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Why James Hansen Is Wrong About Nuclear Power (thinkprogress.org)
mdsolar writes: Climatologist James Hansen argued last month, "Nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change." He is wrong. As the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and International Energy Agency (IEA) explained in a major report last year, in the best-case scenario, nuclear power can play a modest, but important, role in avoiding catastrophic global warming if it can solve its various nagging problems — particularly high construction cost — without sacrificing safety. Hansen and a handful of other climate scientists I also greatly respect — Ken Caldeira, Tom Wigley, and Kerry Emanuel — present a mostly handwaving argument in which new nuclear power achieves and sustains an unprecedented growth rate for decades. The one quantitative "illustrative scenario" they propose — "a total requirement of 115 reactors per year to 2050 to entirely decarbonise the global electricity system" — is far beyond what the world ever sustained during the nuclear heyday of the 1970s, and far beyond what the overwhelming majority of energy experts, including those sympathetic to the industry, think is plausible.
Nuclear powers' 'various nagging problems' won't be an issue if we started using thorium-based reactors.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
James Hansen is right about this. Nuclear reactor technology has advanced to the point that safe-by-design reactors can be built, with technology that prevents meltdown in the event of total power and coolant failure. No other technology offers the energy density necessary to replace fossil fuel power plants.
It's not the 'least worst option', it's the best option. Thorium is plentiful compared to uranium, and more to the point it's plentiful here in North America (no need to buy it from someone else), thorium reactors don't need the complicated high-pressure reactors that uranium-fueled reactors need, thus lower construction costs, easier and cheaper management, they can't 'melt down', and the list of problems solved goes on and on. People need to get over their paranoia about anything with the word 'nuclear' in it and allow themselves to be saved by LFT reactor technology.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
mdsolar, this is absolute trash. No citations, only "it can't work".
There's a link in the summary. I suggest clicking on it. It contains supporting evidence for what is stated in the summary, which is what most people would consider a 'citation.'
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The biggest cost factor for nuclear power _IS_ the level of irrational political opposition. When you have to litigate and re-litigate and re-RE-litigate every application and every engineering change a dozen times over, it becomes nearly impossible to do anything.
You don't. "If wind and solar are so cheap, why do you have to bribe people to build them?". Applies LESS to renewables than it does to oil, gas, coal and especially nuclear. And those don't have any startup costs to go to get market penetration: they all managed their penetration 100 years ago.
Wind and solar ARE cheap. That's why they're bing built so many places.
Note that the world leaders in green power -- Denmark and Germany have retail customer electricity prices approaching 40 cents a kw/hr. And German carbon emissions have actually been increasing despite their massive wind and solar buildout. ... I have something like 3500kWH per year, for the flat, two persons. So mine is something like 1750kWh. As my combined gas and electricity bill is more 720EUR per year, 2/3 of it for gas. This is roughly 235EUR for electricity, which turns to 13cents ... see: the "average of 28 cent" is already wrong for my personal electricity bill. But perhaps I have it wrong in my mind and electricity versus gas is 1/1 and I pay 360EUR per year for electricity, that would be: 20cent. Oh, I forgot, I got a refund of 500EUR this year, so last year I only payed 1000EUR (720*2-500), so the prices above are much lower even.
Wrong on all accounts.
Neither is CO2 emission increasing nor do we have so high prices. The typical price mentioned in the internet is something like 28cents. And that is only so high for two reasons: we don't use much power, so we have a relatively high "base cost" and we have taxes, note able CO2 taxes on power.
It would make more sense to compare a 900 sqare feet flat total energy costs in your country with mine
In Denmark electricity prices are high because of the even higher taxes.
Comparing Apples with horse shit makes no real sense. You want to argue that going for wind and solar would make electricity expensive in your country, but it would not. Both are meanwhile cheaper than coal and nuclear, so regardless of the tax scheme or what ever reason keeps your electricity prices low, it wont change just because you switch to green energy.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Actually, climate scientists are underrating the thread.
The situation is far worth than you get from the "news".
E.g. if you look at the prognosis of sea level rising of the last 30 years. It was a fan with an prognosed upper bound and an prognosed lower bound. A sane person would expect the actual increase to vary around the middle, approaching probably both bounds alternating over time.
Guess what: the sea level increase is ABOVE the upper bound constantly since 15 years or more. And "the scientists" did adjust their estimates every year: and failed every year.
Same for temperature increase. There are idiots like you proclaiming that the warming has stopped 10 years ago. However the educated agree, 2014 was the warmest year in recorded history, and ... we are evaluating right now, but are already pretty certain, that 2015 was even warmer.
Because telling dramatic stories is how you get money and power without earning it.
Actually, a climat scientist does not earn more money as an plasma physicist or aerodynamics researcher. Money for PhDs or Professors at universities or research institutes are the same, regardless of actual topic they work in (*facepalm*). You are an idiot.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yes imagination can get you when you don't see how simple the construction itself is. That building, it's simple. Yes it requires the use of special materials but the structure itself is far simpler than any skyscraper would ever be. Those reactors? Simple by any standard used in the process industry. Which only leaves the question of scale.
I was right there with you in my thoughts. I thought scale was an incredible problem right up until I visited the largest oil refinery in Europe after visiting a tiny one in Australia. Everything was the same, the equipment was the same, the way they worked was the same, the effort put into maintaining it was the same. Things were only slightly larger though. A refinery that had 6 times the throughput had far less than double the foot print and the reactor vessels etc were less than double the size. Likewise on the co-generation facilities. Turbines with 10 times the power generation capacity were also less than double the size.
I also had the opportunity to visit a large industry motor / generator repair house to go check on the progress on one of our 2.5MW motors while they were overhauling a 300MW generator for the local power station. The diameter of the rotor was maybe 5 times the size of our little baby but the duty was over 100 times the power. My mind was absolutely blown. Powerlevels and throughput of industrial machinery scale what seems like exponentially with the size of equipment.
https://www.ovoenergy.com/guid...
That says German average price is 35 cents per kWh.
Do you dispute that number being the average across Germany?
The US number given is 12 cents, and that is accurate for the average, but I pay much less, just over 7 cents in Texas. That doesn't make the 12 cent number wrong, just that it isn't MY number.
Maybe your number is lower, but I suspect that 35 cents is correct as a national average in Germany.
http://renewableenergysolar.ne... they are made of sand. The walrus and the carpenter had a good cry about how abundant sand is.
Consider that if you cover the roof of a typical house in solar panels, they will generate more energy than what is used by that house.
There are several things wrong with that statement.
First, that isn't true of all houses. I've had my house looked at, covering my roof would provide only 1/3 of my total energy use, and that is taking into account multiple energy efficient improvements that I've made.
Second, houses do NOT use the majority of power. They actually are a modest user of power. Manufacturing and industrial uses use far more power.
"Fuel grade" uranium can be very cheap, depending on the reactor technology chosen. For instance, CANDU reactors run find on unenriched uranium. CANDU can also burn thorium.
I think LFTR is the way to go, once the technology is fully developed, since it is much more efficient and produces far less waste.
Be relentless!
Show me examples. The only ones I know of are when there is a major grid failure and the plant is shut down as a safety measure. Capacity factor is the ratio of actual production vs theoretical production. Notice how the capacity factor of nuclear is usually very high. That means it does not go down very often.
Don't worry. Germany is fine. You are reading the wrong magazines.
Yes, it is a problem that pumped-storage is shutting down, but is shutting down because it is currently not needed. The are simulations by Fraunhofer that additional storage is needed in Germany only when going over 60% renewables. In other words: storage isn't really an issue at the point where we are.
The customer prices in Germany are very high (30 cents / kWh) but only 6 cents are for the feed-in tariff for renewables. So this isn't the only one of many reasons for the high price (which is intentionally high). Also part of the industry is exempt and then pays much less than for example in California.
Coal is indeed a problem. But you have to understand that coal is big in Germany for reasons entirely unrelated to the Energiewende. Coal is simply really cheap and locally mined (jobs!) - while gas is expensive in Europe.
They said "SCALES BETTER". Not necessarily "costs less".
In terms of land-use, nuclear has between 4 and 6 times the energy density per installation. And that stays fairly constant over the life of the reactor. PV Solar and wind have diminishing output over their lifetime due to component aging. Not familiar enough with non-PV solar facilities to know about component wear, though they're operating on a principal similar to molten salt reactors. So I'd guess their maintenance costs could be comparable (note I said COMPARABLE, not IDENTICAL, meaning one could be used to form an educated guess about the other).
1: Think Wind and Solar projects aren't being subsidized, you're nuts.
2: Sure, a solar plant might be cheaper, initially. But, output, over time will be lower than if you'd dedicated the land to a nuclear facility. Wind also has to deal with wear and tear. Also, the CLEANUP COSTS of a wind facility, in most cases, are actually pushed by the power company back on the land owner. So, you have an even gross of windmills on your land. When the facility eventually EOL's, how much does it cost to remove 144-ish thick concrete pads?
Additionally, costs can be brought down through mass production means. Right now, pretty much every reactor is a "one off" or a "kitbash" (a standard desgin that's been modified in situ)
3: Education costs? You mean teach people that nuclear != Bombs? Or you mean staff training? You basically have some form of staff training for any power generation system out there (if you think that large scale solar and wind don't have some fairly steep training, you haven't been paying attention).
4: All power facilities in this day and age have security costs and issues. And, if we move to Thorium MSRs, we remove much of the threat of someone trying to steal fissionable material or blow a reactor.
5: Decomissioning costs. Part of that is the fact that currently active reactors are giant Rube Goldberg nightmares with designs from the 70's based on tech from the 50's. Modern reactors are orders of magnitude simpler and built with the entire power generation lifecycle in mind.
6: Endless waste storage. One of the beauties of MSRs. What little waste actually needs to be stored only needs to be stored for a couple hundred years. Not 10,000. Moreover, most of that radiologic fuel is only a step up from inert. Also, let's talk about all the waste produced manufacturing solar and wind facilities? You know, the costs being paid by the Chinese people because its government currently doesn't give a shit about. On top of that, were reprocessing of nuclear fuel NOT, stupidly, prohibited, much of what is currently sitting in parking lots and locked rooms could be used AGAIN. Reducing the amount of overall waste, and ensuring that the remainders, though quite "hot" (radiologically speaking) would be extremely short-lived. Additionally, some of it can be used in a constant cycle between MSR style reactors and more traditional uranium-based boiling water reactors.
Basically, nuclear, done right could be a massive boon to our power industry.
Done wrong, yeah, it's a cluster fuck.
But renewables simply are NOT going to get us there.
Hell, the biggest obstacle, overall, is the shitty, all-but-nonexistent state of the national power grid.
A better power distribution system on a national level WOULD allow for better, faster adoption of renewables. As renewable power could be generated in bulk in places where such things make complete sense, and the power could be distributed to places where installing renewable power would never, ever pay back even its initial costs.
Monster wind farms in Texas, crazy amounts of solar out in the southwest region. Then sell in places like Montana, Idaho, Michigan, etc.
Advances in power storage are going to be needed too. Because we can't afford to simply pump water uphill everyplace that needs to store power. This would help reduce the bursty nature of such renewable systems. And I'm sorry, natural gas isn't the answer (there's still CO2 produced there!)
Even then, we still need a known-steady form of baseline power.
If we're decarbonizing, it's basically nuclear or nothing.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!