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Nuclear Energy Now More Expensive Than Solar
js_sebastian writes "According to an article on the New York Times, a historical cross-over has occurred because of the declining costs of solar vs. the increasing costs of nuclear energy: solar, hardly the cheapest of renewable technologies, is now cheaper than nuclear, at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, the NY Times reports that financial markets will not finance the construction of nuclear power plants unless the risk of default (which is historically as high as 50 percent for the nuclear industry) is externalized to someone else through federal loan guarantees or ratepayer funding. The bottom line seems to be that nuclear is simply not competitive, and the push from the US government to subsidize it seems to be forcing the wrong choice on the market."
Except during nights.
Nuclear power offers the advantage of massive energy production on a small area of land, giving it a high W/skm rate. The ideal solution probably lies in the intelligent combination of several powering solutions depending on the zone type, energy demand and area coverage...
Yeah, and what about coal? Fossil fuels are still by far the cheapest ways of getting / storing energy. (I recommend reading "Physics for future presidents", which lists and explains the reasons for our "love" of oil/gas/coal).
I'm not arguing that we should use coal, but rather that a free market is inherently not (always) in line with protecting the environment. Sure, in the long run fossil fuels will become more expensive and "green energy" more affordable. But in the meantime, the government has to make sure that the industry doesn't destroy the environment. International treaties (Copenhagen, I'm looking at you) would have been a first step.
Utter bunk. See http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/07/gullible-reporting-by-new-york-times-on.html
The plants in the US are ancient one-off designs. Small wonder they don't compare well.
TCAP-Abort
I'm sure that the amount of regulation in plant creation, "green" subsidies for solar and "politically correct" as opposed to "environmentally correct" disposal of waste serves to distort the true price of these sources.
Besides, anyone who has played sim city knows that nuclear is much cheaper.
"Fantastic for those who live in sunny states."
Yeah, it would be handy if there was some way of moving electricity from one place to another. Some sort of national grid service where power can be routed from the place it is being produced to the place it is required. I'm sure someone is working on something like that...
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_thermal_power_stations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations
Now considering that one nuclear power station usually generates 1 to 5 GIGAwatts, and these generate in the order of TENS OF MEGAwatts, it is inconceivable to me how anyone can compare Solar to Nuclear.
"There is always day somewhere."
A lovely sounding line but try actually doing the math.
Unless you have a superconducting grid you lose massive amounts of power in transmission over long distances.
Try powering something off panels thirteen thousand miles away and you'll lose most of the energy in the lines.
And if they do build a superconducting grid the issue becomes that of keeping thirteen thousand miles of superconducting cable cools to the temperature of liquid nitrogen.
If your cable goes underwater in the sea you'll lose a shitload of energy. (magnetic field, conductor etc)
And don't forget that these superconducting grids will be dangerous as hell, if you're pushing enough current through a cable to power north america and any part of the cooling system fails the resistance goes from zero to anything non-zero and your superconducting cable explodes extremely violently.
It's always day somewhere.
unfortunately sometimes that place is in the middle of the pacific and your hundreds of thousands of square miles of solar panels along with the explosive cables would have to be on rafts capable of surviving whatever tropical storms come their way.
Why do people insist on using 1950s reactors as the basis of safety/cost measurements?
Modern reactors can be a lot cheaper/simpler and have very little decommissioning costs (the plant outside the core doesn't become radioactive over time).
No sig today...
You know, no matter how many times you lie about it, you're not going to change what's true. Not only is it not true that the "follow up costs" are ignored, but they're actually overestimated due to the current policy of not reprocessing fuel. Change that, and electricity becomes even cheaper than the current calculations show.
No worries.
Using their regulatory powers, the feds can jack up the cost of anything to as high as needed in order to make an argument for politically correct power generation.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Waste disposal is a made up problem. That "waste" is very useful. Reprocessing it recovers almost all of the original fissionable mass, and the other products have medical and scientific applications. The remaining low-level crap can be glassified and dropped into a Yucca Mountain like storage depot (except that people's ignorance regarding nuclear waste and radioactivity makes them panic about that).
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Well insurance companies won't insure Nuclear Power. That is the purpose of the Price-Anderson act, to limit liability so investors would put money into Nuclear power. It was originally set to expire in 1967 once the industry had proved itself safe. Evidently it hasn't. The continued existence of the Price-Anderson act illustrates that professional risk assessors consider the risks involved in the Nuclear Industry too high to be financially viable, so the federal government stepped in with a remedy. The Nuclear industry would not be able to exist without the protections the P-A act afford as no sane investor would expose themselves to that level of liability.
Actuaries and Risk Assessors are professionals in the insurance industry and their assessment of the Nuclear Industry is that they won't insure it without the Price-Anderson Act. They're not 'against' Nuclear power, they're just paid to asses the risks, professionally.
Speaking of subsidies the 2005 U.S energy bill provided another $13 billion dollars worth of subsidies this round to 2021 and re-authorised the Price-Anderson Act to underwrite the Nuclear industry with $600 Billion of Taxpayer money and closer to a trillion dollars if you factor the huge amount of land you are going to lose from a single accident.
Solar power doesn't require such a construct to be viable, or to exist. So let's not go waving the Fraud word around because the real fraud perpetrated is if the Nuclear power industry was forced to cover it's own liability and fund itself it would cease to exist.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.