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The Nuclear Power Renaissance
Actual Reality writes "It is ironic to me that much of the same sentiment that thwarted the nuclear power industry back in the 80's is partially responsible for reviving it. Nuclear power is very clean compared to any power source that burns fuel. The US has missed several advancements in nuclear technology. We can only hope that environmental concerns will not again stifle our progress."
Another concern is the current ban on re-processing in the U.S.
This leads to an increased amount of medium-half-life waste (not to mention waste of energy), which would be converted to much more radioactive short half-life waste by the re-processing. Such waste is more hazardous, but its disposal is less challenging because the necessary term of safe storage is greatly reduced.
I really don't see the big deal. We're ALREADY a nuclear power, and I sincerely doubt that our energy companies are going to be selling plutonium to the highest bidder.
And here's where I fit your caraciture: I do oppose raising energy rates and reducing consuption because it's anti-progressive, or as I prefer to say, regressive. Any extra burdens imposed on the cost of energy are going to disproportionately hurt the poor, and they've had it bad enough. Besides, it's totally unrealistic. Of course we should be doing more to insulate houses, and I strongly support government subsidies for doing that. But in a choice between reducing energy use and not reducing it while taking the risk of global climate catastrophe, Americans (maybe people in general) will choose the latter ten out of ten times. We can get mad about it or we can get realistic about it and provide them with the one clean source of power that we know how to develop on a large scale. Sucks that we'll probably have to bring in French engineers to do it right; we've really lost our technological lead in this industry!
Regarding the spent fuel, there is an obvious answer: Reprocessing. The most radioactive stuff that we bury now are the heavy metals which are actually fissile and could be used to produce more energy. The rest of the waste, if processed correctly, would be less radioactive in 30 years than the ore that was originally mined. So in the long run we'd be reducing the amount of radioactive stuff in the ground.
As Nikky Telsa said in 1915, "No matter what we attempt to do, no matter to what fields we turn our efforts, we are dependent on power. We have to evolve means of obtaining energy from stores which are forever inexhaustible, to perfect methods which do not imply consumption and waste of any material whatever. If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations."
If it uses up a limited resource, it's "burning fuel", at least metaphorically, and therefore lame. Screw that. Let's figure out how to tap into the vast power represented by the titanic spinning mass we live on, or the even more titanic mass that shines in our skies, instead of perpetuating the cycle of digging stuff up stuff until it we use it all up. Those experiments with dangling wires from the shuttle are a step in the right direction.
You stated we are not capable of mega engineering. This is false. We are capable of scaling our energy collection out as far as we need with technology that is over 30 years old, and with that capacity, we can pursue whatever mega engineering projects we want.
Our biggest threats are population control and wasteful use of our non-renewable resources. There's lots of work to do and the means are right there waiting to be applied if we don't use everything up making rubber dog shit in the meantime.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Back in the early 80s, I thought I had the ideal solution to plutonium waste. There was only a few tons of it on earth - let's pack it up, put it in a booster stage which would be launched from the space shuttle in near earth orbit and, after a few months of slow travel would fall into the Sun where it would totally negligible. Do it every ten years or so - no waste problem. Space shuttles at that point, seemed like a damned reliable method.
Then the Challenger disaster happened. My first thought, after the lives of the crew, was to thank god nobody implemented the solar waste proposal. I'm not sure if a few tons of plutonium distributed into a cloud by the explosion at that altitude would have wiped out life on earth as we know it, but I'm sure the consequences would not have been good.
Glad to be wrong.
How plentiful is Uranium for nuclear power? Will we find ourselves in the same dire straits tomorrow seeking vanishing uranium deposits? What is the situation?
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Reprocessing is expensive mainly due to the labor involved in reprocessing it. Spent fuel must be cut apart and chemically treated in a clean room environment. Removing the tans-uranic elements from spent fuel is not complicated from a chemistry standpoint, but handling spent nuclear fuel is always expensive.
One potential solution is molten salt reactors, which do not use fuel elements but rather use molten uranium salts. Since there are no fuel elements, fuel from the reactor can be chemically treated without a lot of handling. It may even be possible to continuously process the fuel while it's still in the reactor (though this has never been done). Doing this could completely solve the problem of long-term nuclear waste. The only waste produced by such a reactor would be depleted uranium and fission products. Of course, the fission products would need to be safely stored for 300 years before they were safe, but that's a lot better than the trans-uranics that we have to deal with now.
Molten salt reactors also have advantages when it comes to fail safe design. Since they don't have fuel elements or control rods, there is nothing in the reactor core which can break or wear out and cause a melt down to occur. In the case of emergencies, the reactor can be drained into sub-critical containment vessels.
In the current legal climate, thats true. But then I'm of the opinion that the current legal climate is a mess.
Corporations should be proxies for the owners. But only when the transaction being undertaken would be unfeasible if every individual owner had to personally sign off on the decision. The corporation purchases, sells, negotiates contracts, and whatnot on behalf of the owners. Thats fine. But because we, in the US, treat corporations as fictitious entities, that means they are also permitted to do things as make contributions to political campaigns and lobbies. Something I don't believe they should be permitted to do. At all. If the owners of said corporations want to make such contributions, let them. With their dividends. Would that increase the administrative cost of lobbies? Probably, a little. But those costs would be born by only the individuals who believe in the objectives of the lobby or politician.
As far as externalities goes, stockholders cede most of their decision making rights to the executives of the corporation. If and when those executives make decisions that are illegal or negligent the executives responsible should bear the costs of their decisions. Not the corporation, who will pass the losses on to their end consumers, employees, or stockholders (or some combination of the three). So if some energy exec okays a shoddy nuclear plant design, he should be held responsible. Will his net assets be great enough to cover the damages? Probably not. But you tell me, if you were in such a position and you knew if a failure occured you'd be flat broke and probably pretty unemployable, would you go ahead with shoddy decisions?
Again it isn't the way things are, but I'm of the opinion that the way things are is all sorts of idiotic.
I don't expect morality, equality, consistency, or justice from the law. I expect only legality.
The reason Nuclear is the answer is that it works.....now. Wind is the only thing you mention that really works reasonably well, but still has the problem of not being constantly available to generate power. We don't have enough land for all the solar arrays that would be needed, plus the sun doesn't always shine.
Nuclear is a good option, the technology has gotten much much better over the past 30 years.
"...So, the UK is importing nuclear power from France. I think that's a pretty clear indicator that nuclear power is currently fairly competitively priced."
Not necessarily. People say, "let the market determine whether nuclear is cost-effective." The market in the U.S. already did decide, and it said it was not cost-effective. That's why no new plants have been built since 1974. The only reason we're building them now is because the government is heavily subsidizing it. (And, need I add, this says nothing of the cost of waste disposal which is another problem altogether...)
The biggest cost of nuclear is the up-front capital cost of construction and working with government regulation and oversight. Therefore once you have the plants built, it is in the owner's best interest to utilize them to their maximum potential. This doesn't mean that new nuclear power is competitively priced, however.
You will hear the nuclear industry (as well as the U.S. government) touting a 1.8/kWh figure as the cost of nuclear energy, but this figure only refers to the operating costs of nuclear and DOESN'T include the capital cost of building a nuclear reactor itself (which is the biggest part), nor does it include the cost of decommissioning a reactor when it is finally retired. This also says nothing of the fact that uranium prices have more than tripled in the last few years. If we're not going to include capital construction costs when describing the cost of nuclear energy, then why should we use a different standard for measuring energy costs for other technology such as windmills? Wind suddenly become extremely cheap (less than 1/kWh to maintain) if you exclude the capital construction cost.
What killed nuclear in the U.S. was regulatory cost. That changed with President Bush's 2005 Energy Policy Act included several billion dollars of incentives to the nuclear industry, for instance guaranteeing that for the first six new nuclear plants constructed, the U.S. government will pay for any cost overruns (up to $2 billion). This means it's a no-brainer for the nuclear industry - they get paid even if the same kinds of regulatory delays that killed previous plants creep up for these new plants. In addition there are huge tax credits for the first eight years of operation.
IMHO, we don't have to worry about nuclear reactor safety at all. Operationally they are very safe (even Three Mile Island basically operated as it was supposed to during a meltdown). What is less clear is whether nuclear is economically feasible, and whether we have a viable solution for storing waste. Currently the solution is to store them on-site at the reactors themselves.
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I have a pottery studio/kiln out in the county a little ways. When I first built it, I had no power of any kind, so I took to charging up a deep-cycle 12v marine battery at home and then carting it out there. With an inverter and a CFL, I'd get 12 hours of power or so. The battery weighs a ton (subjectively) and it was a pain, but also nice to be able to work in the evening. I would also run some other things off it on occasion. Anyway, I realized that even small amounts of electricity represent HUGE amounts of work -- and carrying that battery back and forth was actually the least of the "work" it took to get that bit of light.
We had a big windstorm a few days ago and power was out at the studio (I know have juice there) for the last day and a half. I used to love it when the power went out -- the world became quiet and I was forced to do quiet things I don't do enough of -- read, think, sleep. Now all I hear is the distant sound of generators running (note me -- others).
As a society, we have become so affluent (or debt ridden) that we are unwilling to give up electricity even for a few hours. We can't do without even for a few moments but it comes at a very high price which will be paid eventually. Anyway, back to your point, I suspect most people wouldn't be willing to reduce their energy usage enough. Even if you got 2kw per day out of the sun, that's only 20 hours for one 100 watt bulb. If you have a computer, fridge, 6 lights, and TV on, you could be hitting near 1000 watts per hour (depending on efficiency of course).
Even me -- I realize how work intensive electricity is, and I try to make sure to make efficient use of it by minimizing my use -- still, it would be very hard to limit myself to 2kw per day, which is what I'd get with 10 hours of sun (good luck in Dec) and $1350. Maybe there are better deals out there. I know for sure all those people firing up their generators sure won't survive on 2kw.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
There is NIMBYism with solar too. Someone nearby put up some panels in his yard and the neighbors sued claiming it destroyed their views. Now they may not WIN, but it will be expensive to defend against.
The problem is exactly what the first-post person was modded down for saying. Nobody wants ANY power generation of any type near them, yet they all want cheap power. You can't have both. All the alternative energy plans have environmentalists fighting them for various reasons - so we still burn coal, and lots of it. Give me nuke plants (modern breeder types), wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal. I want cheap power so we can do desalination and run electric cars. Kill the CO2 emissions so my great-grandchildren have a nice planet to live on...