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Could Nuclear Power Wean the U.S. From Oil?
bblackfrog asks: "Is a Federal nuclear energy program viable? That is, can the USA eliminate our economic dependence on crude oil with a large scale federal program to build and maintain enough nuclear power plants to replace our current oil-based energy needs? The obvious political hurdles are (a) the left opposes nuclear energy, (b) the right opposes federalizing energy, and (c) the oil companies and Saudis wield a lot of clout. This makes a federal nuclear energy program far fetched I admit, however I'm more interested in the economics. Slashdot has covered advances in nuclear power technology. China's doing it." (Read more, below.)
"How much energy is required to replace our fossil fuel consumption? What are the initial costs of the program, and just how cheap could the electricity be? How expensive would it be for our industries to convert? How expensive for home and auto conversions? How much of this cost should be picked up by the government? Bottom line: is nuclear power cheaper than our current oil-driven middle-east policy, with all of its blowback?"
And what'll wean us from nuclear power?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Privatize it, and let the citizens start deciding.
I'm wrong and so are you.
(d) In whose backyard does the nuclear waste go?
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
The president of a country has a fortune invested in oil. Would that country rather:
1. Develop a nuclear energy program;
2. Develop an alternative energy program;
or
3. Relax regulations for pollution control, so that fossil fuel energy can be more conviniently utilized?
While the damage caused by a nuclear catastrophy is much larger than that of a coal or oil burning plant, isn't the day-to-day pollution from a nuclear plant going to be far less than that of other non-renewable energy sources?
Yes, we should be looking to renewable sources, but its just not cost effective right now. Invest in the distance future with renewable research, and invest in the present with nuclear.
About the dumbest thing a person can do with fossil fuels is 'burn' them, whether in a power plant or driving to work.
When you burn them, they're effectively gone.
When they're gone, you can no longer use them to create the materials that, to a large extent, drive the production of goods in this country. Just think of it: Fertilizer, toys, drugs, etc. They are all largely based on petroleum derivatives.
Some can be recycled, which is great.
But if you just burn the petroleum, you lose it forever, and create toxic emissions to boot.
If nuclear power could help stop the petroleum 'burning' I'd be all for it. The problem is safety.
Can nuclear energy ever be truly safe?
---- Richard L. Goerwitz III
We don't use oil as our primary means of generating electricity. We use coal. And then natural gas. Neither of which are big foreign dependencies for us. I guess you're suggesting that we use nuclear energy to break down water for hydrogen power? But the cost of that is more than the cost of gasoline at the current rate. Electric cars, maybe?
As much as some people hate to hear it, we're not fighting in the Middle East because of oil. We're there because we're fighting Islamofascism. Otherwise, we would have used Saddam as an oil-for-food crony the way France and Germany were.
We can wean ourselves off oil better with deisel-electric hybrids, which would give us the same efficiencyt as is projected with fuel cells, and burn vegetable oils as well as (or instead of) petroleum. Vegetable oil powered electric hybrids are actually Solar Powered (think about it.) Which means they're Nuclear Powered. So maybe that's how nuclear weans us off petroleum.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
Fact is, Bush (and Cheney) aren't simply pawns of the oil industry, they ARE the oil industry. Moving away from oil is a conflict of interest for them.
Anyone who thinks that any substantial change in energy policy will happen in the next four years is naive.
The question should be, why do we use sooo much damn energy. I'm all for computers, gadgets, and a variety of power tools, but aren't we just being plain stupid and wasteful? I'm a designer, and the understanding in packaging is, that saving resources upfront (minimal packaging) is much, much more effective than say recycling. Recycling would be absolutely great, if we actually did it, but alas do not do it very effectively.
I ditched my beemer and am walking and such now. Not only is the stress of driving and owning a car that costs way too much to maintain in its glisteney state gone, but I lost ten pounds and save about a thousand a month.
We want it all, but simply cannot have it all. For long anyway.
Yes. But too many people would rather fear-monger the ills of nuclear power than join a rational discussion of how it can be widely implemented in a safe, clean, and effective manner.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
I would also note that Islamic Fundamentalism stoked by our dependence on oil has already killed more US citizens than the nuclear power industry.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
The way investors look at it, a natural gas power plant can be installed for half the price, half the time, and can break even in a third of the time any nuclear plant can. We as consumers of electricity have to make a effort to bear the additional cost of cleaner production means.
If you really want to talk green power, stop thinking nuclear and solar and think WIND. Wind power could provide the USA with more electricity than it currently needs if it is installed properly. The problem? again, wind electricity at the moment is a couple cents more per kWh than natural gas and coal. Are you willing to add the money on your bill each month? I am. Ever wonder why california has more wind turbine farms than any other area, even though they have one of the lowest wind potential west of the missippi? Because people are starting to want cleaner power, even at a cost.
Did you know a single 750 kw turbine can provent as much CO2 emmision as a 500 acre forest can absorbe annually?
Did you know, at the current death rate due to living in proximity to a coal plant, for every 33 wind turbines installed, we save a life. thats one less person who will die from lung related problems caused from emmisions. Coal plants are esimated to cause the death of over 35,000 americans a year.
If we want to get off the oily road we are one, we must make an effort and bear the cost of doing so. It is the only way this will ever work. And it can work. Look at europe, note germany's emmisions over the past 15 years and how they have dropped to next to nill. Ohio alone now produces more NOx emmisions than germany does per year. think about that.
Without question the green party and it's movement are the largest impediment to nuclear energy out there. It's a power trip really, one that has no scientific weight. Now the good news is that some of the greens are starting to realize that their opposition to nuclear power had everything to do with politics and nothing to do with science, and are starting to renew the calls to look at nuclear power.
From pebble bed techniques to better designs, there is no reason we cant build nuclear power plants that can provide widespread clean energy for the masses. Really, if groups like greenpeace were serious about the environment, they would be spending money on research for safe ways to store and process nuclear waste, not fighting it at every turn.
The second problem is stationary energy, that is electricity and natural gas. We have enough coal to generate electricity for many decades. In most cases, electricity can be substituted for natural gas The only constraint on coal is global warming. Nuclear can help here. I will not get into the debate of safety etc.
If we are really "stealing" oil, then why does the price of gas continue to climb? I just love those leftists that claim the war in Iraq is for oil. Been to the pump lately?
--- witty signature
The cost of building nuclear power plants greatly exceeds that of fossil-fuel plants due to the safety measures required. When I researched this for a physics paper in college, building a nuclear plant cost about 3x as much as an oil plant. That cost is often left out of analyses that claim nuclear energy is cost effective compared to fossil fuels.
If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out? - Will Rogers
Joe Public doesn't have to benefit from the theft, oh not at all. Oil Corps get to steal oil (or to be honest, buy it really really cheap) then sell it onto the public at huge markups!
Big Profits! Big Bonuses! Happy Wall Street! Happy Oil Company Directors! Sad car driver, sad environmentalist, sad poor original owner of said oil.
IAASE (I am a safety engineer).
This is not a very good way to frame this question, because nothing is truly safe. It's not truly safe to drive to work in the morning, for example, because there's a relatively high risk that you'll be killed in an auto accident. But it's not truly safe to lie in bed either, because you could get hit by a meteorite, or more likely, suffer from health problems related to lack of exercise. Nothing is "truly safe".
A better question to ask: is the expected net cost/benefit operating nuclear plants better or worse than the expected value cost/benefit from operating conventional plants? The risks of nuclear energy include improper waste disposal and radiation release due to nuclear plant malfunctions. The risks of conventional energy include global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions, increased illness due to other pollutant emissions, economic harm due to trade deficits with oil producing countries, and possibly, terrorist attacks funded by oil revenues.
The risks involved in waste disposal and plant malfunction can be mitigated - think vitrification of waste and fail-safe reactor designs. Some of the risks of conventional plants can also be mitigated - think carbon sequestration, higher efficiency plants, and increased domestic production of oil. These mitigation measures also have costs, both economic and other. The question is which option produces the required quantity of energy at the lost cost in economic and environmental terms. Safety is one of the costs.
Sean
Talking about nuclear energy is all fine and good when it comes to the electrical needs of our citizenry here in the US but what about the millions of cars on the road? Don't these suck up more oil than the power companies? We won't "eliminate" - the word used in the story - our dependence on foreign energy until we find a way to reliably power the vehicles that make our way of life possible.
I don't care for your usage of the term "the left", but I'm not surprised by it.
I personally don't think that Europe or Japan (or Canada for that matter) is more left than the US, which I think is what you are implying. Instead I think that Europe and Japan are more reasoned. That they are more rational societies than the US.
Watching the election, watching the US media coverage of it, listening to voters, journalists, and pundits commenting on it, I was frightened and disappointed. And not because of any particular winner of any particular election or any particular ballot measure (though I did find all the anti-gay marriage measures chilling).
What I found truly frightening was the apparent decline of reason that seemed like an undercurrent of the entire electoral process. People in the United States of America no longer seem to be making fewer and fewer decisions based on rational analysis of the situation. Instead decisions are being made based on irrational belief systems. And I am in no way singling out Christianity here. Animal rights, environmentalism, gay rights, anti-nuclear, you name it, all have become extreme belief systems that people blindly attach to and allow to make all of their decisions for them.
This seems very apropos to the parent's point that Japan and Europe use nuclear power. It's not because they're more left (which the parent seems to find hard to reconcile with their apparent "leftness"), it's because they're a more reasoned society. They don't just scream "Three Mile Island!" when someone discusses nuclear power, instead they make a reasoned analysis of the situation (power needs, costs, available resources) and then pick the most logically sound option.
My concern is America's dependence on oil. Scientists from all over the world say we have less than 60 years of oil left on the planet... Then what?
This reminds me of an episode of Futurama where New York shot all their garbage out into space in the early 21st century, saying "It'll return, but not in my lifetime, so it's not my problem." It returned in early year 3000. After shooting a rocket into space to "bounce" the garbage rocket into space again, Dr. Farnsworth exclaimed that it wouldn't return in his lifetime, so it wasn't his problem anymore. Sense a theme?
We (America) should immediately invest in clean energy sources like wind and solar. The prices of these sources are now extremely competitive with oil or coal burning sources. The sun and wind aren't going away any time soon.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
- "How much energy is required to replace our fossil fuel consumption?
- Depends on the definition of "fossil fuel consumption". It would take around 200 GW plus losses to replace the US consumption of petroleum-based motor fuel, according to my analysis. (Yes, I know, the EIA has broken the important links. Worse, they've split the data which used to be on one page over several.)
- What are the initial costs of the program, and just how cheap could the electricity be?
- The problem comes in two parts, generating the power from nuclear and then transforming it to something which can be put aboard a vehicle. As a quick BOTE calculation, if you need 250 GW of generation at $1110/KW, that's $275 billion dollars. The most efficient way of getting it aboard vehicles is to use batteries. Add 20 KWH of batteries for 100 million vehicles at $100/KWH and I get an additional $200 billion. Over ten years that would be about $50 billion per year.
- How expensive would it be for our industries to convert?
- Industries which need oil as a chemical feedstock would be largely impractical to convert to non-fossil, though non-petroleum is much easier. Industries which simply consume electricity would require no conversion. Industries which use process heat would pay a lot more if they used electricity instead, or perhaps less if they were close to a nuclear plant and could get spent steam.
- How expensive for home and auto conversions?
- It's not going to be practical to convert most cars; they will be replaced. Neither are you going to convert a home to nuclear. Converting to electric is cheap, converting natural gas appliances to hydrogen would also be cheap if it could be made safe enough (which I doubt). Cost of energy would be much higher; it would be cheaper to re-insulate, change building codes and use e.g. solar water heaters.
- How much of this cost should be picked up by the government?
- Do you mean paid out of increased taxes or added to the deficit? (The question betrays stupidity.)
- Bottom line: is nuclear power cheaper than our current oil-driven middle-east policy, with all of its blowback?
- When we could do it for $100 billion/year or less over 10 years? Absolutely.
Your questions are easy. We could easily set up a bunch of thorium-breeder reactors and start them with our surplus fissionables from decommissioned nuclear weapons, and the fission products (the real "nuclear waste") needs to be isolated for only a few thousand years, save for a few troublesome isotopes. It's not our chemists and engineers who have trouble with this, it's the politicians and activists.Sustainability and energy independence essay
I'm not French but I do live here (I love cheese).
Funny you brought this up because in the news last week was "the power stations are getting old, what do we do now?". The equipment is geting old, some plants are ready to be closed and no new plants have been built in a while. So it is far from perfect.
The other big problem is we get sent the nuclear waste of other nations because they don't have the means to treat it. Germany's waste is OK but waste being shipped from Japan is a lot less cool. Think of the kind of accidents it could have on the way. In the Panama canal for example...
By the way George (the old one) never had any problem with the French. I would appreciate very much that republicans like yourself cut the crap and get on with the idea that there are sovereign countries outside of your borders. France said "No we aren't coming, this is a bad idea" to the war in Iraq. So did Canada and New Zealand for that matter. OK Canada and New Zealand are popular destinations for draft dodgers...
realkiwi
Even though I'm a cheese-eating-not-surrender-monkey (joking), I'll have to point out some things about the situation here :
It is true that having 75% or so of electric power coming from nuclear power has its advantages, but as others mentionned already, this is only one side of the overall issue here (car fuel? truck fuel?).
However, the use of nuclear plants is not the ultimate solution we all dream of. Cooling the reactor uses a lot of water taken from the rivers, thus warming them (heat pollution). The very same issue also means that during very hot periods of the year, nuclear plants needs to be throttled down or even stopped down to stay within safe operationnal boundaries. What's the power source then when you suddenly can't rely on nuclear plants?
Moreover, our plants are getting old, and maintenance costs are getting higher. One might state that 'there has not been a major nuclear accident in France since the program began.', but what if these accidents are yet to come? We had pretty good maintenance as long as the company owning the plants was owned by the state, but now that it's a private company, what about the maintenance funding if the company needs to cut some budgets to stay competitive? (You've had some idea of the issues caused by private power companies in Calif. lately, don't you?)
On a side note, nuclear fuel reprocessing is supposed to be handled properly here - the US even sent us some old nuclear warheads load to be converted to plant fuel, but the reprocessing facilities lack transparency in their operation. We know that it is a sensitive activity, but because of that, we can't really measure the pollution impact of it.
Well, as you can see, nuclear fission power might be a better solution than coal or oil, but it's still needs huge improvements on the long term.
Then, what could be the ideal power source for the US? Hmmm, geological power can be a good alternative seeing the US geography : Iceland uses geothermy, and France is doing research on this field. In the US, the Yellowstone region seems to be a good candidate for pollution-free geothermal plants. Dams might also be something you guys could invest more into : Just look how the single Hoover Dam can power the whole Las Vegas!
Nuclear fusion is another issue as long as Humanity hasn't yet designed a useable plant using it. It is a shame (IMHO) that unrelated political issues slows down international cooperation on fusion plant research, as the US pushes hard the international negotiations to make sure the experimental fusion plant is NOT located in France, even though the local needed research facilities are available.
Well, let's put our differences apart for a while and look at what we _should_ do together. NOt a simgle country has yet the ability to work alone on fusion research. Pollution management is also an issue that can't be managed without every country investing in it (Kyoto protocol, anybody?). So we ALL should overcome our differences to make sure OUR children can enjoy oil independance and a pollution free world someday.
> Besides, we can't let the French beat us, can we?
Beating the French isn't the issue here, preserving the occidental way of life is, don't you think? Let's focus on what we have in common, and work on it together.
Best regards from abroad.
Not really. The individually wrapped sliced sheese was just an example. The US is certainly more wasteful than it has been in the past. A few decades ago, most people got their milk delivered in a bottle which was then reused by the milk company. Coke and other soft drinks where sold in bottles that were also generally reused by the manufacturer. Now everything comes in disposable stuff, often wrapped by more disposable stuff. Not only is this wasteful, but it fills up landfills at a faster clip.
Boiling water reactors are designed to deliberately produce plutonium in the normal course of operation. Plutonium can be easily refined from spent fuel rods.
You cannot make gun-type (hiroshima) bombs with plutonium: you can only make them out of uranium, the isotopes of which are rather hard to separate out. Implosion-type bombs (trinity, nagasaki and pretty much all the rest) can be made from plutonium, and the excess polonium found in spent fuel rods make the use of initiators irrelevant.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating
1. Doable: We've had a widespread nuclear program running the entire US submarine fleet for somelike like 50 years with nary a hitch. They dispose of their spent fuel correctly and I know several people that have worked on these boats and they are fine, healthy people. The oldest is around 52 and he is in perfect health.
2. Renewable, Recyclable and Long Lasting: Proof that nuclear energy could last a good long time. Using breeder reactors you generate more nuclear fuel by using plutonium etc. This means we have a nearly inexaustible supply. One of the problems is that Jimmy Carter (ironically a submariner himself) signed the law that forbids us in the US from using recycled nuclear fuels. This means that if it's used once it becomes hi-level waste Thats insane and it generate mre radioactive waste. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
3. Safe: By designing the damn thing right in the first place you prevent meltdown accidents from happening. How? Install a pebble bed reactor. The nuclear fuels are engineered into glass spheres designed so that they can only react with a certain amount of volume of neighboring spheres. They can never meltdown because it's physically impossible. When they are spent, you simply recycle the spheres until 99.9% of the fuel is gone. Then you bury them.
4. Rational: For a pittance of what it costs to police the planet, slaughter innocent civilians by the 10's of thousands and just generally create bad PR you could set up a series of pebble bed reactors across the US which would generate electricity for homes/businesses and hydrogen to be used in hydrides to power cars and/or power cells. Any wastes that are created are used until they are almost used up. Anything left is buried safely. Small contingents of special forces could protect these installations against terrorists and theft. Multiple independent safety auditors and inspects keep track of fuel, procedures and any contamination. You could overdo this entire design 10 times over and still not have spent what it took to just deploy our troops to Iraq.
No, it's not completely safe, but very little in this world is. It keeps the pollution in one place where it can be controlled, checked and inspected instead of spreading it through the air for us to breath etc. How many people die a year from lung diseases brought on by hydrocarbon pollution. How much vegetation dies because of acid rain.
When I see trainloads full of coal heading for St. Louis's power plant I just shake my head.
When the left gets off it's religious crusade against Nuclear energy we might have a chance. Until then they are the best friends the Bushs ever had.
I'm all for saving the environment. Let's start with the stuff we are being forced to breath.
Somebody do the calculations.
If oil was trading at $0.50 a barrel because it was irrelevant to the world economy then they wouldn't be able to fund very much in the way of terror. I understand that they are engaged in a culture war. I just object to paying for the explosives that are being used to blow me up.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Some of the other replies to this have already addressed it, but I wanted to clarify one thing Europeans often don't really understand about the U.S.
In the U.S., our government can't just tell us what to do. The power relationship doesn't work like that. In France, if the Ministry of Education decides it wants all fourth graders taught calculus, it sends out a directive to the schools, which are expected to implement the program. In the U.S., if the Department of Education issued the same "directive," it would get a good chuckle out of thousands of local school district superintendants, and then get pitched into the nearest garbage receptacle.
This system (or, more accurately, this conception of the relationship between a government and those it governs) has its disadvantages. However, I'm sure you can see it has its advantages as well.
- Alaska Jack
Getting weapons-grade materials from a fast breeder reactor is not the best (or only) source. The former Soviet Union seems to hold a lot of weapons-grade plutonium in a usable form. Wouldn't it be better to secure that?