Slashdot Mirror
US Nuclear Power Industry Poised For a Comeback
ThousandStars sends us to The Wall Street Journal for a report that momentum for nuclear energy is waxing in the US. "For the first time in decades, popular opinion is on the industry's side. A majority of Americans thinks nuclear power, which emits virtually no carbon dioxide, is a safe and effective way to battle climate change, according to recent polls. At the same time, legislators are showing renewed interest in nuclear as they hunt for ways to slash greenhouse-gas emissions. The industry is seizing this chance to move out of the shadow of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and show that it has solved the three big problems that have long dogged it: cost, safety and waste."
I really hate the comparisons of Three Mile Island to Chernobyl. Three Mile Island was an example of a failure at a nuclear facility that was solved correctly. Chernobyl was an example of a failure that was caused by extraordinary stupidity and handled as badly as you could handle such an incident.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This needs all the political momentum it can get. Nuclear power is one of the areas I have strong disagreements with the current administration. Considering how much Uranium (and thorium, but lets not get into that) we have available domestically, this is such a fundamental and simple (albeit expensive) steps we can take to reduce emissions (I'm looking at you, coal) while decreasing our energy dependency. It has been so long since we have built a new reactor in this country that the safety of the newest designs, particularly the pebble bed reactor makes the still operating relics of the 60s and 70's look like potential Chernobyls (Of course, they're not, but I'm speaking relatively and the safety aspects have come quite a ways since then)
I think it's tragic that a plant from that era has come to symbolize nuclear power for the entire nation when the technology has advanced so considerably. If we applied that line of reasoning to automobiles, we'd close all the freeways because the Corvair was unsafe.
The simple truth is that nuclear power is good technology that solves a variety of sticky problems. Anti-nuclear propaganda films irrationally scared the public in to rejecting a highly beneficial and useful method of power generation. With the passage of years, the public has come to the realization that the sky isn't falling and that a modern, safe nuclear power system is good economics and good social policy. We should celebrate this return to sanity: it's reason triumphing over irrational fear.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
One must take into account the amount of CO2 emitted during nuclear fuel production. Has anybody done the math?
You don't need to "do the math". Apply some common sense. Common sense tells you that it doesn't take thousands of megawatts to dig ore out of the ground and refine it. Have you ever seen the trainloads of coal that arrive at your local coal power plant on a routine basis? Do you think it takes anywhere near that amount of energy to dig ore out of the ground and process it?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Nope, it will increase the need to build more feeder-breeder reactors to use up the 99% fuel content remaining in that so called "nuclear waste".
They haven't solved the environmental issues. They might have better safety, but what about the fact that they use massive amounts of water, and heat it up about a degree before returning it to the river that the plant is inevitably next to? How about the waste? They still haven't solved that one; all our old waste is still sitting on site at current plants.
Palo Verde. 3 units, no river.
The waste is sitting there because politicians refuse to deal with the issue; not because it is unsolvable. Personally, I think we should rethink breeder reactors.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I think most energy experts consider it the "bridging" option. If coal is unacceptable, geothermal too difficult in many areas, hydroelectric already all but maxed out in much of North America (and not exactly without substantial environmental repercussions of its own), and wind, tidal and solar technologies still some ways until maturation, then we're left with nuclear power. Maybe by the end of the century other technologies (in particular better capacitors which make alternative technologies much more sensible) will see reactors phased out, but at the end of the day, nuclear power is the only way we can generate large amounts of electricity with a minimum of environmental and climate impact. If we wait around for the alternative technologies to mature, we're probably going to spend another twenty or thirty years puking CO2, enriching states that would just as soon send suicide bombers to knock out Western office towers and train stations, and generally making the ultimate transition away from fossil fuels all the more difficult.
The environmentalists are just going to have to suck it up, and that's all there is to it. The world is going to need a lot more nuclear reactors over the next half century, and if every industrialized state out there is going to throw money out the window in the hopes of restarting the economy, then it would make sense that using those dollars to kick start nuclear power is just about the best thing one could do.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Oh they don't like wind generators either. Apparently they kill some incompetent, slow bird once in a while.
As far as solar power is concerned, its just a matter of time till some environmentalist will oppose it on the basis of toxic substances produced during manufacture.
Agrarian society here we come...
"You can't recycle the fuel indefinitely, eventually you will have waste. And eventually it needs to be dealt with."
But that waste you eventually have to deal with is almost completely different stuff. Instead of being a highly radioactive mess for a hundred thousand years, it's a much less radioactive mess for a thousand years (and during that last 500 years, it's pretty 'cool' anyhow). I don't know about you, but I suspect we *probably* have the engineering know how and materials science to contain stuff safely for 500-1000 years. I don't think anyone really thinks we currently have the knowledge to solve the problem of containing waste safely for 100,000 years.
I'd much rather try to solve the problem of containing waste safely for 1000 years than 100 times that.
Even without further technological advance, nuclear power will suffice for several millennia. It produces zero emissions (except a little hot water) and produces a tiny volume of solid waste that doesn't escape into the environment. It runs silently all day and all night. If you were handed a datasheet for a nuclear power plant with the source of power blacked out, you'd jump at the chance to build the thing.
Nuclear power produces long-lived, dangerous waste, doesn't it? Dangerous and long-lived are mutually exclusive when it comes to nuclear materials. That's just the way the science of radioactive decay works. After being taken out of the reactor, the waste that remains can be reprocessed into more fuel. But if it isn't, then you can leave it in a cooling pond for a few years, and after that point, it's safe enough to handle, store, and bury. There are far worse industrial outputs than cooled-down nuclear waste.
But it's still dangerous and we have no place to store the waste! What's wrong with a cave in the middle of the desert? There's no water table. The area is seismically stable, and there's no life where we want to store the waste. And by itself, nuclear waste will do nothing. It won't make your children glow in the middle of the night. It won't contaminate your crops. It won't do anything because it's inert.
What about the risk of nuclear meltdown? Won't that destroy cities? Well, what about steam boiler explosions? What about refinery disasters? What about train disasters? Do those keep your up at night? They all killed people regularly back in their early days. But we don't worry about them now because improved safety technology has reduced the risk to an acceptable level. The same principle applies to nuclear power: another disaster like Chernobyl could never happen to even a 1970s-era American reactor, much less the far-improved versions we have today. The risk of being injured by a nuclear meltdown today is on par with being injured by lightning.
Wait -- won't we run out of fuel? Don't we only have reserves for a hundred years? You don't understand how much energy is contained in nuclear fuel. You need so little of it that the fuel is dirt cheap. The price of uranium could increase a thousandfold without affecting a nuclear plant's bottom line. And because uranium is so cheap, there's been very little prospecting. The reason our proven reserves are relatively small is that nobody has been looking very hard, because uranium is dirt cheap. In fact, for the past few decades, the nuclear power industry has been running on decommissioned nuclear warheads. That's how little fuel you really need for nuclear power.
Sure, nuclear might be okay, but wind power! It's decentralized, and therefore better! And it appeals to my philosophical sensibilities because it's not a big evil industry!Wind power can't provide baseload power. Plus, it's limited by the number of sites with good winds. You can, on the other hand, build as many nuclear plants as necessary without severe geographic constraints. As for nuclear being centralized, big, and therefore evil: big isn't necessarily bad. Properly regulated, a huge nuclear plant can provide inexpensive power to millions far more efficiently than many small ones, or thousands of turbines, coal-fired power stations, and natural gas generators. Furthermore, there's no particular reason nuclear stations need to be private per se: consider the Tennessee Valley Authority model.
If nuclear power is so great, why does it take two decades to build one, and why does the government have to subsidize the insurance?In terms of physical build time, it only takes a few years to erect a power plant. The delays come from hysterical opponents using every possible legal avenue to block new nuclear plants. The complaints have no basis in fact, but the courts have to hear them just the same. Often, legal delays are so severe that projects are abandoned altogether (which is, of course, what op
Or we could use the technology that we know works instead of investing in your ideas that have no existing economic infrastructure or history of successful deployment.
Seriously, build batteries? That's your bright idea? Why don't you stop and think about the environmental impact of building enough batteries to store millions of megawatt hours worth of electricty. Even if we invent a better battery chemistry that results in a massive increase of energy density there's no way that will scale in an environmentally friendly manner.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It costs that much because of the Anti-Nuke crowds hysteria requiring accounting and maintenance practices which would make the gordian knot look like a half-winchester. This is similar to the logic that it costs less to give a mass murderer life then death. Ask the Chinese if it costs more to keep someone in a cage or execute them behind the courthouse.
Throw in enough adjudication and bureaucratic nonsense and just about any activity can be rendered economically unsound.
It goes something like this:
In reality, X produces far less overall pollution than Y.
I've seen this argument used to oppose:
All of these are great technologies. If we're ever to make any progress, we have to learn to think past the environmentalist's fallacy.
AP1000 is a 1000 megawatt plant (hence the name; actually, it makes a bit more than 1000), that's 1,000,000 kilowatts; $0.10/KWH*1,000,000*24hrs/day=$2.4million/day worth of electricity sold. And the businesses taking out these loans can get a damn sight better than 8% annual interest. But yes, the plant is expensive. But the fuel is surprisingly cheap; not by the pound, for sure, but by the watt (since you need so little mass to generate each watt), it's a helluva lot cheaper than coal.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
If nukes are not economically feasible, why does France get ~80% of their power from them?
Because they made a policy decision to do so based on their particular economic situation and resources. I give them kudos for doing it but like any policy decision it has it's upside and downside. France has been trying to privatize their energy sector recently but the primary energy company EDF is still 70% owned by the French government. Were it private to the degree the US energy sector is, the liability costs would be more difficult to justify.
Countries have to use what they have. The US, Russia and China are INCREDIBLY rich in coal deposits. The US is to coal what Saudi Arabia is to oil. The US has about 27% of the known deposits. This makes energy derived from coal cheap in the US compared to France which has virtually no coal of its own. Hence US policy is going to favor coal more than French policy and nuclear in the US becomes less attractive thanks to the economies of scale coal has achieved in the US.
There are actually quite a few successful deployments of power-storing technology -- ones that aren't even batteries. After all, batteries are really only useful for certain applications. Capacitors are nice, but not always appropriate. On the other hand, expending unused power on a reversible, bulk physical process -- like pumping water from a low-altitude body of water to a higher-altitude one -- and then generating power from the reverse process is fairly straightforward.
I only mentioned that survey because the article's claim was blatantly wrong. I've recently driven myself insane trying to explain to climate change "skeptics" that searching for a scientific consensus isn't the way to approach scientific topics because science isn't democratic. It's about evidence. Look into the advancements in technology over the last decades and examine the science yourself. Reprocessing dramatically reduces the volume of nuclear waste, while breeder reactors can generate new fuel. New reactor designs eliminate proliferation concerns by not generating plutonium. Pebble bed reactors eliminate the dependence on active safety systems by creating a nuclear pile out of spherical fuel "pebbles" that automatically react to higher temperatures by lowering their reaction rates. Uranium can be mined from seawater. Thorium can be used instead of uranium. Etc.
Try to understand why 88% of physicists think we should build modern nuclear power plants, rather than trying to count the scientists on each side. That's a topic that gets scientists bored very quickly. Focus on the science, it's much more interesting! But, since you seem fixated on counting heads, I'll answer your other question...
The link you're looking for was on that page, off to the right: "About the survey." Here's an excerpt:
As you say, medical and biological scientists wouldn't know anything about nuclear power. And they polled 5x as many of those than physicists. But they specifically said that majorities in all specialties support nuclear power, while 88% of physicists and astronomers support it. They didn't poll any engineers because this was a survey aimed at scientists.
If I were President, I'd tax the crap out of imported oil, and open up Anwar and California. You might not like everything about it, but sitting complaining about EVERY SOLUTION presented is NOT an option any longer.
ANWR is just a drop in the bucket. It's so not-a-solution to foreign oil that it makes no sense to damage that ecosystem just to immeasurably affect our situation. In fact I'd much rather save that drop until a single drop would affect our situation because we're gagging for any fuel at all, a 'who cares about environmental concerns if we can't deliver groceries' situation. Heaven forbid it comes to that. But even worse is burning up our own reserves, and then having to come begging to the foreign powers we were trying to be free from.
Treating ANWR as a "solution" for today's problems only makes such a situation more likely. We need not-oil to be the solution. All the not-oil solutions you proposed are fine, great even (cept hydro simply because nearly all the best locations are already tapped, so the opportunity here is much less). But more drilling isn't the answer, because we can't drill enough to free ourselves of foreign oil. The only way to end our addiction to foreign oil is to end our addiction to oil.
The enemies of Democracy are
Coal releases every year more radiation into the atmosphere than all the nuke power accidents combined.
True but when you have a quarter of the worlds supply of coal, it's going to be an economic factor whether it hurts the climate or not. Global warming is a huge issue but there is NO economically feasible scenario whereby coal will not be a major part of the US energy supply for the next 30+ years. I don't like it, and I suspect you don't either but coal is here and we'll have to deal with it. There simply is nothing available, not even nuclear, that can scale large enough to take coal's place in the US economy in the next few decades.
Lots of greenhouse gases too -and so it will not be a long term feasible solution if we are to solve the global warming problem.
Not with present or near-term technology, I agree. Good area for research.
Nuke and solar power will be long term solutions, and probably solar will be the best.
The answer is a diversified energy supply (nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, and yes even fossil-fuels) with careful emissions controls on the dirtier technologies. Nuclear and solar are not magic cure-alls but they should have an important part to play in the mix and definitely should be a bigger part of our energy policy. I absolutely agree with you on that.
My friend, radioactive waste will always be dangerous.
Solar and wind are still underexploited resources in this country. Combine them with better use of the energy we currently make and we will be energy independent and cleaner.
Installation of residential solar generation is ideal. It places the generation at the place of its consumption. And the use of geothermal heat-exchange heating and cooling should be mandatory.
Best regards.
If you don't like the two wars, then let us drill here, drill now
The problem is you're just delaying the inevitable - Oil is a finite resource. Sure, you could drill up Alaska like swiss cheese, but what does it buy you? Another 20 years? We need to move to renewables.
>Please point to a single working pebble bed reactor.
>Okay, how about this [wikipedia.org] one, based on the "failed" design you mentioned earlier... Details here. [wired.com]
You get your information from Wikipedia and Wired?
FYI: Under the best of circumstances those are less than reliable sources. And the Wikipedia article refers to a 2005 experimental reactor, and "plans" for a bigger startup in 2013.
And no need to put quotes around "failed", it failed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300