Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

I always find it funny that many environmentalists suddenly become free market advocates when talking about nuclear power. Talk about fossil fuels or renewables, though, and they will say that the government needs to manipulate the market through penalties and subsidies to encourage the use of the latter at the expense of the former.

More interesting numbers about how renewables have been "ignored" in the government subsidies:

Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 2006
 
DRBUZZ0 said:
diar
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"Dire", Buz.

But those like Caldicott have an agenda, and if you tried to provide this, they will say "Those poor African children are being irridiated by that big bomb that the corporations lobbied to have sent there for profit!" And so it won't happen. And the children who could have clean showers and water to drink, who could go to school in big tents with cool air blown in. Who could be safe in a well lit and orderly center... no... they will have none of that.


Maybe we can send them a goddamned windmill instead.
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It is very frustrating, isn't it ?
 
pvt1863 said:
I always find it funny that many environmentalists suddenly become free market advocates when talking about nuclear power. Talk about fossil fuels or renewables, though, and they will say that the government needs to manipulate the market through penalties and subsidies to encourage the use of the latter at the expense of the former.

More interesting numbers about how renewables have been "ignored" in the government subsidies:

Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 2006
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Wrong. Environmentalists tend to realize that subsidies to fossil fuels are even higher than nuclear subsidies. And most recognize that subsidies to ethanol, which is theoretically renewable, are also a waste.

Most environmentalists don't want a free market. Many want a very highly regulated market. Many would like externalities included in the cost of energy. So the part of the cost of asthma treatment attributable to coal-fired generation gets put on your energy bill instead of your health bill, reducing health costs while discouraging overconsumption. I think they're pretty fair about including externalities for all forms of generation.
 
DRBUZZ0 said:
Yeah. Horrible how the US tried so hard to stop Germany, Japan, Sweden, South Korea, Norway and Canada from acquiring it. Funny how "stopping them" apparently means the same as "exporting several reactors to"


But of course, I guess it's pretty unfair that we don't help out Iran with their nuclear ambitions.

Oh wait I forgot. You can't sell them a freakin load of fertilizer and not expect them to turn it into a bomb.

I think it's also pretty hypocritical that we don't like it with certain countries like Iran or North Korea buy other stuff that we have. What's up with everyone getting pissy when north Korea wants to buy something entirely legitimate like we have.

For example, a bunch of massive bioreactors, culturing matter, incubators, atomizers and organic synthsis stuff? I mean *obviously* they were looking to build a vaccine factory or manufacture synthetic insulin, right?

Why are people so against vaccines?


Why did everyone say it was such a bad idea to sell F-14's to Iran back in the 1970's? I mean *we* have F-14's, right?
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Sometimes I feel very naive, Buzzo, but this answer really surprised me. After all your talk about how safe nuclear was, about how we could just churn them out by the hundreds and put them anywhere, how the fuel was useless for weapons and so on

AND

how nuclear was necessary for improving the standard of living everywhere in the world,

I just thought you would support a civilian nuclear program everywhere. That you don't indicates that you recognize risks you don't want to talk about
 
I worked as a research scientist in the Canadian nuclear industry for 23 years. Having studied CANDU reactors in great detail, I can say I would not want to live within 10 miles of one. Pickering Unit 3 (P3) had a serious LOCA in August 1983 from a pressure tube rupture that was not supposed to be possible (according to all the scientists at Chalk River).

Chalk River scientists also believed that the N2 annulus gas system used by all CANDUs at that time could not produce particulate carbon -14. When P3 was opened up for repairs in 1985, thousands of curies of particulate carbon-14 were released to the air and was soon found on swipes taken in the offices AND IN THE HOMES of staff working at Pickering.

And, let's face it, the long-term disposal of CANDU fuel IS a major problem. AECL has been working on this for 50 years and has not come up with a viable plan. So hundreds of thousands of hot fuel bundles are stored in glorified swimming pools that have been known to leak into the local ground water after just 25 years of operation.

And, by the way, a spent fuel storage bay makes a GREAT terrorist target!
 
Buzzo, a while ago you brought up the safety features in existing reactors to convince me that they were perfectly safe.

(Though on a side note, the specific safety issues I brought up have never been addressed)

Here's my question. If we go to the kind of production that you're talking about, how many of those safety features will be in place?

Also, this is based on a model for submarines, which use very highly enriched fuel, correct? Civilian reactors don't use such highly enriched fuel because of a recognition that there are elevated dangers, correct? And the spent fuel is more dangerous, correct?
 
Welcome Apollo. I've been a little lonely. Nice to hear a Canadian perspective.
 
luddite said:
Sometimes I feel very naive, Buzzo, but this answer really surprised me. After all your talk about how safe nuclear was, about how we could just churn them out by the hundreds and put them anywhere, how the fuel was useless for weapons and so on

AND

how nuclear was necessary for improving the standard of living everywhere in the world,

I just thought you would support a civilian nuclear program everywhere. That you don't indicates that you recognize risks you don't want to talk about
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Oh I'd totally support a thorium-based reactor system in Iran or anywhere. I'd also consider supporting a light-water thermal reactor which is fueled by low enrichment uranium purchased abroad or manufactured by a modest domestic system.


However, Iran seems to be building a HUGE enrichment capability. Way more than you'd need to get 3% enrichment for a few power plants. Actually it's so large... it almost seems like the only practical use would be cascading enrichment for super-high weapons grade enrichment.

Also, despite all this talk about their enrichment for their "peaceful energy needs" they've shown no interest in purchasing low-enrichment uranium from Russia, even if it would be much cheaper. Geez, weird, because they could use that stuff just fine to get their peaceful reactors started right away.

Also, they're not building any reactors either. Oh wait... no I take that back... they are building one. It appears to be a bit too small to really be optimal for generating electricity. Also it seems to be a bit too big to be a prototype or pure-research reactor. Also, it's not even a light water reactor.. it seems to be some sort of hybrid heavy water reactor. Weird, because they say they're enriching for standard thermal reactors.

The other strange thing about their reactor is that it's nowhere near their power demand centers... and they don't seem to be building the distribution system for it... or installing turbines.

Hmmmm....

Based on this I'm starting to suspect that it's not Iran's desire for nuclear electrical generation that everyone is so upset about...

I guess I'm naive, eh?
 
Here's another thought, Buzzo.

While you ridicule the thought of wind turbines everywhere saying you can't capture all the energy in the atmosphere, I think you do attempt to try to quantify all the thorium on the Earth in a way that's even more silly.

Wind potential that's been studied indicates that a fraction of the Earth's surface would do. The Dakotas and maybe Texas, for example, could do all of the United States. And wind just goes on and on and on. It doesn't get weaker with time.

When you're trying to quantify thorium, you actually proposed churning up all the world's soils and scraping the ocean bottoms. And you proposed this as an option on environmental grounds. Now I know we're talking hundreds of years out. But still, the environmental impact of a hundred turbines has got to be lower than turning over all the soils beneath them.

There's been similar talk about uranium in granite. As an environmental solution, it fails. Wind turbines have got to be more benign.
 
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I guess I'm naive, eh?
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Not at all. I wouldn't trust Iran either. But then you're in the position of trying to decide who gets power and who doesn't. You're in the position of watching regimes turn over and just hoping that dangerous materials don't fall into the hands of madmen or incompetents. These are the kinds of security concerns that have been brought up in the past and you've pooh-poohed. Can we rule out another Hitler?
 
And, let's face it, the long-term disposal of CANDU fuel IS a major problem. AECL has been working on this for 50 years and has not come up with a viable plan. So hundreds of thousands of hot fuel bundles are stored in glorified swimming pools that have been known to leak into the local ground water after just 25 years of operation.
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Do you know anything about the details of CANDU fuel? I'm trying to get a deeper understanding of the level of danger. How long is it dangerous for? And how dangerous?
 
Schneibster, do you have any links to support your claim that spent fuel is no more dangerous than natural uranium after 100 years? I've been trying to find the facts one way or another and have come up woefully short.

What I can say is that everyone, nuclear proponents and opposers alike, are looking at storage for thousands of years at the very least. Many nuclear sites openly recognize that spent fuel will remain dangerous for millenia, though they do not quantify the dangers.

The closest thing I've found to addressing your claim is this:

http://books.google.com/books?id=iRI7Cx2D4e4C&pg=PA21&sig=IdHoSHE_eby_R2X1jqrJDj_Q9Gs#PPA99,M1

Not all of the text is publicly available on line. The relevant section is about an ALMR reactor. It is proposed because it can reduce the dangers of spent fuel. The suggestion (on page 207) is that with the ALMR, spent fuel will only take 200-300 years to go down in toxicity to the level of natural uranium. There's some discussion about why even this may be a bit hopeful. My point, though, is that the implication is that spent fuel from existing reactors is expected to be dangerous for much longer.
 
robinson said:
In stark contrast, Wind Power is a friggin battleground it is so lucrative. Do you know how much money each turbine makes in a year?
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Have you seen what a battle ground the double-A battery market is? Damn those things kill wind power for profit. I mean look at the ads where they're battling it out. You've got Rayovac, Duarcell, Energizer all running big add campaigns...

Obviously AA batteries are therefore the thing which will lead to energy independence for baseload use!


Do you know how much money each turbine makes in a year?
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Depends. That's a highly loaded question. Different locations will have VASTLY different potential. Hows about we use "Cape Wind" as an example?
Big proposed project off of Cape Cod Ma. That's considered the "Best" offshore wind location for the Northeastern US. In other words: ANY other location would do WORSE than this.


Project cost: about 900 million dollars to build. With commitment to take down the windmills eventually. They have about a 20 year lifespan, and they're going to require maintience. These are out at sea, so you have to bare in mind that they will require relatively frequent repainting and such to keep corrosion in check. Any metal offshore structure needs that.

The cost over the lifespan of the project are estimated about 1.2 billion dollars, including the final cost of either removing or refurbing and overhauling them at the time of planned life span.


They optimistically hope for about 1.5 billion kilowatt hours per year in electrical output. Reasonable, but on the high-side of estimates...

But we'll use their optimistic estimate...

The wholesale price that an electrical company will pay for that is actually just about one cent per kilowatt hour. It varies from .9 cents to about 1.2 cents. This is not only because "non stable" sources like this are hated by power utilities (who often would not buy the damn electricity if they weren't required to). But the amount you pay for electricity has a lot to do with distribution, line losses, maintenance, taxes and so on than generating cost.


The capacity factor issue of wind power makes every kilowatt hour worth the equivalent of about half of standard generation, because the variance factor means you twice as much to reliably reduce output elsewhere.


So they'd get 15 million dollars per year. Oh good. They can get their investment back in just 60 years. Oh wait... I thought the turbines were rated for an offshore lifespan of about 20 years? Well, maybe if they take good care of them they could double that.... oh wait... still not enough... damn


But I thought they wanted to make a profit?

Oh wait... EXTREMELY generous public funds: http://www.prnewsnow.com/Public_Release/State/98931.html


Ah, so basically they're doing this at a loss to sap up the funds of Massachussettes and the US.


Oh wait... but aren't their subsides for nuclear plants too?

Hmmm... well based on what the DOE has been paying...


The 2006 Department of Energy research and development budget provides $1.2 billion for renewables and conservation, $800 million for clean coal, and $510 million for nuclear. These levels reflect the growing awareness that the United States will need a diverse generation portfolio to meet increasing demand, to reduce emissions, and to move closer to energy independence.

Okay...

Hmm... according to this page the subsidies for wind power per kilowatt are $1200... JESUS H CHRIST THATS HIGH

http://www.ncpa.org/studies/renew/renew2c.html

Christ... based on all the articles i've read, wind power subsidies seem to be in the multiple billions if you include all the tax writeoffs...

http://scienceline.org/2007/08/17/env-romero-green-energy-markets/


Hmmm... Jeez... Well at least with subsidies it won't be the consumer who gets hit in the pocket... at least not directly...

Oh wait just look at this page:

http://www.awea.org/faq/wwt_costs.html
If my utility uses more wind energy, will that make my electric rates go up my electric rates go up?

Yes, probably, but not much. Let's say that wind energy costs 2 cents more per kilowatt-hour (2 cents/kWh) than the rest of the electricity your utility is generating or buying—a conservative estimate.
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And that's from a pro-wind page. So even with all that funding it still costs a bit more? Wow.

Well at least the billions of dollars have resulted in making wind power a real source of energy in the US...

Wait what's that? It's only less than 1%? But haven't these been around since at leas the early 1990's?

So if we shell out billions per year like we do not, how long till we get to a 20% wind power use? That would be as high as nuclear?

Oh wait... that would be 100 years. Assuming demand does NOT INCREASE


So if something is going to be subsidized... um... shouldn't we get something semi-decent in return, at least?
 
luddite said:
Here's another thought, Buzzo.

While you ridicule the thought of wind turbines everywhere saying you can't capture all the energy in the atmosphere, I think you do attempt to try to quantify all the thorium on the Earth in a way that's even more silly.

Wind potential that's been studied indicates that a fraction of the Earth's surface would do. The Dakotas and maybe Texas, for example, could do all of the United States. And wind just goes on and on and on. It doesn't get weaker with time.

When you're trying to quantify thorium, you actually proposed churning up all the world's soils and scraping the ocean bottoms. And you proposed this as an option on environmental grounds. Now I know we're talking hundreds of years out. But still, the environmental impact of a hundred turbines has got to be lower than turning over all the soils beneath them.

There's been similar talk about uranium in granite. As an environmental solution, it fails. Wind turbines have got to be more benign.
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HAH! You've got to be kidding me? Yeah, we'll need to churn up all the soil in a few million years.

No, we can get along for centuries before we even need to consider abandoning conventional mining.

You're comparing covering an amount of earth effectively the size of the former Soviet Union with wind turbines.

I'm talking about using current mining operations for about 30-40 years, then backfilling those and moving on to other minable deposits and so on. I mean really, it's no different than any other mining.


Wind turbines from the searing deserts of Kazakstan to the bitter cold reaches of the artic sea, from the northern tip that looks out to alaska, down to the sea of japan across the wind swept thousands of miles of siberia, to the black sea, the casbian sea, the borders of Norway, to moscow the Baltic and toward germany. Threw the jungles, tundra, deserts and mountains...

That's... a... lot... of... windmills.
 
Buzzo, that's pretty much what I said. Naturally, though, Luddite and the like have done a good job ignoring it.
 
Luddite:

Each CANDU bundle weighs about 22 kg and contains pellets of natural UO2. A bundle spends about 1 year in the reactor core and is irradiated to a burnup of about 200 MW.h/kg U. Pickering Units have about 4500 bundles in the reactor at any given time. The radiation dose from a freshly discharged bundle is about 10^6 millirem per hour at a distance of about 0.5 meters in air. This would provide a lethal dose in less than 30 minutes of exposure. The radiation field from this bundle would have dropped by a factor of about 100 in 100 years.
 
How much of this "waste" is not reusable?

Of course, the solution is to naturally shut down all nuclear plants, shuffle the stuff where we can't ever find it, and then get rid of coal.

While we're at it, we should probably also get rid of hydroelectric. When those things blow, those things are dangerous.
 
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luddite said:
There are differential quotas and scaled carbon taxes, tax credits for low income and government programs that target retrofits for lowest income tax brackets. There are a lot of creative ways of getting around the problems of energy poverty.
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A lot of creative ways... expensive too..




But you're wrong about it expanding class divides. It is rather a great social leveler. Income is one of the best indicators of carbon emissions. Make it expensive to emit and you hit the rich hardest.
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Proportionally, I suppose. Yes, you do hit the richest hardest in terms of how they have to spend money. A rich person might get hit by millions and have to give up their second yatch.

A poor person is hit by several thousand. They have to give up eating.


One holiday flight to Fiji and you basically blow your whole carbon quota for the year. Business meetings every week would basically be a thing of the past. Rich people will suddenly see the appeal of small cars, like they do in Europe where energy has been more expensive for decades.
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First that's not a fair comparison because Europe has smaller roads and is much more population dense, but rich people won't buy smaller cars. They'll buy the carbon credits off of poor people who will need to sell them to live at all. And the rich might have slightly smaller cars. But everyone else gets NO CAR AT ALL.

And rich people will be the first to invest in efficiencies as they arise, paving the way for price reductions as new ideas catch on.
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No this was already explained.

I haven't done a systematic analysis, but I think the countries with highest energy prices tend to have smaller class divisions. Europe, for example, fares a lot better than North America.
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Not a fair comparison at all... or even close. And Europe is not a lot better than the US. I really suggest you might want to do some research before you buy into that myth.

But even if it were. Wholliping a system with a sudden monitary collapse isn't going to work well for class division... well actually it might eliminate social class... if you do it hard enough you might lead to "An equal distribution of absolute poverty."
 
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