I guess since Nanosolar is selling for about a $1/Watt, you'll be happy to dispense with transmission and just get power where it is used. On the other hand, the other consumer choice in Texas is wind, and that does cost less than other options. So far as I know, there is only one subsidy for wind and it is small. It is also not likely to be renewed. When Price-Anderson is repealed, we can consider cutting other production subsidies as well. On the whole, the claim that nuclear power is inexpensive seems very shaky. To fund a bond that would cover the liability for a large nuclear accident would cost 4 to 10 cents per kWh over 40 years depending on how cheap you think human life is. What a huge opportunity cost. We might have 40% renewables by now if Price-Anderson had not distorted the market. Think of how much people would have saved on home heating if we had not been burning all that gas to cover nuclear power's inflexibility. Now the dollar is tanking as people lose their homes when realistic pricing of nuclear power might have placed us in a much better position. We'd be ready to not just meet Kyoto, but beat it. Well, now the NRC will kick this one around for a few years and we'll see what they do.
Presumably Iraq was unaware of the existance of those weapons in the same manner we don't know who has the guns we sent for the police force there.
I'm not so sure that warning about the collapse of fisheries is such a small matter or that the warnings are out of proportion. Quite a lot of protein comes from the sea and the loss of the supply might be missed. Is this the sort of thing you are finding to be out of proportion? Do you miss cod fish?
The punchline to one of the jokes I was thinking of is "I used to have a car just like that myself." And the begining was about how many days it took the Texan to drive around his ranch.
The parameter we are controlling is the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the direction we are pushing it is up. It appears that the response of the icesheets to warming is rapid so that 5 meters of sea level rise by the end of the century is quite possible.
You need to get current with the literature. The IPCC points out that they have left the icesheets out of their estimate. You want to go with 5 meters or higher for planning purposes. Say, 5 meters plus a 3 meter storm surge. Here is what things look like under those conditions: http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=28.6942,-96.0603&z=6&m=8
Actually, until recently, hydro has been in a class by itself, renewable but with storage built in. Now thermal solar is getting storage built in as well. I'm not how sure that will go since we'll be making a huge amount of storage for transportation in any case. PG&E is already making contracts to take the used batteries from electic cars (99% efficient) for use for grid storage. Once wind gets up to the point where it is displacing more than gas, storage will materialize. Storage is much better than baseload because it does not require fuel.
Supply and demand. Demand for turbines is very high right now. Manufacturers are ramping up to meet this demand. Once they have done this, the price will come down. On the other hand, the nuclear industry has never once kept its promises. Always late and over budget. Can't operate without a meltdown. We still have those electic meters that were suppose to become superfluous. You may think that the learning curve has been ascended, but how can you be sure? Has the industry stopped asking for subsidies? Does the industry feel it can raise capital without loan guarantees? It is prepared to post a bond to cover liability for an accident? That would only cost 4-10 cents per kWh over 40 years. It would give much greater confidence if they behaved like they were ready to take responsibility rather than wearing a big REGULATE ME! sign taped to their back all the time.
A Texas exceptionalism that sea level rise will not affect them is, well, what can I say... Texan.... We have a few good jokes about that where I come from.
You can see some of the comments below your other point are already answered.
So, Greenpeace provides technically reliable information but you don't like their style. But, if their information is correct, then perhaps their style reflects their valid concerns and should not be ignored. In terms of alternatives, they have always supported solar power and have led the way in showing that it can be the lowest cost form of electric power generation. If that is not a practical suggestion, I don't know what is.
Warren Buffet thinks there is a little money to be made in transmission: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aq3kc7fAgq6k&refer=home. Presumably, the costs will be born by customers. The demand growth is huge in Texas but hopefully we'll see about 12 MW of solar going in at 2005 rates over the next year and that will have some some small effect on Buffet's bottom line. I don't think he'll miss it much given his shift to really big projects.
This is what the nuclear industry would have you believe, but nuclear power emits almost twice as much carbon dioxide as wind: http://157.150.195.10/Pubs/chronicle/2007/issue2/0207p63.htm and solar will shortly be matching wind in this measure. Given that new nuclear power has to be more expensive than wind or solar by the time it comes on line, it is actually a distraction from the main task and will slow our transition to lower carbon emissions. There is a substantial opportunity cost for nuclear power. Also, nuclear power lies under a Sword of Damocles since the next big accident will lead to end of nuclear power. NRG needs Entergy, for example, to really behave itself, and Entergy is not showing a lot of signs of doing that: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/08/2036240. So, reliance on nuclear power to reduce carbon dioxide emissions seems very risky. We could see all of our nuclear power shut down in an election cycle, especially if the required payout from the accident under Price-Anderson exceeds what can be done without making the government insolvent. This is why a sleeping guard at Indian Point seems so crazy, yet Entergy posts solo guards to save money even though New York is a frequent target of attacks.
So, for a number of reasons, new nuclear power does not make sense for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. We should rather be working out ways to reduce our exposure to nuclear risks while using superior and more nimble technology to reduce emissions.
Oh, dear, the capacity factor. What does wind cost in 2013? About $0.70/Watt. What does South Texas nuclear power cost? About 5.6 times the original estimate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Texas_Nuclear_Generating_Station. Wind is the cheapest source of energy in Texas you can buy and it is getting cheaper. This is not going to change until solar comes down further.
No doubt you post anonymously because you know you are providing false information. Such stuff has been refuted numerous times including yesterday: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3006#comment-242422. Hansen tends to get things right sooner than most. Perhaps you are so petty that this annoys you.
The US already has 24 GW of pump storage: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/07/closets.html and with the electrification of transportation, coming up with a mere 3 GW for Texas by 2014 should not be a big problem at all: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/08/roof-pitch.html. Nuclear power takes such a long time to come on line, and requires such a long (hundred year) planning horizon that it just does not make a lot of sense in a rapidly changing market where other energy sources are substantially less expensive already.
It is the poisoning that makes it very difficult to reprocess uranium. You need to go to unacceptably high levels of enrichment to overcome the poisoning uranium isotope. This is why only the plutonium is used (about 1% of spent fuel) and the uranium put in long term storage in French reprocessing. You don't get a whole lot of energy from reprocessing.
In fact, this is not the case. This development has been encouraged by government through loan guarantees that are not available to other power providers. Even with that the cost, likely lowballed at $2.20/Watt is high compared to Texas wind power (about $1.30/Watt). Wind is curently the least expensive source of power in Texas and it is growing very rapidly because of this. There is a definite risk that the new reactors won't be able to sell their power and we will be stuck with the bill when they default on their construction loans. Eliminate the loan guarantees, repeal Price-Anderson and then see if private capital is available to do this kind of thing. From the numbers, it does not look like it makes any kind of economic sense. --
Rent solar power for your home and save: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html
Plans for nuclear power in the UK seem to be taking an interesting turn. Greenpeace UK recently looked at proposed sites for new reactors in the UK and found that four proposed site may be unsuitable owing to the risk of sea level rise: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/reports/the-impacts-of-climate-change-on-nuclear-power-station-sites. The South Texas reactor site is one of 14 currrent or decommisioned civilian power reactor site in the US that are located in tidal regions. With a 2014 start date, a 40 year reactor life and a 20 year decommisioning phase, the South Texas reactor site could be subject to 5 meters of sea level rise: http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/2/2/024002/erl7_2_024002.html. That raises serious questions about the wisdom of siting the new reactors close to the present reactors and it might make more sense to seek an inland source of cooling water.
Another location issue pertains specifically to Texas. Texas wind power has been growing very rapidly and may easily meet anticipated demand. Wind costs about $1.30/Watt to build while the nuclear plant, at this early phase, is anticipated to cost $2.20/Watt without modifications that come up in the licensing process or construction delays that genrally plague large projects.
South Texas may not be the best place to test the waters on new nuclear generation.
Slashdot Mirror
Roscheisen was describing their operation. Who is your utility?
Sorry, I missed your message. You spoke to the wrong person at Naonsolar. Check with a guy names Roscheisen: http://earth2tech.com/2007/07/30/10-questions-for-nanosolar-ceo-martin-roscheisen/. You seem to be so deep in the nuclear industry FUD, that I'll just wait for you to come up for air on the rest of it.
He's using generic code so it can't be non-obvious.
This is joke, however lame....
Just now you might need to move closer to West Texas to get the deal. Warran Buffet is planning to string you some more transmission though.
I guess since Nanosolar is selling for about a $1/Watt, you'll be happy to dispense with transmission and just get power where it is used. On the other hand, the other consumer choice in Texas is wind, and that does cost less than other options. So far as I know, there is only one subsidy for wind and it is small. It is also not likely to be renewed. When Price-Anderson is repealed, we can consider cutting other production subsidies as well. On the whole, the claim that nuclear power is inexpensive seems very shaky. To fund a bond that would cover the liability for a large nuclear accident would cost 4 to 10 cents per kWh over 40 years depending on how cheap you think human life is. What a huge opportunity cost. We might have 40% renewables by now if Price-Anderson had not distorted the market. Think of how much people would have saved on home heating if we had not been burning all that gas to cover nuclear power's inflexibility. Now the dollar is tanking as people lose their homes when realistic pricing of nuclear power might have placed us in a much better position. We'd be ready to not just meet Kyoto, but beat it. Well, now the NRC will kick this one around for a few years and we'll see what they do.
Presumably Iraq was unaware of the existance of those weapons in the same manner we don't know who has the guns we sent for the police force there.
I'm not so sure that warning about the collapse of fisheries is such a small matter or that the warnings are out of proportion. Quite a lot of protein comes from the sea and the loss of the supply might be missed. Is this the sort of thing you are finding to be out of proportion? Do you miss cod fish?
The punchline to one of the jokes I was thinking of is "I used to have a car just like that myself." And the begining was about how many days it took the Texan to drive around his ranch.
The parameter we are controlling is the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the direction we are pushing it is up. It appears that the response of the icesheets to warming is rapid so that 5 meters of sea level rise by the end of the century is quite possible.
You need to get current with the literature. The IPCC points out that they have left the icesheets out of their estimate. You want to go with 5 meters or higher for planning purposes. Say, 5 meters plus a 3 meter storm surge. Here is what things look like under those conditions: http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=28.6942,-96.0603&z=6&m=8
Actually, until recently, hydro has been in a class by itself, renewable but with storage built in. Now thermal solar is getting storage built in as well. I'm not how sure that will go since we'll be making a huge amount of storage for transportation in any case. PG&E is already making contracts to take the used batteries from electic cars (99% efficient) for use for grid storage. Once wind gets up to the point where it is displacing more than gas, storage will materialize. Storage is much better than baseload because it does not require fuel.
Let me get this right. You think that because Iraq once had WMD, poison gas, but documented that it no longer had it, Bush was right?
Supply and demand. Demand for turbines is very high right now. Manufacturers are ramping up to meet this demand. Once they have done this, the price will come down. On the other hand, the nuclear industry has never once kept its promises. Always late and over budget. Can't operate without a meltdown. We still have those electic meters that were suppose to become superfluous. You may think that the learning curve has been ascended, but how can you be sure? Has the industry stopped asking for subsidies? Does the industry feel it can raise capital without loan guarantees? It is prepared to post a bond to cover liability for an accident? That would only cost 4-10 cents per kWh over 40 years. It would give much greater confidence if they behaved like they were ready to take responsibility rather than wearing a big REGULATE ME! sign taped to their back all the time.
A Texas exceptionalism that sea level rise will not affect them is, well, what can I say... Texan.... We have a few good jokes about that where I come from.
You can see some of the comments below your other point are already answered.
So, Greenpeace provides technically reliable information but you don't like their style. But, if their information is correct, then perhaps their style reflects their valid concerns and should not be ignored. In terms of alternatives, they have always supported solar power and have led the way in showing that it can be the lowest cost form of electric power generation. If that is not a practical suggestion, I don't know what is.
Warren Buffet thinks there is a little money to be made in transmission: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aq3kc7fAgq6k&refer=home. Presumably, the costs will be born by customers. The demand growth is huge in Texas but hopefully we'll see about 12 MW of solar going in at 2005 rates over the next year and that will have some some small effect on Buffet's bottom line. I don't think he'll miss it much given his shift to really big projects.
This is what the nuclear industry would have you believe, but nuclear power emits almost twice as much carbon dioxide as wind: http://157.150.195.10/Pubs/chronicle/2007/issue2/0207p63.htm and solar will shortly be matching wind in this measure. Given that new nuclear power has to be more expensive than wind or solar by the time it comes on line, it is actually a distraction from the main task and will slow our transition to lower carbon emissions. There is a substantial opportunity cost for nuclear power. Also, nuclear power lies under a Sword of Damocles since the next big accident will lead to end of nuclear power. NRG needs Entergy, for example, to really behave itself, and Entergy is not showing a lot of signs of doing that: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/08/2036240. So, reliance on nuclear power to reduce carbon dioxide emissions seems very risky. We could see all of our nuclear power shut down in an election cycle, especially if the required payout from the accident under Price-Anderson exceeds what can be done without making the government insolvent. This is why a sleeping guard at Indian Point seems so crazy, yet Entergy posts solo guards to save money even though New York is a frequent target of attacks.
So, for a number of reasons, new nuclear power does not make sense for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. We should rather be working out ways to reduce our exposure to nuclear risks while using superior and more nimble technology to reduce emissions.
Oh, dear, the capacity factor. What does wind cost in 2013? About $0.70/Watt. What does South Texas nuclear power cost? About 5.6 times the original estimate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Texas_Nuclear_Generating_Station. Wind is the cheapest source of energy in Texas you can buy and it is getting cheaper. This is not going to change until solar comes down further.
Curious, can you give a single instance when Greenpeace has been wrong?
No doubt you post anonymously because you know you are providing false information. Such stuff has been refuted numerous times including yesterday: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3006#comment-242422. Hansen tends to get things right sooner than most. Perhaps you are so petty that this annoys you.
The US already has 24 GW of pump storage: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/07/closets.html and with the electrification of transportation, coming up with a mere 3 GW for Texas by 2014 should not be a big problem at all: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/08/roof-pitch.html. Nuclear power takes such a long time to come on line, and requires such a long (hundred year) planning horizon that it just does not make a lot of sense in a rapidly changing market where other energy sources are substantially less expensive already.
I guess you might want the customers to be underwater too ;-)? You can see from the cover of this Brochure that the land is pretty flat there: http://etidweb.tamu.edu/classes/entc359/STP%20Brochure%20June%2006.pdf. Here is how close 5 meters of sea level rise gets to the resevior: http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=28.6942,-96.0603&z=6&m=5. I doubt the resevior will avoid being breached in this situation. You can run the level up to 14 meters which we might see by 2200. 25 meters is not available but this is what a 3 C warming would likely cause. The interesting thing is that this seems to happen in centuries rather than millennia: http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/l3h462k7p4068780/?p=0f73dea5b8974dfa837377d459559a91&pi=1.
It is the poisoning that makes it very difficult to reprocess uranium. You need to go to unacceptably high levels of enrichment to overcome the poisoning uranium isotope. This is why only the plutonium is used (about 1% of spent fuel) and the uranium put in long term storage in French reprocessing. You don't get a whole lot of energy from reprocessing.
In fact, this is not the case. This development has been encouraged by government through loan guarantees that are not available to other power providers. Even with that the cost, likely lowballed at $2.20/Watt is high compared to Texas wind power (about $1.30/Watt). Wind is curently the least expensive source of power in Texas and it is growing very rapidly because of this. There is a definite risk that the new reactors won't be able to sell their power and we will be stuck with the bill when they default on their construction loans. Eliminate the loan guarantees, repeal Price-Anderson and then see if private capital is available to do this kind of thing. From the numbers, it does not look like it makes any kind of economic sense.
--
Rent solar power for your home and save: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html
Plans for nuclear power in the UK seem to be taking an interesting turn. Greenpeace UK recently looked at proposed sites for new reactors in the UK and found that four proposed site may be unsuitable owing to the risk of sea level rise: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/reports/the-impacts-of-climate-change-on-nuclear-power-station-sites. The South Texas reactor site is one of 14 currrent or decommisioned civilian power reactor site in the US that are located in tidal regions. With a 2014 start date, a 40 year reactor life and a 20 year decommisioning phase, the South Texas reactor site could be subject to 5 meters of sea level rise: http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/2/2/024002/erl7_2_024002.html. That raises serious questions about the wisdom of siting the new reactors close to the present reactors and it might make more sense to seek an inland source of cooling water.
Another location issue pertains specifically to Texas. Texas wind power has been growing very rapidly and may easily meet anticipated demand. Wind costs about $1.30/Watt to build while the nuclear plant, at this early phase, is anticipated to cost $2.20/Watt without modifications that come up in the licensing process or construction delays that genrally plague large projects.
South Texas may not be the best place to test the waters on new nuclear generation.
OO seems to be able to do this calculation (=850*77.1) on FC6. =2*asin(1) gives pi to about ten places. Can't do =2*(1+1/1e15).
It is progress in the sense that the process has been optimized for $/Watt. Work on the Porche led to low prices for the VW.