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Brookings Study Calls Solar, Wind Power the Most Expensive Fossil Alternatives
turkeydance (1266624) writes A new study [PDF] from the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, argues that using solar and wind energy may be the most expensive alternatives to carbon-based electricity generation, even though they require no expenditures for fuel.....Specifically, this means nuclear power offers a savings of more than $400,000 worth of carbon emissions per megawatt of capacity. Solar saves only $69,000 and wind saves $107,000. An anonymous reader points out that the Rocky Mountain Institute finds the Brookings study flawed in several ways, and offers a rebuttal.
"$400,000 worth of carbon emissions", it says. What, monopoly money?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
A Think Tank chock full O' Think.
I like it.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Decommissioning costs (including storage, disposal, and demolition) never seem to figure into these numbers.
Can we factor in the cost of even 1 minor nuclear plant accident and see what the numbers look like then?
In a power system with large number of nuclear, additional flex options are needed because 80-90% capacity factor is more than actually needed. Nuclear is not so variable (traditional reactors have discrete safe power output levels, and not particularly high ramp rates)
A power system with large installed capacity of wind + solar is ill-equipped to accommodate large amounts of nuclear, and pumped hydro, coal, gas are a better match.
I mean, as far as I know, no one has properly, fully decommissioned a nuclear power plant and effectively long-term-stored its waste yet, have they? Why shouldn't the cost of doing that, completely and adequately, be built into the cost assumptions for nuclear?
Why shouldn't there have to be an extremely large security bond put up when building one of these things that covers:
a) Full cost of full decommissioning and million-year safe storage
b) Fukushima/Chernobyl scale disaster insurance coverage, covering full remediation costs and damage payments for all surrounding economic losses and health costs caused by a major nuclear plant disaster.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The anti-renewables crowd loves to put forth studies using stats from three years ago.
It claims they're the most expensive alternatives, but what TCO timeline did they project? After all, it's not as though the sun and wind are going to "run out," and they don't leave byproducts that require storage or disposal, so you should be able to amortize the infrastructure and other sunk costs over a really long period, which should make them comparatively cheap.
They are talking about implementation and repair costs in terms manufacturing these things using current carbon output numbers, purely dollars and carbon, and 100% ignoring the expensive cost of less controlled and more widespread environmental damage and ecosystem degradation that certain 'less expensive' oils and coals have. Also, the mining and extraction of the chemicals required (which are burned and not recyclable or reclaimable) tends to take place in unique and extreme ecosystems.
Expese? Short term? Long term? If we re-did these numbers, assuming that 100% of power was already generated by wind/water/geothermal movement or other renewable flows, I'll bet the 'expense' drops dramatically for solar and wind and family.
And let's also include all the health costs from the pollution from burning fossil fuels.
The environmental costs from the drilling and mining of oil and coal.
Personally, I'm tired of the smog in the summer.
Ain't it odd? How generally there are two thing always omitted when people try to sell the clean, cheap nuke plants. I also think it's kinda odd that every time something gets discussed terrorism is a big issue (usually as a tool to get privacy concerns out of the way, citing safety and security as the pinnacle of importance), except when we're talking about the one thing that any terrorist with a hint of a brain would aim for: A soft target that not only is invaluable to the power infrastructure but also has the capacity to actually have a severe and VERY long lasting impact on the lives of million, along with striking terror into the hearts of EVERYONE on the planet at an inconceivable scale.
Fuck, 9/11 would become a footnote in the books of terrorist attacks compared to something like that!
Oddly, that's never even touched when the pros and cons of nuke plants are discussed...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I wonder how they do on costs? I don't know if they have been implemented or studied, but they offer continuous 24x7 operation at virtually constant output, much like nuclear or dam generated power (without building a dam.)
The comparison would have more merit if wind or solar had even the slightest chance of a meltdown, as nuclear reactors seem to do so often when something sufficiently unexpected happens.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
i wonder what kind of solar technology they are talking about. There are multiple solar technologies so talking about it as a single technology is misleading. Absolutely, non concentrated photovoltaics is the worst technology, the most ineffecient, and the fact the public has been conditioned to think of this as the only solar technology is partly to blame for solar not being more widely used. I wonder how technologies such as mirror or lens concentrated PV, or a thermal concentrated solar technology, or the Solar tube lighting systems compares. Very well, I would suspect. The mirror thermal dishes uses only relatively cheap low cost parts involving mirrors, a thermal collector system, possibly a microturbine or sterling engine to convert the heat into electricity, or it can be used directly. Continuing to use flat panel unconcentrated PV solar really is a crime and makes no sense since the concentrated systems and thermal systems can work so much better.
While nuclear is a fossil alternative, it is also not renewable, uranium is not easy to come by and the stocks will run out sooner or later. The good thing about solar is it is renewable.
hey, windmills don't take themselves down!
I notice that only gas is listed as adding new emissions. But hydro has methane emissions from the vegetation that's flooded when the dam is constructed. Not to mention the concrete that makes the dam. Solar, wind, and nuclear also have some building emissions costs, unless you replace all construction vehicles with electric and find a way to make concrete and steel without carbon emissions. (Wood might be an alternative for certain parts of wind turbines and maybe even solar frameworks.) Gas should probably have much higher emissions too, as the whole infrastructure from the well to the power station leaks methane. (How much is debated, but it's not zero.)
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Nuclear costs mostly depend on the amount of (not necessarily useful) regulation, and the amount of opposition to building new power plants. If we replaced all the NIMBY Americans with Frenchmen, the costs for nuclear would be much lower than they are now in the US. Wind, solar, and nuclear all have their plusses and minuses, and currently solar and wind are growing while nuclear is stagnating, so you also have to consider what the costs will be in the future.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Think tanks are always on someone's payroll. Industry pays for the cushy lifestyles of the researchers, and industry expects published results that can be used in PR campaigns.
Economic studies on virtually ANY controversial subject can uncover facts, experiments, and methodologies to amply support one side or another, accompanied by fancy statistical terminology, if the researchers are motivated to do so.
Doesn't consider the probability of an disaster multiplied by the cost of the incident.
Just look at Japan's Fukushima disaster.
So, you're saying we should use non-renewable, polluting alternatives just so it's a better match with wind and solar?
Seriously?
SERIOUSLY?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
just squandered a heaping pile of credibility with this report. It has also tarnished the rest of the think tank industry. Good work if that was their objective. Even if they don't include decomissioning, use inflated prices and old efficiencies, they leave out the drag on our society that is think tanks and vested interest attempts to corrupt our politics and economy.
Cost is not the only consideration. It also by and large doesn't matter - environmental damage does. And build time.
Nuclear power plants can only be built so fast...I believe the chief restriction at the moment is how fast the containment vessels can be manufactured, and there's already a backlog.
What's frustrating is that we're pouring billions into fusion research with virtually no evidence of payout, instead of going with the solutions we have today, and then working on fusion once we've stopped fucking over the planet quite so quickly.
Please help metamoderate.
Good point!
San Onofre nuke plant dismantling will cost $4.4B
Cost shifting? Imagine that...
There is no private institution that has sufficient liquidity / capital to provide an insurance of that magnitude. The risk is is covered by the society that lives in the area that might be contaminated. I think that if nuclear plants are operated at all, they should be operated by the public / a representative of the public. This way, profits go to the society taking the risk and society can shut them down easily if society decides to not take that risk any longer.
The per-kilowatt cost of solar has been on a steady decline for years, and so far the trend shows no signs of slowing. Large scale solar deployments in the future will have the benefit of further lowered costs.
See chart.
.: Semper Absurda
They account for those costs in this particular study.
I've seen comments like yours before and I just don't understand the question. Based on the way you state the question, I'm envisioning the wind turbines being manufactured in a highly radioactive, highly toxic, continuously polluting plant going night and day to manufacture 1 wind turbine.
Do people think that after the plant has produced a turbine, that the plant continues to belch out pollutants?
Help me to understand how can 1 wind turbine producing clean energy for 25 YEARS can possibly be negated by a manufacturing process that takes, what, 1 MONTH?
What am I missing?
This paper: assumes $0.2 - $0.3 billion to decommission a nuclear power plant (based on a 2013 report by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission)
UK: $9 billion decommissioning costs per plant, based on an estimate by the UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
Japan: $1 billion per plant so far, but estimated $1.8 billion per plant for the remainder
I suspect this paper gets its results by downplaying by an order of magnitude the decommissioning costs of nuclear power.
There were nine number in the analysis which were badly outdated. Doing it right reverses the order. http://www.forbes.com/sites/am...
If what happened here in Illinois is typical there won't be any Nuke plants running. None of the existing nuclear plants cleared the most recent auction to to supply the grid here with power. Below is an excerpt from an Excelon conference call explaining the situation to investment analyst. "On the PJM auction results, as you know, the auction cleared at $120 a megawatt day, it was higher than most anticipated due to primarily, the rule changes around lower imports, lower demand response, and participants bidding behavior. We think the results are encouraging for our plants that cleared, but there is an opportunity for further improvements in the market rules in the future, such as, firm fuel commitments, anti-speculation rules, and with the recent ruling, court ruling looking for clarity on the role of demand response, energy efficiency in the capacity markets. Our nuclear units: Oyster Creek, Quad Cities, and Byron, five in total did not clear the auction. For Quad Cities and Byron, these units are important for grid reliability, environmental and from an economic standpoint, are especially critical in helping Illinois meet its environmental goals in light of the recent EPA rules. To that extent, Illinois House passed a House Resolution 1146 in May recognizing the value of nuclear energy for its reliability and its carbon-free benefits and urged the expiration of our opportunities to avoid closing nuclear plants. We have agreed not to make any decisions about retiring these units until June of next year to allow for the Illinois legislature time to enact market-based reforms at the state level that this could be items such as joining Reggie or a clean energy standard. However, as we’ve said in the past, if we are unsuccessful and we do not see a path to sustain profitability for these units in question, we will be forced to retire them to avoid long-term losses. I do want to be clear, again, about one thing, we are not looking and do not want contracts for subsidies from Illinois, only contracts that recognize the environmental benefit in the reliability of the assets."
Watermelons (left overs from the fall of Communism) like to break the consumer's back.
How did the article's "more expensive than recognized" become "most expensive alternatives to carbon-based electricity generation" in the summary?
I doubt that solar and wind power are more expensive than alternatives such as extracting energy from the weight of dew, or from the sound of rain.
The input data were badly out of date. http://www.forbes.com/sites/am... Wind is the cheapest.
That if something goes wrong, Solar and Wind won't destroy the environment.... Or the fact that you still have to get rid of the nuclear waste somehow... sending it to china doesn't fix the problem.
The Rocky Mountain Institute had already debunked this story at http://www.corvalliscommunityp...
One way or another, humankind is trying to wean itself off of nonrenewable energy. Some options just aren't going to be as inexpensive, but that's not really the point is it? Either the petroleum will run out or cause unacceptable pollution, in both cases it needs to be phased out. Cheap isn't the reason.
The Brookings Institution??? Why would anyone give a damn what some think tank, er, thinks?
By definition, a think tank's job is to simply rationalize their clients opinion.
Quite odd how, out of the first eighteen comments (not counting replies), five are about decommissioning costs, and five are about meltdowns? They seem to repeat the same talking points, almost as if on a script.
I'm not saying they're shills, but at the very least a lot of people seem to be getting their information from the same place, which leaves them missing several crucial facts:
1) Nuclear power works at scale. It's proven, and it scales perfectly. The biggest solar plants on the planet are 500MW (Topaz Solar Farm, PV) or 400MW (Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, thermal). A single nuclear reactor is well above that - scroll down this list and you'll see very few sub-500MW, and quite a few 1GW+ reactors. And remember, most plants have more than one reactor. 66 nuclear plants are enough to give us 20% of our energy. 947 wind plants are only enough to give us 3%, and 553 solar plants (PV and thermal) don't even break half a percent.
2) Nuclear power would be a hell of a lot safer if new designs were actually approved. The regulations are pretty much ridiculous - they don't approve new reactor types that are designed to solve all the problems we've found with the old designs, but they still allow old designs with known weaknesses to be extended long past their designed lifespan. Add to that the ridiculous costs of dealing with the bureaucracy and the weak requirements for cleanup/decommissioning, and it almost seems like the regulations are designed both to make nuclear power unprofitable, and to keep public opinion against it. Hmm...
3) Nobody is arguing for pure nuclear power, because that doesn't work for all the reasons people say it doesn't work. Nuclear (and geothermal, where possible) makes for an excellent base load. Nuclear meshes well with hydro - excess capacity can be used to run the dam in reverse, pumping water up to store that energy for later use. And if positioned right, it provides both cooling water for the reactor, and a single point to close off flow or install filters if something does go wrong. Wind, tidal and solar can supplement this as locations allow, with solar in particular taking the edge off the peak load.
4) Every power plant can go wrong. What happens when a hydro dam fails? Thousands of people die. What happens when a solar plant fails? We don't know yet, but it probably won't be that good considering how much damage they can do even when working properly. Same for wind, and tidal, and geothermal. They do some minor damage even when working perfectly - frying or chopping up migratory birds or fish, or altering the geology in the case of geothermal. Nuclear has the benefit, at least, of being perfectly clean when working perfectly. Yes, if things go wrong it can be absolutely horrible, but that's why regulations need to focus on redundant containment and fail-safe designs, not on constant inspections.
"The Olkiluoto project in Finland is three times over budget and 9 years late, while the Flamanville project in France is 4 years late." http://www.vox.com/2014/8/1/59...
There are a lot of things that can be done now that don't have the great potential negative effects that are possible with nuclear energy production. When houses are built or roofs are replaced heat reflective roofs can be used. This could be done for a very small additional cost that would be quickly recovered in cost savings. Passive solar design could reduce fuel use especialy if combined with better insulation. If the passive solar design of buildings was done with an emphasis on keeping the increase in the cost of building to only a small increase a large amount of benefit could be for an acceptable price. There are many cost effective things that can be done now.
Any slightly modern nuclear reactor these days is load-following. Many of the reactors in France are load-following by necessity, for example.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
Decommissioning a nuclear plant site (not counting proper long-term fuel-waste disposal) has estimated costs of $7 Billion per nuclear plant.
My experience with engineering projects tells me that "double it and add 30 (%)" ;=) is a good heuristic for determining how much it will really cost, since everything is usually low-balled to win contracts. So we could guess $15 billion per plant.
No one has really implemented a proper long-term high-grade nuclear waste storage facility yet, so capital and ongoing costs for that are unknown.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Or not appreciably so, even compared to coal. That they do so is a myth being promoted for short-term economic gain.
A major problem with natural gas infrastructure is the leakage of methane (unburned) in the extraction and transport process. If that leakage rate reaches 3%, natural gas energy is about equivalent to coal on greenhouse gas effects on the atmosphere.
So increased natural gas energy is not an effective solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and slowing the global warming process.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The worst thing that has happened is that the republicans put partisan political games ahead of working to solve verified global crises.
A politician trying to show leadership and drive the necessary change is a great thing to happen.
I'm waiting for the criminal charges to be drawn up for obstruction of (climate) justice.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Yes, and the democrats aren't pushing green for any reason other than altruism, correct? Take no notice of the immense graft happening. Neither side is innocent of having vested interests as you demonstrate with your last sentence.
As wind builds out, it will provide more electricity than is needed at times. Using that to produce methane provides a drop-in replacement for fossil methane. This is being included in carbon emissions reduction stratagems these days. http://arstechnica.com/science...
When arguing solar vs. nuclear, what you are really arguing about is where to put the reactor, and whether it's going to be a fusion reactor now, or a fission reactor now, with a fusion reactor replacing it later.
Whoops. There goes one of Obama and the Democrat's richest backers (General Electric, the big Nuke builder)
The only way to keep up with rising demand will be to use everything. Solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, nuclear, and every ounce of fossil fuel on the planet. I think before very long we'll come up with some kind of carbon reclaimation scheme, even if it's as low-tech as turning wastepaper and sustainably harvested pine into charcoal and burying it in tapped-out coal mines. There will be trouble when we run out of petroleum, but hopefully we'll be able to compensate with fusion. And, of course, the "energy companies" as they've rebranded themselves will start rolling out all of the gasoline replacements they've had waiting in the wings for decades, like that bacterium they found in zebra poop that turns cellulose into butanol.
The methane that wafts up from the piles of chopped up bird parts, for one.
Not quite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
. . . we would immediately replace all fossil fuel plants with nuclear while working to upgrade the grid and replace the nuclear plants with distributed solar by the end of the century.
Of course, that would require us to actually put our fear, avarice, and ignorance aside and work together as Americans for the betterment of our country and our species, something which seems unlikely in the current political climate.
I'm not saying that these methods can't eventually offset their manufacturing debts. But pretending they're "clean" from start to finish is disingenuous.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
PV (photovoltaic) won't benefit much from scale, but some of the solar thermal options that use mirrors for heat that's then used for steam generation certainly do.
fencepost
just a little off
Only to a degree, and typically less following is possible as the fuel load gets older in each reactor.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
It's interesting to me that, when someone publishes a study that might not support the liberal template of "renewables and sustainables rock", the moderators also publish a rebuttal. In fact, I have never seen a Climate Change article with a rebuttal attached EVER. Slashdot slanted, oh hell yes they are.... come on guys. Let ALL of the members in the forum speak.
This is why utilities are investing mostly in natural gas plants. A natural gas fired plant is cheap to build and if and when it becomes uneconomic, you mothball it. Which costs nothing. If a nuke plant becomes uneconomic to run, or has a maintenance issue that shuts it down, and these shutdowns can last years, the utility is f*cked.
At least with solar, the operating costs are so low that no matter what happens economically they will delver power.
The deal is, both nuke plants and solar require underwriting to guarantee the loans or they won't be built. The difference is with nuke plants if the economics don't work out you end up defaulting, and the plant produces no power (shut down). With solar, you may default, but the plant will still be delivering power. It's however unlikely that solar is going to default over the long term as prices for electricity will rise over time.
Solar and wind require relatively little regulation or oversight.
Nuclear requires oversight for thousands of years after the plant is decommissioned. How do you even price that?
Answer : They do not price waste disposal into such estimates because they assume the government will handle it for them. Ergo, all this study says is : If we assume an unlimited government subsidy to deal with nuclear waste then nuclear is a bit cheaper.
Can't be bothered to read TFA, and got a life-threatening yawn scanning the overly complicated rebuttal.
Dollars of carbon offsets vs. megawatts of installed capacity is mostly a measure of the average capacity factor during operation, possibly adjusted by the fossil fuels needed for maintenance but that is way beyond this level of analysis.
Capacity factor is something like 20% for solar (5 full sun hours most days), 40% for wind in a favorable location, 95% for nuclear until something bad happens In the end if they all have the same cost per installed MW then nuclear wins. If solar had 5x less installed cost then it wins, similarly for wind at 2.5 less.
There will be studies like that even after millions have suffered because of global warming.
Thankfully, we will be able to read demonstrations that it's not happening.
Idiots. Lobbying idiots.
how much it costs to deal with nuclear waste. It is going to be around a very long time. No one consumes it.
I'd like to see a source for that 95% capacity factor of nuclear power plants. 5% downtime is not even enough to cover refueling and yearly maintenance. Here's what IAEA has to say: "In 1990, the world average annual capacity factor for nuclear power plants was 67.7%. In 2005 this figure stood at 81.4%". I didn't dig deep enough to find any more comprehensive statistics for each year, but given those years it would place some really stringent requirements on other years to bring the average to 95%, no? We seem to fall short even if we resort to being optimistic about the future: "For example, this factor in North America is projected to increase from 90% in 2005 to 92% by 2030". Energy, Electricity and Nuclear Power: Developments and Projections
Fun fact: In 2012 the wind generators I'm a part owner of (spread out in about 8 locations in Sweden) achieved a capacity factor of about 45%, narrowly beating the average for Sweden's nuclear power plants the same year. Now this does not happen very often. For wind this year was on the good end of average, and for nuclear it was a relatively bad year even for Sweden where the capacity factor for nuclear is usually in the low seventies. But the gap is not as wide as you think.
And given that you included the "until something bad happens" in your supporting arguments, I guess you will concede to including it also for your conclusions? As in "then nuclear wins, until something bad happens"?
There's a lot of research going on, but I'm not sure what's current. Some of the things I've seen mentioned include compressed air (pumped underground - old oil or natural gas wells I think), molten-salt batteries of various types, simple molten salt (similar to what's used for solar thermal) and later steam generation, pumped water (gravity storage), etc. Any of these could be appropriate depending on location, geography, etc.
fencepost
just a little off
They obviously left several stages out of their calculations.
From Nature.com
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
When they talk about building a wind turbine, they talk about using the same amount of steel as it takes to build a family car (you know, something that costs around $30k and requires fuel). Why does the wind turbine cost twenty times that?? Because it doesn't benefit oil stockholders, that's why.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Comparing abstracted megawatt to megawatt is assuming it's a continuity - implying that you can build a 10MW nuclear plant when you only need 10MW and that you can do it at 1/100 of the price of a 1GW nuclear plant. It doesn't work that way. At small unit sizes wind, solar, natural gas etc have a vast advantage. So long as you have energy requirements that are not constant and predictable they have a place.
Since the thing we are discussing did not come out of a high school project that's a very major flaw and shows either poor editorial control or a deliberate attempt to mislead.
But the initial heat from the Sun is free. Not only is it free,but if you don't capture it now, it's lost until tomorrow. That's where solar-sodium systems work because you can overheat the sodium essentially for free to pull it back into the system when there's no Sun.
Talk about a skewed, worthless study from Brookings. Garbage in, garbage out.
As Amory Lovins ably pointed out, its data is old. It also does not consider the entire cost of production, usage and cleanup. Cleanup costs count too! Are West Virginia, Ohio, British Columbia, Alberta, the Niger River basin, or Ecuador's rainforests, or the Gulf of Mexico just not in Charles Frank's back yard? I guess not. Screw people for living there, then. Do not the geopolitical considerations of an aggressive military foreign policy required to keep the oil flowing not count too? Screw those GIs and the people who live where they're sent in oil wars, too. Exxon's got to make a buck.
That's what externalization is. It means omitting key and pertinent parts of the picture and just sticking it to whomever is dealing with the consequences.
Solar panels are rapidly getting more efficient and cheaper to make, and you can put them directly on site where they're needed so you don't have to lose electricity to resistance across a far-flung grid with its necessary redundancies and overproduction, which are required in the event that a powerstation needs a maintenance cycle.
Someone's just keen to keep a bloody monopoly.
Its quite clearly a limited resource, and leaves us with heaps of radioactive waste that nobody wants.
You know what is even more disingenuous than pretending that they're clean from start to finish? Pretending that it matters if they are!
In this neck of the woods every wind turbine has a back up generator.
Why?
Peak power demands are hot, windless, summer days.
So the back up power generator has to kick in. And the generators of choice? GAS TURBINES.
Solar you say?
Do you have any idea of how much square footage is required to meet peak demand? So it costs a fortune to hook the necessarily remote solar farms in to the grid (though in fairness, that has a lot to do with the price of copper).
Face it, 'fossil' fuels and nuclear are efficient ... when used efficiently. ... hmm, thought not.
Oh, and if you are really fussed about power consumption, then do something like say, get rid of your air conditioner
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Sure solar can be more expensive than nuclear but solar can be still considered the best alternative. How many nuclear plants can we build? Dozens? How many solar panels we can have? Billions panels installed on every rooftop, in desserts and over parking lots. And that is what matter in terms of replacing fossil-based energy generation.
Rooftop Solar is /less/ costly than any of the other alternatives, because it costs real money to get electricity from a centralized powerplant out to the customers.
Even if generating at the powerplant is free, the transmission costs alone are greater than the cost of rooftop solar.
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
Math, motherfuckers.
--
BMO
$400,000 in savings, add in the irreversible effects of Japan's radiation posioning the Pacific Ocean and the economic impact of Billions you stupid fuck. Don't even bother posting an article ever on nuclear, have fun explaining why the world economy came to an end after the world population gets cancer from water and food contamination. I bet you drive a hummer you asshole
It's about a billion bucks; at least that was the 14 year cleanup at TMI#2; of course that cost is offset some by the 20 extra years we are getting out of TMI#1. Of course 60 years of 852MW is insignificant compared to the $1 Billion in cleanup costs for TMI#2. Oh wait, it's not. In fact, the complete cleanup costs of #2 and the factored in cleanup cost of #1 and the cleanup of an accident should something go wrong HAVE ALL BEEN COLLECTED ALREADY IN A FEDERAL TAX ON ALL NUCLEAR POWER SPECIFICALLY FOR THAT PURPOSE.
The fact that our congress critters can't be fucked to do something about the waste with that cash is on us, not nuclear power. Nuclear power is relatively safe, clean, efficient. We are fucking blockheads for not embracing and extending it.
While wind power is a clean energy source it would be a foolhardy plan to rely on it as a major source. Reason being is that the energy in the atmosphere has a purpose which is to move our weather systems. To remove all our energy needs from the atmosphere would result in large changes that could produce floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, etc. The old saying "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." applies.
that Slashdot will bring up this article but the "answering" response to the article only gets a hyperlink within the article, not a shock headline like the original article. Do I smell Bias?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Casteism
The paper does not distinguish between solar PV, solar thermal, and solar water heating, which are all completely different technologies with completely different scales of efficiency.
It does not distinguish between wind turbines sited on land and wind turbines sited at sea, despite the fact that the latter cost approximately 10 times more than the former to build and maintain.
Overall because of this conflation the results it comes up with are inherently flawed. Please try again.
The Brookings Institute needs to factor in the cost of the wars overseas and the geopolitics of fossil fuels. Also if they really want to be real about nuclear power they need to factor in the cost of all the clean ups and the cost of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission we are going to be paying a lot of money for a long time for nuclear power even if we're not getting one watt out of it
YES YES YES
Wind and Solar are expensive, but they are also the only things that you can install on your own property. I would be overjoyed if we got the majority of our power from nuclear fission, but due to government regulation and public sentiment it doesn't look likely to happen any time soon. If I want clean energy now, I can put solar panels on my roof today.
Searches for the following in the report yielded zero results:
"radiation"
"radioactive"
"radio-active"
"fall-out"
"exposure"
"halflife"
"half-life"
Is nuclear power still more cost effective once the realistic costs of prior nuclear disasters are included into the analysis.
No they are not.
Or, only in a limited sense.
Simply speaking: France is splitting up the fleet reactors into three groups. The "we are prepared to power down" group (dry to take over base load), the base load group (on emergency to power up), and the "ready to power up, but also react on peak old downs" group.
A single reactor can not follow load. Yes, it can power up quickly (far slower than a coal plant) and power down, but it suffers from Boron/Neutron poisoning which prevents it from powering up again (if not time perfectly) that means it is unsuitable for load following (if it has not a small fleet of plants 'in synch' with it)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
30-100% load cycling, according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Also this link: http://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-ne...
Much depends on the exact reactor type, but for Gen II PWR/BWR reactors and up load-following is most definitely a realistic proposition. As the second link notes, German reactors were forced to switch to load-following mode due to the disruptions on the grid caused by the large-scale unbuffered PV solar and wind turbine fluctuations on the grid.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
German reactors never switched to load following.
How should they be able to do that anyway?
They are running on 95% of max output, and they contribute like 20% of total power. Neither do they have room to power up, nor would it be significant if they would power down. If they'd pored down and would not not power up in minimum 20 mins, they can't for 6 hours due to boron/neutron poisoning.
I don't get your first line: 30-100% load cycling what is that supposed to mean?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
If you wish to refute my sources, please provide your own references. It doesn't appear that you even read any of them.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
Why shoul I read a reference that is wrong?
I live in germany, next try?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Typical modern wind turbines have diameters of 40 to 90 metres (130 to 300 ft) and are rated between 500 kW and 2 MW. As of 2014 the most powerful turbine, the Vestas V-164, is rated at 8 MW and has a rotor diameter of 164m.
That from the wiki and which also has other numbers for that biggest piece, which clearly show that diesel still wins.
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2012 was indeed a bad year for Swedish nuclear with Oskarhamn 1 being out and reaching 0.7 % load factor but the yearly average was 70 %. Check your math, either you misplaced decimal somewhere or you are mixing up the load factor of your turbines with the nuclear's share of Sweden's electricity production for 2012 - 38.5%, understandable brain fart, but still completely different metrics.
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Since the Rocky Mountain Institute's head proclaims that "It would be nothing short of a disaster if we were ever to find a source of cheap, clean, abundant energy", I take any statement from RMI with ... about a metric ton of salt.