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Obama Budget To Triple Nuclear Power Loan Guarantees
Hugh Pickens writes "When President Obama said in his State of the Union address on Wednesday that the country should build 'a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,' it was one of the few times he got bipartisan applause. Now the NY Times reports that administration officials have confirmed their 2011 federal budget request next week will raise potential loan guarantees for nuclear projects to more than $54 billion, from $18.5 billion, and a new Energy Department panel will examine a vastly expanded list of options for nuclear waste, including a new kind of nuclear reactor that would use some of it. The Energy Department appears to be getting close to offering its first nuclear loan guarantee. Earlier this week, Southern Co. Chief Executive David Ratcliffe said the company expects to finalize an application for a loan guarantee 'within the next couple months,' while Scana Corp., which has also applied, is 'a couple months behind Southern' and is hopeful of receiving a conditional award 'sometime in the next months.'"
research funding for nuclear research such as thorium reactors or pebble bed reactors?
to increase safety and/or move onto other nuclear fuels
The public's support for that particular snippet of the state of the union was rather low, as CNN reported--so kindly point out to your non-tech friends that nuclear is the best alternative right now and we can't go entirely renewable for a long time.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
It is apparently not cheaper than coal, which is the fuel we fall back to every time a nuclear, or renewable project doesn't happen (which are also apparently not cheaper than coal.) If you're ok with coal then you should oppose all subsidies including "loan guarantee" subsidies.
If you're not ok with coal, though, and your goal is to move US energy infrastructure away from an economic minimax position to another position with non-economic benefits, then you have to pay for the move somehow.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
the Navy has proven that nuclear energy works much better in a renewable / conservation standing than any fossil fuel based system can (look at all the ships they use, most are nuclear fueled)
I'm told you are what you eat, does that mean I can be you by tomorrow with some A1?
Well, naval vessels are something different, but I wasn't ruling nuclear out. But if we massively reduce our consumption and energy use, not only will this help the environment and climate change, it could reduce the need for nuclear in the first place. The US still produces a third of the oil it uses, after all, that should be more than enough if we scale back, improve efficiency and put in place a better transportation system such as rail.
--Greg
It is easy to determine whether nuclear power on a watt for watt basis is cheaper to produce than a similar coal plant, but the total cost must take into account factors such as total pollution, cost and risk of mining unrenewable resources, as well as the geopolitical problems in relaying on such resources.
If you take only the CO2 output as a single factor, the cost of nuclear energy is far lower than any coal plant could ever be. So yes, it is more expensive to produce the energy, but it is far lower in total cost overall when all factors are taken into account.
Oil power plants are even worse. They rely on importation of resources from the Middle East, a region far from stable due to the influence of extremist religions and backwards cultures of nomadic races. Nuclear power will break us free of that (to some extent, we still have longstanding obligations to Israel which ought to be rethought, IMO) and will make us instead beholden to Australia and its uranium mines. But I feel much more comfortable dealing with the Aussies as a culture which is similar to our own and a people much like us.
Nuclear reactors are old school since Steorn had their live working demo of Orbo, an overunity engine just this weekend.
It is mostly completed, perfectly safe repository (assuming they stay with the stupid and illogical position that the fuel shouldn't be reprocessed) and according the the president, "we're done with Yucca and we need to be about looking for alternatives".
Then he sets up a "commission" to figure it out and out of 15 members, only one has any academic background in nuclear energy and another has a physics background. The rest are political hacks. A particularly stupid appointment is Mark Ayers: president of the Building and Construction Trades Department at AFL-CIO.
It's all a load of crap.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
This is incorrect. Nuclear is actually cheaper than coal. The problem is that NO ONE will loan billions upon billions to build said nuclear power plant and mortgage that power plant on a *Fixed* 4% amortization for 50 years.
Secondly, banks cannot really foreclose on a nuclear power plant. Where do they sell it? Flea-market?
This is exactly the point of the loan guarantees. And I'm certain you all realize "loan guarantee" is not the same as a "subsidy"?
Actually, most US Navy vessels are not nuclear-powered. The carriers & submarines are, but almost none of the remaining fleet are. They experimented with nuclear cruisers in the 60s but retired those ships & didn't venture back into that area.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_navy#Other_nuclear-powered_vessels
Because a nuclear plant has high initial costs. You need an investment of billions of dollars and then you need to wait years for construction before the thing can power itself on and start generating energy. That doesn't mean that nuclear is nonviable - it's very cheap once the plant is built - but it does provide a very high barrier to entry that, without loans, only the rich oil companies (who really don't care for competition) are capable of crossing.
Nuclear power is almost the same price as coal, under optimal conditions.
But, the cost of nuclear power all occurs up-front in the form of a multi-billion dollar construction project, and the return is gradual, over 40+ years of low cost operation.
If the construction project is delayed, canceled, or has cost overruns, the investors will lose their multi-billion dollar initial investment. A two year construction delay makes the difference between huge profits and a huge boondoggle.
And there are many things that can cause construction to be delayed, canceled, or overrun: Bad design, changing standards, inability to get approvals, pitchfork wielding mobs, etc.
The modern nuclear power industry claims they have worked out the many snags that troubled 70s-era projects. But the only way to find out is to build one and see.
http://xkcd.com/756//
Google it before you assume it is just like the nuclear reactors that have caused all the nuclear waste problems.
They are a "new" technology that has been proven for decades. They are smaller, safer, and tons more efficient than the currently used technology. They don't produce nuclear waste, they consume it. We could take all of what we currently consider "waste" and use it as fuel for hundreds of years. The current technology only uses less than 5% of the energy that is actually in the fuel. Fast Breeder Reactors use almost all of it. They keep recycling the fuel until there is almost no radioactivity left. They can also use plutonium as fuel so the can be used to actually reduce the weapons stockpiles.
I also think the thorium reactors might be cool too. However there are some concerns as to what extracting all that thorium out of seawater might do to the environment. Not that the oceans need the thorium, but the processing might not be so kind to everything living in the seawater. On the other hand, the processing could also be done in a way that cleans up the garbage patch at the same time.
Bottom line. Don't assume everything you think you know about nuclear power is everything there is to know.
My point is that nuclear is cheap in the long run. It's still fairly cheap in the long run if you add the costs of the plant. I'll cite a source. It's environmentally friendly too (scroll down to the External Costs section).
While that is true, a nuclear power plant provides an energy density many orders of magnitude higher. I for one would prefer to see a single nuclear plant on the horizon than 8000 turbines in every direction.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
I live in Vermont. The reactor here (and the biggest source of power we have other than HydoQuebec) is dead. It's outlived it's lifespan by 10 years, running at 110% original capacity , it's had a cooling tower collapse, and now it's leaking radioactive materials from pipes nobody knew were there.
We need a new plant. Desperately. My hope is that this will help push more companies (like Entergy) to build rather than to shut down, cut there losses, and run away.
Sure, I could google it, but it's more of a talking point than a question. France has a large number of reactors, yet I've never heard of them having problems with their radioactive waste products (then again, I don't read the French press, either).
Sure, we could build reactors which reuse more of their own waste, but presuming we will have some waste - what are other countries doing about it?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Nuclear waste to the moon! We give both space a chance and Earth the energy! And while you are at building the waste storage, please give it a proper name. Since it is going to be the first such base, name it after the first letter of the greek alphabet. Signed, John K.
Now, mod me down freely. My karma can't get any worse...
As for wind, it's nice but wind farms are ugly and have environmental impacts of their own; such as bird strikes.
The real issue is how do we produce energy to run a modern economy? There is no one solution.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Why does coal get a free pass on pollution? Isn't energy generation profitable enough for private ventures to contain all the mercury, thorium, lead, uranium and other heavy metals from escaping and polluting? Why aren't coal power plants financially responsible for all the mercury warnings in majority of the lakes?
Those are good questions. Several years ago, I wrote some stories for an environmental magazine trying to answer them.
It seemed to me that if I was breathing clean air, then a power company should have to restore their emissions to be clean enough that my air would stay just as clean.
Apparently that was technically impossible. The engineers can clean a coal plant's emissions as much as you want, but you can only get asymptotically clean. The more you clean, the more it costs, and it's increasingly expensive to get those last remaining pollutants. At a sufficiently low level of pollutants, the cost of removing pollutants equals or exceeds the value of electricity produced.
The coal companies used to run their emissions through these big bags which removed a lot of particles. They reduced the power output by 10%. There were different technologies but they were all expensive and reduced efficiency.
(This assumes that you remove the mercury, thorium, lead, etc. in the form of sludge, and you find someone who doesn't mind if you bury it in a clay-capped hole in the ground, er, waste disposal site, and monitor it forever.)
But we need some electricity from somewhere. I believe that, in principle, we should be able to generate all the electricity we need from non-polluting non-nuclear sources, which ultimately means solar power. But when I read even the optimistic projections in Science magazine by people who are actually trying to do it, it doesn't look like we'll be able to do more than (I'd guess) 20% or 30% in the next 20 years.
Or perhaps you'd prefer hydropower, like the Three Gorges Dam.
I went without an air conditioner for several years. Then one summer during a heat wave, I gave up. My local Sierra Club, I noticed, had an air conditioner.
From the perspective of single-minded engineering and business efficiency, if you need electricity as soon as possible, coal power plants are great, as the Chinese government has decided. The less pollution control, the more efficient. From the perspective of lungs, they're not so great. The pollution in Beijing is so bad that some people can't live there. Even in the U.S., the pollution from traffic by the side of a busy road is so great that it increases the incidence of asthma and lung disease dramatically.
Too bad everybody laughed at Jimmy Carter. He saw this coming.
Does this include funding for nuclear fusion projects in the US? Or just the current fission reactor based technology? One scientist said there's a 50% chance of fusion becoming a reality 20 years after it gets serious funding. I agree with him
The strength of your argument is overwhelming...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
As for wind, it's nice but wind farms are ugly and have environmental impacts of their own; such as bird strikes.
Its my understanding that the bird strike issue NEVER existed and that it was completely fabricated by environmentalist. The simply fact is, the blades on the majority of windmills are large and turn at low RPMs. In fact, if they turn too fast, they'll destroy themselves. The old windmills used for centuries on farms and ranches are a much greater threat and yet I've never heard a peep about their use.
Remember, tip speed is everything to a windmill. That many sound ominous but let's think about that for a second. For a windmill to be efficient, it must be fairly large in size. That means large and lengthy blades. With large blades come extremely large forces. Most windmills target 30 (very large) - 100 (smaller "home" unit)RPM. At those speeds, you can actually watch the tip spinning. But because the blade is so long, the tip speed is still very high. Since the primary complaint from environmentalists is directed at commercial wind farms, for this discussion we can generally ignore the ones running faster 60 RPM or so.
The reality is, most (all that I've seen; two) studies on the subject indicate that windmills are a natural scarecrow and tend to keep birds at a distance. Furthermore, because of their relatively low RPMs, its relatively easy for even the most hapless of birds to stay clear of the rotating blades. In fact, its these rotating blades, combined with the generated noise, which does wonders to drive them away.
At the end of the day, unless you want to be eating grass and nuts out of your fecal/grass adobe hut, just ignore the crackpots and those who would ignorantly repeat their crack-pottery.
Example, this windmill is completely out of control because of a failed braking system.
Here's a properly functioning wind mill farm - likely operating near peak. Notice an airplane could almost fly between the blades, let alone a tiny bird.
Its my understanding that the bird strike issue NEVER existed and that it was completely fabricated by environmentalist.
No, there were legitimate issues with older windmill designs. They used scaffolding-style towers which encouraged birds to nest, and had much smaller blades with commensurately higher RPMs. Also, they didn't used to do any kind of research into bird migration paths to see if they were putting the farm right in the middle of one.
These issue all came together in Altamont Pass, which you may have heard of since it's pretty much the deadliest windfarm for birds ever (though often the person bringing it up often neglects to mention that fact). Though lets be clear: this deadliest of wind farms killed fewer birds in a year than the office building that would accompany any such power plant, though the deaths were concentrated in raptors so the effect was probably a little greater than an office building.
Now these issues have all been resolved. They now use single-pole towers with rounded tops that make nesting impossible. As you note, the economics themselves dictate using the largest blades possible. And now as a basic step in preparing to build a farm they check ornithological records to see if migrations are a problem.
So yes, there were actual issues that were subsequently resolved.
On a different note, the impression I always got was that the magnitude of the issue was played up by NIMBYs and anti-environmentalists who were finding their previous arguments of "but they're ugly" and "but I'm invested in the status quo" to be unpersuasive. They used the bird thing to try to drag environmentalists along with them, and it worked to an extent, but not for very long.
At the end of the day, unless you want to be eating grass and nuts out of your fecal/grass adobe hut, just ignore the crackpots and those who would ignorantly repeat their crack-pottery.
Well there are crackpots who want us to end up there, and there are crackpots who would have us end up there regardless as an unintentional consequence of trying to avoid it.
And yes, I do tend to ignore them, at least when I can't inform them. For example on the bird issue -- so far I've met very few environmentalists who continue to be anti-wind once they're informed that bird deaths were played up by focusing on one worst-case scenario and that everything has been fixed.
The enemies of Democracy are