Slashdot Mirror

My god, an intelligent answer on the nuclear power issue. Give me a moment to recover from the shock...

OK then, your point about renewable resources being unproven is a good one. So maybe the expenses of nuclear power can be justified. I do emphasize "maybe".

But I think you're totally off base when you claim that most of these costs are avoidable. Congress can't legislate away training, mining, or construction costs. In theory they can legislate away the NIMBY lawsuits, but politically speaking, that's a non-starter. And:

Disposing of the wastes could be solved in the future

No, it has to be solved now, because it's already an issue, even with the small number of nuclear plants we currently have online. Storing on site, is not an answer — they're already doing that (because of the delays in getting disposal sites open) and the cost is horrendous. Besides, the lifetime of a nuclear power plant is maybe 50 years, whereas the waste has to be stored for centuries before it ceases to be dangerous.

Now consider: solar thermal wonks claim they can supply 90% of all U.S. energy needs with plants that would collectively cover about 9,000 square miles. Note that this is 90% of all our energy needs, not just our current consumption of electricity.

As you say, that's unproven technology, and also horrendously expensive (especially when you add in the costs of converting existing non-electrical systems to use electricity). But If I have to choose between a horrendously expensive program that promises to meet most of our needs, and a horrendously expensive program that would never meet more than a fraction of our needs, the choice is pretty clear.

And face it: however much you do to offset the risks of nuclear power, the risks are there. True, people overreact to them (you can blame knee-jerk enviromentalists, but I think bad SF movies are a bigger factor).That does not mean that all concerns are bogus. It may not be possible for a power plant to produce a nuclear explosion (something most people have trouble understanding), but there are real issues that won't go away completely.

When you tackles these kinds of issues, you always consider the worst case scenario, and never assume that you can engineer it away (as the designer of the Titanic learned the hard way. Maybe you can reduce the risks of nuclear power to an acceptable level, but let's stop pretending they don't exist.

If we didn't have other options, and nuclear power had the potential to make more than a marginal difference, I'd say the risks were worth taking. Not otherwise.

Before reading the fine article, I thought it would be a PR piece for Ausra.

If you read the stuff at their website, http://ausra.com/, they answer a lot of the questions that have been, and doubtless will be asked here;

It's possible to store thermal energy and use it to produce electricity at night.
Some places do receive more sunlight than others, and plants built in those places would be more efficient.
They have a nice PDF that shows (among other things) the normal solar radiation for different areas - plants work better in deserts than in river valleys, but there are plenty of places you can build them that are cost effective.
Ausra isn't vaporware - they already build a plant in Australia, and they are building one in southern California.

The current plant is cost competitive with scrubbed coal, and future plants are supposed to be on par with unscrubbed coal plants.
That last may be hype, but at the very least they can already produce electricity for less than 12 cents a kilowatt, and cutting that in half doesn't seem unreasonable.

Even so, at best these kinds of plants will only supplant oil and coal burning electric plants.
We're still going to burn oil in our cars, home heaters, etc.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Ausra, but most of my information about them comes from them, or their press releases, so take it with a grain of salt.

-- Should you believe authority without question?

Instead, look at the fact that it is the ONLY form of AE that can serve as base load. All others are intermitant.

• Solar Thermal - The cheapest option out there at the moment. Heat up water. Keep it in an insulated tank until it's needed. Drive steam through a turbine. Works up to 16 hours a day which isn't perfect but it's better than "only when the sun's shining"
• Vanadium redox (flow) batteries - Charge a Vanadium electrolyte and pump it into tanks for storage. Pump it back the other way to release the charge. Highly scalable (just add more electrolyte and bigger tanks) to many MWh of power. Still pricey but could be competitive with more research funding and economies of scale. A great candidate for Google funding IMHO.
• Compressed air - Use surplus energy to compress air into an underground aquifer. Release it through a regular gas turbine when needed significantly boosting the turbine's efficiency. Not truly renewable as you're still burning gas but you still get the benefit of otherwise wasted wind power. The advantage of pumping water into an aquifer is that the constant hydrostatic pressure removes the need for variable regulation at the plant saving significant cost. Won't work everywhere though and the drilling cost would be significant.
• Pumped hydro - Well established and incredibly scalable (to GWh of power storage!) but not cheap to build.
• Supergrid - Spread your wind farms across a wide enough grid and the wind will be guaranteed to be blowing somewhere giving you guaranteed supply. Uses HVDC lines to minimize power loss over the large transmission distances involved.

Nuclear for so many reasons is not the way of the future. I cannot understand why so many persist.

America is currently the biggest polluter on the globe this may not always be the case as countries like China and India are developing.

If America decides to set an example to the rest of the world by using nuclear power plants to run the country to cut down on green house gas emissions what then gives the US the right to tell Countries such as Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Iran and North Korea they are not allowed do the same.

These countries have to have power aswell, its a stupid move to only allow so called clean power generation from Nuclear in the west as we would all suffer the consequences from constantly burning fossil fuels in vastly populated countries who aren't allowed to have greener technologies because they are a security threat?

Secondly the article makes false claims.

This is rubbish current Solar Thermal technology is perfect to supply generate base load power for the US and plenty of other countries worldwide where there is enough sun to keep it all cooking. Check out what Ausra are doing

I am not saying Nuclear research is a bad thing by any means, but once base load power generation is considered I think it has extremely dangerous implications world wide.

Aren't there ways to get solar power without futzing with photovoltaics?

• They're more economical because the technology is relatively simple
  
• They can store the heat overnight, thus providing "base load" capacity
  
• The superheated steam they produce can be integrated with existing coal-fired plants, taking advantage of existing infrastructure
  

• Worse efficiency
  
• Poor areal density (due to above), so they can't be put in your backyard
  
• Must be built large-scale due to the need for a tracking/control system and a steam turbine
  

Aren't there ways to get solar power without futzing with photovoltaics?

• They're more economical because the technology is relatively simple
  
• They can store the heat overnight, thus providing "base load" capacity
  
• The superheated steam they produce can be integrated with existing coal-fired plants, taking advantage of existing infrastructure
  

• Worse efficiency
  
• Poor areal density (due to above), so they can't be put in your backyard
  
• Must be built large-scale due to the need for a tracking/control system and a steam turbine
  

According to Ausra, one of the companies mentioned, 92 square miles, or less than one percent of US deserts would replace all US energy needs. This is also far less space than is being used for coal mining activity.

Of course always take numbers like that with a huge grain of salt.

Ausra is receiving startup money from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who funded Google.