that will be required, and I think that the consequences of failing to keep this house of cards standing are basically the end of civilization. I like civilization, and I don't want to see a billion people starve to death. And we can't burn fossil fuels any more, either. So I think nuclear power is inevitable, and I hope it gets done without creating nuclear accidents, and I intend to vote for people who I think will see to both of those things- and conservation and renewables and electric cars and insulation for houses, too.

Now, let's try to keep this conversation connected to the real world, shall we? I think it's an important conversation. But please study some economics. It might be boring, but it's about whether people eat or not, so it's pretty important.

 

[Lonewulf]

One is that it seems a bit unfair to ask the New York metropolitan area to cover the power needs of the whole state. I'm unfamiliar with US geography, but I imagine there's more to the state than just the city.

True enough. However, Manhattan is an incredibly large city that is a HUGE energy hog in all of New York... a great deal of energy usage in all of New York State is in Manhattan. And NYC is the most energy efficient city, compared to many others.

Still, if someone can demonstrate the energy needs of NYC, I can deal with that. My searches have proven futile (and I don't have time now, I gotta go to school!)

Another is that Dr Buzzo's figures ignore solar hot water heating. Solar hot water heating is a lot more efficient than using solar power cells to create electricity to heat water, and heating water is a significant chunk of a household's energy budget.

From http://www.dmme.virginia.gov/de/chap7c.html:

The cost-effectiveness of solar water heating depends on the system's installed cost and energy performance, and the value of the conventional energy saved. For normal energy performance, solar water heaters installed for $20 per square foot of collector area (sf-coll.) or less will be cost-effective when saving residential or commercial natural gas. However, the same system installed for as much as $60 per sf-coll. will be cost-effective when the auxiliary energy is electricity, priced at small commercial or residential rates or large-use rates that include demand charges.

That's about all there is on the subject. It seems pretty expensive; I'm not sure what the energy return is. I'll look later.

I think we can take 1/30th of the state's power needs as being a plausible lower limit to what current solar could do, for back-of-the-envelope purposes. If we let New York take care of itself without having to carry the state by itself, added solar hot water systems and maybe stuck wind power installations on the roofs for good luck (lots of wind there or so I am told) I think it's plausible you could to a lot better than 1/30th.

Y'know, to be honest, I've tried to imagine this, and I cannot imagine a building I really would want to live in. Solar panels can be pretty, but then you have those silly windmills sticking out the roof.

I'm not sure how much energy tiny windmills on the roof can generate. I'd like to see some data on that.

To go even further, I imagine that New York is something of a worst case scenario when it comes to the ratio of population to surface area. Less urbanised places are going to have more roof space per person to put panels on and so are going to do proportionally better.

Well, cities tend to have a lot more buildings. Less urbanized areas have fewer buildings.

We still haven't touched the issue of relative cost - I still see the pro-nuke posters claiming that nuclear is cheaper per kilowatt-hour than other sources, and I'm still pretty sure that the reputable sources I've seen say that's total rubbish without huge government subsidies and special exemptions.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_nuclear_power:

The economics of new nuclear power plants is a controversial subject, since multi-billion dollar investments ride on the choice of an energy source. Nuclear power plants typically have high capital costs for building the plant, but low fuel costs. Therefore, comparison with other power generation methods is strongly dependent on assumptions about construction timescales and capital financing for nuclear plants. Cost estimates also need to take into account plant decommissioning and nuclear waste storage costs, as these can dramatically increase the whole-of-life cost of a plant. On the other hand measures to mitigate global warming, such as a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading, may favor the economics of nuclear power.

I honestly think that if they relaxed a few standards that are just a bit exaggerated (for instance, the fact that COFFEE can be considered a nuclear waste under present conditions), that would cut down on costs of storage. Set-up tends to be expensive, but it's an investment, with a huge return in energy given. Like I said, you can pay $100 for 1000 watts, or $10 for 10 watts. One *seems* cheaper than the other, but only at first glance.

As for "low level waste" that I keep seeing brought up again and again: Just remember, everything is a low level waste as long as the sun hits it. The food you eat is irradiated by the sun. You get a radiation dosage just from standing out in the sun on a hot day. "Low level" radiation is always going to be around, with or without fission power plants.






Gotta run soon, but I have a response, Schneibster:

The problem is, the people who are going to build all that infrastructure, and the people who analyze what those people do, say you're wrong. They say that the efficiency of solar and wind power is too low. And if you think I want to see bird species going extinct because they get chopped up along their migration path in a wind farm, you got another think coming. These things take land, and that land has things living on it. You get out there with tractors and bulldozers and build a wind farm, or a solar farm, you're going to have environmentalists (and I'm one of them) fighting you every step of the way. I'd far rather see nuclear than that.

No offense, schneibster, and I hate to sound cold and ruthless, but I don't really care if a few birds get chopped up by wind mills (from what I understand, that doesn't happen TOO often). You've already hit home the global warming issue... global warming will cause a lot more extinctions than any windmill ever will. "Some birds dying" is a relatively low con compared to "global warming", IMO.

The question is, is wind energy efficient enough to be put into place on a grand enough scale to replace or even come close to replacing coal, with any amount of economic efficiency?

 

[Schneibster]

Gotta run soon, but I have a response, Schneibster:

No offense, schneibster, and I hate to sound cold and ruthless, but I don't really care if a few birds get chopped up by wind mills (from what I understand, that doesn't happen TOO often).

Heh, none taken. I follow your line of thought.

You've already hit home the global warming issue... global warming will cause a lot more extinctions than any windmill ever will. "Some birds dying" is a relatively low con compared to "global warming", IMO.

Well, but what if it's unnecessary?

The question is, is wind energy efficient enough to be put into place on a grand enough scale to replace or even come close to replacing coal, with any amount of economic efficiency?

I don't know, but I suspect not. I'd have more hope with solar, and even that's problematic IMO.

 

[Belz...]

See post 386. You don't need oil to make anything that's made out of oil. We're talking hydrocarbons here. Hydrogen and carbons.

Oil contains the chain sizes and ratios already that are good for plastic/gasoline/diesel and such.

You can make it out of other stuff, such as natural gas, coal and water, peat, biomass or people.

I know, but why would you go through MORE trouble to make it ?

 

[Lonewulf]

Heh, none taken. I follow your line of thought.

Well, but what if it's unnecessary?

If it's unnecessary, then we avoid it, naturally. I agree with you on that.

I don't know, but I suspect not. I'd have more hope with solar, and even that's problematic IMO.

Yeah, agreed. Small windmills on top of rooftops would probably be less a problem than giant windmills big enough to actually hit giant flocks of birds, I would think. The question is how we use it, and where as well. Location, location, location.