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Depending on where you get your figures, as much of 50% of US nuclear power is generated from recycled Soviet uranium, either extracted from decommissioned warheads or excess manufactured product that was in the pipeline at the time of collapse. The US also has a large number of vintage-era nuclear weapons that are no longer considered militarily viable (the trigger mechanisms decay quite a bit) and so could be recycled. Finally, if the going ever gets really bad, we can always reprocess our spent fuel for Plutonium and/or use breeder reactors to make the stuff - this is the primary mode in which the Japanese nuclear industry sustains itself without outside supply, although the cheap price of Uranium makes them feel kind of dumb.

In short, the US does not need to import a single gram of fissile material to run indefinitely. Solar/Wind/etc. . are fine ideas for the long term but do not meet our power needs today. We should absolutely invest in these alternative technologies and, while we are at it, invest in conservation and efficiency. Unfortunately, right now, we are making almost 50% of our power from coal that is massively environmentally destructive from the second it is strip-mined out of the ground to its large final carbon contribution. Nuclear power is the only technology currently available that can put a dent in coal usage. If you show me an alternative that can scale to 400 TerraWattHours, I'll withdraw that claim.

References:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html
http://www.usec.com/v2001_02/Content/News/NewsTemplate.asp?page=/v2001_02/Content/News/NewsFiles/04-13-03.htm
http://www.defencetalk.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-215.html

The funny thing being that there actually IS something called OPEC and it has been held in Austria several times.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/opec.html

It's a summit of the oil exporting countries of the world, IE not the US or Australia.

I guess Bush must of had oil on the brain...

Someday, countries like Canada with lots of wheat will want something besides debt instruments in exchange for their goods. So too will countries like Saudi Arabia want something of tangible value in exchange for their oil.

I know you are giving examples, but did you know that the US imports more oil from Canada than from Saudi Arabia? I'm sure that most Americans do not realize this.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

Someday, countries like Canada with lots of wheat will want something besides debt instruments in exchange for their goods. So too will countries like Saudi Arabia want something of tangible value in exchange for their oil.

Actually, Canada exports more oil and gas products to the U.S. than Saudi Arabia. We're your number one source for oil imports, which is one reason our dollar is so strong.

If you mean our #1 foreign supplier, then yes, you're right.

The top 5 suppliers of petroleum to the US are The United States: 39.7%, Canada: 10.5%, Mexico: 8%, Saudi Arabia: 7.4%, and Venezuela: 7.4%.

(Information derived from Energy Information Administration statistics, which only shows the stats for 2005 and earlier)

Personally, I think we should use less petroleum products over here, but convincing people to use their cars less (which accounts for 50% or so of our petroleum usage) isn't easy as long as people here choose to live in Suburbia.

A hectare (2.47 acres) of jatropha produces 1,892 liters (500 gallons) of fuel. 202 gallons per acre.

The US consumes about 400 million gallons of gas and 70 million gallons of diesel per day. At 200 gallons per acre per year, we'd need to plant 850 million acres of jatropha to replace petroleum. According to Google, that's about 1.3 million square miles, or about a third of the land area of the United States.

Since we currently only cultivate 440 million acres[pdf], that would be a significant challenge.

The cost of fuel cells is similar to solar http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/assumption/pdf/ele ctricity.pdf#page=3 but is not falling as fast. Do you have a reference for the conversion efficiency for the algae? Current silicon PV gets close to 20% and 40% cells are expected to be in production in 3 years as a result of a DARPA initiative.
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Solar power saves money: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

There were 1.7 GW installed in 2006: http://www.solarbuzz.com/Marketbuzz2007-intro.htm bringing the world up to about 6 GW. At a typical 5 hours per day equivilent peak generation that comes to 11 billion kWh per year. World net generation was 16,590.6 billion kWh per year in 2004: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb1116.html, so your fraction should be 0.07%, off by about 4 orders of magnitude. At 45% growth, how long would it take to replace world net generation? Somewhat less that 22 years since 1.45^22=3550 which would imply that more than half of the worlds net generation would be fabricated in the year 2028, with the rest fabricated prior to that year. Since panels last 25 years or longer there would have been little need to replace existing solar PV capacity by that time.
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Rent residential solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

None of that is evidence, it's just speculation on your part, and it's poor speculation at that which flies in the face of established facts:

Iraq is a comparatively small source of our oil imports. While losing all of the oil from Iraq would most likely have an impact, there is no reason to believe it would be anything even remotely close to catastrophic.

I reject your entire argument and retain my original position: there is no substantial or direct risk to the U.S. in withdrawing from Iraq.

Solar is currently competitive as distrubuted generation, displacing delivered central generation. It is also developing rapidly in the southwest as central generation, displacing gas. You'll notice wind does not appear in your link either yet wind development in PA is pretty spectacular. You're link may not be the best guide to what is happening. Your number for nuclear power seems low but what is important here is the future cost. You may want to look at table 39 here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/assumption/pdf/ele ctricity.pdf#page=3 keeping track of online years. Nuclear does pretty poorly. Assuming solar beats wind in ten years (and wind continues its decent) nuclear is going to be at the top of pricing.

The DOE says we use a little less than 400,000,000 gallons of gas every day. The article says that if they get their switch grass process running, it'll produce 2,000 gallons/acre. That means we'll need 200,000 acres of switchgrass a day. 200,000 acres is roughly 1/4 the area of Rhode Island. So we need roughly 80 times the area of Rhode Island to produce our current gasoline needs.

Nuclear Power + Electrolysis = Hydrogen Economy

Linky

"A so-called hot rock well three miles deep in the United States would cost $7 million to $8 million, according to the MIT study. The average cost of drilling an oil well in the U.S. in 2004 was $1.44 million, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration."

Yea, so that's about six times more expensive. But wouldn't the savings be much more in the long run? And more "environmentally friendly"?

At a crude oil price of $75/bbl, a 13.7 bbl/day well is yielding $1027.50 of product per day, or $375,284 per year. At a cost of $1.44 million, it takes the well 3.84 years to pay for itself. At a cost of $7-$8 million, it would take 19-21 years to pay for itself. That's assuming you could extract as much energy-dollars from a hot rock well as from an oil well (can't find any numbers on this, but it can't be much higher or the oil companies would be all over this since they're already in the best position to take over any market involving drilling).

The hot rock well does have the advantage of being guaranteed productive for those 20 years, but you're talking "long term" as in way past the term of any elected official. It's hard to get them to pay for needed maintenance on roads and bridges, much less make an investment which won't pay for itself for 20+ years.

http://www.nv.doe.gov/library/films/testfilms.aspx

"Wrong. Refining capacity has expanded significantly in the U.S. while no new refineries are built precisely because of EPA roadblocks. Far cheaper, faster, and easier to expand than build new. This concentrates throughput and pollution at existing sites."

Could you provides a source to substantiate this. I think you are the one who is wrong. In a couple minutes of googling I find this in the Christian Science Monitor:

"In 1981, the US had 324 refineries with a total capacity of 18.6 million barrels per day, the Department of Energy reports. Today, there are just 132 oil refineries with a capacity of 16.8 million b.p.d., according to Oil and Gas Journal, a trade publication."

While major producers like Exxon have significantly expanded production at existing refineries, or snapped up refineries in mergers, a large number of small refineries have disappeared, and of course many oil companies have consolidated in mergers. Refining has as a result been significantly consolidated. Here is another chart which also shows total refining capacity is down from 1982 to 2002 by 500,000 barrels, and shows the extent of the consolidation. Not sure if this has changed in the last 5 years, but I doubt it has.

Everyone knows U.S. refining capacity is inadequate, the Saudis point this out everytime Americans bitch about gasoline prices and blame crude oil for it. The fact is the refiners are the leading profiteers on gasoline. That's why gasoline prices spike when crude oil prices don't spike, its why gasoline prices always spike just in time for the summer driving season. Oil companies are racking up record profits on crude oil, but they are also making record profits on gasoline because of refining.

I wont argue that environmental regulation is a reason for the shortage in capacity, but I can most definitely assure you that oil companies are overjoyed with the fact there is a shortage in refining capacity and are crying crocodile tears blaming it on the EPA.

It would be great if there was a truly free market in refining with competition and if when there was a shortage of capacity some enterprising capitalist could just build a new refinery, increase supply and reduce costs. In the area I'm in there is really only one refinery serving the entire area and they jack up prices with impunity whenever they feel like it. It simply isn't a free market, and when Reagan deregulated it, we traded a government manipulated market for an industry manipulated market and they are both bad.

Last fun fact. Think your Prius is helping with that pesky foreign oil "problem", or (laughs) that you're "fighting terrorism"? Think again. Transportation only accounts for less than one percent of US oil consumption.

Better check your figures. From your link:

Transportation Uses Lead Growth in Liquid Fuels Consumption

U.S. consumption of liquid fuelsincluding fuels from petroleum-based sources and, increasingly, those derived from such nonpetroleum primary fuels as coal, biomass, and natural gasis projected to total 26.9 million barrels per day in 2030, an increase of 6.2 million barrels per day over the 2005 total. Most of the increase is in the transportation sector, which is projected to account for 73 percent of total liquid fuels consumption in 2030, up from 67 percent in 2005 (Figure 82).

    http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/gas.html

67 percent now, 73 percent in 2030. So your car does contribute to global warming.

Transportation only accounts for less than one percent of US oil consumption.

Making ethanol is easy. Making enough ethanol to fill every gas tank in a developed country is tricky.

So...Brazil isn't a developed country? 40% of the gas used by *cars* comes from Ethanol (they actually import oil because of diesel and petrochemical needs.) They do it with cane sugar.

The reason we don't have cheap ethanol, and why corn prices are skyrocketing, is because corn is almost *the* worst way to make ethanol. Corn, however, is what the midwest does, and only what the midwest does. The earliest primaries are in...guess where...the midwest (well, not so much any more, thank god.) The government forks over billions to farmers and farm corporations because it buys votes. Corn is what livestock are fed, not grass. High fructose corn syrup, which is quite bad for you (compared to regular sugar) is in damn near everything because it's cheaper than sugar (which, incidentally, is price fixed. Sugar is *dirt* cheap on the world market, but to protect a fairly small contingent of sugar farmers in the US, the feds price-control it.)

By the way, Bush's favorite line is "reducing our foreign dependency on oil." Guess what? We already get our oil from a rather diverse group, and half of our oil comes from domestic sources.

Last fun fact. Think your Prius is helping with that pesky foreign oil "problem", or (laughs) that you're "fighting terrorism"? Think again. Transportation only accounts for less than one percent of US oil consumption.

Making ethanol is easy. Making enough ethanol to fill every gas tank in a developed country is tricky.

So...Brazil isn't a developed country? 40% of the gas used by *cars* comes from Ethanol (they actually import oil because of diesel and petrochemical needs.) They do it with cane sugar.

The reason we don't have cheap ethanol, and why corn prices are skyrocketing, is because corn is almost *the* worst way to make ethanol. Corn, however, is what the midwest does, and only what the midwest does. The earliest primaries are in...guess where...the midwest (well, not so much any more, thank god.) The government forks over billions to farmers and farm corporations because it buys votes. Corn is what livestock are fed, not grass. High fructose corn syrup, which is quite bad for you (compared to regular sugar) is in damn near everything because it's cheaper than sugar (which, incidentally, is price fixed. Sugar is *dirt* cheap on the world market, but to protect a fairly small contingent of sugar farmers in the US, the feds price-control it.)

By the way, Bush's favorite line is "reducing our foreign dependency on oil." Guess what? We already get our oil from a rather diverse group, and half of our oil comes from domestic sources.

Last fun fact. Think your Prius is helping with that pesky foreign oil "problem", or (laughs) that you're "fighting terrorism"? Think again. Transportation only accounts for less than one percent of US oil consumption.

Not true.

"By the end of 1945 three plutonium devices had been constructed at Los Almos -- and two had already been detonated." The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History

In most parts of the US it's over USD$3 per gallon, not too far from AU: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publ ications/wrgp/mogas_home_page.html

I find that the unit could operate on 1.07 watts

Okay, but what is that, about three and a half days? That's far short of "seven to 14 days" mentioned in the blurb.

If you look at this description of a General Purpose Heat Source Module (dontcha love those military descriptive names?), you see that the major problem with an RTG is, as you alluded to, mass and not size.

GPHS modules stand approximately two inches tall and have a base that is almost square with sides less than four inches in length. Each GPHS module is designed to weigh no more than 1.44 kilograms and produces a nominal thermal power of 250 watts at beginning of mission.

Three pounds is a lot for something a few cubic inches in size. But, given a 7% nominal thermal-electric conversion efficiency (I based my math on some numbers for the Cassini mission), 250 W thermal should produce 16 W electric out of that three pound brick (by adding a little more mass for a thermopile). One of those bricks contains four Pu-238 pellets, and the diagram suggests that they're the same design on each side, so one could presume a half-sized, two-pellet GPHS would produce eight watts at maybe two pounds total. Eight watts isn't much, but it's going to do it for longer than the average term of service for a soldier.

Politics aside, it sure sounds like an attractive solution.

Dinosaur bones are rare and really have nothing to do with oil or gas.

Oil and gas largely comes from decomposed and thermally altered algae and plants buried in the Earth long ago. We've had the luxury of nature spending the last billion years or so brewing the stuff up and concentrating it into deposits we can drill into and pump out at low cost. Yes, I said low cost. Compared to the alternatives it really is cheap.

Plant matter is renewable, but at the scale that the world already uses the cheap non-renewable stuff from the ground it is pretty challenging to substitute.

Global average daily crude oil consumption:
80 million barrels == ~9.4 million m^3 == ~10.9 million tonnes (~7.33 barrels per tonne of oil)

Global canola production:
~11.9 million tonnes per *year*

So, divert a *year* of canola oil production and you could approximately replace a *day* of crude oil production (it isn't 1:1, but canola oil can be used somewhat like diesel).

Global production of all vegetable oils:
~76 million tonnes (converted from tons)

So, divert a year of world vegetable oil production and you've got about a week of crude production. Only 51 other weeks to go.

Ethanol is the main possibility for replacing the biggest portion of what crude oil is usually used for (i.e. gasoline and similar fuels). If it could be derived from "waste" plant material like cellulose it would be a big help, but no matter what exact choices or technical advances are made it is going to be a huge challenge. Augmenting current farmland in a *sustainable* way is hard.

2004 global ethanol production (yearly):
~42 million m^3 (1000litres = 1m^3)

Again, it's a pretty a pretty small amount by comparison to the demand. U.S. average gasoline consumption is about 1 million m^3 per *day*, so you would need more than 8x the current global ethanol production just to satisfy the U.S. needs (and ethanol has less energy per unit volume), and most of the current ethanol production isn't in the U.S., it's in Brazil. At the current relatively small fraction we're already seeing economic impacts from diverting more food to ethanol production.

So, you are 100% right: both the supply and demand side of the equation need to be vigorously addressed. Every bit of oil you don't use now gives that much more time to work on the problem, but people who think that we'll easily come up with biofuel alternatives to allow us to keep doing things the way we're doing it now are delusional. It is going to be increasingly difficult without conservation playing a big a role. The problem is simply too big otherwise, and growing every year. Biofuels will help, but not without some huge costs in terms of the food production system and farmland area.

If you want to convert any of the units I've used, try google (e.g., type "9159000 barrels in metres cubed"). If I made any big calculation errors, please let me know.

As of the most recent numbers, it looks like Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Nigeria for the top five, with 4.55 million barrels of the top five from the Americas and 1.46 million barrels from "Arab oil interests". So the submitter has a point, just not as much as he thought.

That's a cheap shot at Arabs. And untrue. Did you know that the top 2 sources of crude oil are Canada and Mexico? Followed by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela? 3 of the top 4 sources of oil are non-Arab.

It's very misleading to look at raw quantity of emissions. A more sensible measurement is per-capita emissions. I took the raw CO2 emissions figures and the state population figures for the same year, and did the relevant calculation. Turns out many states are worse than Texas for greenhouse gas emissions. By my calculations, New York is by far the worst.

If the Bush Administration wants to make the case that they (The Bush Administration) have been more successful than the EU in reducing emissions, then the logical start point for comparison is about when they took over which would be 2001.

Their comparison on efficiency is to a small generator, so it seems likely to me that comparison to grid efficiency is less favorable even for fossil fuels, particularly if a combined cycle plant is being used. It is not that fuel cell efficiencies are scale dependent the way that ICEs/turbines are but that, when using fuels other than hydrogen, you don't really get to use the energy content of the carbon because carbon fuel cells are a big order: http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/0 3/dcfcw/dcfcw03.html#Conversion.
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Carbon free power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

If we could use NASA's new really-remote control drone tech to make really big reflectors on the Moon, pointing at these high-concentration solar cells, we could beam a vast amount of energy down for use on the Earth. 1.3KW:m^2 falls steadily on the Moon, except for dark phases which could be balanced by another reflector on the Moon's other side.

100m^2 on a single m^2 panel at 40% efficiency would be 52KW, or 10 average US homes. Lunar surface area is about 3.8E7Km^2, so the entire current US energy generation could be fed by 2.39 millionths of a percent of the lunar surface, on about 70*70Km reflectors on a half-million Km^2 of Lunar surface.

Of course, by the time we'd scale up, we could have Lunar (or L-point, etc) orbital reflectors consuming no lunar surface, pointing at only 70-100Km of Lunar based cells. By which time the efficiency could be higher, and optical materials that can receive more than 100x full insolation, then distribute it to stacked cells, could be available.

You might want to be careful about Texas, it's wind generation is large and growing: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page /trends/table20.pdf.

Don't take it from the commies and the hippies; just read the official documents, or any lobby group manifest for that matter:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/economicimp acts/execsummary.html

http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7850

http://www.cei.org/gencon/003,05907.cfm

I'm afraid you're flat wrong here.

The transportation and residential sectors combined make up more than half of our greenhouse gas emissions. I'm not talking about the switch from a Tahoe to a Prius, but from a Tahoe to something like a Chevy Volt (sized for real-world use, of course). Given most people's driving patterns, that could cut our CO2 emissions from transportation by more than half. Similarly, I'm thinking about houses that are grid-neutral most of the time (think solar roofs, on-site windmills, or whatever else can help power houses in x climate). These switches would have a *huge* impact on our CO2 emissions and none whatsoever on our lifestyle, if the policy framework were in place to support them.

The question is - how many gas stations are there and how many grocery stores are there.

Right now, the US consumes about 9.3M barrels (390M gallons) of gasoline per day. That's per capita, annual consumption of about 468 gallons (3000 pounds) per year. By comparison, in 2004, US consumers bought 192 pounds of grains per person.

You're not going to "fill up" your car at the grocery store the way grocery stores exist now.

When you add the amount of time, money, kit and effort that'd go into either burning that many optical disks or filling that many harddrives, then connecting them on the other end and reading it out makes it less attractive than fiber optics.

Do we really need a 747? Well, let's see. 15 PB of data, how many 1TB hard drives would that actually be? According to Wikipedia:

1 PB = 10^15.
1 TB = 10^12

Thus, 1 PB could be written as 1,000 TB of data. So 15,000 TB hard drives will do it. Use RAID 5, say 4/5 (where 5 disks replicate 4 images) so we'll add 25%. That brings us to 18,500 HDD with decent redundancy.

The weight of a 3.5" HDD is apparently as much as about 700 grams so we'll say that's around 25 ounces per drive. That's 375,000 ounces, or 23,437 pounds. But a Boeing 747 can carry about 10x that much!

Methinks you've seriously overbuilt your solution. Heck even a little 727 is still way overbuilt. (max load 58,000 pounds) And 727s are dirt cheap nowadays.

But is that actually better?

Fiber optics nowadays can be pushed closed to 1 Tb per second. That's certainly in the range of what we're talking about. Actual numbers looks like 1 Tb per second could conceivably transfer 15 TB every 5.5 days or so, assuming optimal conditions. How much "dark fiber" is there under the ocean? Not much, I'd wager. Meaning this may likely require another cable to be laid == big, expensive, long project.

So the 727 is probably the best bet, since they can get started pretty much right away, and won't have to put together a 5 year project to run cables under the ocean...

Hmm. more curiosity - a 727 burns about 1,800 gallons of fuel every hour - costing around $1.84 per gallon. 3800 miles, about 3000 knots, or 10 hours at 300 Knots... around $65,000 per round trip. Since the budget of the entire project is 6.7 Billion dollars, it would take over 10,000 such trips to equal 10% of the total CERN budget.

In short, it's a deal at twice the price!

Some history - after a change of government British Nuclear Fuels was forced to release it's financial details to the public and the subsidies it was given from the taxpayer were clear - but it is apparent that they are no less competant than anywhere else and have similar designs.

Look at the British rail system sometime and some of the complaints there. Meanwhile France, Japan, and the USA all manage to have safe and economical plants. I'm not saying that the plant managers are incompetant - I'm saying that the people performing the shutdowns are incompetant, or perhaps forced to be that way by politicians.

the US power industry over a range of energy types is notoriously corrupt and greedy for taxpayer money or tax cuts.

Welcome to economic reality. If you were given the option for a tax break or handout, would you take it? I'm willing to bet most would. All industries do this to one degree or another. The US steel companies and tariffs. The airlines and their writing off their pensions(picked up by the gov). Farm subsidies. Heck, tobacco subsidies. Universities, even 'private' ones, receive billions in federal and state monies.

Going off on a tangent about coal is pointless - nuclear power has to stand on it's own merits and it is worthwhile for any nuclear power advocate to know where those numbers come from and to be able to relate them to a physical plant.

To the contrary, I think that bringing in some points about coal is central to the subject.

Again, it's ORM. We need electricity(it's a net enabler of our lifespan and quality of life, after all). There are a number of sources. I've examined a number of them, gauging total cost, power availability, and pollution. Nuclear is only minorly more expensive than coal, especially when you consider the problems of wind/solar in most areas. It eliminates the vast majority of the pollution** issues. Possible install sites are extremely limited for effective wind power, and it's still more expensive than nuclear, especially when you figure in standby power requirements. Solar is orders of magnitude too expensive. Possible install sites for nuclear are actually more common than coal, as it's best to have the coal plant near the coal mine, while nuclear fuel is compact enough that transporting it is a pittance. One train car's worth is enough fuel for a year, while it can take 2-4 100 car trains a day to keep a coal plant fed. A water supply such as a river reduces costs, but is not strictly necessary.

Why do I pick on coal so much? Simple, Coal is 49.7% of the total electricity generation in the USA, it's the largest single source.

Nuclear is the second largest, at 19.3%, followed by NG at 18.7%. Hydro is a mere 6.5%. 'Other renewables" is only 2.3%. Petroleum sources is actually larger, at 3%.

In various posts I believe that I've touched on most of those sources, but I'll cover them again. Coal is cheap but incredibly polluting. I've seen signs that we're burning our sources of NG* faster than we're burning our oil. It's certainly on of the more expensive sources at this time. Hydro faces more problems than nuke plants for any significant expansions. We've actually blown up a number of dams due to the ecological damage they were causing. Petroleum(oil)? Just look at the pump to see how economical that is at the moment...

*While it's cheap and fast to build a NG power plant, it also has the highest operating costs, and increases in the price of NG isn't helping. Thus, except in California it's mostly used to satisfy peak demands only.
**It's not pollution if it's contained.

There are a lot of ways to cook the books - for instance adding in the output for plants that are offline, assuming that all fuel costs are the same as for the best unit and assuming all capital costs are the same as for the most recent unit of it's type.

Uhh.. Have you looked at t

After dodging the question we get to the childish but common cry of "coal is bad so why can't we be bad too" argument, a bit odd since I originally mentioned hydro.

Recycle them? I've looked up the research myself. As for the 'childish' cry, it's called ORM. Operational Risk Management. It means that rather than suck on our thumb in the closet we assess the risks and attempt to minimize them while still getting work done. Coal kills thousands of people a year. It's a big event when nuclear power kills someone; anywhere in the world. I'm not talking about CO2 emissions here, I'm talking about all the other stuff, such as uranium, thorium, sulfer dioxide, NOx, etc... I tend to mention CO2 because that's a big buzzword today, gotta stop global warming.

Sorry about missing the british question. My answer would be that there's evidence of massive incompetence. It happens in government all the time(just look at the Big Dig). Excessive paranoia, cumbersome regulations, and changing plans in the middle don't help.

Would it be possible to name one of these new reactors? Are they new designs or the old ones we know are uneconomic? Are they actually new reactors or just modifications to the existing ones - that is the question that will really get to the heart of it.

Last reactor online: Watt's Bar, in Tennessee, it became operational in 1996. Comanche Peak 2 was also a late build. Sometime this year Brown Ferry 1 is expected to be re-activated, shut down over a decade ago. It's a 1.1GW reactor.

They're expecting new construction to begin around 2010 on a whole bunch of new reactors; but are keeping details close to their chest(less worry about greenpeace that way I guess).

It requires 1 lb of recycleable aluminum per mile. GP is right; it is a closed system.

Well it will take additional energy to recycle aluminum, so how is this a closed system?

Here is an interesting quote (from http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mecs/iab/aluminum/page 2.html):

According to the most recent Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey (MECS), the U.S. aluminum industry consumed about 727 trillion Btu of energy in 1994 (including electricity losses). This amount represents slightly less than 1% of domestic energy use and 2-3% of all U.S. manufacturing energy use.

Not to mention, Alcoa states (http://www.alcoa.com/global/en/environment/climat e_change/climate_overview.asp)

Aluminum will be greenhouse gas neutral by 2020

As for costs - you can't just conveniently ignore capital costs.

Who says that I'm ignoring them? Referenced site is for European power, and nuclear comes in cheaper at 23.7 E/MWh, vs 28.1 for coal. That's including capital costs, but not including CO2 tax, which raises coal to 44.3.

If you could hydro, wind, solar etc would win every time even in those places where it would be a stupid idea or where the capital costs are far too large for the return.

In the USA, hydro is considered 'overutilized' IE we can't install much more hydro power without negative ecological effects. Solar is orders of magnitude more expensive. A recent thread showed that they expected costs to be $300 million for a 40MW plant. Ten plants and you haven't even gotten half a GW, yet for the same capital you could have 3GW of nuclear plant going. Even wind has limited areas where it's truly usefull - You need a fairly strong and steady wind for it to work, and areas like that aren't everywhere. While you can ship power a long ways, you try to limit that.

Personally, I find the pebble bed to be missing a couple points - Personally, I want the fuel to be easy to recycle, or better yet burned more or less completely in the reactor, such as an IFR(yes, more research needed).

The mainstream is just chasing taxpayer supplied pork. If they were after more than a handout they would be putting in some effort - instead they spend orders of magnitaude in PR, advertising and outright bribes than R&D.

Hmmm.... Haven't seem much PR. Sure, there's a number of websites, but that's peanuts in comparison with nuclear research costs. On the other hand, at least in the USA they need the PR. NIMBY, nuke scares and outright stupidity* have stopped plant construction for years(well, high interest rates for a while helped). Today, they should be able to get lower interest rate loans, which makes the whole thing much more affordable.

As for the research, you do realize that we've managed to keep increasing the power produced by our reactors to the point it's been like building three new plants a decade?

and the "new generation" designs from companies like Westinghouse are just tweaked 1950s designs painted green.

In some ways that's like saying a Ford Focus is a Model-T painted green. The new generation designs, while still using the same basic technology, are far safer, more productive, and hopefully cheaper to build, since one of the 'safety' features was design simplification; fewer parts that can break.

*Why are we trying to build a million year shelter for stuff that's still 90+% fuel?

100 calories (kilocalories, really, as food "calories" are really kilocalories of actual energy) an hour is 116.22222 watts. Average retail electricity price in 2/2007 was $0.0874:KWh. An hour burning 100KCal is worth about $0.01 in electric costs.

If the treadmill could power my PC, I'd be more interested. Because though the actual cost savings are small, the motivation from saving the electricity might actually overbalance the idea that I'm the first generation of humans powering the Matrix.

so I can buy a plug-in-hybrid and seriously reduce oil dependence.

And the energy in the socket comes from lollipops and unicorn kisses? Our (the US, but I'm sure it applies elsewhere) use of oil is more than just to turn into gas. It is turned into just about everything we use, from plastics to fertilizer. Let's do the maths:

U.S. Motor Gasoline Consumption = 9,159,000 barrels/day
U.S. Non-Gasoline Consumption = 11,643,000 barrels/day
U.S. Crude Oil Production = 5,178,000 barrels/day (and declining since the 70's)

Even if all the cars were taken off the road today, there still would be a huge need to import oil. We use twice what we pump for stuff other than driving. I also wouldn't count on ethanol to take up the slack, since petroleum is a major input in agriculture. The ugly truth is there is no ending dependence on foreign oil until it is all gone and we are fighting over the scraps that are left. You can't make plastic out of yellowcake.

Unfortunately that is a cop out which is just what advertisers pushing the incorrecd depend on - no specific information just something from a minor newsletter from a biased source that gives no indication of how they got those numbers.

The DOE is a minor newsletter?

I avoided obviously nuclear related sites. The DOE specifically lists individual plant fuel costs as 'confidential', so I'm at a impasse there. That should be public information.

You really should not be a nuclear power advocate if you cannot name a single example of a plant that you would advocate building.

Ah, that's a different question. I thought you were asking about current plants expense ratios. As for what I'd like to see built, the 4S(10MW) design for remote areas, the EPR looks good for larger installs, at 1.6GW. Still, there are many possibilities. Different designs have different costs and advantages.

Still, I like the idea of breeders, and many plants are shift, if not to, to at least closer, using higher enriched sources to allow longer running times and more neutron capture leading to more burn-up, more efficient usage of fuel.

If I had my way I'd be building at least five new nuclear plants of the traditional PWR design, and have restarted research on the IFR.

Twenty years--lets look at that the number carefully. The current mineral inventory of uranium, coupled with current enrichment technology and usage gives you about 70 years. If one projects that number of reactors triples, then we can get the twenty years that you quote.

Let me present the following, albeit rough, argument. The historical trading range for U3O8 has been about $10 in "current year" dollars--in 2006 dollars, the prices has traded in the $10 - $80 range. The two excursions has been in the 70's and 2004+. From 1980 until 2004, the global demand has been low and the HEU blend down program with Russia introduced a cheap source of U3O8 into the market. Thus, investment in uranium mining, conversion, and enrichment has been low. When one factors in loan financing and depreciation, there is little incentive to invest when there is over 30+ years of inventory available.

Lets adopt the 20 year inventory as factual. The assay of U235 in the tailings from enrichment is typically around 0.3% (vice 0.711% in natural uranium)--the amount varies due to the price of uranium feed versus the cost in enrichment. Depending on how many SWU's one uses, current enrichment technology can produce natural uranium feed equal to about 10% - 25% of the mass of the DU feed. If one uses a more efficient enrichment technology, for example atomic vapor laser isotope seperation (AVLIS), even more natural uranium could be produced. Another option is to recover uranium from the oceans.

So depending on what the projected trend is on the price of uranium and the rate of new uranium ore discovery, the economics of tailings enrichment or new enrichment techologies may become viable. If one then factors in reprocessing of spent fuel, the viability of the uranium fuel cycle goes far beyond twenty years.

The biggest problem with solar power is that only 1366 W/m^2 reaches the upper atomosphere of the Earth. Thus to generate 1GW, you would need a 700000 m^2 (0.73 km^2) at 100% effiiciency. If you didn't want to build an orbiting power station, then the solar fluence becomes much less. Lets say half makes it to the surface in the mid latitudes (in North America the range is 125 - 375 W/m^2) and you can make solar cells that are 50% efficient (current cells are 15%) you will need 2.9 km^2 to generate 1 GW. The net generating capacity of the United States is 978 GW, thus one would need 2900 km^2. Of course, one needs sunshine for solar collectors to work, so lets assume in the summer you have a 50% split between day and night and that you get full power for the 12 hours of sunlight. Lets further assume that the night time power consumption in the summer is 20% of the daytime power consumption. Lets further assume that there is some magical energy storage system that is 100% efficient, you would then need 3500 km^2, which is 10 times the size of New York city. If one assumes you can site the collectors with a 50% density (e.g. 1 m^2 collector requires 2 m^2 of real estate), then you need 7000 km^2 (20 times the size of NYC or twice the size of Rhode Island).

For a point of comparison, the Palo Verde nuclear power plant generates 3800 MW and the plant is sited on 16 km^2, thus it generates 0.24 GW/km^2. My widely optimistic solar power plant generates 978 GW in 7000 km^2, which is 0.14 GW/km^2. This does not factor in the "off site" requirements (uranium mines, enrichment, solar panel manufacturing, etc.) but does provide a rough comparison of the two technologies. The Palo Verde generates electricity at 1.33 cents/KWH. A

Those are a lot of assumptions, most of which aren't very god - take a look at trends in the cost of producing and using solar power on a large scale over the past twenty years, and explain just how your numbers check out. Not only that, but we must also consider that after 20 years, the chemicals in the panels break down and thus, the panel must be replaced. Since the life of the panel (20 years) is also its ROI, you'll never profit from it (AEP and such won't build something they can't profit off of, esp. at a 20 year ROI).

Not only that, but you say 400 square miles is enough for all our energy expenditures? I think you missed a decimal place, son. If you consider 1.4 square miles powers 10,000 homes (40 MW) then we could conclude that (and this is also not a great assumption) 400 square miles would produce 11,428 MW, correct? The Department of Energy shows that 237,054,631 MW-hours were used last year, averaging out (again a not-so-great assumption) to a draw of (8766 hours per year) 27042 MW....slightly more than 11,428.

Not only that, but you must also consider the peak capacity of the grid. Power use is not constant - we have a nameplate capacity here in the US of about 1,067,010 MW, and we're still increasing that as fast as possible. Just trying to "inject some common sense".

Wanna bet on that?

$20 million for a 10MW reactor good for 30 years. Prototype development and regulatory fees estimated at costing $600 million for the first unit, after that the marginal cost would be $20 million.

Historically, in the US, projects that succeed have to be subsidized by the federal government. A prime example of big projects in the US that are "perceived as successful" are dams. Private construction of dams has failed time and time again (due to massive costs) until bureau of reclamation and USACE started siphoning from the federal budget for their construction. If you examine costs vs benefits on most dams in the US, you will see that a large number of them are "useless". Funding of these puppies has been weird, at best. Initially they were supposed to pay for themselves, but, that was abandoned some time ago.

So as it pertains to your argument, were the wealthy given benefits of expensive dam construction? No. The federal government secured funding to benefit all, rich or poor. (In the grand scheme of things, consider all of the beneficiaries poor). Sure, there were exceptions..but would you consider hydroelectric plants as dead-end technology?

Canada has no energy crisis or an energy shortage.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_ publications/company_level_imports/current/import. html

As you can see, Canada is the #1 supplier of oil to the US. Their population is around 33 mil and most of the population lives right next to the US border. So why would they bother with PV arrays? They are going to charge consumers normal electric rates for use --- however, big government projects are very patient. As inflation goes up and time goes on, the electricity will more than pay off for itself. Peak oil is theorized to start strangling energy exports in the next 10-15-20 years while this PV array will last 20-30-40 years without breaking a sweat.

So the moral of the story? Count your chickens before they hatch.

Please note that those papers are not by the original group responsible for the concept. Klaus Lackner, as credited in the slashdot summary and the GRT information, and all news stories discussing the Branson Prize, wrote such articles about air-capture of carbon dioxide as this and this, and others beforehand.

"This is one reason why gasoline/petrol prices in Europe have remained relatively stable, even as the political situation in oil producing regions has caused crude prices to increase. Most oil producing nations trade in U.S. Dollars, so the price in Euros is now 40% cheaper than 2 years ago. Traveling back and forth between the U.S. and Europe, it is quite obvious at the price differential of Dollar based international commodities. Gas prices, at least on both coasts of the U.S., are now about equal to what we pay in Europe, where 6 years ago we paid around 4 times what Americans were paying.
"
Except that while we in the UK still only pay 25p or so per litre, there is another 60p+ tax on it, bringing it up to 85p/l.
A litre being c3.8 to the us gallon, we pay over $6.5/gallon now.
While I am here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/gas1.htm l