Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[Hindmost]

Apologies. That was wrong of me. Especially putting your name and that of RMI in the same sentence, when I knew you had disagreed with them. Sorry. Sorry.

A question then.

Do you agree with the points I made, which are my attempted summary from a number of sources about trends in subsidies and the resulting market? I don't expect you to agree with all of them necessarily, but I thought you would agree with points 3 and 4, in particular.

It will take me a bit to research everything for a coherent post...and it is late, so I will look at it tomorrow. I really have to look at the subsidy issue more comprehensively. The US energy bill certainly added a bunch to nuclear. However, the past 20 years or so, the subsidy seemed minimal.

Thanks for the apology and let's just forget about it.

glenn

 

[luddite]

The US energy bill certainly added a bunch to nuclear. However, the past 20 years or so, the subsidy seemed minimal.

Yes, the era of highest subsidies, identified by Goldberg, was from 1947-1961.

 

[luddite]

Glenn, here's another question.

Do you know if the Korean power plants are publicly or privately owned? What about Finland's Okiluoto? Just wondering if the "skittish investors" idea fits in with this. Can't find it on the web.

 

[Corsair 115]

Zenn is owned by Feel Good Cars, and they're in for a couple million bucks. They reportedly remain on track to begin producing the power units this year; CNN did a story on them in September.

There was a piece about Zenn earlier tonight on the CBC National News. Unfortunately, there isn't a link up yet at the CBC web site for a video of the report or an online text version of it. Hopefully there'll be one later on.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Okillo is opperated by Pohjolan Voima which is a private company.

Korea is a bit more complicated. It's owned by the Korea Power Generating Company, which is a government affiliated corporation. I think that the municipalities own a stake in it as well. That somewhat common in the utility area to have that sort of thing. I think that the operations are done by workers who are technically privately employed but by government contract.

 

[Belz...]

Well, it's pretty far along, Belz. A thin-film expert from the hard disk industry has a patent on the technology, and has acquired funding from Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield and Byers; you might want to check them out, they've been involved in most of the high-tech IPOs of the last two decades; most of their clients are household names, like Sun, AOL, LSI Logic, Genentech, Netscape, Google, and so on. The guy is setting up a production line down in Texas; the name of the company is EEStor. They've got a contract to provide power storage units for Zenn Motor in Canada, to make electric cars. Zenn is owned by Feel Good Cars, and they're in for a couple million bucks. They reportedly remain on track to begin producing the power units this year; CNN did a story on them in September. As far as I know, the smart money don't go throwing several million bucks around on things that are too awfully speculative, especially in the current investment climate.

Thanks for the info. My comment was more-or-less generic, because I often hear arguments for certain things based on the expectation that some non-existent technology will exist in the unknown future. I didn't assume this was the case here, but I always find it safer to make plans with the stuff you already have.

 

[luddite]

Okillo is opperated by Pohjolan Voima which is a private company.

Korea is a bit more complicated. It's owned by the Korea Power Generating Company, which is a government affiliated corporation. I think that the municipalities own a stake in it as well. That somewhat common in the utility area to have that sort of thing. I think that the operations are done by workers who are technically privately employed but by government contract.

Thanks.

 

[luddite]

I'd like anyone who is interested to go over this article from Public Citizen. It's anti-nuclear and strident in tone, but if anyone can get over that, there's a lot of information also that highlights safety issues with nuclear power today. Also, ignore the parts about deregulation. They're interesting, but not relevant here.

http://www.citizen.org/documents/bigblackout.pdf

Here are some highlights:

The degradation and rupture of steam generator tubes at nuclear reactors has been a problem at U.S. reactors since at least 1975, when there was a spontaneous tube rupture at the 5-year old Point Beach reactor in Wisconsin. The NRC describes steam generator tubes as serving “an important safety role because they constitute one of the primary barriers between the radioactive and non-radioactive sides of the plant. For this reason, the integrity of the tubing is essential in minimizing the leakage of water between the two ‘sides’ of the plant.”i Steam generator tube rupture can “cascade,” wherein a break in one tube triggers ruptures in adjacent tubes. If severe, a cascade could precipitate a nuclear meltdown at a reactor. At a 1988 conference, former NRC Commissioner Kenneth Rogers, speaking about the effects of aging U.S. nuclear plants, said: “Degradation (of the steam generator tubes) would decrease the safety margins so that, in essence, we have a ‘loaded gun,’ an accident waiting to happen.”ii Nonetheless, neither the industry nor the NRC has been able to adequately address the problem, and the Indian Point 2 reactor—only 35 miles from Manhattan—experienced a serious steam generator tube failure in February 2000.iii Reactors shut down from the recent blackout that have had tube ruptures include Indian Point 2, Indian Point 3 and Ginna—all in New York. Such a rupture occurring prior to a blackout would place a heavy burden on emergency backup systems, increase the chance of meltdown and further tax plant emergency crews. At least 16 steam generator tube ruptures have occurred since the first in 1975.

The cracking, leaking and acid-caused degradation of reactor vessels and connected components have been a known issue at nuclear reactors for at least 15 years. In March 1987, workers at the Turkey Point 4 reactor in Florida discovered that a small amount of boric acid had corroded the reactor vessel head (the “lid” of the reactor that contains the enormous radioactivity and pressure inside). Since that time, similar cracking, leaking and acid corrosion of reactors have occurred at many plants in the U.S., including Salem, San Onofre, Arkansas Nuclear One, Fort Calhoun, Calvert Cliffs, Three Mile Island, Sequoyah and Comanche Peak, among others. With both the industry and the NRC failing to adequately address the problem, a much-delayed inspection in March 2002 at Ohio’s Davis-Besse plant uncovered a football-sized corrosion hole in the reactor’s head. (Davis-Besse is owned and operated by FirstEnergy, the company suspected by analysts and state officials to be responsible for an initial trigger of the recent blackout. On September 8, Davis-Besse will celebrate a plant record of 570 consecutive days without producing power, at a cost of over $500 million.) The acid had bored through over 6 inches of carbon steel; less than a quarter inch of stainless steel was all that prevented a serious loss-of-coolant accident at the reactor—an accident that can lead to meltdown. The seriousness of this brush with disaster shook the nuclear industry worldwide.

After years of cutting corners, ignoring problems and cutting deals with the NRC to delay necessary inspections and repairs, FirstEnergy had to bite the bullet and replace the entire reactor vessel head (the cost of which will possibly get passed on to ratepayers). Other additional problems have since been rediscovered—including the lack of a thorough “safety culture,” as documented by the NRC’s Inspector General in a December 2002 report —that have kept the plant shut down. On July 30, the NRC issued to the FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC) an “integrated inspection report” that included a preliminary “yellow” finding, representing a problem of “substantial safety significance” (second only to a “red” finding of “high” safety significance on the NRC’s color-coded scale) regarding the reactor’s emergency core cooling system. The NRC cited the company with a failure to “adequately implement design control measures” to correct known problems with its emergency cooling systems. The NRC noted that metal screens that filter recirculated cooling water in the event of a loss-of-coolant accident—the type of accident that nearly occurred at Davis-Besse—could be blocked by debris that is frequently found in the emergency core cooling system. Such a blockage could lead to a core meltdown. A similar problem had plagued another type of U.S. nuclear reactor, and its potential occurrence at pressurized water reactors (PWRs) has been known for over 10 years; a structural problem at one PWR concerns all 69 PWRs like Davis-Besse.

In the past 12 months—from September 2002 to August 2003—there have been 15 reported instances in which emergency diesel generators have been declared inoperable. In seven cases, when such a failure brought a plant below the required number of backups, a complete shutdown of the plant was required; on four of these occasions, all backup generators failed at once. In April 2003, the Cook nuclear power plant in western Michigan shut down when emergency water flow to all four diesel generators was blocked by “an influx of fish on the intake screens.”iv Cook also shut down in January when one of its two emergency generators was inoperable for
over 72 hours.v

Without emergency generators, steam and battery power provide a “last chance” means to cool a reactor and stave off a meltdown. The batteries can operate for between two and eight hours; but in the recent blackout, Detroit did not see full power returned until Saturday, August 16, over 36 hours after power first went out. Had the emergency generators failed during this timeframe—as they did in the aforementioned situations—a nuclear meltdown and widespread radioactive release is rendered not at all beyond possibility.

If the blackout had caused a meltdown or other severe accident, it appears that many of the emergency sirens in place to alert officials and the public would not have operated because of a lack of power. In “event reports” submitted to the NRC in the hours after power was lost, the Indian Point and Ginna nuclear stations (both in New York) noted that many of their emergency sirens would have been rendered impotent due to the blackout, and at least 25 percent of the sirens covering the area around the Ginna plant were inoperable. In the case of Indian Point, the sirens in four surrounding counties—including the densely populated Westchester County, with nearly 1 million people—would have failed, leaving the region in a tragic state of ignorance in the event of a meltdown.

It is a terrible irony that power outages, which have so much potential to cause accidents at nuclear power reactors, also disable the emergency alert sirens designed to notify the public of danger. On April 4, 2003, five nuclear power stations in New York and Wisconsin reported that more than half of their emergency sirens were not working due to power outages. (Interestingly, on that same day, the operators of the Monticello nuclear power station in Minnesota reported that some of their emergency alarms were inadvertently actuated.)vi

A lesser-known vulnerability at nuclear plants is the so-called “spent” fuel pools. The term “spent” fuel is itself a misnomer, since the fuel is only spent in the sense that it can no longer assist in boiling the water to turn the turbines. The fuel is exhausted for that purpose, yet it is still very hot and extremely radioactive—more so when taken out of the reactor than when it is put in. When removed from the reactor core, this irradiated fuel (a more accurate name) is submerged in large pools of water—“spent” fuel pools—in a building adjacent to the reactor for cooling and storage. These buildings are typically just standard industrial constructions, built of concrete blocks and corrugated metal (much less “robust” structures than the still-questionable reactor containment structures) and are thus even more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. In the event of an attack or an accident, these structures would do little or nothing to contain radioactive releases. Depending on the amount of fuel stored in the pools, most of which are fully stocked or overloaded, such a facility has the potential to unleash a disaster at least as great as one originating at the reactor itself.

Shockingly, these fuel pools DO NOT get backup power from emergency diesel generators. When the offsite power goes out, the pool water cannot be re-circulated to prevent boiling, evaporation, exposure of the fuel rods and, ultimately, a fire and meltdown. The risk of this occurring is greatest when a “fresh” load of fuel has recently been transferred from the reactor core to the fuel pool (most reactors refuel about every 18 months). Suffice it to say that the vulnerability of irradiated fuel pools presents a grave radiation risk to the public.

Ontario, the Canadian province affected by the blackout, has found itself regretting its reliance on nuclear for 36 percent of its power. Its cleverly named “Candu” reactors were designed to automatically unlink from the grid in the event of a blackout and then remain in standby mode at 60 percent power, but that isn’t what happened during the blackout. Instead, half of the province’s 12 operable reactors went into full automatic shutdown, with another four requiring full manual shutdown. Only two of the reactors responded to the grid breakdown as designed, by partially reducing power. With 10 of 12 reactors down, the difficulty of cold-restarting the Candu reactors quickly became evident, as full shutdowns involve a chemical “poisoning” of the reactor process which takes days to dissipate, allowing the reactor to power up.

For the Ontario info, there's independent confirmation from pro-nuclear sources:

http://www.electricityforum.com/news/oct03/canduprobe.html

 

[Schneibster]

Thanks for the info. My comment was more-or-less generic, because I often hear arguments for certain things based on the expectation that some non-existent technology will exist in the unknown future. I didn't assume this was the case here, but I always find it safer to make plans with the stuff you already have.

Perfectly understandable, just wanted to make sure you were aware that this technology looks ready to hatch. The proverbial killer app seems to be waiting for anything that can beat batteries in electric cars.

 

[Hindmost]

Glenn, here's another question.

Do you know if the Korean power plants are publicly or privately owned? What about Finland's Okiluoto? Just wondering if the "skittish investors" idea fits in with this. Can't find it on the web.

It is a bit of both...here's a good link giving company history. Buzzo covered most of it...

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/comp...-Power-Corporation-Kepco-Company-History.html

glenn

 

[Hindmost]

...snip


1. Power plants used to be built more by governments who took all the risks.

In the US, plants were built by public utilities..with the exception of TVA.

2. Energy markets are being liberalised.

power generation is being deregulated in the US. Transmission and distribution is still govt. regulated--individual states have the responsibility to implement deregulation.

3. Financiers are wary of taking risks on long and large projects of any kind.

true--especially with nuclear since the utilities got burned in the past.

4. This opens the door for efficiency to meet new demand (I think especially when efficiencies are encouraged with public money).

The door has always been open. However, solar and wind have been traditionally higher cost per kw-hr than any other types of generation. Wind power technology has greatly improved reducing maintenance and making it reasonably cheap. (maintenance was typically bad on wind power...the gear boxes were constantly failing) However, the capacity factor is low and is typically low when needed during the summer months. Solar power can take 20 years to recover capital costs for a person that wishes to power their home with solar cells. More research is needed to improve efficiency and should be subsidized.

5. Penetration by micro-generation is impeded by the existence of power plants built prior to market liberalization.

This is not true for the US. If one builds their own plant, utilities are required to buy any excess electricity. It is the initial capital cost of alternative generation that is the issue.

6. Micro-generation still comes out ahead for rapidly producing small incremental increases in generation. Large power plants are at a disadvantage.

Depends on the demand and what type of micro generation is considered. Gas turbines can be built quickly and are very good at peak load following...

7. Nuclear is particularly vulnerable because of its history of cost overruns and early closures - financiers see it as risky.

True. That's one of the reasons they haven't been built in the US. Cost overruns were typically 5-10 times the original cost.

8. Nuclear has additional concerns about the lack of coherent plans for permanent waste disposal.

True in the US. To me, this is an engineering problem and perception problem more than a real issue. Convincing the public of that is tough.

9. Nuclear has benefited from very high subsidies in the past.

All types of energy have benefited from subsidies in the past. And they are still getting them. During the Reagan years, energy conservation tax incentives were abolished. This effectively ended conservation in the US.

10. Subsidies for renewables are higher today.

This has jump started these industries and is the reason for the development in the US. Germany has high subsidies for solar and it is expected to provide 20-30 percent of their energy needs.

11. Subsidies for fossil fuels remain high.

True. There are still oil drilling subsidies for deep water drilling.

The bit about historic subsidies is the conclusion from a 2000 US Goldberg study that this paper quotes. It compares the development periods for nuclear and wind, and puts nuclear subsidies at US$15.3/kWh and wind at US$0.46/kWh during their respective development periods.

For the year 2001, excluding externalities, the highest subsidies were for solid fuel at 13 billion euros, followed by oil and gas at 8.7 billion euros. Renewables came in at 5.3 billion euros with nuclear now lowest at 2.2.

I approve of higher subsidies for renewables. I can't agree with higher subsidies for fossil fuels.

If you include externalities, add 25.6-46.2 billion euros annually for solid fuels, 12-21.4 for oil and gas, 2.7 for nuclear and 2.0-2.7 for renewables.

This has gotta change.

I have to do some research...the Golberg study is decidely anti-nuke. However, what is needed is to provide incentives to provide long term solutions.

glenn

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Ah yes Germany and solar energy... lets talk about a train wreck.

Germany produces more solar energy than any other country having committed to it big time and looking to make it a major source of power generation. They currently have 400 megawatts of solar capacity, which is actually about half of the solar electricity generated in western Europe.

Now as far as costs. I've had some trouble finding out the totals, but I know that they have invested about 2 billion euro in research and they have a few billion euro in low-interest loans, loan gaurentees, tax wirte-offs and other such things for the industry. I have heard the number ten billion euro float around as what has been spent, but I don't know that for sure.

As far as the price of solar: Even without taxes and such, in order to make solar energy a viable energy source the price of the electricity has to be subsidized. Germany talks a lot about how it's being done through private capital and such and that there has been about 10,000 jobs created by the industry for installing and such.

So for each solar kilowatt hour the price paid to the producer is 48.1 Euro Cent for industrial solar installations and more (something like 70 Euro Cent) for homes and for areas where they need more energy anyway.

The market price of electricity in europe is something like 8-16 Euro Cent per Kwh, so nobody would buy 70 Cent electricity. Thus the government makes up the difference.


Basically if you have a desktop computer, a crt monitor, a light and a television running at the same time, the government is paying about one US dollar per hour. For every hour that you run a refrigerator motor it's also about a dollar. If you have a well pump it could be a few dollars a day in electricity.

Oh and to put it in perspective: The 400 megawatt capacity is solar capacity. In other words: The maximum output of the panels. In reality you have to figure for weather and night. In a place like germany 20% average is generous. So you might figure 80 megawatts of equivelent electricity generation. (In other words, they generate as much as if they produced 80megawatts 24/7) That's somewhat generous but I think 80Mw would be a good liberal estimate. Certainly not much more.

80 megawatts. Lets think about how much that represents: That would be considered a "Microhydro" project if it were a dam. My power company consideres it's 200 megawatt plants to be the "Small" plants. So at the moment Germany gets about 3% of their energy from solar power.

Here's an article on it from IEEE:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/2706


Germany currently gets "Over 15 percent of their electricity from renewable" according to some pages. In otherwords, they get 3% from solar, 12% from hydroelectric and biomas burning and such"

The energy policy is driving them into a recession.

 

[luddite]

Buzzo, you're right about solar being expensive, but this is an odd case where two negatives make (sort of) a positive.

The MW produced by solar have a strong correlation with demand. It's just as well that they're not producing in the middle of the night, when wholesale electricity prices are just pennies a kWh (they've been known to dip into the negatives). On summer afternoons in Ontario, wholesale prices often go above the 40 cents they pay for solar here. In fact, they've been known to go up briefly into the hundreds of dollars. If you add in the fact that rooftop solar cuts transmission costs and energy losses to nothing, it's not so bad. And if in Germany, they are filling an urban need that's hard to fill with other kinds of generation, then there's a value there too. Finally, if we start to cut down on fossil fuels for peaking power, peak power, when solar produces, may get mighty expensive. Then the countries that have invested heavily in it may be glad they did so.

I've never thought solar PV was particularly good for baseload power, but it has a place.

 

[luddite]

By the way. Thanks Glenn for your answers.

 

[luddite]

Just looked up Germany's solar facts. Mixed bag here. On the one hand, they agree with Buzzo that Germany has over 400 MW installed, but that's tied to a statement about 2003 installations. The statement that follows says:

968 Megawatts of PV were installed in Germany in 2006.

This was described as "slow growth" compared to previous years. So I don't know what the total is now, but it's got to be above 1,500 MW. I'll try to find exact numbers.

http://www.solarbuzz.com/FastFactsGermany.htm

 

[luddite]

Okay, here's what I found:

In recent years, the German photovoltaics market and industry have seen strong growth. According to data from the German Solar Industry Association (BSW), 750 MWp of solar electricity systems were newly installed in 2006, as a result of which the solar electricity output totalled 2,500 MWp by the end of that year.

http://www.renewables-made-in-germany.com/en/photovoltaics/

Pity the 2006 installed numbers don't fit with the numbers in the link above. I like it when things are neat and orderly. Still, if Buzzo calculated 400 MW as 3%, then 2,500 MW is more than 18%, all in just 3 short years. That's actually pretty impressive, and rather destroys the argument that renewables can't possibly grow to provide a significant proportion of the electricity needed.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Dr Buzzo, at the prices you quote for German solar panel electricity, how long will it take to pay off the panels?

 

[mhaze]

Buzzo, you're right about solar being expensive, but this is an odd case where two negatives make (sort of) a positive.

The MW produced by solar have a strong correlation with demand. It's just as well that they're not producing in the middle of the night, when wholesale electricity prices are just pennies a kWh (they've been known to dip into the negatives). On summer afternoons in Ontario, wholesale prices often go above the 40 cents they pay for solar here. In fact, they've been known to go up briefly into the hundreds of dollars. If you add in the fact that rooftop solar cuts transmission costs and energy losses to nothing, it's not so bad. And if in Germany, they are filling an urban need that's hard to fill with other kinds of generation, then there's a value there too. Finally, if we start to cut down on fossil fuels for peaking power, peak power, when solar produces, may get mighty expensive. Then the countries that have invested heavily in it may be glad they did so.

I've never thought solar PV was particularly good for baseload power, but it has a place.

When ever someone would like to come to my home, install solar panels, maintain them, and just provide me with electric power (just like I get now) for 2/3 the cost that I am charged (that will be about 0.06 USD per kwh) I will give them a try out.

Until then, all the promoters who would like me to pay them $5-40,000 for the wonderful world of solar are of zero - zero interest to me.

This is a very simple business matter.

 

[luddite]

Dr Buzzo, at the prices you quote for German solar panel electricity, how long will it take to pay off the panels?

In Ontario, the Standard Offer Contracts for renewables, which give 40 cents per kWh for solar came up just as the Riverdale Initiative for Solar Energy (RISE) was negotiating a bulk purchase agreement with a solar PV company for community solar. This was then expanded to other communities under the name Our Power, and I know a lot about this. With a 10% price reduction for bulk purchases, panels were expected to be paid off in 10 years. This is with Toronto sun, which, if properly sited, delivers just over 2000 kWh annually from a 1 kW panel. The panels cost $9000, fully installed.

http://www.ourpower.ca/portals/default/ourpower.aspx

I can only imagine that the rate of return would be much higher in a place like Arizona. Alternately, you could offer rates lower than 40 cents and still have people climbing on board.

I don't know about Germany. On the one hand, they're paying slightly more. On the other hand they may have worse sun.

 

[luddite]

When ever someone would like to come to my home, install solar panels, maintain them, and just provide me with electric power (just like I get now) for 2/3 the cost that I am charged (that will be about 0.06 USD per kwh) I will give them a try out.

Until then, all the promoters who would like me to pay them $5-40,000 for the wonderful world of solar are of zero - zero interest to me.

This is a very simple business matter.

That may be possible. There are companies like Mondial Energy that do just that kind of thing:

http://www.mondial-energy.com/main.htm

Though they are so busy installing larger systems that they don't muck around much with homes, unless your house is very large.

The German and Ontario programmes pay on the kWh. They are grid-tied so you get your energy just as you would otherwise. The maintenance contract you would have to negotiate with the solar supplier, but most people don't bother. It's not high-maintenance.

It doesn't reduce your rates to 2/3, but instead you get paid a lot more than the 6 cents you pay for electricity when your panels are producing. So if you buy up enough solar panels to satisfy your energy needs, you should be seeing a serious profit on your electricity bill, which goes to cover the capital cost. If you pay off the panel in 10 years, you have another decade in the life expectancy of the panel to make some income for yourself. Large investors have no problem buying into the program in Ontario. For homeowners who are offsetting their own energy use, there is additional economic reason to invest in this sort of solar program. North American natural gas prices are expected to rise substantially, which will raise the price of peak power. In Ontario, where smart meters are being installed, we will pay through the nose for that peak as Ontario switches from coal to natural gas for peaking. So the price differential may be enormous (Gee, would I like to pay an average of 40 cents at peak or get paid the same amount?). Note that if that kind of price differential arises (which it well may if either natural gas prices quadruple like they already have in recent memory or if we start applying a carbon tax to fossil fuels), the feed-in tariff at that point ceases to be a subsidy, since it is the wholesale price of electricity at that point.

A lot of this depends on what programs are in place in your jurisdiction. My understanding is that Ontario's program is the most generous renewables program in North America, though Europe has better. Other jurisdictions might have incentives to purchase solar panels, though, or other sweeteners.