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Should Nuclear and Renewable Energy Supporters Stop Fighting?
Lasrick writes "A debate is happening in the pages of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that started with their publication of 'Nuclear vs. Renewables: Divided They Fall,' an article by Dawn Stover that chides nuclear energy advocates and advocates of renewable energy for bickering over the deck chairs while climate change sinks the ship, and while the fossil fuel industry reaps the rewards of the clean energy camp's refusal to work together. Many of the clean energy folks took umbrage at the description of nuclear power as 'clean energy,' so the Civil Society Institute has responded with a detailed look at exactly why they believe nuclear power will not be needed as the world transitions to clean energy."
Wind and solar have variable output, so they need to be partnered with flexible power generation. Nuclear is fundamentally inflexible because you can't quickly ramp up or down electricity output from a nuclear power plant. See this short video for a nice explanation of the incompatibility: http://www.ilsr.org/coal-nucle...
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
No.
In their own words,
We commissioned studies to show
That isn't science, that's paying for confirmation bias.
No, the problem is that we use way, way way too much fossil fuels, producing way, way, way too much carbon dioxide.
Nucelar power has problems and if we were to use it as much as we use fossil fuels, it would cause the same problem.
The same problem exists with ALL fuel sources, including so called "renewables". Solar power uses rare metals whose use could be just as bad as fossil fuels. Similarly, if we just used hydroelectric, then we could cause major problems with rivers.
Nuclear is very clearly part of our energy solution, and it is time that we, as green environmentalists, accept that.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Should we prevent the spread of headlines that end in a question mark?
Enigma
Then they would have to stop fund-raising and find productive jobs.
Fossil fuels are the tiniest blip on the radar in the big picture of time. They will, without a doubt, be effectively consumed (or prices will be so high as to make them unavailable for casual use) within the lifetimes of people who are alive today.
Whether that happens one generation down the road or two is immaterial. The crucial point is that our society depends on ready, reasonably inexpensive access to energy. The Fischer-Tropsch process can convert more available things into quasi-fuel, and could keep our legacy fleets of vehicles operating for quite some time, but like everything it is a lossy process. If we aren't generating with fossil fuels, we need to come up with that from somewhere.
Most (yeah, dams are the exception) renewables are variable and unsuitable for base generation. This is the purview of nuclear. They serve DIFFERENT and COMPLEMENTARY purposes, people.
I'd just like to know the world I hand down to my children and grandchildren doesn't include stories about "those funny switches on the wall which don't do anything." Because that's the road we are on. This issue is the most important one facing humanity today, right alongside ready access to fresh water, and it is being ignored because the status quo mostly works.
For now.
The rebuttal loses me with this line:
"Nuclear power plants (large or small) and renewables are not compatible technologies. A distributed grid design with high penetrations of variable renewables requires flexible technologies for balancing the system. Both nuclear and coal plants are inflexible. "
Maybe they don't get what people mean by "flexible" in regards to the grid?
When people say coal and nuclear are flexible, they don't mean you can move the plant, or install and remove plants at will. What they mean is that the energy production can ramp up quickly when 15,000 people all get home from work and cut their AC on at the same moment...
yes renewable sources are improving how they can scale and ramp up.
Nukes are already there. I'm also annoyed at how articles claim normal tax items (vehicle fleet depreciation, etc) as subsidies for one industry, but then say industry X doesn't get subsidies. EVERYONE gets some form of tax breaks when you fill out your taxes. If you don't claim them, well, then that's on you.
The original article is right. We SHOULD push for more nukes as well as more renewable sources. Getting off of coal / diesel should be the first priority. Eventually if we can wean from nuclear? cool...
I am 31337 or something.
Half the people arguing on behalf of anything should probably shut up about it. There are legitimate arguments for and against solar and nuclear, and I used to really enjoy debating them (hypothetically, what if the government spent the equivalent of R&D on anything besides nuclear?) But these days most "advocates" just bog down the dialectic.
Take for example the perfectly logical argument in favor of allowing the Keystone pipeline... If you don't build the pipeline, it gets built anyway, and you have 0% control or influence in the future (if it does turn out to be really really bad). Fairly intelligent analysis, drowned out by trolls with all cap megaphones. I used to belong to a solar energy activist group. Would still like to see it get the equivalent of the Oppenheimer subsidies. But couldn't stand the company, too many dolts agreeing with me.
Gently reply
Nuclear is far from clean, it's just a different kind of dirty.
Solar/wind/hydro/etc. are "relatively" clean and may be "literally" non-polluting once the plant is built, but they rarely have anything close to zero ecological impact.
One nearly-inherent aspect of renewables is that they won't "run out" like fossil fuels and uranium. Some carbon-based fuels, such as burning fast-growing plants, are "renewable" in this sense but are far from pollution-free.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
At some point all energy comes from nuclear reactions.
Either it comes from the nuclear reactor at the center of our solar system (causing wind, and solar energy), or the radioactive decay in the earths core (geothermal).
Even fossil fuels came from nuclear energy.
I vote for cutting out the middlemen.
we're first in line for almost everything... http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=radiation%20poisoning%20cost%20per%20kwh&sm=3
According to the former NRC chairman recommend all US plants should be shutdown:
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/forum/218/former-nrc-chairman-jaczko-says-all-us-nuke-plants-should-be-phased-out.2013-04-12
Most of the operating plants have serious problems, but the power companies don't have the money to decommission them. So the NRC extends and preys. Sooner or later the US will have its own Fukashima to deal with.
Just to decommision and replace all of the exist US plants would cost the US about 2.5 Trillion. So before you can expand, you need to deal with the existing problems first. I don't see the US having a spare 2.5 Trillion. The US is already insolvent as it owes 17.4 Trillion (on the books), and the only way it can pay its bills is to borrow at 0% interest rates and have the Fed print $500 billion a year. If interest rates returned to normal rates of about 5%, the interest payments on the 17.5 Trillion would consume about half the revenue the gov't collects in taxes and fees.
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/why-solar-is-nuclears-best-friend/
Been obvious to everyone from the start.
If there has not been such huge pushback on nuclear reactors for decades, there would be far fewer coal fired plants now across the world.
Look at what France has done, the rest of the world could be just as clean. But we are not, and you can thank supposed "environmentalist" for direct harm for the very thing they claim to want to help.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't trust the word of someone who turns appliances on by CUTTING them.
Hydrogen powered cars face huge technological and economic hurdles with no solutions on the horizon.
Come on, there have been a ton of advances around storing hydrogen, and building fuel cells generally - also around extracting Hydrogen.
The truth is that if you want every person to own an electric car, Hydrogen is the only way you get there. You cannot manufacture a literal ton of batteries per person across the globe. You cannot fathom the cost to build out a charging infrastructure for when EVERYONE wants to charge, and charge quickly (even musk's 20 minute charging stations sound great - until you think about how long you really have to wait even to get to the charger when there is ever any REAL demand).
I do think electric cars are the future, it's just that batteries are a stop-gap measure. Hydrogen is coming, and it's closer than you think.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nukes are already there. I'm also annoyed at how articles claim normal tax items (vehicle fleet depreciation, etc) as subsidies for one industry, but then say industry X doesn't get subsidies. EVERYONE gets some form of tax breaks when you fill out your taxes. If you don't claim them, well, then that's on you.
That's the thing, it's not normal. The Oil and gas industries are allowed to take write-offs at rates that are unavailable to other industries because Congress wanted to promote oil exploration. My knowledge is a bit dated, but when I was doing taxes back in the lte 80s, you could deduct 125% of the costs against the revenues of an oil well. Yes, basically the US taxpayer PAID the oil company for drilling a well. I seriouly doubt that the tax laws have changed.
They will, without a doubt, be effectively consumed (or prices will be so high as to make them unavailable for casual use) within the lifetimes of people who are alive today.
The only reason why that statement is actually true is because before too long I expect 500 year lifespans, which is the rough estimate to use up the KNOWN reserves at current rates.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe we should just send more people on that one way trip to mars. That should give the rest of us a bit more time.
Nuclear power has a larger carbon footprint than you might think: from the concrete used to build the stations, to the energy used in the mining, extraction and refining processes to produce the fuel. It can take more than 6 years to mitigate the energy used in building of the facility, let alone the actual construction costs.
On account of the fact that every utility scale fission reactor design is really nuclear steam power, every watt of power it produces requires two watts of heat dissipation using water. Of course this means the plants have to shut down if it's too hot, and that source of fresh water you were drawing on is not as cool as it was when the plant was built (eg, due to climate change).
It's also super expensive, because risks must be mitigated; some have pointed out this has led to a negative learning curve of nuclear power.
Much as it is kind of cool that people are using nuclear physics to make power, it really is very dated technology. Phasing it out in favor of cheaper, safer alternatives is a much better idea: with the advent of flow batteries, liquid metal batteries, you don't need to have peaking power plants paired with the renewables. You just need more renewables.
The nuclear industry seems a lot like the American automotive industry, and maybe for good reasons. They've had to fight political battles and prove themselves against fossil fuels in and early on people were not concerned with global warming.
I know there are prototype "meltdown proof" reactors but why aren't they the norm? Anything to do with output and cost? Fukushima's best plan now is to freeze the ground for I don't know how many years? It's going to cost half a billion dollars to build the system but it might need to stay in operation for decades... maybe longer? The costs at Chernobyl are still in the billions and it's not making energy any more, that's just to keep the already ruined land from getting worse.. These things are pre-optimized for nearer term profits for the operators and the longer term clean up costs in the rare (but not so rare it never happens) even of a disaster and the longer term waste storage costs just aren't factored in, not on the correct scale at least.
I know we have thorium an there are some compelling options that seem like there could be abundant, affordable energy for ages to come without contributing to global warming but the downsides are staggering and more importantly, we actually experience the downsides, they aren't impossibly rare. I don't think the problems are such that solutions cannot be engineered but it seems like they're more focused on other things than building the best nuclear solutions..
Less nuka-bomba uranium/plutonium reactors! There lies thy ballanced answer.
Wind and solar have variable output, so they need to be partnered with flexible power generation.
Another option is to partner variable output with consumption that can tolerate the variation.
For example, a nitrogen fixation plant based on the Haber process. Fertilizer from this process is responsible for about 1/3 of Earth's food production, and uses 3-5% of our natural gas supply (some for raw Hydrogen, some burned to generate electricity on-site).
Instead of letting excess energy generation lay fallow, we could route the excess into ad-hoc, non-demand-generated production. For fixing Nitrogen, you could conceivably crack water to get Hydrogen, and distill Nitrogen from the air. Conceivably, a solar panel array in Arizona could make fertilizer out of nothing.
Does anyone know of other types of production which can tolerate quick start-up and shut-down?
Maybe some sort of automatic loom system for weaving cloth? Some sort of commodity cloth which is always in demand as a raw material for other products. Something like that.
Maybe something that can be produced using a lot of smaller installations, such as the loom idea noted above - a factory floor with 1,000 smaller looms computer controlled could fire up individual looms as energy becomes available. Would you need "wear leveling" as used for thumb drives?
They're not reasonable. You can't strike any sort of deal with them on any sort of rational basis.
Here are your options.
1. Over power them politically. This is politically expensive and is pretty annoying because they won't shut up which will mean you'll have to sustain a pretty high level of political suppression for some time to come.
2. Simply confuse them. They're by definition not very observant. They track on things put in the newspaper recently and don't really follow the logic of anything through. So if you make what you're doing out of sight out of mind... they tend to leave you alone. For example, we've moved most of our coal power generation to China where its a lot dirtier then it was in the US and they have no control over it. What do you think happens when industry is closed down or priced out of the US for environmental reasons? It goes over seas where the same thing happens with no restrictions. Mission accomplished, dipshits.
3. Pay off the leaders. Many times the organizers are little more then glorified shakedown artists. They'll want millions. But if you pay them they should be able to contain the gaggle of fools the follow them. This will mean striking up an alliance with the likes of Al Gore... but those are the sorts that control this monster.
Short of that... not much you can do...
Don't get me wrong, I love renewable energy. That said, I have no specific problem with any form of power generation.
Filtered coal plants are great and regardless of any regulation we will burn the coal in the ground... one way or another and eventually.
Nuclear is also pretty great. Mostly because its so compact. Mostly great for mobile high power platforms. We have nuke subs for example that were fueled when they were initially built and have been in continuous operation for 30 years. That beats the pants off gasoline.
Here is what renewable needs:
1. Cheap storage. Something like flywheels or ultra capacitors. Batteries are a non starter.
2. Decentralized generation. Ideally on top of your actual house. A percentage of power is lost in transmission over long distances. A percentage of power is lost meeting demand largely by over supplying a bit... there are other things that each shave their percentage off the total. Add them all up and its a significant amount of power. If the power were provided locally you'd get most of that back.
3. Extremely cheap solar panels. We need something so cheap that you can put it on every surface without thinking about the cost. The efficiency doesn't have to be great. It just needs to be insanely cheap. Do that, and then link everything up to that... and then maybe you'll need a few high efficiency cells.
Get everyone running mostly on their own generation and they'll start conserving power. Not because they want to conserve but because they would run out of power otherwise.
Ideally do the same thing with water as well... at least in so far as having a cistern that is fed from municipal supply. So if there is a disruption or there are months when the water is expensive... they can shift around. Also, in California they're talking about water rationing again. So it might be nice to just have a giant tank buried somewhere on the property and get it topped up from time to time by a water truck.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Come on, there have been a ton of advances around storing hydrogen, and building fuel cells generally - also around extracting Hydrogen.
Not enough to base our infrastructure on those advances. Hydrogen powered cars face three obstacles - one technological and two economic. The teachnological one is developing a functioning technology. There are hurdles to overcome but there is reason to believe they could be overcome. After all, fuel cells and the like are already in existence and prototype vehicles have been made. The much bigger problem is economic. The first economic problem is that hydrogen powered cars are expensive because there is no manufacturing economies of scale, supporting industries and a limited manufacturing base. Absent some sort of subsidy they cannot be produced for a price in the near term that is competitive with existing vehicles. The second economic problem and the real killer is that there is no fuel infrastructure in place and developing one would be hugely expensive. We have infrastructure in place for natural gas, petroleum/diesel products and electricity. Anything that doesn't use one of those three things is essentially starting from scratch.
The truth is that if you want every person to own an electric car, Hydrogen is the only way you get there.
Not even remotely. Hybrids are the path of least resistance (no pun intended) towards electric vehicles. Electric vehicles based on batteries become practical once you solve the charging time problem. Basically you have to get charging time down below about 10 minutes for at least 200 miles of range. We're almost there technologically already.
You cannot manufacture a literal ton of batteries per person across the globe
Actually you probably can. Every vehicle made already has at least one battery in it and it wouldn't be all that complicated to scale up production unless there is some sort of raw material limitation.
I take umbrage with solar and wind power being called renewable. They aren't. When the sun is used up we won't get another one. When the heat from the sun is gone we won't have any more wind.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Actually France has some major problems. Apart from a string of low level but concerning accidents over the years they suffered from power cuts when the weather got too warm for the plants to operate. At first they tried dumping hot water into lakes, killing much of the wildlife living there, but had to stop and just idled the plants instead.
The only thing that saves them now is being able to import energy from other countries, particularly Germany where it gets very cheap during warn periods.
Being reliant on a single source of electricity is a really, really bad idea. One of the biggest strengths of renewables is their diversity and distributed nature. People actually died in France due to those shut downs.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I think we need something similar to the Manhattan Project or Apollo. Kick out all the different "camps" and opinions.
Bring together the worlds top minds and funding with a simple, single goal, clean energy production, storage and distribution.
Make it real instead of just lip service. It is truly amazing what can be done with a simple goal and the funding to back up the science.
I know it a pipe dream.
At least until we have something like an extinction level event to get peoples' attention.
The problem is not "Nuclear vs Renewables". The problem is "Anti-nuclear environmentalists vs nuclear". There are renewable energy supporters who are not against nuclear energy and some even consider nuclear power renewable.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
It is sort of fun to read the rantings of the pro-greenies (solar, wind, hydro) and their semi-coherent arguments.
It is also fun to read the semi-informed posts of pro-nuclear-but-not-nuclear-engineers and their emphasis on several things:
lifetimes of radiation, safety, reactor dynamics, various designs both new and old .
And the popular media - they are just as excitable as Zevons 'Excitable Boy', and just as sane, given their prime directives: /.
readership at any cost, write for 3rd grade, dumb down reality.... And seemingly more ignorant than anyone on
In 1976 I listened to my little brother ( college drop-out ) and Dad ( associates degree in liberal arts ) argue about /.-ers...
nuclear reactors. I had just finished several courses in nuclear reactor design, and was majoring in physics, 1 semester from BS....
They were just as entertaining as both popular journalists and
before too long I expect 500 year lifespans
So did Qin Shi Huang. He still died.
It's not about safety of nuclear power, or inflexibility, or carbon dioxide. It's simply about the amount of fuel. Every kind of energy where we get the fuel out of the ground (coal, gas, oil, uranium) is ending someday. Period. With the current useage of uranium and the known deposits, we can last about 30 years. Maybe there is more to be found. But in 50-80 years it's gone. Forever. Just like the oil, if we continue burning it idling at traffic lights. Maybe I will not experience this, but my kid probably does... :-) )
The only alternative is sustainable energy. Water, wind, photovoltaic, tides, etc. They will last for the next few billion years...
(btw: there exist only one safe nuclear power station on this planet: the one here in Austria. It was built, but never switched on
there have been a ton of advances around storing hydrogen
No there haven't. You can store it as a cryogenic fluid, but no one really wants the general public to haul around a significant mass of fuel at 20K. You can store it as a compressed gas, but no one really wants the general public to haul around a significant mass of fuel at several hundred atmospheres. You can potentially store it as a solid using metallic hydrides, but there hasn't been any meaningful work in that area for decades.
Yes, but the Greens have way too much influence to be safely ignored. Politicians don't like throwing away votes that other parties will easily catch.
It is variable, but it has to be precisely controlled. Given what's at work, generous safety margins should be employed as well. What this means, in practice, is that it takes time.
Sometimes, you need a lot more power during the next 10 minutes and then you go back to your baseline. Nuclear isn't fast enough. Hydro is and that's why it's so popular as storage.
Nuclear does well in propulsion for the Navy and with areal drones, it may work out in the air as well. But it just is too expensive to be considered for a solution to our climate problems. It's opportunity cost is just too high. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...
We already have separate day and night electricity metering here (the Netherlands). Night time electricity used to be very cheap, but now we have the same +/- 18 euro cent / kWh taxes on both, and Germany selling excess electricity to us for near-zero/kWh. I think this summer they will end up at the same price, or even cheaper during daytime, because increased there total number of solar panels by about another 10% since last summer.
Ooh, low blow. Right in the fact node!
Explain how these cannot apply to a nuclear plant.
In Germany, they have stopped generating nuclear,
They now just import the nuclear generated electricity from France. This is another example of merely moving the issue and creating a false sound bite.
Nuclear plants can swing at 5% per minute, between 30% and 100% output.
So... there's that.
The problem is that people underestimate the nature and impact of nuclear waste on environment. It is less seen by public and they don't know how difficult and costly is to assort it. That is the biggest problem.
"Besides, electricity-to-hydrogen-back-to-electricity has a round trip efficiency of less than 50%."
This is arguing that an alternative isn't perfect yet so we should abandon it entirely.
Seriously, quit that. The loss is a factor, but not an important one. The efficiency of fossil fuels is so low we cannot express it. Solar to organic to fuel involving millions of years of intense heat and pressure- massively inefficient.
So what if turning wind, or solar to hydrogen is inefficient? It's free. 50% of free is still free. Same with old design nuclear reactors that can't ramp up or down efficiently- the energy is wasted anyway, so the conversion is still a 50% waste reduction.
There are some hurdles to pass for hydrogen fuel cars, this just isn't one of them. It is a factor that we could also work to improve- nothing more.
That said, yes we need to be plowing money into renewables, it's an investment that will pay itself off many times over...but unfortunately over a number of decades and so private industry simply isn't going to do that.
I think you will find that Ecotricity [http://www.ecotricity.co.uk] is providing wind generated electricity to the UK domestic market. I think the revolution has started...
Using methane pipelines to ship hydrogen is as easy as just doing it.
Gas pipelines are run through compression plants and separation plants. membranes separate the gas compounds already- getting the hydrogen sulfide out on the basis that it is a larger molecule, shunting it out while sending the "sweet" gas methane on down the line. The membrane technology has recently been made more exact and cheaper by research at U of Texas:
http://membrane.ces.utexas.edu...
The same technology can separate the tiny hydrogen molecule out at an earlier step for very little cost increase to the plant.
We have a huge methane infrastructure in place- something CNG has been capitalizing on. All you have to do is offer the same rates to the pipelines that methane does- transport based on CFM to a destination. I can't imagine any pipeline owner saying "no, I refuse to double my profits AND get my foot in the door of a whole new energy field at the same time." At least, not without a LOT of bribery from opponents to offset those profits.
Source: I worked for a 5 state pipeline owner handling their SCADA setup. I am no petroleum engineer, but I have a decent grasp of their operations and setup.
This gets repeated a lot. I imagine it would get traced back to anti-renewable groups.
Modern nuclear reactor ARE scalable. And getting more so. These claims are based on 30 and 40 year old reactor designs. No one is going to build new reactors based on those designs, now are they?
http://theenergycollective.com...
You're right: Coal IS more dangerous than nuclear. About 4,000 times more deadly per TWH
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
An environmentalist's first job is to ensure the need for future environmentalists. That's why the bloody loons scream every time anyone wants to update or improve a refinery. If the companies were able to update their refineries (and factories) unencumbered by silly lawsuits, there would be very little pollution, and there would be no public support for environmentalists.
How often have You seen the environmentalists with pictures of steam from power plants, making it look like black smoke???
The ultimate hoax is "carbon sequestration." This is pumping exhaust gasses underground (where they will seep out, over time) at the cost of between 1/3 and 1/2 the output of the power plant that is supposedly "running cleaner." All that extra power (wasted!) causes pollution.
I still see this reasoning a lot. And it's wring. It may sound like a waste to not store it, but no one complains about not storing the sunlight falling on 99.999% of the earth that is not covered with solar panels.
Yes, solar output is not constant. Just install enough solar panels so the output on cloudy winter days meets demand, and on sunny summer days, disconnect 90% of them.
No need for any moving parts, no maintenance, no centralised storage facilities (and transport losses), no conversion losses, etc.
Technically it's solved: installing more of the same solar panels needs no new technology, and today's small and large solar converters already automatically reduce output power when there is an excess of electricity on the net, by closely watching the net voltage and frequency.
Financially this looks like a more affordable solution than any kind of storage, especially when including maintenance cost.
The storage "problem" was only a problem when solar panels where way more expensive than storage solutions. That time is long gone, and isn't coming back.
When designing solar systems based on there output on cloudy winter days, the output is also very predictable: there will be enough 365 days/year.
With some high-voltage DC cables running easy to west, reliable and predictable solar power can be extended into the dark mornings and evenings on most continents, using yesterday's technology.
When all of this is put in practice and working like clockwork, there will still be people talking about this storage "problem". Don't be one of them.
This is similar to people complaining about the 20% "efficiency" of solar panels. No one complains about the 0% efficiency of normal roof tiles!
Until all rooftops are covered in solar panels, there size does not matter, and unless you want to send them into space, there weight does not matter. The only thing that matters is the cost per produced kWh, the 80% of solar energy that is converted into heat (or 100% for normal roof tiles!) is still free. no-one pays for that 80% anyway, so the efficiency is irrelevant.
Depends on where you live. In part of Japan, a lot of people would not say nuclear is the less bad solution.
If you care about the environment you should want the mountain of nuclear waste reduced. And treating it with a particle accelerator, using a so called spallation reaction, you can do exactly this, while running the whole thing as an inherently save reactor with net energy gain.
The technology is proven and an industrial scale prototype is about to be build in Belgium.
Head is a lot easyer (and cheaper) to store than electricity. when the sun shines, use the electricity to heat a few cubic meters of water from 20 to 95 deg.C, when the sun does not shine, and you need hear, pump the hut water through radiators in your house. The stored heat it's more than enough to heat a whole house.
1 - It's 100% true that current nuclear technology is 100% due to military research, the USA invested thousands of times more money on nuclear fusion than on 100% energy oriented nuclear fission research (thorium molten salt reactors). Light water reactors exist because they were the best option for Navy needs. Uranium/Plutonium breeder reactors (IFR) were researched because they were able to produce more plutonium than they consumed. 99% of nuclear reactor research moneys was spent on light/heavy water and IFR reactors.
2 - One of the key minds in development of light water nuclear reactors, Dr. Alvin Weinberg, as in the holder of the original light water reactor patent, wanted molten salt thorium reactors since the days of the Manhattan project, but the nuclear bomb driven process never properly funded molten salt reactor research (less than 2% of the money spent on IFR research was spent on molten salt reactors), because the Thorium fuel cycle only produces fuel very undesirable for nuclear weapons (radiation type that can be detected from satellites anytime that material is transported, the only know thorium based nuclear weapon resulted in lower yield than expected, no know nuclear weapons in the world's stockpiles are based on Uranium 233, the nuclear fuel generated from Thorium).
3 - There are very compelling safety, efficiency and cost reasons to go Thorium / LFTR, the main one against is research on this stuff was essentially liked in the Nixon administration, documents on this stuff were actually ordered destroyed, but saved covertly by those working on LFTR research. Much like the Clinton administration killed the IFR reactor research for political appeasement to the anti-nuclear interests.
4 - Until the population gets an honest, balanced view of true radiation risks, most people will be somewhat anti-nuclear, most of the anti-nuclear activists are very irrational and unwilling to collect hard data to prove their stand, if they did, they would find out at least 90% of what they say is utter bullshit. Look up hormesis, lookup up no linear threshold, hard data support hormesis (a little radiation being good, too much radiation very bad, much like taking one or two aspirin a day is good, one thousand aspirin a day can kill you), no linear threshold pretends the best for humans is zero radiation, ignoring the FACT that we get radiation from several sources naturally: Cosmic rays, sunlight, radon coming from the earth's core, potassium 40, carbon 14. Plenty of places documented for having therapeutic waters or sand are due to naturally occurring radiation (typically from radon/uranium/thorium/radium). Watched that video of the place in Georgia where FDR went before becoming president to try to cure his pollio, those are radioactive waters. If more radiation were bad due to no linear threshold, we would see clusters of cancer cases among flying airline personnel, living in Denver and Salt Lake City would show more cancer than Los Angeles or Miami, but data shows its the opposite (little city or big city notwithstanding, people at higher altitude gets more cosmic rays and solar radiation, yet, we see lower cancer stats).
5 - Your typical pro nuclear guy accepts none of the downsides I pointed out (item 1), dismissing everything as wrong. It's true that water cooled nuclear reactors are safe enough, but the public wants something much safer, and the companies selling water cooled reactors are investing nothing towards revolutionary (as in not water cooled nor IFR designs). General Electric / Hitachi S-PRISM IFR is interesting, and probably would be a little safer than current light water reactors, but have two large downsizes: They need at least ten times more nuclear material on the reactor due to usage of FAST neutrons (increasing the cost of plant startup and risks in case of a meltdown), the usage of Sodium is a risk factor (less than the pundits claim, but much more than the defendants of this alternative claim). Finally, if General Electric actually truly believed S-PRISM was such a great solutio
If we turn jupiter into a ringworld that's 700 Trillion earths. We need nuclear to do this.
We can pack all the spent nuclear material into 1/700,000,000,000th of the earth.
So Nuclear + Ringworld wins. Easter island proves we can't do it the environmentalist way, or at least it's going to be really hard. The moon orbiter proves we can do it the quick and easy way.
Get me a date when the world was perfect and we'll talk.
Find a way for everyone to live in one city and save the world!
You don't need to beam it to earth, its getting here just fine as it is.
Certain areas that have low cloud cover are perfect for solar thermal.
Photovoltaics are not as efficient as solar thermal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Solar power on earth available is about 1,000 times that of wind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
The Sahara alone would power all of Africa and Europe, possibly the entire planet.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Hate the irradiated wasteland you survive in?
Nuclear supporters responsible.
(No, you can't fucking prove that I'm wrong)
You asked a question based on a false premise. Also a variant of the Complex Question fallacy, due to phrasing in such a way as to presuppose a controversial point of view. We DON'T live in an irradiated wasteland. It's difficult to prove someone wrong when they put the cart before the horse. Frankly, the horse is more intelligent than the aforementioned person.
Do you still beat your wife?
I click Slashdot Classic link. Get redirected away from story to classic homepage. Click story, get redirected to beta version of story again. Click Slashdot Classic link again. Get redirected away from story to classic homepage, again. Click story, get redirected to beta version of story again.
FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU DICE!
Overpopulation is always the primary problem that nobody dares to address.
Nuclear power is a scam. Heavily subsidized and not regulated heavily enough or even properly for the regulations they already have. I doubt that the subsidization is enough to balance out the costs for the current level of inadequate regulation.
Next gen nuclear is always off topic because it doesn't exist even after decades of solutions that were 5 years away - anything you build today is not next gen; therefore, off topic. It is foolish to build them today, the USA is building TWO nuclear plants and those cost MORE than India's solar plants - plus the construction time is comparable (except India's can be online before it's completed and its construction costs are going to go down while it is being built, so it's likely to be near budget, unlike the nuclear plants.)
Solar is cheaper than nuclear power. TODAY. The same tech from decades ago finally being mass produced with the resources that could have been there for decades already... The "innovations" have been minimal (silicon cells) and they are mass production related; nothing that couldn't have happened 20 years ago. If solar only had half what the nuclear industry had to help it evolve it's mass production... (instead we kept putting money into new tech and ignoring mass production... delaying.... The USA dumped some $$ into CIGS instead of making existing tech cheaper like the Chinese did. CIGS may win long term but we can't keep stalling letting the perfect be the enemy of good. )
A modern grid to replace our century+ old primitive power grid would mitigate most the fluctuation issues of wind and solar. Leaving other kinds of power to fill in the gaps which can be done cheaper and safer than nuclear can do. We still have plenty of old power plants that can fill the void while newer ones are invented; perhaps the mythical mini next-gen nuclear plant will happen by that time.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
They are, indeed, very compatible. Indros is probably a green-weenie and is clueless..... In the energy business, you have base demand or base loads; think of it as the amount of GW-hrs that the demand never drops below. Then you have peak demand which is base + spikes (hot summers, etc.). ALL grid-connected generating facilities have to modulate the power source to meet variances in grid demand: Coal, NG, Nuclear, whatever. Wind and Solar suck at this, because they have no command over their source of power (Sun and wind). Energy is going to be an AND solution, not an OR solution. Sorry greenies, get over yourselves and grow up.
they suffered from power cuts when the weather got too warm for the plants to operate
FWIW, that's a common problem to all types of thermal electricity generation. Coal, gas, nuclear, oil, all need a heat sink to work efficiently and that heat sink tends to be water. Lots of water. If the river you're drawing from runs very low, you've got to shut down. If you're drawing from the sea or a large lake, you won't have the problem, but that wasn't the case for those French power plants along the Loire during that year's drought...
Mixed generation is good, gives flexibility and different types have different downsides. (I live in an area where solar makes almost no sense at all because it's so cloudy; we make Seattle look bright and sunny. We also don't have anything like the air-conditioner load of cities like Phoenix or Miami.) Nuclear power can make sense; it's principal down-sides relate to decommissioning. Otherwise, its very much like coal, oil and gas in terms of constraints.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
If the goal is to prevent "bickering", there's no better way to do it than to post an article on the subject here.
On top of that, cryogenically cooling hydrogen is extremely energy intensive.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
They are basically comparing current nuclear technology with future developments in renewable power. Assuming we don't decide to ignore it, in the long run nuclear will be incredibly clean, plentiful, and easy to deal with. But we have to develop the technology first.
In a way almost all renewable power sources come from the sun, so it's all nuclear.
Distribute the storage. Don't store the energy to keep the country powered at the station. End consumers can draw that power while it's being generated and store it themselves. The ideal solution here would be for every household to have a hydrogen power plant, and the hydrogen can be renewed during the day by a solar powered grid. Hell! Even better, go full smart grid, and allow households to distribute directly to their neighbours when they're in need using their own solar power panels and or hydrogen plants. The technology is there already. It's just corrupt politics getting in the way.
Next question.
Can someone please explain why "cost" is ever an issue regarding society switching from carbon based power sources to sustainable ones? Isn't that what the argument is really about? It's going to be more expensive than burning the trees in my backyard, or more expensive than operating off the coal-based grid. What is the most cost-effective and expeditious way forward? Can we proceed with that best way forward? Can the US get a fucking Energy Policy written up so we can actually begin to have meaningful discussions about this?
"Wind and solar have variable output"
And the world has variable input. Go here and look at the graph:
http://www.ieso.ca/imoweb/marketdata/markettoday.asp
Notice that the daytime peak is about twice the nighttime base load.
So in order to supply this sort of demand, which is typical around the world, you need to either have highly "dispatchable" power, like hydro and gas, or have multiple power sources that can be used in concert to fill in the peaks.
Nuclear is not very throttlable, on the order of 20% on a per reactor basis. That means nuclear alone cannot follow our loads. We need something to fill in during daytime peaks.
What we have been doing so far is using coal, and more recently, switching to gas. However, we are all aware of the problems with this approach, namely CO2.
So what power source is primarily available during the day and doesn't give off CO2? Solar. Solar and nuclear are fantastic together.
Yes, we still need gas as a backup when the entire CONUS is covered in cloud, it will happen. But because we've already built all those gas plants, we already have this covered. All we need is more panels.
When faced with this obvious fact, the haters started coming up with new excuses. For instance, solar is bad because now the gas plants have to spin up. We know this isn't actually the case, as study after study has demonstrated, but that's not the point, this is all about FUD.
FUD for whom? For people who think energy policy is a political issue, one that it's perfectly OK to form on the basis of what the people look like. "I notice a lot of liberals like solar, so I'll look for every excuse to hate it". I don't tilt at that windmill, it's the way the world has always worked, but it's sad to see in such obvious fashion.
I used to be a believer in solar thermal. I worked for a metal fabrication company and were bidding on jobs to solar thermal projects. To get to utility scale, they'd need 500 MW to even be considered useful; the size of plant they'd need to get to that point required a material cost that would have financed them right into bankruptcy. I know, because I was the one doing the bidding and i know a few other guys doing it too. Their proposed price in response back to our quote was less than the cost of the steel to produce the frames and structures and didn't even account for our labor, overhead and a very thin margin. Every other guy that I knew that bid the project said the same thing.
The company's project folded as they couldn't get the financing or costs low enough to sell energy at a competitive rate. This happened with 2 other projects. Frankly the science and efficiency has to get a LOT better and squeeze more energy out each setup-dollar in order for it to be cost effective.
I'm still a believer in solar thermal; it's my second favorite source of energy over nuclear. But I've seen how the sausage is made, and I can assure you it's not only not pretty, but it's nearly as easy as you think it is. I live in Southern California; we have some of the best sunlight in the world. If solar thermal was such a panacea SoCal would be covered in these plants, but there's only the Nextera plants in the Mojave and Solar 1 in Nevada and two other concept plants with a combined generation of 600 MW when California's peak demand is 50,700 MW.
"Your example would work if the reactors only ran in the day time"
It's the other way around. Reactors supply base load because they can't throttle. The daytime load has to be offloaded to something that can. That used to be coal, now it's gas.
define "easily. Please include in your definition of "easily" an explanation of the total cost and where that money is going to come from.
I've seen this solution too. Even when you ignore the cost of launchign sufficient solar collectors into orbit or the moon (a surprisingly cheaper solution), launching sufficient satellites that are all coordinated to ensure regular uninterrupted power distribution to specific regions, and the cost to coordinate and control all of these, you still have the political issue of one or more countries with direct control of a global satellite network of microwave lasers pointed at the Earth able to hit every country on the planet.
"Meh, all that crap will take to long."
PV is the fastest growing power source in history. Last year 35 GW (a reactor's worth) went in, this year the projections are for another 50. However, due to rapid price declines, more recent projections are for 60 to 100 GW. There are about 400 reactors in the world, built over a period of 40 years. At the current rate, PV will outstrip nuclear before 2020.
This shouldn't be surprising. CAPEX on PV is about 1/6th of nuclear. Systems can go in in months, start to finish, so the banks love you. Scales smoothly from 250W to 400MW with only a two-fold reduction in price over that range. Permitting is a snap.
The energy per person is astronomical. You send one, you spend the equivalent for 5000. Now if you start a world war, that is a different story. Nuclear will solve all your problems again.
Is the "Kendall" in superkendall the same as the oil company?
The energy stored in one liter of gasoline is 34.2 MEGAJOULES. Gasoline is a fraction of petroleum which occurs in nature, you can power your gasoline generating plant and oil drilling rigs right off the petroleum you pump, no external energy inputs required.
The energy stored in one liter of hydrogen gas is 10.05 KILOjoules. If you chill it down to -253C (or minus 423.17 fahrenheit) you can get 8.5 Megajoules by converting to liquid. This is crap compared to gasoline, it's worse than a lithium-ion battery in fact.
And since elemental hydrogen does not occur in nature, and all methods of generating it require fuel input, and compressing and chilling it require even more energy, in real use it's even worse. You may as well get a horse.
But oil companies luuuuuurrrves them some hydrogen cars, because they use more petroleum (total end-to-end cycle) than gas cars do.
Problem with this whole discussion is the implicit assumption that we will stop using ever increasing amounts of power. And settle down into a techologically enriched rehash of the 1950s (or maybe 1850s). Dont know about anyone else but i have no desire to read by the flickering light of my wood fire... Give me the 1.21gigawatts my car needs... Back to the future indeed.
If we have the capacity to change the fundamental dynamic, right now, why would we want to increase nuclear? Efficiency will much more cheaply get us where we need to go in the short term and profit-driven developments in wind/solar/"renewables" will get us where we need to be in 30-50 years. The nuclear option is idiotically expensive and a step away from distributed power generation. We can't afford it!
Whether the technologies are compatible is irrelevant.
The people are not compatible.
Further, many of the people have little desire to be compatible. The "other" side is seen as evil and disingenuous rather than just disagreeing. Compromise is thus impossible in the same way as the current Washington political situation. Gridlock. Forever. No quarter given or expected.
So, no worries, Dice Holdings. This will continue to be a profitable generator of page and ad views for the foreseeable future.
No, hot weather is not a problem to all thermal electricity generation. It's a limitation only to those power plants that rely on water for cooling. The issue is that in exceptionally warm weather the temperature differential is not large enough to cool the water sufficiently. A thermal plant that operates at higher temperatures would not have this limitation. To run at higher temperatures requires using a coolant other than water.
This is where molten salt reactors come in. MSRs operate at temperatures high enough that the temperature difference of the outside air is largely irrelevant. These reactors operate at temperatures that would melt aluminum. At that high temperature the air is a sufficient heat, even if the reactor is located in Death Valley under a noon day sun.
I'm no longer an advocate of mixed sources of power generation like I used to be. I think all of our grid electricity could, and should, come from nuclear power. People that do not have access to the electrical grid should choose whatever works best for them, which might also be nuclear power. A modern MSR can load follow just as well as natural gas. Nuclear power is very insensitive to the price of the fuel, it uses so little fuel to produce such vast amount of usable electricity that a change of the fuel price by orders of magnitude will change the price to the consumer by only pennies. As pointed out above a MSR does not care about the weather. MSRs can be placed just about anywhere that power is needed.
Solar, wind, hydro, whatever are certainly welcome to attach to the grid to provide power in my world, I just don't see the need. Modern nuclear power could be so cheap and reliable that if allowed to reach it's full potential that I feel no other power source could compete.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Umm, I'm for both. There's no need for separation.
Nuclear is the best option until we can get solar or other working as well for base load, and have storage options. If we used the right type of reactors, there wouldn't be much longlived nuclear waste either.
NASA neither confirms or denies global warming, they can only observe that there exists climate change but cannot explain why that is. They believe that it's possible that the CO2 increase in the atmosphere causes global warming but are uncertain whether that is true or not because there is not enough understanding in this field of science. However, what is true is that there is only a finite amount of oil and natural gas that can be extracted and once the vespene geysers are depleted, then what? How will these oil and natural gas companies make any money? Presumably by "eco-energy" which has been pushed for at least 20-30 years now and even more-so lately since presumably kids from back in the 80's were freshmen in college and ready to believe anything as most college students tend to be. I don't know whether global warming is real, but what I do know based on a Shell commercial I saw a few years ago, they are investing a lot of their funds into alternative energy. Perhaps the term "renewal energy" to them means "renewal income", but those are just possibilities. I think it's quite possible that climate change was a mere coincidence in the whole ordeal but never underestimate big wigs at billion dollar corporations.
As for me, I say we continue to fund NASA so we can learn more about other planets including our own, and determine once and for all what is causing the planet to change as it is, if it's just the sun then no worries (hopefully) but if it's us then we'll have a better idea on how to correct ourselves if need be. Until then, we could use nuclear power stationed in locations that are relatively safe from natural disasters and are prepared in case of a natural disaster as such to be closely monitored by the federal government. I may sound like I'm supporting government programs but I'm only suggesting essential parts to be supported as I believe in a minimal government entity. Well, those are my thoughts. Hipsters be damned.
1.) base load (coal, nuclear). These generally run near flat out 80-100%
2.) variable (Nat. Gas, etc). Easy on easy off and many in between but more expensive than the base generation. Often adjusted to compensate for spikes
3.) unpredictable (Wind, Solar) Great when its sunny or windy and can offset the Nat Gas. but you need something to compensate on that cloudy calm day.
I cant find it behind the paywall but the IEEE publishes things about installed capacity and % of average output... the short is nuclear is always at capacity, Coal and Hydro are something like 80%+ (hydro depending on drought), Gas is all over the place (used for peaking load) and renewables are unpredictable and produce much less than their installed capacity.
The bigger issue with renewables is the grid was not designed for lots of micro generation (5Kw on you roof). The grid is like most thing it flows down hill (high voltage to low; large central generation to lots of small consumers)--Going the other way is like pushing a stone up hill
cocksuckers have won the right to suck cocks. you cannot stop them now. but you can stop slashdot beta. all you have to do is stop sucking slashcock.
don't be the last slashcocker, get cable.
Slashdot Beta Fail
Why are the comments nested on both edges?
Why so much white space on the right half of the screen
How do you change the comment level (I want to only see >3)
The upconing articles are gone.... never to returen ??
Option to post without preview is gone- almost good
How to go back to original Slashdot ?
In a perfectly efficient world, nothing would be wasted, so there would be no room for contention and competition. This is an ideal, I know, but we should measure ourselves relative to it, and no other absolute reference. If cooperation is, as it must be, efficiency and thermodynamics will force them to either cooperate or die, so why wait to start getting along?
John_Chalisque
No, hot weather is not a problem to all thermal electricity generation. It's a limitation only to those power plants that rely on water for cooling.
At the levels these plants operate on, it's all about economic decisions, and using water as your heatsink is relatively cheap.
The issue is that in exceptionally warm weather the temperature differential is not large enough to cool the water sufficiently.
Actually, at least in the states the problem is more likely to be EPA guidelines protecting the wildlife. Other countries have their own equivalents which is why I think the French killing fish stocks by raising a lake's water temperature too high is unlikely. On the other hand, I've read about shutdowns in the states where the natural temperature of the water rose to the point that it exceeded the allowable release temperature, IE it was coming in hotter than the plant was allowed to release it at.
I'm reminded of the proposed additional generators at Palo Verde which would have been dry cooling - completely air cooled, and while it's not in death valley it's still in a desert location.
Living up in Alaska, I'd love to see some cogenerating nuclear plants - use the 'waste' heat to warm buildings in the area. No real worry about things being too hot there!
Though for the 'entire' USA I'd recommend a mix, on the basis of energy generation(IE actual generation, not faceplate):
40% nuclear - this is average baseload for the states
20% solar - we average 50% more energy usage during the day than at night. 2(night) + 3(day) = 5, 1/5=20%
20% wind - max without serious risk of destabilization, not so high that we're putting too many turbines in non-ideal locations
20% other - about half this category is hydrodam, but also includes tidal, geothermal, biomass, etc... Most of your peaking is here.
I don't read AC A human right
No.
It'll be a cold day inside Chernobyl sarcophagus when it's time to be OK with self-sustaining nuclear fission chain reaction! On second thought, not even then.
First deliver a viable technology which produces energy only when it is completely functional, and can't produce energy when it is damaged, give us something that fails and chokes itself dead if it overheats, then we can consider nuclear.
Right now it is like drawing power from a keg of gunpowder, with intricate apparatus keeping the gunpowder from going off. Ah, but, but, ... the gunpowder is so energy rich!
And, frankly, because of the BSing because you can't monopolise renewables easily, we don't have time for the long term solution.
So until we have things under control, nuclear HAS to be off the table.
If Greenland's ice falls off, that's most of the likely nuclear station sites under water or at serious risk of regular flood damage. And we don't know whether that will happen in the next 10 years or 100 years or more hence. And unless we get to grips with the problem and solve it NOW, we're not limited to just greenland's ice.
Therefore, because you're load following more, you don't need as much baseload (on tests and models, around 60% of baseload with fossil technology and nuclear mix is more than sufficient).
My son did a presentation is grade 8 and the subject was "renewable energy". He asked and I showed him Sorenson's youtube on the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR). He loved it and did his presentation on it.
When some of the kids in the class objected saying "thorium isn't renewable" his comeback was a classic.
"Neither are the rare earth elements in your designs"
True and funny at the same time.
I personally use solar power, a wood burning stove AND grid electricity. I also use candle & I burn alcohol for extra heat. If I have the FREEDOM to diversify my own "personal energy portfolio" here in Texas, then others across the nation & the world can do the same! Countries should also be able to also diversify their own energy portfolio. A lot of people get stuck in an either/or or black & white thinkingness on this issue. Why not do ALL energies available. I personally enjoy using solar panels & my own wood stove because I don't get charged for those energies! Those energies are mine! I created them. AND IF I CAN DO IT, THEN YOU CAN DO IT TOO! Don't wait to get an "OK" from your local rep. Just do it :)
You statement does not account for the grid. It does not acknowledge that the problem with renewables vs.carbon-based, vs nuclear is that the grid is developed to use carbon-based resources and that alternatives are put at an economic and practical disadvantage. The grid was designed by carbon-energy providers and they attempt to create a captive market by persuading utilities to not build very well WRT renewables. There are abundant wind resources in the north Great Plains, but they can't be used very well because the grid doesn't extend out there and that is in the interest of the coal-natural-gas-oil companies.
BTW you Sig needs editing it should be "Rich or Powerful Men exploit Poor and Weak Men" and possibly change "Men" to "People". It doesn't matter the means of setting priorities in society weather market or centralized, we are all capable of abusing power, which I think is what you really mean to say.
The anti-nuke crowd (which is overwhelmingly pro-renewables) has been attacking nuclear power for generations. Once they give up that aggression, you might see some amity forming and true solutions coming around.
/// Not a super-genius . . . yet. ///
A commercial nuclear reactor does follow the steam load in power output.
But, the efficiency loss is at the turbine end. With only one massive turbine for generation you have to keep it rolling at top load to get the best output efficiency.
And, it costs the same maintenance cost and personnel staffing cost to run at 100% power or 30% power.
You could make a nuclear plant power scaling with a major re-design... i.e. multiple smaller turbine generators that would be brought online as the power output requirement increased.
But, you would still have the same need for the number of people for maintenance and operation at reduced power or full power.
Hydroelectric is in the same situation. It costs the same to operate whether you are running one or all turbines at a given time. More cost effective to maximize output for the cost of operation.
NRRPT/RCT
First uranium is not the only potential fuel, second curent designs only operate at about 0.5% effeciency. Almost nobody is arguing for nuclear power as it is now. Effecient reactors and throium could give us over a thousand years.
Flywheels can store enormous amounts of power very efficiently, but lose it over the course of a day due to the rotation of the Earth. The fact that most of the flexibility is required due to variable energy consumption during the day negates the leakage problem. Produce what energy you can with renewables, get a surplus with nuclear, store it temporarily in large industrial flywheels, and stop crying about the cost.
So it's no surprise that nuclear advocates and the people who are vested in this expensive technology, with markedly hidden long-term costs, are geared-up to manipulate and propagandize.
Renewables work, the money you get out of investment in them works, the technology developed has somewhere to go, to improve...
This latest attempt to con people into a fake package deal, a fake option of both or none, is politics as usual. Follow the money. It's so obvious.
The thing that isn't being discussed is what needs to happen to the grid in the US. It's regional, mostly build around railroads and petrochemicals, it's inefficient. It's expensive to maintain these multiple regional grids, and there is no time-zone shifting of load, which is, to put it bluntly, idiotic yet profitable for certain corporations and political interests.
We need a modern grid, we need literally a hundred times more geothermal development and baseline capacity, and we need to stop letting the big corporations call the shots with their only real interest being in the short term returns on investment to the long term detriment of society, technology, and the nation as a whole...
There is nothing visionary about claiming nuclear is competitive and cost effective, and better than renewables in ANY way. THAT facade ignores the true long term cost of nuclear power.
As of 2008 T B Pickens lost $150 million on solar energy. He switched to natural gas, because it's abundant, cheap, and cleaner, and it can be used in industrial applications. He calls it a transitional fuel. To what, he leaves that up to the rest of us at his age of 80 in 2008. As for nuclear, the switch to breeder and fusion reactors should take place in the next 50 years. And, cold fusion is making a comeback, and may be the dominant fuel of the future. There is plenty of fuel, as today's reactors use only about 1% of the total uranium in the process. The efforts should be in renewable, affordable fuel, and in the transition from fission to fusion, solar and wind and so forth. TB Pickens is right in that we should develop a long term energy policy based on a strategy that makes sense, not on political hysteria. His talk at Autonation on PBS in 2008 and his Ted talk are a good starting point for anyone who wants a practical perspective on the subject.
"Germany is a classic example of idiotic and counter-productive policies driven by environmentalism run amok."
That is plain wrong. The politically and economically strong nuclear- and fossil-lobbies (often the same mega-corps) successfully use(d) all their influence to push back any tiny advances renewable energies may have made. They successfully managed to shift the public discourse away from "is it ecologically sustainable" to "it has to be at least as cheap as burning our bases." Last year state and EU-subsidies for fossil and nuclear energy in the EU were about 170 bn while subsidies for renewable energies came to less than 30. (German: http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/eu-kommissar-oettinger-schoente-subventionsbericht-zu-energiepolitik-a-927676.html )
The big, wasteful ("energy intensive" - and their numbers are staedily growing) industries are exempt from additional fees for renewable energies in Germany and the private customers are expected to pay for the innovations almost by themselves. (So it was a very clever move by the spindoctors to place the "energy only hast to be affordable"-spin in the elections.)
You export energy in a bright summer day, and import in a hot night in the summer and on windless days in the winter.
You're trying to mislead others pretending you don't depend on France and neighbor countries with large baseload sources to make up for what Germany today lacks in baseload generation capacity.
The current German plan is 100% contingent on importing energy often, and when you do export, it's due to overproduction, it's energy that must be dumped into neighbor countries (to avoid throwing it away).
I suggest you compare the net cost of those exports and imports. It should be telling.
1 - The last really old plants (1950s designs) in the world was decommissioned almost 15 years ago, the ones operating in Germany were decommissioned even earlier. Nuclear power was only widely deployed in the mid 1960s, before that were only demonstration/research/plutonium making reactors, producing so little electricity they were shutdown in the late 70s.
2 - Your argument that is was decided 20 years ago to shutdown nuclear, with nuclear power bribing govt was more like the govt extorted more money from nuclear operator with higher taxes instead. Yes, public opinion in Germany is extremely anti-nuclear, which is unfortunate, since the best anti-nuclear argument is nuclear don't load follow (they should produce the cheapest electricity, and be operated around the clock instead).
3-Are you aware that average generation capacity of solar in the winter solstice (in German lattitudes) is about 1% (compared to 25% in the summer) ?
Solar PV in nov/dec/jan in Germany is less than 2GW at noon.
The post above about solar and nuclear being complimentary shows how to solve this problem economically and effectively. Hot weather is typically sunny and the hot times of day have the most solar irradiation so you have solar for daytime base load and nuclear for night time. France and Germany have a good thing going with their generation strategies so long as they continue to work together. I would submit that France is better placed for solar generation than Germany though.